Some Nerve

by Jane Heller

“And?” I said. So he traveled a lot, had accumulated a lot of miles. Not unheard of for a movie star.

  “He keeps his Cessna at the airport in Santa Monica and takes it for a spin on Sunday afternoons when he’s in town.”

  “His Cessna,” I repeated, suddenly feeling my palms turn clammy again.

  “Yes,” she said. “He’s got a Gulfstream, of course, so he doesn’t have to go commercial, but he’s not trained to fly it. It’s the Cessna Skyhawk, his little single-engine prop, that he pilots himself. His Sunday jaunts in it are his way of unwinding.”

  Okay, I didn’t like where this was heading. Not at all. My heart rate sped up, and my mouth was now without a single drop of saliva. “I’m glad to hear he has an outlet for unwinding,” I said as my legs started to twitch. “We all need that. But let’s get back to the location for the interview—and the date. Does he want to do it while we—”

  “He wants to do it this coming Sunday afternoon. While you’re up in the Cessna. The photo shoot can be done later in the week.”

  “While who’s up in the Cessna?” This wasn’t happening. This was not happening.

  “You and Malcolm, of course.” She paused and I thought I heard her stifle a giggle. “Is there something wrong?”

  Wrong? Oh, let’s see. How about everything? I had finally landed my big get, except that the only way I could get him was to fly in a contraption that was smaller than most cars? As I’ve explained, I simply didn’t do prop planes. They were death machines. Seriously, doesn’t it seem as if they crash a lot? Into trailer parks? Into bodies of water? Into remote rural areas where the remains of the passengers aren’t recovered for days, even weeks?

  I thought of my mother then. If I died in a crash, she wouldn’t even be able to identify my remains because her fear of dentists would probably extend to the office where my dental records were on file and the mere smell of that cherry-flavored topical anesthesia would send her running for the door.

  “My tape recorder won’t pick up anything with all the engine noise,” I told Peggy, trying to sound calm even though what I wanted to do was shriek. “We need to choose a quieter place to do the interview.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Haven’t you ever heard the cockpit recorders on planes that have accidents? The pilot’s voice comes through loud and clear.”

  Accidents. My point exactly. “Still,” I said, “I’d hate to lose even a word, considering how important the interview is to the magazine.”

  “You can always take notes if you’re so worried,” she said.

  So worried. She had no idea. Or—wait—did she? Did she?

  Oh my God, she certainly did, I realized with a blow to the stomach. When I’d declined to take part in her Winona Ryder joyride, I’d confessed that I was phobic about flying, in prop planes especially. She’d acted all sympathetic and understanding, and I’d told Tuscany I didn’t think she held grudges. But I was a fool. A naive, dumb-ass fool for buying her act. She was a master manipulator, and now she was playing me, punishing me.

  “Peggy, you know very well that I’m afraid of flying,” I said, wondering when she’d decided to use this little tidbit against me and why it was necessary to exact payback for the Winona incident. I wasn’t the only reporter who’d blown off that Palm Springs trip, but I’d been honest about my reason for doing it. A fool, as I said.

  “Yes, poor dear, I remember that you’re one of those phobics, and I conveyed the problem to Malcolm. But he still wants to do the interview on the plane,” she said, hardly concealing her glee. “It’s out of my hands. He was insistent.”

  Malcolm. Ah. So this was his doing. I felt the fingers of my right hand curl into a fist.

  So. He was the one who was looking for payback. He was still upset that I had invaded his space, that I had turned out to be a media parasite instead of a fawning fan, and now he was determined to test me, to make me twist in the wind. Peggy had tipped him off about my fear of flying and he was using it to both torture me and wriggle out of doing the interview. He figured I’d be so afraid of climbing aboard his damn plane that I’d take my parasite self and go wrap it around some other celebrity. He was a sadistic snake, and if I resented him before, I resented him even more now.

  “He says it’s the plane or nothing,” Peggy prattled on, driving the knife deeper into my back. “He won’t budge. He’s offering you his free time on Sunday afternoon and he thinks that’s a pretty nice concession.”

