How It Ended Part 12

"Almost."

Tired as she was, she wanted to lift his mood, and she bounded over to kiss him, tasting the sweet-sour tang of whiskey on his breath.

"You know, until I was about twelve I thought all men smelled like scotch. I thought it was a-what do you call it? A secondary s.e.xual characteristic, like facial hair."

"How are the three wise men? Following any stars tonight?"

"I just hope they can make it to Brooklyn." She told the story of the trip-most of it anyway-trying to strike a fine balance between comedy and suspense.

"Jesus," he said, "when are you going to get rid of those clowns?"

The Magi were a source of some friction in the household. She kissed him again. "As soon as you learn to play ba.s.s and drums."

He turned away to adjust one of the lights on the tree. "So how was the last gig?"

"I would've called," she said, "but I didn't want to wake you. Forty-two Buffalo metalheads in a bar the size of this apartment."

"How do they compare to Syracuse metalheads?"

"A little hairier, I think."

"Ah, the glamour of the rock-and-roll life."

"How's the play?"

"Incomprehensible. But the lighting's going to be a killer."

She went into the kitchen and got a beer. "I am so f.u.c.king beat," she said.

"I was kind of hoping we could go out."

"Out? Tonight?"

"I sort of felt like dancing."

"Is this, like, a tradition in your family? Going to some club on Christmas Eve?"

"It's my answer to midnight Ma.s.s."

It was their first Christmas together, so they didn't have their own traditions yet. Well, why not dancing? Lori wanted to please him. He was practically the first guy she'd ever gone out with who wasn't a complete a.s.shole. Or bi. Or a junkie. Who was, in fact, so far as she could tell after six months, a great guy. Just as she was starting to make a name for herself singing songs about what creeps guys were, she'd gone and fallen in love. Hooked up with a lover and a band at almost the same moment.

As much as she wanted to go right to sleep, she was conscious of the occasion. She liked to imagine they might be spending future Christmases together, and it seemed important to set the right precedents. He'd bought the tree and gone insane with the lights-it was his profession, after all. One of the first things she'd liked about him: lighting designer lighting designer. The very concept-a man who taught light how to act. In the places she played, she felt lucky to get a spotlight. And how matter-of-factly he'd said it, like another guy would say computer programmer computer programmer.

Seeing the lights and the wrapped presents beneath the tree, she suddenly felt guilty.

"Is that really what you want to do? Go dancing?"

"Don't worry about it," he said. "It was just an idea."

"It's not that I don't want to stay up with you," she said, moving closer to him on the couch and kissing his ear. "I think I could summon the energy to give you a special Christmas treat."

"A treat? Could it be ... the Vulcan mind meld?"

"It's not your mind I'm interested in."

"That's good. For both our sakes."

"Maybe a shower will revive me."

"Don't worry about it. We can celebrate tomorrow."

Jeffrey seemed sincere, but she felt terrible about disappointing him.

In the bedroom, she lay down and dozed off almost immediately. Waking a few minutes later, she suddenly remembered the packet Rory had given her. That was the answer. Jeffrey was so excited about their first Christmas together, and she didn't want to let him down-especially now. In Syracuse she'd seen an old lover, Will Porter. He'd come to the gig and then she'd gone back to his apartment after, ostensibly because he didn't like to hang out in bars. A year out of rehab, he suddenly appeared to be everything she'd wished for back then. Was it possible to change that much?

Feeling a fresh stab of guilt, she fished the drugs out of her jeans and walked over to the dresser, opening the foil carefully, separating out two fat lines with a MetroCard and rolling up a bill.

The first line almost took her head off. Jesus, she thought, it's crank crank. For some reason, she'd a.s.sumed it was c.o.ke. Like who wouldn't? At first she was p.i.s.sed, but then she thought, What the f.u.c.k. If she wanted to stay up, she might as well stay up stay up. She could sleep tomorrow. In the meantime, Jeffrey would have a dance partner. She did the other line for good measure, then stepped into the shower.

By the time she emerged, she was up for anything, though she was a little too jumpy to give Jeffrey his b.l.o.w. .j.o.b just yet. Right at this moment the idea seemed kind of nauseating. But now they had the whole night ahead of them. She changed into her black vinyl skirt and the pink spandex top she'd bought at Patricia Field for her gig at CBGB.

Emerging into the living room, she found Jeffrey sitting on the floor in front of the TV, watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas How the Grinch Stole Christmas. She stole up behind and tack led him.

"Whoa, what's gotten into you?"

