Psychic Junkie

by Sarah Lassez

  The fact that I’d gone from a supposedly rising star to an earthbound Internet marketer who helped other actors’ careers soar was an irony that was not lost on me, and within a matter of time I sank into a depression like someone starved for sleep would fall into a feather bed. I couldn’t get out. I didn’t want to get out. The rest of the world was simply not one I wanted to be a part of, as, among other things, it often lacked the sensitivity a struggling artist requires. For instance, though the phrase “What have you been up to?” is a seemingly innocent inquiry, it is actually Hollywood’s way of determining if you’re someone who’s just completed work on the next blockbuster and are hence essential to talk to—to be seen talking to—or if you’re a loser who’s not had a job in a while and thus, in terms of strategy, now rank one step below that of the valet. “What have you been up to?” can be directly translated as “What was your last film, and when’s it coming out?” And in response to such a question, I could only shrug and eye the door.

  All this was reiterated to me like a smack to the head the night I mistakenly lifted myself from my downy nest of nothingness and headed off to a party at the Chateau Marmont. The Chateau Marmont combines a mixture of horrors, the first being its location on Sunset Boulevard, which involves fifteen-dollar parking and streets plugged with poor misguided souls who enjoy “cruising”—the art of creating traffic jams so thick that traversing the length of one block can take twenty minutes. Another aspect of the Chateau’s horror is that it can be hard to get into, so once inside, you’re generally surrounded by people who tend to remind you of why you should’ve stayed home.

  After using a considerable portion of my paycheck to park, I showed my ID to the doorman and beelined my way toward the models, I mean “bartenders,” who were haughtily pouring drinks. If I bought a drink now, that would mean I’d have to use the latest AT&T check for food and not skin care. So I was trying to figure out who might want to have me over for dinner for the rest of the week, when I heard my name. As the voice was male, and coming from the vicinity of the bar, I turned with hopes of at least a free Coke or just something to sip, and saw, a few dark wood stools over, the editor from the magazine who’d once deemed me one of the twelve actors to watch. His smile was big, he was motioning me over, he certainly could afford to buy me a drink…. Yet the one thought that had grabbed my brain and wouldn’t let go was He remembers my name! Yay!

  “Sarah,” he said again, “it’s so funny I’d run into you. We were just talking about you in the office the other day.”

  My heart started pounding—was there some publicity in my future? I had no idea what the publicity would be for; I had no movie coming out, no upcoming projects. Could it be just because they liked me? I was likeable! I deserved good things! See? There was a reason I’d gotten out of my pajamas on a Saturday night! “You were?” I asked coyly.

  “It’s coming up again, the Twelve Actors to Watch issue, and we were going over a few back issues, looking at the girls we’d picked. There you were.”

  There was a long, painful pause, during which I wouldn’t have been surprised had one of the model bartenders gazelled her way over the bar and finished his sentence with, “…the only one who wasn’t worth watching.”

  The editor continued, oblivious to the knife he was wedging into my heart. “Whatever happened to that movie you did?”

  His clone friend, whom I’d not noticed till now (perhaps because he wore almost the exact same outfit as the editor, had the exact same haircut, and effectively appeared to be nothing more than a slightly skewed and miniature reflection), chipped in. “Which one? Which movie?”

  “The Blackout,” the editor said. “Abel Ferrara.”

  The clone paused, his face tilted toward the impossibly high ceilings—a necessity in such a bar, in order to allow for the egos. Clearly the clone was trying to place the movie, and I prayed for a swift and dramatic subject change. Had the clone suddenly said, “Gosh, I’d love to have a lengthy conversation about football,” I would’ve done a dance of joy. Unfortunately, I had no such luck.

  “The Blackout,” the clone said. “I’m just not placing it. Who else was in it? When was it released?”

