Plush (19 page)

“Carter’s daughter, Lila, is in a play,” I mumble. My fingers, I keep playing with my fingers. “Um, Enzo… Do you want to hang out?” Don’t look up. Hayley, stop yourself…. But I can’t… “I mean, just for a minute?” Enzo glances down the hall. Oh fuck, alright, I better stop this. “I guess it’s awkward? I mean –”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” His arm sashays. Of course. He’s gay, safe and gay. And safe-and-gay men are more fun anyway, everybody knows that. I open the door; he follows me in. I double lock it and look out the peephole: no one there. I shut the curtains.

There’s old room service food on a tray, and I snack a little. Enzo hands me a drink. He notices my laptop’s open and reads: it has all the fucking nasty blog reviews of my new album up on the screen.

I slam the computer shut, light a fag, and
pace; I can’t stop pacing
. Just don’t be still. To not feel how real this all is, I can’t be still. My world is collapsing. Keep moving, go, go, go, Hayley. I go to my suitcase. “They’re right. I can’t write without Jack, like Jack couldn’t write without me.” My voice is quivering again. I empty out my purse. Where the fuck are my Xanax? I don’t want to ever come down.

“People see you in pain and instead of giving you a band-aid, they pour acid on the wound…” His words are Nyquil, soothing me. If I could only find the Xanax. Ah, here they are. I pop two – not too many, just two, Hayley. I down them with some booze.
Don’t judge me.
Enzo is giving me those concerned fucking parenting eyes from the edge of the bed. I light another cigarette, and he takes it from me and points to the one I have lit sitting in the ashtray. Hayley, you’re fucking crazy, and he sees it. You’re going to kill everything good.

“Write with me if you like sometime, Hayley… Maybe it’ll work. Take some of the prickly pressure off of doing it all yourself.”

I light another cigarette. I don’t care about anything right now but disappearing from my life, my fans, my bloggers, and my fucked-up head. This hurts so much to think I did the most honest work of my life and nobody gets it. Maybe I need to die for them to get it… or maybe it was bad… or maybe I do need Enzo.

My head,
ahk
, is killing me. Did I say that out loud? I need distraction. “Yeah, ok maybe we can try, I don’t know… Have you ever seen
Howl’s Moving Castle?
Miyazaki is one of my favorites. I like things that induce the magic I want to live in.” I inhale smoke rings through smoke rings caterpillar-wonderland-style. Some through my mouth and some through my ribs. Enzo smiles. Of course he’s seen it. I grab my computer, open the film, hit play and put it on the bed. I prop pillows up and sit up against the bed board, and Enzo sits next to me. This is the sort of thing I used to love to do with Jack. The film plays colors upon colors of magic, witches, potions, boney wizard princes, and questions of vanities insanity. I put my head on Enzo’s shoulder, and his arm goes around me. I feel so happy right now – a little less alone in the world. We say the lines in unison: “Wow! He must have been a wizard then… But he was so kind to me. He rescued me, Letti… Of course he did; he was trying to steal your heart. You were so lucky Sophie. If that Wizard were Howl, he would have eaten it… No he wouldn’t. Howl only does that to beautiful girls.”

I am feeling the magic of living come back to me. Sometimes I get so sucked in the darkness, I forget about all the beauty in the world and especially in art. I need to stay out of my head more. I need more moments like this, moments where I am understood and not putting on a mask or trying to be a star or a mom or anything – just me at my raw essence. Enzo makes me feel like I can be myself. I think I may have found a best friend – popping grapes into each other’s mouth, laughing, falling, spinning, no expectations.

The movie ends. I get up to pee, and as I come back he is standing, swaying to some music. “Hayze, have you heard the new My Bloody Valentine song “Only Tomorrow?” He’s doing a slow, languid, spider, shoegazer dance. I lift my arms and join, nodding my head in the clouds. I remember Annie telling me once: “Recognize the good moments in life when they’re happening, because they’re not to be taken for granted.”

