The Girl on Paper (7 page)

‘You narrowly avoided the bulldozer!’ joked Milo as he marched into the living room. ‘Wow. I see things aren’t getting any better. You look like someone who’s just been snorting sodium bicarbonate.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’ve come to pick up my car, if that’s all right with you! I just want to take her for one last spin before she’s repossessed.’

‘Morning, Tom,’ said Carole, as she too stepped into the house.

She was still in uniform. I glanced at the street below and saw a police car parked outside my house.

‘Have you come to arrest me?’ I laughed, pulling her into my arms for a hug.

‘My God, you’re bleeding!’ she exclaimed.

I frowned, but soon noticed the bloodstains that had bloomed on my shirt: a reminder of Billie’s slashed hand.

‘Don’t worry, it’s not my blood.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right then! And it looks fresh,’ she pointed out, a note of suspicion creeping into her voice.

‘Listen to this. You’ll never guess what’s happened to me. Yesterday evening—’

‘Whose dress is this?’ Milo interrupted, holding up the bloodstained silk tunic.

‘It belongs to Aurore, but—’

‘To Aurore? Don’t tell me that you’ve—’

‘No! It wasn’t her that was wearing it. It was another woman.’

‘Oh, so you’re seeing someone else now? That can only be a good thing, right? Is it someone we know?’

‘Well, sort of.’

Carole and Milo exchanged astonished looks before demanding in unison, ‘Who is it then?’

‘Take a look on the terrace. You’re in for a big surprise.’

They hurried across the room and stuck their heads out of the glass doors. They were silent for about ten seconds, until finally Milo observed, ‘There’s no one there, buddy.’

Taken aback, I went out onto the terrace with them, where a cool breeze was blowing.

The table and chairs had all been overturned, and the tiles were covered in broken glass. The ground was smeared with mashed banana, coffee and maple syrup. But there was no sign of Billie.

‘Has the military been conducting nuclear tests on your terrace?’ Carole enquired.

‘She has a point – it’s like a war zone out here,’ Milo chimed in.

To avoid the glare, I shielded my eyes and scanned the horizon. Last night’s storm had transformed the beach into a wild jungle. The swirls of foam that were still breaking on the
shore had left in their wake tree trunks, seaweed, a surfboard and even the skeleton of a bike. But I had to accept the fact that Billie had vanished.

Ever the policewoman, Carole had crouched down by the door and was examining the traces of blood that were beginning to dry on the glass. She looked worried.

‘What happened here, Tom? Did you get into a fight with someone?’

‘No! It’s just—’

‘I really think we have a right to know the truth this time!’ my best friend interrupted again.

‘If you want explanations, shut up and let me finish my sentences!’

‘Well, start finishing them! Who did this to your terrace? And whose blood is on this dress? The Pope’s? Gandhi’s? Marilyn Monroe’s?’

‘It’s actually Billie Donelly’s.’

‘Billie Donelly? The character from your novels?’

‘The very same.’

‘I suppose it amuses you to make a fool of me?’ Milo exploded. ‘I would do anything, anything in the world for you. If you asked me to, I would bury a body in the middle of the night for you. But you obviously couldn’t care less, you take me for an idiot—’

Carole got up suddenly from where she had been crouching and came and stood between us like the referee in a boxing match. Then, in the exasperated tone of a mother scolding her children, she said, ‘Time out, boys. Stop arguing. Why don’t you both sit down and Tom can explain everything calmly, OK?’

And that is what happened.

For fifteen minutes straight I recounted in minute detail the incredible story, from my bizarre first encounter with Billie in the dead of night to this morning’s interrogation, which had finally convinced me that she was real.

‘So if I’ve understood you properly,’ Milo clarified, ‘one of your heroines “fell out” of a badly printed sentence straight into your house. Because she was naked, she put on a dress belonging to your ex-girlfriend, then made you banana pancakes for brekkie. To say thank you, you locked her out on the terrace and while you listened to Miles Davis she slashed up her palm, getting blood all over the place, then stuck herself back together with special ceramic and porcelain Super Glue. Then you made peace by playing twenty questions, after which she decided that you were a pervert and you implied she was a slut, before she said abracadabra and disappeared just as we both arrived. Did I get that right?’

