NOW THAT I WAS OUT of that bizarre . . . sobriety fog, I could see everything much more clearly! I stood in Times Square after work that night in a Velvet by Graham & Spencer cashmere minidress and Chloé motorcycle boots, puffing a ciggie, my thoughts on a loop like the electric ticker-tape headlines and Dow Jones average updates on the buildings all around me. I’d been a real moron—popping speed day and night, for days on end. Of course I’d turned into a self-destructive swamp thing. I’d done it all wrong! If I was going to be back on Adderall—which I was, technically, already—I needed discipline, structure, and limits! That is, a plan for controlled use.
I went to Walgreens and picked out a brand-new pill organizer. The plastic grid was as big as a serving platter, with a square for each day of the month. Perfect! Now I needed some ground rules. I listed them on a Lucky notepad the whole subway ride home. NO ADDERALL AFTER DARK. And I was not allowed to stay up all night anymore. NO DOWNERS!! No Xanax, no Klonopin, no Ambien, no Lunesta, no painkillers. I would let my ADHD medication taper off at the end of the day, and then I would go to sleep naturally. IN BED AT 1 AM ON WEEKNIGHTS. LIGHTS OUT AT 2!
I sat on my bed at home, counting pills and dividing them into the squares. I was still having a million thoughts a minute. I would take a time-release thirty-milligram Adderall every day, in the morning, and then I would take a twenty-milligram regular Adderall in the afternoon around three o’clock, and that was it. No more. I kept scribbling down “rules” as they came to me: NO HARD DRUGS. Ooh, wasn’t it fun counting these pills and organizing them in their cubes and opening and closing the plastic doors? They were like little pink pill-people living in storage units. La la la. No, drugs were not going to rule my fucking life anymore. This was a new era! I was in control now. I made the rules; I was in charge of how I felt! I determined what happened to—
“Knock knock!”
“AUGH!” I screamed, and nearly fell off the bed. “Come in.”
“Sorry, did I scare you?” Becky opened the door. I pulled a blanket over the pill organizer.
“Not at all.” My heart was pounding.
“Do you want to get sushi?” Becky asked. “Whoa. Cool collage!”
“Thanks,” I said. My neck and my shoulders were so stiff! I’d been frozen in the same position for over an hour. “Oh, you know what? I already ate.”
“Okay!” my roommate said. “Next time.”
When she closed the door, I went right back to strategizing. ONLY TWO DRINKS ON WEEKNIGHTS. And I had to drink with people like Becky, never alone . . .
I lay down at one o’clock, just like I was supposed to. I was feeling very confident. I really had it figured out! But there was a problem with my new plan: now that I was back on uppers—and not downers—I couldn’t sleep. I got up and walked to the deli across the street for Tylenol PM. An hour later, I went back for NyQuil. I gagged down half the bottle.
Nothing worked. I was awake when my alarm went off at eight thirty. I dragged through the day. That night, I couldn’t sleep again.
“I just don’t understand,” I whined in our Beauty Spy meeting after a third awful night.
If you’ve ever experienced insomnia—and I’m sure you have—then you know that there is nothing as brutal. You truly suffer, and it feels unbearable. The people around you suffer, too, because not sleeping makes your personality blow. I felt very sorry for myself. Still, I was determined to stay off tranquilizers and sleeping pills. I hadn’t visited a shrink since I got back from rehab. Instead, I took horrible over-the-counter tablets that melted on your tongue. They were cherry-flavored and gave me a headache. I stared at the ceiling until I felt suicidal.
“How’s it going?” JGJ greeted me every morning.
“Not good,” I’d whimper.
Jean—who thought I was sober—felt sorry for me, too. She recommended the This Works Deep Sleep Bath Soak. Cristina suggested melatonin. Dawn didn’t give me any suggestions. She was distracted because she was getting married on November first. Jean, Cristina, and I were all attending the wedding.
That evening after Jean left, I called my mom and complained to her.
“I have a sound machine that makes thunderstorm noises,” my mother told me. “Or why don’t you take half a Xanax? That always works for me!”
