Spin A Novel

CHAPTER 12

Messages Sent and Received





“I’m a method writer,” Mary says during group a few days later. “I take on the persona of each of my characters so I can write them as real people.” She stops, looking uncertain.

We’re sitting in our usual folding chairs in a sloppy circle facing Saundra. The coffeepot is bubbling loudly on the sideboard. The sun hasn’t been out in a couple of days, and there’s a persistent fog seeping down from the mountains. Today it’s enveloped the lodge, and the view out the picture window looks like we’re in a tree house in a rain forest.

“Go on, Mary,” Saundra encourages.

Mary tucks her hands into her oversized fisherman’s sweater and takes a deep breath. “The book I was writing is about a runaway who’s living on the streets. She keeps her innocence for a while, but then she gives in to the temptations around her. She becomes a heroin addict.”

I glance around the room. The other patients look bored, staring into their coffee mugs, slumped in their chairs with their eyes on the ceiling, but The Producer perks up when Mary uses the word “heroin.”

“What did you want to tell us, Mary?” Saundra encourages. Her salt-and-pepper hair has gone wild in the humidity. It’s barely being contained by a wide, black headband that has a line of dogs chasing one another across it.

Mary looks and sounds miserable. “I was so into getting every detail exactly right that I . . . I started using heroin.”

“And you became addicted?”

Mary nods.

“Say it, Mary. Admit it.”

Tears start to trickle down her lined face. “I’m addicted to heroin.”

Mr. Fortune 500 gives an audible snort of disdain, and The Banker snickers next to him.

Mary wipes her tears away and shoots them a dirty look. “Oh, f*ck off, Ted.”

“Did you want to say something, Ted?” Saundra says.

He holds up the palm of his right hand and examines his fingernails. “I would’ve thought her story would be more impressive, that’s all.”

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?” Mary says, leaning forward angrily. “This isn’t story hour. This is group f*cking therapy.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t entertain us at the same time.”

Mary wipes away her tears angrily. “What? Like Rodney’s stories about bowls of cocaine and big movie stars? Like Amber? Should I sing you a song?”

I look at Amber. She’s sitting quietly in her chair next to me watching the exchange between Mary and Ted like it’s a tennis match.

Saundra clucks her tongue in disapproval. “Mary, let’s not personalize.”

“Just because I’m not a big movie star doesn’t mean I don’t have anything worth talking about.”

Speaking of big movie stars . . . YJB is sitting across the room wearing dark distressed jeans and a cornflower-blue crewneck. His color is healthier than it was a couple of days ago, and his face is clean-shaven. Except for his shaking hands, he looks only a few minutes out of character. All that’s missing is a tux and a Walther PPK.

He hasn’t spoken much in group yet, so I haven’t had any news to report to Bob since the singalong in the cafeteria. He loved that shit.

“Ted, Mary, this kind of exchange is hardly helpful.”

“It’s not fair. No one else gets mocked when they’re talking.”

“I think we could all learn a lesson from this,” Saundra says, looking around the room. “Group is supposed to be a safe haven. A place where everyone can speak their mind and learn from one another’s experiences. There are enough people in your lives who’ll stand in the way of your recovery once you leave here. You should be listening to one another, helping one another, accepting one another. This is not a place for judgment. It’s a circle of truth. A circle of trust. Does everyone understand?”

“Yes, Saundra,” we say as one.

By the end of the day, the wind has picked up and swirled the fog away. When I get to the cafeteria at our retirement-home dinnertime, I can see the sun setting behind the mountains for the first time in days. The sky is streaked with orange and purple above the bright green trees. It’s breathtaking. Not that anyone here would notice.

I get some baked chicken and vegetables from one of the women behind the counter and join Mary’s table. She’s sitting, surprisingly, with YJB, Henry, and The Banker.

“Bette Midler and Susan Sarandon,” The Banker says. His fingers are laced across his large belly.