‘Just forget it,’ I said. ‘I knew you’d find some way to turn it against me.’

‘Just one last question: what exactly have you been smoking?’

‘That’s enough out of you!’ interrupted Carole.

Milo looked concerned. ‘You need to see your psychiatrist again.’

‘That’s ridiculous, I feel fine.’

‘Look, I know that I’m responsible for your financial situation. I know I shouldn’t have put pressure on you to finish your book within the deadline, but you’re really scaring me now, Tom. You’re losing it.’

‘You’re just a little burned out.’ Carole tried to soften Milo’s words. ‘You’ve been under a lot of strain recently. For three years you barely stopped: writing through the night, meeting fans, lectures, tours all over the world to promote your books.
Anyone would collapse under that kind of pressure. Your break-up with Aurore was just the final straw. You need to rest, that’s all.’

‘Stop treating me like a kid.’

‘You have to start seeing your shrink again,’ Milo repeated. ‘She mentioned a course of sleep therapy to us—’

‘What do you mean, “to us”? Have you been talking to Dr Schnabel behind my back?’

‘We’re on your side, Tom,’ said Milo, trying to calm me down.

‘Then why can’t you just leave me alone? Why don’t you sort out your own life instead of always interfering with mine?’

Hurt by this retort, Milo shook his head and opened his mouth as if to reply, but his expression darkened and he remained silent. Instead, he took a Dunhill from the open pack on the table and went out to the beach to smoke alone.

I was alone with Carole. She also lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply before passing it to me, just like when we were ten years old and we used to share a cigarette, hidden behind the scrawny palm trees in MacArthur Park. No longer on duty, she shook her hair out of its knot, letting the ebony waves cascade over her dark-blue uniform. With her hair loose, and her familiar clear gaze, she could have passed for the teenage girl she had once been. The bond between us was more than just mutual understanding and affection. Nor was it just an ordinary friendship. It was one of those unbreakable connections that can only be formed in childhood, but which last a lifetime, for better or worse. More often for worse.

As always when we found ourselves alone together, the memories of our chaotic adolescence flooded back. The
empty lots that were the only view we had, the suffocating air of the asphalt quagmire imprisoning us, the painful memory of the conversations we used to have after school out on the basketball courts.

This time more than ever it felt like we were twelve years old again. As though all the books I had sold, all the criminals she had caught were just part of an act we were both putting on for the rest of the world, when really we were still back there.

After all, it was no coincidence that none of the three of us had ever had any children. We still had too many of our own demons to fight to have enough energy to create new life. I did not know much about Carole’s life any more. Recently we had seen less and less of each other, and when we did meet up we both avoided talking about what really mattered. Maybe we were both living in the naive hope that if we ignored our past long enough it would just disappear. But it wasn’t that simple. To forget his childhood, Milo played the fool the whole time, acting as if everything were a joke. As for me, I poured everything I had onto the page, swallowed dangerous cocktails of pills and inhaled crystal meth.

‘I don’t like big emotional scenes, Tom,’ she began nervously, toying with a little spoon.

Now that Milo was no longer in the room, she looked sad and anxious; she no longer had to pretend.

‘You know that we will always be there for each other, no matter what,’ she continued. ‘I’d donate a kidney for you; I’d give both, if you asked me to.’

‘I’m not asking you to.’

‘For as long as I can remember, it was always you who fixed everything. Now it’s my turn to fix you, and I can’t seem to help.’

‘Don’t start with all that crap. I’m fine.’

‘No, you’re not fine. But there’s one thing you have to know: neither Milo nor I would be where we are today if it weren’t for you.’

I shrugged. I wasn’t even sure that we had come very far at all from where we started. Sure, we lived in better areas, and our lives were no longer dominated by fear, but as the crow flies we were still just a few miles from MacArthur Park.

‘However we got here, when I wake up in the morning you’re the first thing I think of. And if you sink, Tom, we go down with you. If you let go, my life won’t make sense any more.’

I opened my mouth to tell her to stop talking crap, but other words came out instead.

‘Are you happy, Carole?’

She looked at me as though she hadn’t understood the question. As though in her struggle just to get by she had forgotten all about being happy, as though that idea had fallen by the wayside long ago.

