One Real Thing

by Anah Crow

  “You’re slumming,” he told her, tucking one arm under his head before his neck quit holding it up. “You don’t need it, Malinda.”

  “Fuck you,” she said again, tossing back her straw-blonde extensions. “You don’t know what I’m feeling.” She teetered over to the table—only then did Holly realize she was wearing a pair of silver stilettos and nothing else—and pawed through the mess until she found a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  “You’re feeling like you want your own damn television show,” Holly muttered under his breath, but he hid it by rolling away from her and off the other side of the bed.

  “What?” Her voice was like a dry stick snapping. She paused in the act of lighting a cigarette and struck a dramatic pose.

  “Nothing, baby.” Holly found his balance just in time to keep from lurching into the bathroom and headed for the closet instead. “Just had an idea. How about you go out and get something for us?”

  She grumbled, digging through some of the shopping bags he’d dropped behind the chair. Holly fished a bit of cash out of an old tennis shoe. Experience had taught him to keep the money hidden, and in more than one place—hidden from himself as much as the leeches that kept finding him. He peeled off two twenties and grabbed a pair of boxer shorts from the floor on the way out of the closet. Putting them on restored some small scrap of dignity.

  “How do I look?” Malinda turned to face him.

  Life with Sierra had taught Holly to bite back his first answer. It wasn’t usually productive, even on his good days. Malinda was wearing a cashmere vest that came to midthigh. At least it matched her heels, since it was pale gray. He’d bought it on his postbonfire shopping spree, not because he’d meant to wear it, but because it reminded him of Nick: reserved in form and color, but soft against his cheek. She could have it. Holly didn’t deserve Nick or anything having to do with him.

  “Great. Very hot. Taking the ‘boyfriend’s closet’ look right downtown.”

  The metallic alligator bag under the bed wasn’t his. He wasn’t sure it was Malinda’s either, but what the hell. He grabbed a few other things from under there that were hers—a half-full fifth of vodka, a black-and-pink push-up bra and matching thong, a hot-pink snakeskin wallet and a silver compact—and shoved them into the bag as well. When he surfaced, Malinda was admiring herself in the mirror over the rickety dresser. The cigarette, abandoned in an ashtray on the table, spiraled a thin thread of smoke into the sunlight.

  “I’m pretty,” she said to no one in particular, running her fingers through her hair and pushing it back. She had been even before the surgeries, but Holly kept that thought to himself. Someone’s huge, glossy sunglasses were on the dresser, and she put them on, smiling at her bug-eyed reflection.

  “Here, baby.” He put the bag on her arm, then steered her toward the door.

  “Where am I going?” She looked over her shoulder at him as he ushered her out into the blistering sunlight.

  “You’re gonna go down to the front desk here,” he said slowly and precisely, pressing the folded bills into her hand, “where you’re going to call a cab.”

  “A cab? This won’t get me anywhere I need to go.”

  “It’ll get you as far as your dad’s office.” Holly pushed her away carefully so she didn’t fall off her heels.

  “My dad?” Holly watched her struggle to keep her balance and work out what he was saying at the same time.

  “Yep. And you’re going to tell him that since he fired me from my job, I’m sure as fuck not doing his for him.” Holly blew her a kiss as he closed the door. He pressed the lock button on the knob, flipped the dead bolt and slid the chain across as the flimsy door shook with every punch and kick from outside. Lorne was a lousy parent, but Holly was a hell of a lot worse. Maybe she’d figure that out someday.

  The tantrum only lasted until he heard, “Ow, my nail!” Then no more. For a moment longer, she snuffled and cursed, but it faded into nothing, and he was left in peace. As much peace as he could get, feeling this way about himself. He picked up her cigarette and took a drag.

  Holly wasn’t going to think about how it felt to have divested himself of the last vestige of the life he’d watched go up in flames. He was going to think of how stupid he was to have sent her off with what might have been the last of the booze. Fortunately, under the pillows, he found a bottle of cheap rum with a good bit left.

  Coming down in the world by leaps and bounds, his brain moaned. Holly took a drink to shut it up.