“I just got out of rehab for pills, Mom!” I screeched. “Are you serious? God!” I hung up on her.
It was six o’clock. Dawn was putting on her trench coat in the next cubicle. “Heading home?”
“Last dress fitting.” Dawn smiled.
“So exciting!” As soon as she was gone, I snuck an Addy out of my pants pocket and chomped it in half.
“Please help me sleep,” I’d beg God at night. “Please let me sleep. Please help me.” “Please.” But God wasn’t feeling me. So I kept raiding my pill organizer like a little kid jumping ahead to get the chocolates out of an Advent calendar. I had to. Amphetamine messed with my internal clock, sure, but it also totally helped me push through the fatigue. What was I supposed to do—just drink coffee? Get real.
As for the “no hard drugs” rule, well, it was only a matter of time before I reconnected with Marco. I cabbed to the Lower East Side on a Saturday night. He was waiting outside his place smoking a Red. We hugged.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
“I can’t do anything too crazy tonight,” I warned him, like I always did.
“Don’t worry,” Marco said. Then he took me to the worst fucking building in downtown Manhattan. It was a project on Avenue D. The lighting in the lobby was straight-up green. A security guard was slumped on his desk. It didn’t look like he was taking a nap, either. It looked like he’d just slurped down a propofol milk shake.
“Come on,” Marco said. He pulled me into the elevator—and there was a puddle of piss on the floor!
“Are you serious?” I said, covering my nose. The smell didn’t bother Marco. He grinned at me like a jack-o’-lantern.
Marco knocked on the door to an apartment on the tenth floor. Someone opened it. The first thing I saw was the Japanese porno on the television.
“AH!” A teenage-looking girl was getting fucked by a bunch of teenage-looking Japanese boys. “AH! AH! AH! AH!”
Then I saw who was “watching”: four grown-ass men piled on one tiny sofa, limp and flopped over each other in a heap—like a litter of sleeping puppies! No, like a litter of dead puppies. What were the people in this building on?
“I’ll be right back,” Marco said, and left the apartment.
I sat there waiting for twenty-five minutes.
ZZZZZZZ, one of the dudes snored. At least that meant he was alive.
Finally Marco came back, his eyes looking bright, like a little bat in the night.
“C’mon,” he said.
“Where did you go?!” I exploded when we were in the elevator. “You can’t just leave a girl in a place like that!”
Marco looked genuinely surprised. I’d never raised my voice to him before.
“I wouldn’t have left just any girl,” he said. “But you’re different. You’re so tough.” That shut me up.
We went back to Marco’s house, where we listened to Shotter’s Nation and caught up over a few grams of coke. I told him about Dawn’s wedding.
“Can I come?” Marco said.
“Can you imagine?” I laughed.
We stayed up until four in the afternoon. By the time I got back to the West Village on Sunday night, I was ready to drop. Still, I couldn’t sleep.
My insomnia continued through October. One weeknight I was up late, in bed with an orange, a can of seltzer, and a box of Benadryl. I’d taken the over-the-counter antihistamine every night at Silver Hill to sleep, so I’d bought it when I spotted it at the deli that night.
I took two of the little pills. Then I peeled my orange and read Perez Hilton on my laptop, waiting for the medicine to kick in and make me drowsy, but nothing was happening. Shock-a-roo. I took another Benadryl.
It was raining outside. Bat-a-tat-tat. The drops bouncing off the air conditioner unit outside my window kept startling me.
My room was a mess. Earlier that night I’d gone to my storage unit and dragged home a plastic Container Store trunk full of clothes. I’d taken off the lid and pulled a few things out, but then I’d gotten tired. So that stuff was everywhere. My nine thousand pairs of strappy black work heels were piled under the garment racks I’d put together. There were beat-up Jimmy Choos, Fendi velvet sling-backs, and mesh Louis Vuitton pumps I’d bought on sale in a rare (fine, I have them all of the time) Carrie Bradshaw moment.
Something kept drawing my attention to those shoes.