‘This thing about the character from your books,’ she carried on, ‘it’s totally implausible, isn’t it?’

‘It is a little far-fetched,’ I admitted.

‘Look, I don’t know what I can do that would help, other than remind you that I’m your friend, that I love you and that I’m always here. And this sleep therapy thing, it might be worth a try, don’t you think?’

I looked at her affectionately. Touched as I was by her desire to help, I was absolutely determined to avoid any kind of therapy.

‘Well, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t pay for it!’

She brushed my objection aside. ‘Do you remember the day you got your first royalty payout? The amount was so large that you insisted on sharing it with me. I refused, of course, but you still found a way of getting my bank details
and putting the money in my account yourself. Do you remember my face when I got my bank statement and my balance was suddenly over $300,000!’

As she told the story, Carole began to look a little happier, and her eyes regained some of their sparkle.

I couldn’t help but smile, as I remembered that happy time when I had believed that money would solve all our problems. For a few moments, life seemed a little brighter, but it didn’t last long, and there were tears of distress in her eyes as she begged, ‘Accept the offer. Please. I want to pay for it.’

She was once again the abused little girl that I had met all those years ago, and it was to make her happy that I agreed to the treatment.

At the wheel of the Bugatti, Milo drove slowly, which was not like him at all. We sat in tense silence.

‘It’s going to be fine. Don’t look like that. It’s not as if I’m checking you into Betty Ford!’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

Back at my house, we had clashed again whilst looking for the keys to the car. We had searched for an hour without finding them. For the first time in our lives we had almost come to blows. Finally, after throwing a few home truths at each other, we had sent a runner over to Milo’s office to pick up the spare keys.

He turned on the radio to lighten the mood, but the snippet of Amy Winehouse’s refrain only increased the tension.

I said NO, NO, NO

I lowered my window and watched the palm trees that lined the seafront whip past us, feeling even worse than before. Maybe Milo was right. Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe
I was seeing things. After all, I was aware that whenever I wrote I was on a knife edge. Writing plunged me into a strange limbo where reality began to fade and my characters became more and more real to me, so much so that they would follow me wherever I went. I shared their suffering, their doubts and their joy, and they would continue to haunt me well after the novel had been completed. My characters dominated my dreams and sat with me at breakfast. They were with me when I bought my groceries and when I went out for dinner. They were even there when I made love. It was at once exhilarating and pathetic, intoxicating and disturbing. However, up until now, I had always been able to stop this temporary delirium from tipping over into madness. If previously my imagination had occasionally gone too far, it had never threatened to make a madman of me. Why should it start now, when I had not written so much as a line in months?

‘Oh, I almost forgot. I brought this for you,’ said Milo, throwing a small plastic bottle into my lap.

I picked it up.

My tranquillisers
.

I unscrewed the lid and studied the little white pills that seemed to be taunting me from the bottom of the bottle.

Why give them to me now, when you’ve tried so hard to get me off them?

‘It wasn’t a good idea to make you go completely cold turkey,’ he explained.

My heart started racing and I felt suddenly anxious and alone. I hurt all over, like a drug addict waiting for the next hit. How was it possible to be in this much pain without having sustained any actual injuries?

I found it odd that, in this instance, my best friend was my dealer.

‘This sleep therapy thing is going to make you feel like a
new man,’ Milo reassured me. ‘They make you sleep like a baby for ten days straight!’

He was trying to cheer me up, but I could tell he didn’t really believe what he was saying.

I gripped the orange bottle tightly, so tightly that the plastic felt as though it were about to crack. I knew that all I had to do was let just one of the small white tablets dissolve under my tongue to feel instantly relieved. I could even take three or four and just go to sleep. They had a lovely effect on me – ‘You’re lucky,’ Dr Schnabel had told me. ‘Some people suffer very nasty side effects.’

Determined to show I wasn’t dependent, I put the bottle in my pocket without opening it.

‘If the treatment doesn’t work, we’ll try other things,’ Milo promised. ‘I’ve heard about this guy in New York – Connor McCoy. Apparently he works wonders with hypnosis.’

Hypnosis, artificially induced sleep, bottles of pills. I was beginning to tire of fleeing reality, even if at the moment my reality was a difficult one. I did not want to spend ten days in a coma induced by neuroleptic drugs. I didn’t like the lack of responsibility on my part that this treatment involved. Now I was keen to deal with my demons head-on even if it killed me.

