by Byron Lane
“You didn’t find these from me,” she says.
But I don’t accept them. “No, no,” I say. “False alarm. These are the pills I give her every day.”
Agnes pulls her arm back, brings the pillbox close to her chest. She looks down at it and, almost as if confused how to open it, her elderly, fragile fingers search for grooves, and she pops the container open. She extends her arm again. I reach out my cupped hand. Agnes pours out the contents of the pill case. Tiny white circular pills I don’t recognize drop onto my palm.
“What are they?” I ask.
Agnes takes a breath, considers her words carefully. “Not vegetables,” she says.
I say to myself, “Fuck.”
Agnes puts the empty pill case on the vanity. She looks down at the floor and slowly walks away. She says quietly as she passes me, “She keeps two. The pill case you give her every day and this one she has in her purse. I suppose she thinks your pill case is the one spot you won’t think to look.”
Agnes leaves me and I stand alone, feeling like a clown who has been played, angry at a reveal of corruption levied upon my innocent system of giving Kathi her daily meds. Indeed, I’ve seen a stray pill case around the house, in her nightstand, in her purse. And Agnes is right, and Kathi is right: I don’t give them much thought; I never open them to check exactly what’s inside, to see if there is competition.
I feel a sizzling inside me, a rage and profound disappointment. When my mother died, I wanted to scorch the earth. Now that same feeling is back. I want to throw the pills across the bathroom, to see them smash on the wall and scatter on the floor, these bits of poison and waste. Therapista says I have a problem accessing my anger. Therapista says holding in feelings is only a temporary fix. Therapista says all that fury has to come out eventually.
I walk to the toilet. I dump the pills into the water. The sound is pretty, a couple dozen little splashes that sound like a second’s worth of the life of Kathi’s fountain outside, the one she made from smashed plates and garbage. So pretty, that sound, these pills, so innocent, so dangerous.
I flush and watch a smattering of problems go away.
“What are you doing, Cockring?” Kathi asks, now behind me, surprised to find me in her bathroom.
“I’m watching you,” I say.
Kathi walks close to me. “I’m a movie star, darling. Who isn’t?”
* * *
I take a shower and try to wash the unsuccesses of the day off of my skin, to let the hot water spray my shoulders, warming the muscles tense and taut from facing Kathi, and to watch it all go down the drain, no longer my problem—not tonight, anyway.
DREW: What’s up? Sorry out of touch. I’ll explain. Hang?
Finally! At least I have Drew. He’s on his way over for a long-overdue date and catch-up. And I’m looking forward to downloading about Kathi Kannon.
I defrost some salmon fillets. I cut some green beans. I prepare for our date, just a quiet night taking up some space in my apartment, pillows and blankets on the floor, Netflix streaming on the TV. I cover Mom’s boxes with a sheet, because class and decor.
I’m having a good hair day for a change. I brush my teeth. I change my sheets.
Drew is parking, my handsome guy.
Drew is arriving, my pal.
Drew is crying, my pain.
Drew, standing in my apartment, is holding the plant I left on his doorstep, in its cute and perfect little pot. He’s handing it back to me. And I take it.
“It’s not you it’s me and blah blah blah,” Drew says. He actually says the “blah blah blah” part. “I’m just not ready to be in a relationship,” he says. “I’m sorry, pal. I’m sorry.”
I look down at the little tree, my new memento of failure and rejection.
I’m angry but disarmed by his emotion. Am I supposed to plead with him? To negotiate this thing back into being? Sadly, I used up all my tears with Kathi.
“Is my job the problem?” I ask.
“No, no. It’s not something I can explain. I’m sorry.”
I can feel myself closing some doors, shutting down some feelings about relationships and partners and dumb fucking nicknames.
And as Drew leaves, I close the door, lock it, walk to the kitchen, and I throw our little sapling in the trash. I sense the beginning of resentment toward Kathi, a job—a lifestyle—that surely made it harder to maintain my thing with Drew. As the baby tree hits the bottom of the trash can, I hear the vase crack.
I delete my upcoming dates with Drew from my calendar. More blue dots gone.
