Head Case (6 page)

“Excuse me?”

“Come on. You just can’t get enough of the rush you get every time you develop a new crush. Why else did you give him the Sanitol? Were you trying to show off?”

“Show off? That’s an obnoxious thing to say.”

“Right back at you,” I said. “Anyway, I’m not being obnoxious. I’m concerned. I mean, what are you taking these days, anyway? I think something in there,”—I tapped her head—“is out of whack.”

She recoiled. “What?”

“You need to separate your dopamine rush from this equation. You don’t know this guy at all. And here you are, acting like he’s the end-all-be-all, wasting what little supply we have left on a stranger. I think it’s a problem.”

“I think you’re jealous,” Polly said, glaring at me with a look that surely should have been able to kill, if looks could do such a thing. “That’s what this is about, Olivia. You’re the one who needs some restructuring.” This time she tapped my forehead.

I sat back and pedantically crossed my arms. “You can think that, Polly, but I think I know a little bit more about this stuff than you do. So before you get all head over heels here, just think about it.”

“About what?”

“Seriously, what are you taking these days? Maybe it’s impacting your judgment.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“I’m not your lab rat, Olivia.”

“Maybe if you were, you wouldn’t be acting like such a fool.”

“Incredible,” Polly huffed, going back to her room and slamming the door behind her so hard it caused a few of my less-wet bills to fly off the milk crate.

It did not seem like a very good time to ask her for a loan.

15

June 9 (B.D.)

The Same Day.

Later.

Polly didn’t speak to me after our little tiff that day. She showered and dressed (in her own clothing, I noted) and walked out the front door, saying only, “I’m going on a date with my dopamine rush. See you later.”

That was one of the last half-normal interactions we had in our apartment. After that, she became so absorbed with her new relationship that if I wanted to see her and have an actual conversation, I basically had to make a date with her myself.

The lust-inducing hormone norepinephrine can do that to people—cause them to become oblivious to the world around them and dismissive of friends they once called four or five times a day. All of those love-making neurotransmitters—dopamine and its chemical brethren—they can make you do things you might not normally do.

I suppose I should have been less quick to judge Polly’s new relationship, especially considering that given the chemical structures in her brain, some of her behavior was out of her control. But I am (I was) only human, and had my own synapses to contend with, like the ones that were being inundated with vasopressin and oxytocin (yes, the hormones associated with jealousy. I suppose I can admit that).

In the end, though, it no longer matters. For all of my studying about what molecules do what to which part of the brain, there is not one molecular structure that could change my current situation. Come to think of it, if you could create a pill to stop death, it would be the biggest blockbuster in history. Imagine the money in that. Imagine the lengths pharmaceutical companies might go to get a hold of that patent. Maybe that’s what I should have been focusing on all along. Then I wouldn’t have been in this predicament.

I’m half kidding, of course. First of all, it’s a ridiculous premise. Second of all, money was never the point. Not for me. At least it wasn’t initially the point. It wasn’t the point of our trading in pharmaceutical swag, and it wasn’t the point of my research. I wish I could have kept it that way, but I was broke and underfunded, so that stopped being an option. Unfortunately, as the proverbial “they” so often say, money ruins everything.

Money is the reason why the vast majority of new prescription drugs hitting the market each year are aimed at “lifestyle” and not at “lifesaving.” It’s the reason why pharmaceutical companies spend 90 percent more on marketing new medications than actually researching them. And money is the reason why I got even more deeply involved with Missy Pander than I otherwise would have.

I was desperate.

The tuition for my program was covered, but it didn’t count for things like living expenses, dresses from Prada sample sales or bottles of Cristal. (OK, I only paid for the Cristal once. Usually when we were with Lillianne or any of her pals, everything was complimentary.) The thing was, even with all the scholarships and aid money, going to graduate school in New York City was doing me in. Working in a grant-based research lab while dressing like I was a senior editor at a Conde Nast publication only made matters worse. I was saddled with undergraduate loans, and it didn’t help my credit card debt when my extracurricular activities started requiring a wardrobe that was more Barneys than Banana. In the past, Polly had often helped bail me out, at least covering the minimum monthlies. When she started dating Mitya, I probably owed her almost as much money as I owed my university, and given the current tenor of our relationship, I wasn’t about to ask her for any more handouts.

So there I was, stewing on our ratty couch, drowning under the pile of still wet bills, feeling rejected by my best friend, and, well, sorry for myself. I admit it. I shouldn’t have been harassing Polly about her dopamine addiction and her hyper-emotional amygdala when my own brain was suffering from an overactive prefrontal cortex. She might not have been fully balanced, but she was right. She wasn’t the only one with a brain that was out of whack.

I looked at myself in our funhouse mirror.

What a pathetic sad sack I was; with my unwashed stringy hair falling forward and the puffy, swollen circles under my eyes, I looked like Droopy.

I bunched up the stack of soggy statements and bills and overdue notices and, as hard as I could, threw the bundle at my reflection. The papers were wet enough to stick to the glass the way toilet paper sometimes sticks to bathroom ceilings, but one small card fell off the wad and fluttered to the floor.

I picked it up. 

