ON MONDAY I WAS BACK at the office, but Dawn wasn’t. She was on her honeymoon. Jean, Cristina, and I had our usual morning meeting. I told them about the confrontation with Dawn’s “crazy friend,” but I kept it brief and vague.
“So weird,” Jean said. Then we moved on to brainstorming about the March issue.
I really needed to get back on track at work—which wouldn’t be that hard to do. After two years, I could assist JGJ in my sleep—or, for that matter, on no sleep. All I had to do was show up, which I always did. My boss wasn’t around half the time, but when she was, I put my best face forward. Simple enough.
But there was no saving face back at 29 Seventh Avenue South, where my mission to pass for “drug-free” and “normal” had gone over like the Challenger. I hadn’t seen Craig or his girlfriend again since the mice night. Then one evening I came home from work and there they were, sitting in the kitchen with Becky. I had to say something.
“I’m so sorry about that crazy morning,” I said. “Did I weird you out? I’m just so scared of mice.”
“Huh?” Craig said.
“Last week,” I said. “When I was out here on the sofa. I was all upset telling you guys about the mice in my room . . .”
Craig’s girlfriend was looking at me like I’d just spoken in tongues.
“I was in Chicago last week,” Craig said. “I just got back today.” He pointed at a suitcase by the stairs. “See?”
What?
“I wasn’t over here,” his girlfriend said. “Because Craig was out of town.”
“That was me you were talking to that morning, Cat,” Becky said gently. “Remember?”
I stared at her.
“Oh, right,” I shook my head and chuckled. “Sorry.”
If it wasn’t awkward living with these people before, it was now. I started looking for a new apartment.
Speaking of awkward. It was mid-November, and Dawn was due back from her honeymoon. I got to work first that day; I always did. Then Dawn arrived. We greeted each other. I fussed with the stuff on my desk, stacking makeup palettes, killing time. She took off her coat. Then I sort of cleared my throat—and just came out with it.
“Dawn?” I said. She turned. I looked her straight in the eye. “I’m sorry about what went down at your wedding. I didn’t mean to cause you any stress.”
“No worries, Marnell.” Cool as a cucumber. Dawn always was.
Exactly one week later, the entire editorial staff was summoned to an afternoon staff meeting. Do you remember the Condé Nast “bloodbath” I told you about? Every magazine was required to make staff cuts. Now it was Lucky’s turn to bring down the ax. Very Hunger Games. Kim was emotional as she named the people who were losing their jobs. I knew I was safe, but it turns out that my newly married coworker wasn’t. I looked around: Dawn wasn’t in the conference room. They’d already told her. Geez.
And just like that, I was promoted. I was a beauty editor at Condé Nast.
A girl named Simone took my place as Jean’s assistant. Back in August, a temp agency had sent her to sit in my cubicle and answer Jean’s phones while I was in rehab at Silver Hill. Everyone at Lucky had flipped for willowy, smart, chic Simone and her A.P.C. smock dresses. And now she was on staff.
I trained her like a Navy SEAL.
“If she goes to Dr. Brandt, it will always be on an afternoon, at the end of the day, and the traffic is terrible over there so you cannot let the driver leave . . . Sally Hansen is not a real person; that is something I learned the hard way . . .” Simone scribbled everything down. “She needs new appointment book pages for the New Year, but she likes to go to the Hermès store herself and buy those . . . Don’t put cellulite products in her office; she thinks they are fraudulent . . . If she’s not flying first class, she likes to sit by the bulkhead. You can call the airline twenty-four hours before the flight . . .”
With JGJ taken care of, I had more time than ever for my favorite extracurricular: doctor shopping! I’d started seeing Marco’s psychiatrist, Dr. X. On my first visit, I walked in with two hundred dollars cash and out with so many paper prescriptions that I could literally spread them and fucking fan myself. No wonder that kid was such a crackhead! I filled everything at the twenty-four-hour Walgreens in Union Square, where I’d been reading the same romance novel from the rack of paperbacks by the pharmacy counter for over a year. (It was about a woman who had attention deficit disorder—and was looking for love! Amazing, right? I swear on my life. No one ever bought it, or even messed with my bookmark, which—fun fact—was a Juicy Fruit wrapper.)
