Live Fast Die Hot (27 page)

“Are you guys serious? You both think I
should
do it?” I looked at Sid dragging a turkey meatball across his plate. He beamed at me. I was getting cold feet and yet the most important players in my life were telling me to go for it. “What if I come back a totally different person who doesn't believe in marriage or makeup? What if I stop wearing a bra and just want to practice Kundalini yoga and drink yerba maté all day?” I looked down at Teets to see if I could get a read on what he was thinking, but he was too distracted by Sid's meatball. Gina screened him from Sid's high chair like a power forward.

If I were kidless, this is the type of trip I wouldn't have thought twice about. But overdosing in the jungle now had consequences far greater than Jason becoming a widower or his ex-girlfriend being able to use her real name on Instagram. If something happened, Sid would be motherless, and that idea filled me with the deepest dread I'd ever known. I couldn't bear the thought of him waking up in the middle of the night and not having a mommy to call out to, of never knowing how much I loved him, of one day trying to understand who I was by dissecting a picture of me taking a picture of myself in a bathroom mirror. My parents had always put their own needs first, and I didn't want to be as selfish. This was my chance to take a different path. A path that
didn't
lead to me being incapacitated in a foreign country.

As hard as I tried to rationalize my actions, I couldn't make peace with my heart.

That night, I shot out of bed, my eyes wide, delirious with terror, my stomach clenching into a giant knot, the kind you can't untangle. The kind you have to use kitchen scissors to cut out.

“I'm not going,” I whispered to Jason, picking up my phone and composing an e-mail to Chelsea. I hit Send before I could rethink it.

The next morning, I reread my e-mail and realized I sounded like a complete psychopath in the throes of an existential crisis. It was 6 a.m. New York time and Chelsea was in Los Angeles, no doubt fast asleep. I quickly scrolled through Instagram to make sure that was the case. Stressed that I was perhaps the worst mother in the world and that Chelsea was going to read my e-mail to Jennifer Aniston over brunch, I decided it was time to call my therapist. As much as I valued Lisette's 8 Ball, I needed input from someone who wouldn't fuck with me by saying “Reply hazy, try again.”

Later that day, while anxiously waiting for my phone session with Chandra, I got a call from Denny. I answered cheerily.

“Hi! Are you so excited about Peru? Because I'm not gonna lie, I'm starting to freak out,” I said. “Oh, by the way, have you heard from Chelsea today?” I tried to make it sound casual.

“No. I never hear from her. But I got your texts,” he said, referring to the six messages I'd sent him over the last twenty-four hours reading: “
R WE GOING
2
DIE
?”

I'd known Denny and his wife, Dakota, for six years. They were the kind of couple you tell yourself that you and your partner are going to turn into when you grow up. Denny and Dakota were freethinking loners who liked each other better than they did anyone else around them. They had two sons and a third on the way. Though their parenting style was incredibly hands-on, they remained open and progressive when it came to their adult lives. In my mind their date nights consisted of an indie concert at the Troubadour, dinner at some cash-only hole-in-the-wall in Thai Town, drinks at a Valley strip club, and maybe a little impromptu ink at a tattoo parlor on Vineland. Dry, acerbic, and fashionably bitter, Denny was like Woody Allen if Woody Allen had moved to Los Angeles and started working in reality television. Not only did I look up to his relationship and how he was able to balance his role as a father with his role being somebody far cooler than me, I also trusted that the skeptic in him would never do something that might get himself killed.

“This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” he said with an enthusiasm I didn't know he was capable of. “Dakota is so jealous she can't go. If she wasn't pregnant right now, we'd probably be doing it somewhere in Topanga Canyon.”

“People are doing ayahuasca in Topanga Canyon now?”

“Mainly Josh Radnor, but yeah.” I could see Denny chomping on a carrot as he chased his younger child around his living room. “I can't fucking believe I'm about to have another one of these,” he said, mostly to himself.

“Do you think I'm being an irresponsible parent, though?” I asked, desperate for reassurance.

“This is a Netflix special. Nobody is going to let anything happen to us. Chelsea is even bringing her own medic. And it's herbal. Have you done mushrooms?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it's apparently just like that, only a thousand times stronger…” Denny trailed off, unsure if he'd made me feel better or worse. “You'd better fucking come. I hate all of Chelsea's other friends.”

