Tweak

  Voltaire is pretty laid-back as a sponsor. I call him every day, but he doesn’t really seem that interested in talking about my personal life. We focus on the twelve steps and that’s basically it. He doesn’t get involved in anything else, which is great by me. Plus, we’re always going out to dinner with a whole bunch of people, or going to art openings or something. I feel important, what can I say?

  When I get home from work, Zelda is already back from shooting the commercial. They wrapped early and she wants to take me out to this Italian place on Robertson. I change clothes, but my stomach starts to cramp up really bad and I have to sit down for a second.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” she asks. I tell her.

  She says that she’s sorry and asks if I want to take anything. The pain is really bad.

  “What’ve you got?” I ask her.

  She comes over and sits beside me on the bed, cradling my head in her arms.

  “I missed you today,” I say.

  “You too.” She hands me a small orange pill and tells me to take it for my stomach.

  At first I want to question her about it, but I don’t want to appear naive or not experienced enough for her. I want to always just seem cool and nonchalant. I think if she told me to step out into the middle of traffic with her, well, I’d do it. So I swallow the pill without water. The tightness in my stomach is still there and I’m not sure what it’s from.

  Yesterday Zelda told her dad and stepmom about the wedding and they were just ecstatic. Already they’ve started planning it—where the reception will be held, who’s going to marry us. Zelda wants her old sponsor, Courtney, to perform the ceremony and she wants the wedding to take place in her dad’s backyard. All that’s fine, but driving home from work today, I felt like I needed to call my dad and explain what was going on to him.

  Somehow, I had convinced myself that he was going to congratulate me and agree to come to the wedding. I had wanted Daisy to be a flower girl. I thought maybe if I just acted confident and excited, the feelings would be infectious or something. It didn’t work. My dad told me I was making a terrible mistake. He was practically begging me not to go through with it. The conversation ended when I got angry and hung up on him, telling him that obviously he didn’t care about my happiness. Maybe my stomach pain has something to do with all that and maybe it doesn’t. Stomach pain isn’t really anything new for me. Growing up, every time I had to fly between my dad’s and mom’s houses I’d get these horrible stomachaches. I remember being doubled over in pain from them. Sometimes I’d start to get the stomach problems two or three days before I left, but they would always intensify the night before. I definitely carry stress in my stomach. But I don’t tell Zelda about what happened. I just go along with her like everything’s all right.

  It’s about the time that we’re walking into Al Gelato that I start to feel strange. The light from the setting sun seems to dim suddenly and it’s like I’m walking through thick, thick molasses. As we sit down at a table, I almost miss my chair. I have to steady myself against the white plaster wall. My head feels too big for my body and I can’t keep my eyes open.

  “Nic,” says Zelda, shaking me. “Nic, hey, are you all right, sweetheart?”

  “Of course,” I say, not meaning that at all. I look over to the mirror that borders the small dining room and I see that my pupils have disappeared almost completely.

  “Zelda, what was that pill you gave me?”

  “Oh my God, why?” she asks, standing back up all at once.

  “I feel like…like…like I just shot heroin.”

  She looks completely panicked. “Fuck, Nic, I think we should go.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “Come on.” She takes my hand and leads me back out to the car, making some excuse to the heavyset waitress. I actually feel really euphoric. I mean, I’m scared and I don’t know what’s happening, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Plus, my stomachache is completely gone. The sensations in my body are familiar and I realize how much I’ve missed them. I ask Zelda for a cigarette. She lights it herself, passing it over to me as she drives back toward our apartment. I don’t say anything for a while, just breathing and trying to take hold of my surroundings. Suddenly, I realize Zelda is crying. I think about how beautiful she is.

  “Whatever’s happening,” I say, “I will understand. I’m never going to leave you—no matter what.”

  She chokes a little, sobbing. “You promise?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I promise.”

  “Look…I—I swear to God I had no idea the Suboxone was going to affect you this way. I guess I’ve just been taking it for so long, I don’t feel it anymore.”

