Hidden Bodies

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Chapters 16-20

Chapters 21-25

Chapters 26-30

Chapters 31-35

Chapters 36-40

Chapters 41-45

Chapters 46-50

Chapters 51-56

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 21 Summary

When Joe wakes, he is tied on her floor with resistance bands. He cries and she yells at him to stop. He realizes she hasn’t called the cops. Joe says his name is Paul and that he was looking for his girlfriend. He makes up a story about his girlfriend, Lydia, and she said she wanted someone to surprise her in her bed as a fantasy.

The woman, whose name is Rachel, relents. She cuts him loose and says she is a nanny who used to run a rape-crisis center. She teaches self-defense. This apartment belongs to the family she works for as a nanny, which is why she didn’t call the police. She signed an NDA and can’t talk about them. She makes coffee and they talk about the appeal to some of rape fantasies. Joe understands that Amy randomly chose this address when she gave it to Calvin. When he gets back, Delilah is waiting. She says she knows about his problem.

Chapter 22 Summary

Delilah demands an explanation for ditching her. She knows he was at the party and shows him a YouTube video from Henderson’s house. He is in the background, in the kitchen. She says she knows about his “pill problem” (167). Dez told her Joe has been buying lots of Percocets from him. She brings Chutes & Ladders and wants to play for therapeutic reasons. Joe agrees, but as they play, he decides that he knows why Delilah acts the way she does: Matt Damon and Nicholas Cage married waitresses, so she thinks it could also happen for her.

She mentions that her friend Ethel saw him at Birds. Ironically, Joe is being stalked and he hates it. He can’t justify killing Delilah, so he tells her there is someone else. The pills are for this girl’s mother’s stomach cancer. When Delilah leaves, he looks at the comments on the YouTube video. One says, “Murderer in the house right there” (171). The comment’s username is AA212310.

Love messages him on Facebook and invites him to Malibu. She is waiting outside in a Ferrari. As she drives, he looks at pictures of her on Facebook.

Chapter 23 Summary

Joe thinks he has made the world better by killing certain people. He and Love swim in the ocean. After, she says that she made a playlist of all the songs he loves for him. They make it to her parents’ home, which is called The Aisles. The family is gathering to watch True Detective that night because Forty is in an episode. Paul Simon is there when Joe and Love arrive, playing a guitar for Barry and Forty. Love says her parents put up with Barry because he knows everyone. She takes a selfie of them and calls it the Summer of Love in her caption.

Chapter 24 Summary

Joe can’t get used to the ostentatious wealth at The Aisles. He remembers that his mom used to dump him at the grocery store and let the cashiers babysit him. Milo is at The Aisles. Joe’s mood worsens when he sees that Milo is there. As Joe and Forty talk about ideas for shows, Joe decides that he wants to kill Milo for making Love laugh. Joe makes a joke to Forty about making an edit to the film Love, Actually, which would pivot to a sex scene from the movie Revolutionary Road at a sentimental moment. Forty quickly makes a video of Joe’s idea and gives the video to Barry Stein, who calls it cute. Barry then offers everyone but Joe a cigar. Forty tells Joe about an idea for a script he calls “The third twin” (185). Joe is confused and says that would be a triplet. Forty discreetly tells Joe that he got cut from the episode. Forty and Joe leave in Forty’s car so that he won’t be there when they realize he’s not in True Detective.

Chapter 25 Summary

Forty and Joe go to a Taco Bell. As they eat, Joe Googles Milo and seethes at his accomplishments. Forty says to text Love that he, meaning Forty himself, is okay. Inside, he tells Joe about his other script, The Mess. It’s on the “Blacker List,” which is like the Hollywood blacklist, but even more severe. Joe tells Forty he has a story too, about him and Amy, called Fakers. They read each other’s stories.

Joe suggests combining Fakers and The Mess to get back at Milo. They work on the plot for The Third Twin. Forty says Love was mad about The Mess, because she thought it was about her. Forty then says she that Love can’t be single and was a wreck after the doctor died. Forty and Love had joked after the doctor’s death that the next time she found someone, they’d tie him up and never let him go. Joe is flattered.

Forty also says that Love used to sleep with Milo. Forty gives Joe $10,000 to work on the script. He also says he’ll kill Joe if he hurts Love. Joe tells Love that he is going to stay in California. He thinks he can move on from Amy.

Chapters 21-25 Analysis

Joe’s encounter with Rachel highlights his incredulity at the naïve trust of many of the women in LA. Not only has Rachel caught him in her house, but she is also a former worker at a rape-crisis center. Rachel understands the dangers that men can present to women. However, she is willing to believe Joe’s story about why he is in her apartment. After she releases him, she not only makes coffee for him, but they confide in each other about why they think fantasies of sexual domination appeals to people.

One of the key facets of success in Hollywood is the constant enlargement of one’s network. For some, such as Officer Fincher, later in the novel, this manifests in stalking behavior. When Delilah confronts Joe about what she believes is his addiction to painkillers, she reveals that she knows so much because she has been stalking Joe. She uses her own social network to keep track of him, his habits, and his comings and goings.

Narratively, these chapters serve as a chance for the author to give a deeper characterization of Forty, which foreshadows the difficulty he will present for Joe. At first, Forty seems that he might simply be another Hollywood cliché: he is from a wealthy family, has delusions of creative grandeur, is insecure enough to leave the party before they learn that he is not, in fact, on True Detective, and is a committed self-saboteur. These hints that Forty’s neuroses and self-destructive nature will prove to be understated as the novel progresses.

Forty serves as a useful counterpoint to Milo, whom Joe loathes instantly. At first, Joe only dislikes Forty because he realizes that he will divide Love’s attention at times. He despises Milo instantly because Joe hates false modesty, as well as the fact that Milo has a vague connection to Love in the past. Milo is a typical Hollywood type, in Joe’s view, but he pretends to modest while steering the conversation towards scenarios in which others praise him. However, Milo will actually sell a creative idea on his own, and secure funding for Boots and Puppies. Forty is not able to make significant creative inroads until he begins working with Joe, whose work he will eventually steal.

When Joe suggests the video, he is surprised when Forty makes it on an iPad. However, he is more surprised to realize that this is actually how some projects are born: they flash into someone’s head, and that someone says it out loud in the presence of someone with money and influence, who might then support the project.

At Taco Bell, Joe and Forty indulge in another set piece of meta-fiction. They tell each other accurate stories about their pasts, while using fictional characters, masked as screenplays they want to write and produce. It is easier for Joe and Forty to talk to each other in the coded language of creative collaborators than to admit the truths about themselves to each other. At the end of Chapter 25, Forty pays and threatens Joe. This will allow him to say that he paid Joe to work with him, and that he also let him know he would protect his sister.