by Byron Lane
In her closet, she has a shoebox filled with precious metals and gems scattered about, necklaces knotted around diamond rings, brooches pinned through emerald earrings. I clear out a sock drawer and fill it with velvet jewelry holders to sort her bracelets, hold her rings, untangle her chains. Loose diamonds go in one section, crystal earrings go in another.
Kathi yells, “Where’s my orange brooch with the doodads and blap?”
I yell, “In your jewelry drawer.”
Kathi yells, “I have a jewelry drawer?”
I puff my chest. “You do now.”
Under her bedroom is a small basement with an empty four-drawer black file cabinet, so I fill it with contents I find scattered all over the house: family pictures, press photos, headshots, intimate letters from family and friends and exes. Everything gets put in manila folders and filed in alphabetical order.
Kathi wrote all of her books by hand on thousands of pages ripped from yellow legal pads. The looping writing of her thoughts turned to words that stretch for miles across page after page in various color inks and without regard for the silly blue guidelines that came printed on the pages—those lines are for the birds, not for film icon Kathi Kannon, whose writing sometimes appears in circles from the center of the page, twirling prose all the way out to the edges, on the backs of pages, with arrows and lines and new words inserted here and paragraphs scratched out there. All of these pages are sorted and filed. I look forward to helping her write more.
As Agnes naps in the kitchen, I turn to the problems of the pantry, using Post-it notes to mark the designated places to put brown sugar, white sugar, powdered sugar, noodles, tomato sauce, napkins, paper towels. I print the inventory so when Agnes orders groceries, she knows exactly what is needed. I sort kitchen drawers and stick Post-it notes to each. Utensils. Pot holders. Mystery items.
Kathi continues with her life, me in her orbit. Or is she in orbit around me?
Sleep, bake, Vegas, repeat.
“Do you want to do any writing today?” I ask, pen and legal pad in hand.
“No, thanks, Cockring. I’m going to Vegas.”
“Again? What’s left to buy? Your room is full of new stuff from Vegas trips this week.”
She says, “There’s always room for more.”
She says, “I’m helping the economy.”
She says, “Why drink from a puddle when you can drink from the ocean?”
Kathi walks to the front door and turns. “And by the way, everything is looking good,” she says, waving her hand about as she strolls out, leaving the door wide open. I gleefully hop up and close it for her. I get back to work, her life.
Sleep, bake, Vegas, repeat.
Unanswered emails get answered.
Her lawyer and agent are loving me as shit gets done, handled. Paperwork gets signed. Kathi starts getting small tasks completed—a favor for this hanger-on, for this magazine, for that producer.
I say, “Hey, Kathi, People magazine wants to know how you would describe yourself?”
She says, “I’m sorry.”
I repeat it, louder this time. “People magazine is asking—”
“No, I heard you,” she replies. “I’m answering you. That’s one way I’d describe myself. Sorry. I’m also bipolar, manic, OCD. I’m postmenopausal, over the hill, a former drug addict. I’m short, overweight, single, poor-ish. I’m loud, smart, insecure. I’m a pinup and an antique simultaneously. I’m bloated and pretentious—those last two go together.” And slam. She closes her bedroom door, in for the night at three P.M., to be asleep in moments. Easy for me to think it’s a waste or a loss. But in truth, I wish I could take a nap in the middle of the day. Who’s to say it’s not a more productive life for her to work when she wants, to create when she wants; perhaps she needs more rest than other mere mortals, perhaps her brain works harder, longer, perhaps her heart beats faster, harder.
Sleep, bake, Vegas, repeat.
I ask, “Am I the best assistant you’ve ever had?”
“Not yet,” she says coyly. “But keep at it.”
“What’s my latest grade?”
“I guess a D.”
“A D!” I yell. “I was a D, like, two weeks ago, and look at all the work I’m doing!”
“Well, I don’t know,” Kathi says defensively. “We’re still new together. I can’t give you an A! I don’t even know what time of day you poop! How about a C minus?”
“WHAT?!” I yell.