  There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world, though, to drink away everything he didn’t want to think about. Like how the only thing keeping him together was knowing it would kill his mother if he screwed up for real and got locked up or knocked off. Dad too, his brain murmured.

  Holly wasn’t sure about that. He jammed the cigarette out on the bedside table without regard for the lack of ashtray. His father had two other sons who were perfectly functional. Holly had no idea how his father lived with the embarrassment. He knew damn well that people always said: He took after his mother. It wasn’t you. Look at your other children. Holly had to agree.

  But his mother…Holly usually tried not to think about her, wherever she was. Mentally. Physically she was in Minnesota, he was pretty sure, at some pleasant “resort” where they locked her in at night and doped her up in the morning. When he couldn’t avoid thinking about her, he worried about her. About who was there to tell her it would be all right when she forgot who she was.

  That was the worst. Holly had always been able to handle it when she forgot him, but he couldn’t take the lost look on her face when she forgot herself. And that was why he wanted to keep something of himself around—because he wanted to think he might be able to bring her back someday.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” When he was a little boy, he would take her hand and lead her to the rose-printed chair in her room. “You’re fine. Look.” He would point at her dresser and the photograph of her wedding to his father. She’d take the picture and look at it, then at the woman in the mirror, back and forth, until recognition dawned in her hazy blue eyes.

  “My hair.” She would touch the soft fall with one trembling hand. “It’s such a mess.”

  “I’ll fix it for you.” Even when he had to stand on her sewing box to brush it, he always did his best.

  “I don’t want him to see me like this.” She would wear her bathrobe for days, until the blue velvet was stained with spilled tea and flecked with dried blood from where she’d dug at her skin with broken nails.

  “You look beautiful, Mom.” She had been luminous, like her pain had burned away anything imperfect and left behind only beauty.

  Holly missed her so much, but he couldn’t take her phone calls these days. The doctors, he’d talk to, but not her. He took a searing swallow of rum and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. They’d always had each other, and then he’d left her. He always meant to return her calls, but he couldn’t deal with the way they ripped him up inside.

  Not talking to her is worse. When he got drunk enough, his brain could convince him it was worse.

  By the time his vision cleared, he was fumbling with his phone.

  That went as well as everything else in his life had recently, but now he had only himself to blame.

  “Yes, Mr. Welles, you were on the access list for Mrs. Welles, but Mrs. Welles was discharged on February nineteenth of this year. I’m afraid we have no transfer documents. She came to us from Brownbriar—have you considered trying there? Sometimes we do have patients return there for further care.”

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Welles, but Mrs. Welles is no longer with us here at Brownbriar.”

  “Mrs. Welles hasn’t been here at Summerlee for some years, Mr. Welles. Have you tried Brownbriar?”

  Holly ran out of rum about the same time he ran out of phone numbers and nerve. Wherever she was, he’d lost her. No one had called him to let him know. Or if anyone had, he didn’t remember.

  He didn’t
deserve to know.

  He had a bit more money. Enough to turn into more than enough if he played his cards right. He’d pull himself together and find a poker game somewhere. If it was something he shouldn’t be doing, Holly was damn good at doing it. As soon as he found his clothes, he could get back to the business of getting everything he deserved.

  ***

  to:addisonn@nygazette.com

  from:rmcrae@importmarket.com

  You know, sometimes things stop being funny. Do you think he knows what he’s doing?

  http://www.outoutout.com/entertainment/sierras-ex-downward-spiral

  http://www.gossipfly.com/entertainment/sierra-i-left-him-because

  http://www.stargazer.com/gossip/sierra-worried-about-ex

  Rich

  The photos in these links were harder to look at. Holly had obviously taken his breakup as a sign he hadn’t been partying hard enough before, because he’d redoubled his efforts. He was looking worse for wear too, pale and gaunt, like a ghost of the vibrant person he used to be.

  Nick hated that he could name most of the pills in a bowl on the table in one photo—propranolol, speed, oxy, sleeping pills, benzos, random antidepressants—and he’d eat his keyboard if the ones he didn’t recognize weren’t MDMA and DXM. He hated more that he could guess which ones Holly was taking. God knew they weren’t the ones he needed.

