Pretty (26 page)

A few small lines of coke were laid out on the fake maple nightstand next to the base of the fake brass lamp. Billy saw me spot it.

“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing toward the drugs.

“Thanks,” I said and leaned toward it, holding my hair back. But as I bent over, Aaron put his palm flat to my chest and stopped me.

“Careful,” he said. “It's not coke. Do just a little, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. And I did. Just a little that night.

I turn and head back
because you can drive and drive but where is there to go really? I'm empty hungry, my whole body a ravenous void to feed. My mind is like a carnival ride gone wild off the rails. I still want liquor and pills. I want a warehouse stacked with heroin. I want an ocean liner full of cocaine. But there's the baby, and even if there wasn't the baby there are the shadows. I'm also fucking starving, so I turn toward where I know there's a Ralph's.

The air through the open window rushing wet on my face smells like rain from earlier in the evening, though I don't remember it raining. The pavement hisses as I drive and drive on the freeway with the late-night radio blaring.

The grocery store parking lot is nice late at night: dark gray and quiet, embossed with an Aztec hieroglyph of yellow lines. The only soul in sight is a nodding bum in a Santa cap. When I get closer, I see the bum is a handsome guy with a matted blond beard who was probably an actor five or ten or fifteen years ago when he came to L.A., like I came here, like everyone comes here. We must have the best-looking homeless population in the world. I'm glad he nods off as I pass by him, because he doesn't ask me for change.

I want anything to make me forget. I try to walk purposefully, but not too desperately, through the aisles. I maneuver around a couple of dazed-looking club kids. A pixie girl wearing a silver minidress and glittering silver makeup stares wide-eyed at the cereal. She's so delicate, so dainty, so pretty. She reminds me of how I left Milla's little Kitty behind. The girl's gay boyfriend stands behind her wearing rainbow platforms, turquoise hip-huggers, and a Starsky and Hutch orange leather jacket. They each have a gallon of Gatorade tucked in one arm and the boy carries a box of Lucky Charms. One sad old lady wearing weird eye makeup pushes a cart with some fish sticks in it. The floors glow green from the fluorescents.

I go back to the dairy case to look for the rice pudding, planning to open one and eat it right here in the store. I do this sometimes. But when I get there, I realize I don't have a spoon. How this works is you have to get the spoon first from up at the front.

The whipped cream cans are lined up like little soldiers. I grab a cold cylinder and aim to shoot the whipped cream straight into my mouth.

I don't know what happens, where the lapse is between thought and action, but I don't tilt the can the right way. The choice isn't a choice; it's pure momentum. I hold the can upright, push out all my breath, insert the plastic nozzle in my mouth, and suck the first spray of sweet sour limp liquid and then the slightly chemical-tasting nothing cold air. Suck and suck and let the poison fill me up and then hold it in my lungs until they ache. Perhaps the lamest relapse in all of addict history—sucking whipped cream cans at a Ralph's.

I am already reaching for another one as the sparkles close in. I can't feel my mouth and then I can't feel my body. I sink to the cold floor in front of the dairy case and, when I begin to come around, I see a red-aproned fat white man hurrying toward me. I gauge that I have time, grab for one more can, and suck the nitrous out of it as fast as I can.

Far away in my body, someone's hands drag me by under my arms. By the time we reach the door, I've regained consciousness. I scramble to my feet as he attempts to haul me out. He keeps stopping to huff and puff dramatically.

As I stand up, I hear him say, “Sorry, Manny. I'm going as fast as I can. She's a big un.”

“Wait, please. I'm sorry,” I say, straightening my dress, which is hiked up around my waist. I try to sound reasonable. “I have to pay for my merchandise. I just need to grab a couple more things first. Please.”

I'm gone. Somewhere in that nondecision decision, I gave up. All this trying so hard to change and love and live. I wasn't trying hard enough and now I'm done trying at all. Fuck it. My eye is already on the liquor aisle.

Three red aprons line up, making a wall in front of me that blocks the door. An angry Asian guy points into the night, into the early parking lot morning.

“Please leave these premises immediately, ma'am.”

“Please. Let me back in. I won't do it again. It was just a teeny mistake.” I make the baby girl face with the pouty lips and the blink blink eyes. They are unamused. What are they so serious about? What the hell do they care if I suck some chemicals in their aisles?

It dawns on me that I can't buy liquor after two in the morning anyway. I wish I'd stolen a bottle of vodka. I wish I had shoved some food in my jacket first before I got myself thrown out of the store.

“Okay, okay,” I say, totally logical. “Listen. I'll blow all three of you for a bottle of Absolut and a package of Snowballs right now. I'm serious.”

This seems like a reasonable idea.

“I have your bottle of vodka right here,” the Santa bum pipes in, grabbing his crotch. He still squats against one of the columns in the grocery store entrance.

The clerks stand there, shoulder to shoulder, serious and pimply and pale green. Two of them look at each other, as if considering the offer, but the angry Asian guy stares them into submission. He's the rule guy. He's the boss here. Apparently it's more important to him to be the boss than to get a blow job.