I had long been fascinated by the links between mental illness and creativity. Camille Claudel, Maupassant, Nerval and Artaud had all gradually succumbed to madness. Virginia Woolf had drowned herself in a river; Cesare Pavese had ended his life with an overdose of barbiturates in a hotel room; Nicholas Staël had thrown himself out of a window; John Kennedy Toole had run a hose from the exhaust pipe of his car to the inside of the vehicle; not to mention the great Hemingway, who had blown his face off with a rifle. Same again for Kurt Cobain: a bullet in the skull on a pale
Seattle morning, leaving nothing but a note addressed to his imaginary childhood friend: ‘It’s better to burn out than fade away.’

As good a way to go as any, I suppose.

Each one of these artists had tried to make their way in the world, but it always ended the same way. If art exists because real life isn’t enough, perhaps there comes a point where even art is no longer enough and the only logical conclusion is madness and death. And even if I was not as gifted as these particular individuals I was unlucky enough to share their neuroses.

Milo pulled into the parking lot of a modern building surrounded by carefully planted trees. The building was a striking combination of pink marble and glass: Dr Sophia Schnabel’s private clinic.

‘We’re your allies, not your enemies,’ Carole reminded me, as she met us on the steps leading to the entrance.

The three of us went in together. At reception, I was surprised to find an appointment had already been made for me, and that my stay in the clinic had been planned the previous evening.

Resigned to my fate, I followed my friends into the lift without putting up a fight. The glass capsule took us up to the top floor, where a secretary led us into a huge office, assuring us that the doctor would soon be with us.

The room was light and spacious, with a large desk and white leather sofa.

‘Cool chair,’ whistled Milo in admiration as he sat down on a seat shaped like a hand.

There were several Buddhist sculptures dotted around the
room, which created a serene atmosphere, no doubt useful for relaxing more difficult patients. A bronze bust of Siddhartha, a Wheel of Law made of sandstone, a pair of marble gazelles complete with fountain in the middle – all the usual suspects were there.

I watched Milo trying to come up with one of his customary jokes. Between the statues and the interior design, there was enough material for an entire stand-up show, but he remained silent. That’s when I realised that he was hiding something serious from me.

I looked at Carole for reassurance, but she avoided my gaze by pretending to study the various diplomas that Dr Schnabel had hung on the walls.

Ever since the murder of Ethan Whitaker, Schnabel had been the hottest psychiatrist to the stars. She counted some of the biggest names in Hollywood as patients: actors, singers, producers, politicians, sons of this one, sons of sons of that one.

She even had her own television series, where viewers caught a glimpse of the inner life of ‘real people’, who got the chance to have a live session with the ‘Celebrity Shrink’ (that was the programme’s title) and describe in detail their unhappy childhood, their addictions, their sexual exploits and how they’d always wanted to try a threesome.

Half the entertainment industry adored Sophia Schnabel. The other half feared her. After practising for twenty years, it was rumoured that she possessed files that rivalled those of Edgar Hoover. She had thousands of hours of recorded therapy sessions that must have contained some of the darkest, most unspeakable secrets in Hollywood history. These files were of course completely confidential and kept under lock and key, but they nevertheless had the power to destroy the entire entertainment industry, not to mention the
havoc they could wreak in the world of politics.

A recent event had further consolidated Sophia’s hold on the entertainment world. A few months earlier, Stephanie Harrison, the widow of the billionaire Richard Harrison, founder of the Green Cross chain of supermarkets, had died of an overdose at the age of thirty-two. At the autopsy, traces of sedatives, antidepressants and slimming pills were found in her blood. There was nothing unusual in that. Except that the doses were worryingly high. The deceased’s brother had accused Schnabel on live television of being entirely responsible for his sister’s death. He had engaged an army of lawyers and detectives who searched Stephanie’s apartment and found more than fifty prescriptions. They were made out to five different pseudonyms, but all signed by Sophia Schnabel. The discovery had proved extremely damaging to the psychiatrist. With the shock of Michael Jackson’s death still fresh in the public’s mind, the media suddenly turned on the vast network of doctors that was more than happy to write out endless prescriptions on demand for its wealthier clients. Anxious to limit this dangerous practice, the State of California lodged a complaint against the psychiatrist for writing fraudulent prescriptions, a complaint that was then suddenly and inexplicably withdrawn. This was highly unusual as the prosecutor had all the evidence he needed to charge her. The change of heart, which many put down to a lack of courage on the part of the magistrate, effectively rendered Sophia Schnabel untouchable.

