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Richie is half-heartedly scraping at a burnt over sauce stain on the stovetop when, from behind him, Fak says, "You could find a therapist, maybe," and Richie tunes back in unbidden, a Pavlovian response to therapy and all its forms on this side of a divorce and tinnitus from him and Tiff screaming at each other for about a decade. He wouldn't call it a trigger word or whatever the fuck. No way. But then again, every single thing he hears could be a goddamn trigger word, if he looks at it like that.
"Nobody needs a fuckin' therapist," he butts in, talking at the stain.
"Are you kidding? Everyone can use a therapist," says Fak.
Richie finally chances a look over his shoulder. Fak is still engrossed in measuring the height of a doorway, unaware that Carmy is standing a mere few feet away and drilling a death glare into the side of his head.
"I mean, we all probably know what they would say, but I just think it'd be good for you. To talk to someone, work some shit out," Fak goes on. "It's like, calming."
He takes a step back and drops his arms. The measuring tape slides back into itself with a loud clack.
"Calming, huh?" Carmy juts his chin out. "What is it you think they would say?"
Richie's body is turning to face them before he even knows it. This is Carmy's dangerous voice, the same one that everyone in his family has, the deadened calm right before the accelerator hits the floor and they fly off the fuckin' handle. But poor dumb Fak either doesn't realize, or doesn't care, or -- perhaps dumbest of all -- thinks that he'll get a pass off the wings of good intentions or some shit, because he sighs, "I don't know, man," as if he's about to dive into an actual answer.
"Fak," Richie says warningly.
Carmy holds a finger up. "No, wait, I wanna hear this. What would they say, Fak?"
Richie looks up at the pockmarked ceiling. Tries to figure out if there are some constellations poked in there. If anyone ever tells him he doesn't have manners, he's gonna point them to this moment, because here he is looking away from the impending carnage and would someone without manners do that? No they fucking would not.
"Maybe, like," Fak starts, hesitant. "Like something about how you've really never known reciprocity from anyone that you truly loved? Or something?"
A pause. Richie rights his head and stares at Fak. He swears he can hear the bathroom sink dripping from a hundred feet away.
"Take Mikey, for instance," Fak says, metaphorical shovel in hand, digging into his own grave. "I mean, like, of course Mikey loved you dude, god, he loved you so much, but he never let you work with him, and even though that's ultimately such a small part of the whole Carmy-Mikey relationship, I also think it caused a deep fucking wound that never really healed over. And then with girls, you know -- maybe because you were already raw from the whole Mikey thing and The Beef thing, so facing the possibility of that kind of rejection again made you even more skittish and closed off, right, so it turned into this terrible self-perpetuating cycle and…"
Richie has been simultaneously widening and narrowing his eyes somehow ever since Fak started talking, but it still takes Fak like fifteen fucking lifetimes to catch on because he's got the awareness of a baby earthworm. Only the sight of Carmy's slowly reddening cheeks finally causes him to trail off.
"Yeah, that's -- wow, that's good, Fak," Carmy says, in that run-on way that he does, words running into each other like crashing train cars. "That's fucking great."
Fak slowly raises his hands. "Carmy. Bro? Bro. You know that this is all coming from a place of love, and caring, and like. The absolute deepest levels of respect -- "
Then he startles and blinks hard when Carmy pounds the doorframe with a repeated, "That's fucking great, Fak, what the fuck," louder this time, before turning and walking away. The backdoor slams shut a few seconds later.
Richie starts clapping into the ensuing silence. "Bra-fucking-vo, dude. Another successful Fak soliloquy." He pinches his fingers together and kisses them, first his left, and then his right. "Mwah. Mwah. Truly."
"Was that all new information for him?" Fak questions, high-pitched and panicked, eyes darting from side to side as if looking for some kind of escape hatch. "No way that was new information, right? And like, it's the truth! I love him and he's the best but also that dude is so fucked up, like so fucked up -- "
"God damn, how long have you been a person, Neil? Huh? You've got a 99th percentile head circumference and a fucking par-baked rat brain inside of it." Richie leans forward and over enunciates, "You never say the whole truth out loud like that. Especially to anyone whose last name rhymes with Schmerzatto. Literally, it's gonna take an entire lifetime and how many reincarnation cycles before you learn that? Jesus fucking Christ."
Fak continues to stand there like a fish that took a bat to the head. Just this big, stupid piece of tuna, not even cottoned on to the fact that he'd taken a melon baller to Carmy's insides. That's the problem with being genuine, Richie thinks. When he wants to hurt, he does it like a BB gun, lots of noise but little to no real resulting injury. And when he really wants to hurt, he does it clean and precise, like an ice pick, easy to fill in the wound with scar tissue. A years-long prison-grade project of a shiv. That's the difference. And no one believes him, but there is definitely a difference, he would swear his life on it.
"Fuck," Fak says. "You think he's mad?"
Richie fishes his phone from his pocket. "Hey Siri, what's the suicide hotline number?"