by Greg Sestero
Six weeks later, when I was at work, my manager called me over to the counter phone. This was odd—no one had ever called me at work. I heard him say, “I’m sorry, sir? I didn’t understand that.”
Tommy.
I got on the phone.
“I miss you,” Tommy said, his voice shaky. “I miss you very much.”
“Tommy,” I said. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
“I just wanted to say hello. I know you call me. I appreciate.”
Tommy sounded even worse than he had that last night in his apartment; his words seemed more howled than spoken. At least a dozen people stood around me—customers, colleagues, my manager—so I comported myself as neutrally as possible. But my intuition was causing my blood to run as fast and icy as some Arctic floe. “I can’t really talk,” I said quietly. “Are you around later?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Never mind. I just want to call and say I hope you’re okay. Not to bother you. I just want to make sure.”
“Make sure of what?”
“Just to . . . make sure. Okay. I have to go now.”
“Look, I’ll try you later, all right?”
And he just hung up. I stood there with the dial tone blaring in my ear—a nontransatlantic dial tone. Wherever Tommy was, it wasn’t London.
Tommy’s call left me rattled. I went to his vacant apartment after work to see if he’d left a message there, since he didn’t yet know I’d moved out. I stepped off the elevator on the third floor of the Crescent Heights building and started walking toward the apartment. I looked down into the aquamarine pool and thought about the first time I’d been there, how alive I’d felt. I realized that I missed the Tommy from that time. Not who he was now, and definitely not the life-draining roommate he’d become, but the free-spirited person he’d once been, who could cheer me up without even trying. When I tried to imagine Tommy now, I kept seeing him underwater, beyond reach, drowning.
Inside, the answering machine light was blinking. I hit play and suddenly Tommy’s voice began filling up that apartment like a ghost. “I’m in a bad place,” he said. “I’m scared.” It sounded like he’d been crying. “In your message you talk about the highway. Well, I’m on highway—the highway of hell. Highway of dying. Highway of survival. It really is . . . it really is hell right now. I don’t know what to do. Hopefully I can get out from this hell. I think maybe I go like James Dean, end in car. Or I disappear. Maybe I jump off Golden Gate Bridge.” He became quiet. Standing in the middle of that dark, vacant apartment, I crossed my arms; I felt a rush of cold air. Then Tommy said: “I don’t want to feel the pain. I don’t believe in hell. I believe in God. Maybe God help me.” He hung up.
I was shaking. I knew what I’d just heard: a suicide message. I called him immediately but he didn’t answer, so I desperately urged him to call me back. I told him that I knew something terrible was happening, but unless he told me what it was, I couldn’t help him. Whatever Tommy was running from, it had finally caught him. It was holding him down and breathing in his face.
I waited in the apartment, hoping the phone would ring. A few minutes later, it did. “Hey, stranger,” he said. He sounded a little more stable. Not much more, but a little. “I cannot talk for long. I get your message. I appreciate.”
“Tommy,” I said, “what is going on?”
“I cannot tell you. I have problem but I can’t talk about it. If something happens, I let you know. Look, it’s late here in London. I need to sleep.”
I did some quick math and determined that, in London, it was actually 11:00 a.m.
“You’re important person to me,” he said. “I just want to tell you that.” And he hung up.
I wanted to help, but I didn’t even know where to go or to whom I should turn. I suspected that Tommy was in San Francisco, if anywhere. I knew he was too proud to admit he was not in London, and maybe he had good reason. After hearing his voice I sensed that he wanted, even needed, space. What was so haunting was that I’d known Tommy for two and a half years and there was literally no one else in his life for me to call or turn to. As far as I knew, I was all he had.