Missy Pander

Pharmaceutical Sales Representative

(212) 555-6337

Missy Pander’s business card.

I thought about the Chanel lipstick she had pulled out of her designer purse. Either she had a sugar daddy, which was unlikely, or—more likely—someone was paying her very well.

I looked at the card again.

Pharmaceutical Sales Representative.

I could do that, I thought, laughing to myself. I mean, I was basically already doing it for free, wasn’t I?

So I called Missy and asked if I could meet her for lunch or coffee, thinking she might have some good advice.

16

November 5 (B.D)

Earlier Today. Back in the Cab. Again.

5:38 P.M.

“Would you please slow down?” I said, tapping on the glass divider that was separating me from Ivan Petrovich Lumpkyn.

“I am good driver,” he said, raising a short, hairy finger in the air to affirm the point.

I pulled at my seat belt, testing its strength. “Well, you’re going pretty fast and whatever’s at the docks that we’re speeding toward, I’m sure your friend Boris would prefer that we arrive in one piece.”

“He not my friend.”

“Whatever. I was just saying …”

He put his hand on top of what I assumed to be a camera or a GPS or a listening device installed under the rearview mirror. Without decreasing the acceleration of the car, he let go of the wheel, turned around, placed his finger to his lips, and then spun back around before we crashed into another car.

“Well, can you at least tell me what—” I began.

“Stay quiet.”

“Is this about money? Because if it’s money you want, you’ve got the wrong girl,” I said.

“Quiet!” he said, admonishing me with his finger. “When we find Mitya, he explain.”

Mitya. He was pretty much the reason that Polly had basically stopped talking to me, and now he was the reason I had to stop talking as well.

It’s funny, really. We spend so much time in life worrying about things like our relationships to money and men when, if you think about it, in the end death is all they will ever amount to. Friendship, though, real friendship—if you really work at it, if you can give each other space to change and grow, but still be there for each other—that is a relationship that can amount to so much more. I can’t believe how badly I screwed it all up.

17

June 11 (B.D.)

Two Days After Polly and I Basically Stopped Speaking.

Lunchtime.

If you Google “pharmaceutical sales representative,” you have to dig pretty deep to get beyond the overwrought postings on job boards and numerous websites that tell you how to pad your resume accordingly to score one of these gigs. Judging by the search results, it’s a coveted and extremely competitive profession; the job can easily net someone, even someone without an advanced degree, up into the six figures, never mind the bonuses. You have to be smart, sure. You have to have a rudimentary knowledge of science. You have to have charm, chutzpah, and a fair amount of self-starting ambition. A bit of sex appeal never hurts. But once you get in (if you get in), you get first-class travel and company cars, expense accounts and fancy restaurants galore. Sometimes there’s even a clothing allowance. Take away the ambition thing, and it would have been the perfect career for Polly.

Instead, I was the one trying to score the job. I was the one at Hedge, one of the hottest and priciest restaurants in Manhattan, meeting for lunch with a pharmaceutical sales representative who looked a bit too much like a high-priced call girl.

“The usual table, Ms. Pander?” the maître d’ said obsequiously as he gathered two leather-backed menus from the stack on his reception desk.

“I come here a lot,” Missy told me in a falsely conspiratorial whisper that anyone could hear. “The doctors love this place. It eats up a huge percentage of my expense account.”

The maître d’ led us past well-spaced rows of tables covered with crisp white linen, past elegantly dressed diners clinking their silver-plated utensils as they put food into their mouths. He placed us at a table located in a quiet corner—coveted real estate in a restaurant, as I had learned from my forays with Lillianne.

It was quite apparent that if it was money I wanted, pharmaceutical sales was a good place to start.

“So,” Missy said, once we’d settled in and our watercress salads had arrived. She pushed a large forkful into her mouth, chewing it as she spoke. “You said on the phone you’re looking for employment? Didn’t you say you were finishing up your PhD? Wouldn’t that interfere with your studies?”

I tried to ignore the contrast of Missy’s open-jawed chomps with the elegance of the surroundings. “Um. Well, maybe a little,” I said. “But in some ways it’s a logical fit. I mean, I understand the products already. I mean, I understand the science behind them, how they work. I was thinking there might be a way to structure part-time, flexible hours.”

Missy asked me about my thesis, what I was concentrating on, and I explained that I was currently using functional magnetic resonance imaging as I activated regions of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex to investigate the neural substrates associated with the processing of moral emotions. She stared at me blankly.

“I’m trying to pinpoint the parts of the brain that regulate emotions like guilt, to see if those emotions can be chemically manipulated in isolation,” I translated. 

Missy smiled politely through a mouthful of greens.

I tried to explain further, in even simpler terms, that I believed that guilt, just like depression, had a chemical foundation, that you could in fact identify specific molecular components of every mood—happiness, joy, anger, envy, jealousy and so forth. I started to explain that everything we felt in life, from loving our pets to hating our jobs, was created by unique molecular formations in our brains, and that …

“Olivia?”

I turned my head. It took me a second to recognize her, she was so out of context.

