Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [105]
“Amelia,” Jeremy says, as—Eureka—the operator connects me. “You can stay in one of the guest rooms. We don’t have to do anything.”
Something about the way he says that utterly convinces me that I won’t be left alone no matter what room I’m in. I don’t know if the drugs are making me paranoid or if I’m having some kind of clairvoyant vision but I don’t have any interest in finding out. “What’s your address?” I ask and he reluctantly says it. I repeat it to the Yellow Cab receptionist and hang up, feeling like this is the smartest move I’ve made in hours.
And then Jeremy suddenly seems overwhelmed with concern—or at least paranoia. Or perhaps disappointment that he shelled out almost his entire supply of E and several expensive bottles of wine and isn’t even going to get laid for his efforts. “Look, I feel sort of bad about all this,” he says, following me outside, where I pick up a nearly empty pack of Camel Lights I’d left on his patio table.
“Don’t,” I say, but my voice is cold. Now that I’ve decided I’m done, I want him out of my face. “I make my own decisions. There’s nothing to feel bad about.”
He hands me one of my plastic 7-Eleven lighters. “You know, I don’t think this is anything we need to tell people about,” he says, and I feel like I can suddenly read his paranoia, which is telling him that a Variety story on the hotshot movie producer who coaxed a sex columnist out of her sobriety with drugs could be imminent.
I nod just as I see the taxi pull up outside.
“Bye,” he says, pulling me in and giving me a kiss on the cheek, like this has been a perfectly lovely and appropriate evening. “I’ll call you.”
I start walking toward his front door, realizing that I seem to be having some trouble walking without falling. I want to say, “Please don’t,” but I don’t have the balls. When I get to the door, I turn around to look at him one last time. “You should probably get a new drug dealer,” I say, and then I leave.
29
When I come to at about three in the afternoon, I expect to be borderline suicidal, but I actually feel strangely calm. I sit up in bed, knocking a sleeping cat—who’d been meowing with unabashed vigor a few hours earlier but had clearly given up and decided to catnap it on my shoulder—onto the floor. Last night is incredibly clear in my mind: saw Adam, felt rejected, relapsed. I’ve fucked everything up, I think, as I reach for a cigarette. Why the hell am I not hysterical about it?
Deciding not to smoke, I get out of bed and wander into the kitchen, where I have some toast. While my head doesn’t seem to be reeling as much from the experience as I’d think it would, my stomach is convulsing in what feels like somersault after somersault.
As I force toast down, I remember how Tommy used to say that a relapse starts long before you take a drink. When did mine start—when Justin told me he was using? When I climbed into the life-size champagne glass? When I faked doing a vodka shot? I guess there’s no way of knowing. Then a thought pops into my head: Clearly, I can’t drink without doing drugs. Somehow this feels like an immense relief because now I don’t have to wonder. In rehab, people kept calling alcohol the “gateway” drug because as soon as they drank, the gate for doing drugs would open. But since I tended to do coke first and drink later, I hadn’t had many alcohol gateway experiences.
Looking back over the night and realizing, with bizarrely amazing recollection, that I’d easily consumed a couple of bottles of wine myself, I start to wonder if maybe there’s something to this concept of my being an alcoholic, too. Riding back in the cab earlier this morning, I’d toyed with the idea of not telling anyone about my little Ecstasy and alcohol escapade, thinking that I’d just keep going to Pledges and still celebrate a year’s sobriety in six months. Apparently, people do that—they go out and don’t tell anyone and smile about how well their sobriety’s going—but they usually end up relapsing in a far bigger