I only notice in retrospect, in pictures and video, how thin Mel is around this time, how her suits hang on her. But that night in San Francisco, all we know is that, up until its end, it is the best night on the tour.
The after-party is at the home of a wealthy, druggy animator who used to work for Disney but won money in an unspeakable lawsuit. (He winks and claws his hands at us: “Check it, babies. Occupational arthritis.”) The place is a genuine mansion, a huge, creamy four-story. Ten bedrooms, more bathrooms, separate kitchens. It’s packed with strangeness. People doing coke off a gaudy purple pool table downstairs. Transvestite strippers, one named Ronalda who keeps picking me up off the floor and twirling me around. Someone’s potbellied pig is sprayed green and fed Velveeta and bologna throughout the night. I see two or three guys in suits and nice shoes smoking angel dust by an open window. The party is the biggest cliché I have ever seen. Later it will be embarrassing to explain what we were doing there.
I find myself in a quiet corner of the house trading stroke notes with a writer who tells me he was in a motorcycle accident when Mel happens by, a cup of something frothy and dark in her hand. “Sharon Kay,” she croons, “with eyes of Drano bloo-ooooo. Get it!” She sways in front of us, puts her hands on my head, leans in. Blows a raspberry into my hairline.
“What do you have there, dear.”
“Robitussin milkshake supreme.” She waggles the cup at me, eyes sort of crossed and dilated at the same time. Her breath is a thick, noxious cloud of medicine cabinet. “Gonna toast the night with some tussin. Good for what ails ya.”
“I’ll pass.”
“You’re no fun, stroke girl.”
Then something strange happens. I clear my purse from my lap, put my drink aside, smooth my pants over my thighs—I make room for her. And she plops down, slings her arm over my neck. We look at each other, then look at the writer, giving him the dumbest faces we can. “Whut,” Mel says, and he just nods and smiles like this is normal.
Mel says, “Did you know you’re talking to the most beautiful, brilliant woman at the party?”
“I do,” he says.
She lays her head on my shoulder. “I mean me.”
I smile at the writer. He’s been giving signals I once would have devoured with my front teeth—the leaning in, the unceasing eye contact. But I’m already planning to go back to the hotel, eat a sandwich, order Killer Klowns from Outer Space on demand.
“You have no idea,” Mel tells him. She leans in and gives me a hard, wet kiss on the cheek, then clambers off my lap and heads out.
“Boston tomorrow,” I remind her. “We fly out at three.”
She turns, points both hands at me. “Sha na na na,” she agrees, and is gone.
The writer and I trade email addresses. To the best of my recollection, I am carrying it in my hand when some festival coordinator I barely know runs to me, face streaked and teary, screaming my name. A crowd is behind him. Someone close by dials for an ambulance—I swear to God, I can hear the three numbers being punched into the phone—and he drags me to an anteroom at the end of a huge hall.
Time warps. I hear my heartbeat in my ears on the walk down that hallway, pushed and dragged by the hand, the shoulder, and I dully realize that I already know what’s happened, have imagined it thousands of times, and goddamn it all I’m going to have to rebook our flights to Logan, she’s gonna have to have her fucking stomach pumped again and this time I won’t give her hell for it. I’ll just let her sit there with it so she can become as disgusted with herself as I am. After all we’ve been through, I think, she is still pulling this shit, as hard as she can.
I’m shoved into the room by the hysterical coordinator and there is Mel, her head in the lap of some sprightly dressed girl, and her chest jumps once with effort, and then she is still. She is dead for more than a minute when the ambulance arrives.
SLEEPWALK
I am given Valium and put on a plane. I sleep through the flight, climb out onto a cold, sandy tarmac in the dark, walk JFK’s piercing Delta terminal. Donnie is at baggage claim, keys to her BMW in hand, face a soft, pale mask below her red hair.
She puts her arms around me. My knees give way. Then nothing.
—
I wake up on the couch in Donnie’s office, cocooned in her overcoat. Around me, there’s a blanket that smells strongly of her pit bull, Wyatt, who gives me a conciliatory lick on the mouth. Donnie’s voice drifts from the conference room. “That’s way out in Flushing. Why would they take her there? They live in Brooklyn. The city morgue in Staten Island would have been closer….No, we can drive out there, that’s not the issue. What?…Well, if she’s the only one who can do it, it’s going to have to wait.” Drops to a whisper. “This has hit her hard. She collapsed when she got off the plane. She had a stroke not too long ago. This is a health issue for her. Okay?”
Wyatt huffs, sticks his nose in my crotch. I push him away.