Katerina Page 5
I walked away walked back to the house where I lived I went to my room and I packed a bag. I went to my friend Andy’s room the friend who gave me the book and I left a note on his bed that said come visit sometime. I got in my truck parked outside a bank I slept in the truck. As soon as the bank opened I went inside the bank and did what I needed to do I left after twenty minutes. I sold my truck at a used-car lot and went to the airport. I had a passport, some clothes, $18,000 in traveler’s cheques and $1,200 in cash.
I got on a plane to Paris.
Chicago, 2017
* * *
I’m sitting in a crowded room. Chairs in rows, all of them full. I know a few people in the room, but not many. Some are speaking in hushed tones, others are crying, many, like me, are staring silently at a box on a short pedestal in the front of the room. A friend of mine is dead in the box. He’s wearing a suit and his hair, which was long and blond and unruly in life, has been cut and styled and brushed away from his face in death. Someone, an undertaker of some kind, has put makeup on his face and his eyes are closed and his hands are folded at his waist, the silver watch he always wore still gleaming on his wrist. In my mind I can hear him laughing, imagine him looking on at this scene and saying what the fuck is this. He died three days ago. Heart failure. He was forty-two years old.
We met as kids at summer camp, my friend and I. It was a traditional boys’ summer camp in the middle of the woods in Wisconsin, somewhere parents sent their unruly children for some wholesome outdoor midwestern fun. I was a couple years older than him. The resident camp smartass. When he arrived he became my junior smartass associate. We’d pull pranks on counselors and other campers, make fun of people, say smartass shit. A couple cocky little punk fuckers who didn’t know any better. After our first summer together, he cried when we got on our buses home, said he’d miss me, that I was the only older kid he’d ever met who was a jerk like him and who didn’t want to beat him up. I punched him on the arm and told him I would if he acted up and we laughed and went home. We had two more summers of fun and secret handshakes and filling people’s shoes with shaving cream and hiding all their underwear and swearing under our breath at our elders, at which point I thought I was too cool for summer camp and spent my summers sneaking cigarettes and stealing booze and smiling at girls from the seat of my BMX bike. I never thought of my friend again. Or if I did, it was a quick wondering of what ever happened to him. Smartass little fucker. With his blond hair in his face. Always fucking laughing and ready for trouble.
I found out what happened to him when I was thirty. I was living in New York, in SoHo, in the years before bankers and hedge fund managers overran it, before it became America’s most expensive mall. I had sold a couple film scripts, one of which got turned into a miserable romantic comedy starring a nerdy sitcom star, and I had some money in my pocket. I had been sober for a few years. I was single, living alone, spent most of my time reading and writing and walking, I was just starting to write, after many failed attempts and hundreds of pages of unreadable crap, the first book I would publish. I was focused, ambitious as fuck, still believed I could burn the world down with words, fell asleep thinking about it, woke up thinking about it, spent my days trying to make it a reality. It was a simple existence. Nobody knew who I was and nobody gave a fuck, which was cool with me. I had work to do. And I believed in it. And it mattered to me. I had faith in what I was doing and in myself and in my life. After almost ten years of trying, I still believed. Though I spent most of my time, aside from when I was walking, alone in my apartment, I ate dinner every night at the same place, a diner on Prince Street that’s gone now, replaced by a boutique that sells fancy handbags and shoes and sunglasses designed by a reality TV star. Sometimes my neighbors, all artists or writers or weirdos who lived on the same floor of the building I lived in, would join me, but most nights I ate alone with a book. Sit read eat think. Drink diet soda finish with an ice cream sundae and a cup of coffee. I was sitting, reading, a cheeseburger in front of me when I heard his voice, the smartass singsong still in it, he said
JayBoy you motherfucker, there you are. I knew I’d bump into you again someday, fuck yeah, I knew it!