But you know what they say: mo’ prescriptions, mo’ problems. My dad had picked me up from rehab in September and driven me back to Manhattan just to give me a stern warning. Our conversation had gone something like this:
“It’s time to cut the crap, Cait.”
“I know.”
“If you fail to remain sober, the rent checks stop. I’m out.”
“That’s . . . fine. I’m . . . that’s totally fine.”
“This is it. Or I’m out.”
“I know, Dad.”
“Or I’m out. This is it, or I’m out.”
“I hear you.”
“The crap stops now, Cait. Or I’m out.”
“I got it. I really do.” Omigod get me out of this car.
Was I crazy-spoiled and nauseatingly privileged? Duh. But I “hated my dad” (most ungrateful and entitled adult children do) back then, and I was only making twenty-six thousand a year at Lucky, and I wanted that rent money. So now I was pretending to be in recovery whenever I spoke with my parents. Whatever, I’d been lying to them all my life.
But lying to my big sister was another thing. I felt so guilty. Emily was proud of me for getting clean. We’d been spending a lot of time together lately, talking about our parents’ divorce. I didn’t care at all that they were splitting, but Emily was really upset. She’d been ultrasensitive to family stuff ever since Cross Creek Manor.
In mid-November, she asked me if I wanted to have Thanksgiving together in New York, just the two of us. I said yes.
“Are you sure?” she asked. “We don’t have to. Just tell me now.”
“I want to!” I was at work with the phone tucked under my chin, applying Givenchy Mister Light concealer to my magnificent under-eye circles. “I’ll be there!” She made a reservation at a restaurant in Soho called Zoe for six o’clock on Thanksgiving.
On the Tuesday before the holiday, Emily checked to make sure we were still on.
Yes! I wrote back. I was texting from Dr. X.’s waiting room on East Seventy-Second Street, flopped in a chair. I was wiped out. I stayed up all night opening Vyvanse capsules and pouring the fine powdered speed onto my tongue anyway—and went into Lucky for a half day on Wednesday on no sleep.
That evening, Marco texted me.
I found a heroin dealer! Oh, Lord. I’d already popped a few lay-me-downs, so I ignored him. Then I set my alarm and passed out on my bed.
When I woke up it was dark outside. My BlackBerry had frozen. (They were always doing that, right? The worst.)
It was eight o’clock on Thanksgiving.
“NO!” I screamed.
I restarted the phone and all of the messages flooded in. My sister had sat at the restaurant, crying and crying. Then she finally had gone home. I found all this out from my mother—because Emily wasn’t talking to me. I’d called my sister over and over and left a dozen messages. No response.
“How could you do that, Caitlin?” my mom said. She sounded disgusted—and my mom never sounded like she cared about anything. This was really bad. I felt sick.
I was sitting on the floor in the dark with my head in my hands when Marco called. He wasn’t with his family, either.
“I’m sorry, Cat,” he said, after I tearfully recounted what I’d done. “At least you and I can hang out.”
“Do you want to get dinner?” I sniffed. “I’ll pay.”
We had turkey and pumpkin pie at 7A, and then walked through Tompkins Square Park. It was practically empty—well, but for the scuttly night-rats. I held Marco’s arm.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked, though I knew the answer. I was already looking for an ATM.
We squirreled away in Marco’s apartment and snorted tiny piles of off-white heroin all night. His roommates were away. I sat on the bed in a nest of clothes and sketchbooks with my eyelids at half-mast. The smack was nice.
“Thank God I have you,” I murmured at one point, reaching out in slow motion. Marco took my hand and kissed it.
“I love you, Cat,” he said.
“I love you,” I said. Then I nodded off again.
