He had enticed Sloane with promises that Alexa would get her an agent, but Luna knew it was a lie. Alexa wanted Nico for herself. There would be no way she would help some struggling actress he was fucking. When Luna met them at the office of the realtor she’d introduced to Nico, it was obvious they were high on something. Sloane was tall, with waist-length highlighted brown hair. She wasn’t model thin, as Luna had expected her to be, but rather big-boned and athletic like a racehorse. She giggled incessantly, drawling Nico’s name each time he stuck his hand down the back of her tight white jeans. Thoroughly embarrassed, Luna departed hastily, saying she was late for a meeting. A few hours later when Nico called, she erupted, castigating him. “I was mortified! I’m sure the realtor noticed you were both stoned…and that girl is trailer park trash! How could you, Nico?!”
Nico hung up, but called her back later, trying to sound convincing.
“You’re wrong, Luna. She’s a very sweet girl. You don’t know anything! And you owe her an apology. She heard what you said; you were on the speaker. You’re showing your age…we smoked some pot…big deal!”
“Nico, she is a bad influence on you. She does drugs with you, and I think that’s why you’re with her.”
“You’re an idiot, Luna! She’s the most beautiful and pure woman I have ever met. The others are all sluts.”
“I don’t believe you.” As much as she would have liked to believe him, her gut told her otherwise.
“She loves me. And is devoted to me. And she doesn’t leave me.”
“Whatever…Nico, please be the healer you’re supposed to be…please…” she begged, practically in tears.
Devastated because Nico shut off his phone for days at a time and missed sessions at the studio, Maya began calling and texting Luna every day. Blaming Sloane for corrupting him and accelerating his rapid downward spiral, Maya maligned her, effusively casting her as a low-class drug addict. “Luna, I’m certain he’s dealing. I never told you that Nico asked me to deliver drugs to clients for him, but I refused. I told him he was crazy! That’s why he’s hooked up with that girl. I wouldn’t be his mule…but she obviously will. Then he had the audacity to ask me if I would do a three way with them!”
Luna welcomed her camaraderie. Maya’s calls made her feel connected to Nico and fueled her with a purpose. Saving him was their shared goal, and they sent each other articles about drug addiction and personality disorders. They created the story of what they believed must have been Nico’s traumatic childhood, and it didn’t matter if it was true; it was close enough. Together, they surmised Sloane not only had become his drug mule, but was fulfilling his compulsion for cocaine-infused all-nighters. Maya knew Nico’s password from paying the bills, and playing detective, she began tracking his cell phone calls, proudly boasting she’d found evidence—the cell phone number of his drug supplier.
When the gossip about Alexa traveled through her office, Luna called Maya right away. “I just heard Alexa was fired—and that she’s in rehab! Nico had told me she was an addict, but I wasn’t sure it was true until now.”
“I believed him! I’d hear her on the phone with him…she was a fucking mess, that bitch!” Maya spat, unleashing her obvious hatred.
Luna chuckled. “Yeah, their relationship was toxic!” She thought about all the conversations she’d had with Nico about Alexa, begging him to sever his ties with her. But Nico wouldn’t forgo the money and connections she afforded him. She loathed Alexa and blamed her for Nico’s demise. Resigned, she sighed, “I suppose they destroyed each other…”
Now distraught and worried that Nico was going to get arrested, or worse, kill himself with drugs, Luna wrote veiled e-mails pleading with him to go into rehab and get rid of Sloane. Possibly in denial, but definitely paranoid because she was communicating with him over the internet, Nico accused Luna of being crazy and imagining things. Obsessed, Luna angered him further by badgering him and repeating the things he had told her, until he stopped replying altogether.
Luna couldn’t reconcile Nico’s drug addiction with the spiritual healer she’d met four years earlier, Confused and at a loss for what to do, she sought Tyler’s counsel, divulging everything—Nico’s cocaine use, Élodie smuggling in the human growth hormone, and Maya’s detective work exposing Nico’s drug dealing. Completely in shock, she beseeched, “Was he always like this? A drug dealer? An addict?!”