"It's just your rock-and-roll girl, ready to dance." He fended off her attack and held her at arm's length, looking into her eyes. "Oh my G.o.d. You're wired."

"I wanted to stay up with my baby."

"I don't believe this."

"What's the matter?" She stopped wrestling with him. He'd never been judgmental about drugs before.

"You're f.u.c.king wired wired."

"I left some for you, if that's what you're worried about."

"This is rich."

"What's rich?"

He took her hands in his. "You looked so tired and I felt so sorry for you. I just took a Xanax and an Ambien."

It took a moment for this dart to lodge itself in her speeding brain. "Oh s.h.i.t."

"Yeah."

She collapsed into his arms, laughing. "Merry Christmas," she said.

He kissed her. As much as she wanted to kiss him back, his lips felt strange on hers, which were slightly numb and had begun to take on a life of their own.

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He managed to stay awake for another half hour, during which she regaled him with tales of upstate New York and Toronto, the quirks of the locals and the outrages perpetrated by her band mates, until he began to nod off on the couch.

"I'm awake," he said several times, snapping his head upright. In the end, she pulled off his shoes and put a quilt over him.

How was it that on this night, the first promising Christmas Eve of her life, she'd ended up alone again? She tried to think of whom she could call. Certainly not her parents, whom she hadn't spoken to in more than a year. She briefly considered Will Porter, her lost-and-found lover, who'd taught her how to play the blues like Bukka White and later how to live them. Waiting all night for him to come home, hiding her money in the toilet tank, one night dragging him into the bathtub and filling it with cold water and ice, just like he'd told her to. Will finally turning blue, if not black.

She was crying. To console herself, she did another couple lines, not that the first were wearing off, not that they wouldn't keep her buzzing into the dawn, but she wanted to get past the guilt about Will. She was ent.i.tled to that, surely, on a lonely Christmas Eve.

She called the loft in Brooklyn where the boys would be, but she only got the answering machine, which played a bar from the s.e.x Pistols' "G.o.d Save the Queen."

After watching Carnal Knowledge Carnal Knowledge and sweeping the entire apartment, she tried to rouse Jeffrey, who was asleep on the couch, a thin trail of saliva running down his cheek. and sweeping the entire apartment, she tried to rouse Jeffrey, who was asleep on the couch, a thin trail of saliva running down his cheek.

"Honey?" She shook his shoulder. "Honey, are you awake?" She turned up the volume on the TV and then undid his belt and began to ma.s.sage his c.o.c.k. After a few minutes he shook his head and rolled over, burying his face in the cushions. She scratched at the skin on her arms, tormented by an invisible rash. If only Jeffrey would wake up long enough to scratch her back.

On one of many circuits through the kitchen, she decided to scrub the sink. She scoured and polished until the green Comet slush and the pink sponge had both disappeared; then she took an old toothbrush to the grout around the tiles. Jeffrey wouldn't be able to complain about her housekeeping when he woke up tomorrow. Afterward she took the toothbrush to the elusive itch beneath the skin of her arms and her neck. Lighting a cigarette, she looked down into the shiny white sink with the sudden conviction that she'd be sucked into the drain if she didn't move away immediately. She backed off and lit a second cigarette from the first.

She walked back to the bedroom and looked out into the courtyard, counting the lighted windows as she reached behind her shoulder to scratch her back. Twenty-three the first time she counted, twenty-four the second. As she watched, one third-floor window went dark. Walking back through the living room and past the Christmas tree, she stopped to look at the gifts underneath. Five packages, plus a bottle of Cuervo Gold with a ribbon around it. His presents to her were wrapped up in pages from Interview Interview magazine. The square box, which she was pretty sure was a DAT recorder, showed Chrissie Hynde's face. Looking at the presents, she found herself remembering the Shaker hymn: magazine. The square box, which she was pretty sure was a DAT recorder, showed Chrissie Hynde's face. Looking at the presents, she found herself remembering the Shaker hymn: 'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free 'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.

That was all she could remember. As she walked into the kitchen, she wondered where she would be next Christmas, and with whom. She opened the refrigerator, though she had no desire to eat. Surely there was something she wanted to do, something that would fulfill this nameless compulsion, this desire with out object.

Somehow it always ended up like this-solo at the edge of dawn. The stage was dark, the audience gone home. She tried to picture a lifetime of Christmases with Jeffrey and couldn't. It wasn't his fault. It was her. It was how she was. She shivered, feeling the chill from the open refrigerator on the p.r.i.c.kly envelope of her skin. She tried to imagine herself rising away from her body skin and leaving the skin behind-like a snake's, like an empty sh.e.l.l of wrapping paper, then emerging strange and new.

