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ALSO BY MIRANDA JULY
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
Learning to Love You More
It Chooses You
THE FIRST
BAD MAN
A NOVEL BY
MIRANDA
JULY
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
This digital edition first published in 2014 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Miranda July, 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the United States in hardcover in 2015 by Scribner,
a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
“Kooks.” Words and music by David Bowie. © 1971 (Renewed 1999) EMI Music Publishing Ltd., Tintoretto Music, and Chrysalis Songs. All rights for EMI Music Publishing Ltd. controlled and administered by Screen Gems-EMI Music, Inc. All rights for Tintoretto Music administered by RZO Music. All rights for Chrysalis Songs administered by Chrysalis Music Group, Inc., a BMG Chrysalis Company. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 672 1
eISBN 978 1 78211 505 2
Export ISBN 978 1 78211 504 5
Interior design by Kyle Kabel
Jacket design by Mike Mills
For Michael Chadbourne Mills
THE FIRST
BAD MAN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
I drove to the doctor’s office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching—windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel. When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward. Who is she? people might have been wondering. Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda? I strolled through the parking garage and into the elevator, pressing 12 with a casual, fun-loving finger. The kind of finger that was up for anything. Once the doors had closed, I checked myself in the mirrored ceiling and practiced how my face would go if Phillip was in the waiting room. Surprised but not overly surprised, and he wouldn’t be on the ceiling so my neck wouldn’t be craning up like that. All the way down the hall I did the face. Oh! Oh, hi! There was the door.
DR. JENS BROYARD
CHROMOTHERAPY
I swung it open.
No Phillip.
It took a moment to recover. I almost turned around and went home—but then I wouldn’t be able to call him to say thanks for the referral. The receptionist gave me a new-patient form on a clipboard; I sat in an upholstered chair. There was no line that said “referred by,” so I just wrote Phillip Bettelheim sent me across the top.
“I’m not going to say that he’s the best in the whole world,” Phillip had said at the Open Palm fundraiser. He was wearing a gray cashmere sweater that matched his beard. “Because there’s a color doctor in Zurich who easily rivals him. But Jens is the best in LA, and definitely the best on the west side. He cured my athlete’s foot.” He lifted his foot and then put it down again before I could smell it. “He’s in Amsterdam most of the year so he’s very selective about who he sees here. Tell him Phil Bettelheim sent you.” He wrote the number on a napkin and began to samba away from me.
“Phil Bettelheim sent me.”
“Exactly!” he yelled over his shoulder. He spent the rest of the night on the dance floor.
I stared at the receptionist—she knew Phillip. He might have just left; he might be with the doctor right now. I hadn’t thought of that. I tucked my hair behind my ears and watched the door to the exam room. After a minute a willowy woman with a baby boy came out. The baby was swinging a crystal from a string. I checked to see if he and I had a special connection that was greater than his bond with his mother. We didn’t.
Dr. Broyard had Scandinavian features and wore tiny, judgmental glasses. While he read my new-patient form I sat on a meaty leather couch across from a Japanese paper screen. There weren’t any wands or orbs in sight, but I braced myself for something along those lines. If Phillip believed in chromotherapy that was enough for me. Dr. Broyard lowered his glasses.
“So. Globus hystericus.”
I started to explain what it was but he cut me off. “I’m a doctor.”
“Sorry.” But do real doctors say “I’m