Page 58 of Endless Summer: Stories
With infinite graciousness, Tyesha had paid for Kirby to go to rehab and promised that when she got out, she would still have a job. In the four weeks that Kirby was at Clarity Farms, Tyesha landed not one but two movies with major studios and hired a new partner, a woman named Alicia who had formerly produced movies with both Brigitte Nielsen and Danny Glover. Kirby still had a job but she no longer had any influence. The people who made the decisions now were Tyesha and Alicia.
“So many vowels,” Kirby joked, but Tyesha didn’t find it funny.
The dramatic end came when Kirby went to pitch a film calledThe Secret Pasture.It was a girl-and-her-horse screenplay set in Canada. Kirby knew the pitch was a throwaway and wouldn’t get picked up anywhere, and in her resentment about this (and, face it, about Alicia), Kirby called her dealer, Brody, and did a couple lines right before taking the meeting. Then, instead of pitchingThe Secret Pasture,she pitched a made-up movie calledThe Porn Star’s Girlfriend.
“It was just a variation on a girl-and-her-horse,” Kirby deadpanned. But Tyesha didn’t find it funny. Tyesha fired herandbroke up with her. In response, Kirby jumped on a plane, and now here she is, drunk in the sun, trying to get home.
She’s crossing Millbrook Road when a shiny Humvee pulls over. Kirby knows that men who drive cars like this are compensating for something, but the dude who pokes his head out the window asking, “Want a ride?” is as handsome to her in that moment as Richard Gere in his naval officer uniform. She feels the searing heat of the pavement through the soles of her Capezios; she doesn’t care if it’s Freddy Krueger behind the wheel, she’s getting in.
“Hell yes,” she says. She hoists herself up into the passenger seat and offers the driver the last of the champagne, which he sucks down as he hits the gas.
Kirby has found a soul mate!
“I’m Kirby Foley,” she says. “Thank you for stopping. I live out on Red Barn Road but I’ll ride as far as you’re going.”
“I’m going where you’re going,” her new soul mate says.
Kirby narrows her eyes at him. He’s younger than her, maybe closer to Jessie’s age. He’s a bit rumpled-looking. If Kirby had to guess, she would say he’d stayed out all night and was only now heading home. “My name’s Charlie,” he says. “But everyone calls me Blowman.”
Kirby hoots. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You want to party?”
“What, you mean now?”
“Of course now,” Blowman says, tossing the empty champagne bottle into the back seat. “Seems like you started without me.”
“I should get home,” Kirby says. The turn for Red Barn Road is up ahead. “Take a left here.”
“How about we do a line before I drop you off?” Blowman asks.
Kirby takes a deep breath. Tyesha was all about breathing, centering herself, flow, yoga, fruit smoothies, vegetables in the juicer, fresh air, karma, mantras, chakras—the whole California cliché. Tyesha would forbid Kirby to do a line with this young, handsome stranger.Go home!she’d say.You’re already drunk!
That’s correct, Kirby is already drunk. A little cocaine might straighten her out.
“Sure,” she says.
That’s all Blowman needs to hear. He pulls off into the low brush alongside Red Barn Road, takes a mirror and a vial out of the Humvee’s console, and cuts two lines with his Discover card. Kirby would have pegged Blowman for the kind of guy who snorted through a rolled-up hundred, but no, he has a little straw. Fine. Kirby hoovers up a line, then she wipes under her nose and rubs her finger across her gums. Derelict. She stares out at the landscape before her—the ribbon of ocean and her mother’s house in the distance. She would never have made it by herself, walking. She would have dropped long ago and become breakfast for birds of prey.
Birds of Preysounds like a movie title. Maybe Blowman can star in it.
She can’t believe how utterly hopeless she is.
Blowman pulls into the driveway, pestering Kirby for her phone number, but she’s finished with him. As she’s climbing out of the Hummer, the front door opens and Jessie steps out, glaring.
“Oh my God,” Blowman says. “Not her again.”
“That’s my sister,” Kirby says. “You know her?”
Blowman throws the Humvee in reverse and screeches out of the driveway. Kirby looks after him with something like longing before turning to face her reckoning.
“Surprise,” she says to her sister. “It’s me.”
8. TOTALECLIPSE OF THEHEART
Kate wakes with the dawn, althoughwakesisn’t quite accurate because she never managed to fall asleep. Whatever she’d thought Jessie wanted to talk about, it never occurred to her that it would be Lorraine Crimmins. Lorraine is back on Nantucket. Living here.Growingthings.
This is ironic, since in Kate’s experience, Lorraine has only been successful at destroying things.
