My Year of Rest and Relaxation (18)

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

Dr. Tuttle handed me the prescriptions.

“Here, have some samples,” she said, pushing a basket of Promaxatine toward me. “Oh no, wait, these are for impotent obsessive compulsives. They’d keep you up at night.” She pulled the basket back. “See you in a month.”

I took a cab home, filled the new prescriptions and refilled the old ones at Rite Aid, bought a pack of Skittles, and went home and ate the Skittles and a few leftover primidone and went back to sleep.



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? ? ?

THE NEXT DAY, Reva came over to whine about her dying mother and prattle on about Ken. Her drinking seemed to be getting worse that summer. She pulled out a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a can of Diet Mountain Dew from her new huge lime green alligator-skin knockoff Gucci tote.

“Want some tequila?”

I shook my head no.

Reva had an interesting method of mixing her drinks. After each sip of Diet Mountain Dew, she’d pour a little Jose Cuervo into the can to take up the space her sip had displaced, so that by the time she finished, she was drinking straight tequila. It was fascinating to me. I caught myself imagining the ratio of Diet Mountain Dew to Jose Cuervo in that can, what the formula would be to measure it sip by sip. I’d studied Zeno’s Paradox in high school algebra but never fully understood it. Infinite divisibility, the theory of halving, whatever it was. That philosophical quandary was exactly the kind of thing Trevor would have loved to explain to me. He’d sit across from me at dinner, slurping his ice water, muttering fluently about fractions of cents and the fluctuating price of oil, for example, all while his eyes scanned the room behind me as though to affirm to me that I was stupid, I was boring. Someone far better might be getting up from a table to go powder her nose. The thought stung. I still couldn’t accept that Trevor was a loser and a moron. I didn’t want to believe that I could have degraded myself for someone who didn’t deserve it. I was still stuck on that bit of vanity. But I was determined to sleep it away.

“You’re still obsessed with Trevor, aren’t you,” Reva said, slurping from her can.

“I think I have a tumor,” I replied, “in my brain.”

“Forget Trevor,” Reva said. “You’ll meet someone better, if you ever leave your apartment.” She sipped and poured and went on about how “it’s all about your attitude,” and that “positive thinking is more powerful than negative thinking, even in equal amounts.” She’d recently read a book called How to Attract the Man of Your Dreams Using Self-hypnosis, and so she went on to explain to me the difference between “wish fulfillment” and “manifesting your own reality.” I tried not to listen. “Your problem is that you’re passive. You wait around for things to change, and they never will. That must be a painful way to live. Very disempowering,” she said, and burped.

I had taken some Risperdal. I was feeling woozy.

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘eat shit or die’?” I asked.

Reva unscrewed the tequila and poured more into her can. “It’s ‘eat shit and die,’” she said.

We didn’t talk for a while. My mind drifted back to Trevor, the way he unbuttoned his shirts and pulled at his tie, the gray drapes in his bedroom, the flare of his nostrils in the mirror when he clipped his nose hairs, the smell of his aftershave. I was grateful when Reva broke the silence.

“Well, will you come out for drinks on Saturday at least? It’s my birthday.”

“I can’t, Reva,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m telling people to meet up at Skinny Kitty at nineish.”

“I’m sure you’ll have a better time if I’m not there to bum you out.”

“Don’t be that way,” Reva crooned drunkenly. “Soon we’ll be old and ugly. Life is short, you know? Die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Who said that?”

“Someone who liked fucking corpses.”



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? ? ?

REVA WAS ONLY a week older than me. On August 20, 2000, I turned twenty-five in my apartment in a medicated haze, smoking stale menthols on the toilet and reading an old Architectural Digest. At some point I fumbled in my makeup drawer for eyeliner to circle things on the pages that I found appealing—the blank corners of rooms, the sharp glass crystals hanging from a chandelier. I heard my cell phone ring but I didn’t answer it. “Happy birthday,” Reva said in her message. “I love you.”



* * *



? ? ?

AS SUMMER DWINDLED, my sleep got thin and empty, like a room with white walls and tepid air-conditioning. If I dreamt at all, I dreamt that I was lying in bed. It felt superficial, even boring at times. I’d take a few extra Risperdal and Ambien when I got antsy, thinking about my past. I tried not to think of Trevor. I deleted Reva’s messages without listening to them. I watched Air Force One twelve times on mute. I tried to put everything out of my mind. Valium helped. Ativan helped. Chewable melatonin and Benadryl and NyQuil and Lunesta and temazepam helped.

My visit to Dr. Tuttle in September was also banal. Besides the sweltering heat I suffered walking from my building into a cab, and from the cab into Dr. Tuttle’s office, I felt almost nothing. I wasn’t anxious or despondent or resentful or terrified.