Sounds Like Crazy (20 page)

I started to pace the empty alley.

My breath caught.

I looked skyward and yelled,“You made your point.You can come back now.” My voice cracked with panic.

“Miss Miller?” I turned and came face-to-face with one of the security guards. “You okay?” Great. Another breakdown by Holly Miller in Page Six tomorrow. Only this time, I really was talking to myself.

“I’m fine,” I said, “just having a bad day.” He nodded and retreated back down the alley. I bit my thumb, hoping the physical pain would stave off the panic and anguish rising like a high tide in the back of my throat.

 

I slipped in the side door just as Mike turned the corner. “Let’s go,” he said tersely.
Yeah, right,
I thought.

When I entered the sound booth, none of the cast members even glanced up.Walter stood glowering behind Mike as he told us to pick up where we’d left off Friday, which meant Violet was up, and Betty Jane was still on strike and nowhere near with her picket sign and demands. The floor underneath my feet felt unsteady.
She’s not coming back.They’re not coming back.

After my third try at Violet’s lines, Mike yelled, “
cut!
” through the talkback.Walter said something to him, glared at me from the other side of the glass; then he left. Mike motioned for me to come out.

When I stood in front of him he said, “Holly, that’s it, you’re through.”

“Sorry. I just need some rest. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”

In response, Mike handed me an envelope. Inside it I found a notice that said in bold letters,
Termination of Contract
.

I glanced at the engineers.They both turned away, unable to look me in the eye. I scanned the cast in the booth.They had the same expressions you’d find on someone who had finally witnessed the going around, coming around.

I couldn’t breathe.

The eyes of all the people in front of me and behind the glass closed in on every inch of the empty expanse I’d become in two short days without the Committee. They kept staring. I didn’t move. With each passing second, their pitying gazes felt like the crushing pressure of a deep underwater dive.And right before the last barrier between me and myself shattered into thousands of fragments, I dropped the piece of paper I held in my hand and I turned around and ran.

I ran out of the recording room and out the front door of the studio. I kept running down Twenty-third Street. I didn’t know where I was running to; I only knew I needed to run to something. But what, I couldn’t at that moment say.

So I kept running.

I reached Fifth Avenue sweating and out of breath. Everything around me seemed unfamiliar and frightening.
Where do I go?
I turned right and picked up my pace again. People parted before me like the Red Sea. New Yorkers instinctively know when to step aside and let crazy pass.

When I reached Ninth Street, I slowed to a jog and turned left. Wheezing like an out-of-tune accordion, I ambled toward Fourth Avenue. Each footfall felt like God had gripped my Achilles’ tendons, flipped me upside down, and spanked me against the pavement. Every corner of my body ached. I took two more steps and then stopped at 95 East Ninth Street. I pressed my hands
against the walls as I heaved the air in and out of my lungs.Then I pushed down on Milton’s buzzer. I heard it sound from the other side of the door. I waited. I pushed it again. I waited. I pushed it again. I waited. I was going for my fourth try when the door opened.

“I need to see Dr. Lawler,” I said. I tried to slip past the woman standing in the doorway.

“He’s on vacation. Back the middle of September, I believe.” She didn’t move.

That’s right. I had the only shrink in the world who took four-week vacations impeccably timed with Betty Jane’s bad behavior
.

I dropped down on the steps and started to cry.The woman shut the door behind me.

 

One of those late-summer torrential downpours, which last from five to fifteen minutes, started when I stood up. People always expect the worst of this kind of rainfall to be short, so they congregate under whatever shelter they can find and wait out its passing in the company of strangers. I walked home instead of waiting, letting the force of the rain soak me all the way through my skin.And even then, what was pouring out of me felt far more powerful than what the sky had to offer. When I reached my building, my shoes were ruined. I didn’t care. I pressed all the buttons until someone buzzed me in. I’d decided to break down my door, but then I saw my bag sitting on the table in the entryway. They certainly were fast about returning that to me, I thought bitterly.
At least I can get in.