After the Thanksgiving fiasco, my dad had guessed that I was back on drugs. He never sent me a check again. But it was cool. As associate beauty editor, my new salary was forty-six thousand. Now I could pay my own rent, and that felt really good. I mean, the timing of my promotion had been sort of perfect.
I’d been killer at managing Jean’s professional life, but now that I was an editor with lots of freedom and work obligations outside of 4 Times Square, how would I manage my own? If you’ve been reading this book, I think you know the answer, but back then I was in serious denial. Sure, I had problems . . . but this was what I’d worked so hard for, right? The trips! The glamour! The perks! Surely I wouldn’t fuck everything up now.
I was about to find out. My first press trip was right in the beginning of the Christmas season, and it was a doozy. Procter & Gamble—“the largest advertiser in the world,” per WWD—owned the beauty licenses for Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana, and they were flying editors to Rome and then Milan to fete launches from both brands. Eva Chen was going. The beauty director of Vogue, Sarah Brown, was, too. So was Elle’s beauty director, Emily Dougherty. And so on.
Representing Lucky: one Cat Marnell.
I’d be out of the office a full week.
“Are you excited?” Simone asked.
“Yes!” I said. It was Monday, and I was leaving on Friday. I’d already gone to Tokio 7 and blown two hundred dollars on a velvet Gucci baby-doll dress with floaty chiffon sleeves to wear to the Gucci party.
I spent the next few nights dressing up in the mirror, my suitcase open on the floor.
On Thursday morning, I was at my desk reading TMZ and eating a high-protein Condé cafeteria breakfast even though I hardly had an appetite. My Addy was kicking in, you know, and—
“Dude!” Cristina cried. She’d just arrived. “What are you doing here?! Why aren’t you at the airport?”
I swallowed my bite of turkey sausage and sort of blinked at her a few times.
“Huh?” I said.
“You’re supposed to be flying to Rome today!”
“What?” I said. “I am?!”
“Yes!”
I thought about this.
“But today . . .” I said, “is Thursday!”
“Yes!” Cristina said. “Today is Thursday! Your flight is today!”
“Really?!” I said.
“YES!” Cristina said. And this is what it is like working with a pillhead.
I raced home. Sure enough, a black Lincoln Town Car was waiting outside of 29 Seventh Avenue South. I tapped frantically on the window.
“I’ll be down in fifteen!” I shouted. Yeah, right.
Upstairs, I completely fell apart. I couldn’t find matching shoes; I couldn’t put outfits together. Worst of all, I couldn’t find my Xanax or my Ambien. I shook out the sheets; I dug through the piles. Finally, I left without them. Have you ever heard the thing about pillheads—that if you really want to see their addictions, just take their pills away? Yeah, this was gonna be bad.
JFK was an inferno of holiday travelers, and once I got there I had no idea where to go or what to do. I didn’t even know what airline I was flying. I sat down on my suitcase and took out my BlackBerry, but I couldn’t access my Condé e-mail from it. I called Cristina repeatedly, but she wasn’t answering. I was going to miss my flight. I was going to be in such deep trouble. I can’t do this. I can’t handle this. I couldn’t go to Italy. It was all too much.
Finally I got Cristina. By then, Jean was in the office.
“Dude,” she whispered—protecting me, as usual. The senior beauty editor was the associate’s immediate supervisor, so I reported to Cristina now, not to Jean. I’d only just been promoted and I’d already exploited her kindness and put her in a fucked-up position like seven different times. “Calm down. You can do this.”
Cristina had gone over to my computer and found my itinerary. When JGJ stepped away, she called me back and told me to run to the Delta first-class counter.
“You’re not going to make it,” the agent told me. No surprise there.
But now what? I wove back into the throngs and sat on my suitcase again. I took my third Adderall of the day. Whatever was next, I wanted to be high for it.
“Dude,” Cristina said when I broke the news. “Okay. I’m calling PR.”
