“William Grayson. Did you say William Grayson? Did someone call here for me?”
“Huh? No, kid. William Grayson is this guy,” he says, nodding toward me. “Well, two schools of thought on that, I guess, but that’s what this card says.”
And the kid looks at me confused for a minute and finally says, “What’s your name?”
This is freaking me out. Frenchy’s isn’t a place for conversation . So I just say to Piercings, “Can I have the magazine?” and Piercings hands it to me in an unmarked and thoroughly opaque black plastic bag for which I am very grateful, and he gives me my card and my receipt. I walk out the door, jog a half block down Clark, and then sit down on the curb and wait for my pulse to slow down.
Which it is just starting to do when my fellow underage Frenchy’s pilgrim runs up to me and says, “Who are you?”
I stand up then and say, “Um, I’m Will Grayson.”
“W-I-L-L G-R-A-Y-S-O-N?” he says, spelling impossibly fast.
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “Why do you ask?”
The kid looks at me for a second, his head turned like he thinks I might be putting him on, and then finally he says, “Because I am also Will Grayson.”
“No shit?” I ask.
“Shit,” the guy says. I can’t decide if he’s paranoid or schizophrenic or both, but then he pulls a duct-taped wallet out of his back pocket and shows me an Illinois driver’s license. Our middle names are different, at least, but—yeah.
“Well,” I say, “good to meet you.” And then I start to turn away, because nothing against the guy but I don’t care to strike up a conversation with a guy who hangs out at porn stores, even if, technically speaking, I am myself a guy who hangs out at porn stores. But he touches my arm, and he seems too small to be dangerous, so I turn back around, and he says, “Do you know Isaac?”
“Who?”
“Isaac?”
“I don’t know anyone named Isaac, man,” I say.
“I was supposed to meet him at that place, but he’s not there. You don’t really look like him but I thought—I don’t know what I thought. How the—what the hell is going on?” The kid spins a quick circle, like he’s looking for a cameraman or something. “Did Isaac put you up to this?”
“I just told you, man, I don’t know any Isaac.”
He turns around again, but there’s no one behind him. He throws his arms in the air, and says, “I don’t even know what to freak out about right now.”
“It’s been a bit of a crazy day for Will Graysons everywhere,” I say.
He shakes his head and sits down on the curb then and I follow him, because there is nothing else to do. He looks over at me, then away, then at me again. And then he actually, physically pinches himself on the forearm. “Of course not. My dreams can’t make up shit this weird.”
“Yeah,” I say. I can’t figure out if he wants me to talk to him, and I also can’t figure out if I want to talk to him, but after a minute, I say, “So, uh, how do you know meet-meat-the-porn-store Isaac?”
“He’s just—a friend of mine. We’ve known each other online for a long time.”
“Online?”
If possible, Will Grayson manages to shrink into himself even more. His shoulders hunched, he stares intently into the gutter of the street. I know, of course, that there are other Will Graysons. I’ve Googled myself enough to know that. But I never thought I would see one. Finally he says, “Yeah.”
“You’ve never physically seen this guy,” I say.
“No,” he says, “but I’ve seen him in like a thousand pictures.”
“He’s a fifty-year-old man,” I say, matter-of-factly. “He’s a pervert. One Will to another: No way that Isaac is who you think he is.”
“He’s probably just—I don’t know, maybe he met another freaking Isaac on the bus and he’s stuck in Bizarro World.”
“Why the hell would he ask you to go to Frenchy’s?”
“Good question. Why would someone go to a porn store?” He kind of smirks at me.
“Fair point,” I say. “Yeah, that’s true. There’s a story to it, though.”
I wait for a second for Will Grayson to ask me about my story, but he doesn’t. Then I start telling him anyway. I tell him about Jane and Tiny Cooper and the Maybe Dead Cats and “Annus Miribalis” and Jane’s locker combination and the copy shop clerk who couldn’t count, and I weasel a couple of laughs out of him along the way, but mostly he just keeps glancing back toward Frenchy’s, waiting for Isaac. His face seems to alternate between hope and anger. He pays very little attention to me actually, which is fine, really, because I’m just telling my story to tell it, talking to a stranger because it’s the only safe kind of talking you can do, and the whole time my hand is in my pocket holding my phone, because I want to make sure I feel it vibrate if someone calls.
