We’re Friends, Lou and I. Even if I Hate Him, Which I Do.
Sometime not too recently nor too far past I read a short story that I didn’t think about much as I was reading, but I thought about a lot after. The problem was that once I realized how much I was thinking about it, I couldn’t remember where I’d read it or who had written it.
It was about a teenage girl with so many freckles she almost just had one big freckle, across her entire skin. Someday she will have all the freckles removed, she says, and then her life can really start.
Her best friend is having an affair with a guy in his forties and one night they all go to his apartment. And then she has a conversation with him that just slayed me, and that conversation is the reason I always think about the story again.
And just today I have discovered that it’s not a short story at all, but Chapter 3 of Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, and the conversation that slayed me is this:
Now he laughs, really laughs, and I understand that we’re friends, Lou and I. Even if I hate him, which I do. I get out of my chair and come to the railing, where he is.
People will try to change you, Rhea, Lou goes. Don’t let ‘em.
But I want to change.
No, he goes, serious. You’re beautiful. Stay like this.
But the freckles, I go, and my throat gets that ache.
The freckles are the best part, Lou says. Some guy is going to go apeshit for those freckles. He’s going to kiss them one by one.
I start to cry, I don’t even hide it.
Hey, Lou goes. He leans down so our faces are together, and stares straight into my eyes. He looks tired, like someone walked on his skin and left footprints. He goes, The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them — listen to me.
And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.
Reunited, at last!
