“You’re still obsessed with Trevor, aren’t you,” Reva said, slurping from her can.
“I think I have a tumor,” I replied, “in my brain.”
“Forget Trevor,” Reva said. “You’ll meet someone better, if you ever leave your apartment.” She sipped and poured and went on about how “it’s all about your attitude,” and that “positive thinking is more powerful than negative thinking, even in equal amounts.” She’d recently read a book called How to Attract the Man of Your Dreams Using Self-hypnosis, and so she went on to explain to me the difference between “wish fulfillment” and “manifesting your own reality.” I tried not to listen. “Your problem is that you’re passive. You wait around for things to change, and they never will. That must be a painful way to live. Very disempowering,” she said, and burped.
I had taken some Risperdal. I was feeling woozy.
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘eat shit or die’？” I asked.
Reva unscrewed the tequila and poured more into her can. “It’s ‘eat shit and die,’” she said.
We didn’t talk for a while. My mind drifted back to Trevor, the way he unbuttoned his shirts and pulled at his tie, the gray drapes in his bedroom, the flare of his nostrils in the mirror when he clipped his nose hairs, the smell of his aftershave. I was grateful when Reva broke the silence.
“Well, will you come out for drinks on Saturday at least? It’s my birthday.”
“I can’t, Reva,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m telling people to meet up at Skinny Kitty at nineish.”
“I’m sure you’ll have a better time if I’m not there to bum you out.”
“Don’t be that way,” Reva crooned drunkenly. “Soon we’ll be old and ugly. Life is short, you know? Die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Who said that?”
“Someone who liked fucking corpses.”
* * *
? ? ?
REVA WAS ONLY a week older than me. On August 20, 2000, I turned twenty-five in my apartment in a medicated haze, smoking stale menthols on the toilet and reading an old Architectural Digest. At some point I fumbled in my makeup drawer for eyeliner to circle things on the pages that I found appealing—the blank corners of rooms, the sharp glass crystals hanging from a chandelier. I heard my cell phone ring but I didn’t answer it. “Happy birthday,” Reva said in her message. “I love you.”
* * *
? ? ?
AS SUMMER DWINDLED, my sleep got thin and empty, like a room with white walls and tepid air-conditioning. If I dreamt at all, I dreamt that I was lying in bed. It felt superficial, even boring at times. I’d take a few extra Risperdal and Ambien when I got antsy, thinking about my past. I tried not to think of Trevor. I deleted Reva’s messages without listening to them. I watched Air Force One twelve times on mute. I tried to put everything out of my mind. Valium helped. Ativan helped. Chewable melatonin and Benadryl and NyQuil and Lunesta and temazepam helped.
My visit to Dr. Tuttle in September was also banal. Besides the sweltering heat I suffered walking from my building into a cab, and from the cab into Dr. Tuttle’s office, I felt almost nothing. I wasn’t anxious or despondent or resentful or terrified.
“How are you feeling?”
I stood and pondered the question for five minutes while Dr. Tuttle went around her office turning on an arsenal of fans, all the same make and model, two installed on the radiator under the windows, one on her desk, and two in the corners of the room on the floor. She was impressively nimble. She no longer wore the neck brace.
“I’m fine, I think,” I yelled blandly over the roaring hum.
“You look pale,” Dr. Tuttle remarked.
“I’ve been keeping out of the sun,” I told her.
“Good thing. Sun exposure promotes cellular collapse, but nobody wants to talk about that.”
She herself was a piglety shade of pink. She wore a straw-colored sack of a dress that looked like coarse linen. Her hair was at a high frizz. A tight, chunky strand of pearls rolled up and down her throat as she spoke. The fans stirred up a roar of wind and made me dizzy. I gripped the bookshelf, knocking a swollen copy of Apparent Death to the floor.
“Sorry,” I yelled over the din, and picked it up.
“An interesting book about possums. Animals have so much wisdom,” Dr. Tuttle paused. “I hope you’re not a vegetarian,” she said, lowering her glasses.
“I’m not.”