Now I See You (12 page)

Not only had Kat been my ride to and from the party, she’d also been my ticket in; she knew a guy who knew the guy who was housesitting at the exquisite home overlooking Sunset that was packed with industry people—mostly actors with a few agents, directors, and casting people tossed in to start a feeding frenzy. The house was massive; the pool deck alone was bigger than the three-bedroom apartment I’d shared in Brooklyn. Chateau Marmont was just up the street and I overhead someone pointing out that you could see Tobey Maguire’s deck from the bar.

I’d guessed what kind of a crowd it would be, which is why it had taken me nigh on two hours to get ready. After painstaking deliberation, I’d settled on wearing a pair of tight jeans and heels with a shirt so insubstantial it would be better characterized as a handkerchief. Despite its size, and the fact that I’d found it on the half-off rack, the shirt had cost a pretty penny at the Robertson boutique where I’d purchased it a few weeks before. I didn’t want to ruin a shirt like that. So, naturally I took it off when I got in the hot tub.

It didn’t seem like such a big deal. Which is to say, everyone else was doing it. After two years in LA, I’d come to see this as a perfectly legitimate defense, a fact that’s not surprising when you recall that trying to make it as an actress in Los Angeles is exactly like trying to survive high school. I could almost hear my mother inveighing, “If everyone else jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?” but I’d left my mother, along with my good judgment, in New York. Checking your self-worth and decency at the door wasn’t just an occupational hazard as an actress in LA; it was an occupational necessity.

Besides, I justified to myself, it wasn’t like I was going to do anything stupid, like sleep around on David, who was waiting at our place in West Hollywood. He refused to come along to these industry parties, found the whole racket deplorable, and nothing I said—or wore—could persuade him to trade in a night of beer, peanuts, and zombie movies for shameless networking. David wasn’t prone to jealousy and he felt reassured when I went out with Kat because she, too, had a serious boyfriend who she’d never cheat on, no matter how much she flirted. Yes, Kat and I served as expert cock blocks, swooping in to save one another before push came to shove.

So where the hell is she?
I wondered as I steeped in the hot tub, squirming away from the King of Candy’s arm.

He wasn’t the King, in point of fact, but the Prince, heir to the kingdom. His father owned the company whose chocolates were responsible for my freshman fifteen back in college. The King of Candy belonged to the only other category of people who came to these parties apart from Industry People, and that was Filthy Rich People who Know Industry People. I’d met him in the gazebo, where I’d taken refuge after Kat wandered off, because it was the only spot on the deck that was at all illuminated. I’d almost fallen into the pool a few times already and though I’d prepared an excuse should that occur—
Shit, I should’ve stopped after the third drink—
it would really be better if I didn’t.

So I’d taken my chardonnay over to the gazebo and arranged myself carefully on a stack of silk pillows there, hoping I’d look Too Cool for School rather than Too Blind to Party. It must have worked because a few minutes later, the King of Candy introduced himself and ever since, I’d been asking him detailed questions about candy production and laughing my head off like an idiot. It wasn’t that he could advance my career or anything, like Kat’s catch, but talking to him kept me from being a wallflower and I’d pay any price to avoid looking like I had no one to hang out with. Including following him into the hot tub.

There were a dozen of us in the Jacuzzi and the Candy King kept creeping closer and closer, even though I’d told him a few times I had a serious boyfriend. The flirtation had turned from flattering to bothersome to an SOS situation.

Come on Kat,
I thought,
help a lady out.

I’d spotted her a little while ago next to the bar, tilting her head to the side and cocking one hip down, which is a trick we both used to make our midsections look thinner. Then I’d looked away to deal with the hand on my leg and now she’d disappeared.

I could call a car service but I didn’t have the phone number of one and, as I’d learned, no one at LA parties ever knew the number for a car, though from the look of how fast the liquor bottles were emptying, they really should’ve. But even if I’d had the number, I’d need to locate my phone first, which required me to locate my purse which I’d abandoned somewhere in the vast, dim universe of the pool deck. It’d take forever to find it and in the process I’d almost definitely do something dangerous or humiliating, like step on someone’s Manolo Blahniks or knock over an invaluable orchid. Kat could help me find it because Kat knew about my eyes—I’d told her back in college, before I’d taken a vow of silence about the subject. But in order for Kat to find my purse, I’d have to find Kat. Which brought me back to square one.

