Chapter 9: “Nova” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

Alex is the least spiritual person I know. That’s not pejorative. Some people simply prefer only to exist in material space. I have no problem with that. I respected that part of her enough to love her.

That said, Alex kept a self-declared witch, Verse, in the bag as her self-proclaimed only friend. I mean, I was Alex’s friend, too—but before I came along, Verse was it. (God knows who else attended that Bridgerton party.)

Verse was an outlet for Alex to anything beyond the material—someone she trusted about the metaphysical, just in case. For example: she allowed Verse to conduct a series of spells in our apartment to rid me of the “darkness” that hovered over me.

For a non-spiritual person to buy that theory, well, that’s a rather unorthodox act of faith. Trust me, I bought it. Just, I didn’t think Verse was what she pretended to be. Maybe she recognized something, but she certainly didn’t have the power to overcome any true Darkness. Trust me: I know.

What Verse did have was the power to burn an enormous hole in my brand-new, $1,000 kitchen island table. Don’t worry: the burn marks are now covered over with a jigsaw puzzle Jojo pieced together. Sigh. Another self-declared, comically incompetent witch.

{Sidenote note on Jojo: On May 4, 2025, Jojo disappeared. Poof! Left everything behind, even her passport. It took a month to get a Missing Persons report filed. Her family found her TikTok account. She’s running about somewhere in the Deep South, clearly drugged up, declaring she’s a sex worker. How’s that for witchcraft? Folks, don’t let your daughters grow up to be witches.}

At any rate, Alex rolled the spiritual dice.

She asked the gods for “her one.”

By her own words, that was me. Me. I was finally the answer to someone’s prayer.

How many sighs can a book hold? Things didn’t turn out as we hoped.

Hold on! Don’t I get fair innings? Don’t I get a request?

That is this chapter.

I know the real Alex has read Bronx Nights. Every word. So has her mother. So has Verse. (I’m Autistic. I see things Neuros cannot see.)

BTW, Alex also changed her surname sometime after Family Court split us asunder in Summer 2024. I’m sure she’d like to know how I know her new last name. Let’s just call it Autistic Cognition.

And it’s not even the first time she’s done this. The last time she did it, it was after a similar mess she found herself in. She was afraid of retribution then, she’s afraid of it now.

But the only retribution here, as stated throughout this book, is Forgiveness, Grace and Redemption. Alex, chill.

If you choose to run from that, you definitely have issues.

In other words:

You can change your name, but not the truth about yourself.

I kinda get it. I once changed my name from Berglund to Bjorn. “Bjorn” means bear in the Scandinavian tongues.

That is the truth about myself.

I wasn’t going to let that ass-wipe, M, the man who fuck-upedly raised and abused me, continue his nominal lineage through me.

But there’s a difference between changing your name out of fear, scared that you and your cryptic schemes will be exposed, and doing it because you’re declaring a new soul crest for yourself and lineage.

I did it for honor. I know why she did it—and continues to do it, probably at the eye rolls of some judge who just can’t be bothered anymore.

Another irony: my new surname had purpose. Alex chose to hide behind the most generic labels. Not Smith. But you know, the other two. The only problem: Alex has nowhere else to run.

Okay, no more rollercoasters. As to my six-page chapter commitment, just maybe. We’ll see.

Alex got the top of the ninth. I get the bottom.

While we were together, I was always more top than bottom. But here goes.

Here’s the thing about a memoir. I’ve written four of them—maybe five.

If you’re not honest in a memoir—with yourself, with what happened—then you’re just a lying novelist.

Of course, you can’t say everything in a memoir.

You must select the experiences in life that are so important, somehow you wouldn’t be you otherwise. With respect to relationships, you must identify the shared parts that made you a togetherness.

Speaking of important parts to share, I’ve left something on the ground—rather, on the kitchen counter. To be specific: in the spice rack jars. But that’s for Chapter 13 (if I ever get there).

No matter who did what to whom—no matter what Long COVID or Autism or Insomnia or Cataplexy or Alex’s cryptic behavior and schemes had to do with any of this—Alex is without a doubt the best goddamn chef I’ve ever had the pleasure of tasting.

Wait. That came out wrong.

I mean, it is true—quite true. God, I miss her. But what I meant was:

of whose prepared dishes I have ever had the pleasure of tasting

Every night, Alex prepared something verging on gourmet. (She hated seconds—and I hated that she hated seconds. I craved to taste her dishes with a day or two of life on Earth under their belts.)

