How to Murder Your Life

by Cat Marnell

  NOOOOOO! I began praying immediately. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT SIT ME NEXT TO THE BEAUTY DIRECTOR OF VOGUE FOR NINE HOURS WHEN I HAVEN’T SLEPT IN A WEEK AND I HAVE BEEN UP ALL NIGHT THROWING UP AND CAN BARELY SEE STRAIGHT, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE—

  When I opened my eyes, someone else was sitting there. Whew. God is real. I’m telling you.

  I hadn’t seen my actual seat because a lady had stashed her cranky Italian baby there, and I wound up sitting next to that very bambino the whole flight home. I couldn’t have been happier if it was Pete Doherty himself.

  We took off. I curled up under a blanket and took melatonia after melatonia. The herbal pills bothered my stomach and kept . . . rising in my throat, making my chest burn, and I would feel like there were bubbles stuck in my chest, like I needed to burp. It was uncomfortable and vile. Hours passed, and I didn’t doze off once. I never even got drowsy. About six hours in, I watched The Dark Knight Rises for the first time—or tried to, anyway. I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying—the airline headphones sucked, even in first class. Eventually I just turned off the sound. Then I sat quietly in the dark cabin. It was so surreal to be crossing the Atlantic Ocean with the top beauty editors in my industry snoozing all around me. I was really living my dream life. Wasn’t I? I suppressed another melatonia belch. Heath Ledger was on the little glowing screen in front of me in his nurse’s uniform, smoky eyes, and smeared lipstick, smirking as he set off bombs and burned the hospital down.

  * * *

  I found my pills somewhere obvious right when I got home—isn’t that always the way?—and was out cold all weekend. When I returned to 4 Times Square on Monday, the beauty department was neck-deep in Christmas swag: Marc Jacobs bags from Revlon, YSL wallets from YSL, jewelry from Shiseido. I opened gifts all morning.

  JGJ swished in at the usual time and was happy to see me. I could tell that she didn’t even know I’d missed my original flight.

  “How was it?” she asked.

  My stomach twisted. All morning I’d imagined going into her office, pulling the door shut, and coming clean—about the trip, about my relapse. About everything. I’d imagined what would happen after that: Jean would have to tell not just Kim and Regan but the ad side—our publisher, our sales team—what I’d done. She’d have to call Procter & Gamble and personally apologize for her employee’s ghastly behavior. And she’d have to fire me or—if I was incredibly lucky—put me on disability again.

  I couldn’t do it.

  “Good,” I said. “It was great! I met Frida Giannini . . .”

  The morning passed uneventfully. Simone didn’t need my help with anything; she’d really gotten into her assistant groove while I was gone. That was good news. JGJ seemed comfortable, too. I opened my mail, listening to the two of them laughing and talking in Jean’s office.

  At noon I sidled up to my boss’s door. She was typing away, her back toward me.

  “I’m going to the cafeteria,” I said. “Do you want me to grab your lunch?”

  JGJ twisted around and looked at me sort of curiously.

  “Er, no,” Jean said. “Simone will get it.”

  She resumed her work. I returned to my desk to open drawers and rummage around for my dining pass. I looked at the back of my boss’s chair. We were sitting just ten feet apart, but suddenly she felt far away.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve, I gave Marco his presents: a handheld Flip video camera—the “It” gadget at the time, gifted to me by a beauty ­company—and a box of Giotto be-bè crayons that I bought in Rome.

  “Dope!” Marco said. He got right to work in his sketchbook.

  I ♥ CAT, he showed me later. The big Italian-crayon-red heart was beautiful, like a smashed lipstick.

  We snorted skag and watched Marco’s looping Eyes Wide Shut DVD for a week straight. Literally—a week. I couldn’t even take a sip of water without running to the filthy toilet. But of course on heroin throwing up feels good.

  On New Year’s Eve, I was standing at the mirror in Marco’s grimy bathroom, doing my makeup, applying MAC Fluidline to my heavy, heavy eyelids . . .

  Tap. I jerked awake. I’d fallen forward and hit my forehead on the mirror on the medicine cabinet above the sink! I shook my head.

