DREAMS OF THE HOLY LAND

“… ANOTHER DREARY DAY HERE IN CELL BLOCK 5248, coming to you live from the great city of New York. That’s right, New York, New York. So nice they named it twice. I’d like to thank all of my intergalactic travelers for tuning in this morning, we’ve got a great show for you today, we’ll be discussing the shelf life of powdered milk … Hey, hey, can you shut the fuck up up there! We’re on the air!”

Can’t play DJ with the fat lady masturbating. She’s been in my empty top bunk since I got back from the laundry. I might have freaked if it had been the only time, if she’d been the first. Instead, I crawled underneath the covers and turned on my radio. I like to talk along, adding my own words.

The fat lady grunts.

“Ladies and gentlemen, pay no attention to the pig-bitch in heat. We have a special guest coming by later. I can’t tell you her last name because she’s in the ‘program’ and we’re not supposed to say, but her first name is … no, let’s just call her Anonymous Woman. She’s been very busy lately with TV appearances, benefits, parties—you don’t know the strings I had to pull to get her on the Lily S. Show.”

“Spread ’em, lover!” the interloper screams. It’s getting harder to ignore her. I pump up the radio.

“First the weather. It’s cold today with patchy clouds, a lowpressure system moving over the Atlantic will make it feel like twenty degrees below zero. For all of you nonweatherites out there, that’s colder than a witch’s tit. Like being caught in the frozen food aisle in shorts and a tank top.”

“Oh yeah, yeah! That’s it, baby!”

“Hey, fuck off!” I throw off the covers, anger steaming from my nostrils. The pig-bitch groans. This means war.

I stand up, fists tightened at my sides, and there she is. A blob with eyeballs huge and fiery. This demon masturbator. Her arms unfurl like a great ape, the folds of skin jiggling above her pubes. Fascinating, like ridges on a volcano. As much as I want to turn away I’m amazed she can do this in front of me without an ounce of shame. She’s a freak of nature; the audience will love it, they’re big into freaks. But her screams, her moany stroke-talk and sleepy sort of whimpering, remind me of crybaby Blair. I’m going back in time, an interplanetary leap courtesy of stereophonic sound. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in the arms of unconsciousness …”

I fall backwards, my arms curled around my body, traveling Blairward. We’re in her house. A head cold makes her cheeks glow and she’s got her hair wrapped in a clean white towel. She carries her medicine in a sifter because it’s brandy. The only cure for the common cold, she says. I take the glass from her and set it on the side table, turn out the big light so we can see the tiny green Statue of Liberty glowing across the room. Like an ancient queen, Blair leans against the headboard, the two Persians, Grace and Marilyn, at her feet. She pats the bed with her palm and smiles. I dive inside and we’re giggling; the sheets so soft, her body so warm. She turns me on my stomach, tickling me, blowing raspberries into the hollow above my cheeks. I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe. I call out for her to stop, which she does, eventually, flipping me over and staring. She takes my right hand in between the two of hers and massages my palm and fingers. You have such lovely little hands, Lillian.

The demon screams, “Yeah, fuck, fuck … fuck!”

I stay with Blair, feeling the quickness of her heart as she presses my hands above her breasts. She says she needs me. A knot of fear slips down my throat. To be needed is a big responsibility. I move my lovely little hands down to her nipples and squeeze, licking the tips.

“Yesssss, oh yes!”

Someday we’ll leave it all behind, she says, just as soon as she quits her job. She’s had it with flying. The soul wasn’t meant to move so quickly. She says she needs me, says she loves me, says she’ll take care of me. Overwhelmed by the warmth, the softness, I nestle my head into her breasts. She says ahhhhh! I shut my eyes and suck, suck, suck, feeling her press against me, warm all over, giggling and calling for … díos? I look up from her spit-soaked nips and she’s Mimi.

“Motherfucker, cocksucker … oh, yes, yes, yes!!!”

Amplified, the pig-bitch snares my attention. I feel her collapse on my top bunk, a sonic boom that shakes the entire bed. Her leg hangs over the side. I imagine twisting until it unscrews from the rest of her body, then wrapping it around the back of my neck, the flesh of a rare animal. It tugs so tightly I can’t breathe. She’s strangling me. My obit will read, “Snuffed by the lumpy limb of a pig-woman.”

I stand up to get a closer look. She is phenomenal. A mountain of skin upon skin upon skin. I can’t stop staring. She flips over on her side, eyebrows fluttering as if she knows the sex sounds get me every time. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the mountain laughs, and I shrink so small I can see my entire figure in her eyes like muddy ponds. “Get your spaceships ready,” she says, “we’re going for a ride in the sky.”

Then, abruptly, in a move more cacophonous than swift, this odd woman jumps down from the top bunk and stands in front of me, stalwart on her hefty legs, topped by her barrel of a stomach and too-small head. I want to scream, Get the fuck out of here! It’s my room! But when I open my mouth it’s as if someone’s sliced out my tongue. This woman in front of me with her papier-mâché face and greasy hair is so stereotypical of women in prison I’m sure I’ve called her to me the way I’ve gotten used to bringing you and Blair and everyone else inside. My mind has become a transporter. I am the radio.

Loosening up a bit, I let the rage shift to a different part of my body, the part I can’t control. The woman kneels in front of me with her hands flat against my stomach. Her touch is gentle though hardly tentative. Before I know what’s happening she’s unbuttoning my pants, and I’m throwing all of my weight against her shoulders—but I don’t usually do it like this. I struggle a bit. She is the biggest fucking woman I’ve ever seen, and now that we’re both standing she’s got me pinned against the wall. “What have you got to say for yourself?” she shoves her fist into my face as if she’s got a microphone. I turn the other cheek. With her free hand she grabs between my legs, lightly brushing her thumb against me. This is not supposed to happen. Nobody but Mimi touches me there. And not too often. “Your audience is waiting …” she whispers, and I am paralyzed. “Not such a big-shot after all, huh?”

She goes down and I bite my cheek, fearing the whole of it: her tongue, my cunt, the electric clash of lips. A complete waste of time. It never works for me, the lovey-dovey cunt worship most girls get off on. Mimi says I need it rough, the way girl cats need to be ambushed and attacked. That was how she took my virgin pussy.

So I stand there pretending because it’s easier than explaining. I think of Mimi and the way she holds me with her thumb and first two fingers … hers; Blair and what I’d like to go back and show her now that I know what is supposed to happen in a double bed, and, of course, you’re watching—it’s what you do—as I float off in my silver suit and glass helmet.

I am the best disc jockey in outer space. An audience of zillions tunes in for my interview with Anonymous Woman, who’s just buzzed into the studio. Images accost me like shooting stars, my cohost announcing them as if we were playing The $25,000 Pyramid (in space): screwdrivers, arugula, shiny black cars, men with beards, electrolysis, split-level houses, orange pill vials, French manicures on toenails, big yellow teeth, Bombay martinis, power suits, sunglasses, red onions, dusty pocket mirrors, thick calves, sashimi deluxe, Chanel No 5, bronze eye shadow, loud belly laughs, tennis skirts, peppermint chewing gum, hair cream, and cigarettes, thousands of cigarettes … ultralights.

Ding, ding, ding … things that remind me of my mother!

We have a winner.

“Yes!” I shout, and it fools the fat lady, who falls back on the concrete. I pull up my pants and dive into bed, drowning under the sheets, more depressed than before. She’s ruined the Lily S. Show. But who cares? Tomorrow is another day. Only I’m stuck in a world of todays. You wrap your arms around me, whispering, It’s okay, Lillian, I’m still here.

YOU’D BEEN CALLING ME TO THE SILVER SHORES of the Pacific for months before Jack finally contacted a writer friend of his in Los Angeles who’d arranged for Edie and me to visit the set of World Without End. Apparently, that was no easy feat. The show had been getting tons of press since your Jaymie Jo Rheinhart started moving things. It began with common objects: pens, notebooks, plates, dishwashing liquid, skateboards, bikes, backpacks. A little concentrated headspace and the right theme music was all it took to lift them, spin them, make them dance, or hurl them against the wall, depending on her mood. Alex Rheinhart thought it was cute until she started levitating people, namely him. Of course, he blamed her boyfriend, calling it some sort of voodoo magic.

Edie said the whole show was racist for making Alex Rheinhart say that on television, but it gave Jaymie Jo the opportunity to reaffirm her love for Max, even though everyone in Foxboro disapproved more than ever, and their anger seemed so real, the way it might happen in any town in America, and I said so. “Of course their racism is real,” Edie’d lectured during one of our World marathons. We’d watch the whole week in one sitting. She always seemed as into it as I was, but that day she stopped the tape. “Let me tell you something, Lil,” she said, “you wouldn’t believe the stares I get even when I’m with the Ayatollah. And he’s just light brown. People are so racist they don’t even know it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” I argued, quoting a story I’d read in Soap Opera Digest. “Maybe if there were more interracial couples on television, people would accept it more. Jaymie Jo’s being courageous. She’s a role model.”

“Jaymie Jo? You say that with a straight face. Jaymie Jo. See, this is why everything is so fucked up. Jaymie Jo is not real ! Her boyfriend’s not real. The whole town of Foxboro doesn’t even exist, but for some reason this fake person in this fake town is more important than me and the Ayatollah walking into the diner even though everyone’s staring like they want to rip our faces off? Like they’ve got some god-given right. Why is that? Huh … why?”

