Rock Monster

by Kristin Casey

  “Rocky’s dead, honey. He got sick and I took him to the vet but it was too late.”

  I was trembling all over, trying to speak but unable. Joe stayed silent until I choked something out—No, please, he can’t be…how, when…?

  “Angelina found him on the kitchen floor. She thought he was dead but picked him up and he was alive, still fighting….” Joe’s voice broke and it did me in. I cracked right in half. In the middle of a bland hotel room, thousands of miles from my true family—Joe and Rocky, now minus one—an unrecognizable sound came out of me, primal and gut-wrenching. I wailed like an animal torn from the herd. I dropped the receiver and hit my knees sobbing. When I could, I put the phone to my ear again.

  “I’ll take care of everything,” Joe said. “Come on home, if you want.”

  Majid sat, frozen, waiting to hear which of my parents or siblings had been killed. That it was my cat elicited a baffled look. “I just hope you react like that when I kick the bucket.”

  I didn’t reply. He wouldn’t have liked my answer.

  Rocky had been the runt of the litter, a nervous, vulnerable ball of fur entrusted to an inadequate caretaker. He’d caught a virus the previous year that weakened his liver. I hadn’t been warned it could kill him. Nor had I asked the right questions. Back in Austin I’d drilled Rocky’s vet about everything from hairballs to feline vitamins. It had been years since I’d paid attention. If there were signs Rocky was unwell, it was no wonder I’d missed them.

  He’d been the last gasp of purity in my toxic world, a symbol of the light and love I could not see in myself. I corrupted or ruined everything I held dear, and now I’d extinguished a life. I thought of Rocky, alone in the dark, slowly dying in an empty house, wondering where his momma was and why she’d abandoned him. Why she’d abandoned us both.

  •••

  In my absence, Joe had Rocky cremated. We buried his ashes in the grass between the pool and the barbecue patio, the spot of our once future vegetable garden.

  We dealt with sorrow and awkwardness by monstering—our way of feeling close. A pseudo, superficial intimacy and our last common ground. I took advantage of Joe’s generosity and cooked my share into crack. One thing led to another, then everything went to shit. Feeling nudged out by the pipe, he tried to get me out of the house. He suggested roleplaying at the Sportsmen’s, as strangers who meet in a bar. He’d “pick me up” and whisk me off to a hotel room for some sexy fun. He left first and I promised to follow after a shower and change of clothes. I’ll be right there, I promised. Twenty minutes, dressed to kill.

  I felt neither horny nor playful, but it was the right thing to do. I had to prove I could take crack or leave crack, and yet that turned out not to be true. As much as I’d struggled in the past, this was my worst failure yet. Joe was waiting, at that moment, praying the girl he loved was still here. Meanwhile, I had “one last hit” at least twenty times. Ninety minutes later, our worst blowout ever.

  “You’re out of here!” he screamed, bursting in the house. “You don’t deserve to live here if you can’t quit that fucking shit. I want my woman back—I love her but I hate you. You’ve ruined us and I refuse to watch you kill yourself. You blew it. Pack your shit and get out!”

  It was true and I didn’t argue. I agreed—you’re right, I have a problem—but he was too mad to listen. I wanted to explain that I hadn’t shown up because I was chained to the pipe, a slave to it. That trying to quit crack was like trying to quit breathing—my body wouldn’t do it. Instead, I went upstairs to pack my stash, toiletries, and some clothes. Joe followed, then in the bedroom he pushed a pile of homemade sex tapes out of reach.

  I reacted. “Are you serious? You think I want those? That I might do something unscrupulous?” I was addicted to crack, but I had my integrity. Jesus. The issue then, though, was how disorganized he could be. I’d come across half a dozen of Lisa’s sex tapes at the penthouse, and no way was I letting that happen to me. “But I’m not leaving them here, either!”

  “Fine!” he screamed, and started chucking them at the wall and stomping on the remnants until they were destroyed. At first, I begged him to calm down, but then his rage triggered my own. We chased each other through the house, though it was mostly me on the run. There was a standoff in the garage studio when Joe cornered me between a tool bench and glass brick wall, built with fiber optics inside to create a beautiful, scrolling rainbow. That wall was my favorite feature in the house. Also the last thing on my mind as I grabbed a nearby golf club and swung it at Joe’s head.

