South on Highland: A Novel

by Liana Maeby

  I throw down a ten.

  “Um,” he says. “What about you?”

  “The Rolling Stones. Tom Waits.”

  I win several of Damon’s cards in a row. “Favorite author?” I ask.

  “Hunter Thompson, I guess. You?”

  “Faulkner. James Baldwin. Hubert Selby. And I like Denis Johnson a lot.”

  Damon wins our first four-card showdown.

  “Favorite movie?” I ask.

  “My Own Private Idaho.”

  “Pulp Fiction,” I say, and Damon scoffs. “Favorite actor?”

  “Robert Downey Junior, probably,” he says. “You?”

  “Johnny Isherwood,” I say with a smirk and throw down a two. Damon wins it easily. His stack of cards has grown so it’s about equal to mine.

  “Favorite drug memoir?” I ask.

  “Permanent Midnight,” Damon says, and I have to agree.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Harlan finally shows up at the treatment center, just a few days before I’m scheduled to check out. I have mixed feelings about getting back into the real world, and I find myself uncharacteristically nervous as I walk across the common room to meet him. He’s annoyed because the man at the front desk made him throw away his coffee, and it was a bold fair-trade Ghanaian blend.

  “Caffeine’s a stimulant,” I say. “Thus, a drug.”

  “But not really,” he replies. “I mean, come on.”

  “I know. It weirded me out too.”

  “It’s kind of a priceless rule. You should write it down so you don’t forget.”

  I brush off the comment, even though it bugs me, and wait for Harlan to ask me how I’m doing. He just taps his fingers against his knee. The potted tree has been removed, but the room still smells faintly of vomit from the previous incident. Or maybe that’s how this room has always smelled.

  “So, how are you doing?” I ask him instead.

  “Oh, I’m losing my mind,” he says. “This town’s a mess. I’ve got three projects out there about the same thing. Adaptations of gay athlete biographies, but there’s no sex in any of them—just a lot of angst and working out.”

  I nod and offer a little laugh. I glance at the clock and see that it’s almost time for afternoon chores. “Sounds lame.”

  “I tell you, everything’s so fucking sanitized right now.”

  “People tend to puke in this room a lot, so 409 gets dumped in buckets.”

  “I meant in the industry.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you do,” Harlan says. He leans forward and tries to seem casual. “So, how’s the script coming?”

  “The desert movie? That’s still happening?”

  “Oh no, they’ve got a kid from Austin on that now—some film-school cowboy. I meant your script. The big one. About your life.”

  “I haven’t exactly been doing a whole lot of writing in here, Harlan. And truthfully, I think I’m ready to put that thing behind me. Cut my losses, etcetera.”

  “Well, too bad. Because we sold it. Remember?”

  I twist my face into a question mark. “We what?”

  “We sold your damn script. I made the deal at Jerry’s seder. You signed on the drive away.”

  “On the drive here? To rehab? I’m pretty sure I was unconscious.”

  “Nah, you came in and out.”

  “Harlan.” I put a hand to my temple and try to tease away an oncoming headache. “What the fuck?”

  “This is good news. Fucking great news. You’re supposed to be happy.”

  I look around the room. A man with neck tattoos plays solitaire, and a malnourished girl compulsively bites her fingernails until they bleed. “Yep,” I say. “I’m feeling nothing if not incredibly happy. Ready to plaster my inner joy on the silver screen.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t get all moralizing on me, not now. This is a thing you wanted, and I got it for you. Okay?”

  My headache’s arrived, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I sigh in a way that’s almost onomatopoeia. “I need a break.”

  “Well, yeah, of course. You can have that. Look, we all understand if it takes a little time. Obviously. But eventually, you’ll get up and deliver.”

  “I mean, I need a real break. From myself. From thinking about this shit, day and night. Plus, the narrative has changed. I found out some stuff about my family that makes the whole first act untrue. Warps the character motivation. And it kind of unravels the whole thing.”

  “So what? No one said it has to be true.”

