“You know addiction is an incurable disease—”
“Ugh. Don’t worry about it, Cockring.”
“You have to quit. This can’t last forever,” I say.
“I know that! It’s not like it consumes me. You never even brought it up until the damn tabloid.”
The comment pierces my heart, the truth hurting. “I don’t know what I’m doing, okay?”
Agnes pops in, notices the drama, the tears. Her eyes widen. Kathi and I both feel her in the room—our senses at peak levels, reading every atom and molecule of the air carrying our words, our wishes, our jabs. Agnes observes the scene for only a beat, the quiet, the tension, and immediately and without comment turns and exits.
Kathi continues, “What do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to tell you it’s not what you think?”
I nod. Yes. I’m thinking, That’s exactly what I want. I’m thinking, And I want it to be true.
Kathi Kannon, film icon, smiles sweetly, stands, walks up to my side of her bed, touches my arm. “Darling,” she says, warm kindness radiating from her body to mine and a rote sincerity in her voice. “It’s not what you think.”
Kathi takes her hand away and brushes her bangs out of her face, offering that rare glimpse of a human being underneath all the Beverly Hills highlights and lowlights and makeup and glitter and fame and wealth and their disgusting, addicting draw.
“There’s nothing further for us to discuss. I’ll prove it to you, okay? You’re an A-plus-plus assistant. Or at the very least a B-plus.”
“I’m going to start grading you on your sobriety,” I say.
“You have no idea about my sobriety,” she snaps.
“Then I’ll just guess!” I yell.
“Fine. I’ll start,” she shouts. “I’ll grade myself! Right now, I’m probably a D, okay?”
“Not okay. I don’t want you to die!”
Kathi doesn’t respond. She walks out to the back patio, alone, with only her phone and the mysteries of whoever she’s texting.
My head heavy, my shoulders slumped, I walk to the kitchen to get a drink.
“What was that all about?” Agnes asks from her station at the breakfast nook. “Back in the bedroom?”
“I was out of bounds, I think. I shouldn’t have said all that.”
“I thought you were reading a script for a movie. It felt so … I don’t know. Intense.”
“I feel bad.”
“Don’t. Someone had to say it to her. Someone should have said it to her a long time ago.”
I take a deep breath and hold in a guffaw, one of those awkward laugh-turns-to-tears moments, where breath and life want to punch out of your guts like the creature in Alien. I suck in the outburst and will the tears away. I don’t blink. I hold my breath. I smile slowly so Agnes can’t see any quiver in my lip, any clue that I just hosted what feels like a test and I failed. I didn’t move any goalpost; I didn’t crack any hard outer shell; I haven’t changed a thing; I’m not a good example. At what point does fault break the bow of intent, of character, of principle—or a lack of it?
“Agnes, do you know where Kathi keeps her drugs?”
Agnes pauses, averts eye contact; several painful moments pass. Then, slow and unsteady, wobbly in her baby-blue-colored socks on the slippery, shiny hardwood floors, or maybe wobbly from the uncertainty of the upcoming betrayal of her longtime employer, Agnes leads me through the mansion. We walk past the French doors looking out into the backyard. We see Kathi out there pacing, smoking an e-cigarette like it’s her last, texting someone, some figure in a secret life.
We glide into Kathi’s room, then into Kathi’s bathroom. Agnes steps to the vanity, where Kathi’s purse is open, contents spilling out like a Thanksgiving cornucopia, Mom’s locket right there in the thick of the crime scene, now tarnished with a new scar—my mother’s spirit, like me, bearing witness, aiding and abetting.
I’m thinking, Mom, what have I gotten you into? I’m thinking, Mom, save us.
Agnes reaches into the purse, unzips an inside pocket, and pulls out one of the pale-blue pill cases I give Kathi each day. She shakes it and the meds inside rattle. Agnes holds it out for me to take from her.
“You didn’t find these from me,” she says.
But I don’t accept them. “No, no,” I say. “False alarm. These are the pills I give her every day.”
Agnes pulls her arm back, brings the pillbox close to her chest. She looks down at it and, almost as if confused how to open it, her elderly, fragile fingers search for grooves, and she pops the container open. She extends her arm again. I reach out my cupped hand. Agnes pours out the contents of the pill case. Tiny white circular pills I don’t recognize drop onto my palm.
“What are they?” I ask.
Agnes takes a breath, considers her words carefully. “Not vegetables,” she says.
I say to myself, “Fuck.”
Agnes puts the empty pill case on the vanity. She looks down at the floor and slowly walks away. She says quietly as she passes me, “She keeps two. The pill case you give her every day and this one she has in her purse. I suppose she thinks your pill case is the one spot you won’t think to look.”
Agnes leaves me and I stand alone, feeling like a clown who has been played, angry at a reveal of corruption levied upon my innocent system of giving Kathi her daily meds. Indeed, I’ve seen a stray pill case around the house, in her nightstand, in her purse. And Agnes is right, and Kathi is right: I don’t give them much thought; I never open them to check exactly what’s inside, to see if there is competition.
I feel a sizzling inside me, a rage and profound disappointment. When my mother died, I wanted to scorch the earth. Now that same feeling is back. I want to throw the pills across the bathroom, to see them smash on the wall and scatter on the floor, these bits of poison and waste. Therapista says I have a problem accessing my anger. Therapista says holding in feelings is only a temporary fix. Therapista says all that fury has to come out eventually.
I walk to the toilet. I dump the pills into the water. The sound is pretty, a couple dozen little splashes that sound like a second’s worth of the life of Kathi’s fountain outside, the one she made from smashed plates and garbage. So pretty, that sound, these pills, so innocent, so dangerous.
I flush and watch a smattering of problems go away.
“What are you doing, Cockring?” Kathi asks, now behind me, surprised to find me in her bathroom.
“I’m watching you,” I say.
Kathi walks close to me. “I’m a movie star, darling. Who isn’t?”
* * *
I take a shower and try to wash the unsuccesses of the day off of my skin, to let the hot water spray my shoulders, warming the muscles tense and taut from facing Kathi, and to watch it all go down the drain, no longer my problem—not tonight, anyway.
DREW: What’s up? Sorry out of touch. I’ll explain. Hang?
Finally! At least I have Drew. He’s on his way over for a long-overdue date and catch-up. And I’m looking forward to downloading about Kathi Kannon.
I defrost some salmon fillets. I cut some green beans. I prepare for our date, just a quiet night taking up some space in my apartment, pillows and blankets on the floor, Netflix streaming on the TV. I cover Mom’s boxes with a sheet, because class and decor.