We don’t hold each other; we just fade into the sounds of guitar tones and distortions that understand this moment of infinite possibility like we are the wind. We are dim lights, lost cities, lost souls, forgiving the world. The song ends. It had to… didn’t it? “Enzo I’m tired… I think I need to pass out,” I say as I rub my sore shoulders. He offers me a massage by making movements with his hands. “That would be so fucking awesome. Planes. Life Drains. Everything…” I lay flat on the couch, but it’s hard to make my neck comfortable and breathe without a face pillow. “Wish we had a ringy thingy.” Head is woozy.

“I do have a little pillow.” He dims the lights, just-before-take-off low. “I’ll get it from my room, okay?” I put on Astrobrite’s “Crush,” and lay back down. I want to sink under the ground. Enzo comes back in with a weird black-and-red-flowered suitcase. Super freaking gay. He locks the door, sits over me, and starts to rub my head. I’m so fucking tired, so weak. I can’t blame me.
Gooey brain melt
.

He: “Yes. I have good and maleficently magic hands. Guitar playing hands.” I’m relaxing so deep. I could pass out. “Enzo. I’m floating down a rabbit hole. There’s so much chaos around me and… I’m so sleepy.” He takes off my shirt, straddling my back. There are so many knots; he’s pushing harder, going deeper.
Chaos, forever heartache, permanent meltdown. Velvet horses strung on a string of lights shake in and out. Don’t let the blackness swallow you whole. Holes. So many holes inside, but now I fly in the night, wings outstretched. Leave myself. BZZZZZZ… He’s vibrating my back with something. Me. So dreamy. The song switches to Noir Desir
’ s “Des
Armes.” Des armes… des armes… I’m blacking in and out, in and out
.

Did he just put something inside me? Rapture, raptors, claws, and crescendos. Car windows tossing out memories. Songs lull me in. Insanity. Uh… uh… what? “Enzo
…
Enzo…” Lullabies of insanity, carousels in the clouds. “Don’t stop… Enzo…” Did I say that out loud. Am I alive? Am I asleep? Dreaming? Dreaming of him and me like I did last night
…

“Hayley… I know what you want from me,” he whispers.

Enzo. Enzo. Release me from me. Enzo. Make me whole again. Uh. So deep. Is this a dream? Enzo. Oh, hold me down. Save me. Break me. Take me. This is all I want. All I want is you. I’m so broken. Uh. Uh. Do whatever you want. Uh. Uh. I’m falling, falling. Screaming. Stars are stretching me in their flames. Enzo is everywhere in me, everywhere, every cell is united with him. I’ll be your everything, Enzo. Tell me what you want. Black out
.

48

Holy fuck, my head is concrete. My eyes feel like glue. Ahhh. Mornings after getting fucked-up and high when I was 19 sure as hell didn’t feel like it does now. Ugh. Get up, Hayley. Come on.

I sit up in the web of blankets knotted at my feet. I’ve only got socks on. Oh no. Enzo. Was that real? Did I just fuck my life up… again? I look around the room. No Enzo. If I had fucked Enzo he probably would have stayed. I think so. Maybe it was a dream?

I get out of bed. On the floor is a carnage of clothes and booze bottles and the sprawled ruins of the devastation of who I once was morphing into who I am, and the person I don’t like that I’m becoming.

BZZZZZZZZZ
. What the fuck is that? I dig through the blankets, the mind fields of memories seeping through my brain.
BZZZZZZ
– the vibrator? Massager? The hotel bed is devastation and mystery…
BbbZZZZZAh
. It’s my phone… Shit… There it is. It’s Carter. Oh, fuck. I miss the call and type in
“Call you in 10.”
I better clean up a little. I don’t need any guilt trips from anybody on how I’m living my life. I already feel guilty enough. I throw clothes in suitcase, pull out a Bowie tee, black jeans, and pull back hair.
Get my shit together.

I hear a knock and run up to the peephole – no more crazy fan incidents for me please. I open it and the red-capped Room Service man brings me OJ and food – but, fuck food. I have a swamp in my gut of searing sadness, dragons burning fire and draining truth, and dirty panties in vending machines, throwing out nickels instead of honesty.

