chapter 14
CHRIS
I slam my hand into the headboard as I hear the door shut behind her.
The hunger for the head buzz, the loose, easy feeling, the release of obligations in favor of blackness, fills my gut.
I want a drink more than I’ve ever wanted one in my life.
And for an alcoholic, that’s saying something.
She shouldn’t need time to think about me. When had it all started to go wrong? How had I managed to screw this up so royally?
But I know the answer to that question. Ultimately, London.
But it had begun long before that.
Ecstasy. New York. The apartment. Chelsea.
* * *
5 ½ Years Earlier
New York
I turn the key in the lock as one of the girls behind me giggles maniacally. I spin around to face them.
“Shut up!”
“What, is your mom going to be mad?” she says, intentionally raising her voice, which causes even more giggles.
My annoyance level is reaching monumental proportions.
“My girlfriend. And yes, she will be very mad.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
Adam, my costar from Ecstasy, looks totally confused. “You still have a girlfriend, man? The same one? Really?”
“Yes, the same one. Really. And she’s going to be pissed if we wake her up at 5 am.”
My buzz is starting to wear off, leaving me with nothing but a gigantic headache and what feels like cotton balls in my mouth. Suddenly, bringing Adam and my newfound friends from the club for breakfast on the terrace doesn’t seem like such a good idea after all. The three blond girls in the back are still giggling as we stand in the entryway. The sound of their tinny voices combining is only making the headache that much worse.
“You all seriously need to shut up. Adam, do you think you can remember how to make coffee?”
“You have one of those instant press machines, right?”
I look at Adam and his friend Charlie, whose eyes are starting to roll back in his head. He’s obviously coming down from some sort of high. Shit. I have to get them out of there before Hallie sees.
“Never mind. There’s a table on the terrace. Grab the fruit from the fridge and the bagels from the counter and head out there. I’ll put the coffee on,” I say, rubbing my temples.
“This place is a freaking palace,” one of the girls (Ami or Abby or Allie or something or other) shrieks. “You must be rich! I mean, I know you were in that movie with the prom and everything, but, I mean, you must be, like really, really rich.”
Adam throws his arm around my shoulders. “This is the next movie star, ladies. I’m talking private jets and meetings with kings and prime ministers and billion-dollar fundraising dinners. Just wait until the end of the summer. James Ross. I’m just planning to ride his coattails all the way to the bank.”
My head is really starting to throb now. I feel the bile rising in my throat.
“Terrace. Now.”
I run to the bathroom on the lower level of the loft and place my head directly over the toilet and empty the contents of my stomach a dozen times. The vomit reeks of alcohol. I reek of alcohol and vomit. I hate vomit. I hate everything about it—the shaking in your gut, the nasty breath, and the way that you can still taste it even after you brush your teeth. Shit. Why do I keep doing this crap?
I brush my teeth three or four times, but I finally give up on trying to get the grit out of my mouth. I’ll settle for making the fastest breakfast ever. I dump grinds into the top of the coffeepot and some spill over the sides, but I’ll leave it for now. I’ve been bugging Hallie about getting a maid, anyways. This will just be another good reason on top of all of the other good reasons. I reach for the sunglasses on the counter and place them over my eyes, because even the fluorescent light from the kitchen is making me want to die.
“You’re the prettiest one!”
“No, you are!”
“I think you’re both pretty!”
Their voices are getting progressively louder. By the time I make it to the bottom of the stairs, they’re hollering and screaming and singing funny songs at the top of their lungs.
Great. Hallie really is going to kill me.
It had almost taken an act of God to get her here. Our summer plans included a trip, maybe to Nepal, maybe to France, maybe to Costa Rica, maybe to the mountains somewhere, but the Ecstasy reshoots and all of the James Ross press had made that a total impossibility. She wanted to stay at Greenview while I took care of my business, but I had begged and pleaded and cajoled to get her to New York instead. The Chelsea apartment, all sharp corners and modern furniture and geometric pieces of art, was supposed to be a love nest that would make her forget about all of the midnight phone calls and drunken rages from the set.
But she hated the apartment, my new friends, even Ecstasy.
I never should have taken that part. The shoot had been utter madness—late nights of rehearsing scenes again and again until they were absolutely perfect, and long nights of going out and dancing and drinking. There were always clear plastic bottles with pills that never seemed to belong to anyone in particular (and which I couldn’t keep myself from indulging in). Then, I would wake up and repeat the same thing all over again. I couldn’t seem to stop it. I kept going out, and then there were later and later nights, and the cycle kept repeating, over and over. New York has been more of the same.
A distance is starting to grow between Hallie and me, one that I’m currently trying desperately to ignore.
I glance down at my shirt, which is clearly wearing the signs of the all-night binge. I tear it off and tiptoe up the stairs. Hallie’s curled up in a tiny little ball at the corner of the enormous bed, making little noises like she’s trying to stay in the middle of a really good dream. I grab a shirt from my closet and put it on. I make the decision to kick these people out of my house with Styrofoam cups of coffee. Maybe she’ll never have to know. But, when I look back and see her twisting and turning in the sheets, I can’t resist moving back to the bed, and planting a quick kiss on her forehead. She stirs slightly, and turns her face to look at me.
