High Life (3 page)

But this wasn’t a film, it wasn’t even happening in Beverly Hills. This disfigurement had none of those ameliorations. It was stark and brutal and she’d wanted me to see it.

“What do you mean?”

“I sold my kidney.”

“Huh?”

“I sold one of my kidneys. Don’t look at me like that, they do it all the time in India.”

“I don’t understand. How can you sell a kidney?”

“You’ve got two of them.”

“I mean … who buys them?”

“A doctor.”

“The
doctor.”

“Yeah, the doctor.”

The latest client getting the sleepover treatment. Someone she’d been seeing more and more of over the last few months.

“You sold your kidney to a trick? This is like some kind of extreme S&M thing, right?”

“I knew you’d be a prick about it.”

“Well, Jesus, don’t you have any self-respect?”

“Shut the fuck up, okay? It’s my body, my kidney. Like it’s my pussy. For thirty grand I wasn’t going to say no.”

That froze me and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. On one hand, selling an organ was a bizarre thing to do, but on the other it wasn’t. Not in L.A. Not for someone like Karen. Thirty thousand dollars is, after all, a lot of money.

“What did he want it for? I mean, what do you do with a kidney?”

“I don’t know, give it to a hospital. Who cares? You want a smoke?”

As she reached into the pocket of her jacket I noticed she was wearing a gold bracelet I hadn’t seen before. It had a lot of filigree engraving on it and looked antique.

“My, that’s pretty.”

“A get-well from the doc.”

“Very nice.”

She sighed tiredly. “Do you want a smoke or not?”

Karen didn’t own the usual glass tube with kitchen scourer stuffed down the middle. Too easy to start carrying around and, like ID, too much of a giveaway if she got busted hooking. Instead she made her own.

Foil stretched and held with a rubber band across a glass of water three quarters full, a small oval of needle perforations on one side of the circle, a half-inch slit on the other. Pile up cigarette ash and a piece of crack. Then burn that sexy little volcano with a disposable lighter and suck pure white smoke straight into your head.

When she couldn’t hold any more she handed it over. I fresh-ashed and reloaded. Cool smoke going in, dead mouth, lungs stretched to burst, let a little out, and suck in even more. Dab the coal out with a pearl of spit. And hold, and hold … And then breathe out, nice and slow. Curl up, close eyes. Nothing exists. Only you, floating in some totally painless void. Better than smack, better than love. An adorable distant nausea. Given the choice, you’d choose this over any sensation in the world.

Ten minutes max, that’s all you get before you hit earth and find nothing changed. Guts knotted, jaws clenching, anxiety riding in steel-shod. Not the best condition to be in to deal with tales of kidney excision.

We didn’t talk anymore right away, we knew we were too fritzed to do it safely. So we bounced around the room instead. Stand, sit, stand again. TV on and off. Booze from the fridge. Meaningless surface babble.

Then an explosion of sex, a few minutes’ escape from cocaine revenge. Bent over the table, stabbing it in from behind, both of us grunting like animals. The faint shitty smell of her ass on the air. When we’d finished we weren’t any closer than we’d ever been.

She lay on the bed, naked from the waist down, and there was something about her unconcerned positioning that right then, to me, was a fresh and unbearable reiteration of just how little I meant to her. She seemed to be screaming that she didn’t care anymore how I saw her, that maintaining some measure of grace in my presence was no longer worth the effort it took.

Jitters of anger were already running up my arms as I started to speak, but I got a whole lot angrier thirty seconds later.

“That car’s the first thing you’ve given me.”

“I know.”

“Making up for lost time?”

She rolled off the bed and pulled on her briefs.

“It’s a thank you, Jack. And a goodbye. I’m leaving.”

“What?”

“We’re quits. I’ve got some money now, I can move on. Living like this isn’t good for either of us.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“I like hanging out, getting stoned. I like fucking for money. It’s real. You live in this bullshit movie-star fantasy world. We don’t connect.”

Around me the world seemed to slip sideways and all the things in the room looked suddenly flat and sharply defined, like high-resolution photos of themselves that were too intensely concentrated to recognize. I stood in a synaptic freeze and catalogued my idiocy.