  “It wasn’t,” I said. Then I smiled brightly, proudly said the dreaded words “Straight to video,” and excused myself. With a speed I never knew I had, I raced out the door, flew across the traffic on Sunset, and was back in my room, where for hours I tortured myself with variations of the conversation that took place earlier in the week between the editor and a coworker. “Check it out, it’s our past issue.” “Who’s this one?” “Who?” “This girl, I’ve only ever seen her here, on this page.” “Oh, yeah. That’s Sarah Lassez…right. I don’t know. Obviously she wasn’t one to watch. But five outta six ain’t bad. You feel like a Mojito? I feel like a Mojito.” “Nah, I’m much more in the mood for a sidecar.” “A sidecar? We just time warp back to the thirties?” “Last week a guy I know told me Drew Barrymore was drinking one.” “Drew? Really? Okay. Sidecars it is. Put that magazine away.” “Yeah, but I gotta say, it’s a great shot. This Sarah chick with a guitar, posing as a depressed musician. You don’t get better than that. Great work, man. Sidecar’s on me.”

  To make myself feel better I pulled out my French tarot cards. Will I get an acting job soon? Will it lead to more acting jobs? Will I be able to support myself as an actor? For hours I asked questions, and each time I shuffled, there it was, insistent on being seen: the Knight of Wands.

  “Who are you?” I wanted to scream. “And why aren’t you here yet?”

  Misery loves company. I admit that the saying is true, but if I could, I’d add “and a couple bottles of wine and a block of Brie.” I had the wine, and Gina stopped at Whole Foods for the Brie, a mission that involved her calling—completely overwhelmed—from the cheese section, whereupon she told me how pretty all the cheeses were and that she just knew I’d like Jarlsberg if only I gave it a chance. I agreed to try it simply to get her out of the store, and then found a platter I hoped would fit her final selection. Mercifully she showed up with only a handful of choices: Edam, Jarlsberg, Gouda, Brie, and a farmer’s cheese she swore was “refreshing.” After a little rant about how Panela should be sold at more stores and accepted as the amazing cheese that it is, she sat back and announced that she hated her job.

  “So, you work at a literary agency,” I said. I was still trying to figure out exactly why she’d taken the job. “But you don’t want to be an agent.”

  “Nope.”

  “And they rep screenwriters, but you don’t want to write screenplays; you want to write books. That’s what you went to school for, why you have all that student loan debt.”

  “Right. Thank you. But just being around writers makes me feel better.”

  “You’re around the writers?”

  “No. They don’t write at the agency. We get what they write. All the scripts. And writers are very close to their agents, you know. You learn a lot about their lives.”

  “And your agent, the one you work for, he reps some good writers?”

  “Well, no. My agent actually just reps directors. Mostly TV. No writers.”

  “But you don’t want to be a TV director?”

  “God, no.”

  “So you want to write books, and you’re working for a man who gets television directors jobs.”

  “Give me the wine.”

  “I’m just saying it makes perfect sense.”

  “I know what you’re saying, Miss Internet Marketer, now give me the wine.”

  We spent the next bottle comparing notes on our miserable states of employment. Gina eventually won the You’ll Never Believe What Happened Award with her tale of an agent who’d witnessed a car accident while driving, and then called his assistant to have her conference him with 911.

  “I mean, had he forgotten what number you dial to reach 911? Or does he really think he’s so important that he needs to be announced when he comes on the line? ‘Yes, Officer,
please hold for Ken Steinberg. He represents several Emmy-nominated writers and has just seen an accident.’ Seriously, who are these people?” Gina laughed.

  “I’d say they’re the successful ones.”

  “Oh my God, that reminds me. I forgot to tell you. I was looking for Gouda earlier and started thinking about you and totally had a vision of you and your husband. You were standing with him in front of a really gorgeous two-story brick house, with a black SUV in the driveway. A new SUV.”

  “So, we’re married? We have a house? And why does Gouda make you think of me?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t answer any of that. I guess it could’ve been my future house, but I’m totally out of my wanting-a-brick-house stage. It’s Craftsman or nothing. The woodwork is amazing. Some of the built-ins will literally give you palpitations, and the—”

  “Gina.”

