The Book of Joe
part, admittedly the stoned part, thinks that showing up in the dead of night is decidedly more romantic. And tonight I’m eighteen again. It’s Jared and me, two young, throbbing hearts; stoned, lonely, and romantic to the end. Our yearning knows no bounds, our faith is endless, our testosterone coming out of our ears. Give us a chance and we’ll love you fiercely with every cell in our bodies; give us the signal and we’ll fuck you all night. Break our hearts, we’ll weep and mourn and we’ll be in love again inside of a month.
I climb out of the car and limp slowly up the front walk.
“Not a good idea,” Jared calls to me from the car.
“I know what I’m doing.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
I ignore him and ring the bell. After a few seconds, I ring it again. Just as it’s dawning on me what a terribly stupid idea this is, I hear the light tread of bare feet on carpeted stairs, and then Carly’s at the door. She’s dressed in blue boxers and a gray UConn T-shirt; her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, her eyes squinting and bleary as sleep and consciousness jockey for position. She looks, I think, quite beautiful.
“Joe,” she says, not so much a greeting as a confirmation, in the same way the villain in a James Bond flick will note the sudden explosion in his underground nuclear facility and immediately say, in a carefully restrained European accent,
“Bond.” Because, really, who the hell else could it be?
“Hi,” I say.
“What’s going on?” she says, rubbing her eyes.
“I was supposed to call. I didn’t want you to think I didn’t.”
“You didn’t,” she points out, momentarily confusing me.
“True.” There follows a leaden silence as the handle on this particular conversation floats tantalizingly above me, just out of reach. “This isn’t going very well, is it?” I say.
“I’m not sure what ‘this’ is, but I suspect you’re right.”
I’m suddenly exhausted. I turn away from Carly and sit down on her front step. I hear her hesitate behind me and then step outside, letting the screen door close with a hydraulic hiss behind her. Score one for the home team. All things are possible. She sits down next to me, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“What do you want, Joe?” she says softly.
“I just - I don’t know. I want to connect with you.”
“And you thought showing up here after midnight would do the trick?”
“It seemed like the thing to do at the time.” I find myself admiring her toes, which are short and thin and then open into little round bulbs at the end, like grapes, their nails painted a glossy crimson. “You have very pretty toes.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No,” I say. “Maybe a little high, though.”
Carly nods. “Perfect.”
Above us, the moon hangs like a fat blister on the heel of the sky, ready to burst in a spray of viscous white pus. I look at Carly and think I might cry. “I just wish I could get past all of this and just talk to you,” I tell her. “You’re the only person I want to really talk to, and I just can’t seem to do it.”
She nods again and leans forward and for one exhilarating instant I think she’s going to hug me, but she only hovers in front of me, craning her neck as she looks down, and says, “Is that blood on your leg?”
Carly’s guest bathroom is done in light pastels, pinks and blues, with impressionistic watercolor orchids on the wallpaper. Above the sink is a frosted Lucite shelf with scented soaps in the shapes of seashells and starfish. I know instinctively that she didn’t decorate this room, that it was like this when she bought the house. It is far too delicate and refined a room to suit the base processes for which it is intended, and I’m sure that defecating in it would feel like swearing in a temple. I sit on the peach marble sink, and Carly sits on the furry toilet seat with my wounded leg planted between her smooth, hairless thighs as she dabs it gently with alcohol. I realize that this was my immediate motivation for having woken her up. I couldn’t bear the thought of tending to my own wounds two nights in a row. “This is pretty deep,” Carly says, grunting mildly as she works around the cut. “How’d it happen?”
“Climbing a fence.”
“And what’s that all over your clothing?”
“Paint.”
She gives me an inquisitive look. “I was playing paintball,”
I explain.
“Oh.” In the dissipating haze of the marijuana, her face appears
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