I’d dragged her back from the edge of narcotic self- destruction, I’d given her a place to live, I’d fed her and clothed her. And all through her whoring, the year of lying awake nights imagining those endless insertions and the showers of come, I’d hung in there, figuring that some day it had to end and that when it did I’d come out of it safely locked into a partner for the rest of my life.

At one level, of course, I knew my reasoning was absurd. Any observer of our relationship could have told me it was going to disintegrate long before I had any chance of collecting my pay- off. But then, when you need something to be a certain way bad enough, the hope that things will get better in the future is an easy blindfold to wear.

Maybe it was because she was doing it just when she’d gotten some money, maybe it was the coke in my system. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the fear of being abandoned. Whatever, when I routed back into the flow I kind of lost control and hit her.

She shrieked at me and I shrieked back, we grabbed each other and lurched around the room, and out of anger and desperation I hit her some more. It wasn’t a pleasant scene, in fact it was very, very bad, and it ended with her running out of the apartment, bleeding from the mouth. I didn’t try to stop her.

“You can keep the fucking car.”

It was the last thing she said.

I stood in the middle of the suddenly silent and empty room, under an unshaded bulb that was too bright. Night air came in through the open door and something by my feet moved in the breeze. I picked it up—a crumpled piece of paper that had my name on it—the pink slip for the car. It made me feel pretty bad.

Chapter Three

I checked the clock. Already too late for work. Tough. I wasn’t going, I had an excuse—a death in the family.

A death. Her death.

How far did she make it? How much time passed between our fight and the carving of her belly? Maybe she got it straight- away, hacked up just half an hour after she stormed out into the night. But the body in the park hadn’t looked eight days old.

If she’d been killed some time last night and the police did find me, things could get difficult—I had no way to prove where I’d been after I left work.

My pill supply was in the icebox—a biscuit jar full of blister packs and brown plastic vials Karen had accepted as payment a month or two back for taking a shit in front of a room full of doctors up from San Diego on a stag night. They were all downers of one kind or another and they were all past their use-by date. But they still worked just fine. I swallowed 20mg of Valium and thought about phoning Donut Haven. Explaining why I wasn’t there seemed like such a hassle, though—better to sit with a beer in front of morning TV and wait for the benzodiazepine haze to wrap me up. Then just drift …

Scenes in the park. Scenes of her leaving the apartment. A question of consequences, of meaning, of how I felt. Would she have ended up dead if I hadn’t exploded? I guess I had to assume some responsibility—but I was only a link in the chain. I forced her out of the apartment and sometime later she died. But I forced her out because of the things she’d done, and she, in turn, had done those things in response to a lifetime of earlier events, back down the line to childhood. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t suppose either of us was entirely at fault. But we both played parts and each part carried its measure of guilt.

And beyond this vaguely apportioned blame, the issue of grief. Slumped on a couch in a furnished room, while the day stoked its furnaces outside and bustling, self-improving Californians carelessly let snatches of their conversation and laughter float up to me, I can’t say grief was paramount in my emotions. There was shock at violent death, of course, and there was my own fear of being alone and adrift in the city again. But a devastating sense of loss? No.

There was relief, though. It sounds foul to say, but it was there—an obscene voice of truth shouting that the unmanning was over, that the nights spent waiting for the sound of her feet on the steps outside the apartment were finally at an end. The hideous compromise I’d had to make to hang on to a soulless and incomplete replica of a relationship was finished. There was certainly an element of relief.

But as much as I wanted to bathe in this traitorously comforting emotion, Karen’s last gesture made it impossible to avoid an artesian seepage of self-reproach. If she had been all bad, it would have been easier. But putting the car in my name raised doubts about the completeness of her coldheartedness and, by extension, any justification I might unearth for my violence.

I tried to force something more definable out of myself, a few tears or a sob. The best I could manage was an anemic self-pity just before the pills kicked in and made manufacturing emotion redundant.

Next morning I woke in a post-Valium languor and found that I was changed. I’d had to hit the pill jar a second time around ten
P.M.
, but that had seen me through. One whole day gone AWOL, twenty-four hours that had been unable to find purchase upon me. Time during which my head had finally let go of those ideas that had been steadily bleeding themselves dry through all my time in Los Angeles—the notion of what ought to be done, what ought to be felt.

