by Byron Lane
“Who told you there’s a right person?”
“Therapista says—”
“Who the fuck is Therapista?” she asks. “What the fuck kind of name is that?”
“Therapista, my therapist—”
“Oh, Jesus,” she says. “Never listen to them. Therapy is not about you, it’s about them. They’re giving advice to themselves. You are your best teacher. Want some advice from a woman old enough to be your sexual abuser?”
I say, “Absolutely.”
“Life only exists in your mind. Everything you see, everything you hear, all of it, it goes through your eyes and ears and is processed by your mind, and the mind can lie, can be sick, can get it wrong.”
I say, “Wow,” and then, “That’s so wise,” and then, “What does that mean?”
“And do you want to hear my advice about relationships?” Kathi asks.
I nod. I’ll take all the advice I can get.
She cups a hand in front of her face as if she’s holding something delicate, opens her mouth, and gives an air blowjob to a huge cock, enormous imaginary balls resting in her other palm.
I stare at her a few seconds. She’s holding in her laughter.
“Is that the advice?” I ask.
She cracks herself up and nods yes.
“How’s your tooth?” I ask pointedly.
Still giggling at herself, she says, “It really hurts, Cockring.”
“You need a dentist?”
Laughing, she nods yes.
* * *
Hey, Siri, the timeshare in Bali has it all: private swimming pools, outdoor showers, an on-call dentist.
This is a teaching moment.
Assistant Bible Verse 131: The personal assistant will never let their celebrity consult with a doctor alone. The celebrity will either give too much or get too much.
A chauffeur drives us to a tiny dental office that looks more like a preschool. While the dentist takes some x-rays, I hear him talking to Kathi about things like “problem areas” and “decay” and “prior drug use.”
The next time you see a star on the red carpet, remember you never know what’s going on inside their mouth.
While Kathi is getting her dental work done, I turn to my own life and start to email Drew. The stakes with him seem higher the farther away I get, perhaps because the more the miles, the more the time zones, the weirder the cell-phone carriers, the less and less control I feel I have—or, rather, the illusion of control. The thought lingers, of course, that if I don’t make it happen, it never will. So I carry on.
Hi, Drew. Hope you had a good visit with your family and they loved seeing you in Los Angeles. Maybe it’s good I didn’t meet them yet—less pressure to introduce you to my insane father. Ha! Xo C
Hey, pal! My parents loved hearing about you and your work stories! Missing your face. And your entire body. I’d love to meet your dad. I can get some tips about unbanking. LOL. Happy travels.—Drew
I feel the opposite of Kathi’s tooth pain, my body radiating with excitement, my body heat rising so much, blood pumping with such ferocity that it feels like my heart has new marching orders, to exalt this beat, carry this torch, dance this song forever.
About an hour later, and the dentist rips off his exam gloves and stands over Kathi. She sits up and wiggles her jaw.
“Good as new,” he says.
“Not really,” Kathi grumbles, spitting.
I pat him on the back and usher him away from Kathi.
“So, she was really hurting?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Damaged filling. No problem now.”
I lean forward to hug him with relief, appreciation, but he backs away.
“What pain medications is Kathi allowed to take?” he asks.
My job responsibilities include managing her money, managing her medications, managing her addiction.
“What’s the least addictive thing you can give her? She’s an addict.”
“Recovering!” Kathi yells from across the room; her hearing has never been better. “Recovering addict!” She starts to walk over to us.
The dentist asks, “What has she safely taken in the past?”
I say, “Lemme find out.” I’m holding her purse, her emergency-contact numbers, my integrity. I open Safari on my phone. The great thing about having a celebrity boss is that almost everything is online. Birth dates, career lows, drug history.
Assistant Bible Verse 132: Get the biggest international data plan possible for your cell phone. You’re gonna need it. Consider maps, consider emails, consider pulling up a fifty-eight-year-old’s medical history on the Cedars hospital website.
I’m scanning the Web for Kathi’s prescription history, but the dentist is ahead of me. He hands me a full bottle of pills to get us through the trip.
