Crazy Love You (15 page)

I'd only been out of school for a couple of years when I sold
Fatboy and Priss
to Blue Galaxy, the small publisher that turned my comic into a huge success. It had started small but grew steadily into a cult phenomenon. My first apartment in New York was a five-story walk-up studio on Avenue C. I had a bed, a drafting table, and a chair, one frying pan, one plate, one set of silverware. A year ago I'd moved into a $6,000 a month loft in Tribeca, New York City's hippest, most expensive neighborhood. The place was a part of the new and improved me, the slim and successful me. I didn't want to give it up. I took a chance and told Megan all of this, most of which she already knew.

“You're not giving anything up,” she said. “You're
growing
up. We're getting married, starting a new chapter in both of our lives, right? I don't think we can do it in your
bachelor pad
.”

She leaned on the words, heavy with irony and disdain. I didn't love her tone. Why did women always have to act like that? As if men were these stupid, selfish, clueless children who needed to be corralled and controlled or else toddle into the street?

“Is this open for discussion?” I asked.

She got that tightness to her mouth that by now I knew meant she was upset.

“Of course,” she said. But her tone said:
No, you man-baby, this is not open for discussion.

“Great,” I said. “We don't need to decide today.”

More silence. She finally got those eggs into her mouth, then took a bite of toast, a swallow of coffee. She was staring out the window, the paper in front of her forgotten.

“What about the place in The Hollows?” she said. “Couldn't you use that as your writer's retreat? I mean, surely you'd have fewer
distractions
there than here.”

Wait for it. She took another sip of coffee. Then, “If that's
really
why you want to keep it.”

Now it was my turn to be quiet. I had just told her why I wanted to keep the apartment. Why didn't she believe that? There were already little problems—maybe every couple has them even from the very beginning. Little things that might just go away, or might be tiny fissures that will split wide open when pressure is applied. She had never met Priss, and I had told Megan that Priss was gone from my life for good. But we both knew that this wasn't quite true. It bothered her, she'd told me, that she felt like I didn't
want
them to meet. We didn't talk about it much, but the issue was there.

Plus, I was still doing some recreational drug use—pills, weed, too much drinking for Megan's taste. She'd asked me to cut back, and I had, some. But not enough. It had come up a couple times, kind of lightly.
Do I smell weed?
Or,
Are your eyes glassy?
The truth was, I didn't want to be completely sober. Weed took the edge off some of the anxiety issues I suffered. And pills like Adderal and Ritalin kept me focused and productive. I could get them online, they weren't exactly illegal. I wasn't drinking to the point of blacking out anymore, so that was something, wasn't it? Sober, I was anxious and unfocused. Better living through chemistry, right?

And now we were talking about The Hollows house. I thought I'd made my feelings on the subject pretty clear. But Megan wasn't getting it. Looking at her, I could feel the pull of that place. It wanted me to come back, and it was using Megan to lure me.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

My tone was harsher than I had intended. It bounced back at me way too nasty, too angry. I saw her eyes grow wide with surprise, then fill with tears.

“Nothing,” she said. She drew in a sharp breath and looked away. Wow, did I ever feel like shit. I had never made Megan cry before, not from being a jerk.

“I'm sorry,” I said. I moved around the table to her and knelt by her side. “I'm sorry.”

“Maybe this is going too fast,” she said. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt. “Maybe you're not ready. It's okay if you're not.”

“I
am
,” I said. “I'm
so
ready. I love you.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding, still not looking at me.

I leaned in to kiss her, and she kissed me back. I was expecting a chaste make-up kiss, but was surprised by its heat and hunger. It was an invitation. I stood and pulled her to her feet and she wrapped her arms around my neck. Oh, she was sweet and warm and my body came alive with wanting her. Her fingers laced themselves through my hair. I pulled off her top and gazed at the long willow of her torso, the perfect white swell of her breasts, the pink roses of her nipples. I lifted her and she wrapped her legs around me. She was a perfect flower of a woman, dewy and blush.

