Hidden Bodies

Joe convinces himself that he likes to spend Tennis Time with Love, even though he hates tennis. When she confronts him about his obvious apathy, it foreshadows a comment that Amy will make later regarding Joe’s unwillingness to improve. Love says, “I know you hate tennis but you wouldn’t hate it so much if you actually tried to get better. And I love you but you are stubborn and I’ve never seen anyone refuse to get better at something. You need to make an effort” (200). Joe superficially acknowledges her point while focusing on the fact that she says she loves him. He compares her, in this moment, to Amy and Beck: “Amy and I had sex and heat. Beck dangled a carrot and I bit. But Love and I grow the carrots, peel them, and eat them together” (200). Joe believes that Love is right about him and his unwillingness to try to improve, but for the first time, he thinks that changing for someone else might be in his best interest. Love will prove to be dysfunctional and frightening in her own way, but she is a critical piece of the extent to which Joe can evolve.

Joe’s relationship with Love is subject to escalating difficulties with Forty, as well as the sale of Boots and Puppies, Milo’s script. As soon as Milo sells the script and invites Love to co-star with him, she begins—at least, from Joe’s perspective—to treat him with less warmth, in favor of Milo. Joe’s perception is distorted, and he is an unreliable narrator, but the reader nevertheless empathizes with Joe because Milo is blatantly demonstrating that he can make Love happy in a way that Joe can’t. Also, because Milo is used to feigning modesty while letting others praise him, he doesn’t boast about the sale of the movie. Rather, he lets Love indulge in her gratitude to him while pretending to be confused about Joe’s attitude.

Joe’s reaction confuses Love. She doesn’t understand why he can’t be happy for her. On the drive to the memorial, their conversation about Henderson infuriates him. He wants to tell them that “I knew him best because I killed him” (223). Joe here equates the final moments of someone’s life to an intimacy similar to birth, and thus the final interaction between a killer and victim yields unique insight. Just as the various characters in Joe’s life hold pieces of his personality and ideas of who he is, none of them see him for his whole self. This calls into question how well one can know another person, and while Joe ascribes himself a god-like level of knowledge about others as he takes their lives, that too is only one part of the whole of a person’s life.

When Delilah confronts Joe about the bag, he describes her fear as she hides in the tub: “All the joy is gone. Somewhere along the way she broke her own heart and without a heart, you can’t get better” (236). Then he says, “I know how sad you are. I know how sick you are. But it’s over” (236). Joe believes that Delilah’s murder is merciful because it will end her suffering, including the constant cognitive dissonance she experiences when she sees her tattoo each day and realizes she does not live its message:

Words she could not live by, words she did not understand. The key is not just to continue believing, after all, but the key to life is to believe in something that matters, something big and beautiful, something more profound than fame, money (230).

It is ironic that Joe pontificates on the key to life and belief, congratulating himself for his powers of insight, seconds before brutally killing Delilah in the bathtub. Joe is striving, like Delilah, to find love and acceptance, and—like her—he fails, due in no small part to his own actions. His final thoughts of her are, “She isn’t beautiful. She was pretty. And I don’t feel sorry for her. It’s like they say about everything in this world. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. A lot of girls, they would have loved to be so pretty” (236). He judges Delilah for her aspiration, for not being contented by what she has, yet he exhibits the same desperation, a gaping hole inside that he wants others to fill.