South on Highland: A Novel

by Liana Maeby

  MAX

  Totally. My God, this could be like Romeo and Juliet. Tragic, sexy. A classic for the ages.

  Leila fiddles with the wrapper on her water bottle. She shrugs.

  MAX

  Hey, just think about it. Okay?

  SOPHIA

  You know, I bet it would help get the movie made. Which is what we all want, isn’t it?

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I drive to my NA meeting an hour before it starts and park down the street. Then I walk. That’s mostly what I do during the day now: walk, to nowhere in particular and with no real sense of where I’m going. I don’t feel like listening to any of the music I used to love before I went to rehab, and my iPod is now mostly filled with blues: Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Robert Johnson, and Chicago-based guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Otis Rush. These songs feel more appropriate for my emotional state than the revelry of big rock ’n’ roll, and I never did go in for the pasty singer-songwriter thing.

  There’s a balance I try to strike with the streets I walk down: too busy or too quiet and I feel exposed, but a good side street with the occasional dog walker, smoker, or biking child gives me the sense of invisibility I need to calm my raw nerves. It’s an uncannily beautiful afternoon, and the breeze smells like purple flowers. Every day since I’ve been out of treatment, I’ve told myself I’d finally stop by my apartment, but once again, I can’t bring myself to do it. I can’t face Mari, or the Virgen de Guadalupe, or the drawers of my dresser, where an assortment of pills are surely still stashed away. It isn’t that I feel like using, particularly, but I assume the urge will come eventually, and that looming fear is more than I can handle.

  I walk into the meeting ten minutes before it starts. This one is held in a room at the back of a Cuban coffee shop in Silver Lake, less than a mile from my apartment. Today’s group is typical of the addicts in this part of town, mostly a mix of aging punk-rock guys and women with candy-colored hair, plus a handful of paperback-clutching off-track intellectuals thrown in for scenery. Everyone smells like an ashtray, different but no less appealing to me than that purple flora.

  There’s no guest speaker today, and the chairperson, a woman named Vivian who has an octopus tattooed all across her back and down her arms, starts the meeting with a rundown of official business—it seems someone keeps forgetting to bring the coffee cake.

  The door swings open, and everyone turns to watch a man mumble an apology for being late. His face is flecked with scabs, and he’s missing a tooth, just like me. He has to walk past our whole row of seats to get to the empty one on the end, making me feel almost like we’re judging a pageant. He looks right into my eyes as he passes by, and I can tell he recognizes me but can’t quite pinpoint where from.

  But I know who he is.

  “Blake,” I mutter. Those eyes I used to daydream about are yellow and dull, that hair, once so deliberate, gone feral. He drops his gaze, but it doesn’t matter. I already know everything about him. I know that the flames of hell have been licking at his boots each and every moment since the last time I saw him. I know he sold his camera and bought it back, then sold it again. I know he spent some time living on the street, nearly dying on the street, on his best days seeing only the fluorescent lights of purgatory illuminating the way in front of him. I know his insides are covered with a stain of methamphetamine no amount of scrubbing could ever hope to shoo away. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did some real, lasting damage to a teenage girl quite a few years ago.

  Vivian reads a section from the Big Book that has the ring of lullaby. It’s the way she says the words, solidly and like she believes them, more than the meaning itself that gives me a little peace. She closes the book and offers the floor to anyone who wants to share. I haven’t spoken at a meeting yet, but today seems like a good time to start. I raise my hand, and Vivian nods at me. I stand. I can feel Blake watching me, but I don’t look his way.

  “I’m Leila,” I say. “Addict and alcoholic. I’ve got thirty-five days clean, which is the longest stretch I’ve gone since I was in high school. The truth is, I don’t know any other way to live. But it’s occurred to me that I can probably learn one, right? What I mean is, it feels like I might actually be ready to change my life. But that’s today, and tomorrow will be tomorrow. And we all know how hard it is to think about tomorrow.”

  The whole room claps for me, and I sit back down, already thinking of things I want to say the next time.

  EXT. LEILA’S APARTMENT – AFTERNOON

  Leila stands outside her apartment, hesitant. She takes a deep breath and unlocks the door.

  INT. LEILA’S APARTMENT – CONTINUOUS

  Leila steps through the door and looks around.

