The Roxy Letters

by Mary Pauline Lowry

  The fact that Rooster Boy (Tim) and Shaved Head Guy (Mario) were actually really nice helped a little, but choking down that breakfast sandwich was one of the most repulsive things I’ve ever done.

  Afterward, we sat in a main lounge full of couches and recliners as the coordinators called us one by one back into a room like a doctor’s office, gave us each a little cup of pills, and watched as we swallowed them. Then we all had to go back into the cafeteria and sit at the tables again. I brought a drawing pad and a pen, but almost no one else had anything with them to read or do. By the time I sat down, the drug was kicking in. I felt floaty and calm and then just incredibly sleepy. I lay my head down on the table, and even though it was a cold, hard cafeteria table, I was so doped up it felt sort of cozy and wonderful. I could get into this study, really. The food was hell, but getting stuffed full of opioids and napping was not going to be so bad.

  SMACK!!!!! A noise like a gunshot sounded almost inside my head. I sat bolt upright. Beside me Melanie stood holding a ruler she must have slammed down on the table right next to my ear. “No sleeping,” she said. “We are minimizing variability by having all patients remain awake during the day.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” I slurred.

  “No, ma’am. I am not,” she said.

  “Don’t calls me ‘ma’am.’ Ornly my mom calls me ‘ma’am’ when she’s mad. Nor you. You’re nor my morm,” I said.

  So I had to sit there at the table for hours, too tired and drugged to read or draw or really even talk, all my energy going toward battling sleep, knowing that if I succumbed for even a moment I’d be awoken with the fiery crack of Melanie’s ruler hitting the table inches from my skull. It. Was. Literally. Hell.

  For lunch, I gagged down a hamburger and soggy fries. After lunch we each received another dose of the opioid and spent a long afternoon sitting at the cafeteria tables. I tried to draw all of us in Dante’s sixth circle of hell but was so sleepy I couldn’t focus on dragging my pen across the paper. There is something particularly horrible about being doped up and ready to blissfully nod off but then not be allowed to do so. Every little while a clinical-trial participant would give in to the narcoleptic effects of the drug and then the ruler would come slamming down, causing all of us to jump. Tim and Mario played Rock Paper Scissors for hours as it was the only game simple enough to follow when stoned stupid on painkillers. Luckily I was too fucked up to consider what the drug might be doing to my system, or what the food was doing to my vegan morals. For dinner, we ate steak fingers (gag!) and institutionalized green beans from a can.

  Last night I lay in bed and cried with sadness and shame. “It’s okay,” my roommate said. “I’ve heard hardly anyone has to get rushed to the emergency room during opioid studies, so there’s nothing to be afraid of. I cried through my whole first study, too, but that’s because whatever drug they gave us made me have stabbing liver pains. You’d be surprised what you can get used to, though. By your second or third drug trial, none of this will seem so scary.”

  Hopefully the long-term side effects of the opioids will not be terrible. But I haven’t pooped since I got here. The meat/opioid combo has caused my digestive system to go on strike. Only twenty minutes until Nurse Robo-Ratchet calls us for our high-fat breakfast and then loads us back up with opioids and refuses to let us nap.

  I am a failed artist. Single. Unemployed. I have had a falling-out with one of my very best friends—the woman who brought light and joy back into my previously stagnant life. I have sold out my vegan values and my body to pay off court fines in an effort at “maturity” and “responsibility.” Hopefully this is as low as this story will go.

  Mired in a dark night of the soul,

  Roxy

  October 14, 2012

  Dear Everett,

  Last night Tim and Mario and I watched “Point Break” again. Mario argued that Keanu Reeves’s stiff acting made the film, while I argued that it almost ruined it. Only Patrick Swayze (as Bodhi) carried the thing. You could give him the shittiest lines in the world—“I could never hold a knife to Tyler’s throat. She was my woman. We shared time.”—and he would turn them into gold. But we all agreed the last line of the film was dazzlingly bad. FBI agent Johnny Utah catches up to Bodhi at Bells Beach, Australia, as a storm rages and “waves of the century” form. Instead of arresting Bodhi and taking him to jail, where he would surely die from the unhealthy stifling of his testosterone-fueled longing for adrenaline and adventure, Johnny Utah lets Bodhi go out into the sixty-foot waves and fulfill his dream of surfing to his death, thereby paying the ultimate price for the ultimate rush. “Vaya con Dios,” Johnny Utah says as he lets Bodhi go, in what could be the worst example of a Chinese Hawaiian English American speaking Spanish in the history of film.

