You Can Say You Knew Me When (43 page)

There was more, but it was increasingly less coherent, and at some point I stopped asking questions and let him exhaust himself. He eventually drifted away in his chair.

When I stood, the room spiraled away from me. My brain was a disturbed sea sloshing behind my eyes, my stomach queasy: vodka for breakfast, popcorn for lunch, vodka for dinner. I fumbled my way to the bathroom—painted and tiled in a late-sixties aqua, which under the low-wattage light seemed the very hue of nausea. Within a minute I was letting loose one, two, three, four explosive blasts of vomit, so powerful they seemed to be emptying not just my stomach but my mind, my senses, my emotional reserves. The heaving was so violent that I entertained the thought I was dying, but it left behind an immediate calm, and within moments I felt cured, a citizen of a new, cleansed world. I washed up to the sounds of the still-growling Victor, poised behind one of these closed doors.

I discovered the kitchen at the back, strewn with even more newspapers. The fridge held only orange juice, tonic water and old condiments encrusted around their lids. An enormous trash bag filled with vodka bottles slumped against the wall like a giant, sad stuffed animal. I found a box of glazed donuts in a cupboard and shoved a few into my mouth. The healing comfort of sugar. On the wall above the Formica kitchen table was a rotary phone. I pictured Dean standing in this very spot after he had received the letter I’d first sent him, ranting into the mouthpiece about his privacy. I dialed Colleen and got her voice mail. I told her, “I’m through here. I’m ready to go home.”

In his armchair, Dean remained unconscious, head drooping, mouth open. I hit S
TOP
on the reel-to-reel. I snooped in a couple of those dated boxes; nothing more than news clippings inside. I found no manuscript, no Proustian prose epic in the making. I suppose the memoir existed only in oral form—decades of recordings, a treasure trove of magnetic tape. What would he do with it? Was any of it transcribed? Perhaps that was why he’d been dropped by his agency—failure to produce anything on the page. Or maybe it had been his personality, careening between its twin poles—sober and intimidating, and bombed and melancholy—all that was left of the optimism that had once allowed him to boast, a year into his Hollywood dream,
You can say you knew me when.

It was time for me to go. I found a broom and dustpan and cleaned up the broken glass. On a scrap of paper I penned a good-bye note; my hand was shaky enough to rival Rusty’s infamous scribble, but it was important to acknowledge this night, these confessions, and not simply skulk away. At the front door, I turned back one last time to see if he would wake. He didn’t stir. In the morning, what would he make of all of this? When he played back his recording, would he regret having spilled so much? Would there be a new angry message waiting for me when I got back to San Francisco?

Outside, the humid air was a cool, damp towel, a balm for the hangover I felt coming on. I wasn’t quite steady on my feet, but I’d be okay. Either Colleen would come looking for me or I’d flag down a cab or I’d stumble my way back to the hotel. Whatever happened next I would handle. If it took until dawn, I’d handle it.

M
y apartment hummed with emptiness when I got back, more so because there were signs that Jed had been here: a pizza box in the trash, a CD in the player that I’d never seen before, a dialogue box cautioning that my Mac had been
improperly shut down.
In the bathroom I watched gray water drain at the speed of melting ice, the pipes clogged, I guessed, from another arm-shaving session. I could picture him here, back from whatever trip he’d taken, expecting to find me waiting, dispersing his excitable energy into rooms that were stale with cigarette smoke and years of inertia—a picture that left me hungry to see him and unsure what I wanted when I did. This delayed plan, this escape to Baja—what if he was ready to go? I’d gotten to the end of my search; did that mean I was free to leave, too?

First things first. My bank card was on my desk, where I’d expected it. I walked to the nearest ATM, touched the key for my balance and crossed my fingers, waiting through one of those unnaturally elongated moments during which doom and hope spin past like slats on a wheel of fortune. Where would it stop?

AVAILABLE BALANCE
: $9,000.

Thank you, Deirdre. I don’t know what it took, but I thank you.

I walked to the check-cashing vendor on Mission and 16th to pay my phone bill. There, under a cold fluorescent glare, I eavesdropped on a conversation between two women standing on either side of me in the slow-moving line. They had some shared history between them, the specifics of which I couldn’t quite figure out; this seemed to be their first conversation in a long while. One of them wore sunglasses, dark as her skin, shuffling in place as she sipped from a paper bag. The other was tall and straight spined; when she flicked her long, cornrowed braids, she was positively regal. She wore a M
UNI
uniform and talked with great pride about her regular paycheck, her religion, her sobriety. “Girl,” she said to her friend, “I gave it
all
up.”

“I only have a little now and then,” Sunglasses mumbled, washing down her words with a chug from the paper bag.

Braids told the story of bringing her
babies’ daddy
to court to collect child support. “That asshole had the nerve to stand before the judge saying he can’t pay for our children because he’s got a
fungus
on his foot. He takes off his shoe right there and waves his ugly warts around.”