Twenty minutes later, I had another flight—Air Italia, coach. Of course I made that one. The plane was nuts—even worse than the airport—with demented babies, canoodling teens, and a garrulous Italian pilot babbling on the intercom. I didn’t sleep the whole nine hours; when we landed, I was un disastro. Thank God for town cars. I practically fell into mine.
I felt better when I got to the Hotel Eden, though. It sat atop a hill, and the view from my suite was just glorious. I had time before the Gucci party, so I decided to go for a stroll. I’d never been to Rome. It’s a rather walkable city—especially if one is on Vyvanse—and so I had a nice time navigating the winding streets in the rain. Plus, there was great shopping—rosaries everywhere! I had to bring a few back to Marco. I stopped at a Bancomat machine by the Fontana di Trevi to take out some cash. Tra la la. It was lovely to be in Europe; I hadn’t been there since high school, and gee, look at those pigeons—
INSUFFICIENT FUNDS, YOU SPOILED IDIOT DRUG ADDICT FUCKING RETARD LOSER BRAT, the Bancomat screamed at me. GO THROW YOURSELF IN THE RIVER.
No, no, no.
I checked my balance: negative eighteen hundred dollars.
“FUCK!” I shrieked at the pigeons. How was this possible? My head spun like a slot machine, remembering the shopping spree before Dawn’s wedding, cash I’d laid out for Dr. X., cash I’d given Marco to buy drugs—and, of course, my sixteen-hundred-dollar rent check. So much for self-sufficiency.
I was going to be traveling for a week. What was I going to do? I couldn’t call my parents. Those days were over.
There was only one person I could think of.
“Darlin’?” Mimi accepted the collect call. She was living in Charlottesville, near the University of Virginia. “Caty? Is it really you?” I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year.
“Mimi!” I wailed into a pay-phone receiver. “Mimi, I need your help. I’m all the way over in Europe, I am all alone and I have no money! I am negative two thousand dollars in the bank!” I started crying. “I’m at a pay phone in the middle of Rome. All by myself!” Liar. “I don’t know what to do. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO!”
“I’ll go to the bank right now!” Mimi said.
“Thank you,” I wept. “I love you so much.” Asshole.
Mimi really did rush right out: she wired me three thousand dollars within the hour. I’d frightened my eighty-one-year-old grandmother to—well, not quite to death. But surely a little closer to it.
Gucci headquarters was in a gargantuan sixteenth-century palazzo just across the river Tiber from the fabulous Castel Sant’Angelo. If that sentence sounds like it was lifted directly from the Internet, well—bingo. I barely remember anything about this party. That’s how out to lunch I was. At one point I felt so wobbly that I had to lean against a big pillar! I also remember an awkward chat with Gucci’s foxy blond creative director, Frida Giannini; she didn’t seem to particularly speak English and at that point I barely did either.
Next up was a sit-down dinner. The editors at my table were from the best magazines from all over the world. A healthier me would have been on cloud nine, but I just wanted to crawl into one of the chic bottles of bubbly Italian mineral water on the table and drown.
The American editors returned to the Hotel Eden and said our good nights. When we got to the hotel I was so drunk that I thought maybe I’d actually sleep—especially since I hadn’t on the flight from New York—but instead I just lay awake feeling agitated, clammy, and anxious. I’d left my sleeping pills and Xanax behind, remember? So now I had “rebound insomnia,” which was ninety thousand times worse than the insomnia I had in the first place. I couldn’t have dozed off for a million dollars. I took baths and did deep-breathing exercises in bed. Nothing worked.
By three in the morning, I was freaking out—screaming inside. I wasn’t used to being so uncomfortable and helpless. In New York, I would have been at the twenty-four-hour Rite Aid, buying Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Pop-Tarts, and Powerade.