“’Cause this town sucks. At least on World people talk about it.”

“Voodoo? You call that talking. It’s a reference and a stereotype. Please … that shit pisses me off.”

“So write a letter.”

“A letter?” She sprung off my bed. “Hey, that’s a friggin’ Anumber-one idea, Lil. Get out your book. We’ll draft a letter.”

Of course, we weren’t the only ones, although our letter was really cool and had references to Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and the lyrics of Bob Marley (my idea, thank you very much). We knew somebody must have read it when Alex Rheinhart apologized to Max for the voodoo thing, and they joined forces to help find a priest to cure Jaymie Jo from the demons that were making her vomit and speak in tongues, and Edie said, see, you were nothing but a pawn for the producers, and you hated her for it. You were shocked when she wanted to come with me to L.A. You never trusted her, but what could I do after she’d begged and pleaded. “My brother’s out there, we’ll have a blast,” she said. “I hear California guys are really progressive. They don’t eat meat and they grow their own dope and shit.”

Okay, maybe we had different ideas about the trip, but I had to admit I was happy she wanted to come. It would be fun having someone to hang out with and might make the flight easier. Ever since the space shuttle exploded, I’d been more afraid of flying than ever. You could never be sure they’d checked all the equipment, or what if the pilot hadn’t slept for days? And then there were hijackers … The more I thought about it, Blair’s fear of flying really made sense. I swiped a handful of Valium from Nancy and swallowed one before she dropped us at the airport. Walking through the metal detectors was easier than ever, slower and more dreamy. I kept thinking I saw Blair and kept working up the nerve to say hello, say look, I’m using your book, say why’d you leave, but up close it was just another blonde with wings.

By the time we touched ground in Los Angeles, I could barely remember strapping in and taking off. I think they let us drink screwdrivers. We stumbled out of the gate at LAX and were met by a man in a chauffeur’s hat and faded jean jacket who held up a piece of cardboard with our names scratched in magic marker. He was Chuck, he said. Gustave Monde’s right hand. We all smiled as he carried our bags out of the airport and into his car, a Lincoln Continental. It was classic—Edie and me sitting like movie stars on the velvety backseat watching Los Angeles saddle up through the smoky windows. I’d been there once before with Jack and Nancy when I was a kid but couldn’t remember anything beyond the Chinese theatre and Disneyland. Tourist stuff. This time I had a purpose and Edie was lucky I’d brought her along for the ride. Of course she was too cool to show it, shuffling her cat-eye sunglasses and sighing in her this-is-so-blasé fashion as we traversed the green hills headed for a place called Los Feliz where Gustave’s aunt owned a place on a block of palm trees and stucco houses that made me think time had stopped in the early sixties. Just before the hippies descended. Even the cars looked tired and clunky.

I half expected to find Lucy and Ethel sipping coffee in the kitchen after Chuck fit the key into the front door and we dropped our bags on the couch with the plastic covers, careful not to bump into the piano in the center of the room. Chuck walked over to it and flicked a switch. The theme from The Sting came out on its own. “That’s my favorite thing about this place,” Chuck smiled, so goofy, his blond moustache twitching. Edie raised her upper lip, like, You dork. I watched the keys drop up and down, touched by invisible fingers. I’d never seen a player piano in real life. It was like watching colors miraculously appear on a canvas.

Chuck said to make ourselves at home. He had to get back to work, but Gustave would be by soon. Left to ourselves, Edie and I set about inspecting the army of cartoonlike statuettes and odd knickknacks—the marionette in red, white, and blue knickers hanging from the ceiling, an old street lamp next to the original poster from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, walls lined with African masks and oil paintings with three-dimensional gold frames, shelves crammed with hundreds of tiny colored bottles, small ceramic plates, crystalline animals, frayed black-and-white photos, silver figurines. Gustave’s aunt, the legendary French gossip columnist, Filomina Leroux, was keeper of the most bizarre stuff I’d ever seen. The kitchen was awash in sand art sculptures, tiny Civil War soldiers, old appliances, plastic cups from McDonald’s, gardening tools, and a supply of packaged seeds to last a lifetime. Edie lifted a white helmet with the nuclear power symbol from the coat rack. “I’ve never seen so much junk in my life,” she said.

“Jack said it was like a museum.”

“The museum of junk.” She put on the helmet and pointed out the kitchen window. “Hey, look! Frenchie really hooked us up.”

In the backyard was a swimming pool the same pale green as the Buick with its top down that I’d spotted in the garage. Edie had seen it, too. She said wouldn’t it be great if we found the keys and went cruising, and I faked enthusiasm, but over my dead body was that going to happen. She was trouble in cars.

Outside, Edie kicked off her boots and dipped her feet into the water. I sat back on a rusty lounge chair, its plastic strips so stretched and frayed they must have held more than a few bodies in their day. Maybe even celebrities. Jack said Filomina Leroux had run with the movie star crowd back in the fifties, back when the president himself was a leading man and a liberal. He’d even headed up the actors’ union. I imagined him, a handsome guy sipping piña coladas by the pool with the stunning foreign journalist, unaware his journey would one day land him in the Oval Office. Life suddenly seemed long and full of hope.

When Gustave showed up a couple of hours later, Edie and I had barely moved. “You are enjoying Aunt Fifi’s house,” he said, as if his simply stating the fact made it so. Gustave had a heavyduty God complex. Jack said this was a good thing for a director, and Gustave did look a little like Jesus before his long brown hair started receding in front. A few months ago, he’d cut it short and started wearing a lot of baseball caps. Now he looked like he played for the Mets.

Gustave rushed us out the door for an early dinner at an Italian restaurant in Hollywood. “I have less than two hours to spare,” he’d said. “I rearranged all things today just to see my favorite girl.” He pinched my cheek, and I blushed. For some reason, Gustave liked me.

As soon as we sat down at the restaurant, Gustave ordered for all of us in Italian, then told us about the PSA he was shooting—a national campaign against product tampering starring a famous drug cop from TV. Nice to direct a spot with a mission, Gustave said. For it was as evil as planting a bomb in an airport, this poisoning of random bottles of aspirin. Worse than Russian roulette. Gustave put his forefinger against his head. “If you are putting a gun to your head, you want to know it, eh?”

“What’s he like? That TV guy,” Edie said.

“Oh, he is a dynamite shithead.”

“I hear he’s going bald.”

“Bald, sure, who isn’t? But he has holes in his skin in addition. This is a problem because we are all working for free. The makeup is very bad.”

“He has holes in his skin?” Edie practically spit up her water, and Gustave told a story about another famous actress who’d had her lips injected with Vaseline so she could become the spokesperson for a cosmetics company. The executives wanted her lips big and shiny, as if their only purpose was to be kissed. Edie kept shrieking and nudging me, but I couldn’t fake interest. All through the meal, I kept thinking of our meeting, you shaking my hand, a knowing twinkle in your baby blues, saying we had so much to talk about now that I’d finally come to the Coast. You tell me about the stress of speaking in tongues on television, problems with your boyfriend, the controversial interview in People where you said you were actively looking for the right movie role, the next step. I divulge my latest philosophy of negative space. You say I am wise.

Edie smacked my shoulder and said something about dessert. I ordered tiramisu. She laughed at Gustave’s joke: What kind of wood floats? Natalie Wood.

You invite me back to your apartment for lunch so we can listen to CDs. The new girl in music-video land sings about love. You tell me you are tired but must read through next week’s scripts. I offer you one of the Valium I swiped from Nancy.

“Earth to Lillian, dee, dee, dee … Earth to Lillian, come in please,” Edie said, her eyes dipping toward my tiramisu with a lone fork print in the custard. “I’ve never seen you leave dessert. Are you on a diet or something?”

“Hah-hah,” I glared. I hated when she interrupted my thinking. Her fork swung toward my plate, and I grabbed her hand.

“Don’t touch it!”

“You’re not eating it.”

“Doesn’t mean you can have it.”

“You are such an only child!” We struggled until she dropped the fork. I sunk my spoon into the tiramisu and shoved a few monster scoops in my mouth, satisfied.

“Piglet!” Edie said.

I grunted.

“I mean it, you’re disgusting. No wonder you can’t—”

“Shut up!”

Gustave cleared his throat—loudly. We froze. He tugged the sleeve of his linen jacket to check his braided gold watch. “A wonderful meal,” Gustave announced, as if he hadn’t heard a word we’d said. One last sip of cappuccino before he ushered us out of the restaurant.

On the ride home I saw your face behind the wheel of every passing car. It didn’t help that all the girls in California had straight blond hair like yours, and the landscape made me feel as if I’d been here a million times before. Los Angeles had to be the ultimate déjà vu. At a traffic light a Mexican boy was selling oranges. A group of punks flexed in leather and studs, a rainbow of spiked hair. Otherwise the streets were empty. But when Gustave took a deep reverent breath and in between the giant boulevards pointed out the Hollywood sign awakening at twilight, I felt as if I’d reached the promised land. My heart fluttered like a pulsing marquis.

I’d seen this place over and over again in my dreams. Sprawling hills and bright white lights, winding roads and limousines and theatres and movie stars all so close I could feel them rushing into me, cohesive yet abbreviated, like movie previews, but it was better than any film I’d ever seen, any place I’d ever been. It was a living dream.