  I swung high on purpose; Joe’s head was perfectly fine. The glass wall wasn’t. After a stunned silence observing the damage, we were off again. Downstairs in the playroom, in the midst of our full-on screaming match, Smokey appeared. He grabbed me, pinning my arms at my sides. One minute I was yelling at Joe from five or six feet away, the next I was immobilized by a man twice my size and weight.

  My entire life, nothing made me snap like constraint. Aggression shut me down, but being penned in made me insane. It broke my brain and broke my heart. The two men I loved most in the world considered me a hostile force. I knew Joe felt betrayed, but I did, too, betrayed by the life we lived. The one he’d introduced me to.

  Smokey had seen drugs kill John Belushi. Joe had seen drugs kill many. Couldn’t they see what was happening to me? I needed protection from myself. Instead, Smokey protected Joe by wrestling my hundred-pound frame to the carpet. “I’m sick of this bullshit,” he growled. “It’s all I ever get from you.”

  “That’s not all you got, motherfucker,” I spat back, too incensed to worry what Joe might think. I already suspected Smokey had been less than discreet about our affair (I later discovered he’d bragged about it), but if Joe had a clue, I was unaware. Did it matter? Affairs were de rigueur. Psychotic crack addiction was kind of an issue.

  That was the end of life as I knew it on Blairwood. I was banished to another hotel, the Beverly Garland, four short miles and a million light-years away from the remnants of my fairy tale. At first, I was too high to care, but then the drugs ran out. Overcome with remorse and despair, I contemplated suicide. I had no razor or pills, and my pistol was back at the house. I probably wouldn’t have used it. At that moment, it was a comforting fantasy. Distracting myself from pain, with an imaginary escape route.

  •••

  The breakup was not yet official, but we were on our last legs. We’d had five whole years together, four of them pretty good. I moved back into the Sportsmen’s until we could figure out what to do. I needed time to plot my next move and prepare for the shock that was to come. I had a lot of thinking to do. I was going to need drugs.

  I also needed more of my stuff from the house, but as hard as I banged on the door, Joe refused to acknowledge my presence. Through the window I saw Joe, Rick, and someone else (possibly Terry) rehearsing, not twenty feet away. “Quit being jerks. All my stuff is in there!”

  Undeterred, I went to the backyard, slipped through the unlocked sauna room door, and climbed the ladder to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Installed during dungeon renovations, it gave access directly to the house. I threw it open. Bam!—the deafening sound of hardwood slamming hardwood propelled by the weight of that twelve-inch-thick trapdoor/floor. All three men froze in shock, two of them quite confused to see a person emerge from a hole in the living room they hadn’t known was there. No one tried to stop me from marching upstairs. I packed what I could carry and walked out without a word.

  I offered Gary my gun in exchange for some coke and he reluctantly agreed, after I thrice promised to unload it first (which I promptly forgot to do). He didn’t come to my room or even park his car. He stopped under the hotel awning for a handoff through the window, his message loud and clear: Gary was done with me. The stories were officially circulating.

  Alone in my room, I monstered for two days, dismantling light fixtures, outlets, and wall hanging
s in a paranoid search for bugging devices. Majid moved in. We used his dealer and my credit cards. I signed for everything at the hotel, including huge tips for the staff. If they smelled or noticed anything weird, they kept it to themselves. When I ran out of booze, one call to the bar and a bottle of Glenlivet appeared at my door. I kept Everclear on the desk for cleaning resin from my pipe. Sometimes I drank from the bottle. Sometimes I gulped Everclear like water.

  We took a break from crack to eat mushrooms instead, driving around Malibu in a rented convertible. When the drugs hit, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I laughed so long and hard that Majid pulled over and parked. In the hills above the coast, with the gray-blue ocean below, I stood on the dirt shoulder, doubled over in tears. Majid’s look of concern made me laugh even harder.