I retrieved my keys and opened my front door. As I stripped off my sopping clothes in the foyer, I noticed the message light on my answering machine was blinking. I kicked the sodden mess aside and hit the play button.

“Holly, it’s Milton. I’ve been trying to reach you on your cell phone for the last half hour. My colleague said you were at my office.” I pulled my cell phone out of my bag.Three missed calls. “Please call me as soon as—”

The phone rang. I scanned the room. It rang again. There it was over on the desk. I walked over as it rang a third time. I picked it up. “Holly?” It was Milton.

“I think so,” I said, relieved.“I’m soaked. Let me call you back in two minutes.”

I put on my robe and opened my pack of cigarettes.When I noticed Cat One lurking over by the chair, ready to escape the instant I opened the window, a fresh round of sobs ensued.
I can’t do this without Sarge.

I don’t know how long I sat on the floor crying, but it must have been long enough to worry Milton, because the phone next to me started ringing again.

The Emmy video had made it to France yesterday, and Milton said he’d planned to call me on my lunch hour, but then he heard about my collapse on the steps of his office and called immediately. He wanted the story badly enough to encourage me to smoke in my apartment without opening a window. I figured, what the hell, Betty Jane wasn’t here to stop me, and the fleeing felines had only themselves to blame for the secondhand smoke they were about to inhale.

Between my rambling and his questions, the whole saga start to finish took an hour and a half and a pack of cigarettes to impart. When I finished, Milton said, “Holly, why don’t we set up regular times to check in until I return?”

“Until you return? Aren’t you coming home now?” This was a serious crisis. I expected Milton to cut his vacation short and help me get Betty Jane to come back.

“I’ll be returning to the office in less than three weeks.”

All the anger I’d been holding inside turned into a tornado and Milton became its target. I had never hated anyone more in my life than I did him at that moment.“In less than three weeks,” I shrieked. “Thanks for nothing.”

“Holly, it is appropriate for you to be angry at me under the circumstances.”

“Fucking right it is.”

“You are feeling abandoned, and this is a natural reaction.”

“I’m not feeling abandoned; I
am
abandoned. First by Ruffles, then by Betty Jane, and now by you.”

“I am aware that you feel this way, Holly, which is why I would like to set up regular calls.We have a lot to discuss.”

“If you really cared, you’d come home for our regular meetings.”

“Holly, I do care. Normally, another doctor takes calls for my patients while I am away, but in your case, I want to speak to you myself, daily, even though I am on vacation.”

The mention of other patients stripped away any feeling of uniqueness and reminded me that I paid Milton, end of discussion.

“I pay you to care,” I snapped.

“In this case, you don’t,” said Milton.“I am doing this because I want to.”

“You are doing this to make sure I don’t go crazy and really ruin your vacation, not because you care.” I hated him more than I had a minute ago.

“I will call you each day at six my time, which is noon your time,” said Milton.

“You do that,” I said, “but don’t expect me to answer.”

I hung up the phone.

F
ive days had passed since my call with Milton. The thought of going outside felt like stepping off a cliff, so it took me that long to muster up the strength to make one trip to the corner store. Once there, I bought enough cigarettes and cat food to lie torpid for several weeks.

I showered only twice in the five days and that was when Peter came over. The first time, all he noticed was the smoky rooms. We had sex and he said he liked being able to smoke in the apartment instead of crawling out on the fire escape. Before he left, he showed me that my windows also opened from the top, so some air could come in without the cats going out.The second time he came over, he commented on how clingy I’d become, we had sex, and then he said he was really busy with the new term. I hadn’t seen Peter for a couple of days, and his phone was switched off a lot more than usual. Milton called every day at noon as promised. And I didn’t answer, as promised.

