Back then my dad was one of the most powerful public relations people in Hollywood. And on this night Dad and I were driving to one of his Hollywood studio parties. A wrap party for some forgettable film called … well, I forget. Dad said he wanted me to meet ‘the gang’. I think he just wanted to impress me. He knew how many movies and television shows I watched and wanted to show me that he was part of that world. Or maybe he was just trying to make up for not being around much. He and Mom didn’t talk much after What Happened.
Most of the people at the party were behind-the-scenes guys: producers, executives, distributors. His group, the PR people, was there too, including an underling who worked for my father for years and who I’d never met. I can’t even remember his name. And, of course, Roland, shaved arms and all, was also there – but back then he called himself ‘Rolin’. He was the PR photographer at the time and believed that all photographers had to have cool names if they wanted the celebrities to trust them. In Hollywood it’s not what you create that matters, it’s the image you portray, and ‘Rolin’ with tattoos conveyed serious artistic talent levels of magnitude greater than ‘Roland’ from the Midwest.
‘Hey, come here,’ Rolin called over to my father and I when we arrived. He rolled up his sleeve. ‘Check this out. My latest. Cool, huh?’ It was da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man on his inner forearm. He looked like he was skinned alive. Rolin’s blood dribbled through where the ink had been injected earlier in the day.
I don’t remember much else about the party, but my shrink says that’s normal. He says, given after what happened next, it’s reasonable for my brain to try to block memories from that night. It’s my mind trying to save me from more hurt.
But I do remember what I wish my mind would let me forget. After the party, driving home through our subdivision, the Orange County air was warm and smooth as it flowed in the car windows. My dad seemed lost in thought, so I just listened to the crickets as they creaked and watched the curbs slide past, dipping and breaking every time there was a driveway. Suddenly there was a sharp swerve and a pop. I was jerked forward and the seatbelt snapped something in my chest as our vehicle stopped cold. I looked over at my father. The way the windshield was embedded in his skin, thousands and thousands of little shards of glass, his face sparkled like a mask of diamonds. I had never seen anything so magnificent. Then blackness crept in.
I woke to the horn. The windshield was gone. The steering wheel was in my father’s chest. I remember trying to scream, but couldn’t. Nothing was coming out. Someone was by the car. Blackness again.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ a voice said when I woke at the hospital. I thought they were talking about me, but they meant my father.
Our car hit a large maple. The impact was so forceful part of the engine ended up in the back seat. I was the lucky one. Broken collarbone. Bruised arm. Three weeks of physical therapy. The next day, when I woke, my father was dead.
Maybe I looked like an asshole to all the doctors in the hospital because I wasn’t all torn up and crying about things. But after Emma I had learned how to compartmentalise my hurt so well that I no longer remembered how I should feel when someone else close to me died. So I just lay in my hospital bed and held my mother’s hand as she shuddered and cried.
The funeral came and went. I was given my father’s gold watch to remember him by. It felt more like a retirement gift. Thanks for your service, son.
A few weeks later I met a girl. It was when, as usual, I went to a movie by myself. As fate would have it, Rachel chose to catch a flick on her own that day too. She was seventeen and had just moved to LA for a modelling contract with Cosmo. We hit it off right away, and though her work kept her busy, we were soon seeing each other. She was gorgeous: slim body, perky tits, anime-red hair and green eyes that would have matched the Van Gogh’s eyes perfectly, now that I think about it.
One night Rachel stopped by while my mom was out grocery shopping. I brought her up to my room and started to undress her. Truth be told, it was the first time I had ever seen a girl naked.
I can still feel how hard her nipples were, how soft her cheeks felt. Her hair smelled like Snuggles Fabric Softener.
I laid Rachel back on my bed and kissed her belly. She slowly arched her hips as I peeled off her mauve lace panties. I slipped a condom on and clumsily began thrusting.
She was so beautiful. Her little moans so comforting. Her breath on my neck so warm. She was perfect. Barely a minute had passed and I already wanted to cum. In her, on her – it didn’t matter.
