I can’t even watch her leave.
When I take my seat on the airplane, I fall instantly into this deep, almost delirious, sleep. I dream of Fallon. She is inside me. She is with me the entire flight.
I have to hurry to make my connecting plane to Charleston, so I run across the airport without checking to see if she was connecting through the same airport.
But she is with me.
I can’t shake her.
I don’t even try.
Ch.31
I’d actually forgotten about the summer internship Sue Ellen applied for—mostly because I never really thought she had a shot at being selected for it. I mean, the woman she was trying to get the internship with is this super big-time artist—and really is one of Sue Ellen’s idols and major influences. The woman’s studio is in LA, of all places, and, uh, yeah, like I said, Sue Ellen kind of just applied on a whim, you know? Like, why the hell not?
But she got it. She actually got it.
Christ, it’s practically her dream job.
In some ways I still can’t believe it—and I don’t think Sue Ellen can, either. I’d been back in Charleston only, like, three days when she got the phone call from the artist’s assistant saying they wanted Sue Ellen out in LA by the following Monday. So, uh, yeah we’ve basically been driving for three days straight across the whole damn country.
Thankfully, Sue Ellen’s mom was able to rent us a little apartment in Mar Vista that allows dogs, since, of course, we brought Tallulah along. The whole internship is supposed to last three months, so it really is like we’re moving here for a while.
Honestly, everything happened so fast and crazy I haven’t had a lot of time to process coming back to LA and all. Plus, I pretty much drove the whole way myself, so I had to stay good and stoned as much as possible—which was, more or less, the entire time.
But now we’re here. I mean, trying to set shit up as best we can in our new, temporary, tin can–sized apartment kind of near the beach in Mar Vista.
So far everything has just been bleeding out like ink running down wet paper—the hot summer drive, the dingy motel rooms, the rest stops and diners and whatever else. But now, back in Los Angeles, the blur of the road has transformed into a hyperfocused, high-definition reality. And I remember everything. I mean, besides the last year and a half in Charleston, I’ve basically been living here in LA since I was about nineteen or twenty—so that’s, like, five years. Not to mention coming here when I was little to visit my mom over the summer and for holidays and whatever. I know this city—the back roads and secret little parks and cafés and theaters—all the places Zelda and I went together and all the places that remind me of her.
Because that’s what this city really means to me. Zelda. She’s still with me. Despite all this time with Sue Ellen. Despite that weird faith-healing, religious cult girl. Zelda is my one, you know? She always will be. And by some totally random coincidence, well, she just happened to have e-mailed me. I mean, I haven’t heard from her in two years and now she’s written me, asking where I am, telling me she’s back in detox at a place called Las Encinas. She gets out in a week. I wrote to her that I’m here in LA, and now she wants to meet. It’s all so random—or maybe not random at all. That cult girl would say otherwise. ’Cause, uh, yeah, she’s been writing me, too. So I have two big-ass secrets I’m keeping from Sue Ellen. And I’m not sure why this is all happening right now.
In terms of Zelda, well, it’s pretty obvious nothing’s gonna come out of our seeing each other. I mean, as much as I’d want us to be together again like we were, I recognize that the way we were was pretty fucked up. And it doesn’t seem possible to build something brand-new together after everything that’s happened. I’d say too much damage’s been done on both sides. But still, thinking about her, I feel this, like, racing crazy energy inside me, making my heart beat fast, like I’m on speed or something. Actually, I’d say that’s pretty much the way I’ve been feeling in general. And, you know, while I do get like this sometimes—kind of hyped up and frantic inside, so I can’t sleep at night and I just have to, like, go, go, go constantly—for some reason right now it feels like a hundred times worse.
I mean, like I said, not only am I talking to Zelda again but I’ve also been talking to that religious girl a whole lot—you know, more ’n’ more every day.
At first it was just e-mails—the two of us writing back and forth. She said she’d been thinking about me the whole time she was in Nicaragua, and she’d finished my book, and she wrote me all about her time doing all that faith-healing stuff in the little villages there. Her writing was so effortless and whatever. It was like I could feel her with me through her words.
I learned about her childhood.
I learned about her life, you know, just day to day.
And the more I’ve learned, I mean, fuck, the more I’ve come to care about her. There’s something so mysterious and seductive behind every word she writes to me.
In terms of all the crazy religious stuff—well, somehow I’ve managed to pretty much dismiss all that. I guess I’ve always been pretty good at compartmentalizing. Her religious babble is filed away in a place where it will be lost and forgotten. My head just discounts it all, somehow. I know there’s nothing to it, and I’m not gonna hold that against her. The whole story is too perfect—her approaching me in the airport—the crazy, visceral attraction we both had for each other instantly. I can’t just abandon it over a few e-mail references to Holy Ghost power or whatever.
Anyway, it was only a couple days ago that she gave me her phone number. After all we’d been through, it seemed sort of stupid that I was so nervous to call her. Maybe part of me was terrified that our connection wouldn’t really exist if we were actually talking to each other.
Maybe part of me was terrified that it still would.
