Finally I tell her I’ve got to get dressed for my party and ask if she knows where Dad is. She doesn’t but she’s sure he’ll call.
Right.
At seven Jeannie says it’s time to get dressed and helps me pick out my outfit, basic black, leather skirt from Fiorucci and a Kamali silk top, fishnet stockings, killer pumps from Bennis and Edwards that I borrowed from Didi a few months back.
You’ll be raped on the street, Jeannie says after she checks me out.
I go, can’t rape the willing.
That’s my girl, says Jeannie.
I’m fine, I go.
Didi and Francesca have chipped in and got me a limo, so the four of us go over to Sam’s and meet the gang there, a table for sixteen, the usual suspects. Rebecca’s prep Everett is there, don’t ask me why, he’s like all mopey and it’s like being at my birthday will at least remind him of Rebecca a little bit so he can keep being miserable. Plus Didi and Whitney and Mark from the tanning place and a bunch of other idiots who are all my friends sort of, and when I walk in everybody jumps up—happy birthday, Alison!—and I’m looking around thinking just maybe Dean will be there but he isn’t and why would he be, really?
So we have this big dinner, I mean, some of us have this big dinner and some of us just keep going to the bathroom, Jeannie’s got blow and so does Mark, Didi keeps screaming at us saying we’re fucking drug addicts, she’s really disgusted. It’s amazing she doesn’t even see that it’s like pretty ironic, to say the least. When we all do a chorus of “Amazing Grace,” she gets really mad.
Things kind of get out of control after a while. The prep tries to beat up the waiter, don’t ask me why. He’s one of those fighting drunks, plus his heart is broken. He offers to marry me at one point and I say, thanks, but I don’t believe in marriage and he goes, I can respect that point of view, saying the words real carefully like he’s afraid he’ll drop them and they’ll break. Then he offers to pay for the meal and everybody thinks this is a cool idea, suddenly he stands up and bangs on a wineglass with a spoon until he breaks it, so then he pounds on the table till he gets everybody’s attention and then he looks around like he’s not sure where he is until suddenly he remembers. He weaves his head like he’s ducking a tiny plane that just skimmed the top of his hair. Then he goes, really serious, today is Alison’s birthday.
Everybody goes wild and cheers, partly because it seems amazing that he can even talk or remember what the occasion is.
Today, he goes, Alison is an adult.
A lot of catcalls and hisses for this idea. The prep takes a direct hit—a piece of cheesecake on the cheek.
I’m serious, he goes. I mean this. I love this girl, no, wait, she’s not a girl, now she’s a woman.
So of course Didi and Francesca start singing Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.”
Everett waves his arms for silence, his right hand is still bandaged from where Mannie cut him, he’s like, I love her sister, but I love her too. I’d like to treat Alison and all of you to dinner because you’re all friends of Rebecca’s and I love Rebecca and I love all of you.
So everybody’s cheering and throwing shit at the prep and I have this funny feeling about this offer. Sure enough, he remembers when the waiter brings him the check that he gave Rebecca all of his credit cards.
Later we go to Nell’s and then the Zulu Lounge and then we end up at our place but it’s too small and the prep says he’s still got this suite over at the Stanhope, he can’t afford to pay the bill so he keeps staying on. So we go over there, it’s getting toward dawn by now and Jeannie takes up a collection and makes a run over to Emile’s place. . . .
The party goes on for two days.
Some of the people disappear eventually, some come back the second night, two guys from this Australian rock band drop by for nine or ten hours and Emile shows up with fresh supplies, I guess we must’ve called him. Francesca keeps coming and going, trying to rescue me, at one point she offers to take me shopping at Bergdorf’s with her Dad’s credit card but me and Everett hold down the fort, sitting in the middle of the floor going, I can’t believe somebody else feels that way—wow, I thought I was the only person in the world who felt like that—and him telling me about Rebecca and me talking about Dean while I burn holes in the upholstery of the Louis Cat-house chairs. We just can’t talk fast enough to free up all these great thoughts we’re having. Great minds sink alike, right? So at some point I ask Everett if he knows the three great lies. I tell him the first two while he sits there nodding like a guru or something with like the intense calm that only the truly crazed and manic can fake. Then I say to him, so what’s the third?
That’s easy, he says. The third lie is, I love you.
And I’m thinking, wow! of course. That’s it!
And we have to phone in booze and cigarettes from this deli over on Lex because they’ve cut off our room service and I try to call my dad but I can never get him and I remember something about the management saying we would have to leave but we shined them on basically and after that I don’t know, I think I got hysterical at some point, maybe I tried to jump out the window, suddenly it seemed like the thing to do.
Anyway, somewhere in the depths of my delirium tremendous I have this flash of sanity that says I am in bad trouble and I remember this thing in my wallet, so at some point when old Everett is draining his toxins I dig through my purse and then my wallet and finally come up with the card, which is tucked up behind the change purse with all these napkin fragments with the names and numbers of all the boys I never called and I crawl over to the phone and call out, call this number, the last four digits spell out H-E-L-P on the dial.
I think after that I talked to my father, I’m not sure, but anyway, eventually a doctor comes over to the suite, I don’t really remember. . . .
And now I’m in a place in Minnesota under sedation dreaming the white dreams about snow falling endlessly in the North Country, making the landscape disappear, dreaming about long white rails that disappear over the horizon like railroad tracks to the stars. Like when I used to ride and was anorexic and I’d starve myself and all I would ever dream about was food. There are horses at the far end of the pasture outside my window. I watch them through the bars.
Toward the end of the endless party that landed me here I was telling the prep the story about Dangerous Dan. I had eight horses at one point, but Dangerous Dan was the best. I traveled all over the country jumping and showing and when I first saw Dan, I knew he was like no other horse. He was like a human being—so spirited and nasty he’d jump twenty feet in the air to avoid the trainer’s whip, then stop dead or hang a leg up on an easy jump, just for spite. He had perfect confirmation, like a statue of a horse dreamed by Michelangelo. My father bought him for me and he cost a fortune. Back then my father bought anything for me. I was his sweet thing.
I loved that horse. No one else could get near him, he’d try to kill them, but I used to sleep in his stall, spend hours with him every day. When he was poisoned I went into shock. They kept me on tranquilizers for a week. There was an investigation —nothing came of it. The insurance company paid off in full, but I quit riding. A few months later, Dad came into my bedroom one night. I was like, uh-oh, not this again. He buried his face in my shoulder. His cheek was wet and he smelled of booze. I’m sorry about Dangerous Dan, he said. Tell me you forgive me. He muttered something about the business and then passed out on top of me and I had to go and get Mom.
After a week in the hatch they let me use the phone. I call my dad. How are you? he says.
I don’t know why, it’s probably bullshit, but I’ve been trapped in this place with a bunch of shrink types for a week. So just for the hell of it I go, Dad, sometimes I think it would have been cheaper if you’d let me keep that horse.
He goes, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I go, Dangerous Dan. You remember what you told me that night. After he died.
He goes, I didn’t tell you any
thing.
So, okay, maybe I dreamed it. I was in bed after all, and he woke me up. Not for the first time. But just now, with these tranks they’ve got me on, I feel like I’m sleepwalking anyway and I can almost believe it never actually happened. Maybe I dreamed a lot of stuff. Stuff that I thought happened in my life. Stuff I thought I did. Stuff that was done to me. Wouldn’t that be great? I’d love to think that ninety percent of it was just dreaming.
Story of My Life Page 16