by Byron Lane
Therapista says another word for sadness is love.
I was once with Kathi, shopping for clothing at some store on Third Street, and as we checked out, the clerk looked at me and said, “Happy Friday!” And I sighed and threw my head back and said, “Happy Friday!”—me expressing joy that it was the weekend, expressing joy that I was about to have two days away from Kathi Kannon—and I wondered, did she know what we were saying? Did she take insult at the Happy Friday of it all? I remember looking over at her. She was still shopping, still touching sweaters and jeans, feeling them for softness, for potential. Did she know that Fridays were happy because they meant a respite from my time with her, from her as my job? Is all of this coming into view for her? Because it’s coming into view for me.
As I walk down her hall, I exhale a few years’ worth of stress, my legs shaking, my body suddenly coming into itself—jarring my heart. What have I done? What am I doing? I remember that young and stressed kid with his short hair and tepid expression, now older, hair longer, eyes heavier. I exit Kathi Kannon’s wing, exit her orbit, despite the gravity, her gravity, her glorious pull—that mansion peppered thick with feelings and subtext. Outside of her room, through that old hallway with its art and sass, past the bar where she first served me a Coke Zero and shared a drag of her e-cigarette. This walk, it’s so different from the fun, colorful life we’ve lived up to now, such a contrast, such a journey, for both of us. I finally breathe my own breath, I finally cry, for I’m leaving it behind, I’ve left her behind, and I know I won’t go back—not like the Charlie I was before this moment. I know I can’t be that guy again. And I don’t want to be.
And in the red room, surrounded by her pillow cushions and boats—too many on the mantel, always so close to collapse—I hear her call out.
“Cockring,” she yells. I cover my mouth to keep from responding, to stifle a sob.
“Cockring!” she calls louder.
Every hair, every cell of my body turns toward her, urges me, longs for me to go to her, to run to her. MEET HER NEEDS! HEAL HER PAIN! DO NO HARM! It’s all in my mind. But in the end, in that moment, it’s not my mind but my heart that turns away, my heart that turns to something that’s even bigger than the celebrated Kathi Kannon, something even bigger than the iconic Priestess Talara. It’s my heart that turns to love, not for her or Reid or my dad or anyone else, but for myself, something that feels, finally, a little bigger than her.
“Cockring!” she yells a third time.
Against all my primal desires, I keep walking to her front door.
Then, “Charlie!” she shouts, her final gasp.
Through my wet, blurry vision and held breath, I’m thinking, Goddammit, she does know my real name.
21
In these final hours of my employment by Kathi Kannon, film icon, the house at 1245 Beverly Canyon Drive is empty and lifeless. Kathi left to run errands, leaving word with Agnes she’ll be back soon. Kathi wasn’t in her bed when I arrived to give her breakfast this morning. Her soda and cereal and meds sit warming and wasting on her bedside. There will be no special last morning moment.
In the two weeks since our pained conversation, neither Kathi nor I have brought up the issue, both of us steely in our positions, truth and honesty a salve that stains. How I longed to walk into her home in these last days and find her gone—bags packed and a note saying she’s back in the hospital or rehab or some variation signaling a change. But, alas, we’re both playing chicken, or, perhaps, we’re both emboldened to endure this heavy break.
Kathi’s business manager has sent some new assistant candidates for her to interview, but she wants no part of it. His office will do the hiring for her. They’ll play it by ear. They’ll just see how it works out. The show will go on. The roller coaster will continue without me.
It’s all come to this.
I’m alone with myself. If Therapista is right, I’m projecting my sadness onto every wall, projecting my uncertainty into every corner. I spend some of my final moments doing nothing—sitting, thinking, trying to remember the good times. This is the day I’ve been dreading for a while, maybe longer subconsciously. I’ve had many ideas about what it would be like, my departure. Would there be a party, would we have a fight, would something special mark the moment: Cake? Champagne? Crying? But it’s none of those things. So far, it’s the absolute absence of those things; it’s worse: nothing, quiet, for hours, my last moments simply hushed, in such contrast to the past few loud years. They ring in my ears, a temptation to sentimentality and paralysis that I now have no choice but to resist.
