Tonight it’s especially cozy in my dimly lit office because it’s so cold outside and dark. The sun fell almost before the afternoon arrived. And it’s almost Christmas. As the day winds down, I decide to take another look at this wonderful actress I’d seen in a one-woman show on Sunset Blvd. where she played a take-off of a lousy lounge singer. “Elizabeth,” I call out to my assistant, who sits outside my office. “Do you have tape on April Winchell, please.” Wait a second. What’s wrong with my voice? It comes out “t-a-a-a-p-e” and “A-a-a-pril.” I’m adding one too many vowels to my words and I can hear myself doing it. I seldom get to the point where I can hear how I sound to the outside world. Had I my wits about me, I would have cried out “what’s happening to my life” but addiction buries reality deep beneath the surface.
This can mean only one thing.
I’ve overshot my mark. Taking 36 Vicodin throughout the day has actually gotten me too high. And they weren’t even extra strength. So why am I slurring? I wonder. I’ve never slurred on Vicodin. That’s the beauty of Vicodin. You fool yourself into thinking that you’re not exactly on drugs and there won’t be any consequences. That’s why so many sober addicts and alcoholics “go out” on this drug after long-term sobriety. But then of course it sneaks up on you.
Then I remember I took a couple of Fiorocet. . . . Fiorocet!?! Why’d I do that? I don’t even like them. Oh I remember why I took them—because they were there. I’d found them at the bottom of a pocket in a pair of jeans I was about to toss into the hamper. And using the same logic that propelled Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest for a different kind of high, I popped them in my mouth with my morning coffee. At least now I know why I’m slurring. Fiorocet has a little barbiturate in them. Barbiturates make you slur. I learned that at fourteen when my friend Kathy introduced me to Seconals, Tuanols, and Parist 400’s—barbiturates all.
Okay, this is bad, but it’s almost the end of the workday; my new bosses Tom, Marcy, and Caryn have probably left, and I’m merely waiting out that quiet last half hour to sneak out the door myself. It’s only three days before the office closes for two weeks for Christmas, when I’ll be home free. It’s okay. I’ll keep a low profile and stay to myself. But still I keep wondering . . . why do I do this? The last thing I want is to disgrace myself here. Why would I mess it up now? I’ve worked for years to get here—and by “here” I don’t mean Carsey/Werner per se—but the grander “here”—not the top exactly, but the high middle to be sure.
One of the many undecipherable paradoxes of my addiction is: I have an easy to understand (but difficult to follow) road to recovery, one that will take my disease away, as long as I adhere to the rules. But I won’t or can’t take that road. One reason why: Addiction differs from all other diseases in that there are actually a few seconds when the disease feels good. Really good. And there’s the rub. With any another disease, let’s say leprosy for example, though I’ve never had it, I’m pretty sure leprosy feels bad all the way through—from the second you get it until you die. Not so with my disease. With my disease I have ten to fifteen minutes of ecstasy before the misery sets in. And my head is really stuck on those first few misleading minutes.
“You will be okay,” I repeat to myself over and over and over. Then the phone rings. I look down at the caller ID. Oh no, it’s Tom, the Werner in Carsey/Werner. I adore Tom. He’s cute, short, dark, and Jewish; think Dustin Hoffman
I hear Elizabeth talking to him (something I’m entirely too high to do) and I think: I’ll just have Elizabeth say . . . What??? Before I can decide on the “what?” Elizabeth bursts into my office, panic in her those bright blue Siamese cat eyes of hers.
“Tom wants you in his office right away. They want you to talk to president of ABC”
“Talk to the president of ABC” means Tom, Marcy Carsey, and Caryn Mandabach want me, their current Golden Girl, to give him an off-the-cuff yet complete and thorough run-down of all the talent I’ve seen or viewed on tape during the past year; offering thoughts and suggestions as I go. Who’s hot, who’s offbeat; who’s got buzz, who do I have a vibe about that nobody has heard of etc., etc., from the myriad festivals, showcases, Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway productions. Even sober, this would take notes and thoughtful discussion, but as high as I am, it’s going to be impossible.
Elizabeth seems so terrified that at first I’m more worried about her than I am for myself. I’m perceptibly high. I’ve never slurred before; I’m even staggering a bit. And this is one predicament she can’t get me out of. She and I have never actually had to have The Conversation. The one where I tell her I’m addicted to drugs. Why state the obvious to such a smart young woman? I’ve been able to hide it from Tom, Marcy, and Caryn, but it’s Elizabeth who takes my refill calls, spins gossamer tales to account for my lateness and disappearances, and surely must have noticed that my pupils seem to contract a little more than they expand from one hour to the next.
I’ve put this lovely young woman who’s always had my back in such a terrible position. Elizabeth isn’t merely stunning; she’s also incredibly quick on the uptake for someone in her twenties. I routinely bring her in to readings with me; she and I have exactly the same taste in actors. It’s thanks to Elizabeth’s eye for talent that we’ve done deals with Dan Finnerty, and the comedy duo of Gohring and Stein--Joy Gohring and Joanna Stein, side-splittingly funny.
“Which is worse?” I ask her, enunciating as carefully as I can, trying to slam the door shut on those elongating vowels. “For you to tell them I left early…or that I went home sick…or, I know, that maybe you just can’t find me, or…showing up?”
Elizabeth assesses the situation for a moment then blurts out a teary “I don’t know!!!”
Elizabeth has lost her Eve Arden topspin.. At which point, the phone rings again. Both our heads spin around so fast to check the caller ID you’d think we were expecting a ransom call.
““Tom!” we say in horrified unison. It’s been three minutes and he’s used to my responding to his calls by making a forty-yard dash down the long corridor to the inner sanctum he shares with Marcy. “Tell him I’m getting my notes together,” I order Elizabeth, buying myself time to pick the perfect chair on the Titanic first class deck from which to view the iceberg.
And here’s the first chair I consider: The president of ABC is actually a very hip guy—what with the little soul patch under his lower lip and all. Then I remember, that hip as he looks, he’s not actually a jazz musician and won’t find any real creative value in my being stoned. Not to mention this isn’t Greenwich Village in the sixties. I’m desperately grasping for some sort of loophole big enough to slip or time travel through back to a time before I’d taken the 36 Vicodin and a couple of Fiorocet.
Okay, I think, so I’m slurring a little, but it’s really just a little. If I lower my voice by about five octaves, speak very, very slowly, and say I’m very, very sick—no one will think I’m stoned. They’ll think I’m sick. They’ll think I’m sick and sound a little like Richard Burton—but they won’t think I’m stoned! I decide to go with that idea. And with that I steel myself to go and deliver this spot presentation to Marcy, Tom, Caryn, and Hep ABC prez.
I walk down the long hall to Tom’s office, not sprinting as usual. Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking pops into my mind. Lucky, I think. At least at the end of that walk he got to die. For a second I marvel at the fact that I’m actually envious of a man about to be executed.
Elizabeth can say “Cara just was rushed to the Hospital bcs I forgot she was allergic to shellfish when I ordered her lunch today.”
"“Tell him I’m getting my notes together,” I order Elizabeth, buying myself time to pick the perfect chair on the Titanic first class deck from which to view the iceberg." NICE.