Gray (15 page)

She never flies out to see me because Her mother conveniently gets sick just as finals are over. Her mother looks like a skeleton. She is always sighing and moaning about something, always struggling against someone. She is always the victim. She and I don’t like each other that much. When she goes back into the hospital, that means no visit to Los Angeles, which only further puts a strain on things. Now whenever we talk, she’s usually standing in the hallway of some Chicago hospital and I’m peering out my window at the suntanned silicone of LA. She is reading me pamphlets about Copaxone and Avonex, I am listening with an Ativan on my lips. There are long periods of silence. We are living in alternate universes. I suspect Her mother did this on purpose. She always hated me.

So, with nothing to do and no one to look after, John Miller decides to head West. I have the record label pay for his flight. First class. Fuck them. He lands at LAX and steps out into the smog and sunshine and feels a shudder run up his knotty Southern spine. His quest for adventure has taken him to the end of the continent, to the end of the world. He has reached his spiritual home, his Mecca. Here he will officially become the Disaster. He shows up at Oakwood with a canvas pack slung over his shoulder
(a definite improvement over a Hefty bag), tells me he’s arranged to have “the gays from downstairs” watch the apartment while he’s gone. His return flight is booked for two weeks from now, but he’ll change that. His eyes are manic, filled with fire and heritage and a million bad intentions.

“Now,” he drawls, “why don’t you show me whut this town is all about?”

We spend the next week haunting the hipster bars in Silver Lake, the velvet-rope Hollywood spots with one-word names, the terrible Red Bull–and-vodka joints on Sunset. We pass out in the achingly minimal lobbies of hotels, DJs playing down-tempo-chill-out bullshit behind black-lacquered booths. We waste away poolside at the Roosevelt, we get invited to a bungalow party at the Chateau Marmont, where we watch the cast of some primetime make bad decisions. The Disaster swears some sitcom actress made a pass at him, but I didn’t see it. There are pills and powders and pot so strong it makes your head ring, black eyeliner and smeared lipstick. Half-smoked cigarettes slowly expiring in ashtrays. Blurry photographs of kissy-faced model/actresses. Bottles and black light. Endless nights and afterthought days. We have kidnapped Jen-with-Two-
N
’s, mostly because we need a designated driver, and she is eternally hammering away on her BlackBerry, though after a few days, her hope of rescue begins to diminish, and one night she gets so drunk I have to drive back to the Oakwoods. She and the Disaster made out in the hot tub while the living dead cheered them on. Everything is falling apart.

I still don’t belong here—I’m an outsider, a peripheral character—but some nights I feel I can see my future playing out in front of me, in the dark corners and the bathroom stalls, the sparkling cleavage of sad starlets, the orchids in the hotel lobbies that make everything smell like a funeral parlor. I stand at the valet line in the dusty, early morning light of Los Angeles, when Sunset Boulevard is bathed in a somber, shimmering red, like a well-trod trail of rubies leading to heaven, and I think to myself that one night I’ll follow that path off into the ether. The Great Ghost of Death is everywhere out here, in the Marilyn impersonators on the street corners, the stoic murals of James Dean, the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It reverberates off the hills, vibrates down into the valley, colors the yellow air that we breathe. It’s why the young and famous party with reckless, feckless abandon: they’re either trying to forget about dying or resigned that their death is inevitable. When I am drunk and spun out on Ativans, I fear that I too am destined to die in this town, out in these hills, with the ghosts of singing cowboys and Marlboro men and about a million rock-star corpses guiding me into the light, my body left to the coroners and the coyotes. Everything is coming undone.

I am thinking this as I sit in the bungalow at the Chateau, the party whirling around me, the Disaster crashing over furniture, careening down the hallway, terrifying everyone in his path. I am thinking about death—Belushi overdosed in one of these bungalows, someone had just told me—when she calls, and I answer with a roar
because I can barely hear myself over the din of Young Hollywood’s demise.

Her voice is faint and distant on the other end because she’s whispering in the hospital hallway. “Hi, hello? It’s my mom, she—”

People are shouting, I can’t make out a word she’s saying. I tell Her to hold on as I climb over the arm of the sofa, snake my way down the hallway, force my way through a crowd of beautiful people at the door. I hear Her ask, “Where
are
you?” All I can say is “Hold on . . . sorry . . .” Finally I am outside by the pool, and I plug my ear with my finger and pour honey into the receiver, cooing, “Sorry, honey . . . sorry about that. How are you?”