Hanging up with Denny, I started to realize that I'd sat with the idea of ayahuasca so long that it had mutated in my head. Having read little more than a few BuzzFeed articles and a Wikipedia page, I'd convinced myself that drinking the tea was as self-destructive as freebasing crystal meth. The reality was, ayahuasca hadn't actually killed anyone. Sure, there had been accidents involving human error, but you could find those same kinds of stories about Ambien, alcohol, or making a Vine while driving. Chelsea e-mailed back assuring me that I was overreacting about the drug and that we were going to have an incredible time. She acknowledged my concerns but brushed past them, like a skydiving instructor would to the person already strapped to her back.

When I finally spoke to Chandra, she did a bunch of mind-gamey shit, asking me why I'd withheld information from her and questioning whether or not I trusted our therapeutic relationship. Coming dangerously close to uttering the words “Reply hazy, try again,” she eventually cut to the chase—and even Chandra, who never missed an opportunity to tell me I was being an asshole, seemed unfazed.

“I think it's fine. Lots of people do it. Not a big deal. For some people it can feel like seven years' worth of therapy in a matter of five hours,” she said, leading me to suspect Josh Radnor might also be her client. “But
you'll
still need therapy,” she was quick to add.

I tried to do a bit more research online, but like looking at my checking account at the end of the month, I was too scared to dig deeply. So, after forcing Jason to do a bit of reading for me and talking it through several more times with Chandra, I decided to keep an open mind and consider that maybe this opportunity had come into my life for a reason. I e-mailed Chelsea's cousin Molly, our production coordinator, to confirm that I was on board.

It was 9 p.m. on a Monday and our red-eye to Lima left at eleven. Travelers and ticket agents moved briskly through the brightly lit departure terminal of Tom Bradley International like it was the middle of the workday. I was hungry and yet not. Anxious and yet resolved. An hour earlier, I'd been on a soundstage in Burbank. For the weeks leading up to Peru, I'd landed another ridiculous television show, and I was working in Los Angeles every Sunday through Tuesday. Since I was going to be stuck on the West Coast for at least two days after my return, I persuaded Jason, Sid, and Naomi to come stay with my sister and wait for me in L.A. The trip was going to be six days in total, including travel, and if I was able to switch my flight in Iquitos on the way back, I might even get it down to five. I'd been away from Sid for longer, but the older he got, the more difficult it was to pull away. Not because I missed him—I did, of course—but because of the way I knew I'd be punished upon my return. I could be working late one night and not be able to give him his bottle before bed and the next morning he would look at me and start wailing “Dada! Dada!” like I was a home intruder. Jason agreed to bring Sid to California, but after getting into a screaming match with my sister at my brother-in-law Larry's birthday party, where she accused him of drinking all the personal-sized Pellegrinos, he insisted they stay in a hotel.

I got my ticket and breezed through security. Molly called, directing me toward the lounge, where she and the rest of the crew were eating samosas and drinking wine.

“I can't believe this is happening,” I said, wrapping my hands around her waist and shaking her like a doll.

“It's gonna be awesome!” Molly was eight years younger than me but felt twenty years more mature. I'd been with her in various predicaments and without fail she always exuded calm, confidence, unflappability. “Okay, so Denny said he's waiting at the gate and Chelsea is at the XpresSpa getting a chair massage. We have, like, fifteen more minutes before we're gonna head over if you wanna buy any almonds or birdseed,” she said, poking fun at my disordered eating. We walked out of the lounge, past Duty Free, Starbucks, and Kitson, looking for the XpresSpa. When we found her, Chelsea was facedown on a rickety massage stool prominently positioned at the store's front entrance.

“Hi, baby.” She looked up and smiled, her short blond hair pulled into a tight bun. Molly gathered Chelsea's scattered belongings while Chelsea paid her tab. “No, Molly, I hate that bag. We have to leave it. I think it threw my neck out.” Chelsea reached over to a satchel she'd unpacked during her massage and handed it to a passing manicurist. “Do you want this?” she asked. The young Korean girl looked at her, confused. “I'm throwing it away unless somebody wants it,” she said to the room.

“We gotta go!” Molly took the bag from Chelsea and handed it to the manicurist. “Come on,” she barked, pushing us toward our gate.

“I think I only brought one pair of underwear,” Chelsea announced as we walked briskly toward the gate. What my own insecurities often caused me to lose sight of was that Chelsea hadn't really changed that much. Her Havaianas might have been upgraded to Manolo Blahniks, but she was still the girl getting the chair massage in the middle of the mall.