“I’m not surprised, Luna. Nico never did the real work needed to be a healer. He wasn’t ready.” Pulling books by Carl Jung from the shelves, Tyler explained the Greek myth of Chiron, the wounded healer, “The greatest healers are wounded themselves, but they use that suffering to heal the pain of others. Nico lacks empathy and uses people as objects for his own gain. He is broken. And you, as much as you have tried, cannot fix him.” Tyler was right, but it felt dispassionate.
“He won’t speak to me, but it still doesn’t feel right to abandon him when he’s in trouble. Maybe Maya can get him into a program…”
Luna texted Nico a photo of the red glass votives in the Saint Francis of Assisi Cathedral in Santa Fe. She wrote she was praying for him, and then playfully added a picture of the statue of Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk woman from the seventeenth century who had been canonized as a saint. The effigy resembled Luna wearing a turquoise necklace and earrings, and she hoped Nico would find the irony funny. Lately, she’d irritated him so much that he ignored her, but this time he texted back: LOL.
A few weeks later, on a warm September day when the sky was a cloudless blue and the air crisp and clear, he called. “Meet me at the bank. I need you.”
Hearing the urgency in his voice, she asked, “What’s wrong? Is everything OK?”
Nico answered curtly, “Not on the phone…” Then he abruptly hung up.
Luna was relieved he had chosen a safe place to meet instead of the studio. When she pulled into the parking lot, she immediately spotted Nico outside the bank frantically pacing back and forth with his cell phone on his ear. Then she noticed Maya leaning against the side of the building with her head down in her phone. Chuckling to herself, Luna thought how good Maya was at disappearing—like she was wearing an invisibility cloak to shield her from the impending incursion. Nico looked red-faced and puffy; he obviously wasn’t doing well. When he saw Luna, he waved her over. Visibly agitated, he declared, “Luna, I’m being audited. As if I don’t have enough problems.”
“I’m sorry, Nico. What can I do to help you?”
“Make me receipts,” he instructed calmly, as if it was a reasonable request.
Luna looked back and forth between Nico and Maya, flabbergasted. “What do you mean make receipts? You mean fake invoices?”
“Yes, that’s it. Some invoices that I paid to you for the business plan…and the book proposal. Make them total twenty grand. I need to show how I spent money. Otherwise, I have to pay more taxes.”
“Nico, that’s fraud. You go to prison for something like that,” she blurted much too loudly.
“Don’t be stupid, Luna.” He grabbed her by the arm, pulling her toward him. “And keep your voice down!”
“Oh, I’m not stupid, Nico! And I will do a lot for you, but not commit tax fraud. That’s a federal offense!” Luna got in her car, but Nico held the door, not allowing her to close it.
“That’s what I’m saying, Luna. You’re never really my friend. You always leave me. This time, don’t ever try to contact me again.”
Tyler’s words ricocheted in her head, Nico uses people as objects… “I won’t, Nico. That’s an outrageous request. Those receipts would point straight back at me! You don’t give a shit what could happen to me!”
Later, she received a text from Maya, as if she was apologizing for him:
Luna, he doesn’t think. He just wants what he wants.
I’m not going to do it, Maya. I can’t. It’s illegal. And besides, Tyler would kill me. It proves to me how selfish Nico is. He doesn’t care if I go to jail. He would throw me under the bus! I�
�m done. I’ve had enough!
Élodie called when she landed in L.A. “Luna, I don’t know if he will see me. He’s with that slut girl who does drugs with him.”
It didn’t surprise Luna that Élodie wouldn’t give up on Nico. He’d been not only verbally abusive to her, but physically abusive as well, yet she was as inescapably tethered to him as Luna was. Élodie claimed she was worried about him, but Luna knew it was more than that. Élodie’s messages became more desperate. Mostly she blamed Sloane, but she didn’t trust Maya either, saying they both must be doing drugs with him as well as whatever else he demanded—and because she wouldn’t participate in these things, he was punishing her. She was determined to get back the Nico she had met while sitting by the gulf waters, gazing at the full moon; the enchanting lover under whose spell she had fallen.
