The Book of Joe

Acknowledgments
    Thank You
    To my family: My wife Lizzie, who tolerates my creative mood swings, takes the kids on Sunday adventures so I can write, and who never doubted I would find the right home for this book. My parents, who supported and encouraged my writing long before I gave them any reason to. Spencer and Emma, who fill my every day with the perfect chaos of their love, and without whom this book would have been finished so much sooner.
    To Simon Lipskar, my fantastic agent, my sounding board and my literary conscience. He gets excited on my behalf and he gets pissed off on my behalf and it’s great to have someone like that, because it’s no fun at all to be excited or pissed off by yourself. Thanks also to Maja Nikolic for handling the foreign markets, Daniel Lazar and everyone else at Writers House for taking such good care of me.
    To Kassie Evashevski, my very cool film agent at Brillstein-Grey, for giving me four of the most thrilling and surreal hours of my professional life.
    To Abby Zidle, my dream of an editor at Bantam Dell, who is frightfully educated but delightfully lowbrow when the moment demands it, and an absolute pleasure to work with.
    Thanks to all the folks at Bantam Dell for getting behind this book in such a big way and making me feel so welcome.
    To Kelley Ragland, who edited Plan B, my first novel, and whose valuable input helped improve this one.
    To Alan Arrick Stone, rest in peace, who passed away much too young on July 7, 1992, and to Steven Stone, who, on an ill-advised nighttime drive through a snowstorm from York, Pa. to New York City, shared his memories of Alan’s final days with me. We ended up getting hopelessly lost and having to call AAA, but the stories stayed with me and bits and pieces of them found their way into this novel.
    To Aari Itzkowitz, for staying unemployed just long enough to proofread the first draft of this novel, despite the conspicuous absence of Winston Churchill or a major world war in the story.
    To all the devoted friends and family members who never stopped asking after this book. Here it is. Now please, just leave me alone.

Book One
    Now a life of leisure and a pirate’s treasure Don’t make much for tragedy
    But it’s a sad man my friend who’s livin’ in his own skin And can’t stand the company
    - “Better Days,” Bruce Springsteen
    It’s a town full of losers
    I’m pulling out of here to win
    - “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen

One
    Just a few scant months after my mother’s suicide, I walked into the garage, looking for my baseball glove, and discovered Cindy Posner on her knees, animatedly performing fellatio on my older brother, Brad. He was leaned up against our father’s tool rack, the hammers and wrenches jingling musically on their hooks like Christmas bells as he rocked gently back and forth, staring up at the ceiling with a curiously bored expression. His jeans and boxers were bunched up around his knees, his hand resting absently on her bobbing head as she went about her surprisingly noisy oral ministrations. I stood there transfixed until Brad, sensing my arrival, looked down from the ceiling and our eyes met. There was no alarm in his eyes, no embarrassment at having been caught in so compromising a position, but only the same look of tired resignation he always seemed to have where I was concerned.
    That’s right. I’m getting a blow job in the garage. It’s a safe bet you never will. Cindy, whose back was to me, noticed me a few seconds later and became instantly hysterical, cursing
    and shrieking at me as I beat a hasty, if somewhat belated, retreat. I was thirteen years old at the time.
    It’s entirely possible that Cindy would have handled herself with a bit more aplomb had she known that years later the incident would be immortalized in the first chapter of the best-selling autobiographical novel that I would write and, as with most successful books, in the inevitable movie that would follow shortly thereafter. By then she was no longer Cindy Posner, but Cindy Goffman, having married Brad in their senior year of college, and I think it’s fair to say that this inclusion in my book did nothing to improve our already tenuous relationship. The book is titled Bush Falls, after the small Connecticut town where I grew up, a term I use loosely, since the jury’s still out on whether I’ve actually ever grown up at all.
    By now you’ve certainly heard of Bush Falls, or no doubt seen the movie, which