Forbidden: A Standalone (32 page)

“We need to talk.” His voice was clearer.

“We are talking.”

“In person at a decent hour.”

Fuck him for being right. And fuck him for being ethical, and for making me ashamed of wanting to know, ashamed of my high, of my hundred-dollar panties bunched on the floor, of the taste of Baby’s mouth on me. What was I doing? Where was I? Why was I even here? And suddenly I was gripped with fear.

“Don’t give me to another therapist.”

“What?”

I glanced at my surroundings. Jesus. Where was I? Purgatory. Derek looked at Daisy expectantly. She swirled the hash-and-ecstasy-laced moonshine in the tube.

“Don’t drink it, Daisy,” I said. “You’ll puke your guts up.”

“But you’ll be so fucking high you won’t care,” Karen said.

“Fiona? Where are you?” Was Elliot still on the phone? Had he heard me?

It was the third time he’d asked me that. Deacon, who was an early-to-bed-early-to-rise type when he wasn’t hosting a party, was either awake, or hosting, or had these pages on a schedule, because his message came right after Elliot’s question.

—Where are you?—

“I’m at a party in Holmby Hills,” I said. “I can’t find my underwear, and I’m so high. So. Fucking. High. Wanna come? I’ll give you the address and you can—”

“Get a cab if you need one. Call me when you’re sober.”

He hung up.

—Where are you?—

—Fucking sucking snorting. Thanks for asking—

“Fuck you both,” I said to the pager. I launched it into the pool. It dropped with a
plunk,
the cone of water collapsing into itself in slow motion.

Daisy still stood on the other side of the table, tilting the bong to her face.

“Give me that,” I said, holding my hand out for it.

“Let her finish.” Karen lit a cigarette.

Maybe it was because the famous-for-being-anorexic Karen Hinnley was defending her, but Daisy beamed a little and quickly, as if she wanted to do it without thinking about it, took a swig of the resin-saturated bong moonshine. Everyone groaned.

Bong water was bad. Bong moonshine was worse. Bong moonshine with the pure chemical happiness of Jump was more disgusting than I could imagine, and probably had never been tried before. Baby gave Daisy a bottle of water as she coughed. Everyone laughed. Even Daisy. Even me.

“You are about to get so fucked up,” Derek said as he took the bong and gave it to me. “I salute you.”

I put the bong on the table. “Who’s got flake?”

Baby replied, “I got a couple lines’ worth.”

I held out my hand. Baby put a folded-up hundred dollar bill in my hand. I opened the bill, exposing the lovely white flake.

“What are you doing?” Baby asked.

“Can you get your dick out, sweetheart?” I said to Derek.

Collective laughter.

“Sure.” Derek took out his cock. “You want it hard, you gotta work for it.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stand up, stud.”

I took it in my mouth. The taste of skin and sweat got rid of the sourness on my tongue, and I worked it until I thought he could maintain it. Some of my friends watched. Most had seen and done it all before, and it was boring.

“Man, you are good,” he said as I stroked his cock with my hand.

Daisy stood watching, swaying a little.

“Too bad I’m not going to finish you.”

“Ball-breaker.”

“Stay still.” I picked up the powder and tapped it onto his erection.

“Hey!” Baby cried.

I’d just dumped all her stash on Derek’s dick, and I was going to snort it for spite. Because the last time I’d done that, I’d met Deacon. As I looked at the mess of powder on a douchebag dick, I wondered…was I crying out for Deacon again? Was I trying to recreate the circumstances before he got my life under control?

My mouth already tasted like malice. Fuck this.

“All yours,” I said to Baby.

“What do I get?” Derek cried.

“If you’re nice, she’ll let you come in her mouth.”

Baby leaned down and snorted the coke off Derek’s dick, licking off the last flake.

I wanted my pager back. My blood felt like gravel in my veins. I could call him. Them. Both of them.

Baby had left Derek hanging, and everyone thought that was pretty funny. I snapped up the panties and wiggled them back under my skirt.

Daisy laughed then puked. Karen got her Pradas out of the way just in time. I was going to have to get Daisy home. She’d have stories to tell, but I thought she might not. She seemed like a nice person. A person who leaves her boobs in her bra. Who didn’t suck a dick in front of everyone for fun.