Nico hadn’t spoken to Luna in over a month, since her refusal to help him with the audit. Still appalled, she told Élodie what Nico had enjoined, “I told him it was illegal…an outrageous request! And he told me to fuck off and leave him alone! He didn’t care that I could be arrested for committing fraud. I’m horrified!” Still, concerned for him and bonding with Élodie, she asked, “Does he know you’re here?”
“I went directly to Amaru, but he wouldn’t let me in. He knows I will stay in the bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Do you want to come by the hotel and have a drink?”
“Sure, I’ll be there in about an hour. He won’t come, will he?”
“I don’t think so. If he does, I don’t care. Do you?”
“At this point, no. How can you come all this way and he doesn’t even open the door?”
But Luna knew Nico would seek her out. Élodie was his prize. So when he walked into the hotel bar, both women followed him with their eyes. Nico would not meet Luna’s gaze. She said a quick good-bye to Élodie and left.
Élodie texted Luna the next day that she was meeting with a client and then leaving for the Emirates. She wrote:
He stayed with me in the bungalow all night. I know he loves me by the way it felt when we made love. Sloane is a drug addict, low…in the gutter. He is with her because she does the drugs, and sells drugs for him. I will win him, and help him to get better.
Spurred by Élodie’s passion, Luna private messaged Sloane on Facebook, telling her to leave Nico alone and writing:
He is a healer, a medicine man—and you are destroying him.
Enraged that Luna had contacted Sloane, Nico wrote her:
Stop interfering in my life! Do not contact any of my girlfriends again. You don’t know Sloane, she is a good girl. She does as she is told, not like Élodie. You know that Élodie lied to me, and hurt me. Why do you defend her? Stay away from me.
Desperate for a solution, Luna looked online and found the nearest Narcotics Anonymous open meeting. Feeling nervous and out of place, she sat in the back and listened in stunned silence, hoping she was invisible to the group. Unexpectedly, she was moved to tears as each member shared heartbreaking experiences, yet each was also hopeful and surprisingly grateful. When the meeting was over, she humbly joined the circle for the Serenity Prayer. Afterward, she stayed and spoke with the leader. Clean more than twenty years, he was now an addiction specialist and explained that aberrant sexual behavior, such as addiction to porn and hookers, commonly coexist with cocaine addiction. Even married addicts regularly paid prostitutes to get them off because of the skill and duration involved. Luna shared her findings with Élodie, who promptly broke down, whimpering, “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu,” afraid Nico would soon die of a heart attack from the combination of Viagra and cocaine.
Maya seemed tougher. Yet Luna wondered if it was a façade. Maybe Élodie was right, and Maya concealed her compliance. After all, she’d admitted she’d taken part in the past. But now, instead of falling apart, she told Luna she was pleading with Nico to dump Sloane and go to rehab—appealing to his reputation as a guru and telling him everyone would admire him for coming forward; that the admission would even elevate his stature.
Now caught in a whirlwind vortex between both women, Luna sought the cause of his addiction. What pain was he compelled to mask? Revisiting Sofia’s speculation of bipolar, a mood disorder, Luna considered the diagnosis. The swing between his outrageous grandiosity and his morbid lows fit. His unstable relationships that split between extreme idealization and devaluation, and his frantic efforts to avoid abandonment were characteristics of borderline personality disorder. But at his darkest, his lack of empathy and remorse, the manipulative self-serving behavior that views others only as a means to an end, and the violent outbursts of rage that led to punishment and abuse were all signs of a classic sociopath with traits of narcissistic personality disorder. Regardless of the label, his pain and wrenching emptiness were palpable, as was her own obsessive need to soothe him.
Luna nudged gently. Nico held a grudge against her and accused her of having selfish interests. Though it was apparent he twisted this indictment for his own benefit, she was bent on proving him wrong. Just before Thanksgiving, she e-mailed him a well-known passage from Corinthians, assuring him that her love would never fail.
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
Endeavoring to regain his affection, she explained that real love is unconditional and given without any stipulations—and the greatest gifts are valueless without love.
Surprisingly, he called to wish her and Tyler a happy Thanksgiving and said he and Sloane would be cooking at the house, then hung up quickly.
