Pack scarves, Christmas lights, glitter. Kathi likes to bring the party with her and uses scarves over hotel lamps to set a mood, Christmas lights—as many as we can fit in the luggage—for ambiance, and, of course, glitter, always. I stuff everything into her luggage—two big antique red trunks with leather straps; even her suitcases are interesting.
Booking airfare was easy. I called her travel agent, provided the destinations, got flight options. Kathi picked the flights, and the travel agent bought us two first-class seats next to each other. Kathi always buys a first-class seat for me. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s being kind to me or if she just prefers falling asleep and drooling on me instead of a stranger.
“Are you ready to do some relaxing?” I ask cheerfully as the first leg of our journey begins out of LAX.
“God, Cockring,” Kathi says, “bring it down a notch.”
“Did you take your meds today?”
“Yup.”
Pack Seroquel, Suboxone, Lamictal.
* * *
Kathi Kannon stops in New York like normal people stop at a gas station. She’s here to refuel, to fully charge, to fill up—just for one night. We leave tomorrow for real adventure, to Bali, but first, Big Apple.
“Checking in,” I tell the front desk clerk at the Greenwich Hotel.
“What’s the name?” she asks.
I lean in close, raise my eyebrows, and say, “Aurora Borealis.”
The clerk smiles faintly, looks down at her computer, then says, “Ah, yes.”
Kathi steps up to the front desk. “I just want to confirm that my room is bigger than his, please?”
“Of course,” the clerk says, tapping away at her keyboard, and then, “Yes, I can confirm it is.” The clerk grins, thrilled to have inserted herself in the little joke. Kathi and I stare at her seriously. The thing about Kathi having a bigger room, it’s only barely a joke.
I put Kathi in her room—large, bright, airy, as promised. Kathi gets a deluxe suite with sitting area and bathtub. We drape her scarves over the lamps, turning the room from white to peach and blue and purple. We string Christmas lights from one side of the headboard to the other. The glitter stays in her toiletry bag, for emergencies only.
The hotel is peak luxury. All items in every room are curated, even in my room. The sofa is an antique; you can see the outline of the old springs imprinted in the velvet cushion. Books on the built-in shelves are hardcover literature, frayed edges telling the tales of their storied lives, stories within stories within stories. There’s a tiny brass lamp with a crooked little bend that makes it look like a character from a Pixar cartoon; it looks like the little lamp is waving to me, welcoming me. I want to take it home.
Snap: I take a picture to email to Jasmine, Bruce, West. “Even the lamps in NYC are cool!”
Snap: I take a picture of Kathi’s bathtub to email my dad. “Mom would have loved this, right?”
Snap: I take a picture of my king-sized bed to email Drew. “Wish you were here.”
Hey, Siri, I’m thinking, everyone’s gonna be really impressed now.
Later, a housekeeper mentions that Bradley Cooper is working out in the hotel gym. Kathi races down in a knit Chanel sweater and Miu Miu ballerinas and casually hops on a treadmill beside him. I watch from the towel station as she cranes her neck to make eye contact with him. He smiles politely. She makes her move. “What’s a guy like you doing in a gal like me?” she says seductively. He grimaces.
“Oh, shit. Did I fuck up the saying?” she asks.
He nods.
“Ah, fuck it,” she says, maneuvering off the treadmill, leaving it running empty beside him. He turns to watch her walk away with me rushing behind her.
Like Rite Aid is a vortex of tragedy, the Greenwich Hotel is a vortex of celebrity.
Later that evening, Mel Gibson sidles up beside Kathi while she’s ordering a Coke Zero at the hotel bar. “Hey, I know you!” he says.
“You do?” Kathi says coyly. “Are you an actoooor?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “Can you tell because you recognize me from some hit motion picture?”
“No,” Kathi says, grabbing her Coke Zero and turning to leave. “I can tell by your veneers.”
Later, Ewan McGregor walks by and spots Kathi, looks at me with her, and says, “Hello.”
I say to him, “Hi. I loved you in Trainspotting, Velvet Goldmine, Moulin Rouge! You’re such a talent, a genius, a star. Great to meet you!”
Kathi swallows a gulp of Coke Zero and says to him, “I was just looking at your penis on Google.”
Seconds of small chat later and Ewan moves on to another group of admirers.
“Feeling relaxed, enchanted, entertained?” I ask Kathi.
“I’m bored,” she says.
* * *
Film icon Kathi Kannon has it all: fame, money, tooth pain.
Kathi started to complain about something being wrong, in steady progression, from the time we left New York, to getting on the plane, to getting off it twenty hours later in Indonesia, of all places to be unwell.
Bali, that elusive paradise I’ve only seen on the screen saver at my old news job, I’m now seeing with my own eyes, breathing the air, appreciating the ocean view to my right and the homeless child begging for food to my left. Surely there are doctors here.
By now my senses are trained on Kathi Kannon. I see problems before she does. It’s in my best interest to stop anything before it advances, progresses, entraps. I hear her sniffle, I buy Claritin. A scratchy sound in her throat, I buy cough drops. Not using a roll of toilet paper fast enough, I buy laxatives.
“Do we have any Tylenol?” Kathi asks. “My tooth is killing me.”
Is it? I wonder. I haven’t seen the signs. I haven’t seen her rubbing her face, flexing her mouth. Is she angling for meds? Is this getting too close to the sun? Is this what Miss Gracie was talking to me about?
Of course I packed Tylenol. I packed Advil. I packed water-purification tablets.
Assistant Bible Verse 130: Being an assistant is tricky at home and even worse on the road.
If you want to really know someone, travel with them.
I reach into the purple backpack. I hand her two Tylenol.
She says, “Four please.”
“But your pancreas!”
She says, “I don’t think I have one. Wasn’t it removed in the nineties?”
“I don’t know.”
She says, “I hope we survive Bali.”
I don’t know exactly what she wants to survive or what she fears might not survive: Our relationship? Our lives?
The sweet driver, in broken, shattered English, asks where we’re from.
Kathi replies, “Space. But, unfortunately, my home planet was blown up. I’m still upset about it.”
The driver nods in polite, confused agreement. Kathi turns to me. “Distract me from the pain of living.”
“How?” I ask sincerely.
“Are you having…” And she pauses, playfully rolling around in her mind what to say next, considering the many words in her inner thesaurus she wants to use to punctuate her sentence. “Are you having … sex?”
“Oh, please,” I say.
If you want to really know someone, travel with them.