I looked at my phone. My messages to Deacon and my call to Elliot would give exactly the right impression and they’d be rightfully disgusted with me. They wouldn’t know all the things I
didn’t
do in Holmby Hills that night.

I’d felt this before.

This hateful unworthiness. My reaction to it was so ingrained I could predict it. The shame made me angry. The shame drew me into it and made me proud of what I’d done. I’d stand by it and deny it even existed. I stepped outside myself and saw myself the way others saw me, which wasn’t new. But this time I didn’t see the disdain and the worship. Nor did I internalize the thread of envy. I saw myself through Deacon and Elliot’s eyes as if they were one man.

Surrounded by the music and the drugs, the stink of moonshine THC, the beautiful night, and the worthless humans around me, I sank into disgrace. I didn’t run. I didn’t cover it. Deacon would come for me. Elliot wouldn’t.

“Fuck this,” I whispered, pocketing the phone.

Next to me, Daisy was on her knees in front of reality star and winner of the genetic lottery, Derek Douchebag, and his cock was in her mouth. She was so fucking stoned she couldn’t even keep her mouth open wide, and everyone found this funny.

“Derek, for Chrissakes,” I said.

“What?”

“You got ten girls and a few guys you can stick it in. Leave her alone.”

“Unless I can stick it in you, just shut the fuck up, Fee-fie Nuthouse.”

I pushed him, hard.

He grabbed my wrist and bent it back. “Don’t you fucking get judgy on me, you slut.”

The bong stood like a twelve-inch clear phallus on the table, and there was nothing I could do but grab it and swing. It landed on Derek’s head with a
thunk,
breaking in a wash of blood and brown-stained moonshine. He screamed and let go, dick suddenly flaccid. Everyone jumped back but Daisy, who didn’t seem to know what had happened.

“You fucking crazy bitch!” Derek screamed. “You Drazen freak! You’re all freaks! Crazy fucking freaks!”

God, Daisy had puke down her shirt.

I turned to Baby. “Sorry.”

“Yeah. The Samoans’ll take you out. Ping me next week if you want to hang.”

I hoisted Daisy up from under her arms. She was no help at all, and I was halfway to hell myself. Derek was still screaming. Arrow gave him his shirt to soak up the blood.

Two gigantic men picked up Daisy and me, threw us over their shoulders, and put us in one of the party’s hired cabs.

fiona

T
he penthouse suite of the Markham was dusty and unused. Total waste of a view and a pool. Mid-century Danish craftsmen had lovingly wrought chairs that hadn’t felt the weight of an ass in months. It was all waste.

There were no paparazzi outside. I hadn’t lived there in months. Likely they were outside Maundy. And certainly, they hadn’t gotten wind of the night’s drama, but they rarely did. Not the real shit. The real shit was like the mafia. No one talked.

That didn’t change the facts.

It was my fault.

Nothing had happened that I couldn’t have predicted.

From pissing off Deacon and Elliot, to acting like a fucking fool, to breaking Derek’s face… even to Daisy, who wasn’t prepared for a party without boundaries.

I’d wanted to hit bottom.

That was the plan.

Hit bottom and get seen doing it.

But Daisy threw me. And Derek Doucherson, who was just doing what Derek Doucherson did. I hadn’t needed to open up his face.

“You don’t hit bottom alone, do you?” I asked the elevator doors but made the statement to myself.
You don’t do it alone.

I owned the floor, so the elevator opened up onto a foyer and a door. Outside the door stood Debbie in a black suit. She stood so straight, she could have been a doll.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hello, Fiona.”

I punched my code into the door, and it clicked open. “Deacon send you?” I was way too sober for this conversation.

“Yes and no.”

Her face told me nothing. She was implacable. She had to be. She’d grown up in a North Korean concentration camp where letting the wrong people know what you were thinking could get someone killed.

“You know who else has that thing you have?” I said as I opened the door.

“To which thing do you refer?”

She stepped in, and I closed the door behind her, letting the moonlight pattern the room in distorted rectangles.

“The thing where you make it so no one knows what you’re thinking.”

“Ah. Who else?”

“My sister. Theresa. It’s like talking to a mask.”