“I’m still figuring out if I like what you’re doing! I don’t know how I feel about my panties sorted by color!”
Hey, Siri, this is painful but progressive. Therapista says not everything in life has to be tied in a neat bow, that’s not how life works—we have moods, people get diseases, nothing is perfect. Therapista says I can’t let this be a setback, a mudslide into my familiar suicidal thoughts. Therapista says I must steady this happier, more hopeful course, trust the process.
Sleep, bake, Vegas, repeat.
I order more pale-blue pill cases so on the first of every month I can take her new prescriptions, which are hand-delivered to her house by pharmacy staff, and fill all the cases at once; she will be set for the month, and I’ll know at a glance when it is time to order refills.
“Do you want to write today?” I ask.
“Maybe tomorrow, Cockring.”
I cleared seventy-two new and unheard voicemails—some as old as two years—and several from—my heart swells—Miss Gracie:
Beeep: “Hello, dear. It’s your mother. I don’t expect you check your voicemails and I know it’s possible you won’t get this message ever, but I wanted you to know we are out of bologna down here, so that should tell you all you need to know about how I’m doing. Goodbye. Thank youuu.”
Beeeep: “Hello, dear. Don’t sleep in the same room with your cell phone. They can cause cancer. I saw it on the news. Terrible cancers. Maybe that’s why you’re always so tired. Maybe you’re dying. Anyway, good night, sleep well. Thank youuu.”
Beeeep: “Hello, dear. I’m ordering a chopped salad from Brighton Catering. Do you want anything? Hello? Well, I’ll get one for you and if you don’t want it, I’ll put it outside for the raccoons. I tried poisoning them, but they survived, so now I’m accepting them. Thank youuu.”
Assistant Bible Verse 4: Delete unhelpful messages.
Kathi is constantly misplacing her cell phone, so I drill a tiny hole in her phone case and put it on a lanyard to wear around her neck. She’s always losing precious jewelry, so when I see a piece lying around, I pick it up and lock it back in her jewelry drawer. She’s always losing her favorite scarves, so I make note of designer and style to easily order replacements.
“How’s my assistant grade now?” I ask Kathi as she puts the phone and lanyard around her neck, swinging it around like she’s a topless dancer.
“Solid C-plus,” she says.
“That’s it?”
“It’s better than average,” Kathi says. I nod, I get it.
She looks at my outfit—the bribe I’m wearing like my new uniform. “Nice cardigan,” she says.
Sleep, bake, Vegas, repeat.
I give everyone a weekly list of duties set to a schedule, and that gives everyone a bit more structure: me, Agnes, Benny, and, it seems, delightfully, Kathi.
KATHI: What size shoe r u again??
ME: 9.5. Why?
KATHI: Shoe size should be on your resumeeeee. Next to age and length of scrotum.
Her Vegas shopping sprees are great for Agnes and Benny and me. Kathi buys us hair products, sunglasses, clothes. She comes home armed, charged. “Cockring,” she says. “Take off that hideous sweater you’re wearing and put this on.” She hands me a new one that cost $350 from H. Lorenzo on Sunset Boulevard. “Never wear the other one again.”
Sometimes, I listen to her fashion advice. Sometimes, I wear my “unflattering” normal clothes on weekends, when I know I won’t be subjected to her judgment. Sometimes I return the one $350 sweater and
exchange it for four new shirts, two pairs of pants, and a new pair of shoes from the sale rack. Or I exchange it for cash if possible. What I need more than a $350 sweater is money for rent. Money for food. Money for debt—I’m still paying off student loans; I’m still paying off credit cards from making no money in the news business, from buying things I didn’t need in failed attempts to fill dark corners of my vision board.
Kathi Kannon’s gifts include a ceramic plate in the shape of an eye, a necktie with little penises, a bag that says HUNG TA (it’s in Vietnamese and no one knows what it means—she just likes that it says “hung”).
Assistant Bible Verse 5: Check in frequently with their wants and needs.
“Do you want to write today?” I ask.
“No, thank you, Cockring,” she says.