  I closed my eyes again . . .

  Tap. I jerked awake again! Fuck, man. I’d keeled forward into the mirror again.

  Tap.

  Someone banged on the bathroom door.

  “Cat?”

  “I’m good,” I whispered. I fell asleep again. Tap.

  And it went on like this for . . . well, I couldn’t tell you.

  Finally I snapped out of it. I floated through the garbage-filled kitchen and found Marco on a futon. Eyes Wide Shut had just started again.

  “Hey,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t you think one of the charms of marriage is that it makes deception a necessity for both parties?” Sandor was waltzing Nicole Kidman around the glittery gold ballroom.

  “What the fuck were you doing in there?” Marco slurred.

  “Is it as bad as that?” Sandor said.

  “I dunno . . .” I sat down next to Marco and leaned on his shoulder.

  “As good as that,” Nicole Kidman said.

  “Happy New Year, Cat.” Marco shook me. When I opened my eyes, I saw that it was midnight. The DVD had started again and we were watching the same scene, from the same movie.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THAT WINTER WAS DOPEY, ITCHY, slushy, and dark. During the week, I zombie-wrote eye cream captions; feigned interest in deep-dish side parts backstage at Fashion Week; received complimentary lash extensions in the basement at Barneys; and hit 1 OAK nightclub at three in the afternoon to chat with 50 Cent about his new cologne, Power by 50 Cent—as well as his debut novel, The Ski Mask Way. (“HARD LIFE. HARD LUCK. HARD DRUGS. HARD DEALS.” Indeed!)

  After work, Marco would pick me up in his father’s old Fiat, which was white and full of garbage. He’d be wearing a sheepskin denim jacket. Marco knew every pothole on the FDR Drive. We’d race up there along the East River, then careen across town to Washington Heights.

  “Slow DOWN!” I’d scream, but he never did. He’d be blasting Pulp (we loved “Common People”). Then we’d buy a special kind of weed called pudé, which made us giggle like little kids. We’d park next to the Hudson River and smoke in the car.

  Marco had lost his room on Madison Street; he couldn’t keep up with the five-hundred-dollar-a-month rent (I don’t know how he ever did). He’d relocated to the Bronx, where his dad owned a few buildings. His dad, who spoke in a heavy Romanian accent, was elderly and always sick. I think he’d been close to death a few times. Marco hardly ever talked about it.

  When I visited on weekends, I heard Marco’s dad’s hacking cough in the other room. He was always trying to feed us. I remember his kind face in the messy little kitchen as he unfolded wax paper. The family only ate beautiful thinly sliced meats from the butcher: prosciutto and things.

  “Butchers have the softest hands because they work with fat,” Marco told me. This was the European elegance he inherited. He always taught me special things like that.

  Underneath the apartment buildings was a phenomenal maze of tunnels and cement rooms: a spooky underworld for vampires like Marco and me. It was built as a two-hundred-thousand-square-foot nuclear fallout shelter during World War Two. The signs were still up from back then. The black corridors seemed endless. His father had filled them with discarded furniture, and Marco had dragged it around and set up hidden rooms everywhere. That’s where he’d paint me. I’d take off my minidress and tights and Hanky Panky thong and arrange myself on a throwaway sofa. Eventually I’d nod off with an orange juice in my hand. Marco usually removed it before I dropped it. He worked on canvas, in oils. Lots of blues and blacks: corpse colors. I could stay still for him for hours
when I was on the skag.

  One modeling session I woke up to a flash and the mechanical crunch-and-hum of an old-school Polaroid camera. Marco had snapped a photo of me with my legs spread.

  “Funny,” I mumbled, closing them. Then I went back under.

  “My eyes are rolling back in my head!” I said, inspecting his painting the next day.

  “That’s how you looked.” He liked women to look dead.

  On Sunday night, Marco would drive me back to Manhattan and on Monday morning I’d be at my desk, staring at my computer monitor, feeling very very dead indeed.