  I turn my head toward her, confused.

  “Nic, I’m not sober. I’ve been taking Suboxone for more than a year. It’s like methadone, you know? It makes me unable to get high off opiates, but I guess at first it kinda feels like doing heroin. That’s what you’re feeling.”

  She’s really crying hard now and I tell her not to worry, that it doesn’t matter.

  “No,” she says. “It does matter. See, Nic, I love you and I want to be honest with you.”

  “Of course, baby.”

  So she tells me. I listen and she tells me everything.

  Apparently, Zelda has been taking benzos and smoking crack for about three months. She started using again with this guy, Alexi, who I’ve actually met a couple of times. He’s older than both of us and was actually shot in the head about two years ago. It was his girlfriend, Bijou, who shot him. They lived in Hollywood, and Alexi climbed up to the balcony off the bedroom—in all black, with a black mask—because he thought she was having an affair. She wasn’t, but she did have a gun—his gun—and she fired at what she thought was an intruder. Half of the top of Alexi’s head was blown off—but amazingly, he survived. He was going to meetings for a while and that’s where Zelda met him, but then he relapsed and moved with Bijou to Las Vegas. He still comes to L.A. all the time, though, and I guess he finally talked Zelda into smoking crack with him. Not only that, but her doctor—Dr. E—is basically just a drug dealer and will write prescriptions for anything she wants. She tells me I can leave her now if I want.

  “No, baby,” I say. “If this is what you’re going through, I want to be with you. I want to be with you on every journey you take in your life.”

  Despite the Suboxone, as soon as I speak these words I feel the tightness swell up inside me again. Is Zelda really worth this? Will I fall back into that same horror I lived out with Lauren? No. Zelda is different. I would throw my whole life away for just one more night with her. Besides, I have learned so much about sobriety and God and everything Spencer helped teach me. Surely those lessons will carry me through this. Zelda and I will come out stronger than ever. Our love will conquer addiction. Our love will conquer everything.

  It will.

  It has to.

  “We’re in this together,” I say.

  “Oh, beautiful boy, I love you so much.”

  She’s stopped crying and we kiss each other for a long time at a red light.

  Zelda asks me if I want to go to a party at Yakuza and Justin’s new apartment they just moved into in Beverly Hills. I’m still pretty fucked up from the Suboxone, so nothing seems like a bad idea right now. The sun has gone down, and the streetlamps streak past.

  “Zelda,” I ask. “Wasn’t Yakuza all concerned about Justin relapsing?”

  “Yeah, but I guess she’s using now. She can be pretty crazy sometimes.”

  I nod.

  Yakuza and Justin’s place looks down on Sunset, off Wilshire Boulevard. It’s a high-rise apartment with a doorman and a garage. We have to be buzzed up. The lobby is huge, with indoor palms and a little fountain waterfall. We go up to the eighth floor, then head down a corridor to the last suite on the left. Someone has painted a messy white X on the door. We ring the buzzer and Justin answers. He’s high as can be—his jaw going back and forth. We go in.

/>   The place is really big, with a full-size pool table in the middle of the living room and a view of the Sunset Strip. There’s also a pile of crystal meth and a pile of coke on one of the dining-room tables. Seeing the meth there, I almost can’t breathe with anticipation. There aren’t any clean needles, but Yakuza lets us use one of hers. She also has the wedding bands and engagement rings to try on. Zelda has never tried meth and just shoots the cocaine, but I of course immediately cook up the crystal. I let her stick my arm with the needle and push off.

  The feeling is just indescribable.

  I don’t know how I could’ve possibly made it over a year without doing this shit. I light a cigarette and feel so high. Then we start looking through the rings.

  We decide to get the wedding bands specially engraved on the insides, but Zelda chooses an engagement ring right away. Yakuza says the one Zelda wants is seven thousand dollars wholesale. I write her a check for three hundred ’cause that’s all I can afford right now, but she says I can pay the rest in installments.