“Dude, why’d you pick two old broads?” YJB drawls, his voice a mixture of the Midwest town he comes from and a lingering British upper-crust accent.

“’Cuz I don’t want to f*ck the old lady from Titanic.”

“Not even to get Scarlett Johansson?” Henry says, winking at me as I sit down across from him. The white lettering across his crimson sweatshirt speaks of an impressive/expensive university education.

“Well . . .”

“What are you guys talking about?”

“They’re playing Two Equals One Hundred,” Mary explains. “You have to pick two famous people to sleep with whose cumulative age is at least one hundred.”

“Isn’t that a drinking game?”

“So?” The Banker replies.

I catch Henry’s eye. He looks amused.

“Forget it.”

“What’s your pick?” Henry asks me.

I think about it. “Um . . . Sean Connery, and . . .” I catch a look from YJB that seems to me like a challenge. “Can we pick celebrities we know?”

The Banker shakes his head. “No, no, no.”

“Why not?”

“Nobody you know. That just causes fights.”

“All right . . . Sean Connery and . . . Daniel Craig.”

YJB smiles at me seductively. “Too bad you can’t pick someone you know. It might’ve been interesting.”

“I thought we could only pick celebrities.”

Henry and The Banker hoot with laughter.

YJB taps Henry’s shoulder. “She’s lively, Henry, watch out.”

“Something Mary said yesterday is kind of bothering me,” I say to Saundra during our next session. It’s Day Fourteen: Rebuilding Your Career. I’m wearing a pair of pink board shorts and a dark blue T-shirt with palm trees on it. My look says: I’d rather be surfing.

“What’s that?”

“What she said about how she became a heroin addict.”

“You could relate?”

“No . . . not at all.”

“So, why did it bother you?”

“It’s just . . . think about the level of commitment she has.”

“To using heroin?”

“No. For trying it in the first place. I mean, I can’t even commit to writing every day, and she cares so much about her work, about its . . . verisimilitude, that she actually tried heroin. Just to get her story right.”

Saundra looks up from her notes. “It sounds like you admire her.”

“I do.”

“Katie, I know you like to tease me . . .”

“No, I do admire her. I wish I had what she has.”

“A heroin addiction?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then what?”

I pull my feet up onto the chair, resting my chin on my knees, searching for the right words. “I don’t know . . . something . . . a drive that’s strong enough to overcome the easy temptations around me, I guess.”

“Have those temptations affected your career, Katie?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

I think back to that day at The Line. The way my brain wouldn’t work. The way I puked and puked and still didn’t feel like myself.

“I had this opportunity to get the job of a lifetime, and I went out the night before . . . it was my birthday, or the day before my birthday . . . anyway, I was just going to have one drink . . .”

Oh my God. I can’t believe I’m telling a “just one drink” story, the staple of every group session. These stories make me want to scream. Like in the movies, when the dumb girl goes into the basement to check out the noise she’s heard after she’s received a dozen creepy phone calls. Don’t do it, dummy! There’s a psycho down there!

But here I am . . .

“And?” Saundra prompts.

“Of course, it didn’t stop at one . . .”

It never does in these stories.

“You missed the interview?”

“No, I made the interview. But I was still drunk, and I lasted about five minutes before I puked my guts out in the bathroom. And that was the end of that.”

“Is that what made you realize you should come here?”

That’d be one way of putting it.

“Yes.”

“Was this the only time that alcohol has affected your career?”

“I guess I’ve never been good at finishing what I start, and alcohol doesn’t help.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I just seem to get distracted.”

“By alcohol?”

“By life.”

“So it’s not a drinking problem, per se, but a Katie problem?”

Oh, I’m definitely the problem all right.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Saundra smiles. “Katie, I think you have to give yourself a break.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have to accept the things you cannot change.”

Ah, the Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenity / To accept the things I cannot change; / Courage to change the things I can . . .” For some reason, reciting it never leaves me feeling very serene.

“Look, I know we say that every day, but what does it really mean?”

