“It’s completely unfair,” I say to Mom. “I mean, I could probably sue them for wrongful termination.” I don’t mention anything about the coke, because I don’t see how it’s any of her business, and just tell her I was fired for having an “attitude” problem.
“Oh, honey.” Oh, honey is about all she’s said during this incredibly unpleasant conversation. Lately I’ve been having this feeling that I’ve stopped disappointing Mom—that, in fact, she’s resigned herself to the fact that I’m always going to be sharing disappointing news—and so she just sounds sad and I resent her for this.
“Everything’s going to be fine, Mom,” I say. “In fact, things will be better than fine.” I’m having this conversation on absolutely no sleep since yesterday, after getting home from work, passing out, then waking up and calling Alex, I’d proceeded to stay up all night with a gram while listening to this Black Eyed Peas song over and over. But obsessively playing the song had actually sparked some mind expansion of sorts, wherein I’d realized that the publishing world simply didn’t appreciate my gifts and it was time to find a place that did. “I’m beginning to think, like, screw the magazine business,” I say to her. “Maybe I should get into the film business, you know? I am, after all, in Hollywood.”
Mom “Oh, honey”s me a couple more times and doesn’t provide any of the comfort, I think, that a mother should. No proclamations that I was surely right and Brian and Robert were wrong and declarations that no one should undervalue her baby, who was clearly so special. “You better call your dad to talk about money,” she eventually says before we hang up. “And let me know what happens.”
The truth is that I’m a trust funder. The only thing is that Dad convinced me to sign the trust over to him and Mom when I turned eighteen and was supposed to get it. So, in theory, Mom and Dad share the responsibility, but Mom essentially relinquished all decision-making power to Dad so he decides if I ever get to see any of the cash. The fact that the money is technically mine—and I won’t get the bulk of it until I’m like forty-five or something—usually feels like a moot point. Convincing my dad that I need and deserve some of it has to be, I think, more challenging, and surely more guilt-inducing, than earning every penny.
But now, of course, I don’t have the option of earning it. I’d like to work, I think, as I dial Dad’s number. But they won’t let me. As I explain to Dad what happened—the version he gets is that I was fired even though I was doing a really good job because my two bosses were complete pricks—I promise myself that I’m going to make it through this entire conversation without crying.
“So, there’s no chance they’ll change their mind and take you back?” he asks.
“Haven’t you been listening, Dad?” I wail, incredibly irritated with him for not keeping up with the story. “I wouldn’t want them to take me back. In fact, I’m getting out of publishing and into the film business.”
He sighs. “How much do you need to live?” he asks, ignoring my film business plan altogether. “What’s your budget?”
Dad’s always asking me annoying questions about my “budget”—about how much I spend on dry cleaning and renting movies and other things—and it tends to depress the hell out of me. It’s so anti-life—this insistence he has on counting up every penny even though there are so many of them.
“Just send me a couple grand and I’ll start looking for a new job today,” I say, and for some reason this makes me want to sob. I’m such a piece of shit, I think. A good-for-nothing spoiled brat who can’t support her-self at an age where most people are married and self-supporting. Dad doles out a lecture on the importance of valuing money, promises to send a check in the next couple of days, and I’m able to get off the phone before the wracking sobs start.
I get into crying for a while, burying myself under my covers with a box of tissues to blow my nose into and watching my pillows get drenched in snotty, teary—and I have to confess, even slightly bloody—liquid. But then I remember that I don’t need to be depressed because I can just do a bump or two and that will make everything okay.
Just a little bit, I think as I get out of bed and walk over to my purse, to keep me motivated today. I pull out the enormous plastic bag filled with coke, take the Gretna Green picture off the wall, pour it out, chop it up using my Macy’s credit card, and inhale. I feel immediately better and decide that I’m going to make better use of my time than I would if I hadn’t been fired and still worked at Absolutely Fabulous.
I e-mail a girl I know who’s an assistant at UTA and ask her to send me the job list. UTA is one of the big agencies in town and for whatever reason, they have a list of the unannounced industry jobs available. In order to see it, you need to know someone who works there, and so the lack of availability of the job list to the general populace serves as its own screening process. It wasn’t announced—I just found out about it from the UTA job list, I’ve heard people say. I was, I decide, going to be one of them.