“Here,” he says. “Just take these as needed.”
“What are they?” Kathi asks.
“Tylenol with codeine.” He hands them to me.
“Cockring, give me those,” Kathi says, wiping her mouth and ripping the paper bib from her chest, approaching me like a star to her mark. “I know what I’m doing. Believe me.”
She reaches for the pill bottle, but I resist handing them over. “I’m nervous about this. Considering everything. Miss Gracie says you’ve overdosed several times.”
“No. That’s crazy,” Kathi says, keeping eye contact, a steady gaze, a movie scene.
The dentist watches like we’re a comedy act.
“Why would Miss Gracie lie to me about your drug overdoses?”
“She’s not lying. She’s joking.” Kathi reaches for the pills again. I pull away again.
“She’s joking about your drug overdoses?” I ask.
“They were hilarious. You had to be there. And that’s all years ago. Way behind me.”
“It didn’t seem like a joke when she said you nearly died. Repeatedly.”
“Miss Gracie is over eighty,” Kathi says. “Her memory is severely affected by age. And chardonnay. It never happened like that.”
“She said you’d say that. That you’d hardly remember because you were so out of it.”
“I’m not dead, am I?” Kathi asks.
“No.”
“So I must know what I’ve been doing these last many decades and counting.”
“Well—”
“Darling,” Kathi says, trying to soothe me.
Darling. That word again.
“Don’t worry,” she says, turning to the dentist. “Pills don’t make you high if you’re in pain. Right, Doctor?”
“I love your movies,” he says.
I’m thinking, Pfft.
Kathi turns back to me. “See?” she says, taking the pill bottle and slipping out of the dentist’s office like a warm knife through a stick of butter, me following behind, like that gross waxy paper that sticks of butter come wrapped in.
Riding back to the timeshare, I stare at Kathi, still looking for signs of a lie, signs that this actress might be acting. But there were x-rays and a doctor. I have no evidence, only bias based on Miss Gracie’s paranoia and my desire to keep Kathi alive because I love her, my paycheck, and my newfound panache.
Kathi casually stuffs the pain pills in her purse along with whatever other mess she’s collected earlier in the day, the week, the year: loose change, paperclips, oatmeal—all stuff I’ll fish out and sort and discard later.
She sees me staring at her. Her eyebrows go up: What are you looking at?
I just smile. What do I know for sure?
Bali is a blur outside our car windows.
Snap: The gorgeous white-sand beach.
Snap: A pack of rabid dogs.
Snap: An entire family of five riding on one rickety Vespa.
“These people are us,” Kathi says, staring out as Bali spins past.
She taps the pills in her purse and they rattle.
“Cockring,” Kathi says, “I give you an A-plus for getting these meds.”
My heart explodes. A-plus.
I’m thinking, Dreams come true.
I’m thinking, I’m the best.
I’m thinking, Did I just sell my soul?
Kathi looks at me. She says, “I’m bored.”
* * *
Snap: We fed bananas to monkeys.
Snap: We got mud baths at an ancient bath.
Snap: We met a wise elderly shaman who cleansed my aura but only half of Kathi’s, because in the middle of the ceremony his cell phone rang and he had to take the call—his ringtone was “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
After a long day of privileged adventure, there’s nothing like the warm lighting, huge bath, and expensive linens of a five-star luxury timeshare in Bali to remind you that you’re all alone, no one to kiss in the dim lights, no one to share the tub with you, no one sleeping by your side. In bed, I look out the windows at the lush greenery swaying gently in the soft lighting, framed by the clear black sky. I tug at the covers, trying to bunch them around my body, my nest of pampering and platitude. The moments before I fall asleep are precious seconds for me to gift myself the illusion that I’m being cared for instead of just doing all the caring. Longing for someone to be there for me, I pop open an email to my guy.