Then I did something that I absolutely should not have done: picked up the phone and ordered binge foods—expensive binge foods—from room service. This wasn’t specifically forbidden or anything, but . . . you just don’t do that on a press trip. Especially on a press trip with a major advertiser! I was representing Jean and Lucky, Procter & Gamble were paying for the room, and the publicists would see the bill when we checked out. I’d already missed my first-class flight; ordering a bunch of room service was just . . . a bad look. I knew all this. But I ordered pizza, tiramisu, and a pastry basket anyway. I was hoping to spike my blood sugar and then come crashing down and into sleep—an old “trick” of mine.
Yeah, right. After I binged and purged, I picked up the phone again—I was in a half-hypnotized state, truly—and ordered room service again: a cheese and charcuterie plate, a basket of bread, another tiramisu. Another order came up on another rolling tray. I threw all that up, too. By then it was six in the morning and all of the alcohol had worn off. I took two Vyvanse and started packing up my stuff. We were all going to the airport together and flying to Milan. At nine, I met the other editors in the lobby. The publicists were at the front desk, checking out. I wanted to disappear. But no one looked at me funny; no one said anything. At least, not to my face.
The Hotel Principe di Savoia was magnificent, but I blew that Popsicle stand the second we checked in and hit the streets. It was hailing in Milan. While the other beauty editors had afternoon tea, I slogged through the icy-cold rain, looking for lit-up green crosses. There were—I knew—farmacias everywhere: elegant little shops you had to be buzzed into, not big drugstores like in the States. It didn’t take long to find one. I stood and rang the doorbell outside. I was wearing leather Goldsign jeans, Nike Dunk Lows, and a soaking-wet white fox fur coat. It was freezing. Why weren’t they letting me in?
BZZZZZ. Finally! I burst inside. I looked for something like Tylenol PM or NyQuil, but didn’t see it. I went to the counter. There were two people working in the pharmacy.
“I need medicine for sleep, medicina,” I said. “Please.”
The farmacistas stared at me.
“For sleep, for sleep.” I made a pillow with my hands like a little Hallmark Store angel. “Please. Sleeping pills. Tranquilizers.”
“Americano?” the woman said rather . . . snidely.
“Si,” I said. I mean, what did that have to do with anything?
The male pharmacist gave me the ol’ Italian stink eye, but the woman came down from behind the counter. She led me to a wall of herbal sleep supplements. Everything was in cute packaging, like beauty products.
“Thees,” she said. “Melatonia.”
“Oh, um, grazie,” I said. Yeah, that wasn’t gonna cut it.
“Okay?” the pharmacist said.
I pointed behind the counter.
“Do you have Valium?” I said. Wasn’t Valium over the counter in some parts of the world? Maybe not. “Or cough syrup?” Then, as an afterthought, I fake-coughed: Cough.
“No,” she said coldly.
Fine. Stupid Europe! I grabbed every incarnation of shitty melatonia in the joint—tablets, gel caps, powders in capsules—and brought it all up to the register. God knows how much I paid. It didn’t matter. I knew none of it was gonna work.
The next night, at the Dolce & Gabbana party, I got a smooch on both cheeks from either Dolce or Gabbana—I do not know which one, but he was very tan and smelled predictably fantastic. It was another glittering cocktail reception. I sipped white wine. There was more to drink at the sit-down dinner, which felt more like a wedding reception. It was a huge party—so many guests! The dining room was decadent and dazzling—no overhead lighting, just ten thousand candles, and exotic flowers spilled on every table. This time I actually knew someone at mine: Eva Chen—the Eva Chen—was seated next to me.
I actually had something to talk to her about. Charlotte had attended Eva’s wedding over the summer and had shown me the photos when she visited me at Silver Hill.
“Congratulations on getting married!” I said. I was a little toasted. “Charlotte showed me the pictures over the summer . . .”
“Oh, she did?” Eva said. She was still the beauty director at Teen Vogue. I’d never forgotten how kind she was when I interviewed there. Which may explain—along with my usual excuse, sleep deprivation—what happened next.
