Postcards From the Edge

by Carrie Fisher

  “I saw you on some of those, remember?” Suzanne said. “You were very good, very relaxed. It was like watching Hal the computer.”

  “That’s when I talked about tunneling out of show business.”

  “That was very funny,” said Suzanne. “Why don’t you say that?”

  “I can’t do it again. That was two years ago.”

  “Who saw it?” said Suzanne. “It was a morning show.”

  “I can’t do it again,” Lucy repeated. “Maybe if I get stressed out I’ll make fun of my weight.”

  “I know,” said Suzanne. “Tell them you’re retaining water for Whitney Houston.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Suzanne explained, “Whitney Houston is clearly not retaining water. She’s obviously getting somebody to do it for her, so let’s—”

  “God, that’s perfect!” Lucy said. “Can I do that?”

  “Yes, do that. Do that,” Suzanne said. “I can help you on something self-deprecatory.”

  “Oh, God, oh, God,” Lucy said. “There’s the studio. I wish you could come out with me. You could just walk out with me like I’m your dummy or something, and we’ll never explain it.”

  “Could you drop us at dressing room B up there on the left?” Suzanne said to the driver.

  “All right, I’m just going to let you take over now,” Lucy said. “I have a heartbeat as big as the hills.”

  Suzanne got a Diet Coke from a vending machine while Lucy got her hair and makeup done. It turned out Larry Walker was not going to be on the show—he was the canceled guest that Lucy was subbing for—but by the time she got out of makeup she was so self-absorbed she related this news to Suzanne with no sense of irony. Down the hall, the theme music for The Richard Collins Show began playing.

  “I look okay?” Lucy said.

  “You look fine,” said Suzanne. “You look great.”

  “You won’t lie to me, right?” Lucy said. “You’re going to watch me and tell me how I am, and you’re not going to lie?”

  “I won’t lie to you,” Suzanne said. “Look, there’s a cute guy over there, the one with the gray shirt. Why don’t you go talk to him?”

  “I can’t,” Lucy said. “I’m too nervous about the show, and to add a guy on top of that . . . I can’t.”

  “Oh,” said Suzanne, smiling. “Your priorities are sort of juggled around at this point, aren’t they?”

  “Don’t make fun of me,” Lucy said. “You can make fun of me all night long, but don’t make fun of me now. It erodes my real sense of who I am.”

  “All right, all right,” Suzanne said. “So, who’s out first?”

  “I’m out first, and then the author, and then I think Emily Frye, that actress who got the movie neither of us did.”

  “Top Priority?” Suzanne said.

  “Yes, the girl who got Top Priority.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Suzanne. “Well, try to be as great as possible.”

  “Oh, good,” Lucy said. “The pressure isn’t on. That’s good. My buddy.”

  A tall man came up to them and said, “Lucy, you’re on.”

  “I’ll wait for you in the green room,” Suzanne said.

  “You better,” Lucy said. “You better wait for me.”

  Suzanne walked around the corner and went into the green room. There were several other people in there, among them an attractive-looking man who looked like he was from New York. He was wearing a green corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows, a multiplaid shirt and a tie, and jeans and Hush Puppies. He had brown hair and wore glasses. Suzanne thought he had an air of studiousness about him, of not stability but something near stability. Of calm, almost. She nodded at him slightly and walked past him to another tiny couch, where she watched the television monitor in the corner.

  It was quite an unattractive room. There was a big lamp in one corner, three couches, and a shag carpet. A woman wearing a dress with pearls on was drinking coffee on the third couch. She was wearing patent leather shoes with peach bows on them. A young girl who must have been her daughter was holding her purse for her. The girl was wearing a pink sweater and had blond hair down her back. Suzanne glanced briefly at the man in green corduroy. He was probably the author, she thought. He looked like he was wearing a writing uniform.

  Suzanne looked back at the monitor, where Richard Collins was still doing his opening monologue. The probable author got up to get some coffee, then came over and sat next to her. “Aren’t you the girl who was in Seventh Tea House?” he asked. “Suzanne Vale?”

