Smoke

by Meili Cady

  I never thought that I would try cocaine. I never even wanted to try marijuana. The only reason I ever did try pot in my senior year of high school was because I found myself looking down on people, even my friends, who did it. I thought I was better than them, but I hated that I felt that way. I didn’t want to spend my life with my nose in the air and riding around on some smelly high horse. I couldn’t help the way I felt, so I smoked pot with my friends in the group limo on prom night. I didn’t feel guilty, and I never again judged anyone who liked to get high. My motivations for trying cocaine were slightly less noble, but to hell with it. I’d been a “good girl” my entire life and it had never gotten me very far. It felt good to be a little bad for once, to do something just because I wanted to try it. So what if I experimented? I was sick of asking permission from the world. Experimenting with cocaine was the first of many secrets and inside jokes that Lisette and I would come to share.

  AFTER NEARLY A YEAR FILLED with countless giddy sleepovers, spicy Bloody Marys, and obsessively affectionate text exchanges, I left Lisette and Los Angeles to spend a weekend in Las Vegas. I flew to Sin City to meet Cate and celebrate our mutual friend’s twenty-first birthday. I’d seen Cate only once, during Christmas, since her visit to L.A. the year before. We’d fallen out of the habit of talking every day since I’d moved, which I supposed was to be expected. I’d told her about Lisette. I mindfully omitted the words best friend when I described her to Cate, but it was clear I’d found someone new in L.A. and Lisette wasn’t “playing second fiddle.” Cate seemed oddly quiet when I told her about Lisette. She’d simply said, “I’m just glad you’re meeting people.” I suspected there might have been some feelings of jealousy on her part, but surely she’d made close friends in Seattle since leaving Bremerton to attend college in the city. She couldn’t blame me for making friends in a new place where I didn’t know anyone.

  At the Las Vegas airport, I looked for the girls around baggage claim. I’d lost more than fifteen pounds since I’d last seen any of my friends from Washington, including Cate. I’d been running every day and taking good care of myself, except for the occasional coke binge with Lisette. The cocaine hadn’t seemed to do much for dieting, but exercising every day and eating well had certainly helped. I’d done coke only a few times since my “cherry-popping,” as Lisette had affectionately deemed it. She was sorely disappointed the second time, when my involuntary elbow-raising proved to be a fluke, one-time reaction. Despite her disappointment, she had recently given me a bejeweled Louis Vuitton necklace as a token of our friendship, and I was proudly wearing it today as I waited at the airport. I’d also brought one of Lisette’s Chanel purses. She’d expressed displeasure with the old purse I’d been using, and one day she handed me a black-and-white Chanel bag from her collection and said, “Sweetie, it’s yours.” I couldn’t believe how generous she’d been to give it to me.

  I spotted Cate with the birthday girl, Reigh, and Reigh’s mother, Lisa. I’d known all three of them since I was in first grade. As I ran up with my luggage, they turned to me with shocked expressions. “Meili! Holy shit. You’re so skinny!” We all exchanged hugs and “I’ve missed yous.” As we were waiting for Cate’s last bag at the carousel, I noticed her staring intensely at my necklace. “What?” I asked her. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just weird. I didn’t even recognize you.” I decided to take that as a compliment and ignored the fact that her eyes were once again burning into my necklace from Lisette.

  The four of us settled into a room at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, throwing our bathing suits on and heading to the pool. We found some lounge chairs and set our things down. I took my swimsuit cover off, feeling confident in a bright blue bikini, and couldn’t help but beam after the reaction from my friends. “You look like you lost half a person,” Lisa remarked, staring at me.

  I’d turned twenty-one in the beginning of the year and I’d barely been to any bars around L.A. I’d never been in the habit of drinking much in public, but today I decided to let loose and buy myself one of the tropical-looking drinks I’d seen people holding around the cabanas. I thought that ought to be sufficient for the afternoon. However, having little experience with the over-twenty-one scene, I wasn’t prepared when a group of friendly, shirtless men started buying us drinks and passing them to us as we floated around in the pool.