But her voice came through to me like the sweetest, most calming, positive, alive, beautiful, hopeful thing I’d ever heard.
It filled my whole body with heat and tingling and this intense fucking longing.
And then, on the phone, our voices echoing back and forth, I could suddenly feel her presence there next to me. She giggled and breathed, and I breathed, and we breathed together. And we had this love going back and forth. And it made no sense. And I couldn’t explain it. And it scared the shit outta me. But it was. I mean, it was as real as anything.
Or, at least, that’s how it felt.
And feels.
Now, of course, I can’t talk about this shit with anyone. I mean, I know how fucked up this is—how crazy I’m acting—and what a shit I’m being to Sue Ellen. But it’s almost as if I’m being controlled by some overpowering force outside myself—like invisible strings are manipulating my every thought and movement. There’s a voice, something living in my head, commanding me in ways I still don’t fully understand.
I mean, come on, how could this all be a coincidence? How could this just be some accident—some random whatever?
It can’t be. There’s no way. My book comes out, Sue Ellen gets this internship, we come to LA, Zelda contacts me, I meet this girl. Everything’s working out exactly perfectly. It’s all coming together. Life is beautiful. I feel beautiful.
Tallulah and I take a walk around Venice. She’s getting better about not trying to bite everyone we pass. I’ve actually been making an effort to walk her through the most crowded areas, like down off the bike path where all the merchants and head shops are set up, walking her through the mass of tourists and street kids and performers and whoever, trying to get her used to being around people. We walk together for hours—through the day and the night and the day again.
I can’t sleep anymore.
I don’t need to sleep.
I walk with Tallulah.
And I talk on the phone. I talk to Fallon. All day and all night and all day again. Sue Ellen doesn’t know.
I’m out walking with Tallulah.
I dial her number.
Sh
e answers on the third ring, her voice coming through sweet and beautiful. Lovely.
“I missed you,” she says. “I know that’s crazy, but I missed you. I want you to come be here with me. I want to just lie down next to you, that’s all—just to be in your presence.”
“I know,” I say, softly—walking without sight or touch or hearing—that is, other than her gentle voice—her breathing. “I want to be with you, too. It feels like I’m existing in this in-between place—like both of our souls have left our bodies and have met together somewhere in the middle. It’s like I’m not here at all anymore. You know what I mean?”
She giggles. “Yeah.”
We go on talking like that—her pleading with me to come be with her.
“You’d love it up here,” she says in a whisper. “This place will change your whole life. You’ll come to know how big God’s heart is for you. He loves you so much. He loves us both so much. That’s why he’s brought us together. That’s why he’s shown himself to us. He wants you to come find him here. I know that’s what he wants. He is speaking to you. He has chosen you to do his work for him. But first you must come here to learn how to open yourself up to his light and his grace. They can teach you how to best serve God here. They can teach you how to interpret his word. And then you’ll be able to go out into the world and accomplish everything that I know you’re capable of.”
“No,” I say slowly, my eyes squinting to block out the setting sun.
For the first time I’m suddenly aware that it’s almost night, so I should be getting back soon. But, still, I keep talking, pulling Tallulah away from a McDonald’s wrapper she’s busy licking off the sidewalk.
“No,” I continue, my voice sounding oddly foreign. “No, I don’t want to go out into the world. I just want to be with you.”
She giggles again. “Well, I’ll be with you of course, silly. I’ll go anywhere with you.”
I smile.
“I feel so much love for you,” I tell her.
She answers without pausing or anything. “I feel so much love for you, too, silly.”
We go on talking a little while as the sun falls lower and lower into the ocean, oranges and pinks and purples blossoming in rows like flower beds sprawling across the horizon.
I can see the world now.
It is coming through bright and sharp and clear.
It is a gift—all of it.
“Of course I’ll come up,” I tell her. “I’ll rent a car and just say I’m going to go visit my family in San Francisco. I’ll come this weekend. It’ll be perfect. You’ll be able to meet Tallulah.”
She laughs/giggles/sighs.
“Yes, okay, perfect. I’ll get someone to cover my shift on Sunday, and I can take you up to Mount Shasta with your dog. It’ll be so beautiful.”
I feel her body against mine.
We breathe together.
We go on talking about our plans.
We go on talking until the sun has disappeared over the water, and the fading glow is cold and colorless.
We could go on like this all night.
But then someone’s calling my name, and I turn sort of instinctively, my stomach lurching into my throat like I’ve just been caught.
I look kind of frantically all around me.
“Nic, man… Nic Sheff, hey, man, where the hell you been?”
He’s standing right in front of me now.
I breathe all the tightness out of me. I mean, it’s no big deal. It’s just John, this pot dealer/musician guy I haven’t seen since I was dating Zelda.
“Hey, Fallon,” I whisper into the phone. “Let me call you back, okay? I just ran into this old friend of mine.”
I hang up, and then John gives me a kind of handshake-palm slap-finger snap thing.
“What’s up, man?” he says, sounding as much like a surfer-stoner as ever. “You haven’t been around in years. Where you been hiding, man, Reseda?”
