“Who says I need to get my groove back?” she deadpanned. A split second later we both laughed, and I had hope that Artemis would be okay, and that our friendship would somehow be okay, too. She held out the box and I took the labradorite necklace she had given me on the night we went to Emo’s to see FAIL BETTER! and fastened it around her neck.
“I brought one more thing,” I said. I pulled my Rider-Waite tarot deck out of my bag. “Tarot. Want to draw a card?”
Artemis shrugged. “Sure.”
I shuffled the deck and set it down in front of her. “You can think of a question you want to ask and then pull a card and the card is a kind of answer.”
“I know how tarot works,” Artemis said, suddenly sullen as a teenager. “My question is: Why the fuck am I in this place, really?” she asked. She cut the deck and lifted a card. I held my breath as she turned it over.
It was The Devil card.
A naked man and woman stand below a scary devil. They each have a chain around their neck and the devil holds the chains. They seem to be being held against their will, but a closer look reveals the chains are so loose the man and woman could just take them off if they wanted.
The Devil is a card about addiction and feeling trapped. It’s a card that can be about the wild side of sexuality, but it also reminds us that giving in to any kind of addictive pleasure can feel great in the moment, but wreak havoc and harm in the long term.
“The Devil?” Artemis said. “Fuck me. Who brings tarot cards to a mental hospital anyway?” She threw the card onto the pile, then shivered and rubbed her arms as if she had a sudden chill. She was right. What had I been thinking? I’d been sure she’d pull something cheerful like The Sun, or inspiring like The Queen of Wands. The tarot deck had clearly been an awful idea. “This place sucks,” she continued. “All the young people in here are spoiled meth-smoking brats with no sense of style.” The anger behind her words threw me.
“Artemis, why didn’t you tell me you were sick?”
She rolled her eyes. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Your name isn’t really Artemis Starla, is it?”
“Of course not,” she said. “What kind of fucking idiot would believe that was a real name?” The words echoed through my head. I felt like a sucker punched little kid who’d just found out that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny were all a giant lie made up by adults to make kids believe the world is an enchanted place where incredible things can happen, when actually it’s the opposite. I’d been in a funk for a long time, and it was meeting Artemis that helped blast me out of it. But our whole friendship had been based on a lie, and maybe all the progress I’d told myself I’d been making had been a lie, too.
I was used to Artemis being vibrant and full of energy. Always she had pushed me to be more, do more, live up to my potential. She’d had so many layers, so many secret projects. Always she surprised me—with her Sin Sation burlesque performance, where she had shone as a professional among amateurs; at the protest where, after telling me she would not show up for me she had shown up in spades, bringing an army of impeccably choreographed dancers with her. I knew her as larger than life, always positive, and now she was shriveled and mopey, and maybe even a little mean, slumped down in the vinyl chair.
“I guess just this kind of idiot,” I said quietly. We sat there for a moment in awkward silence.
“You should go,” Artemis said. “I don’t want you here. You can’t help me.”
“It’s okay. It’s just me,” I said. I understood. She didn’t want me to see her like that, vulnerable and without her glamour magic. “I’m here for you.”
“Here for me? You don’t even fucking know me.”
“I want to,” I said.
“You couldn’t understand me if you tried. I said get out of here!” Her voice was rising and there was real anger in her words. “Just leave!”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, I’ll go. But I love you. Let me know if you need anything.”
“Just go,” she said in a voice so controlled and firm that I did what she told me to do.
I didn’t cry until the elevator doors closed in front of me. But when I started sobbing I couldn’t stop, and I cried all the way home.