The thing to do, I concluded, was just stay put. Kat would come looking for me eventually, and since I was in public, I wasn’t in any serious danger with the Candy King, though he had just taken the liberty of putting his arm around my waist.

“I really have to go,” I protested, squirming away, but even as I said it, I knew he’d be thinking that if I
really
had to go, I would, simple as that.

He leaned over to whisper something in my ear, something about caramel. The whole thing had gotten real old, real fast. I wasn’t laughing anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I have a boyfriend.”

“I don’t mind,” he replied.

I’ll tell him I’m gay,
I brainstormed,
though he probably won’t mind that either. I’ll tell him I have a VD. Herpes? No, syphilis. You can’t argue with syphilis.

Why confessing to fabricated syphilis was preferable than a retinal disease was beyond me. Mine was not to reason why. Mine was not to reason at all.

Just then, I felt a small, soft hand on my shoulder.

“What are you doing in there, crazy lady?” Kat was laughing behind me. “C’mon, I have your purse; let’s get out of here.”

“Thank God,” I muttered, stepping out of the hot tub.

Within fifteen minutes, we were pulling up to the front door of my apartment building, with its Spanish-style roof tiles. Inside, I found David sitting on the couch, watching
The Twilight Zone
and eating pistachios.

“Why is your hair wet?” he asked.

“Why do you care?” I snarled back, storming into the bedroom. Because, of course, right along with the city of Los Angeles and Kat, David was fully to blame for the hot tub fiasco. If he’d come to the party, like I’d asked him, I wouldn’t have ended up trapped in a hot tub with some lecherous moneybags; I would’ve had someone to talk to and a ready-when-you-are ride.

David was my default nighttime driver and it worked well enough when it was just the two of us going to dinner or a movie or visiting friends, something low-key that David liked to do. Whenever it was something he didn’t like to do, there was usually a fight involved, or at least toxic levels of resentment on one side. Because there is a subtle but crucial difference between, “Hey, do you want to come to my agent’s Christmas party?” and “Hey, do you want to come to my agent’s Christmas party? And also, you don’t have a choice.”

In New York, David and I had had our own apartments, our own social circles; we were together sometimes but we were often apart. We acted as guardians of each other’s solitude just like Rilke recommended. But as soon as we moved to LA, that changed. I no longer had the luxury of asking David to protect my solitude—he had to protect my nightlife instead. He still needed a solitude guardian but tough shit. I certainly wasn’t going to start feeling sorry that he’d lost a bit of his freedom when I’d lost all of it. Who was the unfortunate one anyway?

Besides, it wasn’t like I was inviting him to a root canal. This was exciting stuff; this was cocktails at the Standard, concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. Would it kill him to stop being such a homebody and start living his life, in the process making it possible for me to live mine, too?

“You know I hate this stuff,” he said when I “invited” him to the birthday party of a USC director I’d recently struck up a friendship with.

“But you can pitch our movie to him,” I told him, flatironing my hair in the bathroom. “I think Finn knows someone at Sundance.”

“Don’t pretend this is in my best interests,” he replied. “If you need me to drive you, just ask me.”

That knocked the wind out of me. I turned to him, wanting more than anything to press his balls between my flatiron. I hated him. And though I wasn’t honest about my motives for inviting him places, I was honest about this.

“I hate you,” I told him, turning back to the mirror. “I’d like to flatiron your stupid balls.”

“Good,” he said, “then you don’t want me to come.”

“No, I don’t,” I said, fingering gel through the ends of my hair to eliminate flyaways. “And I don’t need you either.”

“Just call a car,” he suggested, turning on the TV.

“You know how much it’ll cost to take a car to Silver Lake?” I shot back.

“What about Kat?”

“She’s out of town.”

“So, ask Finn to give you a ride,” he said. “He won’t mind.”

“Just don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself,” I snapped, slipping on my Via Spiga sling backs.