Back at Aunt Fifi’s, Gustave told us Chuck would arrive at nine the next day to take us to the TV studio. “Then you will come to my office,” he said. “Or better, you go to Melrose for shopping. I have no more time tomorrow.” He kissed Edie and me on both cheeks and I thought we were so lucky it was almost shameful. Gustave noticed and tapped the side of my head. “You carry everything in here, oui? “ he said, and Edie snorted. As if it were unfathomable I had anything in me she didn’t know about. “No, it is not a joke, she has a thousand other lives. A very old soul.” He shrugged and kissed my forehead, and although Edie eyed me as if I’d crossed enemy lines, I loved Gustave for making me feel good about being a weirdo.

The minute he left she lifted the coffee can full of keys next to the refrigerator and dumped them out on the counter. All day she’d been dropping hints about driving the Buick so I’d taken precautions. I opened the refrigerator, empty ’cept for a six-pack of Tab, a few packages of coffee, some condiments, and pharmaceutical vials. “What are you looking for?” I played dumb.

“The keys, Einstein. I heard about a place to find guys but we have to drive.”

“Neither one of us has a license.”

“Your road test’s in two weeks.”

“Tell that to the California Highway Patrol.”

“They’re not even real cops, they’re too pretty.”

“You’re thinking of the TV show.”

“My brother told me about it … it’s, like, where all the cool people go. He said he did the best crystal in his life there. The best crystal in his life, Lil. Think about it.” She had maybe thirty keys set out on the table in front of her and was dividing them into subcategories by name and size. The table was like something you’d find in an old diner, Formica. Nancy’d had our kitchen counters smothered in it. She said it was good for hiding stains. And it was slippery. The keys slid from side to side as Edie shuffled them. A better friend might have said something, but it was a riot seeing her so determined. She looked up. “Why are you smiling?”

“I’m not.”

“Jesus, Lil, what is it with you? You’re not even trying. Here we are in the middle of Los Angeles, in a house all by ourselves, and sitting behind fucking door number one is a car! Think of the potential for life experience!”

“Okay, I can’t take it,” I said. “They’re not there.”

“What?”

“The keys.”

She sighed. “You can sit here all night like a loser if you want, I’ve got places to go, people to meet, you know?”

“Just stating the facts.”

“You are so selfish sometimes. Do you realize how much time I’ve devoted to you and your problem? And what have I gotten out of it? What have I seen? I’ll tell you what I’ve seen: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch. I don’t even know why I put up with you.”

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be going to the TV studio!”

“Oh my god … you really came all the way out here to see a stupid soap opera, you really did. You’re more fucked-up about this than I thought.”

“Shut up!”

“She’s not even real.”

“Don’t talk about her.”

“I mean, it’s one thing having all those posters up on your wall, but—”

“I’m not kidding, Edie, shut your fucking mouth!”

“Look at you, your cheeks are all red. What’s the matter, did I insult your make-believe friend? Your little teen idol? You’re such a baby.”

The room exploded in colors. Throbbing monsters in front of me, slime oozing from the walls. Before I knew what was happening I’d swiped my arm across the Formica, and the keys flung out in every direction, ringing against appliances, knocking over statuettes, bouncing off the floor. Edie covered her head with both arms. “You fucking psychopath!” she screamed. I felt as if a snake had wrapped itself around my body, cutting off my breath and blood, and the kitchen was about one hundred degrees. I was sweating from every pore.

Air, I thought. I needed air.

I bolted out to the pool and sat down on my torn lounge chair, breathing deeply in the dark, calming myself to the fact that she would never find the car keys. Earlier, I’d seen them dangling in the ignition and nabbed them for safe keeping. No way was I letting anything come between you and me and tomorrow. You were right: bringing Edie along was a big mistake.

A few deep breaths later I jumped to the set tomorrow. You smile at me in the mirror as the woman dabs your cheeks with a cotton ball. Your eyelids flutter shut. Makeup always gets you sleepy …

The outdoor lights kicked on and Edie stepped outside sipping from a bottle of gin. She sat down on the lounge chair next to mine, her presence so big it was like sharing a beach towel with an elephant. I wished her away, but as usual she had other plans. She unrolled a plastic bag full of Ayatollah weed and loaded her silver pipe. On the surface of the swimming pool, I traced the movement of her hands, her hair, her face, as if I were creating a stencil. She was a phantom, like your reflection on my window. Somehow out here you seemed closer yet farther away. The elephant woman stood between us.

Edie put the pipe in her mouth and lit up, embers crackling with the scent of burnt chocolate. Marijuana was a sweet sort of high. It made me want to stick my fingers into a jar of honey and lick off every last drop. Laugh at the stupidest things. But making my point required I didn’t take the pipe when Edie passed it. “Come on, you won,” she said. “And you’re a dirty little fighter, too.”

Did she know I had the keys buried in the front pocket of my pants? No, she couldn’t possibly, but the way she surveyed me when I turned my head I couldn’t be sure. I could never be sure of anything with Edie and it drove me nuts. With her, I always felt as if the earth might crack open and suck me down below the way people out here were forever conscious of faultlines and Richter scales, because any minute the ground could start shaking for real. It seemed unfair that a place so magical could go down in a few minutes. Might as well be stoned.

I took the peace pipe from Edie and inhaled, trying to avoid eye contact. “Good girl,” she said, her omniscience multiplied in the floodlights. She was larger than life and timeless, as if she’d been here back in the fifties with Aunt Fifi and the president. Of the two of us, I might have had the old soul, but she knew things beyond age and experience. I handed the pipe back and noticed she’d once again slipped on the hard hat with the nuclear power symbol. Settling into a fuzz-buffed mind bubble, I began to formulate a theory: Tough girls like Edie had a way of converting the things they knew into beauty. Like little nuclear reactors. Trouble was, when they went up it was big-time. The world still couldn’t get a grip on the fallout from Chernobyl, and that explosion had been a couple of months earlier. On TV we watched people all over Europe say they were afraid to drink milk or eat raw vegetables, unsure how far the radiation had traveled. I imagined cancerous particles like tiny jet planes circling the Colosseum, the Eiffel Tower, and all those foreign boys Edie’d kissed on her trip, wondering which was worse: going up in a nuclear explosion or being sucked through a crack in the earth. Either way it was over immediately, like the space shuttle blowout, or opening the wrong bottle of aspirin and swallowing a poison pill. I felt worse for people living in the fallout, not knowing whether they’d been touched until it was too late. Death was easier sometimes.

Edie handed me the pipe again. It felt like a slab of hot metal in my palm. “Do you ever think about dying?” I said.

“All the time.”

“Does it scare you?”

She took the pipe from me and lit up a few times before deciding it was played. Her decision always, when we started and finished anything. Knocking out the residue, she said, “Where I come from death is a beautiful thing.”

“In Ohio?”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I’m from—”

“The planet Andromeda. Yeah, yeah …”

“See, this is exactly your problem, Lil. You refuse to believe, you won’t visualize. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. You know?”

She sounded so much like people on talk shows, so California, I burst out laughing. So did she, and within seconds we were hysterical, tears streaming down our cheeks. She turned to me, smiling so big I couldn’t believe she was the same person who’d insulted us earlier. “Okay, Lil, now I’ve got something to show you,” she said. “Are you ready for the bonus round?”

I nodded. As long as I had the car keys I was ready for anything. She emptied her pockets, and a cascade of cloudy orange vials and cardboard packages spilled out in front of her. We sifted through the ant hill, identifying what we could—blue capsules, little orange hearts, red dots, big codeine tablets, multicolored dots encased in plastic, but the best was a box that looked like it belonged in an old copy of Life magazine and said: Quaaludes, from the makers of Maalox. The name was a compression of the words quiet and interlude. Edie said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard.

She pushed a couple of pills through the silver-and-plastic shield. They were huge and chalky and reminded me of the antacid tablets my grandfather sucked like candy. Edie dropped one in my palm. “I don’t know,” I said. “They’re probably older than we are.”

“No problem. I found them in the freezer.”

“Okay,” I said, and together we swallowed, chasing the pills with the bottle of gin Edie said she’d also discovered in the freezer, and I made a mental note to always check people’s freezers as we sat back on our lounge chairs and soaked up the cool breezes of a California springtime. The scent of newly mown grass sifted in and out like a dab of well-placed cologne, soft gusts rustled through the leaves and sent a ripple of waves across the swimming pool. Goosebumps rose up my arms, and my mouth tasted salty, tangy, like blood. I realized I’d been gnawing at my lower lip for who knows how long, as hyped-up inside as the scenery was palmy outside. The damn drug was taking forever. “I don’t feel anything,” I said.

“Be patient.”

“Maybe it’s not working.”

“Okay, let’s eat another one,” Edie said, and we swallowed once more, passing the bottle of gin back and forth. It shadowed in obscene shapes and sizes and made us giggle into convulsions out there by the pool in the foggy night and I found myself more content than I’d been just a few minutes before. My legs felt like Jell-O, jiggly but plastered to the chair, and everything inside me heated up, like I had a band of miners drilling inside my veins while outside the winds raised the hair on my limbs.

Everything was fine until you showed up. Floating fully clothed on the surface of the swimming pool, you beckoned me: How could you, Lillian?

I asked what’s wrong, and your voice came charred with frustration.

You’ve given over again, and we must not delay. Do you have any idea how busy I am? How much prep time goes into a projectilevomiting scene? What it takes to speak in tongues?