  The first gaudy cabana drink went down quick, and before I knew it I couldn’t count how many I’d had. In fact, I probably couldn’t have counted anything at this point. The drinks just kept coming to me in the pool and they were free. I couldn’t say no. The water was warm and I floated in a dazed euphoria, comfortable and happy like a seal. I closed my eyes and slowly let go of all control. My body went limp, moving wherever the water took me. It felt so natural, so easy.

  “GET HER OUT OF THE POOL!” The lifeguard blew his whistle. “Jesus.” He shook his head. It was the second time in five minutes that I’d started to sink, unaided in the pool. I was still daydreaming about seals with my eyes closed when I felt someone lifting me out of the water.

  I woke up hours later near the pool on a lounge chair that was fully reclined. It was almost completely dark outside now. Someone was talking to me, but I didn’t want to open my eyes and let them know they’d had any success at waking me. Maybe they would leave me alone. I played possum for a moment longer until a still-drunk Cate jumped on top of me and shook me by the shoulders and I heard her scream, “OH GOD! Meili! Are you dead?!” I opened my eyes just enough to offer her some proof of life. I wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but it seemed that my invitation to do that had expired. I lifted my head a little to look around and assess my situation. I was freezing, and I had no idea where my swimsuit cover was. The hundreds of party people who had surrounded me earlier had been replaced by an old cleaning lady giving me judging eyes as she swept around the pool.

  I turned to my side to see Reigh on the lounge chair next to me, only slightly more alive than I was. There was a bucket filled with vomit between our two chairs. The evidence was damning. Cate informed me that Reigh and I had been alternately adding to the pile throughout the afternoon, and that the act was so gruesome that no one dared make an attempt to clean it while we were still present. It was an active splash zone, too dangerous to come near.

  Suddenly, two well-built security guards were hovering over me. “Okay, time to go,” one told me. “Get up.” After an honest effort, I was unable to meet his request. I tried to, but I immediately gave up and deferred to curling back onto the lounge chair to rest more. It became increasingly obvious to everyone present that I was physically incapable of standing at this point. Out of the corner of one squinted eye, I saw the security guards walk away. Relieved, I rolled my face into the plastic of the chair and covered my head with my hands, unsuccessfully trying to hide, and making deep red imprints on my face from the plastic. The security guards returned a few minutes later with a wheelchair. I groaned in agony as they hoisted me onto the cold leather. “Noooo.”

  Still without my swimsuit cover, I wore nothing but a tiny bikini and a sunburn as security wheeled me through the casino. Gamblers and tourists gave me odd looks and children in families pointed at me as I rolled by, slouched over with my head in my hands and resisting a strong urge to vomit on myself. The journey back to our hotel room was endless and humiliating.

  After an hour of trying to sleep off the booze, intense hunger pangs set in, nearly drowning out the nausea. By some small miracle, we found the strength to trudge downstairs to the casino diner. A hostess looked bored at the front of the busy restaurant. “It’ll be a few minutes, ladies,” she told us, barely looking up. We plopped down on a bench and prepared to wait. A waiter walked by and noticed us. He stopped in his path, grabbed four menus, and approached us to say, “Ladies! Right this way! Let’s get you some food!” Without questioning our good fortune, we followed him to a table. “How about a big order of fries to get you something in your stomach right away,” h
e promised before rushing off.

  “Wow,” Cate said, “what a nice guy.” We all agreed. We were pleased when a sizable portion of french fries was promptly delivered to our table with encouragement to “Eat up!” The four of us inhaled the free appetizer and perused the menu for more food.