Now I’m home snuggling the furballs and I’m maybe down a best friend—I hate feeling powerless to help Artemis. And tomorrow I have to go to court. I am terrified. I tried to call Annie but then remembered she was at some PETA gala, so that’s when I called Nadia’s cell phone. She answered, and sounded legitimately happy to hear my voice. I guess living in an OM house where everyone is fingerbanging everyone else rids a woman of the sort of petty jealousies that would make her uncomfortable talking to her new boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend? Anyway, she put you on the phone and I asked if I get thrown back in jail after the hearing would you and Nadia watch the furballs for me, and you said of course. I can’t help but remember back to the time when one of my biggest problems was wanting to get you to move out of my house. I kind of miss those days.
Morosely,
Roxy
CHAPTER TEN
October 4, 2012
Dear Everett,
I am now drinking a cup of coffee and wearing my most conservative outfit—a pair of black slacks and my news anchor blazer (which didn’t start out as a Halloween costume. My mom actually bought it for me once when she was hoping I’d interview for a graphic design firm job. I remember being enraged at her about the whole thing and now I can’t even remember why).
The only positive aspect of having to go to court today is that it will guarantee Annie and the OMers will get back the money they put up for my bail. The last thing I want is to be some kind of mooch leech, sucking my friends (and their fellow sex cult members) financially dry. Otherwise, I’m just terrified I’m going to end up sentenced to serious jail time. While I’ve always considered myself to be relatively adaptive and resilient, I see now I am neither of those things.
And I know it sounds stupid, but I feel totally heartbroken that Artemis and I have maybe broken up. It’s like the searing pain of a boyfriend breakup except without the knowledge that I am entering a sexual desert. (But I’m in the desert already, so it seems just as bad.) Artemis was right—I was an idiot. Not for failing to realize Artemis Starla wasn’t her real name—though that seems obvious now—but for not realizing that she was mentally ill. I just thought she was a “wild and crazy” kind of crazy, not actually suffering from mania. (In retrospect, her belief the creepy plumber was trying to empty her bank accounts should have tipped me off.) The fact that she has a mental illness doesn’t make me love her one iota less, but I am worried she will keep pushing me away.
At least I still have Annie, and you, dear Everett. I’m telling myself I’ll be okay no matter what. But really I don’t believe it. Especially now that I’m unemployed and perhaps headed for a stint of jail time. Part of me wishes my parents were here so I could ask them for advice, but part of me is relieved they aren’t, as they’d probably insist on hiring me a lawyer, which I’d of course accept. Then I’d likely spend the rest of my life feeling both self-infantilized and guilty for my bad choices. But maybe guilt would be better than whatever I’ll feel in a women’s prison.
Terrified,
Roxy
October 5, 2012
Dear Everett,
Yesterday was a crazy-ass day. I swear I spend half my life being totally annoyed that Austin has overgrown itself and is bursting at the seams, and the other half feeling like it’s a tiny town where I cannot leave the house without running into someone I know but would really rather avoid.
I drove to the downtown courthouse and of course there was nowhere to park, so I circled around for fifteen minutes worried I would be late, but I finally found a meter. I practically ran into the courthouse, which was grimy and smelled like pee. The front desk person told me to go up to the courtroom on the fifth floor. It was crammed full of sad-looking, desperate people (like me, but probably without upp
er-middle-class parents) waiting to be called in front of the judge. I sat there for half an hour, wishing I hadn’t left my book in the car. I prayed to Venus to give me strength to get through the proceedings and—since she governs friendship and love—to even make the judge like me a little bit. He was quite the silver fox, I have to say. When he finally called my name, I stood up. “Present,” I called, which made him frown.
“To the bench,” he said.
I walked down the aisle and stood before him, trembling a little in spite of myself.
“You are being charged with vandalism and resisting arrest,” the judge said. “Do you have an attorney?”
“No.”
“Would you like the court to appoint you an attorney?”
Visions of some overworked, uncaring young stoner attorney unable to find employment outside of the Travis County Public Defender’s Office danced through my head. But as a deli maid, I don’t have thousands saved for a high-powered attorney. So what choice did I have? Also, I really, really, really want to be a freaking adult for once and take care of this myself, not hit my parents up for money and ask them to generally bail me out.