I do a line and then, in what seems like minutes, the UTA girl e-mails me back. I print up the job list and start highlighting the positions that sound appealing, taking only one break to snort up a few more lines. Even though I already did assistant duty—slaving away as an editorial assistant at a parenting magazine in San Francisco—I realize that if I’m going to take the film business by storm, I’m probably going to have to start at the bottom. And the UTA job list provides many different opportunities to do just that: Mailroom clerk at William Morris, one listing reads. Second assistant to top-notch producer with Sony deal, reads another. And then my eyes catch on a listing that seems tailor-made for me: Part-time personal assistant for Imagine executive Holly Min, it says. Ideal for writer or actor needing extra cash. I think I’ve seen Holly Min’s name in the trades before. And, as I focus in on the words “ideal for a writer,” it occurs to me that what I should probably be doing is writing screenplays of my own.
Think about it. Everyone in this town, down to the guy who bags my groceries at Gelson’s, is a “screenwriter.” They all lug their laptops to Starbucks and register their scripts at the Writer’s Guild and talk about their “second act problems,” even though none of them are actual writers. Most of them will even admit as much. Oh, I’m not really a writer, I heard a guy say at the premiere of his movie. I just had a great idea.
Well, I am really a writer. I wrote short stories from the age of about twelve on, majored in creative writing for Christ’s sake, and have logged time as a professional journalist at two different magazines. I’ll show these wannabe writers how it’s done, I think, imagining my life as an aspiring writer working for Holly Min. I would schedule her meetings—when she, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer would meet with Russell Crowe or Tom Hanks or whomever—and read her scripts for her, and over time she’d realize that the comments I gave her about the various scripts she was developing were more intelligent than anything in the scripts. This girl’s the real thing, Holly would say one day, grabbing my hand and bringing me in to meet with Ron Howard. This is the mind we need to tap. Ron would value Holly’s opinion so much that, on her word alone, he’d beg me to write something that could inspire him. I’d hesitate for just a second, and then blushingly admit that I actually had been working on a script. Holly would wink at me from across the room because she, of course, would have already read this screenplay, declared it brilliant, and planned this reveal. I’d pull a copy of the script out of my chic Coach briefcase bag (which Holly would have given me when she realized after a few weeks of our working together that her life had never run more smoothly) and leave a copy with him. I’d go to Starbucks with Holly, where we’d smoke cigarettes and make plans to start our own company based on her producing acumen and my writing talent and by the time we’d return to the office, Ron would have finished reading, declared it a masterpiece, and offered me a million dollars—or maybe, like, $750,000.
I call Holly’s number, and speak to her assistant, Karen. “I’m actually going to be doing the interviewing for Holly,” she says, “because she’s just too busy.”
That makes sense, I think, as I try to suss out if Karen and I are going to be friends or if she’s going to be resentful over Holly’s clear preference for me. “Great,” I say. “Can I fax you my résumé?”
“Oh, there’s no need,” she says. “But I’m meeting with people today. Can you come in around three?”
After making the appointment, I gaze into my closet and try to figure out what outfit would impress Holly the most. My eyes dart quickly from tank tops to dresses to jeans and I realize then that I’m quite wired and should probably chill out on the coke until after the interview. I can’t very well be ducking into Holly’s private bathroom—I’m somehow positive she’ll have one—for a bump if I start to come down during my interview. I pick out a conservative brown dress, but can’t stop staring at my closet once I notice how fucked up the paint job around it is. It’s the same off-white, cruddy color that decorates the rest of the room—and, in fact, the entire apartment—but while repainting the apartment has always sounded entirely insurmountable, repainting my closet some cool, dark color sounds absolutely within the realm of possibilities. If I get the job, I decide, I’ll celebrate by painting my closet tonight. Feeling more motivated than I have in ages, I decide to hit the gym for a long workout and then a steam—which will surely deplete all the drugs from my system—before heading over to the interview. I should get fired more often, I think, as I open my exercise clothes drawer. It does wonders for my motivation level.
Wow! Absolutely Fabulous magazine! Are you serious?” Karen asks, widening her eyes. “That’s so cool! Why would you ever want to stop working there?”
Karen, a slightly overweight Valley Girl, is, I quickly determine, no match for me. Before I’ve even handed her my résumé and explained my desire to start working part time so that I can dedicate the rest of my time to my screenwriting, she’s telling me how perfect I seem for the job. When I mention that I recently left my writing gig at Absolutely Fabulous, the girl practically has a conniption fit.