I laughed, looked up, and there he was, all grown up, wearing yellow pants and a bright blue sport coat with ducks all over it and a pink ascot, a pink fucking ascot, I laughed. He was tan as fuck, hair still blond, still long, still in his face, though now it was elegant instead of goofy. I stood and hugged him and he sat and joined me for dinner. He was a success, kind of a big one. And as bad as I had gone, as far as I had wandered, as lost as I had been and damaged as I was, he had moved the opposite way. At fourteen his parents sent him to boarding school, thinking it might be good for him, even though they couldn’t really afford it. While he was away he learned about Park Avenue, Greenwich, and Brookline, about summers in East Hampton and Nantucket and Newport, he learned about Palm Beach and Aspen and Santa Barbara, trips to Europe, Jaguars and Aston Martins and Porsches, tailored suits and Italian sheets. He decided he wanted to be rich. Rich enough to go anywhere and do anything, drive whatever car he wanted, wear whatever clothing, eat whatever food, drink whatever wine. He was smart enough to know that he wasn’t a genius, would never be a banker or trader, wasn’t a computer whiz, would never win a Nobel Prize. He knew his greatest gift was his charm, his wit, his smartass nature. So he nurtured it, learned everything about everything related to money and society, how to speak and act, which fork to use, how to make every drink known to man, how to dance, he read the books, learned what clothes to wear and when and how and where to buy them, made a friend of everyone he met, remembered all their names, remembered everything about them. When he went to college, he went to a party school, one of the schools where smart wealthy kids who didn’t get into Ivy League schools went to drink and snort and fuck for four years. He joined a fraternity and dated sorority girls, went to formals and met parents, became everyone’s best friend. When he finished, he went to work for the father of one of his girlfriends, where he learned the great secret of business, which in his words is:
Find smart people who can do everything for you. Make sure you thank them and reward them. Make most of the dough for yourself.
And that’s what he did. He had an idea to sell colored water with a tiny bit of sugar in it and make people believe that it made them smarter, thinner, and healthier. He came up with a memorable name and a snappy logo and wrote a business plan, got the parents of his friends to invest in it. He seeded the business by sending free supplies of the colored water to his friends in all of the fancy places where they spent their time and encouraging them to mix it with vodka and serve it at parties. He outsourced production, hired a marketing firm, made a distribution deal. The only thing he controlled was sales, and after years of preparing himself, he was a master at it. He’d show up with his hair and his smile, wearing some crazy, bright, colorful outfit and a pair of purple or pink or bright-blue Hush Puppies, he’d have a few samples, by the time he was done whoever he was working would absolutely believe they were smarter, thinner, and healthier because of his ridiculous bottled water, and they would have bought several truckloads of it. The company grew and grew, he poured all of the profits back into it, and after six years, at age twenty-eight, he sold it for a fucking fortune. He was rich. And he was free. And he devoted the rest of his life to, as he put it, wonderful times. He bought a house in Aspen, another in Palm Beach, an apartment in New York. He played golf and skied and went fly-fishing and sailing. He bought rare wine and rarer art, drove fast cars, ate delicious food. He joined clubs. Flew private. Stayed up until dawn, slept until the late afternoon. And unlike some rich dudes, he wasn’t an asshole or a show-off. He shared everything he had. He wanted everyone he knew and loved to enjoy it all with him. He didn’t live the way he lived to impress anyone, or flaunt his wealth, or because he was insecure or had something to prove, he did it because it brought him real joy and true delight, and he spread that joy and delight ev
erywhere he went.
We finished our dinner that night and had a big hug, exchanged contact information, and stayed in touch. He never was my best friend, or even one of my closest friends, and we only saw each other once or twice a year when we happened to be in the same place, but I loved him. He was kind and generous and funny and cool. He was someone I had known for most of my life, even when he wasn’t in it. It didn’t matter if it was four months or six months or a year, whenever we did see each other it was as if it were yesterday. We’d laugh, tell old stories about dumb shit we did as kids, new stories about whatever was going on in our lives. He’d tease me about the khakis and white T-shirts that I always wore, and had been wearing since I was a teen, and he’d offer to take me shopping, I’d make fun of the fancy shoes and shirts and pocket squares and watches that he’d always have on, offered to find the nearest Dumpster so he could deposit them into it. He met my wife and children, brought them gifts, charmed them. When my books started coming out he was always the first to buy them, read them, send me a note, when trouble followed the books, he was always the first to call and offer support. When social media arrived, we followed each other, stayed in touch using it, I saw his adventures and they always made me smile. Motherfucker had pulled it off. Rather magnificently. He was the happiest person I knew, and I was happy for him, and proud of him, and felt like I was lucky to know him.