Bat-a-tat-tat. I jumped a little. I finished the orange, set the bag of peels on the ground, and reached to switch off the lamp. Just as the room went black, I saw the flash of movement under the garment rack.
I sat frozen in the dark.
No.
Then I switched the light back on and looked right where I knew I did not want to look. And I saw it: a big mouse, with black eyes, staring at me from the shoe pile.
“AHHHHHHH!” I jumped out from under my covers so I was standing on my pillows. “AUUUUUUUGGHHHH!”
This couldn’t be happening again. This couldn’t be happening again.
Oh, but it was.
The mouse darted into my closet.
“HELP!” I shrieked. “AHHHHH! SOMEONE! HELP!” No one came. Craig and Becky were asleep on a different floor. The mouse streaked out of the closet and past the bed—and another one followed right behind. “AUUUGGGHHHHHH!”
How many were there? How was this even possible?
Then I spotted something moving at the bottom of the clear plastic crate I’d brought home from storage. Was I hallucinating? I had to be. I focused my eyes. Something was wriggling around in my clothes. I could hear it now, squeaking. I wasn’t hallucinating. My memory flashed to the big rat I’d seen scuttling through the horrible Manhattan Mini Storage garage. Suddenly, I put it all together: there had been mice living in my stuff in my storage unit, and I had brought them home with me.
“AUGGGGGGGHHHHHH!”
I leapt from the bed, ran out of the room, slammed the door behind me, fled past the bathroom into the dark living room, and climbed up on the black leather sofa. Where else could I go? What was I going to do? I stared at the crack of light under my bedroom door.
But then—I swear to God—I saw the creatures’ forms silhouetted in that crack of light. Gathering there.
“NOOOOOO!” I screamed.
And then—swear to God again—the mice squeezed under the door and bolted into the living room.
“AUUUUGGHH!”
There were four of them! Can you fucking imagine?! They were dark, and they weren’t small. Jesus. Were they rats? One dashed behind the refrigerator. I vaulted off the sofa, hightailed it to the bathroom, and got up on the ledge of the tub with a rolled-up Forbes magazine in one hand. I clung to the shower rod with the other. My bare feet gripped the tub, and I was sobbing, bracing myself for another invasion.
I saw the shadow before I saw the actual mouse. It was creeping toward me . . . slowly . . .
Mice don’t creep, I thought for a second. Did they? But the shadow was there—sneaking closer . . . closer . . .
“AUUUUUGHHH!” I threw the magazine at the shadow and jumped from the tub and ran back into the living room and up on the sofa. I scanned the area. Nothing was moving. Where did they go? Mice will do that—just disappear.
I stood there in the dark on the sofa—weeping, trying to breathe—for twenty minutes or so.
Then something came over me. Was it bravery, or was I just drugged and crazy? Who knows? Either way, I decided to go into that storage bin. If there was a mouse trapped in there, I wanted to confront it head on.
I went back to my bedroom door and flung it open. Then I stormed over and went HAM on that bin. I pulled out a pair of Alice and Olivia black leather jeggings and shook them out. Nothing! I pulled out my Keith Richards T-shirt and shook it. Nothing. I pulled out my Lucien Pellat-Finet pot leaf sweater and shook it. Nothing! I was crying, howling, retching—just in the absolute height of psychological agony—as I did this. And so it went with item after item.
Finally I got to the bottom. There was one thing left: a pair of white shredded J Brand jeans. Sure enough, something—a lump—was moving in the pants leg. I wasn’t crazy. It was real.
I grabbed my YSL suede wedge and started beating the lump. It was like that carnival game: Whac-A-Mole. Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham!
“AUUUUUGHHH!” Wham! Wham! Wham! Wham! “AAUUGGHHHH!”
Finally the lump stopped moving. Blood spread out all over the fabric in a big red stain. I flipped the storage crate upside down again to cover the gore. Then I stumbled out into the living room and collapsed. I’d killed another mouse. I couldn’t believe it.
I woke up to whispers at the top of the stairs.
“Is she sleeping?” someone was saying. It was still dark outside, and in the living room. It was early. I was sprawled out on the couch like a freak in tiny American Apparel terry-cloth shorts and a filthy old polo shirt.