“I want to be one of the people doing things, not one of the ones who writes about them,” I say. When she nods sympathetically, I make a mental note that I should remember this line for future challenging conversations with Mom and Dad.
“I totally hear you,” Karen says. “But working at Absolutely Fabulous would have to be, like, so cool and, like, a dream job. So I totally admire you for leaving that to do, like, this.”
I feel my nose starting to run as I smile and tell her that this sounds like a dream job.
“Well, before you decide that, let me tell you about it, she says. “You’ll be taking care of all the details of Holly’s personal life: food shopping, picking up dry cleaning, and walking the dog. Walking the dog is, like, the main thing, actually. Her boyfriend gave her this Doberman pinscher and she was so excited, but then she’s at the office 24-7 and never has time for it! I was finally like, ‘Holly, man, you need another assistant.’”
I nod at Karen and smile, knowing that Holly’s not going to need Karen’s inane advice anymore now that she can have mine. Holly’s life sounds stressful and glamorous and since I plan to make part of her life my own, I decide that I like everything that Karen’s saying. I figure, groceries today, scripts tomorrow. I keep nodding, while Karen tells me about how I’ll get $10 an hour and I should invoice Holly once a month and walk the dog at least every day and the whole time I’m wondering why she’s talking to me like I have the job when I’m not even sure we’ve started the interview. I’m tired so I zone out a little bit while Karen rambles, and I allow my eyes to fixate on her fleshy cheeks as she explains how Holly likes things done. The cheeks stop moving at a certain point and it takes me a second to snap out of the zone I’ve gotten into.
“So that’s it,” Karen says, looking at me kind of strangely. “Could you start today?”
“Today?” I ask, positive that I missed something crucial. “You mean, I got it?”
“You got it!” she exclaims, standing up and reaching out to pump my hand. “Congratulations!”
Landing the job right then and there wasn’t something I’d bargained for, and being given keys to Holly’s house, her grocery list for the week, and the name of her dry cleaners without ever meeting the woman herself was likewise something I hadn’t quite anticipated. But I’m so high off of the ego boost of getting the first job I interviewed for—a job off the UTA job list, no less—that I decide not to let any of this bother me.
I chain-smoke as I drive to Holly’s house in Carthay Circle, but when I get to the address I’ve written down on Imagine letterhead, I think I must be in the wrong place. It’s this barf-colored tract house, not exactly the kind of place I’d think a producer for Imagine would live. Inside, the floor-to-floor carpeting and low ceilings are, in fact, so reminiscent of the first apartment I had after college that it actually makes me feel like where I live isn’t all that bad. But she probably owns this, so it’s a good investment, I tell myself as I try to ingratiate myself with her growling, unpleasant dog.
I grew up with golden retrievers and like dogs in general but Doberman pinschers, I realize as I nervously let Tiger out of his cage, sure are big, mean, stern-looking things. When Karen had asked me if I knew how to walk and “take care of” a dog, I’d nodded vigorously because I figured only an idiot didn’t know how to deal with dogs and besides, I’d grown up with dogs my entire life. But the dogs we’d had just ran freely around the neighborhood, where people didn’t seem to use words like “leashes” and “pooper scoopers.” All too late, by the time I’d already gotten to her house, I realized this chick was expecting me to pick up the dog’s shit. Artists have to make compensations along the way, I tell myself as I slide a leash on Tiger and lead him outside. Brad Pitt, I seem to recall hearing, dressed up in a chicken suit and handed out El Polo Loco flyers when he first moved to town.
So I take Tiger around the block, marveling over the fact that walking a dog isn’t as much fun as it sometimes looks like it is when I pass people doing it in Runyon Canyon. Of course, the depressing, utterly unpopulated streets of Carthay Circle don’t exactly make for impressive scenery. And Tiger isn’t, of course, a very furry, warm, or even especially cute animal. It feels, actually, more like walking a sort of surly, serious old man than walking a dog, and I’m utterly convinced that I’m somehow doing it wrong. Does it hurt them if you pull on their leashes? Tugging Tiger along, I imagine accidentally snapping his neck and having to explain to a tearful Holly that I just didn’t know you were supposed to let dogs lead.
When I put Tiger back in his cage in the kitchen—is it normal to keep dogs in cages? How come we never did that with our dogs at home?—I realize that my enthusiasm for my new life is flagging. I need to treat myself to a little of my stash, I think, as I glance at the vial I’d remembered to put in my purse before I left for the interview.
