Joe is adamant about getting rid of Benji due to his knowledge of Joe's complicity in kidnapping him and stalking Beck, which poses a great threat to his future plans. His ploy proves successful, as Beck, convinced, resolves to put Benji behind her. So as not to raise any suspicions about Benji's whereabouts, Joe starts masquerading as Benji on his phone and social media accounts to keep up the ruse that Benji decided to travel somewhere remote without any notice. He leads him to the bookstore basement, hits him over the head with a mallet and keeps him captive in the store's climate-controlled cage. Posing as a New York Times columnist, he tricks Benji into meeting him for an interview about Benji's soda company. Joe believes that Benji is an obstacle to his future relationship with Beck. While spying on Beck, Joe discovers Benji Ashby, her current hook-up buddy and a pretentious trust-fund baby. She replaces it and he is able to read her text messages synced to the cloud. Later, it is revealed that he stole her phone while helping her. He successfully saves Beck from imminent death before the train arrives. Uncomfortable, Joe retreats to the New York City Subway stations, where an inebriated Beck arrives and falls onto the train tracks. Joe stalks Beck to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where she gets drunk and reads her poetry to disinterested hipsters at an open mic night. In response, Ron admonishes Joe's actions, stating that he is suspicious of him and warning him to stay far away from Paco. As Paco's situation at home with his stepfather Ron, becomes increasingly abusive, Joe finds himself getting more and more involved. Joe has a soft spot for Paco, as he sees a lot of his childhood in him. Meanwhile, Joe has a close relationship with his next-door neighbor, Paco, who has an abusive home life and who Joe lends books to as an escape. He continuously implies that a similar instance occurred in the past with his ex-girlfriend, Candace Stone, who is presumed to be dead. He justifies his actions by stating that in order to pursue Beck, he wants to make sure that she is worth it and won't break his heart. Right after their encounter, Joe starts to obsessively find everything about Beck that he can through her social media accounts. They first meet at Mooney's, the Lower East Side bookstore where Joe and his co-worker Ethan Russell work. Joe, now the bookstore's manager, tries to win over MFA student Guinevere Beck by manipulating everything and everyone around her. This included locking Joe in a glass cage in the bookstore basement for periods of time until he could prove the lesson was learned. He took care of Joe and guided him, but would also abuse him in various ways that he saw as teaching Joe lessons he needed to learn and shaping him into what he believed he should be. Mooney, a retired Soviet prison guard who owned a bookstore, took him under his wing. She tells him that she needed to start over.Īs a teen, an older man named Mr. He tracked down his mother and went to find her, and it is revealed that she is now raising her new son. He felt the need to protect her from her abusive boyfriend and blamed himself for not doing so when she later stopped coming to work.
While there, he was viciously bullied and bonded with a nurse who worked there who was in an abusive relationship and reminded him of his mother. Shortly after, she turned him over to social services, telling him that being with her was not the best thing for him and he was put into a group home.
His mom told him that he was a good boy who would never hurt anyone and was only protecting her. But instead, Joe later used the gun to shoot his father, protecting his mother from his beating, killing him. She hid a gun in a closet where Joe would often hide and showed Joe, telling him that one day she would kill his father.
His mother would sometimes take Joe and leave his father, usually in the company of another man, but would always come back. His father would physically abuse him, such putting cigarettes out under his arms, trying to force him to confess his mother's infidelity. His mother frequently cheated on his father, often leaving Joe alone in public areas while doing so. His father was abusive to him and his mother. He idealized his mother Sandy, whom he said was his home no matter where they were. Joseph Goldberg was the only child born into a dysfunctional relationship. However, his obsession soon becomes out of control when he starts trying to control every aspect of her life. Joe is a loner bookstore manager who becomes infatuated with a woman named Guinevere Beck and begins to stalk her to find out everything about her and hopefully make her fall in love with him.