  I lifted my eyes from the food options and looked around the restaurant. I stopped short when I saw that one of the walls was made of glass. It was a one-way glass wall that allowed restaurant patrons to see out, without allowing anyone on the other side to see in and know they were being watched. Directly on the other side of this glass was an uninterrupted view of the lounge chairs that we’d been sitting in all afternoon. I stopped chewing my fries for a moment and stared out, mouth open, absorbing the facts. Cate, Reigh, and Lisa all looked at me. I raised a fry to point to the glass wall. After a quiet moment, Cate said, “No wonder the waiter wanted us to eat something. He probably thought you had another round left in you.” With equal parts embarrassment and amusement, we gorged on greasy food until we rolled ourselves back to the room.

  Cate and I were too exhausted from drinking at the pool to go out. Reigh and her mother left us to go down to the casino to gamble. Cate flopped down barefoot on the queen bed. She looked deep in thought, staring at the ceiling. I took a similar position on the other bed in the room.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” I asked her.

  “Did Lisette give you that necklace?” she asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And that ugly purse?” she continued.

  “Hey,” I said, “it’s not ugly. And, yeah, Lisette gave it to me.”

  Cate got up from the bed. “Well, if that’s your taste now.” She grabbed a brush from the dresser and pulled it through her hair. I watched her, pissed that she would say that about Lisette.

  “You told me you were happy that I finally had a close friend in L.A.,” I said. Cate tensed, then shook her head, getting angrier.

  “She’s trying to buy you, Meili,” she said quietly, through gritted teeth. “You shouldn’t wear something that you couldn’t afford to buy yourself.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re just mad because it’s from Lisette.” Cate abruptly threw the brush at the wall and faced me, tears erupting from her eyes. I was startled by her level of emotion.

  “You’re right. It is ridiculous. Fine. I AM fucking jealous! I fucking hate her and I’ve never even met her!” Cate crumbled to the floor and sat hugging her knees, sobbing almost into hyperventilation. She lowered her voice and cried softly, “I hate her because she stole my best friend. And I hate L.A. for the same reason. You broke my heart. More than anyone has in my life, you broke my heart.” I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat down on the floor next to my friend. I said nothing and laid my hand on her shoulder as she broke down.

  I left Vegas thankful that our stay had been planned for only two nights. The argument with Cate pushed each of us to threaten to fly home early, but we decided to put our feelings aside and stay to support the birthday girl. I was disturbed by what Cate had said, and it pained me to watch her be so hurt. I guess I’d never realized how much she cared. It must have been hard for her to know that I’d met someone in L.A. who cared about me just as much as she did. Lisette swore that she would never accept being second best as my friend. She was all or nothing, and I needed her in Los Angeles. In time, I believed that Cate would learn to accept that Lisette was in my life to stay. At least I hoped so, because I knew who I’d be forced to choose if it came down to it.

  4

  “AND THE EMMY GOES TO . . .”

  Lisette’s life was a balancing act. I was in awe of how she was able to juggle so many things at once—she was constantly needed at meetings around town for Samsung, and on top of that she’d been hired as the face of an international modeling campaign for an Asian makeup brand. Unfortunately, the campaign would only be in Asia, so I wouldn’t get to see it in advertising here in the States. Lisette didn’t seem to get much joy out of modeling, only excited when she showed me edited photos of herself from recent shoots. She’d often text me from a photo shoot, bored and wishing she could be with me instead. I always assured her that whatever was going on at the photo shoot was more exciting than anything I was doing. Even so, it felt good to know that she would rather be with me.

  In the evening, Lisette’s boyfriend was usually home and his hardly concealed jealousy prevented me from spending a great deal of time with her. He knew that she adored me, and she never treated him with the affection she so freely gave to me. Lisette said it was driving him mad. She confessed that she’d never cared about a man the way that she cared for me, joking that if we were lesbians, we would escape together to another state and get married.

  Lisette told me that she’d been recording music at Sony Studios and was preparing to release a pop album in Asia. Apparently it would be her second release, following a debut album that had multiple number one songs in Korea. She showed me a video of a live performance that she’d done at “the Asian version of the Video Music Awards.” The video was a little distorted on her BlackBerry, so it was difficult to get a close look at her on the stage, but she sang beautifully and seemed to have incredible stage presence. I was proud of her and encouraged her to be less modest.

