“That’s not how I see it,” I say meekly, now tugging at my sweater, now weighted down by it, by some truth in her words.
“You said it,” Kathi says, shrugging. “Let’s be really, really real here. Fine. We make a good team, Cockring. Some things come with the territory. Calm down. Before you know it, your name will be in the credits of a Nova Quest film, darling.”
I stop breathing. Now my hands are those of a nervous soldier, flexing in and out of fists.
I say, “No, Kathi…”
Hey, Siri, I’m seeing her manic in the driveway and trying to swim into traffic.
I say, “I won’t calm down…”
Hey, Siri, I’m seeing her secret stashes of pills tucked in purses and pockets.
I say, “I’m frustrated and scared…”
Hey, Siri, I’m seeing her body looking cold and lifeless in Seattle.
I say, “I’m overwhelmed and lost…”
Hey, Siri, I’m seeing her collapse into a heap onstage in front of an audience of iPhones and ill wishes in waters off Bermuda.
I say, “I’m bored.”
And it’s like a bomb drops.
I say it quickly, flatly, bluntly, louder than I expected. Even Roy looks up at me. My eyes on Kathi are hard with truth and disappointment and realization.
A sadness rinses my veins, stronger and stronger, just like the silence in the room. I watch the blinking red lights of her cigarette chargers, blood rushing to my head, my limbs growing cold and numb. I feel the unthinkable revelation. I’m suddenly raw and spinning. I’m longing for the hospital for myself, for the frosted glass and electric locks keeping truth and reality at bay. I don’t want to see this job for what it is, and I don’t want to see this job for what it could be forever—her in constant danger, and me believing I can help her, and I can’t.
Kathi sucks on an e-cigarette, inhaling and inhaling, then blowing out, and again, her breath is invisible, no electronic vapor in her lungs, no charge held from the cartridge. “NOTHING WORKS ANYMORE!!!” Kathi screams, now her tears beginning as she pulls it from her mouth and jams it into a charger in an unholy fit. She measures her temper, tempers her feelings—whatever they are: Anger? Hurt? Love? She pulls a new e-cigarette from its charger and pops it into her mouth. She sucks on the device, long and hard, and finally, her eyes closed, she exhales vapor, filling the room like it’s on fire, like it’s all burning down.
I say to Kathi Kannon, film icon, “If you don’t go back to the hospital, I’m going to leave.”
As I look at Kathi, dressed in her tattered black T-shirt and long cardigan, similar to what she was wearing at my job interview all those years ago, my life—my lifestyle—flashes before my eyes: me wide-eyed and eagerly parked outside her front gate for the first time, my hopeful walk up to her front door, our optimistic interview, meeting Mateo the Moose, the passion in these wild fireplaces, the living leather royalty of Emperor Yi, the trips, the great aurora, the cursed cruise, the perfection that is Roy—who’s in this strained moment staring up at me with his unending unconditional love, questioning, no doubt, where all this is going, where I’m maybe going, whether I’m indeed going. It seems Kathi is considering, too.
Kathi takes a deep breath, the kind in movies when the hero is wounded. It’s the awkward moment in film when the music stops and we hear the slow ringing in the ears. It’s the moment when all seems lost. And the audience gets it. And the hero gets it. And right now, Kathi Kannon gets it.
“I thought we were friends,” Kathi says, crying softly.
“This is what a friend should have done a long time ago.”
Kathi and I stand in limbo for a while, time seeming so silly, words seeming so pointless.
I close my eyes tightly, so tight I feel muscles I never knew existed, and I step forward in her bedroom to a familiar imaginary mark, and in an instant I see myself holding an imaginary award, blinded by imaginary lights and cameras. I’m emotional—not from victory but something else. I say into the imaginary microphone, to the imaginary auditorium, “Is this thing on?”
Kathi turns from me, dissolving into the ocean of imaginary people, the same imaginary audience from when I first met her so many moons ago, back when I was a different person. I wonder if they recognize me? I wonder if they’ve seen me grow and change and arrive at this very moment.
I take a deep breath; the same oxygen-rich blood vessels gush inside me as if from the first day I saw Kathi Kannon give her imaginary awards speech. God, it’s so real. The metal award, though only in my mind, still feels very solid, very cold in my hands. “I don’t deserve an award,” I say.
I hear Kathi putting down her cigarettes, her feet shuffling. I feel her face me.
And in my mind, I think I spot her in the dark, imaginary theater, behind the lights and cameras and faceless people, and I crane my neck to see her, to speak to her. “If I’m getting an award, it’s only because of one person, a woman who gave me life, who gifted me light from darkness, who helped me see a living world behind black corners. I’d like to thank Kathi Kannon for loving me.”
I feel a tear drop from my eye, moisture clearing my vision, transporting me back to her bedroom, back to standing alone with her and Roy. I stare at her, moved and moving, slowly, her hands twitching slightly.
And here we are, separated now by more than words and more than space and time. Here we stand, finally, in the home where we birthed our awards-acceptance speeches, where we now concede defeat and disconnection.
Kathi’s shoulders slump forward, impossibly low, the crown of her head dipping and dipping and the arch of her back now heaving, dreariness upon her as upon me, the two of us, standing a few feet apart and not touching at all, sipping our sovereignty, trying it on, the itchy loneliness of it, for perhaps the first time since we met.
I don’t turn away from her. She turns away from me, back to her e-cigarettes, her friends, a world that’s all vapor.
I reach over to her bed and gently touch Roy on the head. His ears collapse faithfully under my hand and I rub the loose skin that sits over his adoring brain. I whisper to him, “I’m sorry, buddy.” Another traitorous tear slips from my eye, betraying my attempt to show strength, courage, professionalism—perhaps it’s too late for any of that.
I pull my hand from a grateful Roy, turn from him and Kathi, my blood swirling inside my body from the rush of the motion, the rush of the moment. I feel my heart beating in my chest, I can hear the thumping in my ears, I can see it—the pulsing of little halos in my vision, slowly trying to close in on me, like the onset of a migraine or a heart attack or a heartbreak.
I feel every muscle in my body moving as I start to leave her. I feel her turn, I feel her eyes following my every independent motion, seeing me maybe for the first time as an autonomous being, some creature who crawled into her open door at night and now crawls away at first light. I take a step, and another, and another out of that bedroom, so eerily aware of every centimeter of my being, so self-conscious I feel like I’m watching myself from out of body. From above, I see myself leaving, and as I approach the bedroom door, I see myself pause, wondering if she will come after me. But Priestess Talara, now older and rattled, now revealed as Kathi Kannon, mortal human being, doesn’t come after me.