“Yes,” I said. “When—when—” Don’t. “When she visited me . . . in rehab!”
Then I started blubbering—right there at the table, into my glam risotto.
“Cat,” Eva said, putting her fork down. She reached out and touched my shaking arm. “Are you okay?”
“It’s a g-g-g-ood thing you d-d-didn’t h-h-hire me,” I wept. “I’m a d-d-drug addict.” I told her everything: about forgetting my downers at home, the room service I’d ordered, how Jean didn’t know I’d relapsed, and how I’d stepped into Dawn’s job.
“It’s okay.” Eva Chen patted my back. She probably couldn’t even understand what I was saying, I was crying so hard. At least it was so fashionably dark in that dining room that no one was watching us. “Shhh.”
As the first course arrived, I went into the bathroom and cleaned the eyeliner from my cheeks. I was such a freak show. Thank God Eva was so nice.
I gorged on melatonin that night. I probably took thirty herbal pills. They did nothing except make me feel sick. I lay in the dark in my suite at the Principe di Savoia, waiting for sleep. I would have swallowed arsenic if someone had promised that it would put me under for at least a few hours—that’s how bad prolonged insomnia feels. But eventually I gave up: on sleeping, on self-control, on my career, on myself. I gave up on all of it. I just fucking gave up.
This time I got prosecco—a whole bottle—plus pastries, cheese plates, pizza, and tiramisu. The bill would be . . . God, I don’t know. A hundred and fifty euros? Two hundred? I couldn’t stop. I knew that I should quit my job when I got back to New York. And I was so fucked up that I didn’t care. I was wearing a purple silk slip and I kept taking it off to vomit in the marble bathroom. When I’d emptied my stomach of the first giant room service order, I called and ordered it again. It was so sick.
The bathroom was the size of a New York studio apartment. At some point—I guess I’d gotten really drunk—I finally passed out in there. When I opened my eyes again, I was on the marble floor by the toilet in my underwear. I knew I’d slept for a few hours. Thank you, God.
I got up and put on a robe. Then I went to the window in the bedroom and peeked out the heavy hotel room curtains. Was it light out? Not yet. The sky was dark purple. Then it slowly turned into light gray. I sat there watching for a long time. I heard the Italian birds wake up.
I’m never going to be okay, I thought.
The trip had been such a disaster, but at least it was almost over. I was a wreck. I was wearing a baseball cap; my face was crazy swollen. We took cars to the airport. Then the editors waited together in the first-class terminal. I felt so uncomfortable sitting there that I got up and went to the gift shop and bought a bunch of toiletries. Then I returned to the group and . . . talked about them.
“Italy has the prettiest cotton balls!” I said shakily. “They look like cotton candy!”
A few women smiled—but just a few. I wanted to disappear.
Finally, it was time to board. I was the last person in our group to get on the plane. The cushy, gray leather seats in the first-class cabin were arranged in pairs—and the only vacant single was next to the beauty director of Vogue.
NOOOOOO! I began praying immediately. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT SIT ME NEXT TO THE BEAUTY DIRECTOR OF VOGUE FOR NINE HOURS WHEN I HAVEN’T SLEPT IN A WEEK AND I HAVE BEEN UP ALL NIGHT THROWING UP AND CAN BARELY SEE STRAIGHT, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE—
When I opened my eyes, someone else was sitting there. Whew. God is real. I’m telling you.
I hadn’t seen my actual seat because a lady had stashed her cranky Italian baby there, and I wound up sitting next to that very bambino the whole flight home. I couldn’t have been happier if it was Pete Doherty himself.