I said I was sorry.

I can’t believe you’d come all the way out here to forsake me for this false god from the planet Andromeda. Somebody’s been watching too much Star Trek.

I said it wasn’t like that.

“Like what?” Edie said, and I flinched nervously. Turning to the pool I noticed you’d gone under. I looked back to Edie whose face had expanded into a giant balloon, this demonic raccoon with big purple lips, demanding: “What, Lil?” I was paralyzed. In escaping you’d grabbed one of my arms and were trying to pull me into the pool. I turned toward Edie, keeping my arm behind me so she couldn’t see you. Didn’t want to get her riled again, we’d been getting along so well. I told her I’d drifted off on a cloud, and she said she totally knew what I meant, and slowly, as we settled back into our chairs, I managed to disengage my arm from your grasp. It throbbed with pins and needles—somehow you’d stunned it.

A brittle wind brewed, and I offered to go inside for our jackets. Edie said no. The minute one of us left, she explained, the mood would change. And she was digging our mood even if I kept zoning out. So I sat shivering until we siphoned every last drop of gin through our chattering teeth, and Edie said it was time to go inside where she flicked the switch and hunkered down at the player piano, pretending to play The Sting, singing the notes as they rolled out perfectly … da, da, da, da, da-da, da-da … the ghostly marionette smiling over us in the dark shadows. I sat down next to Edie on the bench and watched her fingers move up and down along the keys without touching them.

She stood up in the middle of a line for another roll, a new song, but there was no other song, and she said that was really depressing—a piano that played only one song. She went for the on-off switch but it wouldn’t budge and we shared a quick alarming stare before she started fiddling with it again, cursing the damn instrument and finally slamming the cover over the keys. The piano continued … da, da, da, da, da, da … da, da, da, da, da, da! … and we burst into giggles, writhing next to each other, her body so warm against mine. Every time one of us stopped the other would snort or hiccup and we would be off again until Edie said, look, and pointed to the marionette whose jaw bobbed up and down, laughing with us, controlled by invisible strings. We screamed and ran into Aunt Fifi’s bedroom to take cover in the king-sized bed with its insanely bright floral covering.

I pulled back the blankets and dove underneath. Edie followed. Long past the point of communication, our laughter tapered into a few occasional grunts. My brain felt like I’d been shoved head first through a windshield and emerged a palpitating mess. Edie said some more pot would help the coming-down process. She leaned over me to get to the side table where she’d left the works, and I felt her heartbeat against my arm, her skin so warm the heat outside almost matched the burning inside, and I thought, That’s love: a matching of inner and outer heat. Moonlight wormed through the window. Sheets rustled, we passed the metal pipe, sprawled across the giant bed the way Los Angeles sprawls through the hills. I wanted to sleep but was suddenly terrified. What if the Quaaludes were too old? Or they’d been tampered with? What if we never woke up?

Edie put a pillow in between her legs and moaned. “This bed makes me want to fuck.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“I don’t get you, Lil. Don’t you need it? Don’t you even want to know what it’s like?”

The quiver in her upper lip made me feel insignificant, tiny, static. Cymbals crashed in heavy-metal soundtracks. My body burned like an acid rash. Edie started monologuing about sex, her hips bumping up against that pillow. I burrowed under the covers where it was dark and tomblike. A bed to nurture a million deaths. My vision gone, I felt even smaller, a psychedelic dot trapped inside one of Nancy’s diet capsules, playing footsie with my dotty friends until an invisible hand rips open our shield and we spill into a colorful waterfall, like a sequence from a Gustave Monde commercial, all of us struggling to keep afloat before bouncing out of sight, never to fulfill our mission as an appetite suppressant. Alone, away from the other dots, I was useless.

I slithered further inside the bed and stumbled upon Edie’s legs. She shaved them almost every day. Her arms, too. Guys were lucky with her, she was so smooth and had big tits. It was an added bonus. One I’d never know. This must be what it’s like at the center of the earth, I thought. The air hot and stuffy and you can’t have what’s lying next to you. On the verge of suffocating, I threw off the covers. Edie’s knees clamped the pillow, her hips engulfing its cotton tip. She pushed her kneecaps against my stomach, her skin translucent in the moonlight. It took everything I had not to hug her like I’d hugged Blair in that other big bed, on the other coast, but I sensed she didn’t want to hug. I flipped over on my back and stared at the waves in the stucco ceiling. Sleeping with Edie was nothing new, we did it all the time, but something was different in Los Angeles. I could feel the city pumping through her, a Vaseline hypodermic. “Hey Lil,” she said. “Can you hear me? You’re not even listening, you shit … turn around.”

I climbed up next to her, and she looked bigger and shinier than all the injected lips in Hollywood. “It’s like swimming,” she said, and I couldn’t recognize her voice. She was starting to sound like Blair, her drunk-talk. “It’s like flying through a warm, salty ocean”—her right leg inched over my hip, the other side of the pillow rubbing against my crotch—“like flying”—with her free hand she pulled the sheets over us again and tightened her body against the pillow, pressing it into me—“or pushing into another world”—her hips bucked—“and if you’re stressed or pissed off or something, you just push harder”—she jammed into me, legs moving faster, and it was difficult to breathe, like sucking down smog.

We tightened together, connected by the pillow, and it felt so good, the two of us bumping together in that colossal bed as she whispered words that no longer made sense. Everything around me twitched and throbbed and flashed as I locked onto her raccoon eyes and shivered, she looked so much like a vampire or witch or Satan lover—all the things I’d heard about her before we’d met, all the things that DID … NOT … EXIST, no matter how she swallowed me like a psychedelic dot. I buried my face in her sweaty neck. She threw her arms around my shoulders and moaned so loudly it sent me into a flush of convulsions before I drifted into the silvery cotton sea.

That night I dreamed of giant metal hangers sliding up and down mile-long racks of clothing. Opening my eyes to the glittery streams of day I saw a ghostly Edie wearing a sleeveless black dress down to her ankles.

She floated toward me, her hair pinned up and long white neck exposed. I swear I saw vampire marks and blood. No, those were Hollywood thoughts. But there was a blemish on her neck, a small blot that recalled her face in the moonlight. My stomach sank, and I thought I might throw up.

She’s still Edie, I reminded myself, still my best friend who at the very worst might be from the planet Andromeda. Before now it had never occurred to me to ask whether she’d come in peace. Mermaidlike, she slithered onto the bed and propped herself next to me. I stretched out my arm to touch her, to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but she flinched as if I might contaminate her. “Rise and shine,” she said. “We’ve got work to do.”

Then as quickly as she’d come she slid from the bed into the walk-in closet. I pulled the covers up to my neck and tried to steam the night from my brain. Edie backed out of the closet with a dress in each hand. They were for me to try on. “If we’re supposed to be VIPs,” she said, “we have to play the part. Now tell me, which dress do you like?” I couldn’t answer. My jaw felt as wobbly as the spooky marionette’s. Beneath the covers, the fingers of my right hand slipped down my stomach. “Fine, leave it to me—as usual. I like this one.” She held up a dress with blue sequins and ostrich feathers. “She’s just like my mom, she’s got fat clothes and skinny clothes. Of course the skinny clothes are nicer, but you can forget about those, most of them wouldn’t even fit me.” Fat clothes, skinny clothes, fat clothes, skinny clothes … If you repeated anything over and over again it sounded religious. I pushed the back of my head further into the pillow, my fingers dug inside my underwear.

Edie dropped the dresses on the floor and sighed. Hand on her hip, looking like a lost cousin of the Addams Family, she said, “What’s the matter now?”

“Nothing. Can we get stoned?”

“Not until we’re out of wardrobe,” she smiled. “Jeez, Lil, when did you become such a burnout? Where was I?”

“My head feels like I spent the night in a boxing ring.”

“Poor baby,” she said, thighs leaning into the foot of the bed. I pushed my fingers against my crotch, hard. She stood frozen, staring in a way that made me think she knew what I was doing down there. She was smiling, too, as if she were controlling my fingers the way she’d conjured sounds out of the piano I could still hear playing faintly. The same bars over and over again. Like a bad dream. Or insanity.

I threw off the covers and snubbed Edie’s dresses for my own trip to the clothing bin. No way was I wearing ostrich feathers! Edie looked forlorn, the end of a long line of salesladies who lost commissions the minute they tried to get me into a dress. Nancy’d grown so weary of explaining that she gave me a credit card. I’d been buying my own clothes for years. “The fat clothes are on the right!” Edie shouted.

“Fuck you very much.”

“Just stating the facts,” she mocked me.

I plowed my hands through the fancy dresses and jackets. Never in my life had I seen so many different textures, such sheer and shimmering fabrics. The effect when combined with the early morning sun was almost blinding. Apparently Edie wanted me walking into that studio looking like a goddamn Christmas tree, when I knew you would expect me to be sophisticated and worldly and wise. I’d been through practically the entire fat rack before I found a herringbone skirt and matching jacket that belted at the waist like a trench coat. I imagined myself in the outfit, a war correspondent in a foreign country. Someone serious.