Therapista says I should stay friends with Drew.
Therapista says I need to have a life outside of Kathi Kannon.
Therapista can go fuck herself.
* * *
Hey, Siri, my friend Jesse is throwing a Christmas party. Behind his back we call him Lenny from Of Mice and Men, because Jesse is very rough and handsy. He loves to get loud and narrate the slightest party happening, introduce this guy to that one, and announce arrivals. “This is Charlie,” Jesse says, grabbing my wrist. I’m arriving single, but I’m not really solo. She is always with me, more or less.
“Charlie works for Kathi Kannon.”
I’ve heard him do this before; I’ve heard others do it. It works. Everyone turns. I feel important. One minute I’m smelling the armpit of Kathi Kannon’s blouse to see if it’s dirty and the next I’m the hottest guy in the room.
The rest of the night, I try to mix and mingle, looking for my next so-called boyfriend. Everyone I meet asks the same question:
“How’s Kathi Kannon?”
“How’s Kathi Kannon?”
“How’s Kathi Kannon?”
I get that question a lot, all the time, everywhere, from everyone. And as I stand there, chatting, sharing my usual stories, I’m thinking: How’s Kathi Kannon? I’m thinking, Interesting that no one asks me, “How are you?” I’m thinking, No one ever asks about me.
But I switch into autopilot, mentally donning the familiar costume of humble assistant, wearing the fabric and illusion of my restless, fabulous life. I stand at the table of Jesse’s homemade Christmas-tree cookies and mistletoe punch and force a smile and share. “Kathi Kannon is great,” I tell this guy and that. “Sure, I work for her, it’s cool.” I tell them that I have Bette Midler’s cell-phone number, that I have a screenshot of a text message from Helena Bonham Carter that says “have her call me pimple. I mean please.” I show my—I mean, our—calendar.
“The blue dots are my appointments,” I say, “and the pink dots are her appointments.” It rolls out of my mouth like an actor with lines. I’ve said it a thousand times to a thousand different people, bragging, preening. I know the desired effect like a stand-up comedian knows which jokes kill. But this time—
“Wait,” Jesse says. “There are no blue dots.”
I grab my phone back and look.
Assistant Bible Verse 138: It takes a special person to be a personal assistant. It takes a person willing to yield. To pause their own life. To make their life secondary. To miss dates and special occasions because your boss at the last minute wants you to pick up dinner, or travel with them to Bhutan.
My phone in hand, I’m looking at the day, the week, the month, the year—and the years—ahead. There are no blue dots. There is no me. There is only her.
So much destruction.
14
Jasmine is hosting a round of work drinks that’s way more drinks than work. Her dad is in town, an oncologist from Minnesota who’s pounding draft beers and leaning forward to show how much he cares, how much he’s really listening to our celebrity stories. Jasmine jumps up and rushes over when she sees me enter.
“Hi, enabler,” Jasmine says jokingly, handing me my drink, Truth, cold and colorful and, tonight, bitter.
“Not funny,” I say.
“Bruce can’t make it,” she says. “He’s working late to get his promotion.”
“Our loss,” I say as I take a big gulp
of the booze. Jasmine puts her arm around me and guides me to her father. “Please tell my dad all the best stories.”
As we approach, Titanic is already in the midst of an epic tale. “My boss’s gate wouldn’t open, because he hit it with his Porsche,” he says, detailing his household’s emergency last night. “It was two in the morning and I had to rush over, find an emergency number for the gate repairman, and he couldn’t come until the next day, so I had to then wait outside the house all night to make sure no one snuck onto the unsecured property.”
“You had to wait out there all night? What’s on that property that’s so valuable?” Jasmine’s father asks.
“A big ego,” Titanic says, to great laughter from Jasmine’s father, the innocent Minnesotan, and polite laughter from the rest of us—it’s not funny when you know it could happen to you.
I take another healthy dose of Truth. I’m thinking, sitting here with these guys, at this late hour, our entertaining a man who could—in some flip universe—be my own father leaves me fucking parched. I signal for a second drink.
