Her room was large enough for a bed and a table and chair. It had water bugs on the walls. It had one barred window where she clutched to watch one-half of the sun setting every night. She would press her face close to the cool sooty bars, her body against the wall, her toes on the base board. When the deep, glowing sun seemed to roll back deeper into the rising clouds that opened in bright blue creases and ridges of gold, she would say, “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh…”
–Margery Latimer, This Is My Body
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Lena’s nephew has a meltdown just as they are sitting down for the Christmas meal. His screeches are a detonated bomb, obliterating all the rosiness and holiday cheer with the sonar equivalent of blinding white light. The adults sit frozen, looking at the floor, waiting for Lena’s brother to do something. He just shrugs. “Give him a minute, he’ll calm down. Just ignore him.”
“Jesus,” Lena’s sister-in-law huffs. She gets up and drags the screaming child upstairs. Dinner will have to wait. After the shrieks from above morph into muffled, angry sobs, they migrate into the kitchen where they pick at the food that was so close to being served.
“I really should go,” says Lena. Outside it’s properly snowing. She has an hour-plus drive to the airport.
“When is your flight?” her mother asks, her eyes already reddening, lips tight.
“Five in the morning,” Lena lies.
Hugging her goodbye, Lena feels her mother’s frail bones, her heavy heart beneath a worn Fairisle sweater. Her father stays behind, won’t even see her to the door. His hostility is familiar, betrayed by the way he licks his lips and blinks repeatedly without looking her in the eye.
The rented Ford Explorer skids and slides on the icy country roads in what now feels like a blizzard. Somehow, Lena makes it to the highway, where the rush of the other vehicles and generous salt just barely keep her on the road. Once she is checked in at the Travelodge next to the airport, she entertains the thought of having a drink—but not if it means trekking back out into the cold to find a package store. Instead, she takes a shower, lies on the bed in a towel with the heat blasting, and tries not to think about Miles, who at that moment is probably sitting down to Christmas dinner with wealthy friends in Malibu.
In a week it will be New Year’s Eve. The pain of remembering where she was with him the year before is so great it makes her wince.
In London where she was in grad school they’d carried on a grand affair. What a thrill it had been: Miles, the sort of famous Hollywood hotshot, and Lena, his mousy but ripe for adventure PhD student lover. He sent her GIFs that flashed in red cursive against a background of stars: “I fucking love you.” He sent her dick pics. He asked about her research, bought her first editions of Keats and Dylan Thomas, instantly bonded with her dog, invited her to boozy meals in private clubs, told her she was beautiful, and introduced her to orgasms that ruined her forever. They spent last New Year’s Eve in a posh hotel in Miami, indulging in their voracious appetites for each other, vodka, and various Class A substances.
Despite the hallmarks of a trainwreck, Lena ran with it, convinced her liaison with Miles would be the doomed, star-crossed romance she’d ramble on about to her grandchildren on her deathbed. This delusion was probably why she’d been dumb enough to follow Miles to LA on the pretense of escaping London for someplace random to finish writing up her dissertation. The plan clicked into place when her friend Stuart offered to let her stay in his Silverlake bungalow for free while he was away on location.
From the beginning, she’d known that when the affair ended it would hurt like a motherfucker. But she didn’t care. It was worth it.
If anything, Lena’s awareness of this pain precipice had helped her cling harder to her research, a deep dive into the life and work of a forgotten female modernist named Margery Latimer. Margery, who died in childbirth at the age of thirty-three. Her novels, short stories, and letters were exhilarating, but what made them all the more powerful to Lena was knowing how much Margery had suffered in love.
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On New Year’s Eve Day, Lena nearly weeps with relief when Miles texts her, asking if she wants to join him for an eight-thirty meeting at the Log Cabin. The only times she ever sees Miles now is at AA—meetings she loathes, for the people, the language they use, the prayers and cheesy slogans—all of it makes her skin crawl.
Since her return from Christmas on the East Coast, Lena has coped by cultivating a form of invisibility, spending her days in an empty, hopeless space that revolves around formatting her dissertation bibliography and trips to the dog park. Mornings she hits the coffee shop on Sunset that opens at seven am. Because she is starting to care less about maintaining a rail-thin Hollywood body, she allows herself to go for the mocha. The guy in the café always gives her a friendly smile, says hello, and this tiny connection buoys her for the rest of the day.