“It means you have to accept yourself. All your flaws, and your good points too. You only have to live with one person, Katie, and that’s you. But once you’ve done that, once you’ve accepted your limitations, you can’t use them as an excuse anymore. If you want to finish something, do it. You control what you do. You decide.”

“That sounds too easy.”

“It is easy, Katie, in a way. If you take it one day at a time.”

I think about the various half-finished drafts of the novels I’ve started and abandoned, cluttering a bookshelf in my bedroom in the city. It’s such a cliché, right, a journalist with half-finished novels lying around. But doesn’t everyone have an idea for a novel, some semi-autobiographical tale that’s just waiting to be the next Catcher in the Rye?

Only, none of my books have anything to do with me, which is probably part of the problem. Like book number two, which was inspired by Sheryl Crow’s song “Home.” That song kills me. Anyway, my book was going to be about a woman struggling to stay faithful to her longtime love. I wrote thirty pages, realized I knew nothing about faithful love, made myself all kinds of promises about doing some research on the subject, and went to Rory’s twenty-eighth birthday party. I ended up sleeping with partner number twenty-four much later that night. His name was Chris. No, Steve. Chris. Steve. Shit.

Anyway . . . Did I decide to never finish what I start? Or was I just letting myself get easily distracted, allowing myself to fail? And has that really been my problem all along? Not making decisions? Letting life act on me instead of acting on it?

My head is spinning out questions, but I don’t have any answers. I feel like they’re floating in front of me, but they haven’t taken shape. And instead of making progress, I’m in suspended animation, waiting, hoping, for something to happen, but unable to make it so.

Given my turmoiling brain, it’s no surprise that I have trouble sleeping. Again.

None of the tips in the pamphlet Dr. Houston gave me seem to be working. Go to sleep at the same time every night. Check. Exercise regularly. Check. Try not to fixate on issues in your life that are troubling you. Impossible.

So, as it happens, I’m wide awake sometime after eleven, when there’s a soft rapping at my door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Henry,” a deep voice says in a loud whisper. “Let me in. I think I hear someone coming.”

Damn. I’m wearing a stretched-out shirt and a pair of men’s boxers, and my hair is bed-tousled. Oh well, it’ll have to do.

I jump out of bed and ease open the door. Henry slips through.

“What’s going on?”

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“What is it?”

“Can you turn on the light?”

I flick on the small lamp by my bedside and light floods the room. Henry’s wearing a broken-in pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. His feet are bare. His red hair curls across his forehead, giving him a boyish look.

“Shit. Someone might see the light.” I take the towel I used to dry my hair earlier off my dresser and hand it to him. “Put this along the bottom of the door.”

He looks impressed. “What are you, CIA?”

“Nope, I just have years of practice hiding the fact that I was up from my parents.”

He bends down and fills in the gap with the towel. “How disappointing.”

“You, on the other hand, obviously have experience getting into places where you don’t belong.”

He stands up and faces me. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

We look at each other, and there’s an odd current in the air. A whiff of danger I haven’t felt in a while. Not like something bad is going to happen, but like I might do something bad.

“So . . . what are you doing in the girls’ section?”

“Passing notes.”

“Seriously?”

“Unfortunately.” He reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and takes out a folded piece of paper. He hands it to me.

“Is this for Amber?”

“Yup.”

“You want me to take it to her now?” I check the clock. “At 11:37 at night?”

“Yup.”

“Why don’t you just deliver it to her yourself. In the daytime?”

He pulls a face. “You don’t think I already tried that? She wouldn’t take it.”

I walk back to my bed and sit on the edge. He sits on Amy’s bed, facing me.

“I assume the note’s from Connor?”

“Yup.”

“He wants her to meet him?”

“Probably.”

“They’ll get in a lot of trouble if they’re caught.”

“Then they’ll have to do their best not to get caught.”

“Why does he want to meet her?”

He gives me an incredulous look. “Why do you think?”

