Tasha knew Roxy from Paramount. Roxy knew Nadine from spin class who knew Jessa from “The White Inside” who knew Art from an unhappy marriage they continued to chip away at like a rotten tooth. Art was trying to fix Nadine up with Josh to limited success. Josh and Ronaldo were brothers by two different mothers. Ronaldo and Cyndi dated off-and-on for seven years. There was hesitation and nostalgia felt by both parties toward another seven years, which they were hopeful the quarantine would resolve. Cyndi and Kellee optimistically shared anthropology majors at UCLA and now pessimistically shared a bungalow in Mar Vista. Violet, arguably more contagious than the pandemic itself, knew everyone.
In addition to these relationships and the viral connections endemic to the Los Angeles entertainment industry, most of them knew each other from the twice-weekly AA meeting that took place inside the architecturally deviant craftsman house on the corner of Broadway and 26th. Jessa was the grand dame of that particular meeting. Now in her forties, she had been sober since her late twenties. While considered by her indie peers and the one favorable Sundance review of “The White Inside” as “an important storyteller,” her stories at these meetings were notably boring. There was no confession of being locked out on the patio of her 3rd story apartment, an eight-ball protruding like a malignant third nipple under the bra that was her only clothing (Roxy). Nor a tale of waking up on the lap of a man 52-years her senior in the backseat of an ’92 Buick LeSabre (Nadine). Or the time when, against AA protocol, a pair went out on a sober date that devolved to one party lapsing back into meth use (Ronaldo) and the other trying meth for the first time (Cyndi). Jessa didn’t even have the ubiquitous office Christmas party debacle (Tasha) because she worked from home.
The supposition had been the stories did not exist. Her own husband had long-suspected that Jessa’s drinking had been more of an indulgence than an addiction and that she attended these meetings—often populated by those beholden of Emmys, Oscars and the occasional AVN statue—for networking purposes. Art thought Jessa desired the certain totemic prestige that followed the movie-industry recovering alcoholic. To be a proper Babylonian, one must spend some time impaled upon its walls. Thirteen years into a marriage that saw his own drinking spike to a state of subjective alcoholism, Art had lately decided that the “drinking days” he serendipitously missed were the fables of a controlling and judgmental woman who viewed sobriety as a cunning way she did not have to be relied upon for a good time. So it wasn’t entirely surprising to him that when the core members of the 26th Street AA began meeting at Jessa and Art’s home, it was Jessa’s idea that instead of telling stories of their own struggles (which, as devotees, were dwindling anyway), they all invent stories.
A city mandate had prohibited meetings of more than ten people so the larger 26th Street meeting was disbanded. Jessa worried that the stress of unemployment and the type of 21st century journalism that carried every story like a pallbearer might propel her fellow addicts into relapse. She invited Tasha, Roxy, Nadine, Cyndi and Violet to meet at her home. Ronaldo heard about it from Cyndi and came without an invitation. He had been quarantining with Cyndi and Kellee, also without invitation.
The first meetings were casual. Everyone brought a roll of toilet paper, a carton of eggs or some other pandemic ration for the host. Tasha and Roxy came dressed for surgery even though both had histories of snorting cocaine off the tanks of public toilets. They talked about canceled film festivals, bumped releases, Skype auditions and fear of never working in this town again. They talked about daily death tolls and how none of their parents were taking the quarantine seriously. What they found themselves never talking about was their addictions.
“You ever think you may be swapping out one sickness with another?” Art asked Jessa after one of the meetings. His office shared a wall with the living room where they gathered. In defiance of having never been asked about using their house as the new meeting spot, he would sit in there drinking and eavesdropping.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, the way I see it,” balancing a crystal highball of scotch in his palm like the neighborhood Salvator Mundi, “COVID-19 has replaced addiction in your meetings. It’s all anyone ever talks about.”
“How would you know?” Jessa aggressively wiped down all the surfaces her guests touched. “You’re supposed be in there writing not philosophizing. How’s the script coming, by the way?”