I laugh, studying his sun-creased face and scraggly blond beard and the large straw hat pulled down over his eyes. Honestly, I was never really that close with him or anything, but he definitely had a hookup for some of the best weed I’d ever had.
We talk shit for a couple minutes before I hint at the real reason I’m excited to have run into him.
He smiles real big when he’s talking about herb. His bleached white teeth sparkle in the fading light.
“Ah, man, hell yeah, I can help you out. I get my shit from the dispensary now. Check it out, blueberry and mango, shit’s far-out.”
From his bag he pulls out two jars labeled like prescription bottles, handing ’em over to me one at a time.
“Smell ’em,” he says.
He doesn’t have to ask me twice.
“Man,” I tell him, “that’s crazy. It totally smells like blueberries.”
And that’s the truth, it totally does. The white crystals look like stardust sprinkled across the deep green and purple buds.
The other jar smells like mango.
And the shit looks so good. I mean, like it’s not even comparable to that nasty-ass dirt weed I was getting in South Carolina.
“Hell, I’ll take ’em both,” I say. “You wanna come with me to an ATM?”
He agrees, and so we walk over there together, Tallulah growling at him whenever he tries to get too close to her.
I light a cigarette and hand one to John, not really listening to his stories about everything that’s been going on with him.
Mostly I just keep thinking about how perfect it all is.
I mean, God is so good, right?
Mango and blueberry weed.
This beautiful, spiritual girl waiting for me up in Redding.
My life unfolding perfectly in front of me.
“Thank you, God,” I whisper aloud. “Thank you so much.”
John smiles back at me.
“That’s right, man, that’s right. It’s about time you figured that shit out.”
I smile back.
It’s a good fucking life, for sure.
Ch.32
Zelda’s text message told me to meet her at, as she jokingly put it, “the scene of the crime”—the Barnes & Noble on Westwood Boulevard where I used to come see her many, many years ago when we first met, the two of us hanging out after her outpatient group that was just around the corner. There’s something that cuts deep into me about the way she said that. I guess it just reminded me of how goddamn clever and funny she is. I’d forgotten that. I mean, there was obviously a reason I fell so hard for her in the first place. And despite what the therapists and counselors tried to brainwash me into believing, I fell for her because of the person that she is—not ’cause of all the celebrity bullshit or whatever. Hell, I even remember the exact moment we knew we were in love with each other. We went to Point Dume Beach together. I went swimming, and we talked and talked and talked. That’s the day she first told me she loved me. Of course, it was the same for me. I was in love with her because of who she is. Everything didn’t get crazy till a long time after that.
Anyway, it’s not like I had the slightest clue what I was doing. I was twenty-one years old. She was in her mid-thirties. There were a million things working against us being together. The fact that there actually was a time when we managed to make it work is a miracle—before we started using together—back when we spent the days and nights watching movies and making love and never leaving the queen-size bed in her little studio apartment.
Being with Sue Ellen was never like that. And as much as I want it to be with Fallon, well, I can see now that it doesn’t even come close. Call me crazy or fucked up or whatever, but when I saw Zelda today, even after all the years that’ve gone by, the enchantment Fallon had been holding over me was gone in an instant. All that bullshit about God’s plan for me and whatever. I realized right then it was all a lie—a lie I’d been telling myself because I wanted so badly for it to be true.
But it wasn’t true—it isn’t true.
There is no God.
It is all a fantasy—just like that love I thought I had with Fallon.
Zelda has shown me the truth without even meaning to.
Christ, man, I could never be with a girl like Fallon. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with her, but we’re just completely opposite. Maybe I wish I was more like her. Maybe I wish I was positive and full of faith and could get so much pleasure out of such simple things.
But I’m not like her.
I’m like Zelda.
That’s the truth of it.
Thank God the two of us met up today, ’cause I was about to make a big-ass mistake.
But it’s over now. I swear it is.
Zelda came up behind me while I was ordering a coffee and grabbed me by the waist and said, “How weird is this, right? I recognized your voice from all the way downstairs.”
I turned and hugged her frail body against mine for a long, long time.
And now here we are, sitting together on the outside patio, where we’ve sat together a hundred times before.
She looks older. I mean, I hate to say that, but it’s true. She looks older and more scarred and lined, and she’s super thin and sickly. Her green eyes are faded. Her upper lip is bruised from where she obviously must’ve just gotten Restylane injections or something—which is particularly sad, considering she got out of rehab yesterday.
But, of course, as always, her clothes are super cool, and she’s got the newest iPhone, and she tells me about her BMW she’s got parked in the garage. She shows me photos on her phone of different parties and things she’s been going to and, of course, all these goddamn celebrities just happen to be making cameos in, like, every shot.
It’s pathetic, really—pathetic and sad.
“I’ll tell you what, Nic, I spent the last two months before going into treatment smoking meth with a bunch of drag queens downtown and, man, smoking that shit is such a better call for me than shooting it. Remember how fucking nutter butter I used to get—thinking you were hiding drugs all over the apartment and everything?”
I put my hand on her back, feeling the bones all sticking out there.