We took off. I curled up under a blanket and took melatonia after melatonia. The herbal pills bothered my stomach and kept . . . rising in my throat, making my chest burn, and I would feel like there were bubbles stuck in my chest, like I needed to burp. It was uncomfortable and vile. Hours passed, and I didn’t doze off once. I never even got drowsy. About six hours in, I watched The Dark Knight Rises for the first time—or tried to, anyway. I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying—the airline headphones sucked, even in first class. Eventually I just turned off the sound. Then I sat quietly in the dark cabin. It was so surreal to be crossing the Atlantic Ocean with the top beauty editors in my industry snoozing all around me. I was really living my dream life. Wasn’t I? I suppressed another melatonia belch. Heath Ledger was on the little glowing screen in front of me in his nurse’s uniform, smoky eyes, and smeared lipstick, smirking as he set off bombs and burned the hospital down.
I found my pills somewhere obvious right when I got home—isn’t that always the way?—and was out cold all weekend. When I returned to 4 Times Square on Monday, the beauty department was neck-deep in Christmas swag: Marc Jacobs bags from Revlon, YSL wallets from YSL, jewelry from Shiseido. I opened gifts all morning.
JGJ swished in at the usual time and was happy to see me. I could tell that she didn’t even know I’d missed my original flight.
My stomach twisted. All morning I’d imagined going into her office, pulling the door shut, and coming clean—about the trip, about my relapse. About everything. I’d imagined what would happen after that: Jean would have to tell not just Kim and Regan but the ad side—our publisher, our sales team—what I’d done. She’d have to call Procter & Gamble and personally apologize for her employee’s ghastly behavior. And she’d have to fire me or—if I was incredibly lucky—put me on disability again.
I couldn’t do it.
“Good,” I said. “It was great! I met Frida Giannini . . .”
The morning passed uneventfully. Simone didn’t need my help with anything; she’d really gotten into her assistant groove while I was gone. That was good news. JGJ seemed comfortable, too. I opened my mail, listening to the two of them laughing and talking in Jean’s office.
At noon I sidled up to my boss’s door. She was typing away, her back toward me.
“I’m going to the cafeteria,” I said. “Do you want me to grab your lunch?”
JGJ twisted around and looked at me sort of curiously.
“Er, no,” Jean said. “Simone will get it.”
She resumed her work. I returned to my desk to open drawers and rummage around for my dining pass. I looked at the back of my boss’s chair. We were sitting just ten feet apart, but suddenly she felt far away.
On Christmas Eve, I gave Marco his presents: a handheld Flip video camera—the “It” gadget at the time, gifted to me by a beauty company—and a box of Giotto be-bè crayons that I bought in Rome.
“Dope!” Marco said. He got right to work in his sketchbook.
I ♥ CAT, he showed me later. The big Italian-crayon-red heart was beautiful, like a smashed lipstick.
We snorted skag and watched Marco’s looping Eyes Wide Shut DVD for a week straight. Literally—a week. I couldn’t even take a sip of water without running to the filthy toilet. But of course on heroin throwing up feels good.
On New Year’s Eve, I was standing at the mirror in Marco’s grimy bathroom, doing my makeup, applying MAC Fluidline to my heavy, heavy eyelids . . .
Tap. I jerked awake. I’d fallen forward and hit my forehead on the mirror on the medicine cabinet above the sink! I shook my head.
I closed my eyes again . . .
Tap. I jerked awake again! Fuck, man. I’d keeled forward into the mirror again.
Tap.
Someone banged on the bathroom door.
“Cat?”
“I’m good,” I whispered. I fell asleep again. Tap.
And it went on like this for . . . well, I couldn’t tell you.
Finally I snapped out of it. I floated through the garbage-filled kitchen and found Marco on a futon. Eyes Wide Shut had just started again.
“Hey,” I mumbled.
“Don’t you think one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?” Sandor was waltzing Nicole Kidman around the glittery gold ballroom.
“What the fuck were you doing in there?” Marco slurred.
“Is it as bad as that?” Sandor said.
“I dunno . . .” I sat down next to Marco and leaned on his shoulder.
“As good as that,” Nicole Kidman said.
“Happy New Year, Cat.” Marco shook me. When I opened my eyes, I saw that it was midnight. The DVD had started again and we were watching the same scene, from the same movie.