The Book of Joe

they’ll have me. And then there’s you. ... ”
    “There’s me,” Carly says, nodding her head bitterly. “The cherry on top of your psychotic little sundae.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “You’re unbelievable,” she says, the volume of her voice
    sliding up a few notches. “Everything back here, me and Wayne and this town, it has nothing to do with you anymore.
    You went off and hit the big time, and now you want to come back and shower your beneficence on all the little people who fell apart when you left.”
    “That’s not it at all,” I protested. “I’m the one who fell apart.”
    “Well, cry me a river,” she says angrily. “News flash, Joe.
    Everything isn’t about you. We all managed to get fucked up on our own. There was nothing you could have done about it then, and there’s nothing you can do about it now. You think you have the market cornered on regret?”
    “That’s not it,” I say, wondering how the conversation went haywire so quickly.
    “Why don’t we just cut to the chase here,” she says, waving away my protestations. “What do you want from me, Joe?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Bullshit. Try again. What do you want from me?”
    Her eyes are cold and humorless, and looking into them, I experience the sensation of drowning, a careless swimmer who failed to heed the undertow warnings. “I just want the chance to get to know you again,” I say. “I know we’re not the same people we were, but underneath everything, you’re still the only person I’ve ever really loved.”
    “So, what are you saying? You want to go out with me? You want to go on a date?”
    “Why would that get you so mad?”
    Carly nods slowly, her cheeks flushed with anger. “I look like such an easy bet to you, don’t I? Your lonely, battered ex-girlfriend. You must have thought, after all I’ve been through, that I would just jump gratefully into your arms.”
    “That’s not fair,” I say, trying to manufacture some indignation of my own to neutralize hers.
    “Fuck fair.” She leans forward emphatically. “Look at me.
    Look at Wayne. When did fair come into the picture?” She stops for a second, fighting back her tears. “Things haven’t
    worked out for you, and that’s too bad. But you left, and then you used us all as props in your goddamn book. You don’t get to come back here now and be the hero, Joe. I’m sorry, but you just don’t.”
    I sit across from her in stunned silence, paralyzed in my seat. I had expected things to be awkward at first, and I’d been prepared to soldier through that, working under the basic assumption that Carly still had feelings for me, buried somewhere, simply in need of minor excavation. I hadn’t counted on the possibility that she really might have no love left for me, that what we had once been is now completely dead to her. Suddenly, irrationally, I feel heartbroken. The rain beats manically against the window, and I feel the urge to run outside and dissolve.
    Carly sits back in her seat, winded from her diatribe. If anything, she seems as shocked as me by the anger she’s unleashed. I stand up slowly, reaching into my pocket for some bills. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You were right; this was a big mistake.
    I’ll take you back to your office now.”
    She looks up at me but makes no move to rise. “So that’s it, then?” I can see the rage seeping out of her, the muscles in her face and shoulders slowly unclenching as she breathes deeply.
    “That’s it. Again, I’m really very sorry. You’re right about everything. I don’t know who the hell I thought I was.”
    Carly nods and then, instead of standing up, turns and looks out the window. “Ask me a question,” she says quietly, all traces of anger now gone from her voice.
    “What?”
    “Fair’s fair. Ask away.”
    I look at her in disbelief and then sit back down, looking at her reflection in the window. “Do you hate me?” my reflection asks.
    “Yes,” hers says. “Sometimes.”
    “Do you love me?”
    She’s quiet for a moment, and I can feel myself age a year waiting for her answer. “Of course I do,” she whispers, her voice barely audible over the pounding rain.
    I nod, quivering imperceptibly as the news is circulated to my internal organs. I don’t pretend to understand women.
    Or, rather, that’s exactly what I do. Pretend. But sometimes it’s apparent to me that it doesn’t even pay to try. This is clearly one of those times, but somehow it comes to me, as if through