Hella Nation - Evan Wright [159]
“Is this your new little slave?” Megan says, nodding toward Josiah. She says to me, “Pat always manages to get a little slave. Like I was.”
Dollard laughs indulgently and corrals her into the editing room for her viewing of Young Americans. Megan sits on the bed and watches the first few minutes with a stony expression. Then she starts to sob.
“Jesus, they’re so young,” she says of the Marines on screen. “They’re like the boys I went to school with.”
“I told you this was good,” Dollard says.
“Have you talked to your mother?” Megan asks. “You need to call her.”
“How’s that fucking bitch?” Dollard says.
“You don’t talk about your mother that way.”
“Watch me—I just did. I just did.”
“Your mother is the most wonderful woman that I’ve ever met,” Megan says. “I want to punch you in the face right now.”
She sits up and inadvertently knocks over an ashtray concealed under the blanket on the bed. She leaps up, brushing ashes from her jeans. “This brings back memories,” she says, growing angry. “This is definitely why I left you.”
“You left because you’re a quitter,” Dollard says.
“I left because you are an alcoholic and you won’t get help,” Megan says.
“You didn’t stick around like Bill Wilson’s wife,” Dollard says, referring to the wife of the AA cofounder. “If Bill Wilson’s wife hadn’t stuck by his side when he was drinking, there would be no AA.”
“My husband was hiring hookers on my credit card—to buy coke [for him],” Megan says to me.
She walks to the door. Dollard hurries after her and hands her the papers he promised her. She kisses him on the cheek and leaves.
Dollard stares at the door. “This really hurts,” he says. “Am I over her? Maybe not. But the question with having a woman is, to what extent do I want to continue to engage with civilization?”
“Jesus Christ, Pat,” Josiah says, still playing Hitman 2. “You said she was hot, eh? But she’s really fucking hot.”
THE JESUS ROOM
DOLLARD’S SCREENING WITH SHEILA NEVINS, in New York, is scheduled for mid-October. During the two weeks before his scheduled departure, his behavior becomes increasingly bizarre. He phones early one morning and says, “I need your help.”
I ask him what’s going on.
“I’m taking steps,” he says, “but they ain’t the twelve steps.” He won’t explain any further, because he feels it’s unsafe to talk on the phone. A couple hours later he shows up at my apartment. There is a massive safe in the back of his Hummer. All his money is in there, he tells me. He plans to hide it. To that end, he needs to leave his cell phone at my house so no one will track him while he’s on his mission. Several days later he phones from a new telephone number and leaves a message: “Driving on Washington Boulevard I clutch the receipt for my new forty-five-caliber Glock and the feeling that I will be very disappointed if I die before I kill jihadis with this gun.”
It turns out that in the state of California people who have been taken into custody as a danger to themselves and others and held for psychiatric evaluation—as Dollard has been—are potentially ineligible to purchase firearms for the next five years. Days later, he calls: “Yo, call me as soon as you get this, please. I need to know if you have a clean record in California, and if you could purchase guns. I will pay you.”
I decline the offer.
Dollard is eager for me to accompany him to New York and witness what he expects will be his triumphant screening for HBO. The day we are to fly out, a girl named Sunshine (I’ve changed her name) phones and introduces herself as one of Pat Dollard’s assistants. She is calling to arrange the final details of our flight. An hour later Dollard phones to say his new assistant will be flying to New York with us. “Oh, yeah,” he adds. “Sunshine will be smoking meth.”
The two never show up for the flight.
Josiah phones the next morning from New York. He has taken it upon