• • •
After I’d been at Armani Exchange a few months, I learned that Barney’s New York had sent secret shoppers all over Los Angeles to find the best salespeople in town. When the secret shoppers’ reports came back, Barney’s offered me full benefits and $47,000—plus commission—to sell women’s clothes in their flagship Beverly Hills store. As a twenty-two-year-old unemployed actor, I thought about the offer for maybe a nanosecond before accepting. Barney’s turned out to be a viper pit filled with a celebrity clientele, insanely competitive salespeople, and an air of acquisitive materialism as thick as L.A. smog. I was doing roughly as well with sales as I had at Armani but felt profoundly out of place. The most significant thing that happened during my time at Barney’s was meeting a young woman who worked downstairs in the makeup department. Her name was Amber, and we started dating almost immediately.
I knew Tommy was still alive because when I’d visited my family over Christmas, I’d reached him on his San Francisco condo’s landline. I heard this loud clatter, like he’d dropped the phone before getting a solid hold on it. When Tommy finally, breathlessly said “Hello,” I told him I was in San Francisco and that it would be great to see him. “I’m sorry,” Tommy said. “I cannot see you. I’m not around.” Of course, he hung up.
By the spring I was living on my own, working a full-time job, dating Amber, and not doing much acting or auditioning at all. For a while, Aaron Spelling’s production company had me on option for a television pilot, but it didn’t come to anything, which was fine. I had a normal, comfortable life, and my acting dream had sort of faded away, just as Tommy had. Amber knew nothing of Tommy, aside from a few complimentary stories I’d shared of him, and those memories felt increasingly distant from the person I was now.
Eventually I left Barney’s to take a less remunerative but far happier part-time job at French Connection. Months had passed since I’d last seen Tommy. Iris Burton had told me she was retiring, and I was thus heading into the professional unknown. This was when Tommy finally got back in touch with me, nine months after he’d disappeared.
Tommy left a message on my cell. He sounded as though he’d stabilized and announced he was moving back to Los Angeles, but into a larger apartment on the same floor of his Crescent Heights complex. “You know my style,” Tommy said.
I did: black velvet curtains, T-shirt pillowcases, and dirty dishes.
A few days later, Amber and I went on a little vacation to Mexico. As soon as we crossed over the border back into San Diego, Tommy called my cell from his new Hollywood apartment. He sounded upbeat and said he was looking forward to seeing me.
I knew it was going to be strange to see him again. Since he had disappeared, I’d done almost nothing to further my acting dreams. It was almost like Tommy’s presence had forced me to stay focused on acting. Amber had allowed me to hide from my dream; she didn’t push me and she didn’t ask questions about it. She accepted me for who I was when she met me. Which was fine. It was pleasant, comfortable even. But it wasn’t who I really wanted to be.
That said, I wasn’t sure I was ready to—or even could—welcome Tommy back into my life. As much as I’d worried about him and occasionally missed having him around, I knew too well the stress and frustration he was capable of sowing. When Amber pressed, I told her that my friend Tommy was back in town, but before I could explain more, she said, “Great! I’d love to meet him.”
On May 7, 2001, I walked from my apartment over to the Crescent Heights building, not at all sure what I was going to find. Tommy had been in a dark, dangerous place, I knew, and part of me was prepared for anything. If I’m being truthful, though, what I found was almost exactly what I’d expected.
Tommy was waiting outside for me in the building driveway wearing baggy blue sweatpants and sunglasses. I couldn’t see his shirt because he’d wrappe
d himself in an enormous and ratty black shawl. His hair was much longer—and blacker, and wavier. As he walked toward me in his Roman sandals (with white socks), I noticed how small and deliberate his steps were. Tommy seemed like someone you’d see standing alongside the road in the middle of nowhere. He seemed lost, ghostly.
He also looked different physically. His face was fuller and his body seemed more muscular; he’d obviously been working out. His stomach, though, was slightly bloated, with a paunch that peeked out from the fold in his peasant shawl. When I got closer to Tommy all I could think was how much heavier he looked; not only physically heavier, but emotionally and even spiritually heavier.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” Tommy said, smiling.
“Bonjour,” I said, hugging him.
“Look at you!” Tommy said. “You look great. No stomach!”
“Glad to be back?” I asked him.