“That’s not an answer. He must’ve told you something.”

“Guys don’t talk about that kind of stuff, FYI.”

“FYI, girls don’t believe guys when they say that.”

We grin at each other, having another one of our moments that is both awkward and not.

“What if she doesn’t want to meet him?” I ask eventually.

“Why wouldn’t she want to meet him?”

“Well . . . given what happened the other day in the cafeteria . . .”

He looks certain. “She’ll go.”

“Despite the Britney Spears toxicity of their relationship?”

“Are you trying to get me to sing again?”

“Would you?”

He shakes his head. “No way. That was a one-time-only performance.”

“Too bad.”

I meet Henry’s gaze. It has an intense quality to it that makes me blush.

I look down at my knees. “If they’re so bad for one another, why are you acting as his messenger?”

“Life’s full of little ironies.”

You have no idea, buddy.

There’s a sound in the hall. We stand and step toward each other, startled. We’re close enough that I can feel the heat of his body and hear the sound of his breathing. It’s strangely intimate.

I listen carefully, my breath drawn in. It must be Carol doing bed checks.

“Quick,” I whisper to him. “Get under the bed.”

He nods and slides under Amy’s bed. I make sure that the blue-striped bedspread reaches the floor on the side facing the door and then leap toward my bed, snapping off the light. I hear Carol open the door to Mary and Candice’s room two doors down.

“Kate,” Henry whispers. “The towel.”

Shit. I jump out of bed, grab the towel, and climb back into bed as quietly as I can. I just manage to pull the covers over me as the door opens. I close my eyes and try to keep my face looking like that of a sleeping person’s.

A patch of light passes across me. The door closes.

I let out a sigh of relief, the sound of my pounding heart filling my ears.

Christ. I’m thirty years old and clasping a foolscap note to my chest, worried I’ll get caught after lights out with a man I barely know hidden under a bed. How the f*ck did that happen?

“Is the coast clear?” Henry whispers.

I get out of bed and put the towel back under the door. I turn on the light and lift the bedspread. Henry’s on his side surrounded by dustballs. He looks like he’s trying not to sneeze.

I stifle my giggle with my fist.

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

“You having fun under there?”

He wiggles out and stands up, dusting himself off.

“You know it.” He runs his hands through his hair, making it stand on end. “Shit, that was close. What do you think would happen if I got caught in here?”

“I’m guessing we’d get kicked out.”

He looks surprised. “You don’t sound that concerned.”

Right. Shit. I’m in rehab. I’m supposed to need to be here. I’m supposed to want to be here.

“Of course I am. In fact, I’m very mad at you for putting me in this compromising position.”

He laughs quietly. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good. So,” I wave the note, “what am I supposed to do with this thing?”

“Sneak into Amber’s room and deliver it.”

“But what if I can’t get it to her?”

“I managed to sneak in here.”

“Ah, but you have previous experience.”

“Maybe.”

“Do you know where her room is?”

He gives me a look. “I thought you were her new BFF.”

“Am I?”

“It’s the next hall over, second door in. Will you do it?”

“I’ll try.”

“Thanks. I’d better get out of here before I get caught.”

“Good idea.”

“Wait five minutes before you go.” He squeezes my shoulder, letting his hand linger for a moment. “Good luck, Kate.”

He opens my door, peeks out, and leaves.

I sit on the edge of my bed, watching the minutes on the clock tick over, resisting the extremely powerful temptation to read the note. Although . . . aren’t I here to get exactly this kind of inside information? I can hear Bob’s voice in my head. Open the goddamn note.

I unfold it and read the scrawled message.

Babe, renkonti min ce la benko de la grande arbo ce noktomezo.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I read it again. It’s still garbled garbage.

How frustrating. I wonder what he wants to meet her for anyway. Probably for sex, right? Or maybe drugs? Maybe sex and drugs? Amber really is going to get in serious trouble if she gets caught. She might even get thrown out this time, despite the legal hold.