“Stop! What’d all you do?”

“I said, ‘Oh, no. I am a child of God. Do not bring your voodoo to me.’”

She was deadly serious, but I had to look away to suppress a smile.

When I got home I broke out my checkbook and went down the list of what I owed. Landlord—pay him. Utilities—pay them. Even if I went to Mexico with Jed, I would need somewhere to return. Dentist—sure, they’d been nice about everything. Collection agency—yes, get them off my back.

And Woody? I owed him nearly two thousand dollars. I could probably get away with not paying; he hadn’t been bothering me for it. But
getting away with it
was, I saw, my own brand of sneaky voodoo. I was not a child of God, was not about to
give it all up
; still, I went ahead and wrote this one last check. I enclosed a note:

I labored over each measly word, each possible misinterpretation. I signed it, “Love, Jamie.” This seemed important, this “Love.” Not open to interpretation.

My phone line reactivated later that day. My voice mail was at capacity, and most of the messages were from Deirdre, updating me on her money situation, wondering where I was, wondering why she hadn’t heard back from me, worrying some more, and finally announcing that she’d booked a ticket to San Francisco for herself and AJ. They’d be here in a week.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” I said when I called her back. “I’m not even sure I’ll be here. There’s this trip to Mexico.”

“You’re broke, and you’re planning a vacation?” There was a sharpness to her voice.

“It’s not a vacation. More like a retreat. A getaway.”

“You stay put until I get there.”

“What is this, some kind of
intervention?
”

“It sounds like you need one.”

“Everything here is under control.”

“Good. Then it’s a perfect time to visit.”

I made more excuses—
my apartment smells like cigarettes, there’s nothing for AJ to do
—but she knocked them down one by one. The tickets were purchased. They were coming.

“Dude, we should be leaving
yesterday,”
Jed said, digging into his pocket to pull out a wad of what appeared to be twenty-dollar bills. “Mission accomplished on the herb.
Vamanos
,
amigo
.”

He had reappeared as I was pillaging my kitchen cabinets—pulling out the remaining expired products and tossing them in the trash—and he unspooled his tale of traveling to San Jose to unload the pot, which involved a series of mishaps, including getting sucked back into the drama of his mother, stepfather, and the Stanford professor. It was vintage Jed: sounding true enough to earn my sympathy, without erasing my doubts that I was being played. “I can’t change my sister’s plans,” I told him.

He asked if they would be staying here, and when I said yes, he said, “Which means I’m not, right?”

I paused, a half-spent, years-old jar of popcorn kernels in my hand. “Where have you been staying since you got back to the city?”

“With Bethany. But her boyfriend’s coming back today.”

“Maybe you can stay at Ian’s. He has an empty room.”

“Maybe I’ll just leave without you.”

“No!” I sucked in air, surprised by my own vehemence.

He stretched, drawing up his shirt, then dropping a hand to his exposed abdomen. He rubbed there, as if polishing an apple: pink skinned, juicy, maybe poisonous. Until that gesture, I had breezed past my sense memories of his flesh. Now his physical presence, so knowingly flaunted, lit the flame again.
Don’t fall for a straight guy
, Dean had said, and though Jed wasn’t exactly straight, I recalled the warning like a slap, and I turned my eyes away.

“Can’t you just give me a week?” I asked.

“A week,” he said. “But that’s it.”

Jed went to Ian’s. I forgot to ask him for my share of the money. I forgot even to ask for my keys back.

I spent that week alone in my apartment, cleaning.
Deep cleaning
was what they called it at the bed-and-breakfast, a twenty-room Victorian mansion, where I’d worked when I first moved to the city; once a month the maids would be scheduled by the inn’s portly owner, who spoke in New Age platitudes but was really a petty tyrant, to
deep clean
the premises. The phrase summoned up an extra-powerful vacuum sucking grime from the depths of the carpet and streams of concentrated ammonia sluicing along the mildewed grouting beneath clawfoot tubs.

With Deirdre and AJ coming, I charged ahead, cleaning not just deep but also high and wide. I got down on my hands and knees in the kitchen with a soapy, hard-bristled brush, laboring over every dingy streak on the pale linoleum; and I reached from a chair with the vacuum’s extension wand, targeting the dust-caked picture rail. I did it with only coffee for fuel; the pot pipe stayed in a drawer, no wine sat waiting on the counter. I wasn’t even smoking cigarettes. I’d run out in LA, and rather than borrow one more dime from Colleen, I rode all the way home without a single puff. This was surprisingly easy at first. I’d developed a slight but persistent head cold that last night in LA, trudging through the damp, smoggy air in my vodka delirium. Now the very idea of taking smoke into my lungs hurt.