Tommy sighed and looked around. It wasn’t that nice a day: smoggy, a little too hot, a little too glarey. “Los Angeles is Los Angeles,” he said. “And San Francisco is San Francisco. I miss San Francisco little bit.”
“So you stopped by San Francisco between here and London?”
Tommy smiled. “Let’s go eat.”
We wound up at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax. Tommy still hadn’t taken off his sunglasses. He didn’t that whole day. Indeed, I wouldn’t see Tommy without his sunglasses for weeks.
“So,” Tommy said, placing his hands flat on the table, “do I look different?”
I remembered what he’d said to me that last night in the apartment: To be star, I need to reshape everything. “You look a little different,” I said.
“I make many changes to my life and myself. Now it’s time to begin the real work.”
This could only mean one thing. “Did you finish your script?”
“I have finished my script, for your information. It is completed. And it is copyrighted. The title is The Room.”
“Totally finished?”
“Yes. One hundred percent. No one has read it yet. Today you will be the first.”
I wasn’t able to aimlessly spend time with Tommy as I once had. With Amber in my life, my hang-around mandate was far more limited. Amber was waiting for me right now, back at my apartment. “You want me to read it today? Like, right now?”
“Yes,” he said. “We read today. It’s very necessary.”
“How many pages is it?”
“You’ll see for yourself.”
“Well, Tommy,” I said delicately, “the thing is, I don’t really have all day. My girlfriend’s waiting for me.”
Tommy stared at me through those sunglasses. “You tell your girl you are busy this afternoon. She can wait.”
Right after our food came, Amber called me on my cell. I didn’t pick up. Ten minutes later she called me again. And again after that. Tommy finally put his fork down and laughed. “Girlfriend is serious, huh?”
I could feel it happening at that moment. I was slipping back into the orbit of Tommy’s Planet.
“So tell me about the acting now,” Tommy said. “What’s happening?”
My mouth opened but I said nothing. I had nothing to say. I was looking at myself literally and figuratively in Tommy’s sunglasses. I didn’t want to admit that I’d barely thought about acting at all in the last few months. It had just gone away. I almost felt like I owed Tommy for getting me here, and was disappointed in myself for setting my dream aside. “Let’s eat fast,” I said. “I want to read this script of yours.”
“That’s the idea,” Tommy said.
His new, bigger apartment looked very similar to the old one, minus the black drapes and food-caked dishes in the sink. (Don’t worry: A week later they were back.) Tommy sat me down in a chair and said, “You must prepare yourself physically and emotionally for what you are about to read. You will see many reflections of your life in my script. Are you ready?”
“I think so,” I said, not knowing whether to be amused or terrified.
Tommy went into his second bedroom for what felt like a long time. When he finally came out, he was cradling a Kinko’s-laminated script, seventy-four pages long, the title page of which bore the words THE ROOM in 144-point font size, with three separate copyright notices below it. “Remember,” Tommy said, “it is copyrighted.” I turned the first slick, laminated page and found a director’s-note preamble that began: “This play can be played without any age restrictions. It will work if the chemistry between all the characters makes sense.”
I looked up at him. “So you settled on making it a play?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s easier that way, for now. And maybe, if you behave yourself, you can direct it for the theater.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Maybe I should read it first.”
Tommy sat down in a chair directly across from me, and that’s how I began reading: with the script’s silent, watchful, copyright-minded author wearing sunglasses and wrapped in a black shawl sitting five feet away.
Even though Tommy wanted The Room to be a play, his script opened with an “external shot of an apartment building south of Market Street.” From there it pushed into a room that was described as being “furnished simply.” An alarm clock rings, and a man “reaches to the clock and turns it off. He sleepily arouses [?] and puts on his shorts and walks slowly to the bathroom.” When the man emerges he “smiles tenderly” at the woman with whom he shares his bed. The first line spoken by this woman: “I am not a slave here, am I?” The man responds: “Did you like last night?” The man is named Johnny, the woman Lisa. They proceed to have a fight about the man’s imminent promotion, which Lisa accuses Johnny of being overly focused on. Of his promotion, Johnny says, “Old man Donkey lets me know today.”