  Yeah, right. “He doesn’t care if I go ahead and write the Spago story?” I said, making one final attempt at hardball. “This isn’t an idle threat. I’ll do it.”

  “Ann,” she said, then lowered her voice into this nasty, hissing whisper. “Malcolm has asked me to relay the following to you: If you write a single word about the incident with the cake, he’ll authorize me to leak it all over town that he agreed to the interview but that you refused, because of your—well—handicap. Your editor won’t be pleased. We both know that. So it’s up to you, dear. Do you want the interview or not?”

  He was worse than I thought. He was determined to make me squirm, make me suffer, make me lose my job. I had never despised a celebrity—as I’ve said, I tried to see the best in all of them—but he was the exception.

  “I told Malcolm I’d get right back to him, Ann,” she prompted. “What’s your answer?”

  There was only one answer. I had to agree to her conditions. All of them. I’d say yes, sure I’ll do the interview on his stupid plane, and then find a way to actually do it, in spite of my certainty that the plane would crash. Of course, when it did crash, he would be the one who’d get the giant obituary while I’d get barely a mention. Except in Famous, where they’d run a boxed item with a paragraph about how I perished heroically while on assignment for the magazine; it would be accompanied by a photo, which I hoped Tuscany would airbrush to make me look a tiny bit more—

  “Ann? Are you there?” said Peggy.

  “What time on Sunday?” I managed.

  “Two o’clock,” she said, as if she didn’t know she was putting me through hell. “He’ll meet you in the pilots’ lounge at the airport and then you can walk over to the plane together.”

  “The pilots’ lounge,” I repeated, my body spasming out of control.

  “Yes. He said it’s in the building right next to Typhoon, the Asian restaurant there. You enter off the observation deck, go past the restrooms, and make a left.”

  The restrooms. Well, at least I’d be able to pee before I went up in the plane, crashed into the side of a mountain, and traveled down that long, lonely tunnel to The Other Side.

  “So,” she said, “you’re all set. Weather permitting.”

  Weather per—Right! There was always the possibility that I’d be saved by rain or wind or fog!

  “Although I hope the skies will cooperate,” she added. “For your sake. Malcolm will be out of the country after the Oscars, probably for a couple of months. If you want the interview to run sooner rather than later, Sunday will be your last stab at him.”

  No, I wasn’t a violent person. But just for a split second there, I really wished I’d stabbed Malcolm Goddard when I’d had the chance.

  Chapter Six

  “Wait, listen to this,” I said to Tuscany and James, both of whom were sitting in my living room on Monday night, sipping wine and watching me torment myself. I was pounding away on the keyboard of my laptop, pulling up every word I could find on the Cessna Skyhawk in anticipation of my dreaded Sunday-afternoon flight. The devil you know, I figured. “It’s described as a ‘monoplane.’”

  “As opposed to what? A stereoplane?” said James.

  “Maybe it gives you mono if you kiss someone while you’re in it,” said Tuscany.

  “This isn’t funny,” I scolded them, then felt sorry I had. They were trying to be supportive in their own ways. It’s hard for people who aren’t afraid of something to relate to those who are afraid of it, and I should have just been grateful that they
were there for me.

  I cleared my throat and continued to read from the manufacturer’s Web site. “‘The Skyhawk is an all-metal, single-engine piston, high-wing monoplane with a four-seat capacity. Its height is eight feet eleven inches.’”

  “That’s not much taller than a basketball player I once dated,” said Tuscany.

  “I think I dated him too,” said James.

  “‘The Skyhawk embodies everything exciting about flight,’” I pressed on. “‘Power. Styling. Adventure.’”

  “You could use an adventure, Annie,” said James. “Maybe you’ll actually enjoy yourself up there.”

  “Please. I have plenty of adventure on the ground,” I said, shutting down the computer. I couldn’t take it anymore. Not only had I done searches for the exact make and model of Goddard’s plane, I’d also checked to see how often it had crashed. I’d made myself sick with all the searching and wished I’d left well enough alone.

  “Sit here,” said James, patting the cushion on the couch next to him. “Let us help, would you?”