  In PharmaTrial we are the opposite of the “Point Break” adrenaline junkies. We aren’t taking life-threatening risks that make us feel truly alive. Rather, we are being doped up with a drug that—though possibly life-threatening—makes us feel nothing but sleepy. (If it kills us, it will be years from now, and slowly.) If we die of anything here in PharmaTrial, it will be boredom.

  Sleepily,

  Roxy

  October 16, 2012

  Dear Everett,

  I can barely remember a time before this place. When I wake up, I rub the chunk of rose quartz I brought in with me as a way to honor Venus. It seems like a pitiful effort, but it’s the only thing that ties me to my old life. Tim and Mario are my only friends. They call the world beyond PharmaTrial “the free.” Tim says, “When I’m back out in the free, I’m gonna take my girl Ximena out to dinner at Pappadeaux.”

  Mario says, “Nah, man. Forget Pappadeaux. When I’m in the free, I’m gonna take my money and get me underglow for my Dodge Charger.”

  “But you gotta eat,” Tim says.

  “Mi mama is gonna make me some carnitas tacos,” Mario says. “No offense, Roxy. I know you don’t like eating meat.”

  “None taken,” I say. I am too sleepy all the time to be offended by anything. I can’t even call to mind what I would want to do once I am out in “the free.” I remember caring about things, feeling bad that my protest failed, being sad about being here, thinking all was lost. But now all I care about is how much I want to sleep.

  ZZZZZZZ,

  Roxy

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  October 19, 2012

  Dear Everett,

  I am home! I am home! It feels so amazing to be sitting at my very own kitchen table! It was so great to be reunited with Roscoe and Charlize Theron. Thank you for taking such great care of them. I really cannot believe I checked myself into that hellhole thinking that was my only option!

  You are probably wondering about the events that led to my texting Nadia earlier today to let y’all know I was coming home earlier than planned (and please forgive me for sending y’all packing back to the OM house a week ahead of schedule). This morning was business as usual at PharmaTrial. I woke up, showered in the prison-like showers, choked down my soul- and ethics-killing high-fat breakfast, got my dose of opioid, and sat at the cafeteria tables playing Rock Paper Scissors with Mario and Tim while trying not to nod off. I wasn’t even sad anymore about being there. I was numb, complacent, all I cared about was not falling asleep because I’ve come to absolutely hate being woken up by the smack of the ruler on the cafeteria table.

  Then a horrible shrieking sound erupted! A fire alarm! The coordinators looked—for the first time—a little panicked. They started yelling for us all to line up at the door, but for a few moments none of us could be bothered to move. Finally, Melanie slammed her ruler down on one of the tables. “Get the fuck up!” she yelled.

  Startled by the crack in her professional facade and suddenly convinced this was not a pointless drill, we all lumbered to our feet and ambled like opioid zombies to the door. (Luckily, I had my trusty spiral notebook with me, on the very off chance I’d feel clear-headed enough to write, and I had the good sense t
o grab it.) We made our way toward the stairwell and trundled slowly down the stairs, as Melanie yelled, “Move! Move! Move!” We exited onto the first floor, which was full of greenish-gray smoke. Had there been a terrorist attack? Perhaps some rogue group of anti–Big Pharma activists had bombed the place. I knew I should be panicked, but all I could summon was a mild feeling of curiosity. As the alarm sounded with a piercing urgency, I lurched along with my fellow clinical trial participants toward the front exit. We walked with eyes squinched shut against the smoke, arms extended, like walking dead unable to fully feel our fear.