I hadn’t pulled the blinds and the sun lay across the room like a brand. Cali sunshine—envy of the world, a go-get-’em flux of ocean, brand-new cars, money, and a channeled energy generated by millions of western seaboarders who were so damn sure they were going to make it. I felt like rolling around in it like a dog, trying to rub it into my coat so I smelled the same way.

I lit a cigarette and went to the fridge. Out back, across the street, a girl was sitting on a balcony. I was naked and she could see me through the kitchen window, but I didn’t care. I looked at her sitting there in her high-cut swimsuit and sunglasses. She had arms and legs and a face, and her pussy was probably getting a little sticky in the heat. But trying to invest that collection with anything approaching personality or significance seemed like the biggest waste of time. After a moment it became impossible to distinguish her from the bricks and the peeling iron railing that surrounded her.

I went back to bed with a couple of beers. Outside, people would be blading along the edge of the beach, sitting in open cafes drinking juice and fresh coffee, sunning up and hanging out. Fuck ’em. This morning California and all its manic enthusiasms could slide into the ocean for all I cared.

At one time I’d bought full-scale into that same sunny optimism. I’d figured as long as you got a job, worked hard at it, and didn’t cross the police, you had a chance at some sort of a life. A chance at a decent relationship, a house in a nice place, a car, the occasional holiday … Not a big life, perhaps, nothing of movie-star incandescence, but one that at least offered a measure of protection against the world’s cold winds—an entry-level prize for playing inside the rules.

An idiot’s evaluation. But what else did I have? Certainly not the liberation of wealth or fame. So I clung to it, hung on grimly with both hands as though it were a magic cloak that could insulate me from the erosion of failure, imagining it wrapped close about me even as my time with Karen pulled it steadily from my grasp.

But that was gone forever now. Last night, while my drugged blood went endlessly round and round, the last reactionary part of me had finally accepted a truth that had been screaming itself hoarse all my adult life: that chances didn’t exist, that they’d all been used up by people who made it into movies or onto TV.

I fired up the VCR and loaded one of my perfume commercial tapes. Ads for high-quality cosmetics are some of the best pointers to a proper life. The people in them are perfect—you can tell just by looking at them. Their bodies are desirable, they wear the most expensive clothes, and they don’t even think about money. They live in a world where problems are dealt with by other people, where it is impossible to doubt yourself, and where no one can see you without loving you and wanting to be like you.

The Obsession series was very good, but my favorite on this tape was a Sun and Moon and Stars clip with Daryl Hannah—dreamy soft-focus, floating through the universe, free of worry about anything that might happen back in the world. You couldn’t beat it, a Hollywood star playing what she really was—a goddess.

I didn’t get out of bed all day. I wanted to sleep some more, but I’d already had too much, so I read the gossips and watched the episode of
28 FPS
again. Lorn looked good in a white tennis skirt and a sleeveless top that showed glimpses of the sides of her breasts. Once when she was bending over I thought I saw one of her nipples. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

About ten that night Rex came around. He was zipped on coke and all finger-snapping, joint-popping energy. He was wearing a long, lightweight cashmere coat over a casual silk-blend suit and he smelled like an expensive clothes store. The feel of the fabric when he hugged me was comforting and clean.

Rex made his money fucking. Blond hair, white teeth, slim and sexy. At first glance a boy with everything Californian. But his skin was pale and the blue eyes didn’t really do that “have a nice day” thing. When you paid attention, when you didn’t just skim the surface, it wasn’t hard to believe the history of suicide attempts he liked to trot out whenever he got the chance.

Karen had brought him home one night after they’d connected in a shared role on a porn flick. It was just work to them and they were never going to be friends, but he and I had hit it off well enough to generate one of those satellite relationships that exist only within certain parameters—always at my apartment, always when Karen wasn’t there. We didn’t go out together, didn’t buddy up for a ball game or sink brews on a standing Friday night bar date, but it was still friendship of a sort.

He threw himself down on the couch.

“Whew, man, I’m flying. Called in today, you weren’t there. Wanted some doughnut action. Needed that sugar. Well, didn’t need it, I guess, but I wanted it, man. I wanted it.”