Dear Drew, Bali is enchanting. We fed bananas to monkeys. The poor monkeys. Some of them have open sores. Hope I don’t have some disease now. Cheers! Leaving here soon. Xo C
Dear Oak, I wanna kiss all over your monkey-diseased body! Hurry home! Have fun! Smoochfest.—Drew
P.S. I can’t believe I wrote “DEAR OAK!” I just noticed my phone autocorrected the word “Pal” to “Oak”! Guess your new nickname is Oak! Thanks, iPhone!—Drew
Oak. That thick and stately tree, symbolic of both strength and beauty. I feel a certain ownership of the species, having grown up in New Orleans, where great oaks are a sign of wealth, lining St. Charles Avenue, framing the mansions that sit under their great shade. Curly clumps of gray moss dangle from the branches like fresh-permed hair of old witches, adorning the foliage with a magic that’s both frightening and hallowed. Oak. Better than Frodo, Baby, and Cockring.
Maybe Drew is feeling what I’m feeling, a fragility underscored by the time and space between us. Maybe Drew is signaling his hope for something solid to be ours. Maybe Drew or, at least, maybe his phone.
* * *
“I hope we survive Australia,” Kathi says playfully, as our plane touches down in Sydney in the middle of the night. We go directly to the Four Seasons. Relaxing is exhausting. Our ride there feels like we could be anywhere, darkness in all directions.
“Reservation for Aurora Borealis,” I say to the front-desk clerk.
Keys in hand, I open Kathi’s hotel room door and let her go in first. She instantly makes a mess, rummaging through the drink fridge and candy bar, cracking open a can of Coke Zero, and emptying her purse on the floor, looking for her hairbrush or her e-cigarettes. She opens her suitcase and hunts for the scarves to drape over the lamps; the Christmas lights get tossed about.
I look out of the window.
Snap: I take a picture of the Sydney Opera House. I’ll email everyone in the morning: “How cool is this view?”
I say, “Good night.”
She says, “Good night, Cockring.”
Before I go to bed each night, I work out a little. I use the hotel gym sometimes, but I also pack an exercise ball, which I inflate with a small battery-powered air-mattress pump. I’m keeping my core tight. I do push-ups and triceps dips on the bed. Fitness has found a place in my life where there was not any before. My diet has gone from fast food to gourmet room service. My hair is getting longer and my waist is getting smaller. I’m decked in winter cashmere or summer couture, depending on our time zone. I look at myself in the hotel bathroom infinity mirror. A million versions of myself, so different from the days of newswriting and no sleep and suicidal confusion. I see a million lives, where it seems a short time ago, there was barely even one.
Dear Drew … Sorry to miss your birthday. Things have been hectic but I have so many great stories to share with you. How’s your new screenplay coming? How did your meeting with the agent turn out? Wish I was there to hear all this in person. Xo … “Oak”
I’m becoming friends with the send button, its crisp blue letters on my iPhone less and less intimidating when I write to Him, to Drew. How careful I used to be with my words and punctuation and pronouncements in the early days of our dalliance. And now I’m just getting the message out, trusting the subtext, if any, and counting the moments until he writes back, holding my breath, turning blue in the most marvelous, longing, childlike way.
* * *
I’m opening my hotel room door, my purple backpack in hand, the morning’s cold soda ready for her, about to deliver it to her room and start a new day, and I smell smoke in the hallway. It’s a cigarette in a no-smoking hotel. I have an idea who’s breaking the rules.
I rush down the hall, the carpet absorbing my impact; it feels like I’m running with sponges in my shoes, running in quicksand.
“Good morning,” I say loudly, smoke twisting in cinematic swirls as I open and close Kathi’s door. Her room is a hotbox.
Her television is on, her head slouched to the side—as if asleep—a lit cigarette in her hand. There’s a small burn mark on the comforter. All these people in the hotel have no idea how close they are to a film icon who almost killed them. From one degree of separation to 451.
