The next morning we were up and on a helicopter by 9 a.m. “Look what this country did to us,” I said, tapping Shelly’s sling on her arm with my leg brace.
“I got injured because I’m your codependent. I knew you had hurt yourself and I needed to hurt myself, too.” Then Shelly and I kissed on the lips.
“Oh, my god.” Gina moaned. “The two of you are so stupid.” Then Sue and Shelly kissed on the lips as our helicopter took off. This was the happiest moment of the trip. Being airlifted to Florence.
About three weeks later, I came into work and Sue had printed out several reviews of Chez Heini she found on TripAdvisor. The following are some highlights:
“ridiculous” (March 20, 2013)
“distinctly average” (February 15, 2013)
“seriously overrated” (April 12, 2011)
“a very strange place” (February 5, 2011)
Needless to say, I haven’t been on a train since, and unless there’s another Holocaust, I never will be.
CHAPTER 9
TELLURIDE
It is not lost on me that my life has become ridiculous. The very idea that I am able to live and travel the way I do is absurd. Losing all capability of using a remote control, brewing a pot of coffee, or peeling an orange are tasks I remember enjoying. I knew things had really taken a turn in my life when I woke up one morning in my bed and called downstairs to the kitchen to order a nonfat cappuccino from my cleaning lady. The only thing I seem to do well is drive a car, yet I can never get where I am going, because I don’t know how to use my navigation system.
One morning, during a radio interview I was doing on my phone, I walked distractedly out my front door and got into the first car I saw. Ten minutes later, my house manager called me to tell my I had driven away in my landscaper’s Honda Legacy. I looked around the dashboard and in the backseat—where I spotted a large pail holding a pair of hedge trimmers and a square of sod. After hearing this story, one of my girlfriends suggested I see a neurologist. Another friend of mine reassured her that were I to take the day off to see any doctor, there were many others I needed to see before seeing a neurologist, first and foremost being a psychologist.
While vacationing on Shelter Island one weekend, I needed to shave my legs and decided the most practical place to purchase a women’s razor would be at the local hardware store. When I received the look from the seventy-year-old man behind the counter as he tried to ascertain whether or not I was serious (a look I encounter multiple times a day), I had to think fast and invent a believable mix-up, and I left there with a handsaw.
What I find even more alarming is how easily the human condition can grow accustomed to such luxuries as having three assistants, having an entire staff at home who do absolutely everything for you, and then becoming highly irritable when the private plane you’re flying on doesn’t have Wi-Fi, or the fact that your gardener has only one arm and you pay him full price. I should be happy to have a gardener in the first place. (For the record, I don’t have a problem paying my gardener the same price as someone who has two arms, but I am unclear as to why he refuses to let me buy him another one. Like soccer, gardening seems to be a vocation that would exponentially improve when one is supplied with the two limbs required to be good at it.)
During our Christmas break, everyone who works on my show gets two weeks off. This particular year, I would spend the first week in Whistler, British Columbia, skiing with my family, and then fly to upstate New York the following week to be taken by a lover.
While eavesdropping on a conversation I was having with my assistant Eva about our upcoming break, my writer Brad heard us going over flying options for the dogs.
“Find out if the dogs have to be quarantined in Canada, because if they do, I’d rather just have them fly to New York and meet me there.” Then I heard Brad goose-step over to Eva’s office—a sound I can identify a football field away.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said, planting his two redheaded duck feet in front of Eva’s desk. Brad’s jealousy over Chunk is astonishingly transparent. I know for a fact that he has spent time during his commute home from work thinking of what it would be like to be Chunk. That’s fine once or twice, but any adult who consistently thinks of what it would be like to be someone else’s dog is really quite the loser.
Brad and me the previous Christmas in Telluride… The first week was friends, the second week was family.
“Why shouldn’t Chunk fly to New York? He is happier when he’s with me and I’m happier when I’m with him. And, by the way, I’m flying commercial to Whistler, then to New York, and Chunk is flying private to New York and then taking Uber to meet me upstate. I would think you of all people would respect the idea that I’m being somewhat responsible with my finances.”
“How is that responsible?”
“Only one of us is flying privately.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Hold on a second,” he said, taking his glasses off. “Are you telling me that Chunk is flying alone on a private plane from LA to NY, and there are going to be no other passengers?”
“No, you idiot. Jacks will be flying with him.”
Brad started violently scratching his arms. “So, two dogs on a private fucking airplane?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I told him, eyeing the rosacea on his forearm. “We’re still running the numbers.”
The color of Brad’s face went from light blue to white with dark blue veins, to a pale pink, and then to a Swedish fish red. He slammed his right hand on the table but deliberately placed it on his hip in an effort to control his apoplexy. His eyes rolled back, and globules of saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. He took a long inhale through his nose in yet another effort to maintain his composure. By that point he reminded me of a retarded walrus.
“Please pull yourself together, Brad,” I told him. He took a long inhale through his nose in yet another effort to maintain his composure.
“Can you imagine, Chelsea, training your whole life to fly—hours and hours of training—and then you finally get your first flight assignment, and you get onboard—only to find out that your two passengers are a boxer and a half German shepherd?”
“First of all, Brad, I would never let Chunk fly with a first-time pilot. The poor dog is a nervous wreck. He hasn’t taken a shadoobie in front of me in over two years.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” he asked.
“Because he’s obviously scared I’m going to leave while him while he’s mid-shadoobie. Why do I need to spell everything out for you? You’re supposed to be a writer.”
“Chelsea, I don’t really see how this has anything to do with me, and your psychopathy is way off. You’re treating this dog like he has polio.”
“Tread very carefully, Bradley. Studies are showing that polio is making a comeback. And for that matter, so is Lionel Richie.”
The truth of the matter is—I believe Chunk is my mother reincarnated. My mother would have loved to go on the trips I am now able to take my family on, and she would have loved all the perks that go with becoming successful. This setup would have been perfect for her. Reincarnating as a half-German, half-Asian dog who could go with me everywhere but not have to speak to a soul would be her version of paradise.