  “I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me about this earlier. This is a big deal and you should take pride in it,” I told her.

  “My parents think my music career is silly, so I guess I don’t talk about it much,” she said. “They even took down all my music videos on YouTube.”

  I asked where I could read about her career online: I wanted to be supportive and also to send links to my family so that they could see how talented my girl was. Lisette told me that she used a Korean stage name that I “wouldn’t be able to pronounce” and that her family had blocked all her career information on the Internet so that it wasn’t searchable in the United States. I found this more than a little odd, but I was willing to believe that people in positions of power could do things that most people wouldn’t think were possible. I was saddened by the thought that Lisette wasn’t able to enjoy her success and have it embraced by her family. It seemed that the only way she would ever gain their support was through success in the business world.

  One night during a sleepover at Lisette’s place, we decided to order delivery—sushi from a restaurant and coke from Lisette’s dealer. The coked arrived first, but Lisette set it aside for “dessert.” She began shuffling through kitchen drawers, looking for the take-out menu for her favorite Japanese restaurant.

  “Babe, can you go look in the drawer in the hallway?” she asked me. I walked to her entry hall and faced the table that ran along it. There were three drawers. I opened the one closest to me. I lurched back when I saw what was inside. A black handgun was visible from opening the drawer only a few inches. Lisette called out to me from the kitchen. “Did you find it?” I considered closing the drawer before she could see what I’d found. I felt like I’d been snooping through her things and seen something I shouldn’t have. Before I could decide whether to attempt to cover my tracks, Lisette appeared in the hallway. “Wrong drawer,” she said.

  “Is that . . . real?” I stammered.

  “Of course it’s real,” she said, casually reaching into the drawer to grasp the gun. She broke a tense silence with a laugh. “Calm down, I’m not going to shoot you. Here, hold it.”

  “I’m good. Guns freak me out.” I stared at it. “Is it loaded?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t, now would it?”

  “Why do you have that?”

  “For protection. We have a lot of valuable stuff in here.” She motioned with the gun as she talked. “If someone tries to rob us, I can kill him before he gets past the front fucking door.”

  My father was a hunter, so I grew up with a small arsenal of hunting guns in the house. But I’d never seen up close a gun that was designed to hunt humans.


  “Honestly, you should feel safer here knowing that I could protect you if it came down to it,” Lisette said, putting the gun away. After a moment, I realized that I did feel safer knowing that she would be willing to kill someone to save me.

  AS TIME WENT ON, I left my job at the postproduction house in Santa Monica to work freelance for a catering company. Like every aspiring actor I’d met in L.A., I needed a side gig to support myself while I pursued big dreams. Most of the “side jobs” actors took involved some form of food service. After a busy summer of tray passing at private parties in Malibu, the catering company offered me a regular position at the Jimmy Kimmel Live late-night talk show, as a caterer to the green room. I moved into an apartment in Hollywood, close to where the show was being filmed. I found the apartment and my roommate, a handsome young chef named Mike, on the website Roommates.com.

  I was busy with work and had no time to buy any bedroom furniture, so my new roommate allowed me to sleep on his couch in the living room until I got set up. Mike was around my age and we got along as friends. In the first few weeks I was living with him, we often had a drink together when I came home from work. We’d sit on our balcony and talk about life and our respective plans for it. Mike also wanted to pursue acting, but he paid the bills by working as a personal chef. After a week of me sleeping on the couch, he began what I saw as a very thoughtful routine of waking me up with a plate of gourmet breakfast that tasted like it had come from a five-star restaurant. I told Lisette that I thought I’d gotten lucky with this one. “Not only is he an amazing cook, he’s really nice.”

  Though he was classically attractive and in impressive physical shape, I wasn’t attracted to Mike. It soon became clear that he felt differently about our potential for romance. Two weeks after I moved in, he told me that he had strong feelings for me. I tried to politely evade his suggestion without damaging his ego by saying that we shouldn’t date because we were roommates and we’d be destined to fail.