You stretch your arms up toward the ceiling and stretch to the right and notice the hole in the wall right behind you. “Jesus,” you say. “That’s a big fucking hole.”

I swallow. “A pipe burst upstairs and they had to get in there.”

“And apparently they did,” you say and now you’re tuning into your environment. You notice Larry, my broken typewriter on the coffee table. You look at me for permission to touch him. I nod. You tell lies. I hoard typewriters. We are different, hot.

“His name is Larry,” I say. I’m gonna be honest like you.

“Do you name all your typewriters?” you ask.

“No,” I say. “I don’t name them. They tell me their names when I bring them home.”

It is fun to fuck with you and you can’t decide if I’m pretentious or insane and I can’t tell if you’re being sweet or patronizing when you laugh. “Right.”

“Beck,” I say. “Of course I name them. I’m just kidding.”

“Well, Larry is handsome,” you say and you lean forward to say hello to him and tinker with his keys. I can see your panties. You ask me a question: “Can I hold him?”

“He’s heavy, Beck.”

“You can put him on my lap,” you say and you’re wearing pink seamless bikinis, size small, from the Victoria’s Secret Angels collection. I pick up Larry and set him on your lap and pray that you don’t notice that your panties are identical to the panties shoved in between the cushions of the sofa. I tell you that Larry is broken because he fell (hahaha), and you pet him, sweet.

“Well, Larry may be broken, but he’s a handsome beast, Joe.”

“He’s a one of a kind,” I say.

You study Larry. “He’s missing an L.”

I have to lie because I can’t have you looking around for the L. “Since the day I brought him home.”

You look at me. “Do you have anything to drink?”

I don’t have anything to drink. Fucking Curtis. You return your attention to the typewriter and you want to look between the cushions and make sure the L isn’t lost but if you do that, you will find your panties, which you will know are yours if you have a keen sense of smell, which I think you do. You’re like a toddler that needs distraction and I take a Twizzler and you grab the last one.

“Do you have any more of these?” you say.

“Afraid not,” I say and now I’m worried because you stop chewing and your eyes lock on something in my bedroom.

You squint. “Is that the Italian Dan Brown I gave you?”

I want to close my bedroom door but that would be weird so I turn around and follow your gaze and realize you are looking at the special shelf I built for the Italian Dan Brown. It could be worse; I could have put the Book of Beck on that shelf.

“I think that’s your book,” I lie.

You pet Larry and you grin. “That’s sweet, Joe.”

I swallow the rest of my Twizzler and I have to get you out of here. “You wanna go get some more Twizzlers?”

“Hell yes,” you say and I walk over to you and you look even smaller with Larry on your lap and you pat him. “Lift, please.”

I lift him off your lap and your powder-blue cords have new dark scuff marks and I put him in his normal spot on the floor and you step back into your boots and slip into your little furry jacket and walk across the room away from the evidence of my affection, your panties and your bras. What a relief to open the door and lead you out of my home, and it’s a whole new world with you in it. You pause in the stairwell and point to a smudge on the wall. “Blood?” you whisper, alive and jocular, my furry nymph, and I nod in affirmation and you raise your eyebrows. “Larry’s blood?”

I smack your ass and you like it and you hop down my stairs and I’m the only one who knows about your dad and soon it will be time for the red ladle. You push open the door that I’ve been pushing open for almost fifteen years. We walk to the bodega and you’re practically skipping.

“Is this the part they’re trying to make into a historical district?” you ask. “I read about that somewhere.”

“No,” I say. “This is the other part of Bed-Stuy.”

My section reminds you of “Sesame Street and Jennifer Lopez songs” and every guy in the shop wants to bang you but you’re with me. You like the attention; you tell me you feel like a celebrity in here and you giggle. I pay for the Twizzlers and the Evian and you shove the Twizzlers in your back pocket, as if you need to draw more attention to your ass. So this is what it would be like if you lived here with me. It would be good, warm. Before you know it, we are back on my stoop.

We sit close and tear into the Twizzlers and share the Evian. A couple of teenage girls from the block pass by and mad-dog you with your Evian and you get sweet, defensive and assure me that you only drink Evian because Peach says it’s alkaline and you’re not wearing a bra, the way you weren’t wearing a bra that first day in the shop and it really does feel like a new beginning.

You scruff my hair with your cold little hand. “You wanna go back up?”

“Yeah,” I say and I wish, I wish I could have prepared for you, hidden your things and showered, and put on matching socks. But you are here now, walking up my stairs, slowly, teasing me with every deliberate, soft step.

It’s a blur from then on. My shitty sofa transforms into a hammock on a desert island in a Corona commercial minus the beer. We don’t need beer, we don’t need anything, we have us now. I keep my arms around you and you hold me in a way that would please Eric Carmen. We suck face until we can’t and then we just tell each other things. You tell me all about the Dickens festival, the fight with your father over cigarettes, your stepmonster and the shitty motel, the bratty stepsiblings, the overpriced candy apples. You want to know about me and I tell you I like you, a lot. We go back to sucking face. It goes on like that for a while and you’re all worn out and cozy. When you finally fall asleep your little body is limp. I don’t know if I will ever be able to sleep with you this close to me. You can’t tell lies in your sleep and you smile slightly, I think, every so often, and move closer to me.

The only reason I know that I am able to sleep in such close proximity to you is that the next morning the sound of the shower turning on wakes me up and you are no longer in my arms and you are naked, wet, there.

25

IF you live alone, you’d be a fucking masochistic freak to buy an opaque shower curtain. I started thinking about this in the Silver Seahorse, where the shower curtain was white, save a few spots of mold on the bottom. It’s like they were trying to make the rooms feel like Psycho. I thought buying a shower curtain would be the easiest fucking thing in the world but you go to Bed Bath & Beyond and they have like six hundred opaque shower curtains that are obviously not an option. And then you go online and there are thousands to choose from. I didn’t buy a totally clear one because you need something to look at while you’re on the can, but when you think about it, this shower curtain is something you are going to look at

Every.

Fucking.

Day.

So I started going through hundreds of options online. Most of the designs are bullshit you could never stomach every day (a map of the world, go fuck yourself, fish, a map of Brooklyn, really go fuck yourself, snowmen, the Eiffel Tower, nautical signs—I mean, I’m not some fucker who buys scarves at Urban Outfitters and rates movies on IMDB). I just wanted something funny and classic.

I finally settled on a clear shower curtain with yellow police tape marked POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS slapped across. And when I bought this shower curtain, I never imagined that you would be on the other side of the police tape, those damn yellow stripes blocking my view of you. Next time I’m going for an all clear, Beck. Lesson learned.