  Some of the pictures claimed to be of Holly buying drugs; an article suggested he’d been an addict for years, with quotes from Sierra about how she worried Holly might die of an overdose. Nick was right there with her. The photos and articles were overblown, but Nick could pick out the grains of truth, things the drama-mongering writers couldn’t manufacture. He could see them because, even now, he knew Holly like he knew the face in his mirror every morning. Another photo showed the front of the motel where Holly was staying, complete with the name emblazoned on a bright neon sign, and before Nick realized what he was doing, he’d booked a flight to L.A.

  Staring at the confirmation email, Nick surrendered to the reality that he couldn’t let it go. Holly needed someone, and obviously Nick was the only one who gave enough of a damn to rein him in. He arranged for a rental car and told Max he’d be traveling to find another of Senator Ingalls’s former interns. The idea of another story on the scandal was appealing enough that Max didn’t ask too many questions. On his way home to pack, he called Caroline. Her phone clicked over to voice mail, and he left a message.

  “I’m so sorry. I know I said I’d have a normal schedule for a while, but something’s come up and I have to go out of town. I’ll be back by the end of the week.”

  Chapter Three

  The five-hour flight gave Nick plenty of time to use the in-flight Wi-Fi to email Rich a scathing thank-you. Fucker. If he’d kept his damned tabloid habit to himself, Nick would’ve been able to go on at least pretending to ignore Holly’s fuckups on the basis he was too far away to do anything about them. Nick had known—known—if Holly really hit rock bottom, he wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. Wouldn’t be able to leave Holly alone. Rich knew it too, which was why he kept sending Nick those emails, so Nick couldn’t even pretend.

  He’d arranged for a hotel room, found a doctor in L.A.—just in case, he told himself, but didn’t think about just in case what—and given Rich the job of finding Holly a studio apartment within walking distance of the Gazette Building in New York. Might as well be able to check on Holly without raising suspicion from Caroline once they got back to the city—and Holly was definitely coming back to the city with him. Nick wasn’t about to leave him alone again.

  His rental car had satellite navigation, and once Nick programmed in the address, it didn’t take him long—for some value of “long” that included the hell of L.A. traffic—to find the sleazy motel the article had said Holly was calling home. Nick hoped the photo had been recent enough that Holly was still there. Nick had no idea what he was going to do if Holly had already moved on.

  The woman behind the counter in the dingy motel’s equally dingy office suited her surroundings surprisingly well. Nick slipped her a fifty to “jog her memory” regarding Holly’s location, and he was pointed down the long strip of doors.

  “On the end,” she said. “I knew that one would be trouble. You a Fed? Lawyer?”

  It was the clothes. Not many people wore suits in places like this. He didn’t bother to correct her, though. His heart was pounding; he could barely keep from sprinting the rest of the way. He’d come so far, so fast. Walking those last few yards seemed like the longest part of the trip.

  Gold paint flaked off the uneven letters and numbers that identified the room: 9A.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  Before second thoughts—or third or whatever he was on by now—could stop him, Nick banged on the door.

  “Just a minute.” That voice was not Holly’s. The door popped open as far as the chain allowed, and a scantily clad young man leaned against the frame. “You here to fix the AC?” Definitely not Holly.

  Nick didn’t have time for this shit. “Yeah. I’m here to fix the AC.” That would at least get him past the goddamn chain. Fucking Holly.

  “Okay.” The kid obviously wasn’t around for security. “Wait.” The door closed in Nick’s face. Nearly a minute later, the chain rattled and the door opened again. Inside, the room was gray with smoke and humidity, strewn with clothes and garbage. Whatever the kid had been doing, it wasn’t cleaning up. At least, it wasn’t cleaning up the trash. “Right there.” The kid gestured at the window and wandered toward the bed, tugging at the shorts threatening to slide off his hips. When he fell back into bed, he sprawled across another male body.

  Holly. Nick almost didn’t recognize him; he was so thin, so pale and sick looking. Christ.