I watch her for a couple beats. Sometimes, before I wake her, I wonder what I’ll do if she won’t stir. If she’s dead. If I’m ever in a real-life nightmare. Isn’t this how they—those so-called “assistants”—always find their celebrities? Doesn’t TMZ document the demise of whomever—Prince, Elvis, Whitney—with some story about how they were late for lunch or didn’t answer a call and the assistant goes to find them and, bam, they’re found “unresponsive”? Remember the next time someone thinks this job is glamorous, assistants are the ones who have to deal with their boss’s dead body.
I reach to take the cigarette from her fingers and she immediately moves, bringing it up to her mouth, taking a breath, as if she was a TV show on pause and I hit the play button. As she exhales, before I can say a word, she doesn’t skip a beat: “Cockring, was your stool black this morning?”
I give my usual response: raised eyebrows and leaning my head forward toward her as if to say, Excuse me, though I don’t say it, not aloud.
“Mine was,” she says. “Black. Or a dark gray. A Spalding Gray.” She chuckles at her own joke, and I smile, too. There’s not another human being on the planet like her, and I’m the luckiest voyeur on earth, unless she kills us all in a five-alarm fire.
“You could have burned the hotel down falling asleep with that cigarette.”
“What cigarette?” she says, pulling it to her mouth and taking its last breath. She snuffs it in a hotel glass with other butts soaking in an inch of old, watered-down Coke Zero.
“And where did you get cigarettes?” I ask.
Kathi shrugs.
“How’s your tooth?”
“Better,” she says.
I begin my usual routine. Tidying the room. Removing the wrappers of candy she’s eaten during the night and stuffed in shame between the headboard and the wall. Wiping off the wet rings from her glass of soda, which are slowly staining, ruining the hotel furniture, leaving her mark everywhere she goes, like a child writing in wet cement. On the nightstand, I place her fresh new glass of Coke Zero right beside the pill bottle we got from the dentist. Is it less full? She sees me eyeing it, studying it, calculating its contents.
“Am I still famous?” Kathi asks.
“You’re a sensation. Did you take your meds today?”
“Yes, Cockring.”
“Would you like to write today?”
“No, Cockring. We’re on vacation. Let’s go shopping. Where’s the cash?”
I turn to my purple leather backpack and rummage through the thousands of dol
lars of vegetable money Miss Gracie entrusted to my care.
“How much cash do you want today?” I ask.
Kathi holds up her fingers as if she’s measuring: two inches, three inches, one inch. “About this much,” she says, a wicked smile on her lips.
I’m thinking, Miss Gracie didn’t account for all this.
Kathi grabs her fresh glass of soda and goes into the bathroom. As the door clicks shut, I notice the bottle of pills is no longer on her nightstand.
If you want to really know someone …
Suddenly the bathroom door swings open and she sticks her head out and we stare at each other. “Are you monitoring me?!”
“Yes.”
“Here,” she says, tossing me the bottle of painkillers. “Then you be in charge. You be my pharmacy. I’m due for my next one in six hours.”
She goes back in the bathroom and slams the door. I shake the pill bottle, victorious, proud of her, and put it in my bag.
Dear Drew, hope to be home soon. How are things with you? Haven’t heard from you in a while. Have you been getting my pics? Xo—Oak
Spiraling is the wrong word, for I’m not quite spinning hopelessly out of control as much as I’m steadying myself for the folly of thinking something’s wrong. Surely there’s been a glitch. Surely Drew’s emails to me have just gone to a spam folder or have been lost in the ether, the in-between where memories and hopes and forget-me-nots are lost, accidentally misshelved in the library of living. I’ll laugh about this with him, this mistake of me not receiving his emails, of me panicked he’s no longer interested. He’ll tell the story and I’ll laugh. And we’ll be at brunch holding hands under the table and his friends will drink in his retelling and we’ll laugh anew at this hilarious mistake where he didn’t write me for weeks and I thought he was ghosting me and the whole time he’s wondering why I’m the one not writing him back. Oh, the glee of love, of trying to love. Love?
* * *
This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, or at the mall, which isn’t much different. At least a mall in Australia is more exotic than one back home.