Lisa was a terror: shrill, controlling, greedy, selfish, and vain. She had to be one of the most chauvinistically written characters I’d ever encountered in a script—until, that is, I met her mother, Claudette.
“What do you think?” Tommy asked suddenly. “Do you see the reflections? Don’t be scared. This is life. Do you see yourself yet?”
“Let me finish,” I said. By this point, I was searching Tommy’s script for clues as to what had gone on over the last nine months. There was a lot of dialogue about property and money and “the computer business,” very little of which I could attach to anything. There was nothing about being sick, or dying, or desperation—at least nothing beyond the desperation Johnny feels about his relationship with Lisa. Everything in the script seemed so curiously devoid of real emotion. Instead I read one conversation after another that opened with lines like “Hi, Mom, how ya doing?” “Oh, hi! I’m very busy. How ya doing?” and “Hello, Peter, this is Lisa. How are you?” I did spot quite a few small details from Tommy’s and my stint as roommates. A lot of the dialogue he attributed to Mark, for instance, who sleeps with Lisa and ruins Johnny’s life, was Tommy-altered versions of things that I’d said. Which was another considerable problem: Everyone in the script sounded like Tommy. “You have too much competition in the computer field.” “You are not drinking your cognac, dear. It will taste good with pizza.” “I heard that, Lisa. Get your pretty little buns in here and help.” This last line is almost certainly something Johnny or Mark says to Lisa, right? Wrong. This is something Lisa’s mother says to Lisa. It was all 100 percent Tommy.
Soon enough, I began connecting the dots. The constant talk about money, about best friends (Johnny and Mark are best friends, but Mark also tells Peter he’s his best friend; Michelle and Lisa are best friends; Johnny’s other best friends all show up for his party—the whole script was like an advisory warning about the perils of having friends at all), about trust, about fear, about truth . . . Tommy’s life study of human interaction had been put into a Final Draft blender and sprinkled with the darkness of whatever he’d been living through over the last nine months. The one thing Tommy’s script wasn’t about, despite its characters’ claims? Love.
I had a sobering,
sad, and powerful realization: Our friendship was the most human experience Tommy had had in the last few years. Maybe ever. The happy news was that whatever Tommy had been running from, he’d managed to turn and face it down in his script. Instead of killing himself, he wrote himself out of danger. He did this by making his character the one spotless human being amid chaos, lies, and infidelity. Johnny was perfect. He was a lost innocent, a pure victim. And Johnny’s story was the perfect American drama—in Tommy’s mind, anyway.
When I came to the last page, Tommy asked me, “So what do you think?”
What else could I say? “It was excellent, Tommy. You should be proud you finished it.”
Tommy smiled. “Wow. I can’t believe you give me compliment. Do you have any suggestions? Because I think about them.”
“No,” I said. “I think it’s perfect.”
Now that the perfection of his script was settled, Tommy sighed in relief. “It’s so much work to write,” he said. “I work so hard on this, to bring it to the life. And I tell you right now, when people see this play, they will be shocked.”
“Yes,” I said. “They would be shocked. Yes.”
“Can you imagine this,” Tommy said, “on the stage, in front of so many people?”
I tried to imagine that. I saw the people patiently waiting for the play to begin, their playbills in hand. The theater would be a twenty-seater in some corner of Hollywood. There’d be a leak in the roof; it would be raining. The actors would be Tommy and, oh, Jesus, probably me, doing it out of pity, and the audience would be made up entirely of my good-sport family and friends and maybe some homeless people who’d been lured in with plastic cups of wine. And the play would begin. Based on what I’d just read, it would either horrify everyone or bring everyone to their knees with laughter. Maybe both. “I think,” I said, slowly and diplomatically, “that your play, if staged really well, would be something incredible.”