  He and Tuscany had each come bearing drugs. Xanax. Valium. Ativan. Klonopin. They’d brought every antianxiety medication their doctors had ever prescribed for them, dumping their vials of pills on my big coffee table, which now looked like a counter at Walgreen’s.

  “Thanks, you guys,” I said, sinking onto the sofa and resting my back against the pillow. “I appreciate the thought, but I can’t take any of that stuff.”

  “Just one Xanax,” Tuscany implored. “Put one under your tongue about forty-five minutes before you go to the airport and it’ll calm you down. You’ll see.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m too afraid.”

  “That’s what the Xanax is for,” she pointed out.

  “No, I’m afraid of medicine the way I’m afraid of flying,” I explained, admitting to yet another phobia I hadn’t been willing to face. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve convinced myself that I’ll have a bad reaction to whatever the drug is and then die.”

  “I thought you convinced yourself that you’re gonna die in the plane,” said James.

  “I did,” I said with a shrug. I had traveled halfway across the country to escape the family curse, but here it was, popping out all over me like a nasty rash. Not only was I panicking about flying and pill taking, but I had panicked that night at Bristol Farms and again after Goddard had lit into me at Spago. I had no idea why I was suddenly having the attacks—Life was good! I was happy! I was living my dream!—but I could no longer deny that bouts of anxiety disorder were exactly what they were. “This is hopeless. I’m never going up in that Cessna with Goddard. Who am I kidding?”

  “What about alcohol?” said Tuscany. “You drink Bloody Marys when you fly on jets.”

  “Yeah, but I have to get hammered or else I won’t even go. I can’t do an interview in that condition. I wouldn’t be able to ask a single coherent question, let alone write down the answer.” I sighed and put my head in my hands.

  “Well, there are other solutions, but you always look down on my alternative therapies,” said Tuscany, who, before becoming a regular at the gym in order to control her weight, had consulted a reflexologist, an acupuncturist, and a hypnotist, none of whom had reduced the size of her thighs.

  “I’m from the show-me state,” I reminded her. “We’re not as gullible in Missouri as people are in L.A.”

  “Maybe, but you’re not in Missouri anymore and you’re desperate,” she said. “I think you should call Dr. Qian.”

  “The acupuncturist?”

  “No, the hypnotist. He just happens to be Chinese too. Chinese-American and very cute, by the way.”

  “As I recall, you didn’t lose a pound when you were seeing him,” I said.

  “That’s not true,” she said. “His hypnotic suggestions worked great until I started dating the chef at the Daily Grill in Brentwood. Not even Dr. Qian can compete with free food.”

  I smiled. “What makes you think he can help me? Does he work with people who have a fear of flying?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “Fears are his specialty. Fear of flying. Fear of spiders. Fear of whatever. You have nothing to lose, Ann. You should call him.”

  “Does he work with people who have a fear of commitment?” James asked. “Because I think I might have it. Either that or I’m just not meeting the kind of men who are life-partner material.”

  James met men at a dance club in West Hollywood called One-Night Stand, where there probably weren’t a lot of men interested in becoming anyone’s life partner.

  Tuscany said she didn’t know if Dr. Qian dealt with relationship issues, but reiterated that I should consult him as soon as possible. “You’ve only got six days until the flight,” she said. “Maybe if you told him it’s an emergency, he’d give you a double session.”

  She was right. What did I have to lose?

  I vowed to call the doctor first thing in the morning. I was determined to cure myself and keep my job, even if it meant going to see every quack in town.

  DR. QIAN’S OFFICE was in a small strip mall in Westwood, and the session itself took place in a dimly lit room furnished only with a La-Z-Boy-type recliner and a straight-backed chair. I went for the recliner, figuring I was the one who’d be going into a trance and reclining, but the doctor directed me to the other chair. He’d been having a problem with swollen ankles, he said, and needed to keep his feet up.

  We sat. He began by asking me when I first became aware of my aviophobia.

  “My fear of flying, you mean?” I said.

  “Yes. That’s the Greek term for it.”