In the bedroom, I lay beside her and held her as close to me as our bodies would allow. I buried myself in her. I pressed my face into the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. She moaned low and breathy for me, pulled me in deeper and deeper. Her hands on my back, her breath in my ear, the caress of her leg on mine—I was lost in her, the peaceful deep of her goodness, her warmth. Why couldn't we just stay there like that? Why did the ugly world always have to be waiting just outside the door?

As we lay quiet afterward, I heard Priss's voice.
She played you, Fatboy. She pulled it all out—tears and sex.

No, that's not Megan.

That's all women. They all bring out the big guns to get what they want. And why not? It works. You're putty in her hands.

You don't know her.

•  •  •

Later that afternoon, Megan left to go to work. And as soon as I was sure she wasn't coming back to the loft for whatever she might have left behind, I popped an Adderal. Then I looked up a number I'd been meaning to call for a while: No Paine Construction.

My dad's old partner got right on the line.

“Ian!” he boomed. “Good to hear from you kid.” Then, softer, “How's your mom?”

“She's holding her own, Mr. Craine.”

“Hey, kid, for the millionth time, call me Jack,” he said. “How's the funny business?”

“Pretty good,” I said. He made me smile. He found it amusing that I wrote “comic books” for a living. And it
was
a pretty silly way to get by, if you thought about it.

“I keep looking for your comics in the paper,” he said.

“Someday maybe,” I said, just to be friendly. Most people did not get what I did. They didn't understand writers or artists and they definitely didn't understand graphic novelists. But that was okay.

“So, Jack,” I said. “I think I want to tear down the old house.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I'm getting married in a couple of months—”

“Whoa! You're kidding. Man, does that make me feel old or what? Congratulations, Ian. Your mom must be happy.”

I actually hadn't even told my mom. That was another thing Megan was kind of miffed about. I literally didn't have one person I wanted to invite to our wedding. Not one. Colleagues, acquaintances, childhood friends? No. My mom would never come; she couldn't handle the trip, the event. She wasn't well enough.

“She is,” I said. “She's really happy.”

“So the new missus has ideas for The Hollows property, huh?”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I got an architect on staff now, you know. We can set up an appointment, help you with the plans for the new place.”

“Definitely,” I said, trying to sound enthused. “But in the meantime, can we just schedule the demolition?”

“Sure,” he said. I heard him tapping on a keyboard. “We're a bit swamped but I have a gap in a couple of weeks. It shouldn't take more than two or three days to do the job. What about the stuff inside?”

“Junk it.”

A pause. “The furniture, the appliances?”

“Just junk it all or sell it, whatever it is you guys do with it.”

“You sure? There's nothing you want from there.”

“Nope,” I said. “Everything of any importance was cleaned out long ago.”

Photos, beloved childhood books, legal documents, my old sketches, a couple of paintings my mom did, some of her old clips, her diplomas, baby keepsakes—my old blanket, Ella's. It filled exactly three boxes and they sat in the guest room closet here in the loft.

I heard him tapping. “All right, kiddo, you're in the schedule.”

“Great, Jack,” I said. “That's great.”

“Hey, Ian,” he said. “What about the other place?”

“Oh, yeah.” Priss's house.

“Want me to rip up that old foundation? We didn't do it right the first time, and it's a bit of a hazard. No charge.”

I felt the bite of fear, a lash of something like shame. Maybe I was going too far. What happened when The Hollows was calling you back and you gave it the big middle finger? Then I caught myself. That was crazy thinking. Megan said it herself:
You give that place too much power.
The same was true for Priss. Maybe Fatboy couldn't get his shit together. But I, Ian Paine,
was
the master of my own universe. Neither The Hollows, nor Priss—nor even Megan—was going to tell me what to do.

“Yeah,” I said. “That would be great.”