It was not going well. Art and Jessa had met years ago in the waiting room of their mutual agent before both fired her. They would joke it was the only positive relationship to come out of that office. Jessa wrote convoluted period dramas and lethargic indies where women found their voices after the divorce or death of their spouses. Art wrote action films for higher budgets and simpler audiences. His pandemic script greenlit earlier in the year was justifiably shelved so he was stuck trying to disguise quarantine day-drinking with starting a new script. He was edging toward something splashy, maybe an ex-cop, ex-Navy Seal, ex-con, ex-anything takes an AA meeting hostage…
“Yep. Writing’s great. Turns out I’m a real natural.” Art raised his glass to himself and took a swig. “But seriously, what are you guys getting out of this except more anxiety and depression? I feel like they all leave in worse shape every week.”
“AA’s not meant to be fun. It’s meant to be introspective and healing. Sometimes grieving. Right now everyone is worried about the virus so it makes sense that’s what we talk about.”
“But when is enough, enough?”
While not fond of this war-time Hemingway that had replaced her husband since the quarantine, occasionally he had a point. The group had been spiraling. Past accounts of shame, desire, vulnerability and self-immolation had no place in this new normal. Addiction perhaps always had a Jan-Marcia relationship with survival made more transparent with crisis; a jealousy for survival’s raw talent to outshine any human condition put before it.
“I think you’re right. I don’t like that you are, but I think you’re right. We’ve been stoking each other’s fears and it’s not healthy.” Jessa removed her nitrile gloves and tossed them in a garbage bag so she could place her hands on her hips. “I had a thought I wanted to run by you.”
Art never looked so saintly as when asked for his opinion. Especially when he was a little drunk. It was one of the things she still found so attractive about him. There was both a flattery and smugness that together acted like disparate tastes on the tongue, an unlikely union of wonderment and sneer, the salty-sweet. “I was thinking maybe we could go back to the single-speaker format and whoever’s turn it was could prepare a story instead. We’re all creative types on furlough. In fact, I think that might be the problem. Our creativity is currently being channeled into our own mortality.”
“Or the mortality of your careers.”
She dismissed him with a tilt of her head. “We’re not having breakthroughs right now. I think what is still helpful about these meetings is accountability and support. But why can’t it also be distraction? If we keep with this panic, we’ll all relapse.”
He crossed his legs for better pontification. “I like it. Maybe you could give each speaker a theme for that story to keep them focused. Love, revenge, piety,” snapping his fingers and pointing at her, “obsession.”
“That’s an idea. As long as it’s not disease.” She picked up her iPad and sat on the opposite end of the sofa. “I’ll send around an email and see what they think.”
“Since, technically,” scooting in close to her, “this is no longer a strict AA meeting, can I invite Josh?” Josh was Art’s agent who side-hustled as his drinking buddy.
“Who said you could come?”
“I feel like we are both exhausted by the farce that is my pretending to write during these meetings and you pretending to believe me.”
“You are exhausting.” She pushed her socked feet into his side with a playful violence. While it wasn’t at all appropriate to invite in media res drinkers to a gathering of former drinkers, she felt she had to keep Art occupied if the meetings were to continue. Also, she was in support of Nadine dating Josh. Art’s shortcomings as a husband oddly translated into strengths as a matchmaker, an ability to see the basic components of two people apart from any compromise or sacrifice. And both Jessa and Art, with the misguided paternity of many writers, wanted the best for their characters.
“I’ll run it by the group. If they’re okay with it, I guess I am. But you have to behave. And you can’t drink! I mean, NO DRINKING. As in, no wandering off into your office for extended periods of time or squirreling bottles underneath the bathroom sink and taking 15 minutes to piss.”
“Does beer count?”
“Are you serious?”
Could anyone be serious in this most serious of times? A little sickle of moon was all that remained outside, like the cleft in Mae West’s bosom or the smile carved into the Black Dahlia or that piece of land that was once an orange grove and now a congested suburb where people languished, utterly bored, quarantined from their jobs in make-believe.
**This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.**
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