“You still didn’t tell him about your eyes, did you?” David said, looking at me over the tops of his glasses.

I ignored him. He just didn’t get it. I was in the business of pretending to be better than I was. I’d just spent an hour making myself appear thinner, more buxom, and taller, with clearer skin, fuller hair and longer lashes. If I couldn’t tell Finn, or any of the other acquaintances who were turning into friends, what my real weight was, I wasn’t about to tell them I was half blind.

I dialed Finn’s number anyway and asked if he’d give me a ride.

“My stupid car won’t start,” I explained.

“You need to bring that car in,” he said. “It did the same thing last week.”

“Yeah, it’s a good-for-nothing piece of shit,” I said, glaring at David. “You can’t rely on it.”

My dependence on David, which I refused to admit and he refused to ignore, was poisoning what was, in all other respects, a blossoming love. Needing someone to drive me places made me feel like a kid at best, a cripple at worst. It wasn’t how I wanted to think of myself and it wasn’t how I wanted him to think of me. Of course, as David tried to explain, that wasn’t how he thought of me. Everyone needs help with some things, he said. And if I would only tell people about my limitations, they’d be glad to help, which would make him feel less hemmed-in and probably be a huge relief to me. It was easy for him to say. He could drive himself to In-N-Out whenever he felt like a burger.

But David wasn’t opposed to my secret just because it inconvenienced him. He was disturbed by the way it was growing. What had started as a careful omission had become a bold, bald-faced lie. I made up stories to cover for bruises on my shin, knots on my forehead, mistakes I made when reading out loud. Put together, these little cover-ups created an alternate version of me, a version that kept getting boozier and ditzier to explain away the mistakes that were all attributable to my eyes.

David didn’t particularly like this version of me and he got stuck spending a lot of time around her when we went out. He didn’t understand why I’d prefer people to think I was obtuse and drunk rather than just partially sighted. I didn’t understand it, or particularly like it, myself. But it was easier to keep going on the course I’d charted than start a new one.

Eventually, I reasoned, I’d tell people. When I had to. For the time being, I got by. Through a combination of feigning car problems, riding in Kat’s passenger seat, and pushing David when I had no other options, I was able to avoid ever getting behind the wheel after dark.

But sometimes I’d already be behind the wheel as it grew dark.

Try as I might to ensure that whatever obligations I had would wrap up before dusk, sometimes things would run late and then I’d be stuck out after sunset. Sometimes I wouldn’t notice; I’d be busy rehearsing and then suddenly look at the window and see the sun was almost set. Usually, I would notice but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t very well call, “That’s a wrap!” midscene with a cast and crew on the clock because I was secretly night-blind.

Then, too, there was traffic. Sometimes I’d be stuck in gridlock on the 101 and watch, helpless, as the sky grew darker. My mind would scramble for a way out as my pulse rose and my palms started to get clammy. There was no way out. I was trapped behind the wheel, sinking in a sea of darkness.

One late afternoon, I was sitting in the waiting room of a casting agency in Sherman Oaks, waiting for my callback to play the wacky secretary in a new pilot. They were running late.

“Sorry,” the casting assistant said. “We’ll get you in really soon.”

I nodded, swallowing. The sky out the window beside me was descending into a dusty gray and I had ten, maybe fifteen minutes left before twilight. I’d never been to this casting office before and I’d needed to consult my Thomas Guide the whole ride over. How would I see the Thomas Guide now? How would I see the street signs? How would I see the road on those curvy, tree-lined streets that took me over the hills? I tried not to sweat through my spearmint-colored shirt.

I’ll worry about it after,
I reasoned,
or else the whole callback is blown.

As soon as the casting agent said, “We’ll be in touch,” I walked briskly out of the room, trying not to sprint in my knee-high boots. Once outside though, I did run, fumbling with my car keys and dropping them in my haste. The sky was darkening but mercifully, there were some weak rays of sunlight remaining. I could outrace the darkness.

Keys in ignition, foot on gas, buckling my seat belt as I turned the wheel.

Take it easy,
I counseled myself.
Not too fast. Don’t forget to look first
.