“Yooooo, Claire! How have you been for the past eight years? By the way, I’m going to be in New York for a month. Do you think I could uh . . . stay with you?”
“No problem!”
Wow, this wasn’t going to be weird at all!
Cut to . . . my first night sleeping over in her apartment. Claire’s smiling face was one foot away from mine, as we lay together in her double bed in her tiny Manhattan studio apartment. It was the size of a closet. And it had no closet. I’m pretty sure it was a closet.
“How’s your mom?” I asked. I figured that if I was lying this close to someone else’s face, then I should probably talk to them.
“Good,” she replied. “Remember how early we had to get up on Saturdays? That was fun.”
“Totally.”
“Yeah.”
“Sure.”
To make things a bit more difficult, the first thing Claire offered me when I got in her apartment was weed. I politely said no. Okay, I cannot stay here for a whole month.
As I was walking from Claire’s apartment to the set the next day, I was overcome with fear. New York City had been the place where my addiction had reared its ugly head for the first time. It was where I fell into Damon’s grasp. I had no fond memories here. How was I going to stay sober here alone? I didn’t have The Log Cabin, I didn’t have Kristal or Stephen or anyone. Plus it was a bit awkward to get on my knees in the morning and ask God to keep me sober for the day, with Claire five feet away making toast next to the toilet.
A week passed in Claire’s closet apartment, and I remembered that Michael, a friend whose short film I acted in, had moved to New York the year before. I stepped into the hallway and hit him up immediately to ask if he had any extra space I could stay in.
“Totally, dude! You can stay on the couch in our basement.”
Thank God. I thanked Claire profusely for letting me stay with her, and then went to the other house in Brooklyn. I was nervous: this was going to be a whole group of new people I’d have to meet and socialize with and live with for the next three weeks. If I was going to be uncomfortable, how would I be certain I wouldn’t drink?
I walked into the house and set my stuff down. Then Michael’s roommate, Leslie, walked in and introduced herself. We talked for a moment, and then she said:
“Welp. Off to AA bishes.”
“Wait, what!!”
“Yeah, I’ve been sober six months.”
“I’ve been sober almost two months!”
She smiled at me; she understood. “Come with me!”
From then on, I went with her every day that I was in New York. It was inexplicable, like there was something watching over me. In AA, we call that a God shot.
New York was a success. I played a dumb model named Bunny. What the fuck was up with the model thing? I did my Ivy character for it again.
I came back to LA on a high, feeling stronger than ever. Stephen felt it, too. We got back together. Things were good again.
“Move in with me?” he asked one day while we were laying on his couch, watching Millionaire Matchmaker. We had been dating for around five months.
I smiled and kissed him. “Aw, I’d love to. But no.”
I didn’t want to move in with another guy until I was married. Not because I was traditional or anything, I just really hate moving. I didn’t want to change locations unless I knew I would be living with this person for the rest of my life. It wasn’t a marriage ultimatum. Moving is just a real pain in the ass.
“Fair enough,” he replied.
A month later, he took me out to this beautiful restaurant called Inn of the Seventh Ray.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why are you taking me to such a nice place on a Wednesday night?”
“Because I love you and I just want to take you somewhere, okay?”
“Okay, okay, sorry!”
The waiter seated us at a table, handed us menus, and then stepped away. Oh wait, I wanted sparkling water. I turned around to look for the waiter, couldn’t find him, and turned back to Stephen, who was gone from his seat. Wait, where did he go?
“Oh shit.”
Stephen was down on one knee in front of me. He was shaking with nerves as he opened the ring box. “Will you marry me? I love you.” He stood up.
“Wait—you can’t stand up yet! You’ve gotta wait until I answer.”
“Right, right. Sorry.” He knelt back down.
“YES!”
We got married one year after we met. The thought of either of us planning a wedding felt like the biggest joke in the world, so we just eloped and flew to Anacapri in Italy the next day. That was it. It felt easy, simple, and right.
CHAPTER 9
Two Apartments and a Home
I moved into Stephen’s small one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica shortly after he proposed to me. We were so in love. Since both of us had jobs with irregular hours, we could stay in bed a bit longer in the morning, watching the sunlight streak into the room.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
This morning, our peace was broken by an angry-looking old woman hitting our window with a broom. I quickly pulled the sheet over my body. What the hell? She peered in through our window.
“Stephen! RENT IS DUE IN TWO DAYS. DO NOT FORGET!” she yelled with a thick Russian accent. She spotted me and glared. Or maybe that was her resting face? It was unclear.
When Stephen moved to America he had no credit. So no sane landlord would let him rent from them. Which is why he ended up with:
“DO NOT FORGET, Stephen! TWO! DAYS!” She punctuated the last two words with whaps of the broom against the window.
Stephen and I shrank down under the covers, waiting for her to leave. This overbearing Russian woman and her weird codependent daughter let Stephen rent from them because he is British. “These Americans are up to no good. You come with us,” they’d said. Stephen wasn’t really in a place to say no. I guess the landlord wasn’t accustomed to texting or phone calls or ringing the doorbell. Her communications were always through our window: “Stephen! Sweep the front porch. IT IS VERY DIRTY.”
They had bought this apartment complex in the ’70s for dirt cheap. These tiny apartments were built in the 1920s, absolutely about to fall apart, but cute nonetheless. The old woman lived in the front one, we lived in the second one, another family lived in the third one, and the daughter lived alone in the last one.
The mother and daughter would fight constantly. They were both codependent and hated each other. The old lady was always convinced there was going to be a war. One time, when we were invited into the old woman’s apartment, I used the bathroom and saw that her bathtub was completely filled with fruit. They hoarded so much food. When there was a news report about a bombing in London, the old lady ran to Stephen’s window and offered to let his entire family stay with them here. “We can keep them safe for when the war comes. We have bathtub of fruit. They will be okay.”
“What war? This was just a random attack.”
Her face darkened: “There will be war, Stephen.”
As overbearing as she was, there was only one moment where she truly crossed the line. She popped up in the window holding a plastic bag. “Stephen, you must try these apples I just bought.”