I was in my office when I got the call. A friend who was close to both of us. I answered the phone and said hello, he said Matty’s dead, collapsed while he was hiking in Aspen, heart failed. The world, or at least my world, stopped spinning. I stopped breathing, heart felt thick and heavy like it was going to fall out of my chest, my stomach empty, my soul empty. I bit my lip shook my head. My friend asked if I was there I said yeah. We were both silent, I was staring at the empty white wall in front of me, trying to process, to comprehend, trying to believe what he’d just told me. I didn’t want to process comprehend or believe, wished I hadn’t picked up the phone, wished I could somehow rewind the last two minutes and not push play again. I asked what happened, how the fuck did this happen, he said he went hiking by himself, was supposed to meet a friend for lunch and never showed, didn’t answer texts or calls, the friend had a bad feeling and went looking for him and hiked the route he knew he liked to take, found him dead on the trail. His phone was lying next to him, twenty-two missed calls. His water bottle was lying a foot from his outstretched hand. I stared at the wall, wanted to rewind time, not answer the phone. I didn’t want to talk anymore, so I thanked our friend, asked him to send me the information on services, hung up.
Now I am in this room, sitting, staring at my friend Matty in a box a few feet away from me, his hair done and out of his eyes, makeup on his face, his hands folded at his waist, his watch gleaming. I’m thinking about those last moments. His last moments. What he felt, how fast it took him, if he knew what was happening, if he was scared, if he had time to be scared, if he said anything before he went. If his life flashed before his eyes, and if it did, was he happy with what he saw?
Was he happy with what he saw?
Was he happy?
I think about my own life. When it will end and how. By my own hand, in a wrecked car on the side of a road, will one of the threats I get sent turn out to be real, will my heart fail or an artery in my brain break, will it be cancer or ALS or a stroke or liver or kidney disease, where will I be, alone or with people who matter to me, when and how, when and how will it end for me. I think about what will flash before my eyes, and whether I will be happy with what I see. I think about the pain I’ve caused, the lies I’ve told, the messes I’ve created, the words I’ve used in anger or sadness or spite, the apologies I’ve never made, I think about all the time I’ve wasted, all the precious fucking time I have wasted doing nothing, being mad over stupid shit, obsessing over the irrelevant and the meaningless. We are told every moment is precious and valuable, but somewhere along the line we forget. And every moment becomes just another moment. To be passed, to be taken for granted, to be discarded.
To be wasted.
And I have wasted so much. With laziness and ego, on drugs and alcohol, chasing shit that doesn’t matter, money and fame and recognition and approval. How many times should I have called a friend to say hello. How many times should I have reached out to someone that I knew needed it. How many times should I have said I love you and I stayed silent. How many times could I have made the right decision, but knowingly and willingly made the wrong one. How many times have I committed acts that shamed me, even if no one but myself knew, how many times and how much shame, so fucking many and so fucking much. There have been days weeks months years when I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and feel anything but hatred and disgust. And almost every one of those times I knew why, and didn’t do anything to change it. I didn’t do anything. I just stared at myself, stared into my pale-green eyes until I couldn’t do it anymore, until I turned away. In hatred and disgust.
I make accounts in my mind of whatever good I have done and whatever good I’ve accomplished and I measure them against all the hurt and wreckage and waste and squander. To see if they balance each other out, to see if one exceeds the other. To imagine what my life will look like in that moment when it flashes, to imagine if I’ll smile, or if I’ll die hating myself. I know the answer. Know it all too well, know it without any real debate. The accounts aren’t balanced. They’re not even close. Not even fucking close.