God knows when I’ll get around to publishing Chapter 13, so I just wanted to put that on the record.

Alex approached our relationship like an arrangement. Or maybe she flatly saw it as an arrangement—but was willing to call it a relationship.

Then again, she told me she loved me—which is not standard arrangement protocol.

At the same time, perhaps every romantic relationship is an arrangement of some kind.

Maybe all relationships would be more successful if both parties (or three, if you’re lucky) approached them contractually in advance, like an arrangement:

You are responsible for this. I am responsible for this.

To that end, I give Alex credit. The responsibilities of our “arrangement-ship” were clear in her mind. Just not in mine.

At the time, thanks to Chronic Insomnia, Cataplexy, Autism and Brain Fog (see above), I wasn’t capable of doing more than clinging to emotional driftwood.

Alex wasn’t driftwood to me. She was an Island of Structure in a maelstrom replete with carnivorous Calibans.

Anwyay, Alex negotiated for both sides of the table. I just nodded.

She had committed, dauntingly, to cook for us every day. I never asked for that. Frankly, I didn’t see how anyone could follow through on such a commitment.

For the first few months, night after night, we enjoyed unbelievable dishes of salmon and pasta and chicken and seafood (king crab was her favorite) that she slaved over while we watched some streaming show that made us laugh like hell. (My favorite memory is of the show Ted—thank you, Seth MacFarlane. Also, Uptown Saturday Night.)

We’d dine and toke—and I happily played dishwasher boy while she relaxed and played Sims 4. Then perhaps a game of naked Twister to end the evening, whereupon I was relegated in militaristic fashion, begrudgingly, to my side of the bed.

In time, however, the meals became less frequent—a domestic barometric reading of our not-so-gradual decline. Her continued cryptic nature of her side schemes bucked my Autistic knowing.

The only problem was: I wasn’t allowed to cook. I’m a more than decent chef—you should try my Armageddon Stew—but Alex refused to eat anything I prepared.

Need I remind anyone, takeout in New York several times a week adds up quickly.

Clue again. Relationship, Murdered in the Kitchen, by Dr. Distrust!

Alex also wouldn’t let me select produce. On numerous occasions at the grocery store, like a Laurel & Hardy skit, I would put an avocado in a bag, she would take it out and replace it with one she preferred.

Sounds petty perhaps—unless you realize your partner doesn’t even trust you to select oily fruits. Something smells rotten in Mott Haven.

Don’t get me wrong. I had my responsibilities, including paying ALL the rent for a $4,300 per month luxury apartment—which is a conundrum considering Alex co-signed the lease.

Co-signing a lease means one thing: Both parties are responsible.

That ain’t some line in Cosmo or Vanity Fair. That’s lawyer speak.

All to say, the terms of our “arrangement-ship” left a lot to be desired. I still can’t fathom it in post-long COVID hindsight.

My {CENSORED} thinks the police screwed up with dual protective orders and has even more to think about the landlord just letting Alex off the financial hook.

But one thing is goddamn clear: Alex and I had a very concrete understanding about the dog.

Damn. Here we go. The mutt. NOVA.

Okay, it’s mid-July 2025. We’re well past all the events of Bronx Nights. Hell, the book came out in June.

But I have this urge upon my conscience to let Alex know what happened to the puppy.

I wrote a fluid novel. It’s self-published. I can just drop this chapter in there whenever I damn well please. And now is the time.

But I’m going to make this very clear. The rest of this chapter has nothing to do with you, Dear Reader. It’s between me and her. Or her and me, for all grammar Nazis.

Now is the time of the weighing of the feather.

Either Alex takes responsibility for how she screwed up, or she continues a life of continuous aliases and denials of responsibility.

I already judged myself as Chief Shithead earlier. And I meant it.

How does her feather weigh?

Any-who, I bought a puppy. With my money. As in: I owned it.

A Shiba Inu, pupped by a Mennonite family in Central New York. We picked it up on our way back from Niagara Falls. (Oh God, there’s a chapter.)

I had done something stupid. I’m too Brain Fogged to remember what. But something inside me tells me I deserved it. And I wanted to make up for it.

I had a deep desire—nearly nuked by Candy (Chapter 2)—to have another child. I wanted Alex and me to raise a being together. But…

I already had two cats, Loki and Porridge. They were my children. I was entirely responsible for their care.

That was my half of the farm.

Thus, Alex pledged to be responsible for all canines in our home.

Pledged. I mean: PLEDGED.

I don’t know dogs—let alone puppies.

