I'm Glad About You(85)

But Dennis considered his singular ice cube tray with the focused confidence of an aristocrat. “Well, I’m sorry if my little foray into the truth got you in the shithouse with Van. But for f*ck’s sake, Kyle, the woman is a nightmare. I would say if she wants a divorce you should be celebrating. Do not pass go, just get out of jail free.”

“It’s hardly that simple.”

“Stop being such a *. You’ve been miserable for years. You never had the balls to just take what you want. Catholicism is stupid. Everybody else knows this; why don’t you? You’re supposed to be so smart, the doctor, start acting like it!” This last bit was delivered with a flash of mean pleasure. It moved quickly, but it was startling in its sneering superiority. Something in Dennis had begun to edge into bitterness; he was turning into the definition of a nasty drunk. The clinician in Kyle recognized the signs and behaviors of the toxicity, how thoroughly the alcohol was taking hold of the organism. Dennis needed months in rehab. He needed his family to step in, not that they would. His father had washed his hands of him years ago. Can you do that? Can you wash away your children? The sacrament of baptism, the washing away of sins. Can you wash away your life?

I need to get out of here. Kyle stood, swayed briefly as the oxygen hit his brain. He needed to find an all-night diner, and get four or five cups of bad coffee into him.

“Where are you going?” Dennis asked. “Kyle! Where are you going?” What’s he so pissed about? Kyle’s bad brain seemed to finally have gone to sleep. Why, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was the sight of Dennis, drunk, proud, withered, old. “Are you going to New York, to finally do it with your long-lost love? Let me tell you. You haven’t missed that much. Seriously! She’s still not giving out. Not to the likes of us, anyway.”

What was he saying? Kyle knew he was trying to get a rise out of him. He knew, also, that Dennis was a liar, that he had told Van whatever he could, that he had thrown bombs into his marriage, that Dennis was every bit the man he claimed to be—charming, dangerous, completely and utterly destructive in every way. He reached for the doorknob behind him.

“Yeah, you heard me!” Dennis jeered. He sounded like a kid in a schoolyard, daring Kyle to punch him. “I went to New York, I saw her!” Kyle turned back and looked at him. “She’s totally sold out. She’s f*cking some director, she’s f*cking anyone. Anyone except you and me! She is what she always was, Kyle. She’s nothing but a whore.”

“Stop.” Kyle was exhausted by the breakage. The breakage of everything. Dennis wove in and out of focus. He was wearing a dirty plaid robe—what an affectation—over a T-shirt and sweats. His face was full-on purple, the color of someone about to have a heart attack. How had this happened?

“Did you even hear what I said?”

“You should go back to AA, Dennis,” Kyle told him. “You’re not well.”

“That’s hilarious, coming from you.”

Kyle turned the doorknob, swung the door open.

Can you wash away your life?





twenty-two





MOVIES WERE FUN. The makeup trailer was boring, and it was a drag to have to get out of bed at four in morning all the time, and everybody obsessing about your hair was boring, and having your picture taken and talking to reporters all the time was also dead boring. But the rest was a blast.

A movie set is a like an aircraft carrier. One of the grips had told her this. A big guy with a plain blue tattoo on the back of his left hand, Stu had been in the navy for sixteen years before they sent him to the Gulf, where he saw some honest-to-God action. According to Stu, who was also a huge flirt, everything in the navy was built toward that aircraft carrier. It was the tip of the spear. The fighter pilots were the tip of the tip. They were the movie stars. He would grin at her, point. She was the tip of the tip here.

Not that Alison was a movie star. Not yet. But the dailies were phenomenal. She had been warned not to watch them, and in fact she wasn’t allowed to watch them, but the buzz on the set was “phenomenal.” It was a peculiar word, when you heard people say it over and over; it sounded insecure and phony, so she didn’t believe it when it first started floating around the bubble of their own little biosphere. Of course people in show business were always pumping themselves up and no one ever wanted to be caught up saying anything negative, that was the sort of shit that could get you fired. But at some point a different sound entered all the narcissistic chatter. There was, apparently, buzz. The suits started to show up on the set. Everyone started to take credit.

Everyone especially started taking credit for her. “I was thrilled when Lars brought up her name, the first time,” Norbert told Us Weekly. “Gordon said from the start, we need to make a star with this one and I took one look at Alison and said, she’s the one.”

“She’s been on everybody’s radar for a while,” Colin told People. “It was just a matter of time until she made the leap into features. I had seen tape on her a couple years ago, people were talking about her then. I said to Gordon, you have to see this girl. And Gordon totally agreed.”

This account was politely contradicted by Gordon. “She was my idea, from the word go,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “I told all of them, you guys need to look at this tape on this girl before you do anything else. It was Lars who needed a little convincing.”