  We burst through the front doors, all of us shielding our eyes from the light of the sun, which we hadn’t seen in days. When my eyes finally adjusted, I spotted a woman with long blonde hair wearing giant sunglasses and a ridiculous neon-pink Lilly Pulitzer dress leaning against a minivan at the edge of the parking lot.

  “Roxy!” the woman yelled.

  Surprised, I stumbled toward the sound of my name. At fifteen feet away, I realized it was Artemis in a wig and disguise. The sun glinted off her labradorite necklace. “What are you doing here?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  “I’m here to bust you out of this place.”

  “Did you set a fire?”

  “I lit a smoke bomb, big deal. Let’s go.”

  Through the fog of the opioid, I remembered the number one rule of PharmaTrial: if you leave, you don’t get your money. “No way,” I said. “If I stay in there another week, I get seven thousand dollars. I need it to pay my court fines and my mortgage.”

  As if from the heavens, I heard Annie’s voice. “Topher Doyle loves your art,” she said. “And now you’ve got a job interview for a badass job on the fifth floor. But we gotta go now.”

  Perhaps the drugs were making me hallucinate. I looked at Artemis. “Did you hear that?”

  “Of course I heard it. Annie’s hiding in the van. Are you coming or what?”

  I looked over toward the building. Smoke still billowed out the front door. All of my fellow clinical-trial participants had adjusted to the sunlight and now seemed to be basking in its glow. Only Mario and Tim looked my way. I waved my hand at them. Tim, looking a little discombobulated, raised his hand in return. But then Mario lifted his fist above his head. “Vaya con Dios,” he called.

  “Vaya con Dios!” I yelled back.

  Then I turned and pulled the handle of the automatic minivan door and climbed into the backseat. Artemis jumped behind the wheel and we peeled out of the parking lot. As soon as we were out of sight of the building, Annie popped up from the floor of the front seat and put on her seat belt.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “You think I want to be caught on the PharmaTrial security cameras with this criminal?” Annie said, gesturing affectionately at Artemis.

  “Good point,” I said. “Could we please stop and get me a coffee? And then you can explain this to me. I’m so fucking sleepy.”

  Artemis pulled off her blonde wig. “Sure thing,” she said.

  At Caffé Medici, I ordered a quadruple latte AND a mocha, both with almond milk. At PharmaTrial they just served Folgers. By the time we all sat down at a little table, I’d guzzled the latte and started sipping on the mocha. Artemis said, “I’m sorry I was such an asshole when you came to visit me.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “The worst thing about this fucking disease is that when I get really, really manic, I don’t think straight. I don’t treat people the way I want to treat them. And I’m sorry you got arrested. I should have dragged you out of there with me. But once my mom got ahold of me I didn’t feel right fighting her off. I’ve put her through a lot.”

  “I saw the prosecution’s video. The lady that grabbed you and dragged you into the crowd was your mom?” I said.

  “I was so addled I invited her to see the dance performance.”

  “Wow,” I said. “It’s okay. At least you got that one cop pretty good with your nipple tassel. Thanks for quitting your job just to come to my protest. You were amazing.”

  “The dance was pretty good, right?”

  “The best,” I said.

  “I stopped taking my meds,” she said. “Right before I met you.”

  “What are you like when you’re on them?”

  “I’m on them now. And I’m still me,” she said. “Just a little calmer. And a lot less deluded. But sometimes I miss the wild, electric, manic me. The me that fucks cashiers in parking lots.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Next time I try to convince you to do something really illegal, say no, okay?”

  “The cops have you on video but you didn’t get charged with anything, did you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because your mom is insanely rich?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which brings me to the illegal shit you just did at PharmaTrial. You know I could have walked out of there anytime, right? You could have just called me on the clinical-trial participant landline and talked me into leaving.”

  “Shit,” Artemis said. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. Anyway, what am I even supposed to call you now? Zoe?” I could hear the tinge of vexation in my voice.

  “What do you want to call me?”

  “To me, you’ll always be Artemis, girl goddess, huntress of men.” My voice softened.

  “Call me Artemis, then. There’s no need for the drama.”