It all came rushing back.
I pulled myself up as Craig and his girlfriend, who also worked in finance, came down the stairs. I told them everything.
“That’s so crazy!” Craig said. “We’ve never had mice before!”
“It’s my fault.” I shook my head. “I attract them wherever I go!”
“We’ll call an exterminator,” Craig assured me. Then they left, and I went back to sleep. When I opened my eyes again it was sunny in the apartment, and I was alone.
Time for work. I was covering Dawn’s events while she put in extra time at the office before she took off for her honeymoon, and that morning I was supposed to swing by a personal care brand’s preview in Nolita. I ran into my bedroom to grab my purse and a dress and ran back out. I didn’t look at where I killed the mouse.
I took an Addy to calm my nerves and cabbed over to Elizabeth Street. The event was in a white minimalist space. There was a DJ spinning Flo Rida—at ten in the morning—plus the usual floral arrangements and tables of new body butters and fragrances.
I can’t handle this, I thought.
“Smoothie?” a waiter chirped. The DJ put on “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” I shook my head no.
“Cat!” A publicist greeted me with a clipboard. “Welcome!”
“Sorry I’m late,” I croaked. I was hoarse—and woozy. “Where’s the restroom?” She pointed.
The bathroom was peaceful and industrial-chic, with a white candle burning. I sat down and peed, and put my head in my hands. I never wanted to get up.
But I had to. I stood up and was pulling up my tights when I noticed a bug on the wall. It had no spots, it was distinctly round, and it was the exact same shade as the paint.
It was a white ladybug. And it was crawling up the wall in the bathroom at this beauty event.
What.
I reached out and pushed it like a button.
It disappeared under my finger. And that’s when I snapped.
“Bwahhh!” I burst out of that fucking bathroom!
The nice publicist with the clipboard came rushing over.
“Cat!” she said.
“I saw a bug . . .” I wept. “It wasn’t there . . . I was up all night . . . I killed a rat . . .” I was crying, crying. People stared. “I have to go. I can’t be here! I have to go.”
“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” She held my quaking shoulders and led me outside. Then she put me in a taxi. (I have no idea who this kind publicist was to this day—but bless her, wherever she is.)
I was a wreck at the office.
“I killed a mouse in my new apartment last night!” Dawn and Cristina exchanged glances. We were supposed to be meeting about the next issue. “I brought them into my house from my storage unit!”
“Oh, no!” Jean exclaimed. “Again? I can’t believe it!”
“Me neither,” I sniffled.
“I’m so sorry, dude,” Cristina said. Dawn didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t go home, so I stayed at my sister’s for two nights. On Friday afternoon, we headed to 29 Seventh Avenue South together. I didn’t want to go into my room.
“I’m so scared,” I blathered the whole subway ride. “I’m so scared I’m so scared I’m so scared.”
My sister practically had to drag me off the elevator and through the living room at 29 Seventh Avenue South and into my bedroom. The instant I saw the murder scene—the YSL wedge, the bin, the jeans underneath—I was up on the bed, screeching like a gibbon. “I CAN’T! I CAN’T!”
Emily was afraid, too, but she went right over and lifted the bin, picked up the jeans, and shook them out . . .
“There’s nothing here!” she said.
“WHAT?!” I stopped monkey jumping.
“There’s nothing here,” my sister repeated.
I clambered off the bed and looked. There was no blood. No mouse. I should have been relieved—but instead, my knees buckled. What the fuck was going on?
“How can that be?” I said. “I killed it. I saw the blood spread.”
“I don’t think so,” Emily said.
“But I did,” I said. “I saw it. I saw the blood spread. I know I saw it.”
“Stop saying that,” my sister said.
“I saw the blood spread. I saw the blood spread,” I replied. “I SAW THE BLOOD SPREAD!”
“Caitlin!” My sister grabbed my shoulders. “Stop it!”
“I SAW THE BLOOD SPREAD!” I howled. “I SAW THE BLOOD SPREAD! I SAW THE BLOOD—”
“Knock knock!”