  “Oh. I’ve always had it to some extent. Other fears too.”

  “Like what?” he said, making notes on a pad. He was a very thin, very short, very serious man who wore a white lab coat over his shirt and slacks, as if to convey just how serious. He wasn’t my idea of “cute,” but then Tuscany and I were rarely attracted to the same men because she was attracted to virtually all of them.

  “Well,” I said, “there’s my fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of my mouth.”

  “Arachibutyrophobia,” he said with a nod.

  “It started when I was a child, along with my fear of clowns.”

  “Coulrophobia.”

  “I come from a family of phobics,” I said, “but it wasn’t until recently that my own situation deteriorated.”

  He glanced up from his pad. “Have you tried any antianxiety medications?”

  I shook my head sheepishly. “I have a fear of them too. They all have these hideous side effects. I can’t even watch their commercials.”

  “Pharmacophobia,” he said, nodding again. “You assume you’ll develop a fatal allergy to them.”

  “Yes. And I’m afraid they’ll make me vomit,” I said. “Ever since Teddy Sloan threw up his bologna sandwich all over my desk in third grade, I’ve been afraid of vomit. Of doing it, seeing other people do it, smelling other people do it.”

  “Emotophobia,” he said conclusively.

  “Okay, but the reason I’m here is the flying,” I said, eager to get down to business. “Today’s Tuesday and I’m supposed to go up in a prop plane on Sunday. I need to be fixed by then.”

  He described the process by which hypnosis works and started with a relaxation technique. He asked me to close my eyes and concentrate on the sound of his voice, which was high and nasal and not the sort of soothing tone that would lull anybody into an altered state of consciousness. “I’d like you to imagine a blanket wrapping itself around your feet—a very soft, very warm, very healing blanket. Your feet are becoming completely relaxed by this blanket. Deeply relaxed. Every muscle in your feet is becoming limp and relaxed.”

  I visualized my feet as limp and relaxed. I also visualized Dr. Qian’s feet, which he’d said were so swollen they had to be elevated.

  I opened my eyes. “Maybe there’s too much salt in your diet,” I said. “Excess sodium can cause edema in the feet.” As I
’ve said, I was a hypochondriac who spent way too much time reading up on medical conditions I’d never have.

  Dr. Qian thanked me, but suggested that I close my eyes and refocus on my own feet.

  He moved the imaginary blanket up my body, then counted down from twenty-five, assuring me that I would be drowsy and limp by zero.

  “Now,” he said, “I’m going to paint a picture of exactly how you’ll feel on Sunday afternoon when you take a ride in your friend’s plane.”

  My eyes flew open again. “He’s not my friend,” I said. “He’s the last person I’d—”

  “Ann,” said Dr. Qian. “Please.”

  “Sorry.” Down went my eyelids.

  He said I’d be smiling and laughing on Sunday, filled with joy as I soared above the earth. He went on and on, and at the end of his rosy scenario, he brought me back from my supposedly altered state.

  “As I count to three you’re going to slowly, gradually wake up,” he said. “You’ll be refreshed, as if you’ve taken a nice little nap. Now, start waking up…one, becoming more alert…two, getting ready to wake up…three, wake up.”

  On “three,” I opened my eyes.

  “How do you feel?” asked Dr. Qian.

  “I wasn’t hypnotized, if that’s what you’re asking.” I didn’t want to insult him by calling his expertise into question, but his routine simply hadn’t done the job. I was still petrified of flying.

  He leaned forward in the recliner. “I recommend that you seek out a competent psychotherapist.”

  “But psychotherapy can take years,” I said, my spirits sagging. I hadn’t really expected the hypnosis to work, but there was always the chance it might. Now I was more discouraged than ever. “And its success rate isn’t very high in dealing with people who have phobias and panic attacks. I’ve done a lot of research on the subject lately. No, I need something that will help me and help me fast.”

  Dr. Qian considered my dilemma. “You might give virtual reality therapy a try,” he said. “There’s a clinic not too far from here.”

  “Oh, you mean one of those places where they use a computerized headset to simulate being in a plane?”