  The fear ratcheted up Nick’s anger. He ignored the directions to the air-conditioning unit and headed for the bed instead. That mop of curly golden hair was exactly the same. Nick grabbed hold of it and dragged Holly’s head off the pillow. “Get up,” he snapped. Turning his attention to the kid, he said, “And you, get out. Ride’s over.”

  “Hey!” The kid launched a pillow at him. “Let go of him!” At the same time, Holly flailed and caught him in the thigh with an elbow, trying to shake Nick’s grip.

  At least Holly was alive. That was something. He was too weak to do any real damage or to actually get away, though.

  “Stop.” Nick got Holly mostly upright but didn’t let him go. Jesus. Holly looked like shit. “You’re not going anywhere. Not yet.” He looked at the kid again. “Didn’t I tell you to leave? Why aren’t you gone yet? Christ, Holly, if this is your idea of a bodyguard, it’s a damn good thing I came to get you before one of that TV bitch’s deranged fans actually tried to get rid of you for making her cry on camera.”

  “Nick?” Holly stopped fighting. He was drunk. No question about that. Dead, stinking, fucking drunk. “Fuck, what did I smoke?”

  “I swear, it was all good.” The kid was stuffing things in a bag. At least one of them was straight enough to know when the writing was on the wall. “Good luck.” Nick couldn’t tell if the kid was talking to him or Holly, but it didn’t matter, because he was out the door in the next breath.

  “Is there anything you need in this dump?” Nick didn’t want to be here any longer than he absolutely had to be.

  “Why are you here?” Holly wasn’t moving. “Fuck, Nick, go home. Or let me wake up.” He buried his face in his hands, elbows on his knees. The curves of Holly’s ribs were sharp under his skin, bisected by the ridge of his spine.

  “You’re awake. If anyone’s having a nightmare, I’m pretty damn sure it’s me.” Nick let go of Holly’s hair, finally, and looked around. He couldn’t see anything, any damn thing at all, in all this mess of shit and smoke and trash. “I am going home. As soon as I get you cleaned up enough to get on the plane with me.”

  “I’m not going.” Holly flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Go home, Nick.
I don’t even want to know what the fuck you’re doing here, how you got here, any of it. If this is some personal crisis you’re having, go buy a car, fuck a boy, get a tattoo. Leave me out of it.”

  Rage hit, and Nick had dragged Holly from the bed by his hair before either of them managed to take another breath. His hand cracked across Holly’s face, leaving his palm stinging, and he snapped, “Shut up. Shut the fuck up. You don’t have a choice anymore. I’ve seen what you do with your life when you get to make the choices. No more. Shut up and get what you’re bringing with you, or I’m leaving it all here for the fucking tabloids to scour like a damn archaeological dig. Now.”

  There was silence, and then Holly pushed to his feet. “Just find me something to wear,” he said icily. He looked brittle, and the only brightness in him was the red rising on his cheek where Nick had hit him. “None of it’s really mine. Did you miss that story?” It was only a few unsteady steps to the bathroom, and then he slammed the thin door with a crack.

  Nick let out a slow breath and scrubbed his hands over his face, then looked around the room. Christ. What the hell am I doing? He found a pair of jeans that were just this side of walking on their own and a purple T-shirt with glittery butterflies on the front and put them on the chair in the corner. Apparently Holly’s bed was still equal opportunity. Except for you, said a voice in the back of Nick’s head, but he ignored it just as he’d ignored the same kind of internal taunting in grad school. It hadn’t mattered then and it didn’t matter now.

  The shower ran for a long time, but when Holly came out, naked and dripping, the mark from Nick’s hand was only just fading at the edges. He tugged a twisted sheet from the bed and used it to towel off, then grabbed the clothes off the chair and got dressed without comment. It was like Nick wasn’t even there. Holly tugged the closet open and kicked away the crap that fell out. Somewhere in the mess he found a pair of sneakers and a denim jacket. “They’re not going to let me on the plane,” he warned. He dug inside the sneakers and pulled his wallet out of one, a pair of sunglasses out of the other.