“Chris?” she whispers, stretching her arms. “What are you doing?”
“Shhh. Go back to sleep.”
She’s already sitting up in the bed. “Did you just get home?”
The peals of laughter from downstairs are impossible for her to ignore, even though she usually needs a good twenty minutes before she’s cognizant of anything other than coffee. Her eyes narrow.
“Are there people with you?”
“Just Adam and a couple of people we ran into at the club. I told them that I would make breakfast, but I’ll get them out of here as soon as I can. I promise.”
“Marcus called a dozen times last night. He said something about talking points for the press junket and requirements for the August premiere,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “You should call him before he has a heart attack.”
She pulls the covers off, and I see that she’s wearing a pair of my boxers and her favorite t-shirt, a retro Greenview one that Alan had found somewhere and given to her after his daughter, Lily, had decided to go to college and not to join a cult.
The sight of her disheveled hair and sleep-filled eyes fills me with an unexpected rush of love. I pick her up and kiss her over and over again.
“Chris, you smell like the bar. Gross. Put me down. I love you, but you really, really, really, need a shower right now.”
“After breakfast. I need to feed these people so they’ll get the hell out of here.”
“Okay.” She glances at the clock. “Chris! It’s 5 am. You were out all night?”
“You know how it is. An hour turns into two, and then you want to leave, but you get stuck in a conversation, and then it’s the morning before you even realize it.”
I don’t tell her about the party favors that changed my perception of time, but the suspicious look in her eyes told me that she probably knows anyway. She opens her mouth but then promptly shuts it again, instead motioning to the stack of books on the bedside table.
“I don’t really know what you mean, Chris. But sure. An hour turns into two. Look, I’m going to try to get this reading done. My final for my NYU class is in a couple of days, and I don’t think I have a good grasp of constructivism and positivism.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I vaguely remember her telling me about a class at NYU, but I didn’t realize that the class had already started.
“You know, the class I’ve been in for the past six weeks? I had to stay up for three days straight last week to write that paper?” She takes a long look at me before shaking her head. “Never mind. You were busy with a hundred other things. Go. Take care of your friends.”
“I’ll make it up to you. I promise. We’ll talk all about constructivism and positivism and whatever other isms that you want to tell me about. We’ll take a trip. Where do you want to go? Paris? Africa?”
“How about Nepal? Remember? You, me, a mountaintop tent? Oh, wait. There aren’t any clubs there.” She covers her mouth and groans. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Seriously. Go. Shower.”
I can’t shake the sense that I’ve broken something, possibly beyond repair, but I’ve suddenly become so hazy that I can hardly form a coherent sentence, let alone a heartfelt apology.
I think I was going to make breakfast but I suddenly need to wrap myself in a curtain of warm water. Maybe it will take some of the sickness in my stomach away.
I stumble into the shower and let the water run over me until I can’t find the edge between where my skin ends and the water begins. I shake my head to clear it, but the blurry line between the sink and shower and water and me grows dimmer and I slam my hand into something sharp and there’s a stickiness and a thickness and my vision is narrowing. Everything is white and gray and somewhere in between.
I groan, loudly. Suddenly, there’s a panicked voice coming from somewhere, from a fog, but I can’t hear it and I can’t make sense of it and I can’t make sense of anything, words or noises or sounds.
“Chris? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
There’s a loud crashing noise and then there’s a warm body next to mine in the bathroom and she’s wrapping my hand in a towel and whispering something softly.
That’s it.
Blackness.
* * *
Chicago
5 ½ Years Later
I still have the little half-moon scar, just above my thumb, where I gashed out a piece of my skin with the mirror, and I can still see Hallie’s face as I came around in the hospital bed, the fear in her eyes. The fear that I had put in her eyes.
No wonder she needed time to think tonight.
The only thing I can’t figure out is why she would even entertain the thought of giving me a second chance, after New York. After London.
I pick up one of the tiny glass bottles from the minibar and twist it around in my hand. That, at least, would be simple. There would be one drink and then another and then another, until the burning in my gut was nothing but a foggy memory.
I open it, lift it to my nose, and take a long breath in.
I hear voices, Hallie’s and Marcus’s and Dan’s, from some foggy memory, screaming at me instead.
I set it back down again and pick up my phone.
Marcus starts yelling before I even say a word.
“Jensen! What the f*ck, man? If you’re calling to tell me that you can’t make it to dinner, I really am going to kill you this time.”
“I can’t make it to dinner. I need to find a meeting.”
The sharp anger switches instantly to concern. “Chris? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Fine.”
“Hang on. I’ll be right up.”
“No, don’t. I’m going to call my sponsor and see if he can find out where the closest meeting is. I just can’t do dinner. Not right now. Make my apologies, okay”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything but the truth.”
“Chris…”
“I’ll be fine, Marcus. I promise.”
I grab my wallet and eye the little glass bottle that’s sitting on the table.
Unable to resist, I pick it up and place it in my pocket.
My fingers close around the cool glass as I twist it again and again, knowing that it, too, contains a kind of history.