  I breathe in. I hear cards shuffling and skin being torn from flesh.

  “Leila.” Harlan takes my hand and taps it twice. “Do you remember what you said to me the night we met?”

  I close my eyes and let the headache drag me under.

  INT. TREATMENT-CENTER COMMON ROOM – DAY

  Leila glances at the clock. She rubs her temples. HARLAN leans forward.

  HARLAN

  Do you remember all that shit you told me the night we met?

  FLASHBACK:

  INT. BAR BATHROOM

  Fluorescent lights flicker from above. Lines of cocaine are spread out on the counter. Leila and Harlan laugh as they take turns snorting up the drugs.

  Leila is clearly wasted.

  LEILA

  I totally have a plan, you know. Yep, I do. And it’s a good one.

  HARLAN

  You keep bringing up this so-called plan of yours.

  LEILA

  Do I? Shit.

  HARLAN

  Well, you going to tell me or what?

  Leila smiles coyly. She leans over and inhales a line of coke. She swoons a little, her eyes going a bit wild. She does not look great.

  Leila leans forward and steadies herself on Harlan’s shoulder. She places her mouth to his ear.

  LEILA

  (whispering)

  I’m talking about rock fucking bottom.

  She sways.

  LEILA

  Hard-core addiction. Coming to in an alley on the precipice of death, sleeping it off, then doing it all over again. Near misses, 3 a.m. revelations. That’s the shit people want to see.

  Harlan looks her over. He isn’t quite sure what to think.

  LEILA

  And I’m going to give it to them. I’m gonna flame out by twenty-five. I’m on my way, as it is. I’m gonna try every single thing and feel every single feeling--my scars are gonna have scars, motherfucker!

  A devilish grin spreads across her face.

  LEILA

  And then you and I? We’re gonna make a movie about it. And this town will lose its fucking mind.

  Harlan takes a step back. He looks Leila over as she tries to steady herself against the wall. He grins.

  HARLAN

  Bravo, you little monster. Just as long as you don’t up and die on me first.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The ironing board is too long to fit between the door and the armoire that sits in the corner of the light-blue room, so it sticks out a few inches into the doorway—which means I’ve rammed my hip against its metal point at least a dozen times. I wish I could remember that the damn thing is there, and I also wish I didn’t bruise so easily, as my hip is starting to resemble a Rorschach inkblot. But more than anything, I wish that my mother hadn’t turned my childhood bedroom into a laundry center.

  I’ve been back inside the house I grew up in for five days, but I still get confused about where I am every morning. Mornings are the hardest. My body has slowly begun to adapt to life without drugs, so falling asleep is no longer a problem for me—in fact, putting my head to my pillow is all I ever feel like doing. The downside of this newfound ability to catch restful, sober Z’s is that I have vivid dreams each night and wake up horrified each morning. For years, I had no trouble suppressing every shitty feeling and guilty emotion that dared intrude on my blissful productivity. The result is that my subconscious has become a stratified novelty skull, comprised only of bad thoughts. On t
he bottom, there’s a layer of remorse over having been an aloof and distant daughter from the time I was old enough to spell those words in return for bright-red A-pluses. The next tier starts when my drug use did: there’s money pilfered from my mother’s purse, countless medicine cabinets raided, lies told to people who did nothing but nice things for me. There’s the brazen arrogance I assumed as a cloak of defense, acquaintances I never let turn into friends because I’d felt they weren’t good enough for me—weren’t as clever, or as fun, or as high. For the first time, I’m acknowledging that I’ve treated people as tools to be used and discarded once I’d ground them down so much that their points weren’t suitably sharp anymore. Or after I’d spotted someone shinier. The topmost, and therefore freshest, layer of my subconscious is an apology to myself. It’s made up of the guilt I feel over having taken a bounty of potential and squandered it—or more directly, at having utterly fucked myself over.