I’m thinking, my dad’s voice in my head, NEVER LEAVE A JOB UNLESS YOU HAVE ANOTHER ONE. But I have nothing lined up. No idea what’s next for me. I’m overwhelmed, sure. I’m tired and hungry and yet have no appetite, scared I’m doing the wrong thing. I’m worried I’m making a mistake, abandoning her, leaving this opportunity of a lifetime. Maybe I’m not so changed by Kathi Kannon after all. Maybe under this fancy sweater she bought me, I’m the same weak loser I was when this all started.
I’m sitting at my usual spot in the living room, leather and Mateo the Moose and me, where I’ve—tap, tap, tap—sorted hundreds, probably thousands of Kathi’s medications, though there’s no more work to be done here. The tap, tap, tap replaced by the tick, tick, tick of the clock, the countdown to my exit, quickly approaching.
Now, here, on my last day, no recusals or pardons or reprieves in our path, I kill time by looking out of Kathi Kannon’s living room window, at the estate and the life I’m leaving behind. I look at the tennis court and the avocado tree. I look at Kathi’s gate, remembering the feeling of being outside of it three years ago, all those memories ago, so desperately wanting to be inside, hungering for this new life that I now have, this skin that I’m now shedding.
And in my view of Kathi’s front yard, I see movement. I see Miss Gracie, alone, still in a robe, a scarf around her head, not dressed for public, not dressed to be out of her house, ambling up Kathi’s colorful brick path.
Miss Gracie moves slowly, with measured purpose. She’s solo; for what she has on her mind, for the strong will in her bones, for what she’s about to do, she doesn’t need Roger’s assistance.
I want to run. I want to lock the doors. This fragile old woman, how I still fear her.
I step back and Miss Gracie is out of my sight now, she’s on the porch; I can feel her moving closer to me, to the front door, until she’s standing there, like a heavenly being, a harbinger of joys, or sorrows, framed by her daughter’s address, lawn, life, forever following, cleaning up the mess, now here to fix the latest transition, if it is one.
Miss Gracie steps into the living room, into the circle of emperors, and I know what’s next. She doesn’t need to say anything. I walk to meet her, to meet this, my fate. She sits and I sit across from her, our dueling positions the same as when I first sat with her in her home down the hill.
She says, “I can’t believe you’re doing this to us, dear.”
I say, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m here in a last effort to dissuade you from leaving.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing more to say.
Miss Gracie is doing the math, sizing me up, readying herself for a scene. “Do you know why women have their period, dear?” Miss Gracie asks.
I manage a suspicious “No, ma’am.”
Miss Gracie says, “It’s because God wanted us to suffer for our children. I’ll take any suffering for my child—I have for years, and I don’t love her any less for it. I love her more for it, more than anything. What can I give you to stay? Money? Fame? Want to make movies with me? What? Anything. Kathi’s life is my life.”
But there is no stopping this bullet train, no sense telling Miss Gracie what she already knows.
I say, “I’m sorry, Miss Gracie.”
She nods rare defeat. It doesn’t suit her; she’s miscast in this role. But Miss Gracie acts as if she’s seen this all before, like she already
knows the ending. Sometimes I forget there were other assistants—other secretaries—before me.
“Can I help you walk back down?” I ask.
“No, dear,” Miss Gracie says. “As you know, downhill is the easy part.” She stands slowly, and I rise in tandem with her. Miss Gracie doesn’t look at me again as she turns and begins her journey farther and farther away from me.
I watch Miss Gracie slowly walk away, out of the house and out of my life. I rub my hand across the front of my gray cardigan, my uniform gifted to me in the first days, now slightly weathered, slightly sun-faded from all the action, retiring with me.
I sit back down under the sparkle and glory of the great room in Kathi Kannon’s mansion.