“The gate repairman didn’t get there until ten A.M.,” Titanic says, “and I’m still in my pajamas and then I had to go do the grocery shopping.”
“Wait,” Jasmine’s father says, “you couldn’t even go home to change?”
“No,” Titanic says. With his back to the sconce, his face is in shadow, hiding his blemishes, and he looks handsome, fragile. “I mean, I could, but here’s the thing: I could have hired a security guard to come stand out there all night instead of me, but how long would that take? An hour to find a security company, a couple hours to connect the company with the business manager to arrange payment, a few hours waiting for the poor security sap to arrive at the house, have him sign an NDA, and on and on. And then I can’t skip the grocery because it’s a Tuesday and the chef comes on Tuesday, and if I don’t go to the grocery, there won’t be any fresh lettuce for him to make salads.”
“He can’t pick up some lettuce on his way?” her father asks, kindly, ignorantly.
“Negative,” Titanic says. “Don’t be silly. My boss only eats the organic living butter lettuce from Lassens, and the chef only shops at Whole Foods.”
“Assisting is the worst,” West says drunkenly.
“The worst,” Crooner confirms.
I rattle the ice cubes in my little glass and signal the bartender for a third drink as the mostly familiar faces at the table all turn and look at me, cueing me to add my nugget to their storied heap. I’m quiet for a beat too long.
“Who do you work for?” Jasmine’s dad asks me, leaning forward again, into my space, seemingly eager to hear what I have to say, a gentle smile on his lips, a living cliché of a warm father engaging with his daughter’s friends.
The bartender arrives in a blink and I take a sip. I eye the faces ready to swallow some of my usual stories, but the easy crowd-pleasers don’t pop to mind; nothing pops to mind.
I open my mouth to speak to Jasmine’s dad, and I’m feeling like a child again, some kind of young student facing a favorite teacher, desperate to impress him. In a strange way he does remind me of my own father—his advancing age, his cellular vulnerability—but he’s a shadow of my father, a faulty copy, for the qualities defining this guy—kindness, curiosity—are absent from mine. My dad would never, and has never, traveled from Perris, Louisiana, to see me in Los Angeles. The suggestion he would ever want to meet or engage with my friends is laughable—even more absurd that he would want to entertain someone I’m dating, or was dating, like sweet Drew. My father would never listen to me and my stories about work with curiosity and care. He’d never reserve judgment or opinion. His reactions would be swift and brutal. His disgust would be immediate and pervasive, starting first in his eyes and spreading to his forehead, the squinting, the peering down and into me. Then his cheeks rise and his mouth grimaces; he turns away from me—he degrades me as not even worthy of his countenance. His mouth opens and he spits some rash opinion or worse—
DON’T YOU DARE! I hear my father screaming at me, so vividly, as if it was yesterday. DON’T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT WHAT GOES ON IN THIS FAMILY!
Or, in that family, the Kathi Kannon family?
I’m thinking, Maybe don’t talk about Kathi Kannon anymore.
I take another sip of my drink. Another. Another. I smile coyly at Jasmine’s father.
DON’T YOU DARE!
I think of how to rid myself of Dad’s curse, the aftertaste of my childhood, Dad’s monologues not so easily dismissed.
As my fellow assistants spill the beans on their employers’ lives, alcohol swirling in my mind, I hear my father screaming at me not to speak out, not to share secrets, not to trust these people with Kathi’s life. My dad’s voice in me: Who is Jasmine? Do I even know any of these people? Who is her father? Who is this guy asking me these questions? Do I know him? Do I know any of them well enough to trust them with stories harvested from my livelihood?
“Well?” Jasmine’s dad asks, turning back to me, leaning closer to me.
DON’T YOU DARE! surges the shout of my father, some revulsion reaction inside me, making me distrust—no, hate—this man in front of me, the things I want to tell him, the things I want to tell my real father.
And I drink.
The first time my father yelled “DON’T YOU DARE!” to me, Mom was still alive, sitting quietly with me in the living room while he railed, angry that I had mentioned to a neighbor that we couldn’t afford a family vacation. “WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS FAMILY STAYS IN THIS FAMILY! MY BUSINESS IS NO ONE ELSE’S BUSINESS!”
