Then they told me the story:
Colin had an older sister named Christine. She was twenty-one and home from college on spring break. About six weeks ago, while I was in Europe, Christine was home alone in the affluent suburban house where Colin and her parents lived. At three in the afternoon someone entered the house and stabbed her multiple times. Her younger brother, Colin, came home within the hour, found her there, covered in blood, no longer breathing.
Colin was immediately a suspect. His dark eyes, his penchant for driving too fast, for drinking too much, his timely arrival at his sister’s murder scene—all these things earned him a photo in the paper, a caption that read something like: “Brother Suspected in Local Girl’s Slaying.”
Within a week Colin’s name was cleared, his sister’s murder linked instead to a string of stabbings across Atlanta that spring. A new suspect was caught, charged, featured in the paper.
The more of the story my friends revealed, the more I fixated on Colin. Laura and Holly went on talking, dissecting the details of the case, but I had stopped listening. I watched Colin with a newfound interest.
He was tidying up the bar, moving with a kind of deliberateness that I liked. He wiped down bottles, rinsed the sinks, emptied the ice bin. He frowned as he worked, his eyes growing darker.
I was utterly transfixed by him, captivated by our shared experience of loss. He knew what it was like to lie awake at night, wishing someone weren’t gone.
I didn’t think much about the murder, about the violence. Those things were too far out of my scope of experience. I only saw someone who lived in the same solitary world that I inhabited.
Things moved swiftly after that. We spent the summer leaning into each other in darkened bars, downing drink after drink until neither of us could feel anything anymore. We spent those nights tangled in bed, never having to explain to the other what it felt like to grieve with every pore in our being. In the fall we ran away to New Orleans in the middle of the night. We fell in love there, stumbling drunkenly down alleys littered with beads and bottles, sitting on wrought-iron balconies as dawn broke across the city.
When it was time to part ways a few months later, for me to go back to school in Vermont and for him to move to New York, we did so wistfully. But I hardly put in a semester in Vermont before I dropped out and moved to New York to join Colin in the East Village.
Now, almost six years later, the things that drew us together in the first place are the very things driving us apart. What remains of our relationship is splintered and brittle, a dry, dead thing. I’m sick of grieving. I’m sick of drinking. I’m sick of darkness and isolation. All of them the very glue of us.
COLIN IS STILL asleep when I get up the next morning.
A few weeks into living in Hollywood, Colin found a doorman job at a club nearby and also enrolled in classes at a well-reputed acting studio. He studies during the day, works late at night. His dark eyes and full lips would lead you to believe that he would find success, but his air of confidence and superiority is off-putting. All my friends think he’s an asshole.
I get dressed carefully, fiddling with the clasp on my slacks and twisting my hair up off my neck. Sometimes I try to imagine what my mother would think if she could see me now. I doubt that she would even recognize the college freshman she last saw, with the nose ring, dyed crimson hair, and combat boots.
I talk to my dad on my way to work. We are both in the car. He is on his way to radiation treatment, and I am bound for what is sure to be another exacting day.
When I arrive, I see that West Coast Editor is in her office, shuffling through papers and throwing things in a bag. I’m surprised to see her there so early.
Can I help with anything?
I’m going to New York tomorrow, she snaps. You can help with everything.
I completely forgot that this was the day West Coast Editor leaves for a month of editorial meetings in the New York office.
At my desk I nod at the other assistant, Sophie, who has clearly been in since at least 6:00 a.m., and start going through my e-mail. Sophie is on hold with the airline, trying to get West Coast Editor’s ticket upgraded to business class. We both know that if she doesn’t, she’s going to be in trouble.
Sophie is blond and French, both things that I am not. She is also far more competent at this job than I am. I like her, but I am intimidated by her.
We spend the day preparing for West Coast Editor’s travels. The airline comes through with the upgrade, and I manage to get her a last-minute mani/pedi appointment. I am emboldened by the thought of her being gone for several weeks and attack my duties with fervor. Sophie and I will be left in charge of the office.
At the end of the day West Coast Editor looms over our cubicle. She drops a handful of lavishly printed invitations on my desk.
These are the ones I want you to go to while I’m gone. The rest are up to you, she says, gesturing to a thick binder full of even more invites to all manner of upcoming Hollywood parties, screenings, and openings.
We must maintain the Big Fancy Magazine presence, she says, taking a rare moment to look me in the eye.
I gaze down at the fat stack of cards before me. There are easily several events for each night of the week.
If you can’t make them all, West Coast Editor says, Sophie can go to some of them.