That's what she really wanted to give him: a whole new girl.

"Wake up, honey," she would say. "It's Christmas."

2000.

Story of My Life I'm like-I don't believe this s.h.i.t.

I'm totally p.i.s.sed at my old man, who's somewhere in the Virgin Islands, G.o.d knows where. The check wasn't in the mailbox today, which means I can't go to school Monday morning. I'm on the monthly payment program because my dad says wanting to be an actress is a flaky whim and I never stick to anything-this from a guy who's been married five times-and this way if I drop out in the middle of the semester he won't get burned for the full tuition. Meanwhile he buys his new bimbo, Tanya, who's a year younger than me, a 450 SL convertible-always liked the young ones, haven't we, Dad?-plus her own condo so she can have some privacy to do her writing. Like she can even read read. He actually believes her when she says she's writing a novel, but when I want to spend eight hours a day busting a.s.s at Lee Strasberg it's like another one of Alison's crazy ideas another one of Alison's crazy ideas. Story of my life. My old man's fifty-two going on twelve. And then there's Skip Pendleton, which is another reason I'm p.i.s.sed.

So I'm on the phone screaming at my father's secretary when there's a call on my other line. I go h.e.l.lo and this guy goes hi, I'm whatever-his-name-is, I'm a friend of Skip's, and I say yeah and he says I thought maybe we could go out sometime. And I say what am I, dial-a-date?

Skip Pendleton is this jerk I was in l.u.s.t with for about three minutes. He hasn't called me in like three weeks, which is fine, okay, I can deal with that, but suddenly I'm like a baseball card he trades with his friends? Give me a break. So I go to this guy, what makes you think I'd want to go out with you, I don't even know you, and he goes Skip told me about you. Right. So I'm like, what did he tell you? and the guy goes Skip said you were hot. I say great, I'm totally honored that the great Skip Pendleton thinks I'm hot. I'm just a jalapeno pepper waiting for some strange burrito, honey. I mean, really really.

And this guy says to me, we were sitting around at Skip's place about five in the morning the other night wired out of our minds, and I say-this is the guy talking-I wish we had some women, and Skip is like, I could always call Alison, she'd be over like a shot, she loves it.

He said that? I say. I can hear his voice exactly, it's not like I'm totally amazed, but still I can't believe even he he would be such a pig, and suddenly I feel like a cheap s.l.u.t and I want to scream at this a.s.shole, but instead I say, where are you? He's on West Eighty-ninth, so I give him an address on Avenue C, a rathole where a friend of mine lived last year until her place was broken into for the seventeenth time, and which is about as far away from the Upper West Side as you can get without crossing water, and I tell him to meet me there in an hour, so at least I have the satisfaction of thinking of him spending about twenty bucks for a cab and then hanging around the doorway of a tenement and maybe getting beat up by some drug dealers. But the one I'm really p.i.s.sed at is Skip Pendleton. Nothing my father does surprises me anymore. I'm twenty-one going on gray. would be such a pig, and suddenly I feel like a cheap s.l.u.t and I want to scream at this a.s.shole, but instead I say, where are you? He's on West Eighty-ninth, so I give him an address on Avenue C, a rathole where a friend of mine lived last year until her place was broken into for the seventeenth time, and which is about as far away from the Upper West Side as you can get without crossing water, and I tell him to meet me there in an hour, so at least I have the satisfaction of thinking of him spending about twenty bucks for a cab and then hanging around the doorway of a tenement and maybe getting beat up by some drug dealers. But the one I'm really p.i.s.sed at is Skip Pendleton. Nothing my father does surprises me anymore. I'm twenty-one going on gray.

Skip's thirty-one and so smart and so educated-just ask him, he'll tell you. Did I forget to mention he's so mature? mature? Unlike me. He was always telling me I don't know anything. What I don't know is what I saw in him. He seemed older and sophisticated, and we had great s.e.x, so why not? I met him in a club, naturally. I never thought he was very good-looking, but you could tell Unlike me. He was always telling me I don't know anything. What I don't know is what I saw in him. He seemed older and sophisticated, and we had great s.e.x, so why not? I met him in a club, naturally. I never thought he was very good-looking, but you could tell he he thought he was. He believed it so much that he actually sold the idea to other people. He had that confidence everybody wants a piece of. This blond hair that looks like he has it trimmed about three times a day. Nice clothes, shirts custom-made on Jermyn Street, which he might just casually tell you some night in case you didn't know is in London, England. (That's in Europe, which is across the Atlantic Ocean-oh, really, Skip, is that where it is? Wow!) Went to the right schools. And he's rich, of course, owns his own company. Commodities trader. Story of Skip's life. Trading commodities. thought he was. He believed it so much that he actually sold the idea to other people. He had that confidence everybody wants a piece of. This blond hair that looks like he has it trimmed about three times a day. Nice clothes, shirts custom-made on Jermyn Street, which he might just casually tell you some night in case you didn't know is in London, England. (That's in Europe, which is across the Atlantic Ocean-oh, really, Skip, is that where it is? Wow!) Went to the right schools. And he's rich, of course, owns his own company. Commodities trader. Story of Skip's life. Trading commodities.