Even though I’m obviously the only one there, I slip into Holly’s bathroom to lay some coke on my hand and snort it up. I know this is the wrong way to start working for you, I silently tell Holly as I snort. But making me pick up shit and keeping your dog in a cage is wrong, too.
Feeling inspired again, I decide to do a little more, then bid Tiger good-bye, lock up, and realize that I’m not up for doing Holly’s grocery shopping or picking up her dry cleaning just now. Karen had, in fact, told me I simply had to do it “later,” and she hadn’t specified whether “later” meant later today or simply later in the week. With the coke now flowing fully through my veins, I decide that I need to do something for me, and that painting the closet would really be a way to embrace this new turn my life was taking.
So I start driving toward the paint store on Beverly. I’d never really fancied myself someone who was capable of doing things like painting. But now, I was beginning to see, anything was possible. I was, after all, on my way to becoming a screenwriter with a deal at Imagine. I needed to prove to the universe that getting fired and landing this new personal assistant job was a good thing, and if I painted, I’d prove that I was now more productive than ever. Tomorrow, I decided, I’d start working on my script.
As I park, I realize that I’m incredibly exhausted and jittery. But the thought of giving in now—going home, getting in bed, and sleeping this whole thing off—doesn’t seem within the realm of possibilities so instead I go inside and tell a guy who works there that I want gray paint.
He starts bringing out little paint cards with all those different shades on them, asking me if maybe I want a silver-gray or even a greenish gray, and I want to snap his neck. Doesn’t he understand that the exact nuances of color don’t matter, that people only debate between mauve and taupe and baby blue because they don’t have anything better to do?
“I just want gray,” I say, with barely simmering rage. He eyes me nervously, then says he’ll go and mix the paint for me. As I wait for him, my nose starts running and I reach into my purse for one of the wads of Kleenex that I thankfully stashed in there this morning. I wonder if the guy knows I’m high and isn’t in fact “mixing color”—what the hell does he need to mix if I’ve just picked a solid gray color anyway?—but calling to report me somewhere for something. I pick at my cuticles and then file them down with a nail buffer I keep in my purse for this very purpose until he returns—it could be twenty minutes later or it could be two hours—with a can of the paint.
“Do you have paintbrushes?” he asks, and I feel certain this is a test. I shake my head and he picks a paintbrush off the shelf behind him and places it next to the can of paint on the counter. He rings everything up and I pay him with as businesslike a demeanor as I can muster. I dare you, I think as he hands me my change, to think I’m crazy or weird or on drugs. But he just smiles and tells me to have a nice day.
Both painting and writing get put off for the next week or so as I fall into a routine of sorts—going to Holly’s, walking Tiger, picking up his shit and pretending it’s not happening, then coming home and doing some Alex while I figure out my life. I keep telling myself I’ll start my script just as soon as I finish reading Us Weekly, but somehow I never seem to finish reading Us Weekly or, if I do, I’m too high by then and need to do something else to come down, like take a bath or a shot or a ride on the Magic Wand.
Finally—I think on a Thursday but it could actually be a Friday—I get fed up with myself. I glance at my laptop, which is on my bookshelf lying on top of my Hollywood biographies, then walk over and get it out.
Even though I’ve read only a few scripts and don’t really have any idea what I’m doing, I just start writing. I already have Final Draft software on my computer so the dialogue I’m coming up with looks so much like an actual script that I’m instantly motivated. I start crafting a character named Melinda who’s misunderstood and unappreciated and fired from her magazine job. I smoke and do lines and write and think that if I keep going and don’t go to sleep for the next week or so, I could have my script completed and dropped off at Holly’s office in under a month. I have this vague notion that I should probably plan out an actual story but decide that it’s better to just go with the flow and see where it takes me. I can imagine my quote in Variety about it. I started typing and the story just flew out of me, I would say in the article that would detail the bidding war that had ensued over my script.
And there’s no denying the fact that I am flowing. I’m on page fifteen when I hear my next-door neighbor leave for work the next day and when I take my midday break to go to Holly’s, I’ve written almost thirty pages of what I’m convinced is snappy, smart dialogue. Why, I wonder, doesn’t every Hollywood screenwriter just use coke as a way to expedite the writing process? As I place the coke-covered framed picture on the top shelf of my closet so that my cats can’t knock it over while I’m gone, I wonder if maybe they all, in fact, do.