And then he tells me about Isaac, about how they’ve been friends for a year and that he always wanted to meet him because there’s just no one like Isaac out in the suburb where he lives, and it dawns on me pretty quickly that Will Grayson likes Isaac in a not-altogether-platonic way. “So, I mean what perverted fifty-year-old would do that?” Will says. “What pervert spends a year of his life talking to me, telling me everything about his fake self, while I tell him everything about my real self? And if a perverted fifty-year-old did do that, why wouldn’t he show up at Frenchy’s to rape and murder me? Even on a totally impossible night, that is totally impossible.”
I mull it over for a second. “I don’t know,” I say finally. “People are pretty fucking weird, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah.” He’s not looking back to Frenchy’s anymore, just forward. I can see him out of the corner of my eye, and I’m sure he can see me out of the corner of his, but mostly we are looking not at each other, but at the same spot on the street as cars rumble past, my brain trying to make sense of all the impossibilities, all the coincidences that brought me here, all the true-and-false things. And we’re quiet for a while, so long that I take my phone out of my pocket and look at it and confirm that no one has called and then put it back, and then finally I feel Will turning his head away from the spot on the street and toward me and he says, “What do you think it means?”
“What?” I ask.
“There aren’t that many Will Graysons,” he says. “It’s gotta mean something, one Will Grayson meeting another Will Grayson in a random porn store where neither Will Grayson belongs.”
“Are you suggesting that God brought two of Chicago-land’s underage Will Graysons into Frenchy’s at the same time?”
“No, asshole,” he says, “but I mean, it must mean something .”
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s hard to believe in coincidence, but it’s even harder to believe in anything else.” And just then, the phone jumps to life in my hand, and as I am pulling it out of my pocket, Will Grayson’s phone starts ringing.
And even for me, that’s a lot of coincidences. He mutters, “God, it’s Maura,” as if I’m going to know who Maura is, and he just stares at the phone, seeming unsure of whether to answer. My call is from Tiny. Before I flip open the phone, I say to Will, “It’s my friend Tiny,” and I’m looking at Will—at cute, confuzzled Will.
I flip open the phone.
“Grayson!” Tiny shouts over the din of the music. “I’m in love with this band! We’re gonna stay for like two more songs and then I’m gonna come get you. Where are you, baby! Where’s my pretty little baby Grayson!”
“I’m across the street,” I shout back. “And you better get down on your knees and thank the sweet Lord, because man, Tiny, have I got a guy for you.”
Chapter eight
I am so freaked out, you could pull a clown out of my ass and i wouldn’t be at all surprised.
It would make maybe a little sense if this OTHER WILL GRAYSON standing right next to me wasn’t a will grayson at all but was instead the gold medal champion of the mindfuck olympics. it’s not like when i first saw him i thought to myself, hey, that kid must be named will grayson, too. no, the only thing i thought was, hey, that’s not isaac. i mean, right age, but entirely wrong face pic. so i ignored him. i turned back to the dvd case i was pretending to study, which was for this porno called the sound and the furry. it was all about ‘moo sex,’ with these people pictured on the cover wearing cow suits (one udder). i was glad that no real cows were harmed (or pleasured) in the making of the film. but still. not my thing. next to it was a dvd called as i get laid dying, which had a hospital scene on the front. it was like grey’s anatomy, only with less grey and more anatomy. i totally thought for a moment, i can’t wait to tell isaac about this, forgetting, of course, that he was supposed to be with me.