What the fuck is wrong with these people? What the fuck is wrong with me? Am I so ugly? Have I lost all my powers of persuasion? I can't even get a fifteen-dollar bottle of liquor out of a couple of night-shift grocery clerks? Even with offers of oral sex? I've fallen so far so fast. It hasn't felt fast. It's felt like forever.

“Oh, come on,” I say. They stare at me wordless.

“Homos!” I shout at them as I turn and walk ungracefully toward the Honda. I'm less walking and more falling toward the car. There's no liquor to be had. I think of who I can call with drugs or booze, but I don't have anyone's number.

The cool thing about being pregnant is how I stopped feeling alone. Like there's this other glowing presence with me all the time. But I just killed it. Not the baby. The baby's still there I think. I killed the feeling and I'm back alone again. I have to get rid of this baby, this probably crazy monster fetus. I've got to do it tomorrow. And with that thought the night crumbles in front of me. I'm going to get high. Whatever I have to do I'm going to get high and I'm going to stay that way as long as I can.

Frantic inspiration strikes me. I dig through the mountains of crap in the trunk of my car and pull out the plastic gas can, red and yellow like a child's fire truck toy. I have the gas can and the tube stashed in case I get down to my last dollar, run out of gas, and need to pillage from a good samaritan. This embarrassing scenario has happened before, is why they're in here. Is how I know how to siphon gas in the first place.

I fall to my knees on the pavement next to the car, unscrewing the gas cap with a pop hiss. I thread the clear tube like an IV into the metal pipe. I set the can in front of me and put the other end of the tube between my lips, sucking out the air until a mouthful of burning acid piss poison floods my mouth. Then I fill the can with a small amount of gas and pull the tube out. The relief starts even before you get high. It starts the minute you can see the finish line. Eyes on the prize.

Kneeling on the blacktop in front of the gas can, I unzip the back of my dress and shimmy the top half of it off my shoulders. I unsnap the leopard print push-up bra, hold it against the nozzle of the gas can, and saturate the padding. I open the door and crawl into the driver's seat without even standing up. I wrap the gasoline-soaked C-cup around my nose and mouth and I breathe and breathe and breathe until my head caves in and there is nothing but floaty blackness and my arms drop like weights to my sides and everything is so heavy until it is so light and there is only the twinkling dark and nothing no feeling just nothing.

The solidity creeps
back in beginning with my extremities and a current of nausea surges through me. I open the car door and vomit onto the asphalt. As I hang there, trembling, waiting for the next wretch, about a foot to the right of the curry whipped cream splatter I see a broken beer bottle, tossed out a window by some asshole who wanted to tell God he didn't give a shit about anything. Most of the bottle is shattered, but the bottom stayed intact, with one tooth of a shard sticking up. I lean just a little farther from my perch, carefully grasp the piece of green glass, and place it, still wet, onto the dashboard in front of me. A delicate hem of light highlights the perfect edge of the shard.

I can't imagine living after this moment. I close my eyes and lean back and imagine that the suicide ghost surfer who owned the car before me is a warm boy with a shoulder I can lean my head on. I pretend he's with me and he is. He's white pale and the blood has pooled at his feet. I know it sounds ghastly but it isn't. It's like having a friend. He sat in this same seat, cut his wrists, and bled to death as he stared out at the ocean, the dark shapes of the other surfers drifting over the waves. He had once felt flickers of the joy that the morning ocean held for the others. He had once believed that their purpose could be his. But always he wound up back to blinking the water from his eyes and thinking, born again and again and this is all there is? It's not enough.

Would it be undignified to join him right now, like this, in a Ralph's parking lot with vomit crust on my dress and the car smelling of gasoline? I only need to not feel so sick first. I only need to find the strength to sink the glass into my skin. It's the thought, the always thought, the one I don't talk about too much because people get all worked up about it. The one where I drive wild up in the canyons until I find the perfect cliff to launch off. The one where I push the plunger down and the next moment doesn't exist.

Maybe I'll find them waiting for me, Aaron and my dad and the surfer. Not that they'll be sitting on a cloud with wings growing out of their backs, but I think that I'll find them. I'll find my Aaron again in a realm of boundless forgiveness. We'll be together and be more than the sum of our choices.

Here it is, the perfect piece of glass. Waiting for me like God planted it there. Like God is saying go ahead and let yourself off the hook already, you're so far beyond saving.

I mean to do it after I rest my eyes for a minute, but instead I surrender to sleep. When I wake, the windshield has shattered into a spiderweb of cracks and I think how it almost looks pretty. When did I crash? When did the sun rise? The daylight is so bright, this relentless white flame, that I try to put my hands over my eyes but my arms are so weak I can't move them. I wonder if I did it and I can't remember.

I can barely turn my head to see the surfer sitting next to me. He looks just like I imagined, with a tangle of sun-bleached hair and eyes like they sucked up the sea itself. He smiles at me. He's fine now. There's no more blood on the floor and his arms are sealed up with perfect skin like he never took a razor to them. What about my hands, I wonder? Are they healed? I think that if I look down and see my hands are healed then I'm probably dead. I don't look.