She stepped forward into the dark room until her face hit the light from outside. She looked different in that light. Sad, broken, held together with spit and chewing gum, every crack leading to the center of the earth. “Is this better?”

“No. Yes. But no.”

“Do you know that you’re loved?”

I turned on the lights. “Sure.”

I knew it. I knew it like I knew how to hold my wrists when I was getting knotted. It was a fact, not a feeling. Not something that made me a better person. Actually, it made me feel worse for everyone else’s wasted love.

“Want something to drink?” I asked.

“Water, please.”

My kitchen had been used four times, so I had to look in all the cabinets for the glasses. I didn’t have to search for the Advil for more than a second. I poured us water from the filtered tap I’d forgotten was there and gave her the glass from across the kitchen bar. She sat on a stool. I drank all the water and popped four Advil.

I didn’t think ahead. I swam in the wake of any number of narcotics. My mind felt as if it was made of puzzle pieces that were in the right places but hadn’t quite snapped together yet. I could make sense of my thoughts but not the space in between them.

Part of me wanted another line or another pull off a laced bowl. I’d always been impatient with the time between the high and the not-high. Can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t feel. Can’t think. Might as well take another hit/snort/drink/whatever.

“Why didn’t he come himself?” I asked.

“There’s a crisis. In Eritrea, I believe. One of his photographers was drugged and is travelling with a group of ENA soldiers.”

“Jesus. Those are problems.” I put my glass in the sink. “Let me ask you something. How do you even deal with someone like me? You’ve been through so much, and you’re so together. I’ve never had a real problem in my life.”

She nodded, eyes on me. “If you shoot a man’s chest and he’s wearing a bullet-proof vest, he’ll walk away unharmed. If you stab him, he’ll be able to defend himself. But if you punch a naked chest, especially if that person is weak and vulnerable, the heart could stop. If you stab or shoot that chest, they are dead.”

“Am I the naked chest?”

“All I can say is I have a vest on. What you feel pity about, my childhood, is what protects me. You were given nothing. You were free from want. From even the slightest anxiety. Now you have nothing to protect you. Every slap feels like a bullet wound. You tolerate more pain in your life right now than I do.”

I couldn’t help but look at her lips when she spoke, because I couldn’t look her in the eye. She was validating my pain. She was giving me permission to hurt. Of all people, she was probably the one I needed it most from.

I got out two short glasses so I didn’t have to face her.

Behind me, she continued. “In the camp, they took away my humanity from the day I got there. They made me an animal. So as an adult, every day, I have to choose to be human.”

I opened another cabinet and grabbed the first bottle I saw, slapping it next to my glass. I pulled out the cork. I didn’t even know what the liquid was except brown.

Debbie put her hand over her glass. “It was easy for me. The choice wasn’t really a choice. It was life or death. For you, the privileged, you cannot believe you’ve ever done anything to deserve to be a part of this world. You’re told you’re royalty, but you don’t feel it. You can’t. Because you haven’t chosen to be human.”

She took her hand away, and I poured a finger of whatever-it-was into the glass.

“There was a girl with me tonight. Just a regular girl.” I swirled the drink but didn’t drink it. “I thought I’d show her a little fun. I’d take her out to a party and get her drunk on free booze and send her home in a cab. I thought I was doing her a favor.”

I let my eyes linger on the amber liquid for a long time. Debbie didn’t say a word, just gave me time and space to think.

“I think if I hadn’t pulled her out of there, she would have died of an overdose with movie star jizz all over her.” I tapped the edge of the glass on the marble counter.

“You took her to your Camp 22,” Debbie said.

“I won’t belittle what you went through.”

“You’re not. I made the comparison.”

“I don’t know what happened to me tonight. It wasn’t fun.”

“You don’t have to go back to it.”

“I can’t stop alone. Not when I’m like…” Shit, I was crying. The thought of giving it all up by myself was painful. “Everything hurts, and nothing bothers me. I feel all backward. I get bored for five minutes, and I just want to go get fucked or fucked up.” I rubbed my tears with the backs of my hand. “Then I run back to Deacon because he gets it all under control.”

“You say you can’t do it alone.”

I sighed and looked at the whiskey. I didn’t even like whiskey. “The last day, before I got out, I kind of felt good, because of all the work my therapist had done.”

“The man I gave the shoes to?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s in love with you.”