For a week, my dreams were vivid, upsetting, embattled. Inspired by Ginsberg, I started leaving my journal, much disused lately, next to the bed in order to record what went bump in the night:
Chased on foot by malicious figures, can’t see their faces, their bodies are sharp, angular, like shadows in expressionistic art, but goofier, more like Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine
…
Woke sweating cornered by monstrous face, horned, bloody—the devil? Seemed to be trying to speak to me but I wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t respond
…
In an old movie palace all the seats have bad views and I can’t see the screen no matter where I sit. I find a seat near Woody but I fall and am kicked in the head by people in the aisle. I fight back kicking and swinging and finally bite into someone’s skin, but I don’t want to be so cruel. I wind up in the back of the theater, it looks like a stadium, big wide halls wrapped around. A young skinny guy in an old-man’s sweater approaches. He looks me in the eyes and says “All cru-alities are relative.”
I remembered this last one vividly, the epic search of it, the violence and remorse, the strikingly odd face of the guy in the striped sweater—wizened but youthful, a boy-witch—and his strange phrase.
Cru-alities:
Was that supposed to mean
cruelties? Dualities
?
Cruel realities
?

Each dream was a confrontation in which I remained mute. Only on the night before Deirdre arrived did I speak: I stood facing a crowd in what was supposed to be Jerusalem but looked a lot like the Tenderloin. Again I had been chased, but now my pursuers stood at bay, willing to listen. Like bile churned up from within, what was to be communicated began to rise, hot as steam and thick as custard, from my loins into my stomach and throat. It burned and choked, but I knew it had to come forth. As if pregnant, I was at its mercy until the end. Freed from the cage of me, the words finally erupted into creatures of flight, bats and birds and fish with wings, and I heard my voice, the voice of a deaf person who has never known speech, say, “Ecstasy.”

As I left my apartment to meet Deirdre and AJ at the airport, I ran into Eleanor, who, while shushing Dinky, told me I had woken her from sleep in the middle of the night. She said, “Honey, you were shouting.”

“I’m having crazy dreams this week,” I admitted, and then added, “I’m quitting smoking.” As soon as I said it, I wanted a cigarette, and in that moment—the illumination of the craving—the decision was made. I was not just taking a break, I was quitting. I was done with it.

Ecstasy isn’t just a drug, but what the dream brought back were memories of drug trips. There was the most recent, with Jed, the frightening climax of which I now saw as inevitable, given that I’d been faking my identity when I swallowed the truth serum. There was the first occasion I ever took E, with my ex, Nathan, who had spent the whole time delivering an aggressive, gloomy monologue about decay and apocalypse—which also now seemed inevitable, given the degraded state of our relationship at the time. Unlike those couples who slowly stagnate, our excessive passion had been a dying star growing bigger and more fiery as it approached its demise.

And I remembered the visit Deirdre and Andy made to San Francisco a couple years before they married. For a week I took them to the usual tourist stops, all the while complaining how
touristy
everything was. I wasn’t trying to act superior; I truly didn’t know what else to do with them. My own routine was limited to a handful of bars and cafés in the Castro and the Mission, places I didn’t think they’d like or that I’d decided they shouldn’t see lest they gawk or feel uncomfortable around the fringe dwellers who made up my life. This was before the mid-nineties, when the fringe became fashionable.

On the second-to-last night of their visit, we went to a party at Colleen’s, where we all took ecstasy and—no gloom meisters among us—swelled toward the expected declarations of love. Expected for the drug, though not for Dee and me. We had never spoken to each other in those terms, and even the artificial inducement of the moment didn’t detract from my sense that we made a breakthrough that night: We’d demonstrated that we were capable of purer feeling. As for Andy, he wore a fool’s grin throughout, unable to form words. When I gushed to him, “It’s so great the way you’re looking out for my sister,” he struggled to respond, finally coming up with, “What me and Deirdre have is above average.” Thus, for the night, he became Above-Average Andy.

After that party, Dee and I had joked that she should smuggle a capsule of E home and break it into Dad’s nightly glass of milk. It was tempting to think that a single magic bullet might have punctured my father’s steely membrane; hadn’t ecstasy first been produced for clinical purposes? Dee and I hadn’t spoken “I love you” more than a couple of times since then; ours was a breakthrough deferred.
Purer feeling
was no match for the family structure that positioned her—a new wife and mother—at the center of things while forcing me into self-exile. Maybe ecstasy was no match for the
crualities
of all relatives.

That trip was seven years ago. The truism is that it takes seven years to regenerate every cell of the body. Deirdre and I were new beings now, at least physically. That was my hope. Like in the old saw:
Together again for the first time.

I took BART to the end of the line, then transferred to an airport bus. I got there on time, gifts in hand: a pink Gerber daisy for Dee and a kid-size soccer ball for AJ. The first thing I noticed as she came through the gate was how her hair, pulled back from her face, had reverted to its natural muddy brown. As she craned her neck to look for me, I saw the last of her frosted highlights tied together like a shaving brush at the back.