“Or back and forth six times a day.” He laughs.

THE key card works. Benji was right. The storage locker is where he said it would be and there was no trouble getting in because nobody wants to employ humans anymore. Back in the day, there would have been a security guard and a pit bull and there would have been questions.

Who are you?

What’s in the box?

Who authorized your access to this locker?

Where is your authorization?

Can you get Mr. Crane on the phone?

Can you get him to come down here?

And my answers wouldn’t have been good enough and I wouldn’t have known what to do with the box of Benji. But he was generous toward the end of his time on earth. He knew I’d get in here no problem and I think he wanted to rest here. I think he wanted to be reunited with the stolen Rolexes and suits and silver, the stuff he was trained to respect and the stuff that he didn’t have the balls to break away from. He was always gonna be an unhappy materialist. I spared him years of pain.

I pop open two bottles of Home Soda, one for me and one for Benji, and I set his bottle by the box. Tell you this, Beck, the shit tastes like heaven once in a while, if you catch the right batch. I glove up and clean up and listen to the carbonation fade. I notice a Mount Gay Rum Figawi Sailing hat from 2006 with the name Spencer Hewitt stitched under the lid. Rich kids have their names stitched into their clothes, because of rooming with klepto brats like Benji and nannies who need help remembering names. I try on the hat. It fits and I decide to keep it. I need it, Beck. It’s Nantucket red, faded to a dusty rose hue, sensitive to the elements, regal somehow in spite of being damaged, just like you.

17

YOU don’t know that you’re in mourning. You don’t know that Benji is dead. You couldn’t know. But you’re off, Beck. You’ve spent the whole week loafing around having virtual movie screenings with Peach. You can’t even leave the apartment to get coffee without debating the merits of Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and the “sweet workers” at your deli. I’ve tried to get in with you, but right now, you’re all mixed up in Peach.

You can’t even keep your head straight about a fucking movie. When we went to the Corner Bistro, you told me you love Magnolia and you went off on your love/hate relationship with California and your dreams of meeting Paul Thomas Anderson and telling him how fucking smart he is. And I agreed. But Peach tells you his movies are bloated and judgy and you agree with her! And judgy isn’t even a fucking word and you’re supposed to be a writer. I try. I ask you what you’re up to and you tell me you’re watching Magnolia and what do you do? You tell me that you think it’s judgy. You don’t think that. Peach thinks that. And I try to get together with you but you tell me you’re sick.

You’re not sick, Beck. You ask Peach to go shopping, to get lunch. She says no. She says she’s sick. But I tracked her down. I have to know why she has this hold on you so I’ve been watching her walk to her architecture firm and walk to lunch and kiss people hello and pick at Cobb salads all fucking week, Beck. She’s not sick. I ask you to go out for a walk, for coffee, soup, for anything. It’s always the same:

I’m still sick.

I sleep. Six days since Benji’s passing and still I haven’t seen you. I don’t dream, at least, not that I remember.

THE world is a better place when I wake up because at long last, you got into a fight with Peach. She told you she thinks your shrink is no good and you stood up for your shrink and for yourself. I’m proud of you. And the best part is, now that you’ve got your head on straight again, you are the you I know and love. You wrote to me in the middle of the night:

Okay, this is way too many words and it’s way too late but do you ever just feel like telling everyone in your life to fuck off? I don’t want to be that girl bitching about her friends but right now, may I just say . . . my friends are bitches! I try so hard to get them together, you see that, and they all bicker and make my life impossible and Chana won’t go somewhere if Peach is gonna be there and Peach won’t go somewhere if they have happy hour specials because she thinks drink specials bring out the riffraff. The point is . . . And now it’s five A.M. and I haven’t finished my piece and I have to be workshopped today and just plain ugh, you know? And there’s this Blythe girl, this monster, she hates me, and she’s gonna attack this cowboy story and okay. I am so babbling. But basically, the sun is coming up and I am thinking of you. See you soon, assuming you don’t decide I’m a crazy person after reading this e-mail? Night.

And just like that, you’ve made my day. I wrote back to you short and sweet:

Dear Beck, I’m buying you six drinks tonight. Joe

You loved it and I got a smiley face and we have a date tonight—yes!—and I’ve made all the right moves—yes!—and I put the typewriter I took to bed back in its place and my hair looks good today—yes!—and Curtis is working tonight so I don’t even have to close up—yes!—and Peach is out of the picture—yes!—and I cum so fucking hard for you, Beck. Who knows? Maybe tonight, it happens. I go all the way to your neighborhood and buy two cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. They smell fucking good and I want them but I am a good boy, Beck, and I have ideas about what to do with all this icing.

BUT then . . . then. We’re supposed to meet at nine and you call me at 9:04 and you are breathless, on your way uptown. It’s a long story, you say, but Peach is alone at home, and she thinks someone broke in because the furniture on the terrace has been moved around. You sound like her in this state of panic. “Joe, listen to me.” You persist. “Whoever broke in shifted her chaise.”

I interrupt. “But they didn’t steal the chair?”

“No,” you say and you sigh. “But someone broke in, Joe. She’s scared.”

“Of course,” I say and you go on but it’s not as dramatic as you’re making it out to be. I didn’t break in and I didn’t move her chaise. I used a service key I found at the party. And I didn’t steal anything. I’m more like Santa Claus because I brought an acrylic jacket for that Bellow, so the bitch should say thank you.

“Peach says sorry,” you swear to me. “She feels horrible but she is just terrified of having a stalker again.”

I won’t even dignify the word again and I can only imagine the horror stories Peach has spun in years past.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say and I sound like I mean it and I tell you to be safe and you like me. I forgive you. I do. You’re a loyal friend and chaise is not your word, it belongs to Peach. I eat both cupcakes and the icing is stale and it would taste so much better if I were licking it off your tits. You tweet a photo a little while later. There are mini cupcakes much smaller than my big Magnolia cupcakes on those bright plates and a giant bottle of bullshit candy cane vodka. You write:

#Girlsnightin

There’s no way you could know about my cupcakes. But sometimes, I wonder.

18

YOU do make it up to me the next day. But it’s not over six drinks and two cupcakes in a dark bar. Instead, we meet for lunch and you tell me all about Peach’s depression, her loneliness. We’re in sexless Sarabeth’s drinking water (also nonsexual), and sampling artisanal jams (supremely nonsexual), and all you want to talk about is Peach (fully asexual). You feel responsible for her because she doesn’t have any family around and we’re only supposed to go to places like this after we have sex and I can’t figure the logic in any of it.