Where It Began(45)

Leaving aside those pesky questions that are sure to come up in maybe five minutes (if Mr. Healy ever shows) about (1) the drunk driving, (2) the Beemer, and (3) why someone who did what I did should get out of trouble just by having her enormous lawyer bludgeon people.

What I don’t want to be doing is the thing I came here to do: get arrested. Or maybe re-arrested, this time adding the element of consciousness.

It turns out that there are quite a few other things I don’t want to do, such as getting fingerprinted.

Such as having mug shots taken with numbers on the bottom. Such as surrendering my driver’s license—graciously returned to us by the mom of the kid who threw the party on Songbird Lane by FedEx, my wallet still nestled inside my bag and nothing missing—into a big mustard-colored envelope with my number on the front.

Such as getting a date and an actual time on a real day in June to show up in juvenile court.

So I hold my breath and get logged in to the system, with Mr. Healy standing around drumming his fingers as if he’s bored and all of this is no big deal. And I say, “I don’t remember,” in response to every question other than the one about my name and address.

No, I have no firsthand knowledge of where the party was or who threw it or if there even was a party or how I got the liquor or if I drank it of my own free will or if there even was liquor, which I don’t remember and therefore I can’t admit I drank. Artfully avoiding words like “stole” and “Billy.”

The detective looks annoyed as hell but he has the doctor’s report about the tree and its effect on my head right in front of him on the table so he can’t exactly come out and say liar, liar, pants on fire to try to get me to tell him what he wants to know. He keeps cozying up to words that have a great deal of SAT potential such as “stonewall” and “intransigent,” but Mr. Healy keeps murmuring “closed head injury,” and I just sit there, amazed by the depth and breadth of what I really don’t know, and hoping I look dazed and brain-dead enough for them to leave me alone.

What I want to know is why Billy didn’t tell me this part of it, the part where you’re sitting in a metal chair in a windowless room and it feels like you’re an inch away from being sucked up into a whole other life—not in a distant universe, but in a squat, shabby building, with cells and linoleum floors and pissed-off detectives, that you never even knew was there before.

Explain that.

And when I am finally home, alone in my room, all I can think is, Man, if I did have a drinking problem, this would be the magic moment.

And then I think: What the hell?

And I go into the bar in the living room and get out some vile-tasting twelve-year-old scotch and some ice.





XXXIII


WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DRINKING A GREAT deal of scotch on the rocks when you’re alone in your bedroom is that, in addition to making you feel somewhat less preoccupied with the sorry state of your abysmal, completely wrecked life, it makes you uncoordinated and a sentimental sap and somewhat more stupid than usual.

Which might cause you to drink even more scotch on the rocks in order to take the edge off feeling stupid, et cetera.

So basically I sit on the edge of my bed hugging the ice bucket, drinking twelve-year-old Glenlivet and feeling like a moron. Vivian is getting over her traumatic afternoon in the Valley by getting her nails wrapped in Santa Monica and I, actually being a sentimental sap and also stupid, start rummaging through the Billy Nash memorabilia in the top drawer of my dresser.

There are movie ticket stubs and shells from the beach outside his parents’ place near Point Dume and a ratty wrist corsage that I probably should have pressed instead of shoving it whole into a drawer where the petals are turning into mini-compost.

There are little boxes that used to contain an assortment of Belgian chocolates that Billy bought for me only because he wanted the semi-sweet truffles and if he bought the whole box for me, he didn’t have to feel like a goof standing in line at Godiva Chocolatier buying himself romantic candy.

There is the Rule the Pool water polo booster baseball cap that seems like a good thing to be wearing only because by that point in the bottle, I am seriously judgment-impaired.

It seems like a good idea to ponder all the lined up little presents Andie Bennett has mailed me since the accident, and then it seems like an even better idea to kiss the little plastic Flower the Skunk figurine with the pencil sharpener embedded in its belly that she sent last week, only I don’t even think about how a person could nick her lip on the metal strip where the shavings get sliced off the pencil.

By the time Anita calls to see if I want her to come over so we can quiz each other on SAT words, I am impaired on several other dimensions too, and she says, “Are you all right? You sound awful.”

I say, “I’m fine.”

“I don’t know,” Anita says. “Are you crying? Should I come over?”

“I just cut my lip on a pencil sharpener. Don’t come over.”

You can hear Anita taking a breath. “Gabby,” she says, “if this is wrong, I’ll never bring it up again, but are you drunk?”

This seems like the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all day, which isn’t saying much. The only tiny scrap of self-control I have left staunches the impending giggle and leaves me sort of snorting into the phone.

“I’m not drunk,” I say, in a vain attempt to sound as if I’m not. “Maybe I went to the dentist so my tongue is numb.”