Hey, Siri, is it sarcasm, is it annoyance?
I’m wearing new electric-blue loafers Kathi bought me at Opening Ceremony. “Size nine and a half,” she says, handing them over like Santa Claus. I would never have bought them for myself, but they look good; they’re actually fun. Perhaps she knows me better than I think.
I’m shuffling those shoes, my feet, into her room, tidying up while she bakes cookies in the kitchen. I pull her comforter taut, clear junk from her nightstand, grab that day’s pale-blue pill case—and notice that some still remain. I open the case and count.
I’m thinking, Did I put too many in?
I’m thinking, Is this my mistake or hers?
I’m thinking, How bad could it be?
It’s not unusual to get text messages from Kathi in the middle of the night. It’s almost charming, the idea that I’m on her mind in the wee hours, that I serve some purpose as part of the rumbling of things that go through her mind late at night. But as I wake up on this Tuesday, I’m alarmed not that she texted me but that she texted me so often, and with so much intensity, while I was asleep.
KATHI: Change the bedding and strip into sheets shitface marble cock!
KATHI: Where do-est thou reside and if thou-ist not alone may you be impaled by the best of all that the planet has to offer and many a time over, spilling out of thee and dripping into the milky way’s wondrous wound.
KATHI: Are you getting these? They are brilliant-adjacent. We should make bumper stickers. Or just stickers, sickly sweet globs of printed paper bits of happiness for ur skool locker.
KATHI: I take your non-response as a yes.
KATHI: Have you ever heard of a prolapsed vagina?! Let’s panic and puke together, lass.
KATHI: I don’t feel well.
KATHI: Nevermind I feel great.
KATHI: Where do we keep the knife sharpener?
KATHI: Are you
KATHI: Cack?
I sit up in my bed, yank the charging cable from my phone, and rush to text her back. She sent the last text hours ago, but I still feel an uneasy urgency.
ME: Hi. What’s up?
And almost instantly …
KATHI: ME! I haven’t slept at any age and Life is a party.
ME: u okay?
KATHI: U Coming to play?
ME: On my way.
* * *
That gate.
That code.
That woman!
As the gates swing open, I see Kathi Kannon, film icon, turn and spot me. She’s wearing a bright-blue fitted bedsheet with a hole cut out of the middle, like it’s a poncho. Because the sheet is fitted, the rest of it bobs around her body like a jellyfish. She’s in the driveway and rushes, flailing, toward the open gate, toward me, or my car, or the street behind me—who knows. Her eyes are wild, searching, pained.
Benny stands nearby, hedge trimmers in one hand and his other waving around, urging Kathi away from the open gate. “Come back, come back,” he’s shouting. His upper torso twists back and forth, like the waist of an old He-Man action figure, with his legs stiff and still, like they’re bolted to the ground, like he’s just going through the motions, like he’s a rerun.
“COCKRING!” Kathi shouts, rushing over to me, twirling, bobbing. “You’re a B-plus!” she yells.
I roll my window down; the peeling tint crackles and shrieks. “Hi,” I say.
“Ewww,” Kathi says. “This is your car? It’s so sad.”
I say, “Thank you.”
“COCKRING! You’re a B-plus! Did you hear me?” Holding her arms out like a T, she says, “Hey, look at this dress I made!”
“Is that a fitted sheet you’re wearing?”
“YES! You like it? What’s wrong?”
“What are you going to sleep on tonight? I’ll have to find you a new one.”
“Don’t live in the future! Don’t you think people will like it?” she asks, fluff, fluff, fluffing her dress-creation and turning away from me and toward the traffic rushing by—puff, puff, puff—on Beverly Canyon Drive behind me. Kathi takes a few steps toward the current of cars.
I throw my Nissan into park and twist my keys to turn the engine off—those keys growing in number as I accumulate the ones from her estate, twisting them alongside my sweet mother’s locket, the long dangling reminder of some miracle that led me here, a reminder that as my hero advances into traffic, this job is what I wanted, this job is an answer to my prayers.