  We all hang out talking nonsense for a couple hours. There’s some pain in my arm where I shot the meth, but I ignore it. At some point Yakuza disappears into the bathroom with all the drugs and refuses to come out. She starts yelling from behind the door about how she’s going to get evicted from the apartment and how she’s calling her lawyer to sue the building management. She says something about the front door and how they know it was her and I figure she must have been the one who painted that X. Zelda tries to console her, but Kuza’s just completely fucking lost it. I can hear her mumbling in there. Justin is passed out on a black leather couch. It seems like it’s time to leave so I ask Zelda if she wants to go check out the pool on the roof. She agrees and we go.

  The pool is closed. It’s like three in the morning, but I strip naked and dive in anyway. Zelda watches and laughs. I managed to steal a bunch of crystal and a rig from Kuza. And even though Zelda is hesitant about doing meth, we both shoot up right there—me dripping wet. I choke on the chemical fumes as they rush up the back of my throat. We go home—me driving and talking, talking, talking.

  Around six in the morning I pass out on the bed. I’m not sure how long I sleep, but when I come to, Zelda is standing over me holding this Prada bag of hers.

  “I can’t believe you did this,” she shrieks. Her eyes are glassed-over and crazy.

  “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I’m not fucking stupid, Nic. You tore out this lining and put it back together, right? There are drugs in here, aren’t there? I already found all the drugs in the bathroom tile.”

  “Zelda, what are you talking about?”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah, right.”

  “No, no, I’m serious.”

  I follow her into the bathroom and see that she’s removed all the tile paneling along the base of the white painted walls. She shows me a little pile of white flakes.

  “Tell me that isn’t meth,” she says.

  “It’s not meth,” I say. “Those are fucking paint chips. Zelda, you’re in a psychosis or something. You’re not thinking right.”

  “I’m not even high,” she says. “You’re fucking high—you’re hiding drugs all over this apartment.”

  “Uh, no, baby, I’m not. I mean, I haven’t.”

  “Tell the truth, Nic.”

  “Zelda, I am.”

  She starts trying to tear more of the paneling apart.

  “Zelda, please, there’s nothing there. You’ll see. Look, I’ll make a deal with you. Wait till tomorrow—the drugs won’t go anywhere—then, if you still want to, we’ll take it apart together. But baby, really, there’s nothing going on. I’ve never lied to you and I never will.”

  She doesn’t believe me. She’s just gone.

  I mix up another shot of whatever’s left and give it to Zelda. That actually seems to calm her down some and I suggest we go take a drive somewhere. She agrees and we go down to the Rite Aid on Franklin and Sunset. It’s almost midday already and the sun is so goddamn bright. I buy a carton of cigarettes and Zelda steals three pints of ice cream, a box of Lucky Charms, and some makeup. She just puts it in her purse. It’s that easy.

  I kiss her on the steps and everything seems okay again. We drive home and she apologizes for freaking out. She says she never wants to shoot meth again. We fall back into a half sleep, watching TV.

  DAY 407

  I’ve been out of work since last Friday. I showed up at the salon in a total blackout, having stayed up all night shooting coke with Zelda. Her friend gave us the number of her dealer, this guy, Adam. Most times we have to meet him down in the neighborhood surrounding Larchmont. It’s actually really close to Dr. E’s, who I’ve also started seeing with Zelda. He writes me prescriptions for Xanax and gives us free packs of Seroquel. Between him and Adam we can always get anything we want.

  Despite the occasional freakouts Zelda continues to have, where she thinks I’ve been hiding drugs in the apartment, our relationship seems better than ever. We are so close and we do everything together. We make love and talk and watch movies and I’m still trying to write. Unfortunately, I took apart my computer with Zelda’s toolbox the other day because I wanted to fix it. Now all that’s left of my Mac is a pile of unusable parts. It reminds me of what Gack used to do.