I was too much of a Brain-Fogged mind to caretake a puppy—let alone a Tasmanian Devil canine that enters the cat litter box perpetually to eat cat shit likes chocolates (to my cats’ disapproving Cheshire frowns), piss-puddles everywhere, poops even more therein, and has more energy than a particle collider on Black Rifle beans.

Christ told us to take care of the helpless, the hurting, the broken.

But he never mentioned a damn thing about tarrying furry, un-housebroken, ADHD, coke-addled pups!

Thus came the moment of truth: Alex’s ‘Con Artist Con’ weekend.

Wherein, let’s just slow it all down.

Alex had her big conference weekend, with oodles of 24/7 responsibilities—her principal, non-con artist income tied therein.

And me, clearly lost in my Long COVID, Autistic miasma.

Yet Alex made no plans for Nova’s care.

SHE SHOULD HAVE!!!!!

I was already waking up early each morning and doing my best to potty-train the damn pup. Of course, Alex would dress up once a day in her finest couture and take Nova for a photo-op walk. I have the photographic receipts!

But I was left in the Cinderella dust to do Nova’s piss-poo training. Pardon my fucking French, but Alex had no goddamn clue how to train a baby animal in the ways of domestication. I did, and was doing my best, experienced at least in the ways of felines.

Fuck grammar, pretty prose and all the rest.

It was a complete clusterfuck situation.

On all the souls of all the monks of New Skete, this woman had NO FUCKING IDEA HOW TO CARE FOR A HYPER PUP!!!

Funny, though, as her mom has a circus of canines in her apartment. Alex had learned about her autistic brothers—why not the dogs?!

Mightn’t Alex have put Nova in her mom’s care that weekend?

Mightn’t Alex have—and mind you, mightn’t is a word that harkens back to a time when people instead might have said something along the order of:

“WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING NOT TO DO SOMETHING ELSE THAN WHAT YOU DID?!”

Christ Almighty, we’ve already crossed into page nine—well past the event horizon of The Art of Raising a Puppy.

Dear Monks of Skete:

What does one do when the puppy has consumed several pounds of cat feces, when the woman who has pledged to care for said wolf scion is absent, and you have just recently lost your daughter, all your friends, your jobs, your entire social network, you are desperately ill, and the only hope you have to sleep each night is a woman who slaps a fucking metal divider down the middle of the bed and says if you touch her in sleep, she will knock you into New Jersey—plus, she is maintaining a cryptic other life, with an alias, and keeps you at bay from everyone she is close to?

Sincerely,

Arik

//·∞·//

Dear Arik:

You pick up the pup and head for the elevator door and trust that God will make all well.

Sincerely,

Monks of Skete

//·∞·//

Thus, I did.

I snapped—just the same as when a person gets really frustrated after a horrible phone call and inexplicably smashes their phone. Or when a person loses it and punches a wall and breaks their hand.

I picked up the pup, walked one-sixteenth of a mile to the elevator, and hoped that the gods had an answer.

They did.

Final page, I swear.

I loved that animal, little innocent demon, Nova. As I love all animals. (Hell, even Loki and Porridge had started to tolerate her presence, despite the fact it ate all their waste. Maybe they started seeing Nova as a symbiotic waste collector. A loveable lamprey.)

But Nova was laying me to waste in my oblivion state.

I entered the elevator sobbing. When I got to the ground floor, Nova and I were met by a Puerto Rican volcano named Natasha.

Nat’s perspective: A door opened upon a hulking, tear-drenched man with an untethered puppy swaddled in his arms.

“What is wrong?” she asked—only, it sounded more accusatory than empathetic. As is her way.

“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I just have to find a home for Nova.”

“Don’t jou worry.” Sorry, but this is a woman who roots for the New York Jankees. “We will find jou a home.”

And that was that.

Natasha took care of Nova. Nova now lives in a lovely apartment with one of Natasha’s cousins. A good life. Someone who knows how to take care of a dog—not a cat poo within intestinal reach.

And Natasha took care of me too. I mean, that’s not the whole story. She did ultimately dump me on the psych ward steps, steal my Jeep, relieve me of more than a few thousand bucks. And a bit more.

But she also helped me get out of jail after Alex illegally accused me of abuse. Camera footage doesn’t lie. I gave Natasha full control of my cameras—hell, my entire life—the rest of the summer.

The rest is on Alex’s conscience. The rest is between her and her dogs—I mean gods. Alex Johnson: it’s on you now.

xxx