  Suzanne was startled and embarrassed, and said, “Yes,” as if the question had been an accusation.

  “That was very good,” he said.

  “Really?” she said. “Well, thank you. You liked it? You like that kind of movie?”

  “Well, no, I don’t really, but yes, I did,” he said. “I thought it was a well-made film and I certainly appreciated how difficult it must have been for all of you to be in it. Are you on the show tonight?”

  “No,” said Suzanne, grateful for his taking control of the conversation. “My friend Lucy is. She’ll be on in a minute.”

  “I read an interview with you once and you were very funny,” he said. “I can’t remember what magazine.”

  “Probably in Omni,” Suzanne said. “So, who are you?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “Jesse Templeman.”

  “The author?”

  “Oh,” he said, surprised. “You know my work?”

  “No,” said Suzanne. “I knew there was going to be an author on the show. What have you written?”

  “Well, actually, I’ve written a novel,” Jesse said. “It’s called The Appetite People.”

  “Really?” Suzanne said. “And you’re promoting it, so you must be proud of it.”

  “I am proud of it, yeah,” he said. “I worked on it for quite some time. It’s difficult to get a publisher.”

  “Do you live in New York?”

  “Well, actually I’ve just moved out here,” he said. “I’ve been living in New York, but they bought my book to make a film out of it and I’m writing the screenplay. I didn’t want somebody else to do it. I don’t know that I’ll be staying here after that. Hey,” he said, nodding toward the monitor, “isn’t that your friend?”

  “Oh my God,” said Suzanne, realizing Lucy had already been on for a little while. She had promised to watch and tell her how she was. “Can they put the sound on? Can someone put the sound on?”

  Jesse leaned forward and turned up the volume. Richard Collins was laughing very hard. Lucy said, “I mean, I’m too old to be in the Brat Pack and too young for my own exercise tape. What am I?” Richard Collins laughed harder.

  “She’s very funny,” said Jesse.

  “She is funny,” Suzanne said. “She was very nervous.”

  “I’m nervous myself,” he said. “I feel dumb doing this, but my publishers . . . you know. Do you live out here? I guess you do.”

  “Yes,” said Suzanne.

  “Well,” Jesse said, “maybe we could . . . I don’t want to seem presumptuous, but maybe we could have lunch or something. Or go out sometime. What do you do to relax?”

  “I don’t relax,” said Suzanne. “It’s sort of a therapy goal of mine.”

  “I see.”

  “But what I do that’s the closest I get to relaxing,” said Suzanne, “is I drive around and listen to loud music.”

  “Well, maybe we can take a long loud drive sometime,” he said.

  Suzanne looked back at the screen and saw that Lucy wasn’t there anymore. “Oh my God, I’ve gotta go find my friend, she’s gonna kill me,” she said. She scribbled her number on the flap of the envelope Rehab! had arrived in, tore it off, and gave it to Jesse. “This is my number,” she said. “Good luck on the show.”

  “Thanks,” said Jesse. “I’ll call you sometime.”

  Suzanne rushed past the tall man who was coming to get Jesse and saw Lucy running d
own the hall toward her. “Did you hear what I said about my father?” she asked hysterically. “He’s gonna kill me. He’s never gonna speak to me again.”

  “No, honey, it was fine,” Suzanne said calmingly. “You were funny about the Brat Pack thing—”

  “Did I have lipstick on my teeth?”

  “You were fine,” Suzanne said. “But what did you say about your father?”

  “I thought you said I was fine,” Lucy said. “Were you watching the wrong channel?”

  “You were fine,” Suzanne assured her. “I saw everything but that. I looked away for a second—”

  “At what?” Lucy demanded.

  “I was talking to a guy,” Suzanne said. “The author guy.”

  “Did he think I was good-looking?” Lucy asked. Suzanne nodded. “And you didn’t hear the father thing? Do you know what I said about my father? That he was a giant whale and I wasn’t sure he was actually my father. I called him my alleged father.”

