The Animators(27)

The women have multiplied. There have always been a lot—Mel has a way—but now there are more, and they are more fleeting. It used to be that Mel’s horndog would only really come out when she needed to unwind after a bad day. Like when we got shot down for a Hollingsworth the first time we applied—she wanted to drink, then fuck, then drink, in that order. She likes brunettes; in homage to her Florida roots, she’s drawn to women with deep tans. She’s rarely had girlfriends serious enough to bring around the studio, but now she doesn’t date at all. She prefers darkness, inebriation, speed. A near-dawn visit to someone’s apartment to shed clothes, bump bodies, fall asleep.

One morning, when I’d left her at Dixie Mafia the night before, she came into the studio sporting a brand-new black eye. “What happened?” I asked her.

She winked her good eye at me. “Her name was Starla.”

It’s all happened so fast, the transition of Mel’s hell-raising from preoccupation to main attraction, that I keep asking myself if I’m not blowing it all out of proportion. If I’m really seeing what I think I’m seeing. But you don’t work with someone for over ten years without getting some overflow, knowing a little of what they know, feeling a little of what they feel. I can feel the dark rushing at Mel’s center, the guilt that’s gnawing her raw. It rips me in half to see something she loves hurt her so badly. I wonder if this is why we can’t come up with a good idea. If she’s scared to work. And, if she is, what I can possibly do about it.

—

August 16. I wake up with another of the headaches. I’ve moved from ibuprofen to Percocet. I shake one out of the bottle I have stashed in my underwear drawer, swallow it with flat Diet Coke, and call a car to JFK.

I’ve just settled myself into the Delta terminal when Mel bops in, dirty duffel bag slung over her shoulder, sporting—unforgivable—a fedora.

The past two weeks have forced me to realize how narrow my life is without Mel, how unpopulated. Things got so bad, I delved into my phone directory to see who else actually lived in my world. You have other friends besides Mel, I told myself. Go out and see what they’re doing.

I had eleven contacts in my phone. Three of those were distribution.

Donnie—a sort of friend, kind of, I’ve always felt the closer to her, of Mel and me—promises to set up a lunch when she gets back from her San Francisco work trip. Fart and the interns are out; they are firmly entrenched in the Mel camp. I get the furthest with Surly Cathie, who sounds like she’s wrestling a hyena when she answers the phone. “What are you doing today?” she pants. “Feel like taking some urban junkyard photos? Professional opportunity.” She moves her mouth away from the receiver before shrieking, “Get off my frigging stoop, you shitassed brats.” Back to me. “Buncha elementary school kids. I hate summer.”

We end up out in South Edgemere, on the very edge of Queens, rolling slowly along abandoned streets the city stopped maintaining a decade ago. “Well, come on,” she says when I linger on the stoop of a house with a dangerously sagging roof and a pentagram painted on the wall. “Get in and get your feet dirty. You smell that?”

“It smells like people who have left.”

She smiles and closes her eyes, the same way she does when she gets a sound take exactly right. “Oh God, yes. Totally gone.”

The day ends when I hear growling from behind us and turn to see a large, filthy German shepherd advancing, ears back. He’s joined by another dog, and another, and a few more. Soon, there’s a pack. Hunting us.

Cathie just rolls her eyes. Says, “Shaggy bunch of bitches. Gotta show em who’s boss or they’ll track you. Eat your skin right off.”

“What?”

She steps in front of me, reaches into the waistband of her pants, and produces a Colt .22. Screams, “Okeydoke, cunts, who wants to be first?” She shoots into the pack. They scatter.

Mel and I have never ignored each other for this long. The feeling is worse than I would have expected—a horribly slow sinking sensation. It feels strange to miss her, to be afraid for her. What she might be doing, who she might be doing it with. Worrying that she’s in danger. So I’m almost glad to see her, flapping a crooked line toward me like she hasn’t gotten enough sleep, until I see her roll her eyes at me.

“Son of a bitch,” I grumble.

“Come up with something more original,” she says. “Everyone calls me that.”

“I’ll bet they do.”

She gestures at my sunglasses. “What’s the matter. Has staring into the blinding light of Brecky Tolliver’s vag burned your retinas?”

“Leave me alone,” I say, raising my voice. An old man reading a Louis L’Amour novel looks up, glares at Mel.

“My pleasure,” she says, and slinks away.

She reappears right before the plane takes off, the last to board. Donnie ordered our tickets together, of course, and the plane is full—the only seat available is the one next to me. She asks the Louis L’Amour guy if he’d be willing to trade seats. He looks up coolly, turns to me for a once-over, then looks back at Mel. Sneers, “I don’t think so.”

She settles in, giving me a preemptive dirty look before we sink into a weird, pained silence. I’m a little ashamed of myself. Hurling the Brecky offer at her was a low blow.