Nothing Left To Want (43 page)

How kind of them. Nothing, of course, about my immediate needs for food and medicine and, oh hell, why not go crazy and get my utilities turned on.

Still, I knew I could use a car service and I had promised myself to do anything and everything to please my family, so I called Dr. Abram's office, and when his receptionist heard my name, she said they’d see me that afternoon. Then I called the car service and was told they’d pick me up in a half hour. A half hour can be a killer, literally. It was during that half hour that I decided to look through my bulging spam file. I deleted a few hundred ads for sexual enhancement drugs, and while I was going through it, I kept seeing and deleting this same name over and over. Dina Vodka.

I got curious and opened one of them. “Hi, Carey! OMG, I hope you are reading this! Listen, girl, I’ve seen your pictures and read EVERYTHING about you. You are BANGIN! I want to meet you so bad. My name is Dina and I am the biggest star on My Space. I run a 24/7 video chat room for my fans. It’s called Dina’s peeps and I want you to be interviewed on it sooo bad! I read that you are having some money troubles, but be cool, gurl, I can relate! If you email me back, I will come and pick you up from anywhere and take you to my bangin house for the interview. That’s where all my camera stuff is and I’ll give you five large for a half hour interview. I know Dina’s peeps will love you too, just like I do. Please say yes. We’ll just chill and talk. You are BANGIN! So write me, okay? Xo xo xo and then some, Dina.”

If Dr. Abrams hadn’t been an ice cold asshole; if he hadn’t responded to me telling him that I was getting sicker by smiling, and telling me that my parents had assured him I was getting the “best possible medical care available,” and that any mental confusion I was having must be from my “prolonged drug use”; if he hadn’t told me that seeing rats was a “common symptom of drug paranoia”; and if he had only said something else when I started crying and begging him to ask my parents to bring me home besides, “We’ll see. It all depends on how your treatment progresses”, I wouldn’t have had the car service take me back to Kinko’s so I could send Dina an email asking for her address and saying I wanted my interview right then.

She must have lived on the internet because one second later she shot me back her address with about ten OMGs, and I went back outside to my waiting driver and gave him her address.

He took me to a small nice contemporary house in Studio City, a place I had never been before. It had started pouring rain on our way and he asked me reluctantly if I wanted him to wait. I said no, it was okay, either my hostess would drive me home or I could call him back.

I didn’t go to the door right away. I stood outside nervously in the cold rain but I guess Dina had been watching for me because the door flew open and out came a girl even tinier than me. She was a super-pretty Asian girl and she didn’t look crazy in a plain white wife-beater and Daisy Dukes. She looked like a really good looking, very friendly high school girl.

She spoke in a rush. “Oh my God, oh my God, I can’t believe you're really here, and, God, you are ten times prettier than you look in your pictures. Oh God, come inside, its freezing out here and you're soaked.”

Smiling tentatively, but already grateful to be wanted and admired for the first time in ages, I shyly said hi and followed her into the house.

I liked her house. It was small, all white, and so clean, and she had a big fuzzy dog, Riley. When she asked me if I wanted to get my buzz on, I said no, so then she asked me in the sweetest voice if I was nervous and I said yes, and she hugged me like we were old friends.

I was so lonely and so grateful for affection that I hugged her back, and when she started to kiss me, I didn’t like it but I didn’t want her to be mad at me, so I let her. Dina smiled then and said that all I needed was something to make me relax and bustled off to her kitchen, coming back holding a vial of OxyContin and a glass of orange juice, with this proud excited expression like she had just made me a Cordon Bleu dinner.

I shrugged and swallowed. Good old Oxy. Apparently it really was the drug of choice for lesbians and all quasi-reluctant maybe-not-sure-they-are-gay girls. Oxy used to make me dizzy and overheated even when I wasn’t sick so, in minutes, I was drenched in sweat and worried that I would disgust her, but she was so nice to me, she smiled and held out her hand. “Come on, baby, you need to lie down. Come with me. All my camera stuff is in my bedroom, it’s where I do my best work.”

She giggled and I took her hand, a fixed object in a suddenly blurry room. I know she must have helped me take off my wet clothes and maybe even arranged me in a half-seated position on her bed, but its vague. The room came in and out of focus, and when she took off her own clothes and joined me on the bed, wearing only her bra and panties, I thought she was going to want to have sex with me, so I was relieved when all she did was gently grasp my chin and point my face towards a camera attached to the computer right in front of her bed.

She fumbled around with my hair and pulled down my bra cups until I was arranged to whatever her vision was, and then she leaned forward and punched some buttons and whispered to me that we were live and that all I had to do was smile. She was just going to have some fun now. I tried to smile for her. I wanted to please my new friend.

She started talking. “Hey bitches, I’m baaack, and tonight I’ve got my girl Carey Kelleher here with me, and she is my baby and she is banging! Me and Miss Kelleher are in fucking mad love and she is going to be my little bridey bride, and if you all ignorant bitches doan know who she is, well check your med stash. Cuz she is the Kelleher on all the Kelleher pills that make us all feel so good! Say hi to my peeps, baby.”