“AUUUGHH!” My sister and I both jumped a foot in the air.
“Sorry!” Becky stepped into the room. “Did I scare you?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Becky, this is my sister Emily.”
“I’m helping with the . . . the mice,” Emily explained.
“I was telling Cat it’s weird,” Becky replied. “Because we’ve never had mice before . . .” As they chatted, I skulked around looking for clues. Hmm. No little black pellets . . . No greasy trails around the perimeter either . . .
That’s when I saw the Benadryl box on the bed. I picked it up.
“How many of those did you take?” Emily said.
“Three?” But almost all of the pills were popped out of the little sheet. My sister rolled her eyes.
I crashed at Emily’s again and stayed up late on her MacBook, reading all about Benadryl. Diphenhydramine hallucinations are terrifying, vivid, and different than other “trips”—several websites claimed—because you aren’t aware that what you’re “seeing” isn’t real.
That made me feel better, but not much. The next day at work I used the beauty closet phone to book a psychiatrist appointment. I needed to be back on sleeping pills and benzos. Prescription-drug dependency sucked, but insomnia was even worse. Being clean just wasn’t worth it.
Then it was Halloween—a Friday. The city was nuts. I walked over to see Marco. He was waiting outside his apartment on Madison Street, wearing a black suit with a skinny black tie.
“I can’t do anything too crazy,” I said as I hugged him. “I have to go to my coworker’s wedding tomorrow.”
“Cool,” he said. “Look what I got!” He opened his palm and showed me a rock. It was bigger than Dawn’s engagement ring. Jeez!
We went to Chez Marco. My friend put on David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) as he fixed up a stem.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” I kept saying as we passed it. “My boss is going to be at that wedding tomorrow.”
“Jean Godfrey-June?”
“The one and only,” I said, exhaling the freebase smoke.
“I want to meet her,” Marco said. “Do you think she’d like me?”
“Nope,” I said.
“I still think you should bring me as your date,” Marco said.
“Not gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“You wouldn’t fit in at all!” I said.
“What do you mean?” Marco was indignant. “This is a Dior suit!”
“It’s very nice,” I said. “But no.”
At eleven in the morning, we split a pill of real ecstasy that Marco had in his pencil case.
“Let’s go look at art,” I said as it started to kick in.
We went to the New Museum on Bowery and walked through the Elizabeth Peyton paintings. They were okay. I liked the Sid Vicious portrait best. Afterward, we shuffled around in the gift shop. I pocketed a button that read: I ♥ TERROR.
“Dope,” Marco said, pinning it on my jacket when we got outside.
I nodded. I wasn’t talking so good.
I decided I wanted something new to wear to the wedding, so we went to Tokio 7, the secondhand designer resale boutique on East Seventh Street. I piled things at the register without trying them on: a gold and silver Missoni tube dress, a Joie brown rabbit fur jacket, a Dior button-down for Marco. The total was $379.99. I threw a pair of Tom Ford sunnies on top of it all: $479.99. The shop was . . . vibrating. I could barely hand over my credit card. The cashier took it from my hand.
“Shankssh.” Marco took the bag with one hand and my elbow with the other.
“Thanks,” he said to the clerk. Other customers were staring. “Let’s go.”
I lurched out of the store. It was sunny in the East Village.
“Idunrillyno what time thish wedding shhtartshhh,” I said. “I sshhink I should take a nap and ammyhoush.”
“I’m coming with you,” Marco said. He was still holding my elbow.
“Don’t do anyshhing crazy,” I said. I’d never let him up into the West Village place before. “My roommateshharrr home.”
No one was at the duplex. Marco and I rested on my bed. By the time it was dark outside, I sobered up considerably.
“I gotta get ready,” I said. “I gotta go.”
“Let me come with you,” Marco said. “Cat. Seriously.”
“But I RSVP’d as a single . . .” I shook my head.
“It’s a wedding!” Marco said. “It’s a party. Everyone is going to be there with a date!”
“I’ll text Dawn,” I said—and did. (In retrospect, I imagine this message was a bit . . . messy.)
