And then there was the family: Carter had finally shaken off his rocky start and was thriving beautifully. He was absolutely gorgeous, with a terrific head of blond peach fuzz, perfectly even features, big blue eyes, and the longest eyelashes this side of anywhere. Chandler, the baby genius, was two and a half now, and she had fallen deeply in love with her brother. She liked to pretend she was the mommy—feeding him his bottle and supervising Gwynne and Erica as they changed his diaper. Chandler had been my best company, as I shuttled myself between the royal bedchamber and the basement’s wraparound couch, doing nothing but watching television and consuming massive quantities of Quaaludes. In consequence, Chandler had become a Jedi Master at understanding slurred speech, which would stand her in good stead, I figured, if she happened to end up working with stroke victims. Either way, she spent the greater part of her day asking me when I would be well enough to start carrying her around again. I told her it would be soon, although I strongly doubted that I would ever make a full recovery.
The Duchess had been wonderful too—in the beginning. But as Thanksgiving turned into Christmas and Christmas turned into New Year’s, she began to lose patience. I was wearing a full body cast and it was driving me up the wall, so I figured as her husband it was my obligation to drive her up the wall too. But the body cast was the least of my problems—the real nightmare was the pain, which was worse than before. In fact, not only was I still plagued with the original pain, there was a new pain now, which ran deeper, into the very marrow of my spine. Any sudden movement sent waves of fire washing through my very spinal canal. Dr. Green had told me that the pain would subside, but it seemed to be growing worse.
By early January I had sunk to new levels of hopelessness—and the Duchess put her foot down. She told me that I had to slow down with the drugs and at least try to resume some semblance of being a functioning human being. I responded with a complaint about how the New York winter was wreaking havoc on my thirty-three-year-old body. My bones, after all, had become very creaky in my old age. She recommended we spend the winter in Florida, but I told her Florida was for old people, and in spite of feeling old, I was still young at heart.
So the Duchess took matters into her own hands, and next thing I knew I was living in Beverly Hills, atop a great mountain that overlooked the city of Los Angeles. Of course, the menagerie had to come, too, to continue Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional—and for the bargain price of $25,000 a month I rented the mansion of Peter Morton, of Hard Rock Café fame, and settled in for the winter. The aspiring everything quickly reached into her bag of former aspirations, pulling out the one marked aspiring interior decorator,and by the time we moved in there was $1 million worth of brand-new furniture in the house, all arranged just so. The only problem was that the house was so enormous, perhaps 30,000 square feet, that I was considering buying one of those motorized scooters to get from one side of the house to the other.
On a separate note, I quickly realized that Los Angeles was merely a pseudonym for Hollywood, so I took a few million dollars and started making movies. It took about three weeks to realize that everyone in Hollywood (including me) was slightly batty, and one of their favorite things to do was: lunch. My partners in the movie business were a small family of bigoted South African Jews, who had been former investment-banking clients of Stratton. They were an interesting lot, with bodies like penguins and noses like needles.
In the third week of May my body cast came off. Fabulous! I thought. My pain was still excruciating, but it was time to start physical therapy. Maybe thatwould help. But during my second week of therapy I felt something pop, and a week later I was back in New York, walking with a cane. I spent a week in different hospitals, taking tests, and every last one of them came back negative. According to Barth I was suffering from a dysfunction of my body’s pain-management system; there was nothing mechanically wrong with my back, nothing that could be operated on.
Fair enough, I thought. No choice but to crawl up to the royal bedchamber and die. A Lude overdose would be the best way to go, I figured, or at least the most appropriate since they had always been my drug of choice. But there were other options too. My daily drug regimen included 90 milligrams of morphine, for pain; 40 milligrams of oxycodone, for good measure; a dozen Soma, to relax my muscles; 8 milligrams of Xanax, for anxiety; 20 milligrams of Klonopin, because it sounded strong; 30 milligrams of Ambien, for insomnia; twenty Quaaludes, because I liked Quaaludes; a gram or two of coke, for balancing purposes; 20 milligrams of Prozac, to ward off depression; 10 milligrams of Paxil, to ward off panic attacks; 8 milligrams of Zofran, for nausea; 200 milligrams of Fiorinal, for migraines; 80 milligrams of Valium, to relax my nerves; two heaping tablespoons of Senokot, to reduce constipation; 20 milligrams of Salagen, for dry mouth; and a pint of Macallan single-malt scotch, to wash it all down.
A month later, on the morning of June 20, I was lying in the royal bedchamber, in a semivegetative state, when Janet’s voice came over the intercom. “Barth Green is on line one,” said the voice.
“Take a message,” I muttered. “I’m in a meeting.”
“Very funny,” said the obnoxious voice. “He said he needs to speak to you now. Either you pick up the phone or I’m coming in there and picking it up for you. And put down the coke vial.”
I was taken aback. How had she known that? I looked around the room for a pinhole camera, but I didn’t see one. Were the Duchess and Janet surveilling me? Of all the intrusions! I let out a weary sigh and put down my coke vial and picked up the phone. “Hewoah,” I muttered, sounding like Elmer Fudd after a tough night out on the town.
A sympathetic tone: “Hi, Jordan, it’s Barth Green. How ya holding up?”
“Never better,” I croaked. “How about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” said the good doctor. “Listen, we haven’t spoken in a few weeks, but I’ve been speaking to Nadine every day and she’s very worried about you. She says you haven’t left the room in a week.”
“No, no,” I said. “I’m fine, Barth. I’m just catching my second wind.”
After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Barth said, “How areyou, Jordan? How are you really?”
I let out another great sigh. “The truth is, Barth, that I give up. I’m fucking done. I can’t take the pain anymore; this is no way to live. I know it’s not your fault, so don’t think I hold it against you or anything. I know you tried your best. I guess it’s just the hand I was dealt, or maybe it’s payback. Either way, it doesn’t matter.”
Barth came right back with: “Maybe you’re willing to give up, but I’m not. I won’t give up until you’re healed. And you willbe healed. Now, I want you to get your ass out of bed right now, and go into your children’s rooms and take a good hard look at them. Maybe you’re not willing to fight for yourself anymore, but how about fighting for them? In case you haven’t noticed, your children are growing up without a father. When’s the last time you played with them?”
I tried fighting back the tears, but it was impossible. “I can’t take it anymore,” I said, snuffling. “The pain is overwhelming. It cuts into my bones. It’s impossible to live this way. I miss Chandler so much, and I hardly even know Carter. But I’m in constant pain. The only time it doesn’t hurt is the first two minutes I wake up. Then the pain comes roaring back, and it consumes me. I’ve tried everything, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”