I’m still not clear why I am first assistant and Sophie is second, but I just nod and stack the invitations carefully.
West Coast Editor finally leaves in a flurry of last-minute instructions, barking orders at us even as she is stepping into the elevator. Once she is safely out of the building Sophie and I begin to pore over the glittering invitations, divvying them up, and doubling up on some.
Sophie calls in our RSVPs, her accent sounding haughty and commanding.
Yes, hellooo, she purrs, I’m calling to RSVP from Big Fancy Magazine. Yes, thank you, we will be in attendance.
The rest of the week goes by in a happy blur. The office is so much more relaxed with West Coast Editor gone. Even her bleating phone calls from New York don’t faze me. Sophie and I order in lunch every day, play music at our desks, and even take cigarette breaks together, rolling the office calls to our cell phones, just in case.
On Friday night I drag Colin out to my first invite: an art opening for someone named Gottfried Helnwein, hosted by the actor Jason Lee. The gallery is in a warehousy part of town, and we walk nervously from the car to the entrance. A woman at the door scans her list for my name.
Oh yes, right here. Big Fancy Magazine. She smiles at me brightly when she says this and ushers us in.
We make a beeline for the bar, across the cavernous, exposed-brick room. Neither of us is sure what to expect from this event. How exactly am I supposed to make my presence known?
By getting drunk, Colin quips, ordering us two double vodkas from the bartender.
We wander the room, sipping our cocktails and taking in the scene. Helnwein’s images are disturbing. People with bandaged heads and children lying immobile on the floor. We see Jason Lee standing in a corner talking to a group of people.
Colin nudges me after a minute and nods his head in the direction of a man sitting on one of the benches in the center of the room. He looks incredibly drunk and decidedly unshowered.
I realize it’s Nick Nolte. He’ll be arrested for DUI that same month, his mug shot displaying the same frazzled hair I’m seeing now.
We stay for the better part of an hour, talking to no one, downing more drinks, and eventually giving up on figuring out Helnwein’s work.
With each event I grow a little more confident, and a lot more drunk. These parties become the saving grace of my relationship with Colin, the alcohol-infused evenings the only time we connect anymore. I catch glimpses of who we used to be as we lean into each other, feeling like the only two people in the world who get it.
We go to a party with Sophie and her boyfriend on the rooftop of the Standard. It’s a soiree to celebrate
the kickoff of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, and the director talks our ears off about all the amazing kinds of couture we’ll be seeing. I nod along drunkenly, pretending like I know what he’s talking about and trying hard to hide my scuffed heels under the tablecloth.
Another night we attend a Frederick’s of Hollywood fashion show at a trendy restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. I sway from the vodka running through my veins and stare up at the scantily clad women parading down a catwalk inches from my head. David Spade stumbles boozily into me on my way back from the bathroom, and I just nod at him. He seems to be at every party we go to.
I take advantage of every movie screening I can, thrilled to be sitting in these darkened theaters on studio lots, in the middle of the afternoon, seeing films months before they come out in the theaters.
We go to a party to celebrate the opening of a mobile phone boutique on Rodeo Drive. The cell phone service reputedly costs twenty thousand dollars and comes with a special button you can press that will connect you directly to your own private concierge so that you can, say, have your favorite Nars lip gloss delivered to your bungalow in the Seychelles within hours.
I watch as Christian Slater inspects one of the phones, peering into the crystal display case. Oh, and there’s David Spade again.
Claire Smith, Big Fancy Magazine, I say to the faceless girls who stand at the door of each of these events with their clipboards and headsets. Colin and I are ushered in every time. We sip mojitos and martinis; we pluck sashimi off silver platters. We brush elbows with Benicio del Toro, Keira Knightley, Annie Leibovitz, countless writers and producers, Hollywood wannabes, and more glitz and money than I ever realized existed.
All the stuff I’d always heard about LA is true: the movie stars, the Botox, the cars, the smog, the traffic, and the lavish parties. It’s all there. There’s more to it than that, of course, but right now, working this job, my days are filled with an undiluted version of Hollywood, something I never thought I’d be privy to.
But there’s always a moment when I find myself standing against the rooftop railing of some hotel, a drink in my hand, and I think of my father alone in his condo, forty-five minutes away, clicking through movie channels, a glass of watery scotch puddling on the table next to him. I know he wants me to be here, out in the world, living my life, but this version of living just doesn’t feel worth it.