I am beyond drunk. I do not realize how bad this could be.

“Where
are
you right now?” is all she says.

“Oh, I’m at a party . . . at the Chateau Marmont.” I’m still trying to pull off the babe-in-the-woods routine. “The place where all the celebrities stay. John and I got invited to a party here, and it’s—”

“You’re at a party?” she shoots back, probably scaring some orderlies.

“Yeah . . . I . . . is that okay?” I tremble, the blood slowly draining from me. Assorted fabulous folk, previously lounging poolside, sunglasses on in the middle of the night, now turn their attention to me, the ratty outsider slowly drowning in the deep end. I hadn’t noticed that I was still shouting. The gallery laughs condescendingly.

“What? I don’t care. Listen. My mom . . . it’s not
good.” Her voice is flat like an out-of-tune piano, lifeless like a corpse on a slab. “The doctors say she hasn’t been responding to the medicine . . . the new medicine, the Copaxone . . .”

Silence. I am missing my cues.

“The Cofazone?” I shout again, earning more stares from the people around the pool. I am out of my mind.

“No, COH-PA-ZONE. It’s not working, and she’s starting to shake more and more now. So they say that, maybe they’ve run out of options. They say there’s not much else we can do now . . .”

Her voice cracks at the end of the sentence, trails off down the haunted hallway. I figure I am supposed to be compassionate now, even though I’m not certain it would be a bad thing if we
were
out of options, even though Her mother’s been out of options at least five times in the past and has inexplicably survived, even though I am a terrible person. So I say I’m sorry because that’s what people say in situations like this. I decide to whisper the words so maybe they’ll carry a bit more meaning, but she says nothing back. Maybe whispering was a bad choice due to the shitty cell-phone service out here. I clear my throat and repeat the apology more audibly. She says she heard me and then asks if I could come back to Chicago for the weekend, because she needs me there, because she is confident Her mom is going to die any second now. I tell Her I’ll see what I can do.

More silence. The heavy, awful kind. The worst kind.

“Okay. Well, I’m going to go back in with her,” she says, completely deflated, betrayed by the man she loves
when she needed him the most. “Call me in the morning, okay?”

“I will. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Then she hangs up. Everything is broken now. Everything is falling into the Pacific Ocean. I stand by the side of the pool for a minute, thinking about the ghost of John Belushi. The empty lounge chairs. The candles flitting in the breeze, lilting back and forth on the breath of the Great Ghost. Everyone has gone back to ignoring me now, returning their attention to hastening their inevitable demise. I am nothing to them once again. I am a ghost. One more Ativan goes down my throat. I go back to the bungalow, back to the clamor and the clatter and the cocaine. Back to the business of death. Girls are locking hips and lips. Guys are shouting and snorting. That prime-time actress is balanced on the arm of an Eames chair. She looks like an angel.

I
fly
back to Chicago for a week. Have a minor panic attack on the ride to LAX. Take three Ativans to settle myself down. This is becoming a daily occurrence. When I land at O’Hare, no one is there to greet me. I take a cab to my apartment, realize I don’t have my keys, make the driver take me to my parents’ house. My mom asks me if everything is okay. I tell her I don’t know and go to sleep in my old bed. I wake up a day later, my cell phone on the floor, the message light blinking violently. I go to Her apartment. Her bed isn’t made. Nothing is sadder than an unmade bed. We go see Her mother in the hospital. We hug awkwardly, and I can feel her shoulders twitching as I hold her. Spend the next few days wandering the hallways, poking my head into mysterious, darkened rooms, eating french fries in the cafeteria. I smoke cigarettes with Her outside the emergency room. We don’t talk about much. At night, I hold Her while she sleeps. We don’t have sex. Her mother doesn’t die. All in all, it was a bad trip.

As I am waiting for my return flight, I am suddenly and
inexplicably overcome with terror. I shouldn’t be leaving. I should stay here where I am safe. The floor goes out from underneath me. My pupils become black holes. I am shaking and sweating, my stomach is tumbling. Tears are streaming down my face. I fumble for my phone, call Her to come save me. She tells me to calm down, that she will call me when she’s done talking to the doctors. My flight will be gone by then, and so will I. She tells me to take my medication and says she has to go. Silence on the other end. I was calling for a little compassion. I got none. I am aware of the irony of the situation.