I watch the sun begin to set, and that’s when Kathi comes home, maybe from Vegas, shopping bags in hand and soon out of hand—dumped on the floor, trinkets and jewelry and clothing spilling out—things for no one in particular, and yet things, eventually, for everyone, anyone.
“Want to write today?” I ask her, a final jest.
“Not today, Cockring. Maybe tomorrow,” she says. Is it a jab? Indeed, perhaps tomorrow she will begin her writing, finally putting pen to paper, finally helping me do my job, when it’s no longer my job.
I do my time, 10:30 A.M. until 6:01 P.M.
Our world is still warmed by fading Beverly Hills daylight when I go to find Kathi, to bid an awkward, feeble farewell.
She’s on the back porch, spraying vanilla perfume all over Roy. “Stand still!” she’s shouting, as Roy bucks and twirls, desperate to escape. Kathi doesn’t look up at me as I approach.
I say, “Well, it’s time.”
Roy spins and jumps under her arms.
She says, “Okay.”
I say, “Goodbye, Kathi.”
Kathi stops, turns from Roy to me, and stands. Roy stops his jittering and he watches, too. Kathi takes a couple steps over to me and we hug. And she says softly to me, muffled by my grasp but loud and clearly enough, “Goodbye, darling.”
Darling. Could it be any worse?
“I’m not good at this kind of thing,” she says.
“It doesn’t have to be a thing. We can just make it a see you later.”
She breaks from our hug but still holds my shoulders, looking me in the eyes.
“See you later, Cockring,” she says.
“See you later,” I say into those familiar eyes, those famous eyes, the gaze decades old, the one I’ve treasured since I was a boy, my idol, my living action figure.
With that, Kathi Kannon, film icon, lets go, turns, and walks away from me and back into her home. And dutifully following her into their unknown, Roy, trotting behind her loyally and rightfully through that doorframe, now a portal out of my universe. Their exit stirs the Beverly Hills air, the smell of vanilla pooling around me as I stand utterly alone on the back porch of the home of a hero, my heroine, the nearby water fountain made of her broken plates flowing beside me, draining, leaking, emptying—even the fountain reminding me nothing lasts forever.
Assistant Bible Verse 145: You can’t win. If you leave, you’ve left them. If you stay, you become them. No goodbye is ever good, or good enough.
On my way out, I sit at my desk for the last time. I open my laptop and pull up the sacred document, the one that took what feels like lifetimes to compose—my life, Kathi’s, Roy’s; I print the Assistant Bible for the new guy, whoever her business manager eventually decides to hire, whoever Kathi finally decides to approve and amuse and bless and beguile.
The pages of memories print beside me—so coldly and emotionless those pages tumble upon each other out of the printer, a collated collection of Kathi’s likes and dislikes and preferences and peculiarities: Don’t wake her before ten; she prefers the tall glasses in the bar; never leave any pale-blue pill cases lying around. As if those delicate details can be captured in black and white. I pull the pages into my hands and tap them on the desk to make a neat stack, a final effort to leave something tidy, some mark of order. I stack the Assistant Bible on the desk. After Kathi and Roy, it’s perhaps the hardest thing to leave behind. So many lessons, so much truth, such a big part of my life, now useless to me.
I twist her keys off my key ring—her shed, her pool house, her front door.
I hang the empty purple leather backpack on the chair.
I log out of Kathi Kannon’s iCloud, her contacts, her calendar.
And in an instant, at last, painfully, no more pink dots.
22
I’m standing alone at the same bar where it started a few years ago, the Village Scribe. I’m looking at their drinks menu—Truth, Self-Esteem, Inspiration—and wondering, Where’s mine: Where’s Lost? Where’s Worried? Where’s Insecure?
I do a lap, walking around and remembering when it was all new, the smell of the alcohol, the shape of the teardrop room in the back corner. Bruce led me here, guiding me, goading me with his high fade haircut and low-level anxiety.
My feet are planted in the same place I stood when I met West and Crooner and Titanic and the lot. Jasmine stood right here with me back then, toasting my life, my newfound power nestled in the heart of a complicated, beautiful film icon. Not far from this spot, she introduced me to her father. He tried to warn me.