It’s not like i wouldn’t have noticed him come in; the place was empty except for me, o.w.g., and the clerk, who looked like the pillsbury doughboy if the dough had been left out for a week. i guess everyone else was using the internet to get their porn. and frenchy’s wasn’t exactly inviting - it was lit like a 7-eleven, which made all the plastic seem much more plastic, and the metal seem much more metal, and the naked people on the covers of the dvd cases look even less hot and more like cheap porn. passing up go down on moses and afternoon delight in august, i found myself in this bizarre penis produce section. because my mind is, at heart, full of fucked up shit, i immediately started to picture this sequel to toy story called sex toy story, where all these dildos and vibrators and rabbit ears suddenly came to life and have to do things like cross the street in order to get back home.
again, as i was having all these thoughts, i was also thinking about sharing them with isaac. that was my default.
I was only distracted when i heard my name being said by the guy behind the counter. which is how i found o.w.g.
so, yeah, i go into a porn shop looking for isaac and i get another will grayson instead.
god, you’re one nasty fucker.
of course, right now isaac is ranking up there in nasty fuckerdom, too. i’m hoping that he’s actually a nervous fucker instead - like, maybe he showed up and discovered that the place his friend recommended was a porn shop and was so mortified that he ran away crying. i mean, it’s possible. or maybe he’s just late. i have to give him at least an hour. his train could’ve gotten stuck in a tunnel or something. it’s not unheard of. he’s coming from ohio, after all. people in ohio are late all the time.
my phone rings at practically the same time as o.w.g.’s. even though it’s pathetically unlikely that it’s going to be isaac, my hopes still do the up thing.
then i see it’s maura.
me: god, it’s maura.
at first i’m not going to answer, but then o.w.g. answers his.
o.w.g.: it’s my friend tiny.
If o.w.g. is going to answer his, i figure i’d better answer mine, too. i also remember maura’s doing me a favor today. if later on i learn that the mathletic competition was attacked by an uzi-wielding squad of frustrated humanties nerds, i’ll feel guilty that i didn’t answer the phone and let maura say good-bye.
me: quick - what’s the square root of my underwear?
maura: hey will.
me: that answer earns you zero points.
maura: how’s chicago?
me: there’s no wind at all!
maura: what are you doing?
me: oh, hanging out with will grayson.
maura: that’s what i thought.
me: what do you mean?
maura: where’s your mom?
uh-oh. smells like a trap. has maura called my house? has she talked to my mom? pedal motion, backward!
me: am i my mother’s keeper? (ha ha ha)
maura: stop lying, will.
me: okay, okay. i kinda needed to sneak in on my own. to go to a concert later.
maura: what concert?
fuck! i can’t remember which concert o.w.g. said he was going to. and he’s still on the phone, so i can’t ask.
me: some band you’ve never heard of.
maura: try me.
me: um, that’s their name. ‘some band you’ve never heard of.’
maura: oh, i’ve heard of them.
me: yeah.
maura: i was just reading a review of their album in spin.
me: cool.
maura: yeah, the album’s called ‘isaac’s not coming, you fucking liar.’
this is not good.
me: that’s a pretty stupid name for an album.
what? what what what?
maura: give up, will.
me: my password.
maura: what?
me: you totally hacked my password. you’ve been reading my emails, haven’t you?
maura: what are you talking about?
me: isaac. how do you know about me meeting up with isaac?
she must have looked over my shoulder when i checked my email at school. she must have seen the keys i typed. she stole my dumbass password.
maura: i am isaac, will.
me: don’t be stupid. he’s a guy.
maura: no he’s not. he’s a profile. i made him up.
me: yeah, right.
maura: i did.
me: what?
no please no what no no please no fuck no NO.
maura: isaac doesn’t exist. he’s never existed.
me: you can’t -
maura: you’re so caught.
I’M so caught?!?
what the FUCK.
me: tell me you’re joking.
maura: . . .
me: this can’t be happening.
other will grayson’s finished his conversation and is looking at me now.
o.w.g.: are you okay?
It’s hitting. that moment of ‘did an anvil really just fall on my head?’ has passed and i am feeling that anvil. oh lord am i feeling that anvil.