As fast as I can, I put on my boxer shorts. It is suddenly, urgently, important to have boxers on and for everything to be clean. If the room gets stormed, I don’t want it streaked with residue and mess and I don’t want to be naked. I wipe down the surfaces of the bathroom and the bedroom and gather the glasses with the pills and the crack next to the bed. I set up the bottles of vodka on the floor and bring an empty one to pee into. At some point during the cleaning and gathering I decide that once I lie down on the bed I will not leave it. I sit at its edge and pack a hit. I smoke hit after hit, but it seems I can’t make a dent in the pile of drugs in the glass. I begin to take the pills. One after another, with big mouthfuls of vodka. I hear footsteps on the roof. The sound of ropes, of heavy boots, of cables. Boxes piled with guns scraping the concrete. Surveillance equipment being hauled. More footsteps. More hits. More pills and larger gulps of vodka. This goes on and on in the half-lit room, the late morning sun seeping through the closed curtains. The surfaces that had once seemed to shimmer with the most inviting urban glamour now look cheap and cold and ordinary. I hear a helicopter and imagine the men above fastening the roof with cables lowered from a large, powerful chopper that will — any second now — lift the little cube of a room into the air, away from the city, and behind the walls of a federal prison. The bed feels as if it is rocking, and I cannot tell if it is me, the bed, or the entire room. I down more pills. I smoke more. Drink more. Find a piece of paper and, as Noah wrote so many times on the back of envelopes and left on the bar in our foyer, write Can’t take it, and leave it next to the bed. I can barely move my arms, and my legs begin to ache. My heart feels like it is a rocket taking off from inside my chest, but at the same time a low, dull wave of drowsy energy begins to roll at the back of my neck and head.
The pills are nearly gone. I wonder, for the first time, if I really want to go through with this. There still might be a chance to crawl up and out of this deep well. Do I really want to die? I stop and the sounds on the roof stop, too. Everything is silent but for the roaring of blood behind my eyes and ears and chest. All I can hear is life slamming through my tired, aching body. Do I want to do this? Now? The sound of something snapping comes from the roof and I startle.
Yes, I think as I lean over to pick up the glass with the pills and slide the last ten or so into my mouth. Yes, I say out loud to the men on the roof and the ones in the vans who must be listening. YES, I shout, before I chug the dregs of vodka from the bottle. Yes, I whisper angrily, packing the only clean stem until it bulges. Yes and Yes and Yes as I finish it all and my limbs slow and the great drowsy, long-awaited wave rises, crests and, at last, crashes down. Yes.
For a long time, the next thing I remembered was being in the lobby of One Fifth, holding on to the front desk, telling Luis that I needed the new key. But over time I remember standing on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Washington Square Park. Did a cab leave me here? Did I walk from the hotel? I had no idea then and have no idea now. But I remember standing at the corner, not knowing what to do. Whether to go home or not. I have no money. Nothing. And I can barely stay awake. I can lie down on the sidewalk and sleep so easily. If I can just find a spot, out of the way, where I won’t get arrested or harassed. Sleep is on me like the heaviest blanket, and I can’t stand still without stumbling. I start walking north up Fifth, toward home.
And so Luis — thirty-something, extremely polite, Hispanic, the same doorman I have waved hello to coming in and out of the lobby for years — is telling me that Noah is not at home and that I’m not allowed in the building. He says it nicely, but he says it. I ask him to just please give me the new key. I tell him it will be fine, Noah won’t mind. He tells me he’s been instructed not to give it to me, and I tell him if I don’t lie down somewhere I will die. I can now barely stand up. He calls John, the building manager. John comes down and asks me to follow him. We go to the second floor, where he has a small office, and he suggests I wait with him until Noah gets back. I tell him he has to call Noah. My cell phone is dead. He dials the number and hands me the phone. Noah’s voice mail picks up, and I tell him I’m home and they won’t let me in. At some point during the message I fall down. My legs give out and I’m on the floor in front of John’s desk. He helps me up, but there is nowhere to sit. I hang on to the door frame behind me. I am awake and asleep, alive and dead, and I don’t know how I got here. John is talking, and I’m no longer hearing his words. His phone rings and he puts it to my ear. It’s Noah. Hi, I say. I’m home. Help. Please. I give the phone to John and more sounds happen and then John is walking me downstairs, to Luis’s desk. Give him the key, John says, and Luis opens the cabinet to get it. There is some confusion about old and new keys, but eventually a key ends up in my hand and I start heading for the elevator. When I get in, I can’t remember what floor we lived on. Three? I hit three and know it’s not right. Five? Six? Six. Six. Six W. So I hit six. The doors open and close on three, and for a moment I forget it’s not my floor and move toward the door. I remember, but when I stop, my body buckles again and I’m on the floor. The doors shut and I manage to stand up as the doors open on six. The apartment is to the right of the elevator, the last door on the left. I start toward the door and hang on to the wall the whole way. I finally get there and see the shiny new steel lock where the old copper-colored one had been. I don’t know what I’ve done with the key and as I search my pockets I realize it’s still in my right hand. Now I just need to open the door. But I can’t seem to guide the key into the lock. It must be the wrong one. Maybe we live on the seventh floor. Maybe the fourth. I keep poking at the lock, but my hand is shaking and I can’t make it go in. Now that I’ve stopped walking, the drowsiness hits like a tidal wave. I’m leaning against the wall next to the door, but I can’t stay up. I’m going down and hold on to the knob to keep from falling backwards. I sway in place for a while, and as it all begins to go dark, there are hands at my back, along my arms, taking the key, pulling me up. I see them on my wrists, and they are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Made of light, not flesh, winging around me with good purpose and grace. Noah. He pulls me against him — he smells like dry cleaning and cigarettes — helps me stay up with one hand and unlocks the door with the other. He is speaking but the words are too far away. He tries to hold me up as the door opens but I’m already down. The light from the apartment streaks toward us. I fall in.
White Plains
An ambulance will wait by the service entrance at One Fifth to take me to Lenox Hill Hospital. Unlike the ride to the hospital when I am twelve, this one won’t be remembered — there will be no surfacing between awake and unawake, no comforting voices. I won’t remember the emergency room, won’t remember the elevator to the psych ward, won’t remember anything beyond falling through the apartment door, Noah behind me, the light.
I wake in a room, alone, strapped to a bed, with no idea where I am. It takes several minutes to register that I am alive, and when it does, I am furious. Nurses come. A doctor. People — my family, Noah — are outside the door, but I tell the nurses not to let anyone in. I stay frozen, in the room, with only one thought: What now?