More tapping.

“It'll feel good, I think,” said Jack finally. He was always such a nice guy; my dad really liked and respected him. “Raze the past, start a new life. You deserve it.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That's the plan.”

“It's a nice piece of land. We'll build you something beautiful when you're ready, for you and your new family.”

That was never going to happen. I would scorch the earth before I would ever move “my new family” out to that hell mouth.

“I'm looking forward to the day,” I said, just to be sociable. “I really am.”

I ended the call feeling weak, even shaking a little, with relief. I lifted a recent sketch of Priss and Fatboy. She was pulling him off the train tracks.
That
was Fatboy, not me. I didn't need Priss to live my life.

See. She didn't get what she wanted
, I said in my head.

Didn't she?

But even under the relief, the bravado of my thoughts, wasn't there a dark river of dread? Didn't part of me know that I had stepped over some cosmic line?

Anyway, that's when bad things started happening.

After I had scheduled the demolition on the house, and the initial superstitious dread subsided, I rode a giddy sense of freedom. I was shedding all the negativity in my life—Priss, The Hollows, even the series, which had, as Zack had intuited, come to its natural end. The house was going to be leveled, and with it any chance that Megan could convince me to go back there. I hadn't seen Priss at all; she was obviously respecting my wishes. And I was tearing up the place where I'd first met her, so even my memories wouldn't have a home there anymore. I felt good—liberated and strong.

Meanwhile, I buckled down and started working like a machine, taking Adderal in order to work sixteen-hour days on the last
Fatboy and Priss.
I had one bottle left, a little orange vial of blue pills—just enough for a month. I was taking it only in order to meet the deadline, I told myself. I felt guilty because of the promises I'd made to Meg. But I swore to myself that when I was done with this book, I was done with the pills.

I'd stopped smoking weed during the workweek, and whenever Megan was around.
It makes you gross and lazy
, she told me. And I knew she was right. I was just a lump on weed, voraciously hungry and zoned out. I'd also promised to give up anything harder permanently. Moderate drinking was still okay, though. (God knows Binky and Julia tossed back two martinis a night, and Megan had never met a glass of Cabernet that she didn't like.)

I wanted to give up all the drugs. I would have done anything for Megan, anything to be the man she wanted me to be. But,
honestly
, I didn't have the mental juice to do what I needed to do without help. I tried not to worry that I had permanently fried my brain with everything I'd taken over the years—weed, blow, X, mushrooms, mescaline, ruffies. They—the ubiquitous “they,” with all their threats and warnings—say the kind of drugs I was taking can permanently alter the chemicals in your brain. I told myself I'd deal with my various addictions and all the problems associated with such after the wedding, after the book was turned in and accepted, and after Megan and I were married and lying on a beach in Hawaii. Then I'd do some self-examination, walk into my new marriage working to be a better man.

But right now there was work to be done and very little time to do it. Adderal made me a superachiever: focused, tireless, fearlessly creative. And I needed that. I was struggling with the narrative, wrestling with Priss and what needed to ultimately happen in the book. It was like she was fighting me, clinging to her own existence.

One night around three a.m. I crashed hard. I must have fallen asleep at my computer, just spent. Graphic novels are often a team effort. There might be a creator, and a writer to begin with. Then there's a penciler, who does the initial sketching for the book, the inker, and finally the colorist. I do it all for
Fatboy and Priss
. The writing, the art. I am the creator, the artist,
and
the writer.

It's a paper-and-pencil proposition. I write out the story longhand in a notebook—totally old school—creating a loose outline of how I want things to go. But I never know exactly how things are going to end. Then I start penciling the panels, very vague sketches of how the story is going to evolve in pictures.

Once that's in place (with some ambiguity toward the end) I start inking. After that, I scan the inked pages into my computer. And working in Adobe Photoshop, I do the coloring, shading, all the fine-tuning of the images, as well as the lettering.