Her only friend was the third grade teacher, Aasiyah Silverman. Weekdays they ate lunch together. Weekends they spent drinking wine, watching movies, and best of all talking shit about the rest of the incompetent faculty. Often Aasiyah came to her asking for advice on how to handle some untenable situation, especially when it came to dealing with her overbearing mother.
“What do I know about anything?” Aasiyah would always say. “My mother is a devote Muslim and my father is a Jewish accountant from Encino. My whole life is a walking contradiction.”
“So what does that make you?”
“A single atheist with almost no chance of ever meeting anyone who'd even sleep with me.”
“Don't say that, Aasiyah,” Kathleen scolded her. “You're going to find someone.”
“I'm a twenty-seven-year-old virgin who hasn’t been on a date in years. My mother wants me to date a good Muslim man, but when they meet my father they bolt as fast as their sandals will take them.”
“What's your father want?”
“He wants my mother to let him eat corned beef again, but she says his cholesterol is too high.”
“I mean what does he want for you?”
“I'm not sure,” she said, looking down and drinking more wine. “He told me when I was sixteen that most of the world is a lie told to us by the media to persuade us to buy things. He said love is nothing like the romance novels and movies, not what you see on television. He told me the trick to learning to love someone else was to master your heartbreak and disappointment. In other words, my sweet sixteen present was my father telling me if I ever wanted to be happy I'd have to learn how to settle.”
“I'm not sure that's what he meant, Sea.”
It was the first nickname Kathleen had ever given anyone that had stuck, aside from Socks who also learned to respond to Stink Butt. It amazed her that she still missed that cat more than she did her ex-husband.
Is it crazy to think things might have been different if he'd just have let me keep Socks?
“It doesn't matter what he meant. He was right. The truth is that I will never be happy. You are ten times more beautiful than I am and you couldn't make it work. What chance is there for me?”
“That was different,” Kathleen protested, shaking her head. “David was a lawyer. They don't have souls you know. It's part of joining the bar. They lock them up in the State Capitol. It's true. One of the janitors’ kids told me the whole building has an astral glow to it at night.”
Aasiyah laughed and tears formed in her eyes. They'd grown so close since her divorce. She really was the only one that Kathleen could trust.
“Besides,” Kathleen continued, “you have me. And I never plan on leaving you, no matter what!”
They hugged and cried and opened another bottle. It was just a typical Saturday night.
Those were some of the best nights of my life. I wish I could go back to that place and not know what I know now. Things were hard then, yet they seem so much easier in retrospect. I wish I only had to deal with Mr. Jacoby and snotty parents now.
She didn't even know when she first started getting ill. She'd been feeling run down by the job for years. She just assumed the headaches and the weight loss and the lack of energy were caused by stress. She waited until summer break to even see a doctor. She didn't want to upset Mr. Jacoby, and her health insurance plan meant scheduling appointments sometimes months in advance. She was shocked when the doctor wanted to do a mammogram. She'd had one the year before and been fine. She was even more surprised to learn she had breast cancer.
“I'll just get them both removed like Angelina Jolie,” she joked. “If she can live without tits, so can I.”
The doctor was not as relaxed about the news. He explained that the cancer had moved into her lungs and also her spine. Chances for her survival were not good. She started chemotherapy soon after, right along with radiation treatment. Within six months the cancer had spread to her brain. They didn't give her a year to live, short of an honest-to-God miracle.
“You got one of those up your sleeve?” she asked Aasiyah with a smile when she came to visit her at the cancer ward.
“You know I don't believe in God,” Sea told her. “But that doesn't mean we can't still pull off one last magic trick.”
She held up the brochure for her sick friend. Living Dreams. It was a foundation for adults dying of terminal diseases that allowed them to live one last fantasy before their number was up.
“You remember when you told me that everyone in college wished they were with George Clooney?”
“It was Ryan Gosling.”
“Same difference,” she said. “Only you never told them you would much rather spend your last sexual encounter with Neil Patrick Harris. Well, guess what?”
“You've convinced him to be straight for the night?”
“Better.”
“What's better than that?”
“He's hosting the Emmy's and you're going to be there front and center. Darwin Radcliffe is going to be your date! Can you believe it?!” Sea's eyes looked like they might bulge out of her head, and for good reason.
Over the years the girls had watched different television programs together, catching most of the shows in between gossiping about other teachers personal lives and downing homemade white wine spritzers they'd concocted out of cheap Chardonnay mixed with Sprite – and even throwing in the occasional Vicodin for special occasions.
First came How I Met Your Mother, but soon they were watching The Office, Two and a Half Men, Castle, Modern Family, 30 Rock, and all of Animation Nation on FOX. From there they'd quickly evolved from popular prime television sitcoms to more complicated premium cable fare. Sons of Anarchy. Breaking Bad. True Blood. Dexter. Mad Men. Boardwalk Empire. The Walking Dead. The Killing. Game of Thrones. Weeds. They both skipped Girls, calling it a fad. They'd dedicated an entire night to bitching about how rich girls with famous parents shouldn't be given an acting career.