I backed out of the closet and held up the jacket for Edie. “Bo-ring!” she sang, but I stepped into the skirt which was a pain to zip up the side. My pink kneecaps poked out like shrunken heads. Edie put the pipe in my mouth and lit up. While I smoked she kneeled over the trunk at the foot of the bed and found a transparent black scarf. She wrapped it around her head and came up behind me in the mirror, her chin peeping over my shoulder and black polished fingernails clinging to my hips. “I wouldn’t have thought it but it’s okay,” she said, although together we were a mixed metaphor, the war correspondent and vampire.

She turned me around, slowly running her index finger down the back of my thigh, and I liked what I saw. Rounded calves heading into an upside down V, the slit saying, come a little bit closer, not that close; closer, not that close; closer … And in that moment, watching the muscles in my lower legs expand and contract, I felt as if Edie had given me passage to a secret colony. So I trusted her with my bare calves and correspondent’s clothing and believed her when she said I looked good in the outfit. She knew about these things; she was a nuclear reactor.

I AM SAD TODAY. Reading about the secret war in Nicaragua. If what they’re saying is true, the president and his Contras should be jailed one hundred times over. Only he can’t seem to remember any of it and if he doesn’t remember it then it couldn’t have happened. Memory, imagination, it’s a jungle in there.

I feel bad for the Contras, fighting a war nobody will own up to. At least they can congratulate themselves privately. It’s okay to kill in the name of freedom, but not for love.

Remember, what I write is circumspect. Isn’t that a great word? It’s one of those SAT words that sounds like the opposite of what it is, bottled-up and overly cautious. I hear a whirlpool of risks and rumors spinning around the cum in the middle, and it should be in the middle. Everything at its core is about sex.

Ever since I told Mimi about the fat lady in my cell, she’s been making me wear a plug up my butt. Two condoms wrapped around the thick stub of a carrot. To get it out I have to yank it by the dental floss she’s fixed to the end and left hanging from my body like a wimpy tampon string. I removed it the first day to shower, and while soaping up my ass started burning like crazy, as if it had lost its core. That damn plug had given it life. Without it, I felt abandoned. I ran back to my cell and reinserted the thing with a glob of lard I’d swiped from the kitchen.

She’s been waiting for me to mess up, Mimi. Deliciously anticipating the moment she pulls down my pants and finds the string has disappeared. But I won’t give in without a fight. Not even at night when she forces me down on the bed, asking whether I’ve been good or bad, if she’ll have to throw me to the she-wolves. Going out, the carrot feels like a big fast dump. Next comes the throbbing, her gloved hand on the back of my thigh, the woolen blanket scratching my neck and chin. One by one she fills me with the fingers of her left hand. Her tattooing hand. It takes everything I have not to scream. I’m too feisty, she says, always repeating her words in Spanish as if we were playing it for a Telemundo soap. As if she’s a Contra or something.

She fucks me like she’s funded by the CIA.

She fucks me like she’s got the whole world in her hands.

She fucks me because she can, whenever she wants, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

I have not shit for three days. Nor have I been eating. At meals I take bites and spit the half-chewed particles into tiny rectangular napkins. The thought of swallowing food is repulsive. I don’t deserve to eat as long as I’m wearing Mimi’s plug. I only allow myself water and orange juice made from concentrate, the kind that’s full of pulp and still tastes bitter. Jack used to squeeze oranges in the juicer at our summer house. He would stand over the glossy white sink in his shorts and sneakers, bare ankles peeking above nylon and leather. A casual guy, fun-loving beyond the convention of socks. He always squeezed my glass of orange juice first.

I say this now, circumspect. You of all people should know that one in the flurry of a public imbroglio (another kick-ass SAT word, though this one means exactly what it should) cannot be too cautious. I have reason to believe someone’s been stealing my notes and smuggling them to the newspapers. How else would they know the things they know? The real question is why should I care? It’s not like I have a life anymore, thanks to you. If only you’d listened. Then we wouldn’t have to rely so heavily on hypotheticals.

When I see Piper, one of the few women guards, I slip my yellow legal pad into the slit I’d carved in the foam pillow with the sharpened plastic of a Bic. At school I used rollerballs. The better choice for drawing while I was supposed to be taking notes or listening or doing whatever it is regular kids do in school. The art teachers loved me, though the shrinks say they should have discerned my foxy temperament from the way I bent and stretched my women. Picasso had to deal with the same shit. Always slammed for distorting his women, and he never killed one of them. At least not off-canvas.

Piper unlocks my cell and cuffs me, saying I have a visitor. A current hurls through my stomach, bloated from constipation yet growling as if I’d swallowed a rodent. Nerves have a way of loosening my sphincter, but luckily I’m clogged by the stub of a carrot. There is sudden comfort in this thought. I am guarded by Mimi’s charms just I was shielded by you.

We make the long walk through the cell blocks, cold today, like a train platform in winter, and quiet as Christmas. I am calm until I see the visitor’s list. Nancy’s perfect cursive. The room goes blurry. I double over in pain. Anonymous woman has finally come. “You got a problem?” Piper asks.

I can’t speak, can’t get beyond the slicing through my stomach, though I manage to nod no, no problem. She removes the cuffs and frisks me ’cause I’m still in pants. Not a real criminal yet. I fall forward, blurt out: “I have to use the bathroom!”

“Now?”

I nod.

Piper rolls her eyes. “You better not be messing with me, sugarplum.” She flags down another guard to take the group downstairs and leads me to the bathroom. I barely make it inside before vomiting orange pulp and saliva into the sink. My head spins. I run the tap water, flushing my liquids down and out into the river where the gun that killed you still lies. Amazing things can wash away so easily. I try to drink but it’s too painful. Instead I stick my nose under the cold water and snort from its stream. At first I can’t breathe, then I want to sneeze. Finally, a few soothing drops slip down the back of my throat.

Piper knocks. “Don’t you want to see your mother?” I don’t respond. “Damn, girl, you are getting on my last nerve today. This is what I get for being the good guy, they take advantage …”

I splash a few handfuls of water on my face and walk outside.

“Okay, Cinderella, time for the ball,” says the guard, who thinks she’s a comedian. All the way to the elevator and down into the visitor’s room, she cracks herself up.

The doors open revealing the usual scene in the pit. Family, lovers, friends. I spot Nancy fiddling with a cigarette. Her hair looks shorter, hiked up with mousse and stylish, and she’s wearing tinted glasses. Seeing her I am instantly six years old and I’ve slipped off my grandmother’s roof in the Bronx. They have to call an ambulance. I am lying on the grass surrounded by my grandmother, my grandfather, other kids, and a couple of paramedics when Nancy crawls out of her car. She doesn’t hug me. She barely even looks at me. As if she’s mortified I had the stupidity to fall off a roof. I blank out.

As I approach the table I see my mother’s upper lip shake. A vital thing. She lights a cigarette. I sit down across from her and pick up the pack of ultralights. “Can I have one?”

“You smoke?”

“I used to steal them from you.”

She nods. “I guess I knew.”

A ring of red lipstick clings to her filter making it feel like home, and at home we do not talk to each other. We smoke silently, elbows on the table, cigarettes teetering between the first two fingers of our right hands, our inhale-exhale motions in tandem.

It’s scary how much we resemble each other. Both small-shouldered with chunky hips and thighs, hers more tethered and toned; both redheads, though I’m the natural right down to my white streak in front, which seems to have gone whiter since I’ve been in here. In the high fluorescents it even looks gray. Odd for my age, but I’ve always felt older than the numbers say.

Nancy smashes her cigarette into the gold cardboard ashtray and asks how they’re treating me. I say okay and joke that it’s probably like rehab only with drugs. She doesn’t laugh. I guess there’s no comparing our incarcerations. She tries to light up again but is too jittery. It’s as if she’s thumb wrestling with her lighter. “Dammit!” she says, and crushes the cigarette between her fingers. Tobacco shavings fall over the table like soiled confetti. I’ll be spending New Year’s Eve in jail.

Breathing through my nose, I feel the cold water slip down my throat, no less a talisman than the carrot in my ass. I shift positions to make sure it’s still there. Nancy taps her fingers on the table. The lighting is obnoxious. Looking out I can barely see the other faces, each involved in their own thirty-minute dramas, hazy like the city in summertime, when the living was easy and Jack squeezed me fresh orange juice.

I turn back to Nancy and light a cigarette for her. She nods no as if my igniting the damn stick had tainted it, as if it were another damn competition. “Go on,” I say. “Take it.”

She gives in, sucking once from the filter before setting it down in the ashtray. “I’m drinking too much coffee these days,” she says, exhaling deeply. “It’s my only addiction—well, that and these. If there’s any justice in the world I’ll get clean and die of lung cancer. Oh well, everything at its own pace. Its own time. It’s eighty-four days I’m clean, Lily; eighty-four long grueling days. What do you think of that? No, don’t tell me what you think, I don’t know if I can handle it yet. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do; I mean, we were so young when we got married, so responsible, and let me just say it was like that for everyone around us. I always told you the hippies were a myth, we were the reality. Both of us struggling through school and with a kid, it’s like we were born old. We just kept thinking if we did everything before we turned thirty we could relax, slow down a bit, but let me tell you, you get used to things really quickly. Do you know what I mean?”

I nod, a bit uncomfortable with this monologue. Only she won’t stop. It’s as if she’s a talking machine, a jukebox packed with anonymous lingo instead of songs. All of the phrases she’s been pumping into her letters these last few months. One day at a time. You only live once. Bottomed out. There but for the grace of god go I. When she says god, she doesn’t mean the big G or any of his prophets. In anonymous-land they call it your higher power, but even this dogs Nancy. If there is any such thing, it resides within, she says. Eastern philosophy understands this. She’s thinking of checking out Buddhism.