But the following week, a frightened Maya called Luna from Nico’s house.
Her voice trembling, she whispered, “I’m with him at the house. When I got here, he was lying in a fetal position, crying. Now he’s locked himself in the bathroom. There’s all these empty packets…I don’t know how much he’s done. I’m scared, Luna. What should I do?”
Luna’s anxiety soared, but she steadied herself and asked calmly, “Do you know what happened? Where’s Sloane?”
“He confessed he’d done a lot of cocaine on Thanksgiving, and he mumbled something about being mean and not eating the beautiful dinner she’d prepared. He admitted that he went off on her and hit her because she wouldn’t stop crying. And then he kept screaming at her when she called her mother.”
“He’s terrible with holidays…they always trigger stuff for him.”
“He said that the next thing he knew, there were police at the door, along with Sloane’s parents and brother. They drove from El Paso, packed all her things in a truck, and took her home! When they left, he called me and told me to come right away. He said he was going to kill himself. Luna I flew here—don’t know how I didn’t get a ticket!”
“Just keep talking to him through the door. He just needs to know you’re there. He’ll come out.”
“He keeps ranting that he hates himself and wants to go into rehab. But then he started crying again because Sloane won’t answer her phone.”
“Well, he called you…that’s a good sign. And, thank God, Sloane is gone. Maybe now we can get him the help he needs.”
Luna felt bad for Maya, whose love remained enduring. It had turned out that she was, after all, the last soldier remaining on the blood-soaked battlefield.
30
Tyler never spoke about Nico. He’d had his fill of the drama, and Luna knew that it was coming to a head. When the doorman rang up to announce Élodie, Tyler gave Luna a stern look, though she was as perplexed as he was. Élodie’s eyes were swollen with tears. But the fear in them was paramount. “Luna, I thought he was going to kill me. He’s dément…lunatic. I’m afraid. It is only a bungalow, and he can break down the door!”
Luna rushed to console her, feeling responsible because she had relayed Nico’s plea for her to come. “Élodie, it’s fine, you’re safe here. You can stay here and leave tomorrow. He’s not himself.”
“I know, it is the drugs. He takes them and is up all nig
ht. He wants to fuck all night, and no sleep. If I say I have to sleep, he yells. The security came to the door. I was so embarrassed because they know me, and it is my client’s bungalow. It was awful!”
Luna gave her a cup of chamomile tea and waited until she calmed down before asking, “Why do you keep coming back, Élodie? He’s a drug addict, and he abuses you!”
“I have other memories…of sweet Nico. This is another face I do not understand. I want to help him to stop these drugs and go back to the man I fell in love with. He only blows up because I say no. I will not do drugs and have crazy sex. So he becomes violent.”
“He’s dangerous, Élodie. I fear for you. I never knew about the drugs until recently. Maya told me, but she said he never hit her. Why is he like this with you?”
“If she does the drugs and sex all night the way he wants, then he’s happy with her. I won’t do this, and so he kicked me in the head, like a dog, giving me the concussion in Maui. That girl Sloane did everything he said. He told me. When I arrived he put out cocaine. I said no, I won’t do this. He went crazy, screaming for me to give him what he wants. This crazy sex. I cannot do this with him.” She looked away, embarrassed. “And he did so much drugs that I thought his heart would explode.” She began crying and slumped over, her head in her hands. Luna put her arm around Élodie’s shoulders, leaning their heads together. Élodie’s hair was knotted up in a loose chignon, and the tendrils fell down the back of her swan-like neck. Luna looked over at Tyler, who she knew felt compassion for Élodie, but wished none of this had been brought upon them. He mumbled he would go make up the bed in the guest room.
Now that Nico’s destructive behavior had been unveiled, Luna, cleaving to and cherishing Tyler more than ever, promised him she would take her life back.
Nico had been her drug, and she had chased the high long after he had withdrawn the euphoric potion of his flattery, making her feel young and beautiful, feeding her vanity—and compelling her to him. But now she had to let him go.
The Sleeping Serpent: Page 44