That’s when Mom walked in.
‘Mom!’ I screamed.
‘Jerry, what is this?’ Mom yelped, her jaw long and her eyes wide in mortification.
And to Rachel, I yelled, ‘Cover yourself up!’ But she just lay there: legs spread wide, a perfect grin on her perfect face.
That’s one thing about being a supermodel: you know you’re so beautiful it just doesn’t bother you if total strangers see you naked – even your boyfriend’s mother.
‘Oh, Jerry, oh Jerry,’ Mom kept saying. ‘What are you doing?’
To Mom I yelled, ‘I didn’t think you were home!’
And to the pillows on the bed I yelled, ‘Rachel, get dressed!’
But that’s one thing about being a bunch of pillows: they don’t have to do what anyone tells them.
And just before I blacked out, Mom asked, ‘Who’s Rachel?’
Rachel, it turned out, was a figment of my imagination. That’s the name my psychiatrist gave it: a ‘figment’. A hallucination, a symptom of psychotic depression, maybe as a result of my father’s unexpected death. Or maybe, my father’s death, coming right after Emma’s, was the thing that made me snap. Who knows?
Mom told the shrink how I had stacked the pillows like they were a person. Two duck-feather ones for the torso, decorative pillows from the couch for arms, a couple of body pillows for the legs. My mom feared the worst. But my shrink stressed that I wasn’t schizophrenic. ‘Psychotic depressives invent people to fill voids,’ the shrink said.
What void? My mom didn’t dare ask.
‘Psychotic depression and schizophrenia are two different things,’ the shrink told us. He said schizophrenia is a slow road into hell. It’s not reversible. Psychotic depression is. ‘With regular counselling from a mental-health professional and some Zyprexa we can rid Jerry of these figments,’ he explained in his Harvard Medical Journal voice from behind a large oak desk. ‘Your son will be good as new in no time.’
Mom looked like she really didn’t believe it.
‘Are you sure the medicine will make him OK?’ she asked.
‘If not, there’s always electroshock therapy. That can help.’
‘My poor baby,’ my mom said, like the treatment was inevitable. Me, I was reading between the lines. I wasn’t going to get laid by a supermodel any longer.
‘And what other things should we keep an eye out for? Besides the seeing people?’
‘As long as he stays on his meds, nothing major,’ my shrink told her, like I wasn’t in the room. ‘Maybe some disassociation. Some minor anti-social behaviour. Perhaps a small inclination – less than one percent of psychotic depressives get this – but perhaps a small inclination to other rare disorders.’
‘Such as?’
‘Really rare stuff. An inclination towards things like Stockholm syndrome.’
My mom whimpered.
‘Relax,’ my shrink tried to reassure her. ‘Just make sure he’s never kidnapped and he’ll be fine,’ he winked. And to me he said, ‘But seriously, be sure to stay on the medication or the figments could come back. And you don’t want us to have to treat this with shock therapy.’
I took my meds religiously and saw the shrink once a month. I saw Rachel less and less. Another difference between being a schizo and being psychotically depressed: you know your hallucinations aren’t real once someone points the first one out. It makes them a lot easier to ignore. And though the medicine seemed to be workin
g, my imaginary supermodel began to be replaced by very real stomach cramps.
‘I want to try a new medication,’ my shrink said the next time I saw him. ‘It’s off-label for this condition, but there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence that it’s helpful for treating it. It might even eliminate your hallucinations with little or no side-effects.’
Sounds great, Doc. What is it?
‘Mifepristone.’
Aka RU-486.
Aka the abortion pill.
Don’t ask me how the pharmaceutical companies figured that one out. Maybe some psychotic depressive was convinced she was pregnant, popped a 486, and suddenly realised not only was she never pregnant but that the father of her child never existed.
However they figured it out, they were right: the abortion pill not only kills babies, it kills imaginary friends as well. I never saw Rachel again.