I wasn’t’ sure if she was talking to me or not, and I was less sure what she meant by bridey, but I smiled obediently anyhow.

After a minute words began scrolling on her computer. She giggled with excitement. “Look baby, those are all messages from my peeps. They love you, bridey.”

I couldn’t make out the words. My vision was dim, so she read me some of the comments.

“
Wow, she’s beautiful.”

“
Way to score, Dina gurl!”

There was another message that she repeated but she sounded annoyed when she read it. “She looks so sad. She doesn’t belong there.”

I didn’t know if I was supposed to talk or what, so I stayed quiet, and after a long time even Dina noticed that I was falling asleep, so she made some suggestive comments about what we were going to do on our 'pre-honeymoon' to her viewers at home and finally turned off the camera.

Briskly, her voice no longer loving or excited, she told me I could get some sleep if I wanted to.

What I wanted was to leave but I was way too far gone for that by then, so I slept or passed out for a few hours. When I woke up in a strange room, I was terrified. When I remembered where I was I wished I were dead.

Dina wasn’t in the room and shakily I dressed in my still damp clothes which she had thrown on the floor. As silently as possible I opened the bedroom door. I didn’t see Dina or her dog, and for less than a second I considered looking for her to ask if I could have my interview money but I wanted to get away without having to face her more than I wanted the money.

I walked outside her front door into the freezing rain and didn’t close it behind me. I was lost and my cell was dead, so I staggered through her strange neighborhood, soaked and shivering, until at last I saw a gas station. Walking inside, I asked the attendant if she would call the number of my car service. She told me she would if I waited outside.

Obedient and ashamed I did as she asked. When my driver came, he opened the door without saying a word. He didn’t ask me where I wanted to go, he just began driving me back to my bad house. When he turned onto my street, I spoke for the first time. “What day is it?”

He sighed. “December twenty ninth, almost New Year's.” I had missed Christmas.

With the last of my old Kelleher girl vibe I ordered him to stop at Kinko’s first. Once there, I went inside and, ignoring all the curious looks at my dead white face and soaked hair, I inserted my Kinko’s card into the machine. I had two dollars and forty six cents credit.

I typed in, “Happy almost 2010 everyone, and sweet dreams.”

It was only eight in the morning but I figured everyone would just think I was loaded on something and write it off to that.

When I got home, I made a last stop into the darkened main house. I found the can of black spray paint on the floor of the filthy kitchen and painted the words 'Help me' over and over until the can was empty, then I threw it in the corner where I thought I saw movement. Now I’m back in my guesthouse.

I won’t be leaving again.

Chapter 45

So that’s it, my review of the greatest hits of Carolyn Kelleher.

What’s that old song say, ‘the road is long'?

A week ago I would have said, hell yeah, it’s been too long. I feel different now. I guess everybody does when it’s too late to fix things. I made it to the New Year, though. That’s something.

I can hear fireworks exploding out there somewhere and happy people yelling. I wonder what they’re happy about, a new year, making it through another year? Maybe they know all the secrets to living happily ever after and so every day is the first day of the rest of your life, or some such crap, but most likely they are just drunk.

It’s just me and the rodents here now, having our own little party. This is my last night, my last New Year’s, the last of me, and I still don’t know anything.

Maybe that’s the way it goes for everyone.

I do know a couple things. I know that a famous name can open every door but what the hell do you do when you go through it? I know people are stupid and value all the wrong things. Usually they value money most of all and money spends so fast. Maybe love does too.

I just wish I’d had the chance to find out.

A modern fairytale – disclaimer

'Nothing Left to Want' is first and foremost a fairytale in the tradition of the fairytales and nursery rhymes of medieval Europe which were often much more gruesome than their modern Bowdlerised versions that we read to our children today.

It is also a bold and fiery satire.

You could even call it a Greek tragedy in which the narrator's Achilles heel leads to her undoing and ultimate demise.

The central story maps closely that of a US royal family and the demise of yet another of its clan. However, that is the story. The characters in the story are all emphatically fictional. Indeed they are fairytale archetypes:

The narrator suffers from long-standing delusional disorders and the consequences of recreational drug abuse. She is also hallucinating with the effects of her brittle Type One diabetes and diminishing levels of insulin. So nothing she says about any of the characters in this tale (including herself) can be assumed to be in any way accurate of any real person. Specifically, all the main characters are fairytale archetypes and are nothing like anybody associated with the underlying story. Some elements of a true story have been borrowed because of their uncanny echoing of themes commonly found in fairytales but the characters themselves are entirely fictional.

Indeed they are exaggerated, symbolic characters set up to populate a morality tale that, if taken to heart, might even save a gilded life or two.

To Belle Avery, friend, mentor and lodestar, this one's for you.

I would also like to thank Tim Hewtson and Sheila Bellshaw who took my stacks of messy pages and made a book out of them. To Claudia who forces me to keep up the work and to my sweet mother, all my family and friends, and anyone else besides them who reads this book.