  “Yeah, okay. I don’t know if you were married, but you were definitely with him, and I think it was your house, and he was cute, too. Very preppy-looking. Blond hair and green eyes.”

  A couple things struck me about this latest claim. First, preppy-looking with blond hair and green eyes is pretty much the polar opposite of the type of man I’m drawn to. Just that description brings to my mind a guy who’s got a semblance of a life, someone with a job, someone who plays golf and showers regularly. That is not who I date. Blindfold me and stick me in a party full of men, and I’ll sniff out the empty wallet and pained soul of the one actor/musician in the building. Dark and messy is how you’d describe the men I date. Not preppy with blond hair and green eyes.

  The other, more alarming aspect of this claim was that the description perfectly matched that of the Knight of Wands. It was then that I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was coming.

  My knight was on his way.

  A few weeks later I was at work, enjoying one of my self-imposed “breaks,” when I discovered Angel, a phone psychic with lofty promises. I scrolled through her site, temptation twitching in my fingers as I learned that she had a special rate for first-time callers and, even more tempting, that she didn’t use tarot cards.

  Lately the tarot cards had been annoying the crap out of me. In addition to the unrelenting Knight of Wands, I’d also become—less pleasingly so—haunted by the Disappointment and Strife cards. If I saw either card one more time, I swore I’d launch myself off the Hollywood sign, which stood as a painful reminder outside my window at work. Even a sidelong glimpse of those letters made me sad, because I remembered with aching clarity the first time I’d seen them in person. I remembered feeling that those letters cast a promise to all who viewed them, a promise that anything was possible. Yet here, years later, stuck in an office with a clear view of the taunting sign, those letters only brought to mind Peg Entwistle, the out-of-work actress back in the thirties who couldn’t bear it any longer and hurled herself to her death from atop the H. As if that in and of itself weren’t tragic enough, two days after she killed herself, her uncle received news that Peg had just been offered the leading role in a play at the Beverly Hills Playhouse. The way I view that final twist has always been dependent upon my mood, as it’s either a reminder to find a way to last another day (or two), since things will get better, or it’s a harsh statement about the universe’s sick sense of humor.

  At any rate, I needed answers. I looked around and determined that the other employees were also on breaks: I caught glimpses of poker Web sites and eBay on flickering computer screens. What the hell, I decided, and slipped out of the room and into an empty office.

  As I dialed the number, I felt guilt the way one does when cheating on one’s hairdresser. I was about to betray Aurelia; I was about to have a dalliance with another psychic. But Aurelia wouldn’t read me anymore, so what choice did I have? Essentially she’d driven me to this. This was, basically, her fault.

  I was scared to ask Angel about my career, but forced the question. Without pause she told me there would be success in my future, but what I needed to overcome was fear and a karmic block. “You used to be a very famous actress in a past life,” she said. “That’s where your strong ego comes from, but your karma in this life is to be humbled and rejoin the masses.”

  I was conflicted. Part of me was thrilled at having been a famous actress, while the other part heard the phrase “rejoin the masses” and wanted to stomp on the phone. I mean, rejoin the masses?

  What came out was, “Sarah Bernhardt? Was I Sarah Bernhardt?”

  “I can’t say. But the sooner you learn the lesson and are humbled, the sooner you’ll be freed from your karma and go on to great success.”

  My eyes flickered to the Hollywood sign. I was stuck in an office with computer nerds high on café lattes. Wait. I was a computer nerd high on café lattes. Hadn’t I already been humbled?

  Then, with words that certainly wouldn’t lend to my humility, she announced that I’d go on to win a Golden Globe.

  My smile could’ve blinded passing airplanes with its brilliance, and my eyes stung with tears of joy.