That was one of our better evenings, Kathleen thought. I've never felt so satisfied complaining about other women before in my life. In fact I never felt comfortable allowing myself to bitch about other women until I met Sea.
Eventually they'd run out of things to watch, having either seen every episode available or simply been too bored to keep watching. They tried combing through On Demand for new shows, but found it was mostly made up of artificial reality television shows. That's when they'd discovered a new bad habit, Netflixing. Kathleen had signed up for a free month on a whim, but soon the girls were camped out watching episode after episode of a series until they'd seen them all. When one would end, the desire to watch the next overwhelmed them. They spent several sleepless weekends this way, burning through Arrested Development and Orange is the New Black before they found the show that would come to define their relationship – SuperMax.
Darwin Radcliffe played Jim Reynolds, or JR for short, the cruel and manipulative prison warden who ran the toughest super max prison on the West Coast. Using his cunning understanding of human nature and total lack of remorse, he toyed with the lives of his inmates for his own amusement, pitting them against each other in contests of will that often ended in outbursts of violence. He knew just what to say to each colorful character to wind them up or set them off. To make matters worse he'd handpicked the meanest, most dehumanizing prison guards known to man and set them loose on the prison population with near impunity. The Correctional Officers found new ways to make the convicts suffer, all while running their own moneymaking schemes behind closed doors. The season finale shocker had been when we learned that Darwin himself was behind it all, from the drug trade to the prison sex ring to murder for hire.
Erickson, the young and naïve new guard, looked dazed as he realized his idol and mentor, Warden JR, was in fact the puppet master, and not some hard but benevolent father figure as he portrayed himself. Far from wanting to get to the bottom of the prison corruption he was instead the source of all of it, running an empire o
f dirty money and laundering it through legitimate businesses owned by co-conspirators beyond the prison walls, including judges and police and high powered lawyers.
“All this time? You knew?” Erickson's mouth hung open in genuine shock.
“What did I tell you the first day I hired you to work here? Think hard on it, Erickson. I said nothing goes on at this prison without my knowledge. Inside these walls I am God – and I’m not the happy, kind, forgiving God of the New Testament either. I'm more like the God of the Old Testament, fire and brimstone, and above all, wrath. Disobey me and I will utterly wipe you from the book of life and bury your forgotten bones so deep under this prison no one will ever find you. Are we clear now? Either you do as I command or I will make you suffer. Now get out.”
Darwin had earned several nominations for his performance. Being his date also meant that she would absolutely be on camera at some point, most likely more than once. All of their friends and, better still, the women they hated from work, would see Kathleen by his side. It was the greatest revenge she could imagine, one final fuck you to all the women who had made her feel like she didn't fit in.
“Well?” Sea prodded. “Say something, bitch!”
Kathleen had heard of women fainting before, but she'd never understood it until then. It could easily have been explained away by her fragile state or the medicine she was on, but she knew better. One minute her heart was racing and she felt short of breath, then all of a sudden it was like someone had turned the lights out.
The hospital released her and a few weeks later she was packing for Los Angeles, despite her mother's insistence that she not go.
“There has been talk of rioting on the news,” her mother cautioned.
“Its just protests. Big deal. They protest something new every week in Seattle.”
“Not like they do in Los Angeles. Those people run on the freeway and attack strangers if their basketball team wins the playoffs. It's not safe. I don't want you to go.”
“I'll be fine,” Kathleen assured her. “Besides it's just for the weekend. I will be back on Sunday night.”
“It's like Rodney King all over again. You could get...” her mother’s words trailed off.
“Killed? I'm going to be dead no matter what in less than a year. What does it matter now?”
“Don't say that.”
“It's true!”
“You don't know that for sure.”
“Yes I do. The doctors were pretty specific. The odds of me surviving are unbelievably grim.”
“Don't tell me about odds.”
“I'm just saying that it doesn't matter if I get killed in the riots with Doogie Howser, or if I die in a hospital bed in Tacoma General Hospital.”
“It matters to me,” her mother said, tearing up. “It matters more than you will ever know. I wanna be there with you. You are my baby.”
“Mom, stop.”
“I was there from the beginning and I plan on being there until the end. You hear me? So it matters very much to me.”
“I'm coming back, Mom. I promise.”
“You’d better,” her mother said, wiping away a fresh burst of tears and laughing. “If you do go and die on me in God-forsaken Los Angeles, I will never forgive you.”
She turned and walked out of the room. It was the last conversation they ever had.
The weather was warm, even in September, due to the Santa Ana winds.
Living Dreams flew her out and put her up at the JW Marriot the night before the event. She'd had a big plan to convince them to bring her out early because of her condition. While it was true that she normally ran out of energy without warning, it was also just a ruse to buy her extra time in the City of Angels. She'd decided to really see Los Angeles, to do all the cool things she'd never done when she lived there before because they were too touristy.
