“Hey, can I have a smoke?”

He shakes his head. “Honey, I can’t do that.”

“So it’s fine for you but not me?”

“Did you bring a costume?”

Costume? Jesus.

“Do you think I brought a costume?” You groan. “Just one smoke, please.”

“Hell if I’m gonna give one to ya.”

“Are you kidding me right now? This is when you decide to be a fucking father?”

You said father and I might collapse as my brain waves sizzle and my heart stops. Father. You told me he was dead. You told everyone he was dead. Oh, Beck, why? I don’t know if I’m mad or sad because in the present moment I’m just so relieved that you’re not paying (or being paid?) to put on a schoolgirl outfit and get banged in a motel room. I breathe. The Captain is your father and your father has the key and you groan and follow him into Room 213. I want to know him and I want to follow you in there and I want him to shake my hand and tell me how happy he is to see that his daughter has got such a good man in her life. But you told me he is dead so maybe you’d be happier if I went in there and made that happen? I am confused and it is colder by the second.

It’s off-season in the shithole that is Bridgeport and the activity of checking into the room helps me steady myself. It’s a lot to take in, but I’m relieved. I spout off some bullshit about lucky numbers and request the room adjacent to yours. They give it to me and it smells like bleach and Newports and the walls are thin and after I shower I throw one of the extra towels on the floor and sit down and listen to you fight with your dad (something about money, kids, you sound like adults in Peanuts cartoons). He slams the door and you’re alone. After you finish crying you shower and now you’re wet and clean, like I am, and I hear the door lock. You tear the blanket off the bed—it hits the floor, it’s heavy, I hear it—and you start to work away at yourself and you moan—you’re loud, I hear it—and now I’m working and you’re working and in my mind, there is no wall because I’m fucking you on that bed and you’re bent over begging for it and we’re in Bridgeport because we want to fuck in a motel and I’m pulling your hair and you’re screaming—you are, Beck, you’re loud and there’s no green pillow for you to cry into—and when it’s all done you turn on the TV and light a cigarette. I can hear it and I can smell it and I’m so heavy from doing it with you and not doing it with you that it takes a minute before it hits me.

You know the smiley-face balloon was fine and your father isn’t a dead junkie.

You’re a fucking liar.

22

MY, you have a way of making me do things I don’t normally do. I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since the third grade (Spiderman), and though it’s gotten harder over the years, I’ve managed to silently protest that whore of a holiday for the bulk of my life. Yet here I am in a mothball-scented dressing room at Bridgeport Costumes. The dressing room is so small that a fucking Smurf would be sweating. Celine Dion is singing about her fucking heart through the worst sound system in existence while the well-intentioned Irish shopkeeper prattles on a few feet from the dressing room.

“Have you got those pantaloons on yet, son?”

“No,” I say and I look in the mirror and I want to die. But I can’t die, because you need me. Your father is dragging you to the Charles Fucking Dickens Festival across the sound in Port Jefferson. You don’t want to go, but he rented you a costume and after the two of you finished arguing this morning, you agreed to go spend time with his family.

While you and your dad were getting ready for the festival, I hunkered down in my motel room and read up on this fucking festival. When you stepped out for a cigarette, I looked out at you and I knew I had no choice. You were a vision in your costume, drowning in red velour as your hair poured out from under a little red bonnet. You were smoking and pouting in the parking lot of the Silver Seahorse Motel. You are the only girl in the world who could look so serious and so silly at the same. Your dad stepped outside to join you, in a top hat and tails. He gave you a white furry muff.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” you asked.

“Put your hands in, keep warm.”

“But, I have gloves.”

“Beck, can you just give me a break here?”

You sighed and put your hands in that lucky muff and I want to put my hands in you. I’m taking too long to get dressed and the Irish shopkeeper taps her knuckles on the door. She wants a sneak peek, of course. “It’s so nice to see young people like you getting into the spirit,” she calls. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think those pantaloons are going to suit you quite well, you know.”

“Yep, in a second.”

“And I’m not sure if I mentioned,” she says for the third time. “Rentals must be returned within one week of rental date. Otherwise you might have an old Irish slag knocking at your door in the wee hours. Are you ready?”

“In a second,” I say and maybe Irish women don’t speak English. Celine Dion is still screaming about her goddamned heart and I’m choking on mothballs and self-loathing and if you would have told your dad about me, he could have rented costumes for both of us. Then you’d be in here with me and I wouldn’t even notice the mothballs or the schmaltzy Canadian crap. But, you lied to me. And now I have to walk out of the dressing room and tell the Irish lady that I’m attending the festival on my own.

“Handsome chap like you won’t go very long without finding a nice lass, I’m sure.” She chortles. And there’s a mirror behind her and fuck. This costume certainly does look good on me—my top hat is taller than your father’s top hat—but this costume is not a disguise.

“Do you have any beards?”

She objects jokingly, “Are you quite serious, young man?”

“It’s cold out there.”

“We have beards but they’re not at all Dickensian.”

“I don’t care,” I say and she grips my twenties and fumes. Small towns are scarier to me than cities. This woman, who seems all kindly and obsequious a minute ago, is melting down because I want a beard.

“I’m in kind of a rush,” I say, the slightest bit of an Irish affect.

She lowers the volume on the ancient tape player. Celine Dion on cassette isn’t very Dickensian either, but she concedes and points me toward the non-Dickensian, nonrefundable beards, which are in a box in the back marked JOHNNY DEPP/DUCK DYNASTY.

Fucking America, Beck. I just don’t know sometimes.

LIFE is aggravating when you’re alone in a costume on a party boat with people who are all together, in costumes, on a party boat. We’re not even close to docking at Port Jeff yet and I shouldn’t have boarded the ferry. I didn’t think it through. What if you recognize me? You’re not gonna want to introduce me to your father while I’m in pantafuckingloons.

I should have gone back to New York but there’s no turning this festive boat around so I’m trying to focus on the good: You haven’t tweeted once since you’ve been here or sent one e-mail. But bad thoughts creep in. Your father is back in the picture. What if this means that you tell your mother to shut off your phone? Calm down, Joe. I know your passwords and I will always find a way into you, but I like having your phone. I like thinking of your mother paying for me to protect you. It’s hard to be rational in a costume and I try again to think good thoughts. You are capable of going offline and you’re lying to everyone, not just me. And in a way, I’m having an easier go of it than you. You and your old man sit on bucket seats in the main cabin. You look gorgeous, of course, the Rose on our Titanic vessel to my crafty, upbeat Jack, and if we were in this together, oh Beck, I’d find my way under that skirt of yours.