  The other problem I’ve developed is that I’m now utterly and fundamentally incapable of envisioning my future. How could this possibly play out? Do I stay clean and move on to another career, maybe go back to school for my teaching certificate and marry a nice lawyer? Do I relapse and lose all my friends—and what’s left of my money, my health, my teeth—before I eventually OD? Or am I doomed to play out the last few years over and over again, constantly cycling through recovery and relapse and recovery and relapse and redemption until one time, it finally sticks—for a while, at least.

  If I stay clean, will I walk through the world like a shadow of the person I once was, never feeling wholly human? If I start using again, will the success I once had return for a while, or will the lowest depths of my addiction be waiting there to greet me as soon as I pick up a pill or a needle? When I close my eyes, my mind writes blank pages until I fall asleep.

  I still have quite a bit of explaining to do. My parents have been walking on eggshells around me, biting their tongues, as though uttering one wrong word could send me right back down the tar-paved road to hell I’d barely managed to veer away from. My dad and I haven’t talked about his book since the day I found out it wasn’t real, but it’s the unsaid part of every conversation. I know we’ll have to discuss everything to death eventually, but for now I’m just going to try and get through today.

  INT. DINER – DAY

  Leila and Harlan sit at a table. Leila sips from a mug of coffee. Harlan speaks excitedly, his hands flailing.

  HARLAN

  Off the fucking hook, I tell you. I’m fielding ten calls an hour about you.

  LEILA

  How’d that happen? I mean, no one’s even seen the script.

  HARLAN

  Hey, word gets out. This idea is golden. And you knew it all along, kiddo.

  Leila signals to the waitress for more coffee.

  HARLAN

  I’m going to need the pages you’ve written so I can send them to Max and Sophia over at the studio, okay?

  LEILA

  Harlan--

  HARLAN

  They want to start talking about getting talent attached. What about Michael Pitt for the love interest? Or that skinny white kid with the cheekbones from The Wire?

  LEILA

  I mean, shouldn’t Johnny play Johnny?

  Harlan looks away.

  HARLAN

  Johnny’s pretty tied up with the cult movie, so--

  LEILA

  Oh. He’s still doing that?

  Leila looks down. Gets lost inside her coffee cup.

  HARLAN

  Forget Johnny. He’s a loser. This is about you. And kiddo? You are about to be fucking huge.

  LEILA

  I just don’t know if this project is the healthiest thing for me right now.

  HARLAN

  There’s a payment sitting in a bank account for you right now, and it’s a fuck-ton of money. I get that this is emotional--I do. But you’re not just going to walk away from this kind of cash.

  LEILA

  But I could. Is the thing.

  HARLAN

  Oh yeah? And what are you going to do for a living? Practice law? Wait tables? Kiddo. You don’t know anything else. This was your plan. Now see it through.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I can smell pancakes cooking, and it makes the thought of getting out of bed and facing the world more bearable. I’ve gained eight pounds since the day I checked into rehab, and I can see the weight hanging on my body every time I pass a mirror—hunks of flesh I want to tear out and stomp on until they explode into loathsome globs of ooze. But I understand the weight is healthy and that it’s my brain that’s sick, so I try to keep my focus on other things.

  My mouth waters involuntarily at the buttery scent from downstairs. I throw on a pair of jeans and make my bed, something I’ve continued to do each morning even though I’m out from behind the treatment center’s rules and daily agenda. I halfway wonder if I might not take up professional mopping too. Leila Massey: janitorial wunderkind. Weirdly uncomfortable with the informality of going barefoot in my own parents’ home, I slip into a pair of socks. Downstairs, my mother is flipping pancakes on a griddle. A stack steams atop a blue ceramic dish, new since the last time I ate here.

  “Good morning,” my mother says, shoving her voice full of extra cheer.

  “Hi, Mom.” I pour myself a cup of coffee and add a drop of whole milk from the refrigerator.

  “Would you get the syrup out?” my mother asks.

  I put the sticky bottle of maple syrup on top of a napkin and set the table with a pair of plates and forks. My mother brings the pancakes over, and we both sit in the same seats we would have been found in on any morning ten years ago. Habit is a hard thing to break. “How many would you like?” my mother asks.