I drive down to see him the next morning, vowing to start spending more time with him, but between the demands of the job and the distance of his condo it has become increasingly hard to see him outside of the weekends.
I insist on spending every Sunday with him. We go for long drives through the San Bernardino Mountains or the hills of Pasadena. My dad points out places where he worked in the 1950s and homes he lived in with his other family decades ago.
I find myself holding my breath on these drives, knowing that the time I have left with this man, with my only parent, is running out. He spins the wheel lazily with one hand as we snake down hairpin mountain curves, unspooling story after story about his life. I have begun to carry a tape recorder whenever I am with him, recording hours’ worth of his voice.
Sometimes my father wants to go over technical things with me on our visits together. He wants to add my name to his bank account, help me understand how a living will works, double-check that I have the extra key to his safe-deposit box.
Dad, I moan, you’re being so morbid.
Not morbid, sweetie. I’m just trying to prepare you.
But you’re not going to die yet, I say.
Hopefully not anytime soon, he says. But when I do you’re going to have to be on top of this stuff.
The radiation has been wearing him down. His taste buds have stopped working, and my heart sinks each time I watch him push a plate away, complaining that everything tastes like cardboard. For his birthday in October, I make him a little coupon book of all his favorite meals, something he can redeem when his taste buds return. Neither of us realizes that this is never going to happen.
I think about him late at night, as I try to fall asleep. About how I’m going to be completely alone when my father is gone. There is a screaming, gaping chasm that opens up inside me when I try to imagine it.
I still miss my mother, but it is my father whom I have come to depend on now. My deep, dark secret is that I am glad that she died first. Had she not, I may have never known him.
My father has mellowed and sweetened in his old age. He moves slowly, like a turtle, carefully planning each move in order to make the most of it. He cooks recipes from the New York Times and he cans peaches like his mother used to when he was growing up in Michigan.
He is friendly with all the young neighbors in his condominium complex, and he enlists my help in planting flowers around the perimeter of his front stoop. He inherited this condominium after his sister died, and he has since done away with her seventies avocado-green furniture and heavy draperies. He has outfitted the living room with black leather couches and black-lacquered credenzas. He acquired an absurd collection of lava lamps that he proudly displays on a shelf in the living room, and he hangs photos of my mother in every single room.
Most weekends we just watch movies together. Whatever is on HBO: The Thomas Crown Affair, The Bourne Identity, Tin Cup. I know that after four years of living alone he is unspeakably grateful for companionship.
I get that breathlessness again when I think about it though. The feeling of time spilling across the floor. Of my father ebbing away from me. Of not being able to do anything about it.
Now and then I offer to quit my job. I could move in with you, I say. But even as I offer I am torn. It’s not Colin I’m afraid of leaving; it’s my twenties. I’m afraid of giving up who I am.
Each radiation treatment depletes him a little more. He has lost weight and his skin has turned an unappealing shade of gray. The doctors want to start radiating his hips too, suspecting that the cancer may have spread there as well. My father sets his jaw and raises his eyebrows at me.
What other options do we have, kiddo?
On Sunday nights, when I drive the hour back to Hollywood, it is with a sinking feeling, a dreadful confusion that does not abate. I listen to Radio-head and I blow my cigarette smoke up through the moonroof into the balmy Southern California night air.
WEST COAST EDITOR RETURNS from New York in a flurry of activity, with multiple orders to be carried out immediately. She even ships a giant box of her dirty laundry to the office a few days before her return, and Sophie and I stand in the center of the room, surveying the contents.
I cannot believe she mailed this stuff to us, I say.
I can, Sophie replies.
I tell Colin about it that night when I get home. I even try to explain to him that apparently this is standard Hollywood behavior. It seems no one would get their jobs done if they didn’t have assistants to do this stuff for them, I tell him.
Fuck her, he replies, without looking up from the TV.
I can’t even bring myself to respond to him. Our relationship has been deteriorating by the day. We are hardly speaking to each other. I can tell that we both want out but that neither of us knows how to make the first move.
The next day, when I go into the office, West Coast Editor is in a huff. She’s only been back for two days but I’m already not sure I can do this.
West Coast Editor has been assigned a cover story on Sultry Movie Star and she is completely stressed. I have no sympathy for her. On top of the thousands of dollars she’ll likely receive in addition to her salary for the piece, she actually gets to write, something I’ve been dying to do since I started the job.
But I don’t have time to muse on all of this. West Coast Editor is in rare form. She walks in and out of her office, slamming the door, barking out orders at me and Sophie.
The Rules of Inheritance Page 8