It took two more days to realize I really was on life support. All my commercial spots had been pulled, and this meant no
more surprise checks would turn up regularly in my mailbox, which meant my rent and therapy would burn up the last of what I had in less than three months. I had two choices: Call Sarah or call Brenda.

Having something like destitution to focus on galvanized me. I called Brenda. I left her at least five messages. Per day. I hated being on the hard-up end of the stick, but I had no choice.When Brenda didn’t return my calls, I started to think that Walt’s World was galactic.After three days of messages, she left me a voice mail saying I had an audition for a commercial in Midtown, and I breathed a sigh of relief until I realized there was no magic portal to get me from my apartment to there. I’d have to venture out onto the streets of Manhattan, alone.

 

Somehow I managed to call a car service and it delivered me to the door of the building where the audition was taking place. I arrived to a waiting room full of people chatting merrily and made my way to the harried-looking woman sitting behind a desk.

“May I help you?” she said.

“I’m Holly Miller,” I said hesitantly. The Emmy video had received tens of thousands of hits on YouTube after someone posted a link to it on
Fark.com
with a pithy headline—“When Emmy awards attack . . . and they call it acting.” The chatter in the room transformed into hushed tones. I held up my head, feigned indifference, and waited for a response. I needed a job.

“Oh.” She nodded her head.“The audition was canceled.” Her words echoed off the walls of the now noiseless waiting room.

Canceled, my ass, I thought. I blinked back angry tears and I told myself to maintain dignity, get out of here without making a spectacle.“Okay,” I said to the receptionist.“I wasn’t told.Thanks.”

I turned and walked to the door, hoping my clenched teeth
and fake smile would hold back the bile that had reached my tonsils as the waiting room occupants whispered to one another behind their hands.

A woman stopped me at the elevator. “Do you know where the auditions for the Palmolive commercial are?”

I looked down at her hand on my arm, hoping she would remove it immediately. “No. Sorry,” I said. I pulled my arm away and pushed the button for the elevator.

Going down.

 

Another week, a missing boyfriend, a vacationing shrink, and ten humiliating auditions later, I finally faced the truth—this was not one of Betty Jane’s intermissions.

I’d spent almost a thousand dollars on transportation to and from my auditions, because that was the only way to avoid people and get there, and in between I spent the rest of the time chain-smoking and watching the Emmy award show video.All this had done nothing except produce dust bunnies as large as tumble-weeds rolling across the floor of the Committee’s living room until they started feeling like boulders pounding inside the walls of my head, reminding me that Betty Jane was gone. Ruffles was gone.They were all gone.

I wrapped my mind around this realization. Then I crushed the thought like a piece of paper in my hand and decided to get revenge.

I walked with purpose all forty blocks to my destination in Midtown. It was almost the middle of September.The city streets remained thick with heat and crowded with people who bumped me on all sides. I didn’t care.

I stopped only once, to tip my head sideways toward the skyscrapers enclosing the pale white sky like sandwich bread over a thick slice of cheese. Then my stomach contracted against the
wave of dizzying longing. Since Betty Jane had kidnapped Ruffles, my head no longer tilted to the left. My neck ached from the change, and I didn’t like the way the world appeared from my new perspective.

I shook it off and walked faster, knowing I should walk slower so I wouldn’t be sweat-drenched when I arrived. But I was on a mission and nothing was going to stop me.As I neared Midtown, I noticed the brightly dressed people moved languidly, as if held back by the heat of the day. Barneys loomed large down the street. I had a half block to go.

I arrived at the front entrance, gripped the handle, and opened the door with a flourish.The biting blast of air-conditioning almost knocked me over. My body temperature immediately switched from too hot to too cold. The dried sweat left salty gravel on my skin. I strode in and went straight to the escalator. Once in the shoe department, I picked up the first pair of sandals that caught my eye. I held up one of them to the suited salesman over by the register. He walked over to me.

“I would like to try this in a size seven please.”

“Of course. Have a seat and I will be out in a moment.”