  * * *

  That spring, I found a new place to live, and a new roommate. You may know Nev Schulman as the star of Catfish (as well as MTV’s spin-off series Catfish: The TV Show). The documentary, which was directed by Nev’s hot older brother Rel (who was moving out of the apartment) and his partner Henry Joost, explored how people pose with fake identities on the Internet to lure unsuspecting rubes into relationships. When I met these guys, they’d just finished filming; Nev wasn’t all famous yet. I’d come across his looking-for-a-roommate ad on Craigslist. I e-mailed him and I’d said that I was a Condé Nast editor and that I would be a great roommate and could we meet?

  “I am VERY healthy and normal!” I wrote. Nev took the bait. Catfish.

  I moved into Rel’s old room in March of 2009. The clean, stylish two-bedroom on East Sixth Street was full of art books and vintage Eames chairs. The Schulman boys had great taste. My room had its own entrance from the fifth-floor stairwell and two large windows. I was particularly excited to be living in Alphabet City, a magical pocket of the East Village full of secret gardens and stuttering dustheads.

  Marco came to inspect.

  “This is good.” He nodded. He especially liked the private entrance. He was studying the lock on that door when one of Nev’s two cats wandered in and . . . mewed, as they do. Mew.

  Marco’s gaze snapped up. He lunged at the cat—like he wanted to stomp on its head with his boot! The cat jumped a foot in the air.

  “Marco!” I said as it scampered away.

  “I fucking hate cats,” he grumbled.

  He didn’t like any animals, as far as I could tell. I’d also once stopped Marco from kicking a drug dealer’s dog in the projects. And this was one of the . . . many weird things I’d started to notice about my sweet soul mate, about my dreamy best friend.

  * * *

  But I was too busy at work to dwell on Marco’s quirks. Online was now a “thing” at Condé, and even the all-powerful Jean—who championed separation of print and web with all the conviction of Thomas Jefferson—couldn’t get us out of blogging for the new (i.e., no longer just a place to subscribe to the magazine) luckymag.com. I, too, was Team Print all day, but to my surprise, I actually enjoyed drafting my once-a-week blog post. I could play around. It was more fun than writing boring, phony-sounding fragrance captions for the magazine.

  “I know black eyeliners better than the busboys at the Sea Org snack bar do. . .” I opened one post. I referenced Pete Doherty, Britney Spears’s meltdown, Sharon Stone—all of the weird stuff I was into. I was no Richard Pryor or anything, but humor in beauty writing was definitely a little edgy at that time—particularly in the world of women’s magazines. Sometimes I snickered to myself while I was writing.

  My wacky beauty blogs were a hit. Well, not with readers (no one was reading luckymag.com, let’s be real), but Jean praised my work for the site every week.

  “I know when I hear you laughing at your desk that it’s going to be good.” Jean would smile when I turned in my posts (which she edited by hand before they went online—old-school). And you know I’d just beam. Kim was into my blogs, too! Our editor in chief came over, laughing, to tell me how much she’d liked something I’d written. It felt so good.

  I guess she really meant it, because in June, Kim chose me—me, out of everyone on staff—to cover music festivals for luckymag.com. All summer long! These special assignments had nothing to do with beauty, but JGJ wasn’t about to tell Kim no. Simone and Cristina would pick up extra work while I was away.

  What a time! I traveled all over—to the New Orleans Jazz Fest, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Bonnaroo in Tennessee—scouting “real” girl style and interviewing rock stars. I hung in catered press tents with writers from Rolling Stone and Spin. I saw MGMT, Jay Z, Nine Inch Nails, and Jane’s Addiction. I also saw a lot of fucking gladiator sandals. Every day a photographer and I would prowl the fields for hours, hunting for chic concertgoers.

  “I SEE ONE!” I’d squeal over the music. “CATCH UP WITH ME!” Then I would sprint across the grassy plain and pounce. Half of my victims were ’shrooming so hard that they could barely sign their model release forms. Even the “talent” I met was out to the ball game.

  “Can you tell that I’m rolling my face off?” an up-and-coming pop singer (now a big star) asked at Lollapalooza. Glitter was literally leaking out of her nose. Had she been snorting it? (Swag.)

  My special project ended in August. All in all, it had been a success. Kim and other high-ranking Lucky operatives were very pleased with my performance. Which meant Jean was very pleased with me.

