And I do make it. But I stay only one night, the night of his premiere and the party after with his friends and producers and family. I smile and nod and engage and play the part of a supportive boyfriend. But I’m fixated on the little zip-lock bag wrapped in tissue nestled in the pocket of my navy blazer hanging in the bedroom closet at One Fifth. I imagine the clear glass stem resting next to that bag, and the lighter on the dresser nearby. I picture these things every second I’m in Utah. From the moment I get there I need to leave. From the second I leave New York I need to return, to get back to that conversation, the one that just started up again; and now that it has, nothing but death can keep me from it.
Last Door
I need a new sweater. I need to clean up before I try to check into another hotel. It is evening but some stores may still be open. I get in a cab and ask the driver to go to SoHo. He hums as he drives and I can’t bear looking to see if his license photo is obscured by cardboard or paper or just not there, like all the others. Here okay? he asks, as he pulls to the corner of Houston and Wooster. I shove $10 in the money slot and don’t bother looking at the fare.
The stores south of Houston look like Christmas. Extraordinary displays — animated, art-directed, intelligently lit — beckon and intimidate from the windows along Wooster. I remember, as a kid, coming into the city with my fourth-or fifth-grade class to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. The streets in midtown were jammed with tourists and city people, and they were lined up by the hundreds to see the decorated windows of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor. I remember being confused about why the windows were important to see but also excited that I was involved in something famous, something big. It was the same feeling when we got to Radio City Music Hall. My mother told me it was the best theater in the whole world and that the Rockettes were the most beautiful, most talented performers anywhere, whom people came from around the world to see. When my class finally made its way through the crowds into Radio City I could barely breathe. We were here, in this place that people traveled from everywhere to be, where the Rockettes performed (what exactly they did I still had no idea). The gold fixtures and red carpeting exaggerated the dizzy Christmas-in-NY adrenaline pumping through me, and I remember literally shaking with excitement. At the top of the first set of stairs, there was a bank of pay phones. I made a beeline for the nearest one and dialed zero. I told the operater I wanted to call home, collect. The phone rang and no one answered. This was before answering machines. Before voice mail. So I hung up. But I was bursting and had to tell someone, had to put the excitement somewhere. So I picked up the phone and dialed the operator again — a different one answered this time — and immediately started gushing to her about where I was, what I could see, what I had already seen on this, one of my first trips into the city. I don’t remember anything about the performance that night but I always remember that call, the friendly operator, her kind voice, and how she told me to go find my teacher, to be careful not to get lost.
I wander past the bright, contrived windows along Wooster and try to remember what time of year it is. It looks like Christmas but I’m sure it’s not. It takes longer than a few beats to remember that it’s March. I make my way into a wide, light, serene store, with low tables and discreet racks hanging with what look to be carefully curated garments. I ask a dark-haired saleswoman with eyes like opals — blue with flashing gold and red — if they have any men’s turtleneck sweaters. I tell her I’m visiting and have run the one I’m wearing into the ground. She looks down my torso at what I am wearing, and her frown and wrinkled brow seem to agree. She directs me down a flight of steps to the lower level. Near the bottom of the stairs is a small basket of folded cashmere turtlenecks, and I pick the smallest one they have, in burgundy, with a cable knit pattern, and find a changing room. The moment the door clicks shut, I pack a thick hit, cough loudly to mask the sound of the lighter, and hungrily draw from the stem. I blow the smoke wide and close my eyes for a few minutes. I have no idea where I will go next and I lean against the back of the changing room wall and let the warm glow of the drug shield me from caring. This little changing room, nothing more than a cube of light and mirror and white paint, is safe, and for a moment I am calm.
I slump further down the wall and let every tense, clenched muscle loosen. It feels as if each limb, every digit, could fall off. The contraption of my body feels barely assembled, on the verge of collapse. Out of nowhere comes a memory of Noah weeping at Japonica. Shaking his head and sobbing. Telling me not to explain, not to say another word, that he knew I was high, could see it on every inch of me.
I pack a hit as big and as fast as I possibly can. It takes a few deep draws for the vision of Noah to dim, and after a few more hits the exorcism is complete. The tiny changing room is thick with smoke, and I know I need to leave. After another big hit, I suddenly remember the SoHo Grand Hotel, which can’t be far and where, thankfully, I have no history.
I sit up and shimmer with the promise of a clean, new hotel room as more smoke curls around the ceiling of the changing cubicle. Energized now with a plan, finally a place I can go, I cool off the lighter and stem and head back into the store. As I walk, I notice that my jeans won’t stay up anymore. My old blue cashmere sweater is tucked in all around my waist, but the soiled, worn-thin Levis are still slipping off me. I need to get a new hole punched in my belt before going to the hotel.
The downstairs of the store is brighter now than I remembered, and smaller. I worry they’ve been listening to me get high and that they can smell the smoke pouring from the now open door of the changing room. Without trying on the sweater, I race upstairs to the opal-eyed woman and tell her I’d like to buy it. She runs my debit card through and as she pulls out the bag that has the words Christopher Fischer scrawled across its meridian, I look around the store. Where once it had a sleek impenetrable chic, it now has a slapped-together, flimsy quality. The bag looks odd, too thick, too bright, too big, as if it were a prop bag for some off-Broadway play that involved shopping. The opal-eyed woman folds the sweater in a confection of tissue, places it in the phony bag, and hands me my receipt as she tells me to have a nice evening. I can feel my grip on reality loosen as I take the bag. Is this some setup? But how would they know I’d come here? I rush out of the store and onto Wooster Street.
A few beats later I hear my name being called in a high-pitched, nervous, southern accent. Bill, oh, hello, Bill. I freeze. ROSIE?! Old art-project, crack-smoking, 23rd Street Rosie? What’s she doing here? Jesus, is she in on this? I look around and can’t see anyone I know. My heart pounds and my neck chokes with a sudden rush of blood to my head. And there she is: Barbara. A lovely middle-aged, impeccably dressed woman who acts as an adviser to foreign publishing houses, what people in publishing call a scout. I’ve known her, not well, for years. She eyes me with worry, but kindly, and quickly I say hello and move on before a conversation can take root. Seeing her jolts me into thinking about book publishing, the agency, Kate, our employees, my writers — Jesus, all those writers. And with them the names and faces and voices of all the publishers, editors, agents, scouts, publicists, and assistants roar to life, one by one, like a great, animated mural — scolding and disgusted. And then, again, memories of rehab and Noah flood back in. With my fake shopping bag in one hand and debit card in the other, I start hustling west toward the SoHo Grand.