So basically, he had it all. Should have been a Dewar's Profile. I'm like amazed they haven't asked him yet. But when the sun hit him in the morning, he was a shivering wreck.

From the first night, bending over the silver picture frame in his apartment with a rolled fifty up his nose, all he can talk about is his ex, who dumped him, and how if he could only get her back he would give up all of this forever, c.o.ke, staying out partying all night, young bimbos like me. And I'm thinking, poor guy, just lost his main squeeze, feeling real sympathetic, and so I go, when did this happen, Skip? and it turns out it was ten years ago! He lived with this chick for four years at Harvard, and then after they come to New York together she dumps him for some Rockefeller. And I'm like, give me a break, Skip. Give yourself a break. This is ten years after. This is nineteen eighty whatever.

Skip's so smart, right? My parents never gave a s.h.i.t whether I went to school or not, they were off chasing lovers and bottles and rails of blow, leaving us kids with the cars and the credit cards, and I never did get much of an education. Is that my fault? I mean, if someone told you back then that you could either go to school or not, what do you think you would have done? Pa.s.s the trigonometry, please. Right. So I'm not as educated as the great Skip Pendleton, but let me tell you something. I know that when you're hitting on somebody you don't spend the whole night whining about your ex, especially after like a decade. And you don't need a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out why Skip can't go out with anybody his own age. He keeps trying to find Diana, the beautiful, perfect Diana, who was twenty-one when she dumped him. And he wants us, the young stuff, because we're like Diana was ten years ago. And he hates us because we're not not Diana. And he thinks it will make him feel better if he f.u.c.ks us over and makes us hurt the way he was hurt, because that's what it's all about if you ask me-we're all sitting around here on earth working through our hurts, trying to pa.s.s them along to other people and make things even. Chain of pain. Diana. And he thinks it will make him feel better if he f.u.c.ks us over and makes us hurt the way he was hurt, because that's what it's all about if you ask me-we're all sitting around here on earth working through our hurts, trying to pa.s.s them along to other people and make things even. Chain of pain.

Old Skip kept telling me how dumb I was. You wish, Jack. Funny thing is, dumb is his type. He doesn't want to go out with anybody who might see through him, so he picks up girls like me. Girls he thinks will believe everything he says and f.u.c.k him the first night and not be real surprised when he never calls again.

If you're so smart, Skip, how come you don't know these things? If you're so mature, what were you doing with me?

Men. I've never met any. They're all boys. I wish I didn't want them so much. I've had a few dreams about making it with girls, but it's kind of like-sure, I'd love to visit Norway sometime. My roommate Jeannie and I sleep in the same bed and it's great. We've got a one-bedroom, and this way the living room is free for partying and whatever. I hate being alone, but when I wake up in some guy's bed with dry come on the sheets underneath me and he's snoring like a garbage truck, I go, let me out of here. I slip out and crawl around the floor groping for my clothes, trying to untangle his blue jeans from mine, my bra from his Jockeys-Skip wears boxers, of course-and trying to be quiet at the same time, then slide out the door laughing like a seal escaping from the zoo and race home to where Jeannie has been warming the bed all night. Jumping in between the sheets and she wakes up and goes, I want details, Alison: length and width.

I love Jeannie. She cracks me up. She's an a.s.sistant editor at a fashion magazine, but what she really wants to do is get married. It might work for her, but I don't believe in it. My parents have seven marriages between them, and anytime I've been with a guy for more than a few weeks I find myself looking out the window during s.e.x.

I call up my friend Didi to see if she can lend me the money. Her dad's rich and gives her this huge allowance that she spends all on blow. She used to buy clothes, but now she wears the same outfit for four or five days in a row, and it's pretty gross, let me tell you. Sometimes we have to send the health department over to her apartment to open the windows and burn the sheets.