  “Um, two for now.” The pancakes are filled with apples and chocolate chips. It’s a meal I ate on five hundred mornings growing up, and the smell evokes cartoon TV and spilled milk and the dread of an impending boring hour spent flailing around on a soccer field with a gaggle of unathletic girls who were just there for the pink uniforms. My mom slides two pancakes onto my plate. “Thank you,” I say.

  I cut myself a piece of pancake, making sure to get both a chunk of apple and a chunk of chocolate chip. My mother sees me do it, and a smile spreads across her face. I grin sheepishly. “I can’t believe you still eat like that,” my mother says.

  “You have to, Mom,” I say back. “Otherwise, it’s a total waste. What’s the point of putting both apples and chocolate chips in the pancake if you aren’t going to get both tastes at once? It’s physics.”

  “Honey, that’s not what physics is.”

  “It’s not? Well, I’m pretty sure I got a five on that AP test.”

  My mom shakes her head, continuing to smile until her lips appear frozen in the shape of a canoe. A silence overtakes us, and I cut another bite so I can fill the emptiness with chewing. I suck down some coffee, all too glad I’ve been able to introduce caffeine back into my diet, but painfully cognizant of the amount I’m consuming. One day at a time suddenly seems overwhelming, so I change my mantra: One goddamn bite at a time.

  I flip a third pancake onto my plate, and I can tell this makes my mother happy. I try not to think about the sharpness that has been fading from my cheekbones, and the fact that my jeans feel a little tight around the stomach. I let the syrup swirl liberally on top of the dough and watch it fill the crevices and puddle around the chocolate chips. I make an exaggerated show of cutting up the pancake for my mother’s amusement. When I eat, bits of flour make their way into the hole in my mouth that once contained a healthy tooth.

  “Hey, Mom,” I say, suddenly aware of the stillness of the house. “What day is it?”

  “Oh, it’s Thursday,” my mother says, and then she’s busy scraping a mound of chocolate from her plate.

  Thursday means that, once again, my mother is staying home from work to look after me, even though she promised she wouldn’t do that anymore. “Mom—”
/>   “I was thinking we could go shopping this afternoon. Maybe check out some boutiques on the east side, then head to the bookstore?”

  “Oh. Um, I have a meeting to go to. You know?”

  My mom’s expression falls. “Right.”

  “But I’ll be home later,” I say. “We can watch a movie. And hey—what if I help you make dinner?”

  “Only if you feel up to it,” she says, looking at my face like whatever she sees there still isn’t quite what she expects.

  INT. BEVERLY HILLS OFFICE – DAY

  Leila sits across from two slick executives, MAX (35) and SOPHIA (40). She seems a little nervous as she sips from a bottle of water. Max leans forward.

  MAX

  So obviously, we don’t normally give notes on scripts that aren’t finished, but this is a unique situation. And I have to say, we fucking love what you’ve done with the first two acts.

  SOPHIA

  So edgy and provocative.

  LEILA

  Thanks, I was aiming for that.

  MAX

  So where’s it going? How does it end?

  LEILA

  You know, I think it’s going to be a little vague. Open to the audience’s interpretation. Let’s let them decide if she gets her shit together or not.

  MAX

  Hmm.

  SOPHIA

  Yeah, I don’t know if that’s the right move here.

  MAX

  I mean, we want redemption. We need that for this character.

  SOPHIA

  Do we, though? Isn’t redemption a little played out? Honestly, I think it makes a better story if she dies.

  MAX

  Ooooh, I like it. I love it. Leila? Thoughts?

  LEILA

  I don’t know. I mean, of course I’ve considered that as a possibility, but it’s so dark.

  SOPHIA

  Exactly.

  MAX

  Dark is making a comeback this year.

  LEILA

  But maybe a little manipulative?

  SOPHIA

  Well, it’s certainly more dramatic. And more honest too, wouldn’t you say?