I give my usual response: raised eyebrows and leaning my head forward toward her as if to say, Excuse me, though I don’t say it, not aloud.
“Mine was,” she says. “Black. Or a dark gray. A Spalding Gray.” She chuckles at her own joke, and I smile, too. There’s not another human being on the planet like her, and I’m the luckiest voyeur on earth, unless she kills us all in a five-alarm fire.
“You could have burned the hotel down falling asleep with that cigarette.”
“What cigarette?” she says, pulling it to her mouth and taking its last breath. She snuffs it in a hotel glass with other butts soaking in an inch of old, watered-down Coke Zero.
“And where did you get cigarettes?” I ask.
Kathi shrugs.
“How’s your tooth?”
“Better,” she says.
I begin my usual routine. Tidying the room. Removing the wrappers of candy she’s eaten during the night and stuffed in shame between the headboard and the wall. Wiping off the wet rings from her glass of soda, which are slowly staining, ruining the hotel furniture, leaving her mark everywhere she goes, like a child writing in wet cement. On the nightstand, I place her fresh new glass of Coke Zero right beside the pill bottle we got from the dentist. Is it less full? She sees me eyeing it, studying it, calculating its contents.
“Am I still famous?” Kathi asks.
“You’re a sensation. Did you take your meds today?”
“Yes, Cockring.”
“Would you like to write today?”
“No, Cockring. We’re on vacation. Let’s go shopping. Where’s the cash?”
I turn to my purple leather backpack and rummage through the thousands of dollars of vegetable money Miss Gracie entrusted to my care.
“How much cash do you want today?” I ask.
Kathi holds up her fingers as if she’s measuring: two inches, three inches, one inch. “About this much,” she says, a wicked smile on her lips.
I’m thinking, Miss Gracie didn’t account for all this.
Kathi grabs her fresh glass of soda and goes into the bathroom. As the door clicks shut, I notice the bottle of pills is no longer on her nightstand.
If you want to really know someone …
Suddenly the bathroom door swings open and she sticks her head out and we stare at each other. “Are you monitoring me?!”
“Yes.”
“Here,” she says, tossing me the bottle of painkillers. “Then you be in charge. You be my pharmacy. I’m due for my next one in six hours.”
She goes back in the bathroom and slams the door. I shake the pill bottle, victorious, proud of her, and put it in my bag.
Dear Drew, hope to be home soon. How are things with you? Haven’t heard from you in a while. Have you been getting my pics? Xo—Oak
Spiraling is the wrong word, for I’m not quite spinning hopelessly out of control as much as I’m steadying myself for the folly of thinking something’s wrong. Surely there’s been a glitch. Surely Drew’s emails to me have just gone to a spam folder or have been lost in the ether, the in-between where memories and hopes and forget-me-nots are lost, accidentally misshelved in the library of living. I’ll laugh about this with him, this mistake of me not receiving his emails, of me panicked he’s no longer interested. He’ll tell the story and I’ll laugh. And we’ll be at brunch holding hands under the table and his friends will drink in his retelling and we’ll laugh anew at this hilarious mistake where he didn’t write me for weeks and I thought he was ghosting me and the whole time he’s wondering why I’m the one not writing him back. Oh, the glee of love, of trying to love. Love?
* * *
This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, or at the mall, which isn’t much different. At least a mall in Australia is more exotic than one back home.
Being a celebrity assistant is a lot like raising a child, or a puppy. Assistant Bible Verse 133: It helps to wear them out.
And so here we are, doing laps and walking in and out of stores.
“Relaxed yet?” I ask.
Kathi, looking sad with puppy-dog eyes, shakes her head no.
Some people shop by sight—what looks good—but Kathi Kannon shops (and lives) by touch—what feels good. She brushes her hands across a colorful sweater or scarf or sock, and if it’s soft, she’ll take it. She spends a quarter inch of cash on a snug sweater she may wear once and then gift to Agnes. She spends a half inch of cash on an Australian alpaca trench coat. “This seems pretty. Maybe for Benny,” Kathi says.
“I’m sure he has lots of use for it, living in your shed.”
“Cockring, what has this Australian alpaca coat ever done to you?” Her speech is slurred. We’re both exhausted.
“Time for my next pill?” she asks.
I look at my watch. “Yep. You sure are good at telling time.”
I fish the pill bottle from my purple backpack, open it, finger out a pill, and hand it over. She pops it immediately—I don’t even see her swallow. She winks.
I ask, “What’s next?”
She says, “I’m bored.”
* * *
“I hope we survive Japan,” Kathi says, looking down at Kyoto, its bright lights piercing through the night sky as we come in for a landing.
Snap: The limo that drives us to the hotel.
Snap: The finely groomed white-sand sculptures.
Snap: The boat that takes us to the lobby.
Hey, Siri, our hotel in Kyoto is accessible only by boat. The Hoshinoya is built along a river. It’s the kind of place tourists pay money to pass by and take photos. And we’re staying here, sharing a villa.
“Reservation for Aurora Borealis,” I say at check-in.
“How much to dress him as a geisha?” Kathi asks the front-desk clerk.
“I don’t want to,” I say.
“He’s very officious,” Kathi says to the clerk. “But I’m sure there’s a wild man in there who comes out at night, his testicles wrapped in a bright-yellow thong, cheeks of his buttocks red from a fresh walloping, right?”
Kathi turns and stares at me, daring me to react. I don’t budge. We both turn at the same time to look at the clerk to see if she reacts. She’s fucking confused. She doesn’t understand the brilliance of that moment, where an icon whips from molecules of space around us a twisted and erotic tale that’s so compelling you want to get high off it. I’m drunk with awe of how a human being like her can take the most ordinary of moments—checking in at a hotel—and turn it into an otherworldly memory, a thrill, an essential ingredient in what makes a life feel full.
Worn out from a day of airports, I get Kathi settled in her room and prepare to leave her for the night. I watch her. She tinkers with her phone, fiddles with her e-cigarette. She’s in a strange room and is just as comfortable as if in her own home, just as comfortable living her life with me staring at her as with me not staring at her, probably more. Kathi Kannon has never been alone. She’s been surrounded her whole existence with help, nannies, assistants, chefs, directors, doctors, enablers. She can sleep soundly with throngs of people around her, impervious to noise. Therapista says learning how to be alone with others is a key part of a healthy relationship.