I look up at my friend and imagine what he saw and what he felt and what he knew and what he did as the lights went out, as he said good-bye to his life, as his heart failed and he died. I look up at him and smile and I start to cry. Smartass little fucker. Sugar-water mogul man. Dancing fool in your pink-and-blue madras suit. You went way too young, way too fucking young. But I’m happy for you and proud of you, you lived so hard and so well and so beautifully, so joyously and so magnificently. I know you smiled, and I know you laughed, and I know, even though you were scared, you went away satisfied with the way you lived your life.
I’ll miss you.
I wish I had seen you more.
I wish I had told you I loved you.
I wish we could have raised a glass one more time.
I wish.
I wish.
I look at my friend and I cry. When they close the box and everyone stands I stand with them and we follow the hearse to the cemetery. I watch the box that holds my friend get lowered into a hole in the ground and just before it vanishes I hold up my hand and say good-bye, I’ll miss you, good-bye.
I go to the airport.
Get on a plane.
Fly home.
My wife is asleep when I walk into our house. I kiss her on the cheek and get into bed next to her.
Every moment.
Every precious moment.
As I fall asleep I wonder how much time I have left and how it will happen and what I’ll see and how I’ll feel and what I’ll say when the lights go out.
Will my accounts be balanced.
Will they.
When the lights go out.
Paris, 1992
* * *
Sitting on a bench in front of The Gates of Hell. Sun is hot, high and shining the museum just opened it’s the middle of summer if I want any peace here, any time alone with The Gates, I have to come before the crowds arrive. I have a bottle of water a pack of cigarettes one of my notebooks a pocketful of black pens. I’m writing. Not journal nonsense. Not the musings of my day. Not my quaint observations from the café or what I had for breakfast, but the beginnings of a book. And despite what the cheesy journalers and writers of how-to books and the professors at writing schools say, writing for publication is vastly more difficult than journaling. Nobody is going to read your journal. If they do, or if you ask them to read it, they’re not going to say anything honest about it. It could be the biggest piece-of-shit journal in the history of the world, and whoever reads it will smile and tell you how talent
ed you are and how much they enjoyed it. When you write for real, for publication, with the intention of putting your work into the world, every word matters. Every sentence matters. Every comma, punctuation mark, grammatical choice. How the words read and sound and what they look like on the page. They are all a decision and they all matter. And every decision made should have a reason behind it. There’s pressure. Pressure to make the right decisions, and make them again and again, again and again. If you do it correctly, and you do it well, people outside of you, people you don’t and will never know, will read what you write. And they’ll have an opinion on it. And whether you like their opinion or not, their opinion is valid. And so when I sit down to write, I take it seriously. I know what I want to do and what I want to say and I can hear it and see it in my mind, and I can feel it in my beating heart. It’s ambition and rage and radicality. It’s sex and love and the smell of cum. It’s sadness and pain. It’s the joy and freedom of not giving a fuck, and it’s the burden of caring too much. It’s the blunt force of my soul laid bare. It’s direct and economical. Nothing wasted. Nothing flowery. Nothing to impress you with my virtuosity or my skill. I want to make you feel, as I do, deeply and powerfully. I want to shake you and move you and make you look away from the page because I’ve overwhelmed you, I want to force you to come back because you want to be overwhelmed again. I want to sear myself into you in a way that you will never forget. And though I know this, and I can see it and hear it and feel it, as I sit on a bench, The Gates of Hell in front of me, a twenty-one-year-old American in Paris, lost and wandering, found and focused, I can’t do it. I can’t do it yet. Yet. And so I work. Write. Think. Feel. Try to get what I want and what I know and what I feel on the page. I stare at the black ink on brown paper. I listen to the sound the pen makes as I move, see the marks appear. And I believe, in a way that could never be taught, that at some point I’ll be able to do what I want to do, to write what I see and feel and hear. If I sit and work and believe long enough, maybe a year, maybe five, maybe ten, maybe twenty-five, what’s in my head will match what is on paper.