The dogs are another balm—her Staffy Dylan’s gang of buddies, the regulars at the park—Clarke the Great Dane puppy, gangly and goofy and the size of a Zebra, Scooter the Wheaten Terrier ever in need of a trim, and a mixed pack of labs, retrievers, and mutts. Lena stays until she has finished her mocha. When Dylan plops in the dirt, sides heaving, tongue lolling out of his wide grin, she knows he is ready to go. On the way back, she stops at the place with the good muffins to order a blueberry one with black coffee before continuing home. The rest of the morning and early afternoon are spent at her computer in the bedroom, cave-like with the shades drawn so she can better see her screen, tackling the tedious task of entering, formatting, and double-checking the hundreds of footnotes and citations.
Some days she goes for an early evening run. Some days she vetoes the run to vape CBD juice on the couch until it knocks her out to sleep. Some days she walks to Trader Joe’s with the service dog jacket for Dylan stuffed in her knapsack. When she gets to the parking lot, she checks no one is looking and squeezes him into it. Once it’s on, she imagines she’s epileptic and Dylan is her seizure dog. The fact her anti-depressants are also prescribed to prevent seizures makes this easier to rationalize. Inside Trader Joe’s, she’s compelled to go further and finds herself shuffling with a limp, staring down at the floor as if she is blind. Self-conscious, filled with shame, she’s aware she deserves to be struck by lightning for this charade. Nobody notices or seems to care, and despite it all, she manages to find most of the things she goes there to buy: tofu, a head of broccoli, turmeric, sriracha, and coffee. Her diet of laziness and, when it comes to what she eats, the age-old, unshakeable control. Back outside, at the far end of the parking lot, she slips Dylan out of the vest and walks the rest of the way home.
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At the AA meeting on New Year’s Eve Lena is sat between Miles and a gay pop star named Danny, silently bawling her eyes out.
“Ssh, it’s going to be okay,” Danny coos, taking her hand and giving it a warm squeeze. Lena releases a colossal shudder of renewed grief at his concern, a low moan escaping despite her best efforts to remain soundless. “Oh, honey,” Danny sighs.
Beside her, Miles is oblivious. He’s scrawling notes in his AA Big Book, as the speaker, an ebullient queen in soft flannel and pink Dickies keeps the room in stitches with the story of his rock bottom in Tijuana. Miles hangs on his every word.
How the fuck has it come to this? Lena wonders. What she wouldn’t give to rewind, to be with Miles in a five-star hotel, fucking for hours, drinking Tito’s by the gallon. Lines of supercharged cocaine, weed to help them drift off to sleep. How easy it would be to dismiss the thoughts of dire catastrophe, to cross over with abandon, to eke out every last ounce of pleasure and oblivion before the inevitable waves of despair and panic crashed in.
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Towards the end of the meeting, Lena manages to pull herself together. The speaker finishes, and it’s time for raised-hand sharing. Both Miles and Danny raise their hands, and Lena does her best to hide her disgust at their willingness to participate. Miles is overlooked, but the speaker nods to Danny, clearly recognizing him—of course he does, everyone in the room has been aware of Danny, glowing in his full-body halo of fame. It should have made Lena feel better to have Danny beside her, everyone else trying to play it cool and not stare. But she might as well have been alone at the bottom of a well.
Danny stands, a platinum smile, his gift to the minions. As he launches into his share, Lena cringes with every name he drops. His moments of sober gratitude the past week include: dinner with Elton, a trip to the beach with Alanis, and a barbecue at Christopher and Jamie Lee’s. The room savors these privileged tidbits like jewels. Then Danny pauses, his eyes welling with tears. And he’s coping, he confides, given he’s still mourning the loss of his dear friend Carrie. This draws a wave of nods and knowing sighs, Carrie Fisher’s great alcoholic spirit looming large in their midst.
+
When they step out of the meeting onto the sidewalk, it has started to rain. The three of them huddle under Danny’s umbrella for a quick cigarette. Danny is off to ring in the New Year at Joni Mitchell’s, and Miles’s plans are mysterious, although he has promised to drive Lena home.
Lena and Miles bid Danny farewell and dash to Miles’s Mustang—a stupid car, Lena thinks, especially for a man his age. As she struggles with her seat belt, Miles positions his phone in the mount on the dashboard. The rain is now a downpour, heightening both their senses of entrapment.
Finally, Miles ventures, “You were upset.”
Lena sits motionless, staring straight ahead at the cascades of water streaming down. Unable to look at him, mouth pursed, heart filled with pain, head bursting with accusations.
Miles turns and stares at her until she has to respond.
“What?” she says, as neutrally as possible. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think you’re fine.”
“Okay,” she says, exasperated. “My heart is broken. You hurt me.”
Now Miles looks away, contemplating the dashboard. Fingers the keys in the ignition but does not start the engine. His face has gone concrete, impenetrable.