I get it now, looking back at that one moment of many, realizing his humiliation, his reaction. But I now also understand this is the language of an abuser, someone who fears truth, someone who harbors shame. And at what cost? Rage because of economics and employment and assemblage of coin that’s more or less out of his control? Therapista says boundaries are an act of selfishness, that the fewer our boundaries, the more honest we are, the more we all see one another, the more united we become, that sharing our secrets is true intimacy. But I wonder if my father could convince her otherwise—his powerful voice and throbbing jugular make very convincing arguments. His point lives inside me, seared there, following me and defining and occupying the voices, the home of my childhood, of my adult apartments, of my current employment.
“Charlie must be feeling shy,” Jasmine says, shooing away my silence.
“No,” I say, shaking my head, scrunching my toes inside my shoes, shoving my glasses back on my face, clenching my stomach tight, darting my eyes to the bartender, waving to get his attention, and shouting to him, “Could I get another drink over here, please?”
“Slow down, turbo,” West jokes. I laugh along with her, painfully fake and slow.
I turn to Jasmine’s dad. “I work for Kathi Kannon,” I say. “Star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Worst Dressed list,” I mutter, my familiar quip, always popular at parties, first dates, jury duty. I add, “I help her. I love her.”
“I love her mom,” Jasmine’s dad says. “Have you met Gracie Gold?”
“It’s ‘Miss Gracie,’” I correct him as the bartender brings over my fourth drink. I want to grab it out of reflex, like the cool guy in a movie, like some basic popcorn flick set on a college campus where I’m wearing a tweed sport coat and we’re all chatting about something—maybe poetry—and the bartender brings me more Truth and I’m in the middle of a punch line and just before I deliver it, I swoop to the bar and grab my new glass and take a sip and then, boom! Punch line! Laughter! Praise!
But I snap out of my daydream and look down at the full drink already in my hand, to the new one now on the counter across from me, a reminder that I’m moving too fast, acting too thirsty, getting a tad drunk.
“Kathi’s been in the news lately, no?” Jasmine asks, prompts.
“None of that’s true. They’re gonna publish a retraction. Honestly, Kathi is great,” I say, eyeing my drink,
putting it down on the bar, retreating from it. “Kathi and Miss Gracie are really great. I have no complaints.”
“Oh, please,” Crooner says.
“When we first met Charlie,” Jasmine says, “he was a bit of a chicken with his head cut off. But he’s getting the hang of it all now. He even dresses better.” She nods to my body and my Kathi Kannon cardigan, shirt, pants, belt, shoes.
“I’m wearing clothes that Kathi bought for me,” I say, adding playfully, “She’s remaking me in her image and likeness.”
“Yikes, be careful,” Jasmine’s dad says.
My head cocks, some instant and immediate reflex that surprises me, though nothing has ever felt more natural than to defend Kathi. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” he says. “You know, just, she is an admitted drug addict, right?”
My eyes open wide and I take stock of the room. Jasmine avoids eye contact, and the silence reminds me I’m alone; I’m as alone as Kathi Kannon. “She is not a drug addict. How dare you?”
“She has said publicly over and over she’s a drug addict,” he says.
“Dad—” Jasmine says, trying to stop the train.
“She’s not a fucking drug addict now!” I yell. I stand. “She’s trying so, so hard, okay? You don’t know her! You don’t know how hard it is!”
“Baby,” Jasmine says kindly. “Calm down. Have a seat.”
But I continue, leaning toward Jasmine’s dad. “Kathi Kannon is a fucking human being! Your life is so perfect? Fuck you and fuck you twice again.”
“Charlie!” Jasmine says.
“Sorry, man,” Jasmine’s dad says. “I’m just saying be careful when someone wants to change you. What if you don’t want to change?”
I step slightly toward him. I glance at my two drinks sweating on the bar together, both of them looking so delicious and so detrimental, both of their fates already imagined inside me, both of them going to waste, me calling my own limit, making a sober choice—as sober as possible—to shut up and keep Kathi’s business Kathi’s business.