  “So?” said Suzanne. “He’s got a sense of humor, doesn’t he?”

  “My father? The Republican nightmare?”

  “Well, are you counting on his will for anything?”

  “Don’t be funny about this,” Lucy said. “Oh, all right, be funny. The show is over, you can make fun of me now. So, you didn’t think it sounded slutty when I said I went on talk shows to meet guys?”

  “To meet guys, no,” Suzanne said. “You didn’t say to blow them, did you?”

  “You wouldn’t know,” said Lucy. “You were busy cruising the green room.”

  “I was not cruising the . . . I was talking to . . . You tell me to do this stuff.”

  “I don’t tell you to do it while I’m on TV,” Lucy said.

  “Oh, it’s scheduled around your career now, my talking to guys?” Suzanne said. “Let me just tell you this one thing. You look great and I gave the guy my number. It’s been a breakthrough night for both of us. Now we can go and have some French fries and doughnuts and really live life.”

  They walked out of the building and got into the limo. “What’s his name?” asked Lucy, settling into her seat, and Suzanne talked about Jesse all the way back to Hollywood, thinking the whole time, “He’ll never call me.

  “And if he does, what if he’s a murderer?”

  The Dating Accident

  Suzanne was dreaming that she was hanging by her hands outside the window of a speeding car with her hair flying behind her. Driving down a street and flying through the air. It was frightening, terrifying, but as she sped along it became almost exhilarating. She passed through the danger into the creamy filling of Wheeeee! and then woke up, her heart beating very fast. She had the strange sensation that she actually had cried out, “Wheeeee!” but she saw Jesse fast asleep beside her and knew she hadn’t.

  They had been living together for almost a year—though he’d kept his apartment—and she was still always a little surprised to find him there in the morning. She liked to study him when he was asleep—he seemed unarmed somehow without his glasses on—but she could only engage in this activity on weekends. During the week Jesse got up at seven to write. “Look at him,” she thought. “He looks like somebody you could go up to at an airport and say, ‘Could you watch my bag?’ ”

  He remained curious to her. She knew she cared about him—her latest analogy to Norma was that he was a wounded Confederate soldier and she was this sweet Yankee woman who’d found him on her lawn—but she wondered why. It was as though she doubted her own judgment, which in fact she did. For years her judgment had told her to take drugs. Why should she think her logic had improved that much in just two years?

  What did she see in him? He said that the sky was “bucolic”; she asked him what “bucolic” meant. He said he liked Steely Dan and the color black. Well, so did she. What did that make her? He drank coffee black, or sometimes with a little cream. What did that mean? She felt like she was on a scavenger hunt, searching for clues as to who he was and what he wanted from her. She had no idea whether, if she found out, she would give it to him or not.

  Was Jesse a good man? she asked herself. He probably was, because he bored her to death sometimes. “You think that if it isn’t dramatic, nothing is happening,” Norma had told her. “The idea is to get old with them, not because of them. Pretend it’s an acting assignment. Act like someone who enjoys the quiet that can be found in a mature relationship. Act normal, and see if some feelings of normalcy don’t eventually follow.”

  “Normal. People don’t get much more normal than us,” she thought. “We’re prototypes for the new normal line of people who were designed to pave the way for the nineties.” She realized that she and Jesse were getting serious. Serious. She hated the sound of it. “I joked myself into a serious situation,” she’d told Lucy.

  “You’ve backed into normalcy via Cambodia,” Lucy said, “so you can appreciate it more. It’s like you applied for a weird life and got a regular one by accident.”

  Lucy liked Jesse. She thought he was good for Suzanne, that people would take her more seriously if they knew she was going with “an author.” For a while she even considered finding herself an author, but one who was, as she put it to Suzanne, “maybe just a little famous, like John Irving or Philip Roth.”