  Needless to say, I began calling Angel all the time. With Aurelia’s refusal to read me I’d been left with a huge void in my life, one that Angel with her uplifting readings lovingly filled. Of course Angel wasn’t free, but for some things you just have to find money any way you can—and hearing that I had a future as an actress and wouldn’t be stuck forever in the fish-bowl computer room as an Internet marketer certainly qualified as one of those things. Before I knew it, the credit cards I’d once wisely left at home were in my wallet at all times. And lucky for me, and for Angel, I had a huge credit line.

  And then it happened: I had only two weeks left before turning thirty.

  Granted, I’d contemplated this event every single day since my twenty-sixth birthday, but I was still in no way prepared for the actual experience. The actual experience involved me actually being thirty, as in, no longer in my twenties. In a stroke of what some people may have considered regression but I considered genius, I decided to throw myself a party: a good old-fashioned child’s The Wizard of Oz–themed party, complete with my parents in the other room sipping spiked drinks. I utterly rebelled against aging, and did so with the Wicked Witch of the West stuck beneath my couch, a yellow brick road twisting through my apartment, and a slightly hazardous game of Pin the Heart on the Tin Man.

  And I survived. I awoke the next day with such a feeling of relief. I’d tackled turning thirty and lived to tell about it! But then it hit me. I’d now have to turn thirty-one.

  In fact, turning thirty had never been the problem. It was all the years after that I should’ve been afraid of. But no matter, I clung to the idea that turning thirty-one or even thirty-two wouldn’t sting nearly as much if I had the love and fame that had been predicted.

  One day Angel, my lifeline to my Golden Globe future, told me she was joining up with a psychic Internet site, a place called Psychicdom. I was horrified. I’d just gotten used to our little routine, to my relationship with her, and now all that could change. I’d have to go through the site to reach her, and what if someone else was talking to her? She was my psychic, and I was not happy about sharing. Sharing, as a concept, has never been one I’ve embraced. I mean, why share when I can have my own? Why settle for half when I could have the whole? No. Angel, like Aurelia, was betraying me, and I vowed never to forgive her…but decided to check out the site first.

  What struck me was that Angel, in whom I’d put my utmost confidence, wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Essentially she’d just led me to a smorgasbord of psychics. I could barely breathe, I was so overwhelmed. Look at them all. And they’re all here for me! I tried to remain calm as I did a little searching on the site, contemplating the psychics’ names. Would Desire to Love lead me to my knight? Or would Astro Linda point me in his direction? And then there were the photos, sedate Sears portraits and disturbing Glamour Shots, a whole range of psychics from what appeared to be councilmen to cowboys, housewives to waitresses, and of cour
se a few stereotypical gypsies thrown in for the more traditional callers.

  Beside their names were stars, five being the highest, so one could feel assured they’d get their money’s worth, money being the obscene amount per minute written in a much smaller font and nestled somewhat off to the side of the alluring stars. And, like eBay, there was feedback, so I was sure that irate callers would expose anyone who failed to live up to their price tag. The system itself was like a security blanket that smothered any doubts I had, and before I knew what was happening, a Visa card with my name on it had jumped from my purse and settled by the phone.

  I leaned in toward my computer, studying up on a man named Erlin, who was rated as one of the top three on the site. He looked remarkably like Valentino, his smooth smile, slicked-back hair, and black tux lending the impression that should you request a reading, he’d be forced to set his champagne glass on an ivory-topped table and exit the ballroom, much to the chagrin of a line of women either coyly fanning themselves or discreetly hoisting their cleavage. Surely this Erlin understood romance and love, unlike Ask Ursula, who looked as though the only thing she understood for certain was the location of the best buffet in town.

  When I looked up, away from my computer, I realized how late it had gotten. My room was dark but for the eyestrain-inducing glow of my laptop, and I could see from my bedroom window that most of the houses on the street were now only lit by porch lights. The world was going to sleep, but I refused to follow its cue. I needed a reading, and nothing could stop me.