“I’m fine,” Lena continues, hating herself. Considers opening the car door and making a run for it. She can get an Uber. Fuck this.
Miles turns to her again as if he is about to say something, but his phone begins to ring, the caller’s name clear on the screen for Lena to see. A woman’s name, a name she recognizes: one of the producers on the Oscar-nominated film Miles worked on. From internet sleuthing Lena knows she has huge boobs and is now spearheading a biopic on Anaïs Nin. From Getty Images she suspects Miles has been sleeping with her since the week they spent together at the Venice Film Festival.
Miles reaches quickly for the phone, fumbling, and nearly drops it.
“Hi honey,” he answers.
A fresh stab to the heart, even though it’s what she expected. Lena stares out the side window, sucking hard on her Invisalign retainer to hold in the tears.
“I’m on my way,” Miles continues. “Just dropping off a friend. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
He starts the car, and they pull out onto the flooded streets, riding the entire way to Lena’s in silence.
“Happy New Year, sweetheart,” Miles says, as she gets out of the car.
“Yup,” Lena manages, before slamming the door and running through the pelting rain to the shelter of her porch.
For the first time ever, she is spooked being alone in the empty house. It feels haunted, possessed. Fortunately, she has Dylan, who emerges from the bedroom to greet her. She lets him out the back, where he relieves himself under the gloomy avocado tree that dominates the yard. After stripping out of her wet clothes, she wraps herself in a scratchy throw from the couch and stomps into the kitchen, where she grabs the carton of Korean food she’d picked up earlier that day. At the time, she’d been hopeful. Maybe the fantastical would strike—it was beyond all reason; the idea Miles might end up with her after the meeting. But she’d wanted to be prepared. Now, she inhales the shredded tofu bulgogi standing in front of the opened refrigerator door. Her hunger unabated, she raids the cupboards and finds a family-sized pack of Strawberry Pop Tarts, no doubt nicked from craft services by Stuart. They are more than a year past their expiry date, but Lena figures processed ingredients, chemicals and pure sugar, never really spoil. The Pop Tarts would probably last unblemished for another decade. She puts one in the toaster and then eats it while it is still so hot she burns her fingers, tongue and lips. She eats another. Then, two more.
Sated, dizzy with a sugar rush, she pulls the wrap tightly around herself and goes out to the porch. The rain has let up and a few stars are visible. She sits on the porch swing, takes out a cigarette, and smokes. After a few drags, the combined aftermath of Korean food and Pop Tarts becomes too much, and she realizes she is going to be sick. She gets to the bathroom just in time, vomiting her guts out into the toilet bowl. Afterwards, washing her face and then brushing her teeth, she avoids her reflection in the mirror.
But the purge, even while it was happening, is divine. Liberating. Her body light again, not just the food, but the emotional weight has been snagged loose as well.
In bed well before midnight, she snuggles deep under the covers with Dylan snoring at her back. At last, Lena can cry properly. When her body finally lets go into sleep, it does so with a serenity she hasn’t known for a very long time.
+
At some point near dawn, Lena wakes at the exact moment her iPhone lights up with a message. A small kernel ignites in her belly. Before looking, she savors the not-knowing. Could it be Miles? In fact, it’s Danny.
“Hey sweetie, just checking to see how you are.”
Lena’s body fills with a warmth that surprises her. Without pausing to think about her response, she texts back, “All good! Thank you xx.”
Danny sends her a GIF, a flashing rainbow-colored “Happy New Year.” Unprepared with her own, she sends him three lines’ worth of hearts.
+
After booking a one-way ticket back to London, Lena goes out to the sagging chaise lounge in the backyard to take in the sunrise as it creeps across the Silverlake hills. Because of the recent downpours, everything is all the more tender and fresh. A straggly white cat—Frankie, the neighborhood stray—emerges from the brush at the far end of the yard. He pauses when he spots Lena and Dylan. Dylan raises his head and the two of them stare eye-to-eye, neither one making a move. “Hey Frankie,” Lena whispers. Dylan drops his head on her lap, and she scratches his ears. Frankie relaxes and hops up on the rotting picket fence that separates the yard from a steep drop to the houses below. As the sky grows ever lighter, the three of them sit in stillness and infinite peace.
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Nina-Marie Gardner is a Paris-based writer born in New York City. She is the author of Sherry & Narcotics and her work appears in 3AM Magazine, The Fix, The Frisky and the anthologies Bedford Square and 3AM London, New York, Paris. She holds a PhD in theatre studies and teaches in the Creative Writing MA program at the University of Kent Paris School of Arts & Culture.