“You can’t just become a Buddhist,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Because you already have a religion.”

“Oh no I don’t, I never asked for that one. Nobody ever said to me, ‘What religion do you want to be? It’s your choice.’ You’re the one who had the choice.”

“Some choice.”

“We always wanted you to choose, when you were old enough.”

“You said it was all bullshit. What kind of choice is that?”

“This is exactly what I mean, Lily. You have to learn these things for yourself. Took me almost forty years to understand this, but you’re lucky, you’re still young. And you’ve got all the time in the world.”

“Thanks … thanks for reminding me.”

“I’m just being honest. All we’ve got now, Lily, is honesty, right? Do you want to ask me anything? Go ahead, I’ll tell you anything. Just ask me.”

Why is it whenever anyone says ask me anything I can’t think of a single thing?

Nancy waits.

I am anxious, on the spot. Two-dimensional, I could slide right through the space between the chair and table. Slip away. Nancy gives up the wait. She says she and Jack had it all but somehow that wasn’t enough. She says she was depressed since childhood and learned to self-medicate. Who is this woman? I want my snide, sharp-as-manicured-nails mother to joke about the food in rehab, tell me all they served was Wonder Bread, creamed corn, squares of red gelatin. I want to watch her dip into her pill vial, sit down in front of the vanity, and when I tell her I’m going to marry Blair she says okay, sure, whatever, as if the dream of every twelveyear-old girl in America is to marry the drunk stewardess next door. Frame it as question, I tell myself. Ask her why she never once mentioned Blair’s name, not even after she’d been erased and we went to barbecues around the swimming pool that used to be her house. But how do you turn all of this into a question? On Jeopardy they give you the answers first, and Nancy isn’t helping, the way she’s going on about herself. Meanwhile, I’m slip-sliding into the cafeteria-like cacophony, the fuzzy smoke-filled edges. I hike up my hips—carrot still there. It burns from my asshole up through my ears. I imagine suiting up in my disc jockey space gear and floating above this woman in her designer jeans and pearls. Her Chanel No 5 and cigarettes. This woman now dissecting her former life—a, quote, zoned-out, chrome-and-steel existence without core or conscience. Sounds like hippie shit to me. Maybe we’re destined to become what we fear most. My fears were more basic: I became a murderer.

Nancy says, “I know you think it’s stupid or even cliché, but sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason. We had everything we wanted … cars, jewelry, a table at 21. I mean, really, we had more money than a small country, and I was the perfect advertising wife, quick-witted, sexy, up for anything … Then I got out there every morning and hustled my ass off. Jack loved that. ‘My wife’s the big earner around here,’ he told anyone who’d listen. And let me tell you, they listened. Jack used to say money talks and bullshit walks. Remember that? And he was so good at all of it.

We both were, and you never want to be too good at anything. I don’t know why, but it gets really lonely. The cruelest joke is you can have everything you want and still be miserable. Money cannot buy happiness.”

I roll my eyes.

“I’m serious, Lily, I’m not going back. I’m learning how to take care of myself—I never knew how to take care of myself, it’s that simple.”

“You already told me. In the letters.”

“Yes, but my apology must be complete and continual.”

“You’re apologizing to me?”

“Yes, and you must believe me. I am so sorry.”

She removes her glasses and dabs her eyes with a tissue. Make no mistake, she’s not crying, but the gesture seems to comfort her. Clouds from her unsmoked cigarette rise above us and I want out of this confessional. A million miles away on Planet Recovery, Nancy can’t see I’m still lying on the ground after falling off a roof. Still waiting for a mother who won’t touch me or talk to me. A mother who can’t see me without seeing herself. Why can’t she ask me something for once?

I shift in my seat for another jab of carrot stub. The pain lets me know I am still here. No way will my mother’s rehabilitation nullify my own. Nancy says we can learn from our mistakes and move on. Every day we must be grateful for the simple gift of life. Is she out of it or what? I am in jail awaiting trial for murder. But like the rest of them she believes if she doesn’t remember it, then it couldn’t have happened. I am worse off than an abandoned freedom fighter.

Piper and the boys start rounding up the troops. Handcuffs on one end, civilians on the other. A few people weep, the volume in the room shoots up a thousand notches. Guards will use force to pry people apart if necessary. There are no real goodbyes in jail.

Before I leave, Nancy grabs my arm. “Lily, there’s one more thing … about Jack.” She takes a deep breath, and my lungs cave in. “The thing is, I’m not sure we’re going to make it.” Her words burst into quivering lips, and I am paralyzed. As if I’ve been punched in the stomach. It’s the first time today I understand her sentences.

For one second I wonder what it would feel like to really hold my mother, to stretch my arms out and suck her into me, not letting go until the guards with their iron claws tear into us. There is too much commotion, however; faceless people being herded into elevators and hosed down for the long walk to nowhere. This is the worst part of being locked up, the moment when the world splits off into us and them. Nancy kisses my cheek. I touch her shoulders and her body feels like Styrofoam. I can’t figure out what’s made her so brittle.

We barely say goodbye before I am shoved into the elevator, its whistles and clinks reminding me I used to be one of them. On the outside. A jolt of longing for the life I’ll never have shoots through me. Then I remember my mother’s face and understand what few people ever acknowledge: It’s not so great out there, either.

AT THE TV STUDIO THEY PASSED US from one person to the next, each saddled with scripts and hooked up to some sort of electronic device. I felt as if we’d infiltrated a giant pod where everyone spoke my father’s language and looked as if they hadn’t slept in weeks. Only their clothes were impeccable and bright. Edie and I stood out among all the rich pastels.

Away from Aunt Fifi’s mirror I looked as if I’d stepped out of a World War II poster, while Edie was a walking corpse in all that transparent black and gothic makeup. At the last minute she’d hung a big silver ankh around her neck making her seem frighteningly spiritual. A messenger from the devil’s workshop. No surprise the pastel people stumbled over their words determined not to offend us. At the wrong phrase or gesture we might have gone nuclear on them. Who knew?

One pod led us to a place they called the Green Room. It had beige walls, a blue couch and carpet, blown-up articles from soap magazines on the walls. Nothing green in sight. Steam rose from a Mr. Coffee machine carrying the scent of my kitchen. As far back as I can remember there was always coffee brewing in the morning and I had developed a major craving for it. So much so I couldn’t remember a time I didn’t drink coffee. It was practically mainlined into my baby bottle.

Coffee stunts your growth, someone had said. I never listened, drinking four or five cups a day, and only at night when I touched my breasts wishing they would expand beneath my fingers did I think maybe it was the coffee keeping them down. Maybe if I’d learned to drink milk I would have grown enormous Playboy tits, and guys might have noticed me.

In the Green Room, I poured the steaming liquid into a Styrofoam cup and loaded a plate with miniature muffins and pastries. It was fun being a VIP. Free breakfast. People escorting us around the set. I imagined this was what your days were like, your every whim and desire served up at no cost. I stuffed whole muffins in my mouth as Edie paced back and forth. She said she wasn’t hungry and mumbled words to herself. Song lyrics, I think. It was nice to remember songs had words after hearing that damn piano all night long. Chuck had finally shut it off when he showed up. I think he might have broken the switch. “Would you sit down?” I said finally.

“We have to get out of here.”

“Relax, okay.”

“I can’t stay in this room, it’s wigging me out. The whole place smells like formaldehyde and the ceilings are too low.”

She continued pacing and mumbling. She must have taken some of those red pills to counteract the dope; meanwhile, I’d eaten a couple of Nancy’s Valium right before we left the house and had just started feeling dreamy. I grabbed a slice of sugary pastry, picked out the peach filling in the middle and licked it off my fingers. Edie raised her upper lip and grunted at me. “That’s all part of the government’s conspiracy,” she said.

“Conspiracy, I like that word.” I smashed the dough into a ball and popped it in my mouth. “It sounds like pirates and hidden treasures.”

“Seriously, you don’t even notice the sugar they put in everything. There’s this book my mom has that talks all about how we’re being totally controlled by sugar. Do you know how stupid it makes you? It’s, like, the worst drug out there, well, next to cigarettes, but that’s a whole ’nother story. Don’t get me going … Anyway, it’s why nobody gives a shit about anything anymore, they’re all high on sugar. And people, you know, like these television people, they’re nothing but pushers. Pushing sugar and stupidity.”

“They’re sugar-pod people.”

Edie turned abruptly from the window. She came toward me looking like she’d just seen a ghost. Maybe her own reflection, maybe yours. “Lil, I’m serious, we have to get out of here. We have to go now!”

The door opened and a pod woman dressed in pink busted inside. She said she was the show’s publicist and told us her name. It sounded like a gum disease. “So,” she said, “which one of you is Gus’s daughter?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Edie answered. “I am. I’ve been dying to come out here for weeks. But don’t ask me to speak French, for some reason Daddy never taught me.”

“Liar,” I said.

“Wonderful.” Pink Pod shook Edie’s hand and smiled. “I just love your father’s work. He’s a real innovator.”

“Yeah, isn’t he? And I’ll tell you what, he’s completely given up sugar and caffeine.”

“Wonderful. How truly wonderful.”

