“When did you start doing drugs tonight?” she asked Drew.
“I don’t want to talk about drugs,” Drew said through tears. “I just want you to know that I stayed away because I want your life too badly, and I hate that feeling.”
“I don’t think I’m awake enough for a big, deep talk right now,” Milly said. “You should try to get some sleep. I found an Ativan. Do you want it?”
Drew nodded yes, following Milly into the kitchen. Milly went away, came back, and set the Ativan down before her on the table with a glass of water. Drew took it. She reached into her bag for her cigarettes.
“I don’t smoke in the apartment,” Milly told her, concealing rapid waves of pity, morbid fascination, horror, and sadness. She’d rarely seen Drew high or so wrecked. In a way, it was a relief to see Drew letting herself fall apart, finally abandoning her bravura performance. “Come on, we can go up on the roof.”
Up there under a night sky with a wan sliver of a moon, sitting cross-legged on the roof’s gravelly floor, they smoked, Drew’s hand shaking. Milly had all but quit smoking and—Wouldn’t it figure, she thought — was having her first cigarette in weeks with Drew.
“Can I just tell you one thing?” Milly asked. “Believe me, you wouldn’t want my life if you fully knew what I went through with my mother growing up. I know you didn’t have it easy with your father, but if you could only know what it was like. Because it was really awful. It was like growing up with Patty Duke for a mother.”
Milly said this gravely, but Drew laughed, which made Milly laugh, which made Drew feel a bit better suddenly. The first cool edge of the Ativan was creeping in. She would know peace soon; she would sleep with Milly nearby, perhaps close beside her. A thought dimly formed, which seemed too much to ask for: there could maybe be moments of peace when she could put down the exhausting project of Being Drew.
“And,” Milly added, “I hope it’s obvious to you that you have to go to rehab. Everybody thinks so.”
Drew continued to nod, staring at the ground. Then she pulled the baggie of coke out of her bag and handed it to Milly. “Will you get rid of it for me?” she asked.
Milly looked at the small plastic square of white powder in her palm. “What should I do with it? Sell it?”
“Dump it down the toilet, then rinse the bag and throw that out,” Drew said. “That way I won’t try to find it wherever you’re hiding it.”
“Oh my God,” Milly said. “You are so addicted.”
This made them both laugh again. They finished their cigarettes and went downstairs. On the stairwell, walking behind Drew, Milly put her hand on Drew’s shoulder, and Drew pulled it around to nuzzle it against her face and kiss its back. Drew went into the bedroom to undress and Milly took the baggie of coke into the bathroom. She knelt down by the toilet and tapped its contents into her left palm, moving it around a bit with the index finger of her right hand. She marveled for a moment at the ability of a lump of inert white substance to so completely steal someone away, to the point that she was barely recognizable anymore. Milly had tried coke only once, in high school, and hadn’t liked the effect at all.
She dumped the coke into the toilet, brushed her palm, rinsed the baggie in the sink so as not to leave even a powder film of remains in the trash bin that might tempt Drew, and tore the baggie in two. She felt a bit like she’d felt when she’d spied Perry on the street, rushing self-importantly back to the Harper’s office, unseen by her, a few weeks after he and Drew had finally broken up. Both cocaine and Perry had given Drew a sense of being all right in the world, but then had turned on her. Now they were things that Drew would have to put huge amounts of energy into saying good-bye to rather than enjoying.
It was exactly how Milly felt about Jared. How can I really judge her when I’m going through that myself? Milly thought. That allowed her, amid her exhaustion and annoyance, her first tiny wave of forgiveness toward Drew. In the bedroom, with pale strips of light in the slits between the blinds, the Ativan had put Drew to sleep. She lay on her side, in her T-shirt and underpants, her head tucked under both hands. Her face, Milly thought, looked childlike, unguarded, not straining for wit or charm. Milly undressed and lay down the same way, her arm holding Drew below her breasts, her nose in the scent of Drew’s hair. It was much the same way Jared had once held her in bed, before she learned she wasn’t free.
Five. I Want to Thank You (1984)
Ysabel was having so much fun. The music sounded amazing and the men around her were beautiful. Whatever she and Tavi had taken — MDMA, she thought Tavi had said — had made her feel euphoric, and she and Tavi were dancing close, bumping, grinding. In the song, the woman sang something like, Had enough of all the pressure. . had a life that felt like pouring rain. . Then I turned around. I was so astounded by your smile. Finally there was light. . and this is the moment of my life!
That’s just how Issy felt. There could not be more than a few dozen other women in this packed club, going on two A.M., and she knew none of these men was going to fall in love with her, but she didn’t care. She was with her best friend, Tavi, and a bunch of Tavi’s friends. The music was great, Tavi was holding her close, it was a Saturday night, and she didn’t have to be back at work, in fact, until Thursday, the day after The Fourth of July. She and Tavi locked eyes, held that stare, smiled. Then Tavi kissed her — not his usual kiss on the cheek, but on the lips, openmouthed. Not with his tongue, but still. . it lingered!
She put her hand over her lips. “Oh my God, Tavi!” she said. “You did not just!”
Tavi laughed like a hyena. “Hahaha, yeah, princess, I just did!” That boy was fucking crazy. He was skinny with a big Boricua ’fro and a gap between his two front teeth, wearing Sergio Valente jeans, a tight yellow T-shirt saying WHERE’S THE BEEF? and three gold chains. Tavi, her best friend from the block in Corona, Queens. Whom she’d pretty much known was gay since they were fourteen. What other boy ran around the neighborhood in tiny orange gym shorts, a rainbow headband, and Mork from Ork suspenders singing at the top of his lungs, Hey, mister, have you gotta dime? Mister, do you wanna spend some time? Yep, that was Octavio. Tavi-boy, she called him. They did everything together.
She showed Tavi some of her best moves — kind of like if she were Sheila E. in the new “Glamorous Life” video she was obsessed with, in that shiny tight coat, rocking her shoulders while she thrashed away on those drums. Sheila E. was her new idol. In her mind, she was Sheila E. She did have hair nearly as big as Sheila’s, styled asymmetrically, and she thought she had Sheila’s attitude. Yet Issy was not deluded; she did not think she was as beautiful or sexy as Sheila, even as she tried to make the most of what she had: her large, bright eyes; smooth caramel skin; and fairly good curves. Even though she stood at only five feet four inches, and even if her nose was a little flatter, her forehead a little higher, and her lips a little thinner than she’d have liked, she did her best to distract away from those things with makeup, fashion, and attitude.
In her neighborhood, she was well liked. She was, after all, the younger sister of Freddy Mendes, a big guy with swagger who’d nearly made the farm team for the Mets and who, frankly, had never much paid her the time of day. But lately, having just turned twenty-five, working toward her dental hygienist certificate while watching all her friends get married and have kids, or not get married but still have kids, she’d started to wonder, What’ll become of me? Will I be alone my whole life? She would then catalog in her head the good qualities she possessed: I’m a caring person, she thought. I have a good sense of humor. I can cook. I take excellent care of my teeth. I don’t take things too sensitively — I can go with the flow! Putting this list together in her head helped her, and she would always top it off with a prayer that she meet the right man for her before she turned twenty-eight. (The previous cut-off had been twenty-five, until she’d turned twenty-five.)