  LEILA

  Mari?

  No response. She takes a step forward and yelps. Looks down and sees a sticky mousetrap attached to her foot.

  LEILA

  Damn it.

  Leila removes her shoes and heads into her bedroom to grab another pair.

  She looks up at her Virgen de Guadalupe mural. She traces the woman’s features with her fingertip.

  She looks over all her things and begins to pull clothes from a drawer. She spots a package on the desk and picks it up.

  A note reads: “I fucking miss you. Take this and cut it into little stars. Your Johnny.”

  Leila opens the package. Inside is a gram of black tar heroin.

  Leila looks at the drugs for a long time. She drops them on the desk and curls up into a fetal position on top of her unmade bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I walk into the house carrying a bunch of fresh-cut flowers. They’re calla lilies, delicate and white and clean. My parents are making dinner together, whipping up a batch of pasta in a deep-red spicy tomato sauce. They both look up at me as soon as I enter, like they’ve been attuned to every single sound all evening.

  “Hi,” I say. I put the flowers in a vase and put the vase on the table.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” my mom says. We share a smile.

  I see my father glance over at the flowers a few times in a row, and I realize I’ve forgotten to put water in the vase. He knows it too, but he lets it be.

  “Can I help?” I ask.

  “Let’s get you on garlic bread duty,” my dad says.

  I slice a loaf of crusty Italian bread down the middle and spread butter up and down both halves. My dad hands me a clove of garlic, and I chop it into fine pieces. The three of us lose ourselves in the work for a minute, silent except for the sounds of cutting and washing.

  “Hey,” I say. “I was thinking—”

  “Yes?” my mother asks too quickly.

  “If there are leftovers, maybe tomorrow I’ll invite Mari over for dinner?”

  “That would be perfect,” my mom says, smiling, and my father agrees.

  EPILOGUE

  INT. BEDROOM – MAGIC HOUR

  Tight on a pair of lightly closed eyes. An abstract mask of brown haze comes over them. Spots of color dance the Charleston across both lids.

  Pulling back, we see Leila, naked except for a pair of lacy black underwear. She is slumped over, with her face resting atop her arm, and completely still. Slashes of golden light cut across her body.

  Her lips are slightly parted, and the color has begun to drain from her face. Her mouth, freshly rouged, stands out against the paling skin. Her eyes appear delicate and almost peaceful.

  A lit cigarette crackles in a makeshift ashtray.

  A flower sits in a tiny vase.

  The perfect song plays.

  So much stillness, so beautiful and poignant.

  The mask of brown haze fills the frame, and it slowly begins to darken, bleeding inward from the edges. Darker and darker, until . . .

  WE FADE TO BLACK.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Firstly, I want to thank my family for having been the greatest and the most supportive people on earth for my entire life. Carol, Jack, and
Dylan: I love you dummies.

  There would, of course, be no book at all if not for the faith and input of my impossibly smart and way too lovely editor, Carmen Johnson.

  And I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Melissa Kahn, Richard Abate, and Jermaine Johnson, all three of whom have been invaluably helpful and insightful throughout this entire process.

  Thank you to Elizabeth Johnson, my copyeditor, for teaching me how to spell “Wookiee.”

  Richard Rushfield was the first person to read parts of this book in its most fetal form, and his feedback and encouragement gave me the resolve to keep going with it.

  Stephanie Carroll has read more drafts than is reasonable to ask of a person, and she never even complained about it, because she is amazing.

  Kevin Seccia said, “I like that book idea you told me about—why don’t you just write that already” enough times that I eventually did.

  And finally, along the way, some dear friends have offered various forms of support and encouragement that have meant more to me than they could ever know. Thank you to Aimee Mann, Ashley Cardiff, B. J. Novak, Bigfoot (that is my dog—shut up), Daniel O’Brien, Drew Grant, Jacob Pitts, Jarrett Grode, Jeremy Schoenherr, Maya Dean, Rob Delaney, Sarah Linet, Stephen Falk, Taylor Grode, and Tyler Coates.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © Jeremy Hunt Schoenherr

  Liana Maeby was born in Brooklyn and raised in Los Angeles, where she still lives. This is her first novel.