What do you care? Just deliver the note like a good little enabler, and don’t get caught.

Right, good point.

I tuck the note into the band of my boxers and leave the room stealthily, sliding my feet along the polished wood floor so they don’t make a sound. When I reach the end of the hall, I freeze against the side of the wall and peer around it. The coast is clear. I skitter to the next hall, stopping outside the second door.

I hear a noise. It sounds like it’s one hall away, but it might be closer. I raise my hand to knock, then decide to enter and take my chances. I turn the handle gently and slip into the room. Someone with long dark hair is sleeping on her side, the covers tucked around her slim shoulders. Surely, this must be Amber.

“Amber,” I whisper.

She doesn’t react. I take a step toward her bed and put my hand on her shoulder. Out of nowhere, she reaches up and grips my wrist tightly.

“What the f*ck are you doing in my room?” she hisses.

“Amber, it’s me. Katie.”

Her grip loosens a little. A very little.

“Who?”

“Katie. Katie we sang together in the cafeteria.”

Katie I’m here to use your life for my own personal gain.

“Katie?”

“Yes.”

She lets my wrist go and sits up. “What are you doing in my room?”

“I have a note for you. From Connor.”

She sits there silently. I can’t see the expression on her face in the dark, but the set of her shoulders is that of a person in deep concentration.

“Can I turn on the light?” I ask.

“Yeah, all right.”

I spy a towel lying folded over the desk chair and use it to block the space between the door and the floor. I turn on the light. Amber’s wearing flannel pajamas and her hair falls across her shoulders in soft waves. She looks like she just came out of hair and makeup.

She holds out her hand. “Can I have the note?”

I dig it out of my waistband and hand it to her. I watch nervously as she unfolds it. What if I didn’t fold it back up in the right way? Maybe they have some special folding code? That would be bad. Very, very bad.

She stares at the note for a moment and tosses it onto the bed.

Some of the tension eases from my shoulders. “What does he want?”

“For me to meet him in the woods.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Not sure yet. Did he bring this to you?”

“No, Henry did.”

She snorts. “I should’ve known. God forbid he should deliver his own notes.”

Though every fiber of my being wants to probe her for more information, I think the better move here would be to leave.

“Anyway . . . I should be getting back to my room.”

“Will you stay with me for a bit?”

“Sure.” I sit down on her twin bed.

“What time is it?”

I check my watch. “Ten to twelve. What do you think he wants?”

“What he always wants.”

Sex? Drugs? Rock ’n’ roll?

I notice that her hands are shaking. She catches me looking and clenches them shut.

“Yeah, I know. Whenever I think about him I want to use in the worst way.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t go.”

“That’s what my head’s saying.”

“And your heart?”

She looks bleak. “My heart? My heart’s saying . . . Connor Parks is waiting for you . . .”

Connor Parks is waiting for you. Connor Parks. Even I’m tempted to go meet him, and I know he’s not waiting for me.

“So . . . you’re going?”

“Yeah.”

She stands up and walks to her dresser. She takes out a pair of black jeans and a dark shirt. She drops them onto the bed and pulls her pajama top over her head, revealing her rather large, naked breasts. I turn away so she can change with some privacy, though she obviously doesn’t care.

“Goddamn rehab food,” she mutters.

I look at her. She’s concentrating on buttoning the front of her pants.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Thanks for delivering the note.”

“No problem . . . I couldn’t sleep, anyway. Especially not after being visited by a man in the middle of the night.”

She gives me a penetrating look. “You like him, right? E.?”

Shit. What’s made her so perceptive all of a sudden?

“I just met him.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.” She applies lip gloss and puckers her lips. “What do you think? Will I do?”

“For an assignation in the woods with your maybe ex-boyfriend?”

“Exactamundo.”

“Note perfect.”

She flashes me a smile. “Cool. I’ll see you later?”

“Sure. Be careful out there.”

“Not a chance.”