“Oh, by the way, this is my friend Lily,” Edie said, talking so fast her lips trembled. “She’s Jack’s kid, you know Jack, he works for Daddy. He’s a sales guy, and let me tell you, he’s the best. Number one. The guy could sell rocks to the Flintstones, he’s such a babe.” Pink Pod turned my way gulping at the sight of me. Although the Green Room was freezing, I was sweating in that stupid wool suit. I should have worn my black jeans and T-shirt and was angry Edie had talked me into dressing up. At least she looked sexy; I looked like a Communist. I felt moronic and Pink Pod knew it. When she shook my hand I pressed so hard I cracked the bones in her fingers. She quickly yanked it away, forcing a smile. “Don’t mind her,” Edie said. “Lily’s the quiet type, apparently she’s got other worlds going on in her head.”

“Look who’s talking,” I grimaced at Edie, but she just laughed.

Pink Pod clapped her hands. “Oh, this is so exciting, are we ready to tour the studio?”

We walked and walked through the spanking-clean hallways and vast rows of closed doors with actors’ names written in big cursive letters. As we passed your name my head felt trippy and my body flashed hot and cold like the beginnings of the flu. I was glad we didn’t stop, I wasn’t ready to see you yet, though I wondered what you were doing behind that door. If you knew I was there. My skin itched in its heavy sheath. I wanted to remove the jacket but had only a tank top underneath; this clothing was holding me captive. Or I wasn’t wearing it right. There was no fitting the mold sometimes.

Pink Pod knocked on a few doors, and if they were in, the actors welcomed us with Cokes and questions: what’s your name, where are you from, what do you want to be when you grow up, how long have you been watching the show? Edie told them all she only started watching the show when she met me. Where she came from there were no television sets. Poor, deprived girl, their eyes said, although they kept up the chatter. Happily they autographed their faces for us. The chief nurse of Foxboro County Hospital wrote, “Keep on watching,” designing the A in the shape of a human eye, while the evil bartender at Flannery’s wrote, “We are the World.” The guy who played Alex Rheinhart had run out of photos and ended up giving us each a World Without End hand towel from his bathroom. He was also the only actor who’d commented indirectly on our clothing, asking if we were extras in one of the scenes that day.

“No,” Edie said. “But we’re from New York, you know, all the world’s a stage.”

“Excellent!” he said. “There’s plenty of room out here for a highly developed sense of the theatrical.”

If we were in New York I would have assumed his words were sarcastic, but out here they all spoke in sugar-pod tape loops, and it was getting on my nerves. I did not risk my life flying across the country for canned comments from soap zombies, those who would pass the rest of their television days in Foxboro. You had other plans: movies, plays, maybe a sitcom. The right role, you told TV Guide, was just around the corner.

By then too eager to see you, I asked Pink Pod why we hadn’t knocked on your door and was told you were already on the set. “You mean we don’t get to see Brooke!” I said.

“Not privately, no.”

A knife shot through my gut and I was speechless. Edie stared at me as if I were nuts and I knew it was her fault. She and her connections on Andromeda had disrupted the cosmos. Or maybe the two of you were in on it together. You could have been talking to Edie as well. That had never occurred to me before … and she was more interesting than I was. Hot and cold sirens ran through me again.

No, I refused to believe you were talking to Edie. That wasn’t logical. Fists planted at my side, I spoke as firmly as I could.

“Gustave said we could see Brooke.”

“You know how Daddy talks,” Edie said.

“Shut the fuck up, he’s not even your father.”

Edie pulled my hair from behind. “Don’t start,” she whispered.

“Excuse me, young ladies, do you see this door?” Pink Pod directed us toward the door next to her. “Behind this door, Brooke—or Jaymie Jo as we call her inside—is recovering from her exorcism—”

“Her exorcism?” we both said.

“Yes, yes, you’ll see it in a couple of weeks, but that’s nothing. Jaymie Jo is on the verge of something even bigger, I won’t tell you what just now, but I will say that you are two very lucky girls. Do you know how many fans would kill to see a scene like this? Anyway, if you’d like I can take you into Jaymie Jo’s bedroom, I’ve already received permission, but you must, and I cannot stress this enough, you must promise not to make a sound.” The whole time she was talking I couldn’t stop looking at her nose. So long and thin it reminded me of a witch’s nose. “Do you promise?” she said again.

“Sure,” Edie said.

They stared at me, waiting on my response. Funny, now that I’d come this close to seeing you, I was terrified. A thousand images flashed through my mind. Scenes of our various meetings. Restaurants. Beaches. Airport bars. Maybe you wouldn’t recognize me in a skirt. Or I’d say the wrong thing and you’d ditch me forever. Then Edie could take my place. No, that’s crazy, you hated Edie, but it wasn’t too late for me to walk right out of this studio and preserve what we had. Some doors were never meant to be opened. Simply believing in what existed behind them was enough.

“Come on, Lil,” Edie said, a hint of disgust in her voice. “This is your deal.”

I remembered what she’d said the night before: Whenever a person leaves a conversation the mood changes. Walking into a scene had to have the same effect: The bond between us might grow stronger or it could snap like a twig. But you would hate me if I chickened out after coming this far. You had no respect for cowards.

So I gave my word not to make a sound, and we slipped through the double doors into the freezing-cold soundstage, my heart pumping as if it were the track to a horror film. Picture it, Brooke. See through my eyes what it was like walking into your world of fake sets and tight costumes. How it pained me to hear the nightie you’d been wearing for weeks had given you hives while I battled my own itchy clothing. I had visions of rubbing down your skin with pink calamine lotion as we traded life philosophies. But there were rumors in the air. Things I would only understand a few months later when your name began to surface in the tabloids, the cameramen whispering that you’d been forgetting your lines and freaking out on the set. That you’d brought in your own makeup lady, a cry for detox if ever there was one. Even that day, when you entered the soundstage, your face looked so thin it was almost skeletal, your eyes incapable of focus. You slipped beneath the sheets, and I swear you pushed your palms together in prayer for a few seconds before the cameras rolled.

Watch now through my eyes. See what I saw when the director called action and you cued into Jaymie Jo as if roused by an electronic current. A surge so radiant its waves ignited the outskirts of the set where I’d been banished behind the cameras. A swell so forceful you clearly dipped deep into your reservoirs to become the corpselike vision we would see for days. Around you the men circulated. Your father, Max, the priest who’d performed the exorcism. It was the perfect setup for flashbacks, but those would be filled in later. Just as we’d see you coughing up green slime and begging Jesus to reunite you with your dead mother. A virtuoso performance that would earn you your second Emmy (the third, of course, would be given posthumously, making soap opera history). But what we saw in the studio that day came after the exorcism, as your father and Max discussed whether to contact the hospital against the priest’s wishes and you bolted up in bed. Alex and Max burst into tears. Max tried to hold your hand, but you brushed him off and called to the priest. “Father,” you cried. “Oh holy father!” And then something about how you’d been to the other side and returned. And then something about how you’d seen your true destiny: You were going to become a nun!

The director shouted cut! Your body slackened and head slumped over. As if the scene had drained every ounce of energy from your spine. Then you bounced from the bed and walked to the front of the set, making a visor of your right hand against your forehead. I moved out of the shadows. Your eyes found mine and for the brief seconds we connected I felt a series of convulsions charge up my legs as if your spirit had invaded my flesh, and I knew immediately what people meant when they talked about the heart skipping a beat. It was the most peaceful feeling I’d ever experienced. A kind of perfection most people don’t get close to in their lives. But like anything perfect, it couldn’t last. You winked at me and threw your head back in laughter. My entire body felt exhausted but energized. As if I’d just skied a long, treacherous slope. I closed my eyes and sighed.

It took a few seconds to realize Edie was punching my thigh. “Cut it out!” I said.

“Look.” She pointed to the set where you wrapped your arms around a man in a black trench coat. “That’s John Strong. He was standing behind us the whole time.”

Can you imagine my isolation then, Brooke? The pain I felt upon watching you fall into your boyfriend’s arms after what had just transpired between us? It was as if you’d ripped open my chest and poured hydrochloric acid over my heart. I couldn’t move, not even when Pink Pod said we had to clear the set. “Really, we must be going,” she said. “I promised I’d have you out of here by noon.”

“Oh, fuck off, we heard you,” Edie snapped, and I burst out laughing. Pink Pod turned to a young woman with headphones wrapped around her neck. “Would you deal with them, please?” she said. “I’ve been trying, but they are really too much. And Gus is such a wonderful man …”

The pod girl nodded, promising to escort us out of the building. Pink Pod stormed off without saying goodbye. Edie shouted, “Goodbye!” then turned to me. “What was her name again?”

“Halitosis, I think.”

“Bye, Miss Halitosis!”

The pod girl laughed. She was younger and looked almost normal, like she was passing through TV-land on her way to a rock concert. Maybe she was a friend of yours.

She led us out to the reception area where Chuck was waiting in his silly chauffeur’s hat, and Edie and I fell to our knees giggling. In those few seconds it became clear why I’d taken her along on the trip: She was my decoy just as John Strong had been yours. I felt guilty for doubting her and worse for doubting you. What happened on that set between us was too big for the rest of the world. It had to remain between us.

For better or worse, till the end of time, world without end.

AFTER NANCY, I FIND ANGEL LYING ON MY BED, waiting for Chandon to slip her a needle. She can’t sit up without chafing the scar from her C-section. Twice, she’s ripped open the staples so the wound won’t close. It’s all she’s got left of the boy, she says.