“Yes,” I said. “Can I just say that I’ve never been in any trouble before? And that I only resisted arrest because the cops grabbed me from behind, so I didn’t know they were cops?”
“That’s something you can discuss with your attorney,” the judge said. “You can meet with your PD at this address at two p.m.,” he said, sliding a slip of paper across the desk at me.
“PD?” I asked.
“Public defender,” the judge said. “And try to stay out of trouble on your way over there.” He smiled. Was he flirting? I’d thought he was cute but now felt a little outraged at this clear abuse of power. I barely refrained from mouthing off to him.
I drove over to the Public Defender’s Office, which was south of the river on Post Road. It looked like your typical craptastic government building. As I sat in the parking lot trying to gather the nerve to go inside, I contemplated the fact that the building was likely full of lawyers who had once had enough gumption to go to law school but whose energetic wagon must have lost a wheel along the way, leaving them stranded in this hellhole of poor people justly or unjustly charged with a wide array of unsavory crimes. I should have known the day that Artemis first assaulted me at Whole Foods that any friendship with her would likely end in this particular disaster—me sitting heartbroken in the parking lot of the Travis County Public Defender’s Office.
“Venus,” I said aloud, “please, please, please help me.” And then I climbed out of the car and went inside.
The receptionist smiled at me and seemed really friendly and competent. “Your attorney, Sam Johnson, is great,” she said.
“He is?” I asked nervously.
“The best,” she gushed. “And he’s a super nice guy. Very caring.” She nattered on as she walked me to a small, windowless room. “If you wait here he’ll be right with you,” she said. I’d remembered to bring in “A Confederacy of Dunces” and was happy for the distraction. I was actually chuckling at Ignatius’s antics with the weenie wagon when the door opened. I looked up. With his tattoo covered by a tailored blue suit and his arms full of file folders, it took me a split second to recognize the man in the doorway. Texas!
I felt out of my body, or as if I’d drifted into another, stranger reality.
“Vet Girl,” Texas said.
“Texas.” Not very witty dialogue on either of our parts, but I think we could both be excused due to the bombshell of a situation. “What are you doing here?”
“I… I guess I’m your attorney.” He sat down across from me. I was used to listening to FAIL BETTER!’s album, used to seeing Texas gazing down at me from the giant FAIL BETTER! poster at Waterloo Video. But having him so close to me again made it hard for me to breathe. “I have to apologize.” He paused as if deciding what tack to take. I held my breath, eager to hear what excuse he could possibly give for ghosting me. “Usually I review cases on my own before I meet with a client. But I had a stack of four land on my desk this morning and I haven’t had time. I was going to—”
Disaster! Not only had I been assigned a completely shit attorney, but he was a completely shit attorney who was distractingly good-looking in a suit and who wouldn’t even acknowledge he’d blown me off after our sort-of date.
“Why didn’t you text me?”
He looked honestly surprised. “I texted you three times. And then you texted me back saying, ‘Stop texting me.’ ”
“WHAT????”
Texas pulled out his phone, scrolled through his messages, and then held the phone out to me. Sure enough, there were three texts from him.
The first text said:
I HAD A GREAT TIME LAST NIGHT. I APOLOGIZE AGAIN FOR HAVING TO LEAVE SO ABRUPTLY. MY FRIEND IS GOING TO BE OKAY.
The second said:
WOULD YOU WANT TO GET TOGETHER AGAIN SOMETIME THIS WEEK?
The last one, which really broke my heart with the thought of what might have been, read:
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY. WANT TO GO TO ZILKER PARK?
And then finally a response:
VET GIRL: STOP TEXTING ME.
“Oh my Goddess! I never sent that.” I thought hard. Had I sent it drunk? Could someone have gotten ahold of my phone? “I didn’t send it!” I felt my voice rising. Then I had an idea. I looked at the number the text had come from. “That’s not my number,” I said, relieved. “My number is 512-555-8792. That’s 8793.” The realization soaked into me slowly. “Which means I accidentally put my number into your phone wrong.”