  Then Lucy met Lowell Stephenson. When No Survivors came out, she received a lot of attention, so when she went to Seattle over Christmas to make up with her father for the things she’d said about him on the talk show, Lowell—the head of New Age Studios—recognized her on the plane and struck up a conversation. She was seeing him fairly regularly now.

  Sometimes the four of them would go out together. Lowell even cooked for them once. “This is exactly how I like it,” Lucy had whispered to Suzanne while Lowell was perfecting the salad dressing. “Breadmaker and breadwinner all in one.”

  “How did we ever end up as parts of couples?” Suzanne asked, as they watched Lowell show Jesse how to sauté shrimp.

  “Think of it as an experiment,” Lucy suggested.

  “Does one of us have cancer?” Suzanne had asked Jesse on their fourth date, after they’d sat in her house talking for eight hours straight.

  “Pardon me?” he said.

  “I just wondered. We spend so much time together, it’s like you have a twelve-hour shore leave, or we’re cramming for a state exam on one another, or . . .”

  “Cancer,” he said, nodding. “That wouldn’t have been the analogy I would have chosen.”

  After their fifth date, he hadn’t called her for six days. Suzanne was stunned. She forgot what he looked like. “Smoke in a room, that’s what he is,” she told Lucy. “Smoke in a room.” She started thinking about him as the guy she liked who never called her again.

  “What’s the matter?” Michelle asked her.

  “I’ve been in a dating accident,” she announced dramatically. “A terrible, terrible dating accident.”

  It became Suzanne’s favorite phrase. “Ask me what’s the matter,” she said to whomever she talked to.

  Then he called, and again she was stunned. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you again,” she told him.

  “Why?” he asked. “I told you I was going to New York and that I’d be back on Monday—today.”

  She had forgotten, but because of this mistake he had become more vivid to her, more real. They’d had a crisis in common—though, to be sure, in Suzanne’s mind more than anywhere else—and they’d come through it. They had survived the dating accident together, and on their sixth date they had total endless nightmare sex. “Big Kabuki Sex,” Suzanne called it.

  “This is interesting, isn’t it?” Jesse remarked during a rest stop, then said, “That sounded odd. I just didn’t want to frighten you with affection.” Suzanne thanked him, and wondered if she should say that she, too, thought the sex was interesting.

  Instead, she said, “I called someone the other day, and his message gave the number of his car phone. I left my home number and said that if I wasn’t t
here, I could probably be reached in my crop duster.”

  “I consider it a kind of defeat to call someone in their car,” Jesse countered, stifling a yawn.

  “Do you want to stay over?” she asked, her chest tight.

  “I really should go. I’m writing in the morning, but I—”

  “Okay,” she interjected quickly. “Okay,” she said again, this time quieter.

  “I’d love to, though,” he said, nuzzling her affectionately. “You’re so calm, so still.”

  “I’m like a peaceful flesh rock,” she said moodily.

  “You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said ironically. He turned her toward him and put her head on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.

  “Which nothing?” he asked.

  There was a beat, after which Suzanne said quietly, “You’re leaving me.”

  “I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving to write. I have to—”

  “It’s okay,” she sighed. “I’ll get over it. I’m getting over it already, look.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “My hand on your chest looks like a flesh shell on a hairy beach.”

  “Do you have an alarm clock?” Jesse asked wearily.

  She had had relationships before. Well, people had had relationships with her. Eventually, she would always end up on drugs, and there were only two roles you could play with someone doing drugs: you could either do them, too, or you could object to doing them. Or both. In any case, the relationship then became, in part, about drugs, and then it was just a matter of time until the drug part wore away whatever it had been about before.

  Jesse had done coke twice and found it wanting. Occasionally he smoked dope, but never around Suzanne. Her only other relationship with a nondruggie—that is, with someone who wasn’t taking drugs while she was involved with him—was her nonrelationship relationship with Jack Burroughs. Suzanne had recently heard Jack had begun free-basing again now that Ziz! II was such a hit, but then, that could just have been a rumor.