“Vivian! Hi!” I said, flustered. Lillianne’s friend and Hollywood cohort Vivian Ward was the last person I expected to see today. Especially at a place like this. Although with her almost iridescently clear skin, perfectly tailored shift dress and expensive scent, she fit right in.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, almost accusatorily, sizing both me and Missy up and down. It occurred to me that even though she had pretty much ignored me the other night at Charity, my presence here was giving me new credibility in Vivian’s eyes. I wish I could say I rose above her opportunistic superficiality, but I didn’t.

“Um. Having lunch with my …” My cheeks started to burn, unsure of how to introduce Missy and feeling ashamed of her too provocative work attire and overly styled hair. I didn’t bother to finish the introduction, and Vivian didn’t bother to acknowledge Missy.

“I didn’t know you were still in town,” I said, although there was really no reason I should have. 

Vivian said she had to come meet with a potential producer, and we chatted awkwardly about the weather, me acting like it was totally normal that I would be having lunch at a place like this, she graciously letting me act that way.

“Hey, are you free Thursday night?” she suddenly asked. As if I would have other plans. “Adam’s in town. I was thinking if you had any more of those …” Vivian glanced over at Missy and quickly dismissed her as irrelevant. “You know, those sample ‘candies’ you gave me and Lillianne?” She winked as she said that.

I told her we were running low and weren’t really able to, well, you know… I rolled my eyes over toward Missy, implying that even if I had any meds, I couldn’t really talk about it in present company.

Vivian’s smile faded. “Okay. Whatever.” She pointed at the maître d’, who had been patiently waiting this whole time. “I should get to my table.” She held her thumb to her ear and her pinky to her mouth and said in a whisper, “Call me if things change.” As if I had her number. That was Polly’s domain.

Then she followed the maître d’ to join whoever it was that she was joining at a table opposite us.

I turned back to Missy. I immediately knew that she knew.

“That was Vivian Ward, wasn’t it?” she asked, sounding impressed and curious.

I nodded.

“Did she mean Lillianne Farber? That friend she mentioned? Do you know her?”

“Sort of. Lillianne’s a client at Polly’s firm,” I said, really wanting to change the subject. “Polly’s worked with her a bunch of times.”

“Seriously?”

“She escorts her to junkets and stuff. Acts as her lackey when she’s in town.”

“What a cool job.”

“Not really.” I poked at a piece of bread. 

“She doesn’t like it?”

I shrugged. “There are perks. But really it’s pretty shitty work. One minute they treat you like a friend, the next minute …”

“Well, if you can’t be happy working with people like Lillianne Farber and Vivian Ward …” Missy’s voice trailed off, ignoring my point.

“Yeah, too bad there isn’t a pill for that,” I said. “Tweak your brain and start loving even the most mind-numbing, soul-destroying employment.”

“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” Missy said. She sat back and pensively crossed her arms. “I just might be able to do something with that.”

I laughed. “It’s all about brain chemistry in the end, isn’t it?”

“Not entirely,” she said, more to herself than me. “Job misery. Who can’t relate to that? I like it. Very marketable.” She sighed. “Anywho…” She picked up her knife and fork.

We each took a few bites of our food.

“So … sample candy?” said Missy, her mouth once again full of lettuce. “Is that what I think it is?”

I silently picked at my salad.

“Those samples I gave you in Dr. Warner’s office, to give to his patients? Is that what …?”

I grimaced.

She waved her fork at me in mock admonishment. “Olivia, darling, you should know better than that. Such behavior isn’t befitting a serious scientist like yourself, now is it?” She put down her fork like she was getting serious. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” I said into my salad, feeling my heart pounding against my ribs.

“Do you think I want to be a sales rep for the rest of my life? Traveling all over town hawking drug samples like a door-to-door salesman?”

I looked up. Huh?

“I mean, really. Do you think this is what I want? That I’m happy with my job?”

I had no idea where Missy was going with this, but I was happy to be off the subject of my celebrity “friends” and candy samples.

“Listen.” She leaned forward. I could smell the garlic from the salad dressing hovering on her breath. It didn’t combine well with the abundance of her spicy perfume. “I think I have an idea. You need money. I’m tired of flirting with bloated, aging doctors. I think we can help each other out,” she said. “Anyway, considering your candy shop, you sort of owe me now, don’t you?”

She had me there.

“Look, you say you want to be a sales rep, right?”

I nodded with tentative affirmation.

She shook her head. “Don’t underestimate yourself. It’s shitty work and, honestly, I’m finding out the hard way that there seems to be a direct correlation between the gradual sagging of my boobs and diminished sales.”

“I’m not really sure what you are talking about,” I said, because I wasn’t. Or at least I wasn’t sure about what she was getting at.

“Come on, Olivia. It’s pretty clear that I’m selling my looks more than the actual medication, right? Let’s be realistic. It’s not like there’s great job security in that over the long haul. But with a good, marketable idea …” She held out her hand, palm open, her gold watch skimming the butter dish. “Can I see your resume again?”

I showed it to her and she made some oohs and aahs and waved her salad-covered fork in the air whenever she saw something that interested her.

She took a bite of endive. “Olivia, this is a no-brainer.”