“Oh, shit,” Texas said. “My feelings were really hurt.”
“Mine too!”
We sat there for a moment as all this sunk in. Finally, Texas broke the silence.
“Let me see,” he said, opening a file folder with my name on it. He scanned the documents inside while I sat there silently, boiling with relief that I hadn’t been ghosted again and discomfort that my former crush was now my public defender. “Um… I think… Can you hang on just one moment?”
“I don’t know what else I would do,” I said, but I was concerned that Texas was more flustered than I was, given I was the one facing possible jail time.
He stood, picked up the folders, and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind him. I sat and sat and sat in the stuffy room, waiting and waiting, when finally the door opened and another guy came in. He was shorter than Texas with a close-cropped head of dark curls.
“Roxy? I’m Mitch Turner.”
“What happened to Texas?”
“I ask myself that all the time. I think when Ann Richards was governor in the 1990s, the right-wing Republican establishment realized they were going to have to really step it up—”
“No! Not the state of Texas! My lawyer. What happened to Texas, my lawyer?”
“You know Sam?”
“Oh my God, is no one in my entire life telling me the truth about their name?”
Mitch cocked his head and studied me. “So you know him?”
“Yes. But why are you calling him Sam?”
“Sam is his real name. Texas is the name he goes by when he plays out with his band.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Why?” Mitch looked uncomfortable. “It’s like his nickname. So his clients don’t go see him when he plays, which could be really awkward.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.”
“He likes to keep work and music separate, you know?”
I suddenly, and for no explicable reason, felt my face burning red with a fierce, fiery, and uncontrollable blush.
“The thing is,” Mitch continued, “there’s been a mix-up and I’m actually going to be your attorney.”
“I knew I should have hired my own lawyer,” I moaned.
“Again, I apologize,” Mitch said. “This sort of thing is highly unusual for us.” He kept talking but I couldn’t even focus on what he was saying. I was so unner
ved. Texas must have recused himself from my case. I couldn’t help but feel the bitter irony that having Venus as a planetary deity was supposed to make people like me more, not run out of the room to get away from me. It didn’t make sense, since we’d just cleared up the misunderstanding about him ghosting me.
“Would you mind if I take a minute and really read over your case?” Mitch asked.
“Go ahead,” I said. I cracked open “A Confederacy of Dunces” again. As I read, I comforted myself with the idea that Ignatius J. Reilly’s protests didn’t ever go as planned either.
When Mitch finally looked up at me, I put the book down. “Okay. You are being charged with vandalism—a Class A misdemeanor. And resisting arrest, which is a felony. The entire incident was captured on video, which is on record. Let’s watch it together, see what we’re up against.”
Mitch pulled out a laptop, logged into some PD evidence database and opened a video, which he began to play. It had been taken with an iPhone and showed the protesters marching in a circle and chanting. The presence of the burlesque girls made the protest in general look much sexier than your average anti-corporatization march. I spotted myself, carrying my sign, looking incredibly happy and kind of overwhelmed as I shouted, “Don’t give me no overpriced tights; we just want our civil rights.” (No wonder news stations were having a hard time pinpointing the point of the protest—at the time our chanting had seemed clever and passionate, but I realized it made no actual sense.) Then Artemis came busting through the door of the Lululemon yelling, “You guys need to shut the fuck up and listen!” She looked so fierce as the burlesque dancers moved into formation behind her.
“She was one of my two best friends,” I said mournfully.
“Did she die?” he asked, alarmed.
“No. We broke up,” I said.
By then Artemis and the burlesque girls were running the world with their sexy dance moves. As the song ended, the person holding the iPhone moved in for a closer shot of me taking the spray paint from Artemis’s hand—my face was clear as day in the video—and then Artemis and I stepped forward together and started spray-painting the store windows.
The Roxy Letters Page 21