  “I hate to interrupt, but we’re on a tight schedule here,” Annie said. “Topher Doyle loved your protest signs. I mean, he wouldn’t shut up about them. And then our store artist, Joaquin, turned in his notice. He’s going to the MFA program at The City College in New York. So I suggested you to Topher Doyle and he wants to interview you.”

  “Store artist?”

  “It’s like three hours a day of work. You draw asparagus on chalkboards in the store, stuff like that. And then the rest of the time you can do your own work in your office studio.”

  “No way.”

  “Way. Joaquin created his whole portfolio on the clock. Topher Doyle likes it as he feels like he’s supporting a struggling artist. And it pays. Full benefits. A great salary. Everything. Like, you could pay off your court fines in no time.”

  “Does he know I got fired from the deli?”

  “He doesn’t give a shit about that. He said he likes your spunk.”

  “When would the interview be? I mean, if I decided to do it.”

  “In an hour.”

  “WHAT?” I said. “I’m still groggy as holy hell.” The espresso was cutting through the fog, but only somewhat. “And look at me.” I was wearing PharmaTrial pajamas and my hair was a mess.

  “We need to do it now, before one of Topher Doyle’s nieces pops up and says she wants the job.”

  “Roxy, come with me to the bathroom,” Artemis said.

  In the bathroom, Artemis pulled out an interview dress for me from her miracle backpack—a vintage-inspired Johnnie Boden number—and black Mary Jane pumps in a size eleven. She turned on her battery-powered curling iron, doused my hair in dry shampoo, and set to work doing my makeup. Once I was transformed, she poured some crushed Ritalin on the sink and handed me a rolled-up dollar bill. “Just this once,” she said. I stared at the Ritalin. I’d taken it a few times before, and I knew it would blast right through the opioid fog. It would make me lively and vivacious for my interview. I took the dollar bill and bent over the sink.

  But before I snorted, I remembered the last time Artemis had offered me something—i.e., a can of spray paint—I’d ended up in jail. I love Artemis, but I wanted to do this my way, not hers. I stood up and handed her the dollar bill.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “No way. I’m seriously never taking your advice again.”

  “You shouldn’t,” she said. And we both started laughing.

  “Are you gonna snort it?” I asked.

  “And risk triggering another manic attack? No way.” She swept the powdery
Ritalin into the sink. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What?”

  Artemis paused. I could see her swallow hard. She looked scared.

  It made me nervous—I was used to Artemis always being confident and self-assured, no matter what. “What is it?”

  “When I was in Shoal Creek, I started going to AA. Roxy, I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Oh, honey,” I said. Her lip trembled. I’ve never seen her look so vulnerable. “I love you no matter what you are.”

  “Really?” she asked. She was tearing up.

  “Of course. I’ve never met anyone like you. I’m glad you’re sober and getting things sorted.”

  She threw her arms around me. “That means so much to me. Sometimes I worry people only like me when I’m off my rocker.”

  “If it’s okay for me to be honest, a toned-down version of you would be a little bit of a relief.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not that toned-down. AA is full of hot guys. Addiction is like a whack-a-mole. And once they bash down their alcoholism, it’s sex addiction that pops right up.” She gave me a lascivious wink. “Now I know why I drew The Devil card, if you know what I mean.”

  “Because it’s a card about being trapped by addiction?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a card about being naked and chained up with a hot guy!”

  When we stopped laughing, I told her I was sorry for bringing a tarot deck to the mental hospital. “That was idiotic.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I was just grouchy because I was in alcohol withdrawal. I love your inappropriate ways. I wouldn’t stand for a girlfriend who brought me flowers or chocolates or something else really nice.”

  “Shut uuuup!” I laughed.

  When we walked out of the bathroom, Annie’s jaw dropped. “Wow!” she said. “I’d hire you.” She bought me another latte for the road.

  When we pulled into the Whole Foods parking lot, I said, “I need a minute to pray to Venus.”

  They said okay and climbed out of the car, leaving me to sit there alone for a moment. I pondered what I wanted to say to my favorite planetary deity. “Venus,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been making bad choices every which way. Please just help me to go in there and do my very best. Help me and I will do everything I can to bring more beauty and love and friendship into this world.”