After walking Tiger and depositing him back in his cage, I decide that I’m not only going to write my script in a month but also paint that damn closet. Back home, I pull the paint and brush out and just start slopping the stuff on the front of the closet. Too late, I realize that I probably should have taken my clothes out before I started painting and also remember that you’re supposed to lay tape around the area you’re painting so that you end up with a straight line. Ah, well. After removing most of the clothes and tossing them into piles on the ground, I decide that I like painting—something about dipping the brush in this mess and then using that to change the way the closet door looks is quite soothing. And I’ve always loved the smell of the stuff.
I’m obsessing over the paw prints that one of my cats has tracked through the unpainted bottom part of my closet when the phone rings. Because of the clothing piles all around, I have to toss the paint brush into the can and then dart through the piles like an army recruit on a training course before I can even glance at caller ID and decide if I feel like answering. I see that it’s Karen from Holly’s office and get the phone just in time.
“Hello!” I all but sing into the receiver, realizing too late that my hands are covered in gray paint, which is now decorating what used to be a pink phone. I’ve done more coke than I ever could have imagined was possible in the last couple of weeks but the only impact this seems to have had on my job with Holly is that I’ve stopped picking up Tiger’s shit. The residents of Carthay Circle, I’ve decided, can sully their shoes in it every day for all I care. But I’ve been almost obsessively checking in with Karen, reporting on completely fantastical interactions Tiger has allegedly been having with a neighborhood basset hound, chatting about how adorable the animal is and just generally trying to sound the way I think a brilliant, soon-to-be famous screenwriter should. Part of my act involves never letting on that I have caller ID and thus making her believe that I always answer the phone like I’m as cheerful as a midwestern schoolteacher.
“Amelia?” she says. “I have Holly for you.”
I can’t believe it. My first interaction with the woman who’s become sort of larger-than-life—with her dog cages and assistants who hire assistants and barf-colored tract house—in my mind.
“This is Holly Min,” she says, and for a second I’m confused. Am I calling her or is she calling me? Everything has seemed so surreal lately, like it’s all coated in a thin layer of gray paint, that I keep finding myself confused like this.
“Hi, Holly,” I say with exaggerated cheer. “It’s great to finally hear your voice.”
“Oh, you, too,” she says. “Listen, do you have a minute to talk?”
This is what I’ve been waiting for—the conversation where we discuss how I shouldn’t be doing her errands and picking up her dog’s shit but, in fact, writing screenplays that she can produce or, at the very least, having coffee or drinks or lunch with her. Yet the timing of this seems strange, since she couldn’t possibly be aware of how special I am yet.
“I understand from Karen that I’m paying you $10 an hour to walk Tiger,” she says.
“Yes.” This is not how I expect the conversation to start but I hide it well.
“And are you walking Tiger for a full hour?”
“Well, no.” I know as soon as it’s out of my mouth that this is the wrong answer. Why the hell am I afflicted with this ridiculous instinct to tell the truth at the most inconvenient times?
“That’s what I wanted to discuss,” she says. “I was thinking…if I’m paying you $10 an hour to walk him and you’re, say, only walking him for twenty minutes, then you’re being paid for forty minutes of time that you’re not earning.”
My right nostril runs and I wipe it. “But you live twenty minutes from me, so even if I walk him for only twenty minutes, it still takes me an hour.” I don’t want to be argumentative with my mentor/ producer/savior but I’m also dimly aware of the fact that I don’t like where this seems to be going.
“I get what you’re saying,” she says, rather condescendingly. “But—well, you know that I work at Imagine, right? And I get paid to work here. But Imagine doesn’t pay me for the time it takes me to get to work and home. Are we understanding each other?”
“Um…I think?”
“Good,” she says. “Karen has been telling me how great you are so I’d hate to lose you over something like this. So, how’s this? You get $10 an hour, starting from when you report to work. If you only walk him for twenty minutes, you get a third of that. We’ll be working on the honor system, of course.”
Glancing around my bedroom at the clothes in piles; the only partially painted closet; the gray paint spilled on the floor; and my shaking, half-gray hand with its bloody cuticles clutching the phone, I find myself nodding. “Sure, Holly,” I say, feeling like I’m about to hang up the phone and never speak to her, Karen, or the fucking dog ever again. “That’s fine.”
I hang up and toss the phone across the room, where it lands in the middle of the paint can, splattering more gray everywhere.