“What’s shaking, little Long Island?” Chandon says.

I shrug. Words, phrases, sentences won’t coagulate. There’s a word for this, a disease. I read it in the medical dictionary.

“It’s tattoo day.” Chandon smiles at me then looks down at her hands, where she’s got the needle filled with clear liquid, not ink. She flicks it with her middle finger, and we, the three of us in my cell, are hypnotized by the few clear drops squeezing through the tip. Seems too small an opening for a drug so powerful, but I know better. I can make the same hole bleed ink into people’s skin. We don’t go as deep as Chandon’ll get inside of Angel—she has to break the vein, once she’s done prepping, a task she performs as fastidiously as her laundry duty and for some reason makes me think of a black-and-white cartoon Jack had framed and hung in his office. A group of surgeons hover over a patient with his head cut open and one of them says: “Lighten up guys, we’re not making a TV commercial!”

My mother told me there were no dress rehearsals in life. No pain, no gain. If you can’t beat them, join them, she said.

Angel holds out her left arm, veins bulging beneath the strip of cotton they’d cut from a pillowcase. Chandon slaps them down with two fingers and the crack of Angel’s skin sounds painful. It’s probably low-dose next to sinking a needle into your vein or having a baby ripped from your side. Apparently, my birth had been so harsh that Nancy had her entire system shut down afterwards. And she didn’t even have a C-section; she kept the scars bottled up inside, self-medicated.

Chandon takes Angel by the elbow and shoves the needle into her arm, carefully depressing the end with her thumb. She wears rubber gloves that stink of bleach and baby powder—Mimi’s smells—and has her shirt sleeves folded above the elbow. She knows her turf and is experienced. One of those things everyone always said she did better than most. Silently she removes the needle. Angel shuts her eyes and leans back with her mouth hanging open while Chandon pulls off her gloves and cracks the plastic wrapping on another needle. Mimi would not like this. Their wasting clean needles on drugs. I try and warn Chandon but she laughs. As if Mimi is only Mimi in my imagination.

“She get too damn preachy sometimes,” Chandon says. “Got all that Nancy Reagan shit in her head.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Just say this, just say that … Who the fuck she think she is?”

“Her little brother OD’d.”

“Nope. Sorry. Don’t need it from her, don’t need it from nobody, that’s why I left the church, praise Allah,” she says as she fixes her works on top of the paperback copy of the Koran she carries everywhere. Practicing her Islam, like Nancy’s practicing to be a Buddhist. These are dangerous times. Everybody’s got something. Chandon wraps the sheet around her upper arm. “Hey, Long Island, grab this for me? I can’t get the vein.”

I hesitate. She sighs, says come on, she won’t tell Mimi or nothing. I sit down next to her on my bed. Angel lies behind us, her legs against my back, warm. I tie the ends of the sheet together and tug hard, staring down at the Koran. “You read any of that yet?” I ask.

Chandon sucks up a thimble full of liquid with another needle. “It’s not really what the book says that’s interesting,” she says, “it’s how we interpret it.”

“And how do you interpret this?”

“What?”

I nod down at the needle, her thick vein busting through the crook of her elbow.

“Allah forgives,” says Chandon, and pushes the needle into her arm.

We are silenced momentarily out of fear—or reverence. It’s actually peaceful watching the drug flood into her, witnessing the transcendence. A triumph over all of this gray. If only I could give over that easily. Shoot up. Carry the words of an all-forgiving prophet in paperback. But some things are not forgivable. Chandon pulls the needle from her skin and leans back over Angel’s legs with a cozy, satisfied look. The two of them stare at the bedsprings and striped mattress above their heads. I settle in, floating through osmosis.

“What’s this?” Mimi’s voice startles me.

I jump up. “It’s not me, I didn’t do anything.”

“I give you a little time to yourself and this is what you make of it? You were supposed to be watching them, this is trouble.”

She turns to Chandon. “And you, you said she wanted a tattoo. You lied to me.”

“No I didn’t,” Chandon says. “She just needed a little muscle relaxer, is all. For preparation. You gonna draw her something nice?”

“His name,” Angel says.

“You think I can work on her now? Like this? Forget about it.”

“I only want his name.”

“Don’t be so cold,” Chandon says.

“I’m cold? Stupid yunkie shit … mierda.” Mimi looks at me trying to gauge whether I’m high. She knows I’m not into drugs but hasn’t trusted me since the fat lady appeared in my cell. The funny thing is, I can barely remember it and I’m testing the president’s psychology: If I can’t remember it, then it never happened. Even if it all goes down in my single cell, the one with the empty top bunk. I reach into the pillow, take out my legal pad, and on a fresh page write ALEJANDRO in big block letters. As if Mimi isn’t mad enough with Chandon begging her to do Angel’s tattoo and Angel mumbling the kid’s name over and over, my scribbling is another violation. What’s she going to do, shove more carrots up my ass? Stick needles in my eyes? This is supposed to be jail, not some degenerate carnival. I am here for my rehabilitation. To learn to forgive myself and speak in anonymous phrases.

The more Chandon pleads Angel’s case for the tattoo, the icier Mimi’s words become. She says no way will she touch her when she’s so fucked up, bad enough she’s got the virus. “It’s too much negative energy,” Mimi says, “we’ll wake the demons.”

Angel bursts into tears, still calling out for her son.

“Look what you’re doing to her,” Chandon says.

“It’s not my doing.” Mimi shakes Angel by the shoulders. “Calla … calla … shaddup!”

“Puta! “ Angel spits at Mimi.

Mimi slaps Angel’s face, Angel punches her arm, and they’re into it. Chandon grabs Mimi by the elbows and hurls her to the floor. Angel cowers against the wall as if she could slip inside it.

Her body convulses, reminding me of Nancy’s cliché-spouting lips. Mimi calls her a disgusting infected yunkie, her pronunciation making it sound much worse than it is. “You have lost all tattooing privileges!” she shouts. Angel wails, younger now, a screaming infant.

A new mission sends me to the shoe box beneath my bed. I retrieve my Walkman and Bic pen, although there are no more needles. I look up at the towering figure that is Mimi, the anger distorting her face worse than the master distorter himself could have envisioned. In her hand, the two drained hypodermics.

“You’re not ready yet,” she says. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Yes I do, you taught me.”

“You know nothing about her energy. This is the worst mistake—you never wondered why there are so many bad tattoos? ’Cause it’s not about the picture, it’s about the energy, and this is really bad. If you can’t see that …”

“I don’t care.”

“So big and strong you are now.”

“Give me the needle, Mimi!” I shout, amazed by the force of my own voice. So is everyone else. For the moment it even quiets Angel.

The glaring Mimi crosses herself, then slips a needle into each palm, cupping her fists over them. She holds out her arms, wrists upright, and it’s the first time I can see the extent of her suicide tracks. It’s crazy but I want to hold her like I wanted to hold Nancy, only she doesn’t deserve it. She’s got no heart. Angel had tried to warn me, those weeks when she schooled me, stroking my head as she relayed the most disgusting stories I’d ever heard. Tales of human autopsies and digging out people’s kneecaps. I’d stopped listening soon after and hummed the World Without End opening she loved so much. I never wanted to be street smart, but I really liked the feel of her fingertips in my hair.

Mimi stares down at her fists, then back at me. “You’re playing with fire, chica.”

I hold her gaze.

“Go ahead, then … your choice,” she says, and because Angel’s tattoo has become the most important event in my life, I point to Mimi’s left hand. She slowly uncurls her fingers. I take the needle and hook it to the siphoned inner tube of the Bic. Armed with black ink, I sit down next to Angel and touch her shoulder, so smooth and brown it looks like candy. Sweet enough to eat despite the poison lurking below. Like the shiny red apples with razor blades inside that mean people supposedly hand out on Halloween. As if she’s reading my mind, Mimi says, “I’m warning you, she’s got the evil blood. This is your last chance.”

Her words fuel my determination; I put the needle to Angel’s arm and turn on the Walkman. The current surges through my fingers for the first burst of the A. You can etch a tattoo with just a needle and ink, you don’t need the motor, but it makes it easier. And there’s less blood. Mimi crosses herself again and shouts a few sentences in Spanish. She cannot take me from my work, not with Angel staring at me, her eyes sadder than my grandmother’s on the day she walked into the courtroom for my arraignment. Enough to tell me this tattoo, my work, is all that matters. Mimi says I’ll be damned to hell. My mother said there is no hell, just endless repetition, and Chandon … Allah forgives!

Some shouting starts in the other cells. Soon the guards will come. I pick up the speed and by the letter N find my fingers are spotted with ink and blood. Angel shuts her eyes, and I can actually feel her limbs relax. “Mi hijo,” she whispers, as if by inscribing his name on her shoulder I am bringing him back to her.

When the banshee calls finally draw the guards, I am on the last curves of the O. There is no explaining this madness: all the banging and wailing, stolen needles, my dirty fingers wiping Angel’s shoulder, Mimi and Chandon nowhere to be found. Before I can say anything, Angel is wrested from me. As the guards drag her off, she points to her tattoo and says, “Thank you, Long Island! God bless.” My eyes swell, and I’m certain there is no justice in this world.

I hold up my stained fingers begging your forgiveness. Then I smear the bloody remains of Alejandro across my lips.