Living Dreams seemed to understand this without her having to say anything at all. They sent out one of their top people, Sean Hopewell, a fulltime employee who'd joined the non-profit after years of working for the Peace Corps. He was a simple, easygoing companion who was ready on a moment's notice to lend a helping hand, or even just to listen. It was as if nothing in the world made him happier than to make her happy.
Sean helped her pull her luggage out of the carousel. There was even a driver holding a sign while waiting for them, just like she was a celebrity. He also insisted on loading her bags into the back of his Pruis. Once they were buckled in and heading out the driver introduced himself as Carl.
“I'm going to be driving you around while you are here. All you have to do is let Sean know everything in the city you'd like to see. But first I am taking you to your hotel so you can get checked in. It's a short drive to Downtown. Traffic is not too bad this time of night. We should be there in less than thirty minutes, so sit back and enjoy the ride.”
“I didn't know there were eco-friendly car services. Are there more drivers using Prius's now, or are you the first?”
“There are others now, and some cab companies as well, but this company was the first to really jump in with both feet,” Carl smiled. “Started back in 2010 with taking a bunch of celebrities to the Oscars. Since then the demand for green rides has expanded to include a number of Fortune 500 clients. We run a fleet of twenty-five and we are constantly booked.”
“That's amazing! I mean on the one hand it sounds like something people would make fun of about Hollywood, right? You know what I mean?”
Carl smiled the same kind way Sean had when they first met. It was as if they were willing to indulge any slight she offered them.
It's amazing just how nice people treat you when they know you're going to die, she thought.
And why shouldn't they? After all, she was a condemned woman with one foot in the grave. What point would there be to argue with her? She'd be gone and forgotten in less than a year, cremated and thrown out into her beloved Puget Sound so that her ashes could mix with the marine life. She imagined killer whales and dolphins breathing her in. For some reason it always made her feel calm.
“But this isn't like a Prius you can just buy at the dealership,” Carl continued as he merged into the right lane to the sound of angry honking, and looped onto the 105 Freeway. “These babies use the most advanced hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles in the world. We've even got solar, which is perfect for L.A.”
“Because it never rains in Southern California?” She smiled as she asked her rhetorical question, thinking of the song's melody she was quoting. Carl smiled genially back at her.
“You got it!”
“Thank you, Carl,” she said. “Can we have some music?”
“Sure thing, Kathleen,” he said, switching on the stereo. “Let me know when you hear something you like.”
“KROQ will be fine,” she offered. He hit the preset for 106.7 and a new song came on, the singer crying out soulfully, “…this is it, the apocalypse.” She smiled and relaxed back into the soft leather seats. She watched out the window as they connected to the 110 via a huge, looping overpass, giving her a bird's eye view of Downtown in the distance. There wasn't much to see from there until they passed under the 10 Freeway, coming out to the breathtaking sight of the LA Convention Center and the monolithic JW Marriot towering over the freeway like a modern day obelisk. Downtown Los Angeles had changed in her absence. A renaissance had swept through the area in the form of money and new construction, reclaiming the once blighted streets and transforming them into a playground full of sound and light and color. There was a huge billboard painted on the side of one of the new buildings that advertised Coke, with two sexy young models in bikinis holding surfboards and drinking from glass bottles. There was a multiplex with shops and eateries. Happy shoppers and moviegoers blithely swarmed through the streets like pedestrians in New York. Kathleen gawked in amazement at how this one sketchy area was now teeming with foot traffic – a resurrected commercial wonderland. She touched her fingers lightly to the window in amazement.
/> What else will change after I am gone? Perhaps the whole world will be reinvented when I am no longer here.
After she had checked in, ordered room service, taken a bath, eaten, taken her medicine and routinely thrown up, she called Sean.
“I'd like to go out,” she said.
“You sure you're not too tired?”
“I'm sure,” she countered. “I took some Oxy. I should be good for a few hours at least.”
“I will let Carl know,” Sean said in a happy tone. “How far are we going?”
“Just around the area,” she said, glad to hear he didn't plan on trying to talk her out of an evening adventure. Both Sea and her mother had taken to coddling her by that point. It was endearing and yet frustrating, but she understood. She didn't have time for that now. It didn't matter if she was tired or if she felt sick. This was her last chance to drink in the sights before the sickness fully confined her to a bed and then pulled her into the darkness.
“Meet me in the lobby in thirty?”
“Can we make it fifteen?”
“I'll be there waiting for you,” Sean agreed, and hung up.
True to his word, he was there twelve minutes later when she came down in an evening dress. Carl picked them up out front and she told him to head north toward the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. Carl had them there in under five minutes, pulling up in front of the lobby where three sad, tattered looking, formerly white flags were buffeted back and forth by the gusts from the nearby freeway interchange.
“You two have fun up at that rotating bar,” Carl said.
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