An hour passed. I sent another message to my coworker. Still—no answer.
“I guess you can come.” I shrugged.
The New York City Fire Museum was just a few blocks from my apartment. Marco and I hustled down Varick. We were a little late. Then we hung a right on Spring Street. I spotted Dawn’s friend Leigh standing outside a building down the block. She was wearing a bridesmaid dress.
“That must be it,” I said, and picked up the pace. We had both sobered up; I was feeling pretty good and wearing my new glittery Missoni tunic over black tights. Marco looked dreamy in his black three-piece—
“I DON’T THINK SO!” Leigh was yelling in our direction. She was waving her arms around. “YOU’RE NOT COMING IN HERE.”
“Is she talking to you?” Marco said under his breath.
“No way,” I said.
Marco and I turned around.
There was no one behind us.
We were almost at the Fire Museum. Leigh was still hollering. Then she was charging—toward us!
“I DON’T THINK SO, CAT MARNELL!” Marco and I stopped in our tracks. “GET AWAY!”
“Excuse me?” I said. I had met this chick before, but what?
“YOU’RE NOT COMING IN HERE,” Leigh yelled. I was very confused. What was happening? Was she talking to Marco?
“But . . . he’s wearing a Dior suit,” I said.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” Leigh’s face was bright red. “GET AWAY FROM HERE. YOU’RE NOT WELCOME.”
“What are you talking about?!” I said. Of course I was welcome. I knew everything about this wedding. I’d sat next to the bride for two years. “I texted Dawn—”
“I KNOW YOU DID!” She was screaming—right there on Spring Street! “I READ YOUR TEXT! YOU THINK THAT’S WHAT SHE WANTS TO DEAL WITH ON THE MOST SPECIAL DAY OF HER LIFE?”
“I—I—” I stammered.
“WHILE SHE’S GETTING READY FOR HER WEDDING?” Leigh raged on. “HOW DARE YOU!”
“I’m calling Dawn!” My hands were trembling as I fumbled in my purse and pulled out my BlackBerry.
“OH NO, YOU’RE NOT!” Leigh lunged for it. Like she was going to take it from me and smash it on the ground!
“What the fuck is your problem?” I cried out as I dodged her.
That really got her going.
“MY PROBLEM?” she roared. “YOU’RE THE ONE WITH THE FUCKING PROBLEM. YOU MAKE YOUR PROBLEM EVERYONE ELSE’S PROBLEM. I KNOW ALL ABOUT IT! I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU, CAT MARNELL. EVERYBODY GIVES YOU A PASS.” They did? “DAWN HAS TO PUT UP WITH IT, BUT GUESS WHAT? I DON’T. AND I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU! AND I’M NOT LETTING YOU RUIN THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF MY BEST FRIEND’S LIFE. NOW GO HOME.”
My jaw was on the sidewalk. Marco’s was, too.
What could I do? What could I say?
“Let’s go,” Marco murmured.
He grabbed my hand. We turned around and strode quickly back up Spring Street toward Varick. I was shaking.
“THAT’S RIGHT! GO ON NOW,” Leigh bellowed at our backs. “GO HOME, CAT MARNELL! AND DON’T COME BACK!”
I was in such shock that I couldn’t even talk. I felt like I’d just been Tased! What the hell had just happened?
“I thought you were close with your coworkers,” Marco finally said.
“I am.” I started to cry. “We’re all friends.” Weren’t we?
“Fuck those people, Cat.” Marco put his arm around me. “At least you have me. Come on. Let’s go do some drugs.”
“Okay,” I sniffled.
It was only a few minutes’ walk back to my apartment. Inside, I texted Jean and told her Dawn’s friend wouldn’t let me into the wedding.
What? Why? she wrote back.
I stared at my phone. Then I just never responded.
I was upset for a while, but my friend had me smiling soon enough.
“To think that all happened . . . because you wanted to bring me to a wedding,” Marco snickered.
“Right?” I giggled, passing him the glass stem.
“Shows how much that bitch knows,” he said. “I mean, this a Dior suit.”