A year after the accident my mom packed us up and moved to a teaching job at DePaul University. Her friends thought she was running from the memories of her husband, but Mom wasn’t running away from anything. She hated Hollywood life. She was running towards the life she had always wanted. Sometimes we can only be free when the people we love are gone.
One day I came home to our new Chicago house to find Roland in our kitchen. His shirt was a hideous blue-and-orange Hawaiian theme and his goatee had started to sprout grey. Roland had left the studio and moved to Chicago to take a position at the Art Institute. Mom said he wanted to offer help in getting me a job at the museum.
‘We have lots of computers,’ he said to me, like I was some delicate flower.
Mom had told him everything.
‘It’ll be nice to get out of your bedroom, won’t it, honey? Maybe get your own place with all the money you’ll be earning?’
‘Trust me,’ Roland said, ‘you’re going to love the museum.’
I fucking hate the museum and I need to be back there in ten minutes – barely time to finish the paper. Like anyone else, the amount of love I possess for my lunch break is directly proportional to the amount of hate I possess for my job. I cherish this time. But just as I turn to the Celebrity & Lifestyle section he comes in.
The bum.
Besides his torn clothes and his dirt-marked face, he looks like an old version of Ernest Hemingway – or the Gorton’s Fisherman. Silver hair peeks from the bottom of his knit cap, grey whiskers give him a rugged look, but it’s his cool blue eyes that are the most striking.
Every once in a while he’ll burst through the doors screaming about religion or philosophy, before someone offers him coffee to calm him down. I guess the regulars have found it’s quicker than waiting for the Chicago PD to show up. Today he’s unusually frantic.
‘I seek God! I seek God,’ he cries. ‘Where is God?’
This sounds familiar.
‘I will tell you,’ he continues. ‘We have killed him – you and I.’
Ah, Nietzsche.
‘All of us are his murderers.’
Someone give this guy a coffee already.
‘What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives.’
Personally, I think he just pulls this crazy act because he knows you can get a lot more out of people a lot faster by scaring them, annoying them, or making them feel like they’re your saviour, than you can by sitting around asking them for a nickel.
Case in point: a kind-looking, balding man is bringing him a cup of Kenyan Select right now. ‘It’s OK. Calm down. Why don’t you drink this and warm up?’ the coffee-bringer tells the doomsayer. The bum takes it and stands between a set of tables and the snack counter, his body blocking the path of an alternateen barista with pigtails who carries a tray full of biscotti. Her shirt reads: ADMIT IT. YOU’D GO TO JAIL FOR THIS. As the barista awkwardly slips around him, carefully trying to balance all the biscotti on the tray, one falls off. The bum snatches it from the floor before the girl has a chance to see.
Now the bum’s settled into a seat in the middle, at a little round table with a chequerboard. The barista, counting biscotti, eyes him suspiciously. The bum holds his biscotti in both hands, twitching his head left then right, like a skittish squirrel nibbling an acorn.
Choke on it, you freak. My lunch break is almost over and I didn’t even get to finish my paper in peace. I put on my coat and leave the Sun-Times on the table. Someone else will get to finish it. As I walk towards the exit I pass the bum and intentionally check him with my body, knocking him back in his seat. Fuck you, I say in my head.
And just as I get to the door a lady screams.
I turn around and everyone is on their feet. Through their legs a mass of dirt-stained clothes wriggles on the floor. Then a break in the crowd reveals a black knit cap with silver hair sprouting from the back. The bum’s face is turning an ever-darkening shade of blue. He’s grasping at his throat. The motherfucker is choking on his biscotti.
There are eight people between me and the bum, but no one is doing anything. Admit It just rolls her eyes, wearing a face that says, God, this is so inconvenient. I don’t get paid enough to worry about choking homeless people. Some guy near the back has started recording everything with his phone. Look for it on YouTube soon, no doubt.