I’m here to meet them all for drinks, for our last work drinks, but no one is here.
I sent the email invite a week ago, my last “fwd” in their long line of “fwds.” No one wrote back. I followed up again a couple days ago. Only Jasmine responded: “Sorry, Baby. Can’t make it. Good luck. Maybe next time.”
But I know there won’t be a next time—they have no time for a mere mortal. I get it. I’m no longer Kathi’s Baby. I’ve quit her, and they’ve quit me. For them to come now would be a violation of sorts, an affront to the purpose of this entanglement at its core. For them to come now would mean it isn’t work drinks, it’s just social drinks. No one has time for that. And I accept it. I left their world. I left that prima prison, where assistants are shadows, puppets, pawns, cogs in the wheel, known without autonomy and known only by the name of their employer. Who are they to come meet me now, in my own skin, my own clothes, a stranger before them, independent and powerless? And who am I to blame them, these souls who were my support for a time, these great people, unthanked, unappreciated, absurd pseudo-soldiers who give their lives—their time, their youth—to the lives of others who are wealthier, more connected, more famous? These assistants, who put up with abuse and long hours and screaming and harassment and heartless wages and whose names will be forgotten once they’re out of the Shine; these assistants, whose real names I don’t even know.
23
SPRING
I’m at the gate.
The gate, but not that gate.
I’m parked outside a new gate now, at my new job at a film studio, wearing the same clothes I wore to the job interview, because that’s how much I care.
I lie and tell my friends I’m loving it.
I answer the stray calls on my cell from people looking for Kathi. I tell them I’ve moved on. They don’t ask where.
Kathi’s first text to me since my departure came many weeks after I left, filled with everything I could have wanted from her, a whisper that she’s well, that she’s still sassy, that I’m not an enemy.
KATHI: Is your hair still growing? Is your heart full? Are your fingernails long enough to scratch an attacker so the sweet little piggies can bring swift justice? Smooches but only on inappropriate places from Roy and me, well-bell-do-tell, I’m kissing you on the taint.
Other texts come randomly, very occasionally. Our years of traveling the globe and surviving the dramas on the home front together, of bonding and living intertwined lives, sharing sky and earth, all now stripped down to text messages sent rarely, sent in the middle of the night, when there’s little chance I’ll be awake to respond. Does she not want me to?
I see the texts early in the morning; though they’re few, they’re a reason I get
up every day—I finally found something that gets me out of bed, I guess. I blush, that familiar feeling, that heightened heat rising from my feet to my face, that old insecurity reminding me how far I’ve come. Strange, my body still having an actual reaction as if she’s in the room with me. As if I can actually see her tapping at her phone, typing out the message, smiling at herself, amusing herself with her wit and charm and filthy turn of phrase. I never respond to her texts immediately. I never respond with some flippant whip or whim. That’s her, but that’s not me. I want to craft a response that’s worthy of her, clever and charming, conveying my longing for the good times. My earnest texts—sometimes I think that’s not what she wants, sometimes I worry they’re boring.
What’s Kathi Kannon doing right now?
I still see her all the time, though we haven’t been in the same room together for all these weeks. But I see her in the woman in front of me at the grocery store, with her hair in a clip just like Kathi. I see her in ladies wearing gold leggings and smelling of some variation of Tom Ford. I see her in the haze and smoke of people enjoying their e-cigarettes, everywhere these days. I’m convinced she’s the reason they make a special announcement about not vaping on airplanes. And I see her in fan T-shirts. I see her in movie posters. I see her on book covers. I’m thinking, I used to know her.
SUMMER
Kathi was with me and Reid as we traveled to Paris, my first trip out of the country with him, and my first trip out of the country without her. But she was there in spirit. She helped my relationship with Reid grow stronger with lessons—If you want to really know someone, travel with them. Reid is the one I now sit beside on planes. But the seat he occupies will always be hers, really. She literally paid for it. I used all the airline miles I racked up with her to buy the tickets.