“You f**king whore!” I scream as I rip the shower curtain off the rod, exposing so much awful, soapy flesh.
I’m standing in the tub. My hands are around his throat. I’m between them now, the shower is spraying the back of my coat with hot spokes, weighing down my sweatpants, and he is in the air, begging me with his eyes, pleading for a breath of air. His hands are trying to break my grip, but he is a tiny, weak man. Nikki is screaming; Kenny G is playing; Nikki’s lover is turning purple. He’s so small, I can hold him up against the tiles with one hand. I c**k my elbow back, squeeze a tight, teeth-shattering fist, and take aim. His nose explodes like a packet of ketchup. His eyes are rolling into the back of his head; his hands have fallen away from mine. When I c**k back my fist a second time, the music stops playing, and then I’m on my back in the tub and Nikki’s naked lover has fallen out of the tub and naked Nikki is holding the CD player in her trembling hands. When I try to stand, she smashes the CD player over my head once more; my knees give out, and I see the silver faucet rise like some fat, shiny snake to strike the hard spot just above my right eyebrow, and then—
—I wake up in a hospital and immediately begin vomiting all over myself, until nurses arrive and tell me not to move my head. And I’m crying and calling for Nikki, but she does not come to me. My head hurts so badly. When I touch my forehead, I feel some sort of bandage, but then my hands are being forced to my sides. The nurses are screaming and holding me down, and then doctors are restraining me too. I feel a prick in my arm, and …
When I blink, I see my reflection in the blank television screen. The video has ended. I look life-size on my father’s flat screen, and I can see my mother asleep on the couch, just over my right shoulder. As I continue to stare at myself, my little white scar begins to itch, but I do not really want to smash my forehead with my fist.
I find my feet and crutch my way into the kitchen. The address book is still in the cabinet above the stove. I place a call to Jake’s apartment. As the phone rings, I look at the microwave and see that it is 2:54 a.m., but I remember that Jake is at a swanky hotel party and won’t be home until tomorrow, so I decide to leave a message.
Hello, you’ve reached Jake and Caitlin’s machine. Please leave a message after the beep. Beep.
“Jake, it’s your brother, Pat. I need a huge favor …”
Best Intentions
Pat,
It’s been a while, hopefully long enough.
If you haven’t ripped up this letter already, please read until the end. As you have discovered, I am a much better writer than I am a speaker at this point in my life.
Everybody hates me.
Did you know your brother came to my house and threatened to kill me if I made contact with you? His sincerity scared me—enough to keep me from writing earlier. Even my parents have reproached me for pretending to be Nikki. My therapist says my betrayal might not be forgivable, and by the way she kept repeating the word “unforgivable,” I could tell she was very disappointed in me. But the truth is, I did it for your benefit. Yes, I was hoping that once you found closure and got over Nikki, you would want to give me a shot—especially since we are such great dance partners, we both enjoy running, we are in similar housing situations, and let’s face it, we’re both fighting hard to maintain our grip on reality. We have a lot in common, Pat. I still believe you fell into my life for a reason.
Because I love you, I want to tell you something I have never told anyone—except my therapist. It’s sort of screwed up, so I hope you will be able to handle it. At first I wasn’t going to tell you, but I figured the situation couldn’t get any worse, and maybe a little honesty could go a long way right now.
I don’t know if you know this, but Tommy was a cop. He worked for the Meadowville Police Department and was assigned to the high school sort of as a counselor. So half of his hours were spent working with and counseling troubled teenagers, and the other half of his hours he was just a regular cop. I’m telling you this because it is important to understand that Tommy was a good man. He did not deserve to die, and his death absolutely proves that life is random and f**ked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make sense of it all for you—if only temporarily.
Anyway, Tommy was really good with teenagers, and he even started a club at the high school designed to raise awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving. Many of the parents thought the club condoned underage drinking, because it was not an anti-underage-drinking club but just an anti-drinking-and-driving club, so Tommy had to fight really hard to keep it afloat. Tommy told me that a lot of the high school kids drank every weekend, and underage drinking was even condoned by many of the town’s parents. And the funniest thing to me was that the kids came to him and asked him to start the club because they were worried that someone was going to get hurt or die if their friends kept driving home after parties. Can you imagine talking to a cop like that when you were a teenager? That’s the kind of guy Tommy was, people trusted him instantly.
So Tommy organized assemblies and even put together this teacher karaoke night where students could pay money to hear their favorite teachers perform the current hits. Tommy could talk people into doing things like that. I’d go to these events, and Tommy would be up on the stage with all those teenagers, and he’d be singing and dancing with the other teachers, all of whom he had convinced to dress up in wild costumes—and parents, students, administrators would be all smiles. You couldn’t help it, because Tommy was such a burst of positive energy. And he always gave speeches during these events—listing facts and statistics about drinking and driving. People listened to Tommy. People loved him. I loved him so f**king much, Pat.