  We spent a day in artsy-earthy Ojai, window-shopping for things we couldn’t afford, drinking margaritas made with limes plucked from a tree over the open-air bar. We fantasized about moving there, hitting up one of Majid’s industry friends. He knew a director with a guest cottage where I could write screenplays while he networked. I was reminded of New Zealand’s Butterfly Bay, where Joe and I had daydreamed about after leaving LA. Maj drove the convertible to Vegas with the sun on our shoulders, my feet on the dash getting tan. I flirted with passing truckers, feeling freer than I ever had. At Caesars Palace, Majid introduced me to a charming Evel Knievel and manic Buddy Hackett whose mile-a-minute one-liners made me want to hold his head to my breast and/or slip him a Valium.

  Back in LA, we took a limo to my aunt and uncle’s, where my parents were visiting. Dad inquired as to Majid’s “intentions.” He said to marry your daughter and my whole family cringed (myself included). I got us out of there, but not before sneaking baking soda from the pantry. We cooked up in the limo and smoked crack all the way back to the Sportsmen’s.

  •••

  I called Smokey, desperate to see Joe. They were in Florida. I begged—literally begged—and was allowed to fly out. Allowed to get the last of my delusions dashed in person. When they spoke to me at all, it was with suspicion and contempt. I returned to LA humiliated, then two weeks later asked to see him again. We had a short, cordial visit at Blairwood that gave me hope we might stay friends. A short time later, I got a call from an acquaintance in Texas, a twenty-two-year-old, waifish blonde I’d introduced Joe to. She’d just returned from spending the weekend with him. He’d invited her, out of the blue, and though she’d gone, she’d also brought a friend to chaperone. “Nothing happened,” she assured me. “I just wanted you to know.”

  In September, Joe hit the road again, leaving me a house key in case I needed anything. I used it to start packing. He called a few times, surprisingly friendly. One day he said, “If you’re there when I get home…that would be okay.” I assumed it was pity. Maybe he’d met another woman and forgotten how much he hated me. I didn’t mention the moving boxes stacked in the entryway. I told myself it was the mature thing to do—detangle our belongings, begin the process of closure. And yet, I must’ve hoped it would shock his system, because I didn’t warn him at all. I let him enter the house to be greeted by the full force of it.

  I got what I wanted. He walked in smiling, excited to see me, then his face went from confused to crestfallen. I found out later, he’d harbored a sliver of hope for our reconciliation.

  I’d never understood how much he loved me or how much power I had to hurt him.

  Change It

  My first two weeks in Vegas were a mix of cold, hard reality and blissful ignorance. The latter was drug-induced. The former was, too.

  Majid’s best friend there was Sid, a longhaired, sleepy-eyed thirty-something who dealt coke out of his mom’s house, where he lived. I liked Sid’s low-drama, no-bullshit vibe. I was a stranger in a strange town, in need of a place to crash until I got my bearings, and a place to smoke crack until I crashed. Sid opened his (mom’s) home to us and was generous with his stash, but houseguests were one thing, crackheads another, and we wore out our welcome fast. I got us a cheap motel room that sapped my last credit card.

  I wasn’t an experienced couch surfer and did not intend to learn. I wanted our own apartment and for Majid to land one of those great jobs he’d gone on about. His hopes were pinned on a valet parking gig, apparently quite lucrative according to a well-connected friend. But when Majid called, the news wasn’t good. A supervisor had been fired, there was a personnel shift…something like that, but a dead end nonetheless. Calls to other friends had similar results.

  I was a practical girl, accustomed to men who got things done. Joe’s career was in decline, but at least he’d had one. The men in my life tended to be proactive and ambitious: my father, Brad, Abe, and my closest high school friends—Marc, Mike, and Daryl. The punk boys I’d dated were twenty-something men, working on graduate degrees and/or playing in bands. Even meth dealers I’d dealt with had had a certain (delusional) imperious vision. I started to wonder if I was being conned. Majid accused me of being unreasonable—me, who funded every motel room and tank of gas. We argued and I drove off, spending the night in the Mustang, scrunched below the window line so Circus Circus security guards wouldn’t run me off the lot.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d spent a night like that. Less than eight years earlier, at a low point with meth, I’d had to hunker down in my Dodge Colt wagon, vowing never to be there again. Majid promised to try harder. I pushed him to job hunt the regular way—submitting forms, lining up interviews, that sort of thing—but that path was blocked, too. A background check turned up a criminal record—the plague, as far as casinos were concerned.