Rex took a breath and ran his hand over his face. I dug some pills out of my pocket. Rex shook his head.

“What happened with work? It’s not like you.”

I swallowed a Valium and told him Karen was dead, that she was found in the park murdered.

He was glitteringly aghast, his mouth open and his white teeth shining. He shifted quickly to where I was sitting on the bed and put his arm around me. He held me close and I was tempted to interpret it as genuine commiseration. In a way it was. I’m sure he felt sadness at what he perceived to be my loss—sadness for me, sadness that someone he knew was dead. But at the same time, I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion that what he was really plugged into was a resonance between the loss he imagined me to feel and his own black void of unhappiness.

“Wow, man … I don’t know what to say. I mean, Jesus …”

“It’s not like it wasn’t going to happen someday.”

“Sure, sure. But it brings it home, dude, it brings it home.”

“Mortality?”

“How everything fucks up. How we fuck up everything.”

He was silent for a moment, then: “What happened? I mean, can you talk about it? Is it too soon?”

“You know how we were. I can’t tell you I’m dying inside.”

“But it’s something to assimilate. It’s something to come to terms with.”

At this point I was pretty certain I was right, that Rex was all set to use this situation as a windfall opportunity. He was after a little transposition. He wanted to project his own pain onto the backdrop of Karen’s death and watch it play. But that wasn’t going to work for me. Too complicated. He was going to expect me to be intensely genuine and introspective, and I wasn’t going to be able to explain to him how the death of someone could feel so … peripheral.

“You know, maybe it is too soon.”

“Oh … okay. Sure.”

He looked robbed and for a moment I could see into him, see the horrible twisting beast he had to struggle with each day, and absurdly I felt like I was the one who was short-changing people here.

“They found her in the park a couple of days ago. Before it happened she sold her kidney. Maybe it had something to do with it.”

“Sold her kidney? Like … sold her kidney?”

Rex couldn’t help a quick snort of laughter.

“Now that’s what I call hooking.”

He caught himself, was immediately concerned and shocked again.

“Sorry, man, too much blow. God, that’s terrible. But I can dig it. Sometimes you feel so disgusting you want to have part of yourself cut away. I mean, you know what I’m talking about, right?”

“She just wanted the money.”

“Nah. It might not have been conscious, but she was making a statement. She was saying how ruined she was, paying for being bad.”

This looked like a long road to travel. I got up and took a few steps around the room so I didn’t have to answer.

“Still, she’s got to be better off now, huh?”

“Oh, please …”

“Come on, you think this is all there is?”

“Pretty much.”

“You don’t think there’s some kind of continuation?”

“If you get on TV.”

“Hey, it’s your night, but …”

He looked down and busied himself with a vial of coke. We charged up and I talked a little faster.

“I mean it. Only half a dozen people remember my father, right? It’s like he never existed. But someone like Dean Martin, say, is still here. It doesn’t matter if he’s dead, he’s still in his records and his movies. That’s life after death. That’s as close as you get.”

“I wonder if Jerry sees it that way.”

“Of course he does. Same thing’s going to happen to him.”

Rex nodded like he was taking this in, but I knew he thought it was a pile of shit. After a moment he cleared his throat and stood up.

“Got a gig, dude. You want another hit?”

I felt a quick fizz of affection for him because I knew he’d like to argue with me but was holding back, despite the coke.

Another snort and he split to service the wife of a director who was shooting nights over at Warner. We hugged at the door. I heard his Porsche start down on the street and the breathy clatter of its engine turned the salty night air hollow.

The sound died quickly as he turned a corner somewhere out in the city, and with it went the illusion of his company. He’d been there, he’d heard about Karen, but it hadn’t gone very deep. Where were the questions about my long night being grilled down at headquarters, about the arrangements I’d made for her funeral, about all the other things that also hadn’t happened?

The truth was that he could only care so much. He needed too much of himself for himself.

Later, I walked around to an all-night Korean store for beer and food. On Main the restaurants glowed with indirect lighting—smooth interiors full of happy people spending money, drinking good wine, making plans for the future. Parked cars down both sides of the street looked shiny, looked like they belonged in three-car garages surrounded by exotically stocked gardens. It all made me feel outnumbered and vulnerable.