I swallow a handful of Ativans—who’s counting anymore?—and crash out on the plane. I arrive back in Los Angeles, call the Disaster to see if anyone died while I was gone. He asks me if I’m all right. I tell him I don’t know and hang up. I call Her to say I made it to LA. Voice mail. When I get back to the Oakwoods, I close my blinds and crawl into bed. I pull the sheets over my head and try to imagine what it would be like to be dead. The air-conditioning kicks on. Outside, silicone and meat are stewing in the hot tub. I fall asleep flat on my back, my arms at my side, like a cadaver. I wake up a day later, when Martin starts pounding on my door. He comes into my room and sits in the corner, asking me if I feel okay, if I need a doctor. He doesn’t say it, but I can tell he’s worried that I’ve gone off the deep end. I don’t blame him. I’m worried too. I can’t even begin to explain what’s happening to me.

I am informed that some doctors in Los Angeles can get you anything you need, no questions asked. They will even come to your “temporary furnished and serviced
apartments” if necessary. They are quick with the diagnosis and even quicker with the prescription pad. I figure now is as good a time as any for a consultation. The Disaster knows a guy who knows a guy, so I have him summon a doctor to my bedroom. A slick-talking guy, with a wide tie and a white smile. Tan. Pager on his belt. He looks like he just stepped off the set of a soap opera. Maybe he did. It doesn’t matter all that much. He listens to me talk for a while, then whips out the pad and gives me a script for Zoloft. The little, blue miracle workers. He doesn’t even ask if I’m taking any other medications, probably because he knows the answer already. Or he doesn’t care. If only Chicago had doctors like him. As he’s leaving, he gives me his pager number, tells me to call if I need anything. I am now officially taking meds for anxiety and depression. I am now officially under his care.

•   •   •

A week or so later—who’s counting anymore?—I am wandering the aisles of a bookstore in a haze, and during a momentary break in the clouds, I find myself staring at
The Pill Book,
“the illustrated guide to the most-prescribed drugs in the United States,” according to a blurb on the cover. I have always liked illustrations, so I buy it. Thousands of pills are listed inside, of every shape and size, potency, ability. They have fantastically foreign-sounding names, such as Abacavir and Norvasc and Zaroxolyn, that clog the tongue and bunch the lips. Betatrex and Cerebyx, Lorazepam and Mevacor, Questran and Rynatan. My old friend Ativan. My new nemesis Copaxone.
Anoquan. Decadron. Guaifenex. Norethin. Roxicet. Warfarin. Names that recall distant galaxies hovering on the rim of space. Placid resort towns in Arizona. Snow-dotted villages in New England. Sterile stops on the sterling-silver superhighway of tomorrow. Misty, quartz-powered home worlds of superheroes. Letters seemingly chosen at random to make words—new words, a new language, a new world. Alphabet soup. Flurries. Each of them is a unique, little snowflake. Each of them is beautiful.

I hide the book under my mattress, like it was an old copy of
Playboy
and my parents were in the next room. I lock the door to my bedroom and read it at night. My pulse quickens with each page I turn. My eyeballs flutter in the dim light of my Oakwoods apartment. I hope my mom doesn’t walk in on me. Snorted, swallowed, or shot into my stomach, every pill represents a new opportunity, a new neuron-frying, serotonin-searing adventure for me to embark on. There are dosage guides and lists of possible side effects. Food interactions. Generic equivalents for the penny-pinchers. Overdose warnings too, but I usually ignore them. It’s a step-by-step guide to self-medicating, sort of like
The Anarchist Cookbook
for manic depressives. I am no longer aware of how many different pills I am taking, but I find myself paging the Soap Opera Doctor at least once a day. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s seen hundreds of guys just like me, nobodies from the middle of nowhere who show up in his town and promptly fall apart. I’m just following the script, having my first meltdown. Call me a cliché. I probably won’t even notice. My eyelids are always heavy. Things are easier this way. No
talking, no feeling, no pain. Just a handful of prescriptions and the occasional suspicious look from the pharmacist. Days blur into nights. Dull, warm sunsets become hazy, fuzzy sunrises. Los Angeles begins to disappear into a pharmaceutical haze. And I go with it. Sometimes, I even admit that I’m sort of
enjoying
all this. This is what I am supposed to be doing, after all.