I get Didi's machine, which means she's not home. If she's there she unplugs the phone, and if she's not she turns on the answering machine. Either way it's pretty impossible to talk to her. I don't know why I bother. She sleeps from about noon till like nine or so. If Didi made a list of her favorite things, I guess cocaine would be at the top and sunlight wouldn't even make the cut. So she can be hard to get hold of.

My friends and I spend half our lives leaving each other messages. Luckily I know Didi's access code, so I dial again and listen to her messages to see if I can figure out where she is. Okay, maybe I'm just nosy.

The first one's from Brian, and from his voice I can tell that he's doing Didi, which really blows me away since Brian is Jeannie's old boyfriend. Except that Didi is less interested in s.e.x than any of my friends, so I'm not really sure. Maybe he's just starting to make his move. A message from her mom-Call me, sweetie, I'm in Aspen. Then Phillip, saying he wants his $350 or else. Which is when I go, what am I, crazy? I'm never going to get a cent out of Didi. And if I do find her, she'll try to talk me into getting wired with her, and I'm trying to stay away from that. I'm about to hang up when I get a call on the other line, my school telling me that my tuition hasn't been received and that I won't be able to go to cla.s.s until it is. Like, what do you think I've been frantic about for the last twenty-four hours? It's Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Jeannie will be home soon and then it's all over.

By this time I'm getting pretty bitter. You could say I am not a happy unit. Acting is the first thing I've ever really wanted to do. Except for riding. When I was a kid I spent most of my time on horseback, showing my horses and jumping, until d.i.c.k Tracy got poisoned. Then I got into drugs. But acting, I don't know, I just love it, getting up there and turning myself inside out. Being somebody else for a change. It's also the first thing that's made me get up in the morning. The first year I was in New York I did nothing but guys and blow. Staying out all night at the Surf Club and Zulu, waking up at five in the afternoon with plugged sinuses and sticky hair. Some kind of white stuff in every opening. Story of my life. My friends are still pretty much that way, which is why I'm so desperate to get this check, because if I don't there's no reason to wake up early Monday morning and then Jeannie will get home, and somebody will call up and the next thing I know it'll be three days from now with no sleep in between, brain in orbit, nose in traction. I call my father's secretary again, and she says she's still trying to reach him.

I decide to do some of my homework before Jeannie gets home-my sense-memory exercise. Don't ask me why, since I won't be going to cla.s.s, but it chills me out. I sit down in the folding chair and relax, empty out my mind of all the c.r.a.p. Then I begin to imagine an orange. I try to see it in front of me. I take it in my hand. A big old round one veined with rust, like the ones we get down in Florida straight from the tree. (Those Clearasil spotless ones you buy in the Safeway are dusted with cyanide or some s.h.i.t, so you can imagine how good they are for you.) Then I start to peel it real slow, smelling the little geysers of spray that shoot from the squeezed peel, feeling the juice stinging the edges of my fingernails where I've bitten them....

So of course the phone rings. Guy's voice, Barry something. I'm a friend of Skip's, he says. I go, if this is some kind of joke I'm really not amused. Hey, no joke, he goes. I'm just, you know, Skip told me you guys weren't going out anymore, and I saw you once at Indochine, and I thought maybe we could do some dinner sometime.

I'm like, I don't believe this. What am I-the York Avenue Escort Service?

I don't know where I get these ideas, but sometimes I'm pretty quick. I go, did Skip also tell you about this disease he gave me? That shrinks this Barry's equipment pretty quick. Suddenly he's got a call on his other line. Sure you do.

Skip, that son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'm so mad I think about really fixing his a.s.s. First I think I'll call him up and tell him he did give me a disease. Make him go to the doctor, shut down his love life for a few days.

Then the phone rings and it's Didi. Unbelievable! Live-in person, practically. And it's still daylight outside.

I just went to my nose doctor, she goes. He was horrified. He told me that if I had to keep doing blow I should start shooting up, then the damage would be some other doctor's responsibility.

What's with you and Brian? I say.

She says, I don't know, I went home with him a couple of weeks ago and woke up in his bed. I'm not even sure we did anything. But he's definitely in l.u.s.t with me. Meanwhile, my period's late. So maybe we did.

She has another call. While she takes it, I'm thinking. Didi comes back on and tells me it's her mom, who's having a major breakdown, she'll have to call me back. I tell her no problem. She's already been a big help.

I get Skip at his office. He doesn't sound too thrilled to hear from me. He says he's in a meeting, can he call me back? I say no, I have to talk now.

What? he says.