Click. I unlatch my seatbelt, open my car door, and step alongside Kathi, my arm outstretched to guide her home, to turn her around. “This way, please.”
She says as we turn from the traffic, “I wanna swim in it.”
I say, “I know.”
Kathi tries to walk in reverse, toward traffic again. I grab one of her wrists and try to hold her back. That wrist, the same one everyone can see garnished in jewels in Nova Quest, that wrist is now in my tight grip, because right now it’s the wrist of a follower of some dark, confused instruction.
“No … I want to see the people in their cars,” she says, trying to get free of me.
“Nope,” I’m groaning back at her.
I’m pulling at Kathi.
She’s yanking away from me.
Benny points at Kathi. “She’s manic,” he shouts.
“Very helpful, Benny. Thank you!” I say.
“Yeah! Go to hell, LIAR!” Kathi shouts at Benny, then turns to me and calmly says, “He’s right, I’m manic.”
“Benny, go get Miss Gracie, please,” I say. Benny starts but doesn’t get far.
“Stop right there, Benny, or you’re fired!” Kathi yells.
Benny stops and instantly returns to tree trimming.
“Thanks a lot!” I yell to him.
“You’re welcome,” Kathi says to me.
Benny ignores us both.
Kathi reaches her two hands out to mine, an invitation for me to grab on, and I do. “Let me ask you something,” she says seductively. “Are you afraid of the human body?”
“Maybe,” I say, releasing her hands, putting mine on her back, and gently pushing her past my car, farther from traffic and danger.
“You’re so diplomatic, Cock-cack. That’s something I like about you. That, and your long neck.”
“Thank you.” I guide Kathi past Benny.
“You need medicine,” he says to her.
“You need it!” Kathi shouts at him.
She shouts, “LIAR!”
She shouts, “You don’t know what I need!”
She turns to me and says quietly, “I need medicine. Meet you inside?”
“Yup.” I nod, and just like that Kathi twirls up the hill, shouting down to Benny as she goes.
“I love you, Benny,” she says. “It’s my mental illness that hates you.”
Benny turns back to pretending to service an already perfectly manicured bush. He continues with his duties as if this outburst, as if Kathi wanting to play in traffic wearing a bedsheet, is just another ordinary workday.
Chinese emperors.
Mateo the Moose.
Fireplaces.
In Kathi’s palatial closet, the fitted sheet is on the floor, and she’s now wearing pink leg
gings and an oversized sweater with plastic eyes stitched all over it.
I ask, “How are you feeling?”
“I feel like all of these eyes should have eyelashes glued on, so I’m going to go to Home Depot to see if they have any.”
“Maybe we can take a moment and talk about your health. Did you take your meds this morning?”
“I feel great,” Kathi says. “Except for these leggings.” She starts tugging at her leggings, struggling to get them off. “Ten seconds ago I wanted them, but now I see that leggings are one of mankind’s strange wearable Rubik’s Cubes.”
I go to her nightstand and look for yesterday’s pill case. I give it a shake. Empty. I rustle in the drawer, through papers and pens and books and hair clips, and there on the bottom—the pills, the magic beans, unsowed, and more than there should be for one missed dose. I collect them and bring them to her.
“Kathi, you have to take your medication,” I say.
“My medication takes me,” she says, having traded the pink leggings for gold.
“No, they don’t. Please take them.”
“I thought I took all of them.”
“These were all at the bottom of your drawer.”
“I think those are old,” she says. “Did you forget to give them to me maybe?”
I open my mouth to deny it but feel a surge of heat rising in me. Did I forget? Did I fail her? “Shit, Kathi. Maybe I did. Are you sure the ones in the drawer are old?”
“It doesn’t matter! I’m flying,” she says, raising her arms, keeping eye contact with me. She’s intense as ever, playful in a way that’s kind of drunk, and determined in a way that’s kind of dangerous.
“No, you’re not. We need to pin this down.”
“I’m not pinning the butterfly to the wall of your collection,” she says. “I’m catching fireflies in a jar and lighting your way with them till one or all of us burn out.”