Dusk. I’ve always hated the word, and the time of day. They say that people get depressed at the time of day that they were born but I was born at 9 A.M. and usually feel okay around then, if I happen to be up. It’s the evening hours—where the day isn’t quite over and the night hasn’t quite begun—that kill me.
Even though I seem to have lost whatever powers of estimation I may have once had, I’m guessing that it’s been a few hours since Holly and I spoke and I’ve moved to the living room, where I seem to be unable to move. I’ve had to pee for at least an hour, but either my appendages have lost their ability to follow through on directions from my brain or the messages are getting lost in the translation because I just continue to sit there. I’ve been steadily doing coke for God knows how long and not moving.
I’m wired to the gills, I think, borrowing the expression from this militant lesbian I overheard one night and feeling good about it, the way I always do whenever I manage to hear a figure of speech and then use it as my own. And then I think, What the hell does that even mean? Fish have gills. Am I so high that I think I’m a fish? Or am I so high that I’ve grown gills? I think about this as I do more coke and don’t pee.
At a certain point, I realize I’m shivering and have the distinct sensation that it didn’t just start. Is it possible to get hypothermia inside a heated Los Angeles apartment? I shake my vial onto the CD case in front of me. Fucking hell, I think. I can’t be out. I don’t want grams and grams more—just a few good lines to get me over this shaky, immobilizing state I’m in.
And then I come up with a new plan. I manage to stand up—it’s not so difficult once I convince myself that my very survival is dependent on it—shuffle to my bathroom, open my medicine cabinet, and swallow five Ambien before I can freak myself out with thoughts of what combinations of cocaine and sleeping pills can do to people. Total unconsciousness is my only desire. Not for the rest of my life, mind you—just until I can feel a little better. I drink a bottle of Arrowhead to make sure the sleeping pills flow as far into my system as they possibly can, lie down on my bed, and wait to feel exhausted. Nothing happens so I go back to the living room, light a cigarette, and wait some more. Ambien is usually amazingly sharp in its ability to knock me from complete consciousness into serious REM—while not as drastic as an anesthetic, a close second—and I always revel in that split second where I slip from life to a place that’s temporarily problem free.
But this time, the Ambien does nothing. It seems, if anything, to make me more alert. I’ve been taking a lot of it lately, more than I’m prescribed, but my doctor is so clueless about how bad my insomnia is that he actually tells me to cut the pills into quarters when they don’t even do a damn thing unless you swallow at least two or three of them. Lately, though, two or three hadn’t been guaranteeing sleep the way four or five did. I never bothered to explain this to the doctor—he would surely just launch into a lecture about how I need to be more careful—so I usually just tell him I’ve been traveling and lost the rest of the bottle on my trip when I need refills early.
After about twenty minutes, or maybe two hours, I realize that my body simply isn’t going to be coaxed into anything akin to sleep. I seem to have perfectly regained the use of my limbs, however, and as I stomp into the kitchen to get out my last pack of Camel Lights from the carton I bought last week, I decide I want to be around people. The idea is both radical and terrifying, and when I discover that the carton is actually empty and I already smoked the last cigarette from what I thought was my second-to-last pack, I feel even more convinced that companionship will be my salvation.
I decide to walk to Barney’s Beanery, this bar down the street that was built in like the 1920s and looks it. When I get there, I make my way directly to the bar, where I ask for an Amstel Light, a shot of tequila, and a pack of Camel Lights. I’m so eager for the tequila that I don’t even wait for the goateed bartender to deposit salt and a wedge of lemon: I just shoot it down and chase it with a long gulp of beer. And then I scan around the bar, noticing a table filled with these big, brawny guys wearing USC shirts and hats. My eyes dart around furtively, first to the other side of the bar, then to the people gathered around the karaoke microphone, then to a group of girls making their way in through the back door. Eventually, I leave the safe perch I have at the bar and, deciding that the most practical move for me right now is to look around for someone who has coke, start walking from table to table.
I go up to the USC table; tap a tall, kind of pale guy on the shoulder; and ask him if we met through Gus. I know we didn’t but I can’t think of anything else to say and I need something.
He shakes his head but smiles. “Is Gus your boyfriend?”
Now it’s my turn to shake my head and smile. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say.
The guy introduces himself as Simon and asks if I want to sit down.
“Why not,” I say, as he moves over. “My friends aren’t here yet.” Technically, I think, I’m not lying. None of my so-called friends are here.