Sometimes I think nobody understands me. OK. Jeeze. Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself. Get your shit together, Hayley. Maybe reading too much Plath and Duras has fucked my life view forever. Out he goes. Through the walls I can see him walking down the hallway pushing the cart away. I double lock the door and pop open the computer.

Skype. Carter. The twins are building castles with Lila and don’t care that I’m on some computer screen. They barely fucking say “Hi.” I wouldn’t say “Hi” to me. I try to talk to her, but apparently I’m like a homeless person off the freeway that you roll up the window and look the other way to. Cody runs into frame. “I want scrambled eggs. And rabies!” Haha. A freak like me. At least I did something right. Benjy won’t even look up at the screen. “So Benjy, is that a dump truck you’re using to build your castle?” Benjy doesn’t say a fucking thing. Really? It’s only been like three days. They will understand when they get older:
life just doesn’t turn out the way you want it to; you have no fucking control over the planet’s puppet show. How death just eats your goodness and hope alive.

“Benjy, Mommy’s talking to you.” The ever-gallant Carter steps into view, as someone knocks the screen a bit.

“I know.” Benjy says.

“Well, answer her, buddy, OK?” Carter’s in a white shirt. So clean. So pure. Guilt is a sinking ship in my swamp of a gut. I take a sip of juice. I want to smoke, but shouldn’t in front of the kids.

“Course it’s a dump truck!” Benjy yells. So much aggression. He could get that from me. Cody is running around wearing a monster mask I made with him: Godzilla meets Frankenstein meets aliens. Benjy chases him out of the room. Lila grabs her shoes and leaves too. Everybody is leaving me.
Do they know secretly that I’m failing at life?
Carter is still working on his laptop at the kitchen counter, concentrating so hard. Here I fucking am. You know, your sometimes wife! “Oh-kay. What’re you working on?” I say to Carter.

He’s researching another crazy story: those unsolved mysteries where a killer will leave hair and blood in ice cube trays and little dolls made of human bones from past victims with his new victims. He’s on some magazine deadline as usual. Carter walks toward the camera staring so deep and hard into me. I am afraid he might see all the lies just beneath. He kisses the screen like he’s missing me bad – but not my badness. He’s my prince no matter what. He’s always my prince, and I feel like such a fuck-up – I hate that I maybe have feelings for En– I won’t say it. Please don’t make me feel so much for someone else when I have the world’s best guy already. Oh Hay-ley, you fuck!

“I miss you too… I wish you and the little monsters coulda made it. I wanted them to see the bats.” I hint about the ridiculously sucky reviews of my heartache spilled into music called an album – that they call ‘shit.’ He tries to comfort me, but he’s not being honest with himself on how. And a fucking band-aid is not what I need.
I need open heart surgery.
Carter twists his perfect man nose and says too soft, “Men sometimes can’t understand such vulnerability” Haha. Awesome. I sink deeper in the ravine of me. Don’t freaking grab a fag, Hayley – not in front of him. Be a good girl. Be good… No Xanax, though I need a fucking Xanax.

Carter continues on and on all about –
blah, blah
– I should have made a more happy album, at least one party song, that’s what the kids want –
blah, blah, blah
. Fuck him. Why would he be such a prick?

“JACK’S FUCKING DEAD! How much fucking fun can I have?! WOOO, LIFE’S A PARTY! I’m HAPPY SEE? EVERYTHING IS FINE!” I light a cigarette up now that the kids can’t see.

And if it’s even fucking possible, he drives the nail in my heart and head even further, fracturing my spine, telling me his book deal –
blah, blah, blah
– is going through, and now he’s making the big bucks so I can take time off… WHO is he to tell me what to do? I’m so tired of the men in my life dictating what I should be doing, how I should behave. First dad, then Jack. Now him? What am I supposed to do, become a fucking housewife?
I’m a ROCKSTAR,
misogynistic fuck! “I DON’T WANT TO TAKE TIME OFF!” Carter’s face goes dead. See.
I just broke him they way he broke me
. Me: “I gotta go…” I shut the screen.