You

Over the next few days, Joe thinks about Beck constantly. Using her name, he scours her social media profiles. Beck is a writer who moved to New York from Nantucket. She is studying writing at graduate school in the city. Her father had an alcohol addiction and died young; his death had a profound impact on Beck and her siblings, Anya and Clyde. Joe finds Beck’s “ridiculously safe and expensive” (14) West Side address on the Internet. He watches Beck through the window of her parlor-level apartment. He sees her walking naked around her apartment and becomes concerned about her “deluded sense of privacy” (15). Joe secretly watches Beck for two weeks, lusting after her. One day, he sees a man walk into Beck’s apartment. He watches her have sex with the man, and he is convinced that she can do better than this “blond misogynist” (18).

Joe decides to be “patient” (19) with Beck, just as he was patient with Candace, the previous target of his obsessions. He reads Beck’s emails and decides that the blond man is not her boyfriend. Candace was a musician, and Joe pretended to work for a record label to get close to her. He considers his experience with Candace to be “training” (20) for his obsession with Beck. He calls in a fake gas leak in Beck’s building, and, when the gas company employee arrives and interacts with him, Joe poses as Beck’s boyfriend. After the employee leaves, Joe lingers in Beck’s apartment and reads everything on her computer. As he lays in her bed, he hears Beck opening her front door.

Joe clambers out of Beck’s window to escape. He decides to visit Greenpoint, where her friends are attending a writing event where reads her latest short story. When Beck is away from the table, Joe listens to her friends criticize her. They talk about the blond man—a vapid entrepreneur named Benji who runs an artisanal soda company—in disparaging terms. When Beck joins her friends, she is tipsy. She defends Benji while her friends criticize him for not attending and being “a permanent man-baby” (25). They toast their drinks to Beck never speaking to Benji again.

Beck leaves the bar and waits at the subway station. Joe watches her. He is worried that she is drunk and standing too close to the edge of the platform. While using her phone, she slips and lands in a dangerous area. Joe runs to help her. Eventually, he lifts her up onto the platform. They sit together on the platform.

Joe and Beck share a taxi ride. Beck tries to guess why she vaguely recognizes Joe, but she is too drunk to remember. Eventually, he tells her about the bookstore. When they arrive at Beck’s apartment, Benji is waiting for her. Joe pockets Beck’s phone. As she searches for it, she gives Joe her email address in case he finds it. Then, she enters her apartment with a distracted, annoyed Benji.

Joe returns to the bookstore and unlocks the soundproof basement, where the owner, Mr. Mooney, has constructed an airtight storage room for books. The room is named “the cage” and even has a small toilet. Joe sits inside and talks to the old and valuable books. Joe has worked for the now-retired Mr. Mooney since he was a teenager. He is the only person with a key to the basement. One time, after he allowed a valuable book to be stolen, Joe was locked inside the cage for days by Mr. Mooney as punishment. He was released “three days after September 11” (37), emerging into a different world. After that, Joe spent more time at the bookstore than he did with his emotionally abusive father.

Joe works in the shop and uses Beck’s phone to read her emails and learn her passwords. Beck visits the shop with a thank you gift for Joe. He feigns surprise and asks her on a date. She accepts his invitation.

Joe reads Beck’s emails while he waits for her to contact him. She eventually does, but Joe is perturbed by the slow progress. He decides that Benji is a problem, so he begins to research. Benji is a successful entrepreneur who treats Beck badly. Joe takes a tour of Benji’s organic soda factory but slips away and uses Benji’s office computer. When Benji tempts Beck to cancel her date with Joe, Joe tricks Benji into meeting him at the bookstore by pretending to be a famous food critic who wants to promote Benji’s soda.

Pretending to be a food critic named Nathaniel Herzog, Joe meets Benji at the bookstore and leads him to the basement. Joe drugs Benji and locks him in the cage in the basement. He takes Benji’s possessions, including his phone, his wallet, and his drugs. He uses Benji’s phone to post a photograph of a woman and writes a blog on the company website, in which he poses as Benji to announce that he will be out of the city for some time. This provokes an angry response from Beck, as Joe wanted. She re-arranges her date with Joe. Benji wakes up in the cage.

Joe spends three days “babysitting Benji” (50), using Benji’s phone to construct an elaborate narrative on social media, in which Benji has descended into heavy drug use. Benji gives Joe a list of his favorite books but cannot answer any questions about them. Joe arranges a date with Beck and works in the bookstore all day, though he worries about someone discovering Benji in the cage. A coworker, Curtis, arrives late to take over from Joe at the store.