  As far as what happened at work to make them fire me, well, I honestly don’t remember. All I know is that when I got back to our apartment, Fawn had called and left me a message saying that they were changing the locks and I wasn’t allowed back for any reason. That shook me up, you know? I mean, I really had loved, and still do love, those girls. I would never intentionally hurt them. I can’t believe they were so scared of me they actually changed the locks. I think back to breaking into my parents’ house in Point Reyes. There’s no way I can live with doing anything like that again. The guilt and shame are just too unbearable. So maybe it’s a good thing that I got fired, before I did any real damage. Besides, I can’t stand being away from Zelda—not ever.

  Still, though, I’m not sure what the hell I’m gonna do for money now. Zelda is getting unemployment every two weeks now that the commercial finished shooting, but that’s not anywhere near enough.

  Not only that, but ever since that night at Yakuza’s there’s been a swollen, painful lump growing on my arm. Zelda tells me it must have been from a dirty needle. Over the last week it has gotten even bigger, turning purple, and sort of yellowish. The growth is about the size of a baseball. I keep thinking it’ll go down, but it’s just getting worse. It hurts so bad.

  Because we’re running out of money, Zelda calls her friend Lisa, to see if she wants to buy some of Zelda’s never-worn designer clothes. Lisa, it turns out, is going out with this kid Jordan, whom I’ve known since before I was born. He grew up in New York in the same apartment complex as one of my best friends.

  Anyway, Lisa agrees to buy some clothes, so we head over to her house up Rockingham Street. I’m starting to get really sick on account of my arm and Zelda tells me that the infection is starting to smell—so I ask to be dropped off at an emergency room in Santa Monica. I figure I’ll just take a taxi to Lisa and Jordan’s. Zelda drops me at the UCLA ER. I give my insurance card to the woman at the front counter. My whole arm is fucking swollen as hell and the abscess has turned orange and brown. The woman takes a look at it and I’m rushed in pretty quickly.

  The first doctor who comes, this chubby-faced man with a close-cut mullet, frowns and tells me he thinks the arm is going to have to come off.

  My eyes go wide.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. Son, why did you wait so long to have this thing looked at?”

  “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

  “Not that bad? The infection’s almost eaten straight through the entire arm. I guess we’ll try to just cut it locally at first.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll be fine. It’s not that bad.”

  “Kid, listen to me—it is bad. I’ll try to sav
e the arm, but I can’t promise anything.”

  I just don’t get it, you know? I can’t see how it could possibly be as serious as he says. A nurse comes in and gives me a shot of morphine. I swear I don’t feel a fucking thing from it.

  “Hey,” I say. “I’m on this opiate blocker called Suboxone. You’re gonna have to give me more morphine than that.”

  The nurse is this haggard-looking white woman. She asks the doctor, but he tells her I can’t have any more. Another nurse comes in, a man with a light beard and glasses. He holds my arm down and slices a big X in the top of the abscess. It hurts. It really hurts.

  As he makes the incision a white, yellow, bloody pus comes oozing out. It smells awful—just like rotten flesh or shit or something. The two nurses squeeze and squeeze and I feel like maybe I’ll pass out.

  After they drain the whole thing there’s this giant, gaping hole in my arm. Then the nurse tells me I need to pay attention to how he packs the wound, because I’m going to have to do it myself. They take a long wooden Q-tip and this bottle of sterilized bandage and they begin stuffing the hole with it. They have to push it hard down around the bone and I grit my teeth and maybe there are even tears in my eyes. They’re just shoving the stuff in there—forcing it in every possible little space that’s been eaten out of my arm. It takes around fifteen minutes. Then they bandage it up and tell me to stand up and pull down my pants. I do and they give me a shot of antibiotics right in the ass. That hurts almost more than everything else.

  The doctor comes in a few minutes later, telling me how lucky I was the bone wasn’t infected. He gives me a prescription for Vicodin and antibiotics. They give me a bunch of extra bandage tape and some of those long wooden Q-tip things. I have blood all over me, but I finally get to leave. I go to the end of the block and call a cab. The driver comes quick but almost doesn’t let me in the cab ’cause of all the blood.

  “Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”

  “Oh, uh, I just came from the emergency room.”