To enter into the privileged inner circle of patients, you had to be recommended by one of her former clients. She was one of the ‘hot tips’ that celebrities liked to pass around amongst themselves, like the answers to
Where do you find the best coke? Which trader will get you the best investments? How do you get courtside seats at the Lakers’ game? Who do you
ring to get a call-girl-who-doesn’t-look-like-a-call-girl?
(the men)
or Who do you call to get breasts-that-don’t-make-
it-look-
like-you’ve-had-your-breasts-done?
(the women).

I had been given Sophia’s number by a Canadian soap actress that Milo had tried to chat up, without much success. Schnabel had treated her for a severe form of agoraphobia. At first I had thought this girl bland and uninteresting but she was in fact cultured and discerning, and through her I discovered the charms of John Cassavetes’ films and the paintings of Robert Ryman.

Sophia Schnabel and I had never really seen eye to eye. Our sessions now mostly consisted of me simply picking up my medication, which made us both happy: she got paid for a full consultation for only five minutes’ work, and I had access to all the chemicals I wanted to pump into my body.

‘Good morning,’ Dr Schnabel greeted us as she walked into her office. She always wore the trademark welcoming smile from her television programme, and today sported the familiar tight leather jacket left open to reveal a low-cut blouse underneath. Some people thought she was stylish.

As always, it took me a few moments to get used to her shock of hair, which she tried to tame with a strange perm that made her look as if she were wearing the still-warm corpse of a small poodle.

I could tell by her greeting that she had already spoken with Milo and Carole. I was excluded from the conversation as if they were my parents and they had already taken a decision on my behalf that I had no say in at all.

What I found most disturbing was seeing Carole so distant and cold after the emotional conversation we’d had just an
hour ago. She was uncomfortable and hesitant, visibly upset at being part of a scheme she didn’t approve of. On the surface, Milo looked more sure of himself, but I sensed that this was an act for my benefit.

As I listened to Sophia Schnabel’s ambiguous words, it became obvious that a course of sleep therapy had never been the plan. The battery of tests she wanted me to undergo were just an excuse to lock me up in here. Milo was trying to have me put away so he didn’t have to deal with the financial mess he had made! I was familiar enough with California law to know that a doctor could enforce involuntary committal of a patient for up to seventy-two hours if they judged the patient to be so unstable as to present a danger to society, and in my present state I fitted into that category pretty well.

I had clashed with the authorities more than once over the past year, and it would be a long time before I was off their radar. I was currently on bail awaiting trial for possession of drugs. My encounter with Billie – which Milo was currently recounting to the doctor in vivid detail – would be enough to class me as psychotic and prone to hallucinations.

Just when I thought there could be no more surprises, I heard Carole describing the bloodstains on my shirt and the terrace windows.

‘Was it your blood, Mr Boyd?’ asked the psychiatrist.

I chose not to explain; she wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Her mind was already made up, and I could almost hear the report that she would later dictate to her secretary:

‘If you don’t mind, we’re going to start the tests.’

Yes, I did mind. I didn’t want any testing, I didn’t want to be put to sleep, I didn’t want any more pills! I got up to end the conversation.

I walked over to the polished glass screen that stood in front of the sculpture representing the Wheel of Law, decorated with little flames and floral motifs. The Buddhist emblem was about three feet tall and had eight spokes, which were supposed to indicate the path that led away from suffering. Dharma’s wheel worked thus: follow the path toward ‘what must be’, and explore the path until you find ‘the right decision’.

I had a sudden epiphany and lifted the wheel, hurling it with all my strength at the bay window, which shattered into a million tiny glass diamonds.

I can still hear Carole’s scream.

I still see the satin curtains fluttering in the wind.

I still feel the gust of wind that rushed in through the gaping hole, scattering papers and overturning a vase.