  “What were you busted for?”

  “I wasn’t, my brother was. That’s my twin’s rap sheet. He uses my identity whenever he gets arrested. He’s done it for years.” (I was skeptical at first—until I met him and he copped to it without a hint of remorse.) Maj felt bad about his lack of prospects, but (I thought) also relieved. When I’d dropped out of college for the third and last time, I’d felt much the same.

  I drew a line in the sand: Majid was free to reclaim his drifter life without me in it. That day, he found a temporary pad with a friend on Flamingo Road, west of the strip. An upscale apartment with a spare guest bath. I jumped on it, desperate for space to shower and primp. I had my own applications in process.

  •••

  Majid’s “friend” turned out to be an ex-girlfriend, and a jilted one, at that. To hear him talk, they’d had a casual thing, but based on her chilly greeting, I guessed Mindy felt differently. Pulling Maj aside, I learned she’d been in love with him when he’d dumped her two months ago for me.

  “Jesus, Maj!” I was mortified. Months later, Mindy and I would laugh about it, but that day she acted like I didn’t exist. She sat in the kitchen drinking wine with friends, a group of fit, tan, beautiful strippers—my soon-to-be competition.

  Mindy did well, if her home was any indication. The complex itself was recently built, with pink stucco, gurgling streams, and tidy desert landscaping. Mindy’s unit could’ve been their showroom, with a trendy black-and-red color scheme, potted palms, and framed Nagel prints. I imagined myself in a similar place (with better artwork, of course) and was hopefully positioning myself to get it. The strip club scene in LA had not impressed me. It managed to feel both seedy and snobby at the same time (like much of LA, really), but Vegas was for the everyman, or so it seemed. A place where screw-ups like me could start fresh. I locked myself in the bathroom preparing to do exactly that at Olympic Garden, the best strip club in Vegas.

  •••

  I was hired at OG without an audition (on the recommendation of a Sugar’s friend who worked there on occasion), then spent each shift watching their dancers rake it in while I eked out a sum that could only be called embarrassing. At a lower-end club I would’ve been a big fish in a small pond, but I was too proud to go that route. Instead, I staked my claim at one of t
he big three, sticking it out at OG with the doggedness of an addict.

  My first regular was more talker than spender but also better company than the video poker machine I’d sat at (without playing) for three days. He came every day for a two-hour chat and one lap dance—an income on par with minimum wage. Later, the connection would pay off in a way I couldn’t predict, but until then he was just a guy who happened to be the first mobster I’d met.

  He was the brawn of the outfit, quite clearly not the brains—a low-level guy with “highly respected” bosses, whatever that meant. Unlike me, he’d settled comfortably on the bottom rung, claiming not to mind its meager pay. He liked his work and, when I denounced violence, assured me those he hurt had it coming. I chose to believe him without further details; I didn’t request them and he didn’t offer. He asked me out a number of times, which was both flattering and offensive. I said I was in a relationship, not bothering to hide my unhappiness.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No, thanks,” I replied hurriedly. “It’s fine, really.”

  I’d just acquired a cheap suite at the Frontier (thanks to a surprise credit increase on my MasterCard). It was spacious and tasteful, and best of all, it had a phone where Majid could be reached 24/7. Prior to that, his friends had acted as an answering service, taking messages on job leads and passing them on whenever they got around to it. I hoped the Frontier would be the break Majid needed to turn things around—if not for us, then for himself.

  “Once he’s on his feet, I’ll decide what to do about our relationship.”

  “You’ll break up,” my customer said. “You’re too good for him and you know it.”

  “That’s sweet of you to say, but I can’t pull the rug out yet. He’s under too much stress… It wouldn’t be right.”

  “Sounds to me like you’ve got the stress and he’s got it made.”