  * * *

  Marco got a girlfriend. Carly drank whiskey from a flask and weighed seventy-five pounds. She was perfect for Marco.

  Their romance meant I saw my friend less and less, but that was okay. Lately he’d been acting sort of . . . obnoxious.

  For example: one Tuesday, Marco had stopped by to bum a few sexy Dexys. Or was it to borrow cash? Marco never seemed to have either those days. That wasn’t the annoying part: I was happy to spot him. It was just that . . . he never said thank you. For anything, ever. Had it always been that way? I couldn’t remember.

  “You’re such a good girl, Cat,” Marco said—instead of “thanks”—after I gave him what he wanted. He was drinking a beer and had his dirty boots propped up on my bed. (I’d also noticed how lazy and entitled my friend had been acting lately—like he was a king in my home.) “I always tell Carly she’s wrong about you.”

  “What?” I said.

  “She thinks you’re jealous.” Marco shrugged.

  “Huh?” I said. I caught his eye in the reflection. “Of you guys?”

  “Are you?” Marco said.

  “No!” I said. “Why would I be jealous? She’s just insecure.” Then: “Don’t tell her I said that.”

  “I won’t.” Marco smirked. Then he stood up. “Gotta go.”

  “You just got here!” This was the second time this week he’d . . . whatever. It wasn’t a big deal. “Throw this out for me?” I held up a small plastic deli bag knotted at the top.

  Marco looked at the bag like it was full of rotten meat and maggots instead of Diet Sunkist cans and Popsicle sticks.

  “No.” Marco shook his head.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  “My hands are full,” Marco whined. He was carrying a Jean Paul Gaultier gym bag (which he’d been lugging around ever since he lost his apartment and had become “transient”)—but only with one hand. The other was free.

  “Just take out the trash, please,” I said—sharply.

  Marco stared hatefully at the plastic bag.

  “Fine,” he finally said, snatching it from my hand. He slammed my door shut behind him. The next morning, I couldn’t find my Dexedrine bottle.

  * * *

  A few nights later, Marco returned.

  BUZZZZZZZZZZ. BUZZZZZZZZZZ. BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ­ZZZZZZZ. BUZZZZZZ. BUZZZZZ. I jumped up and ran through the living room to the intercom. Nev came out of his room half-asleep.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. He was standing in his boxers. His girlfriend was sitting up in bed; his two black-and-white cats were weaving around his ankles.

  “Can you tell your friends not to buzz this late?” he mumbled.

 
“Of course,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Marco sauntered into the apartment in his leather jeans. The cats ran from him.

  “Marco!” I said. “Apologize to Nev!” But Marco didn’t even look at him. He stormed into my room and slammed the door. I followed and found him lighting up a Marlboro Red.

  “Hey!” I said, yanking him over to the windows and opening one. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Marco had scratches on his face. He put his gym bag on the floor and unpacked his stuff: a copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray—and Carly’s passport.

  “I stole that bitch’s passport,” he said unnecessarily. Then he stared at it, curled his lip.

  “That’s fucked up,” I said.

  “Fuck that cunt,” he growled. “Next time she falls asleep around me, I’m gonna cut off all of her hair!”

  “Marco!” I recoiled. “Don’t even joke about doing that to a woman! That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard!”

  Suddenly Marco was sugary sweet.

  “Just kidding,” he said. “I’d never do that.” Still, I shuddered. Love really was a battlefield, wasn’t it? That’s why I preferred Vyvanse to boyfriends.

  * * *

  I sat on the sofa with my best friend until sunrise, chewing gum to keep my eyes open. He was hopped up, hogging my computer, talking about himself.

  “And then,” Marco said. “I walked up to the bar at Lucky Strike—”

  “And you demanded a Pellegrino and they just gave it to you,” I finished. Lately he’d been telling me the same stories—ones in which he was fearsome, audacious, and glamorous—over and over.

  “Isn’t this great?” Marco turned my laptop around to show me a black-and-white photo. It was of him, of course.

  “Nice,” I yawned. Marco had thousands of self-portraits banked in his Gmail. He was always e-mailing them to me and to Carly and his mother.