And maybe the rest of the people don’t know the Heimlich, but I’m betting no one else is helping him because they don’t want to touch a creepy, worthless fuck of a man – worthlessness that might rub off on to them.
I can relate. To the bum, I mean.
Clawing at his throat, he’s a minute closer to death than he was when the lady screamed, and still the crowd is acting like they’re watching a one-man improv show.
And look, I don’t know the Heimlich either, but I did bump him. So I push my way though and kneel at the bum’s side. Then I do the worst thing possible. I do the thing the first-aid refrigerator magnets tell you never to do: I stick my fingers down his throat.
And there’s a reason they tell you that. All I’ve done is lodge the biscotti further down. Panicked, I grab his coffee and pour it into his mouth.
And somewhere in the crowd a woman screams again.
Someone shouts, ‘He’s going to die!’
Someone shouts, ‘His face is so blue!’
Someone shouts, ‘Leave room for cream!’
And, leaning over the nearly dead bum with his mouthful of steaming coffee, I take my middle finger and jam it down his throat.
I thrust up and down, finger-fucking his mouth until the coffee has saturated the biscotti enough to break it in two. As I roll him onto his side the combined coffee and biscotti sludge slowly dribbles out of his mouth and down his whiskered cheek like a mini mudslide. Going back in, I stick all my fingers in his gaping, coffee-scalded mouth, past his rough, rodent-like tongue, till I feel the sewer-slime slickness of his throat and scoop out a clumpy mush of biscotti. I go in one more time, fishing for leftovers.
Then comes the gag.
And his warm, chunky, lava-like vomit flows over my hand.
He gasps for air.
‘I’m not going to go to hell for someone as worthless as you,’ I whisper under my breath, as I watch his sad face lose its blue. His whiskered cheeks softly pump up and down.
‘Oh!’ a woman exclaims. ‘Oh!’
‘Awesome,’ says YouTube guy.
Then I guess the crowd realises they should do something so when they tell this story to their friends they can say they played a part. They help the bum up. They tell him he is so lucky. They tell him to view this as a new day, a new start.
I’m still on the floor, my hand covered with homeless vomit. No one wants to help me up.
My fingers are red and scalded. My heart is racing, beads of sweat dot my face, and it feels good when someone opens the door and the cold April wind blows in.
And when the door bangs shut, she’s on the other side of it again – her raven hair hangs in wet strands before her eyes. Her pale skin is slightly pink from the cold. The place where her
ear lobe should be drips with water from the shredded cartilage. And her green eyes stare at me. I mean, right at me. The words from my dream echo in my head: An awakening is needed in the west. Heat radiates from my skin. The little beads of sweat that dot my face evaporate. I’m dizzy and just want to close my eyes, but I can’t look away from the girl. Those penetrating eyes. That mutilated ear.
Then a towel hits me in the face.
‘Here you go, hero,’ the alternateen barista says, moving between me and the door.
I wipe my hand clean of vomit and when I look up again, my dream figment is gone. It rains in her place.
4
Assassins
After you save someone’s life, people don’t just let you leave. When they think you’re a hero, they want to be your best friend. They pretend like they care about you. They pretend to be interested in you because of who you are, not because of what you just did.
I sit on the steps outside the coffee house and let the drizzle fall over me. The barista takes a seat by my side. Her eyes are caked with eyeliner, the raccoon. Inside the coffee house a line has formed at the counter.
‘On my break,’ she says and lights up a cigarette.
I wonder if she’s even old enough to be smoking.
‘That was really cool what you did,’ she says.
But my attention has shifted to across the street. I’m watching the figment from my dream as she stands behind a crowd of Asian tourists who’re snapping pictures of one of the big lion statues that guard the museum’s entrance. But then the Asian tourists, they see a WGN-TV cameraman shooting footage of the museum. It must be for their story on the west wing’s renovation Roland mentioned. So the Asian tourists stop shooting the lion and start shooting the cameraman and a very bored looking reporter.
Epiphany Jones Page 2