Once I slide in, Simon’s friend returns with shots of Goldschlager and I expertly bullshit them about how Goldschlager actually contains specks of gold from the days of the California gold rush. It’s something I remember some guy telling me in a bar in San Francisco when I was too drunk to tell him that I thought he was full of it. But Simon and his friends—a Josh, a Todd, and, I think, two Johns—seem to buy it and next thing I know, I’m chatting reasonably comfortably with them and we’re all exchanging anecdotes about getting busted for drinking in high school.
As I finish up a story about getting drunk before performing in Hair my junior year, Simon returns from the bathroom, leans over, and whispers in my ear. And I know before he opens his mouth exactly what he’s going to say. I swear, I’m better than any drug-sniffing trained dog when it comes to zeroing in on the nearest users in the vicinity.
“I left a few rails for my friend on top of the windowsill over the first stall in the men’s bathroom,” Simon says as he winks at me. “Why don’t you take them?”
Simon’s being so generous that I decide I can absolutely forgive his terrible Guess jeans and cheesy wink. I nod and slide out of the booth silently.
I’ve used men’s bathrooms about three thousand times in my life—all those times they’re empty when the women’s one is full—so I know how to just stroll in there as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. The bald guy peeing in the urinal doesn’t seem to have as much experience with this as I do, however, so he looks at me in shock, but I shrug, whisper, “The women’s line was too long,” lock myself in the first stall, see the lines on the sill above, and wait for him to leave. As soon as he’s gone, I take out a rolled-up bill, stand up on the toilet, and inhale the lines. Instant relief, or at least something like it.
Once I’m back at the table, though, something strange starts happening to me: I sort of lose the ability to speak. One second I’m fine and the next I can’t seem to form words. It sort of reminds me of how I didn’t feel like I could move earlier, but this seems more alarming because there are other people around, people who will be expecting me to behave normally. Luckily, Simon doesn’t seem to notice. He’s telling stories and his friends are laughing and I want to laugh, too, but I feel nauseous and overwhelmed and like my head is maybe caving in on itself, though I’m not really even sure what that means. My head pounds and I want to lie down, even though I don’t really feel tired.
“I don’t feel well,” I manage to get out.
Simon nods, as if this is par for the course. “Falling into a K-hole?” he asks, conversationally.
“A K-hole?” I ask. I picture a donut hole.
One of Simon’s friends overhears and yells, “So that’s what happened to the Special K you were supposed to leave me!”
I look from Simon to his friend and, though very little seems clear at this point, I’m able to make a crucial and horrifying connection.
“Special K?” I ask, and Simon and his friends all look like they’re laughing but the volume of the universe seems to have been put on mute because I can’t hear anything anymore. Even in this state, I know what Special K is—ketamine, a horse tranquilizer.
“But—” I start to try to tell Simon that he’d told me the line was a line of coke but then I can’t remember if he said that or if that’s just what I had assumed or hoped. Simon and his friends continue to talk, and I can’t believe how a part of the world they seem, and how far away.
“Outside for air,” I say and Simon nods. Part of me is offended that he doesn’t offer to come with me, but mostly I’m just relieved. I just need to sit down outside, have the wind blow on me, and feel better, I tell myself as I weave through the crowd and outside. An enormous trash bin sits under a street lamp near the middle of the parking lot and I decide that it looks like the perfect place to sit and relax.
Part of me knows that I must be pretty out of it to be in such a disgusting place and not really care. The trash doesn’t even seem to smell that terrible, which is weird because usually the stench from this back bin is noticeable from the street. I greedily suck in gulps of air, wondering why I don’t feel any better. Then I lie down and close my eyes.
At some point, a Mexican guy, one of the valet parkers, starts trying to shake me awake. My eyes flutter open and I realize that a dirty brown jacket rests over me like a blanket.
“Hospital?” he asks, and I shake my head. It seems like a pretty ridiculous question to me, but when he starts pushing me up to a sitting position, I notice that I’ve thrown up all around me. Humiliated, I try to sit up, but my legs feel paralyzed.
“Two thirty A.M.,” the guy says after muttering a whole bunch of other things I don’t understand, and when I look past him, I see there are a few other Mexican guys gazing at me like I’m some kind of a circus freak. And suddenly I feel very clear, recalling that I did Simon’s line at around ten, a lot of time has passed, and that’s not good. I’m also clear on the fact that I’d very much like to go home but I know that moving right now is out of the question.
“I’m fine,” I manage to say, as I lie back down again, this time in the direction away from my vomit. I decide to take a nap.