Page 83 of Pierced

I may be falling in love with Myrtle. It’s possible I’ve been in love with her for a while. Why was it so hard for me to see it, I wonder?

I dunno. It may have something to do with the fact that dating all the way back to some of my first memories, what I learned early on was that when you come to care about something, and enjoy it, and attach to it, somehow it always seems to get taken away. My sister. My father. My innocence.

Oh, boo fucking hoo. Poor Pierce.

Hell, it doesn’t take a neuroscientist to figure out that my issues with control, and my issues with intimacy, and my issues with loss, are all pretty inexorably bound up together. Good thing it doesn’t, because I am definitely no neuroscientist. I’m just a guy who owns a men’s magazine and seems to have fallen in love with his former executive assistant without meaning to.

Jesus.

I sound like one of the dopes in Myrtle’s dirty books.

“Pierce?”

“Hm? Sorry? What?”

“I said… did you want to ask me some questions?”

Oh. Right. I did say I wanted to. And I do.

“Oh, yeah, uh, so… Myrtle?”

She waits for more. There isn’t any. That’s it. Finally, she says, “Yeah. That’s my name.”

“I know.” I get a little smirk that I can’t conceal. “What’s that about?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - MYRTLE

It’s a fairly safe question so I’m not nervous about answering it. “My mother,” I say, then stop.

“Yes?” Pierce takes his eyes off the road to look at me, then puts them back where they belong. We’re on I-70 now, climbing that first hill up into the foothills. I always feel like my car doesn’t handle it very well. Like I have to really press my foot down to feel like I’m making progress. And it’s a really steep hill too, so you’re always like… leaning back, like you’re taking off in a plane, wondering if you’re gonna make it up the mountain. Or if you’re me, imagining what happens when a car stalls out and everyone else around you has their foot on the gas too… which never ends well in my imagination.

But he’s got the Escalade on cruise and the engine is taking it all in stride—kinda like Pierce and this whole game I started with him—so that whole Am I gonna make it up this mountain? worry doesn’t seem to be there.

“Her name is Ethel,” I finally say, focusing on the gray clouds ahead. Because we’re almost at the top now.

“So she’s what? Old-fashioned?” And he kinda chuckles.

“I guess. She’s a librarian so—”

“She is not!” He laughs.

“She is.” Then I sigh. “She one hundred percent is.”

“Like… stereotypical?”

“Yup.”

“How did that happen? I mean, your father is… well, not stereotypical.”

“You know. The old I-went-to-the-circus-once-and-came-home-pregnant-by-a-lion-tamer thing.”

“Oh, that.” He laughs again. “Happens all the time.” He’s in a pretty good mood. I am too, if I’m being honest. “Did they like… date? Or was it a one-time thing?’

“One-time thing that ended in marriage. That’s how things are done in her family. And my father is a stand-up guy so they gave it a try.”

“How old were you when they separated?”

“Five,” I say.