Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

“Your thirties ?” he shouted. “Let’s talk about my forties for a few minutes, shall we? Let’s discuss that I have a wife and two daughters and I’m still soaked to the skin with a big movie wound on my arm, playing cops and robbers.”

“What about that I’m thirty and I don’t have any children?” countered Suzanne. “Or a husband, for that matter.”

Bobby started laughing. “This is a perfect actor conversation,” he said. “‘What about me?’ ‘Oh, yeah? Well, what about me?’”

“An actress on her thirtieth birthday obsessing about herself,” Suzanne said, also laughing. “I’ve become typical.”

“Sweetheart, you became typical long ago, only you were too stoned to notice.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said. “I suppose you’re not typical?”

“I revel in my typicalness,” Bobby said. “Do you think they remember that we’re out here waiting to do this shot?” He squinted down the highway at the crew, where Simon and Rocky were having what appeared to be an important conversation. Simon looked down the road toward their car and held up five fingers. “Five more minutes,” Bobby sighed.

“Hey, babe,” teased Suzanne, “ you wanted to go into show business.”

“Not this show business,” he said. “I wanted to be in the glamorous, fun show business.” A soft warm breeze moved steadily across the desert, carrying the voices of the crew. “You’re awfully cheerful for someone who’s just turned thirty,” he said.

“I’d just hate to remember my thirtieth birthday as an ordeal,” she explained. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’m happy and I just don’t…” She paused, looking for the right words. “Sometimes I’m afraid I’m happy, but because I expect it to be something else, I question the experience. So now, when in doubt,” she shrugged with true bravado, “I’ll assume I’m happy.”

Suddenly they heard Rocky call them, and Simon made a thumbs-up sign. Roger ran up the hill with a water bottle to spray them.

“Action!” called Simon.

Bobby clutched his wound and started driving down the hill. Suzanne grabbed her movie gun. As they drove past the camera, Suzanne was exhilarated. She was still young, good-looking, funny, bright, her wet hair was blowing behind her, and she had a gun in her hand. As soon as they were out of camera range she began to sing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.”

As they hit the main highway, Suzanne saw that the Desert Palm Drive-In was showing False Start , a movie she had read for and not gotten. Her spirits sank instantly. “We should go back,” she said quietly. “They’ll be mad.”

Bobby noticed the sign and smirked sympathetically. “Were you up for that?”

Suzanne pretended to be interested in her gun. “I’ll get over it,” she said stoically.

“When?” Bobby asked, turning the car around and heading back.

“When I have my therapy breakthrough and nothing bothers me anymore.”

“You know,” he said, “there are people who feel bad because they didn’t get this movie. What would you tell them ?”

“To rethink their careers,” she said. “I’m always rethinking mine. It keeps my skin soft.”

“Do you think you’ll stay in show business till the end of this picture?” he asked.

“Do you mean this show business, or the glamorous, fun show business?” Suzanne asked.

“ This show business,” he said dramatically, gesturing grandly and stopping the car. Suzanne looked around and saw that the entire crew was mooning her and singing “Happy Birthday.” Marilyn stood at the car holding a chocolate cake with thirty-one candles.

“I had the worst ass, so I got to present the cake,” she said, smiling.

“It’ll be hard to forget this,” said Suzanne, blushing like a desert rose.

“Still,” Bobby said, “maybe with enough therapy…”

“There isn’t enough therapy,” said Suzanne.

She was going to a party, but she was pregnant and she didn’t want to bring the baby, so she took it out and left it home. While she was at the party, she realized that you can’t do that with babies, so she went home. When she got there, the baby was blue, so she panicked and tried to get it back in. “How could I have done this?” she thought. “How could I have not known what would happen? I didn’t even want to go to the party.”

All of a sudden she was flying, soaring over great stretches of countryside, and it was wonderful. Wonderful. Then, in the middle of her flight, she thought, “ I can’t fly! ” and she realized she wasn’t flying at all but was actually falling from a great height. She was trying to get the wind under her arms to keep herself in the air when someone on the ground started shooting at her. She felt completely exposed. She couldn’t hide, couldn’t duck the bullets. She wanted to get farther inside her clothes. There was nowhere to go. She couldn’t go down because they were shooting at her, but they were shooting at her so it wasn’t safe to stay in the sky.

Then she was in the passenger seat of a car. The driver was in shadow, but she could tell it was a man. She wanted to get out of the car—it seemed to be out of control—but it was moving too fast, traveling great distances in a direction she’d never been. Suddenly they came to a house, and she opened the door and was in a tunnel, a long tunnel. From deep in the tunnel, she thought she heard a little baby crying, and then she heard the echoes of the crying and she got very frightened. She started to run, and then the man from the car was behind her, chasing her through deep snow with a gun…

The phone rang, jarring Suzanne from her dream and out of immediate danger. She lurched across her bed. “Hello,” she gasped, clearing her sleep-filled throat. “Hello?” she repeated, hearing the overseas hiss.

“Hello?” she heard a male voice cry from deep inside the phone. “Is Suzanne Vale there, please?”

“Who’s calling?” asked Suzanne, with her eyes shut tight to block out the morning sun experience.

“Sven Gahooden,” the accented voice carefully said. “I met her at an est intensive several years ago, and she told me to call her if I should ever—”

“Suzanne is on a verbal fast retreat in New Mexico,” interrupted Suzanne.

“The Insight Chaparral?” cried Sven.

“I think that’s the one,” said Suzanne patiently.

“Well, tell her I just wanted to share with her about a breakthrough I had watching a film of hers in Stockholm,” Sven said.

“I’ll tell her,” said Suzanne in her best let’s-wind-this-up voice.

“And that I’ve quit medical school to work full-time on the Hunger Project,” Sven finished.

“Okay, I’ll tell her,” said Suzanne with some gusto. “Good-bye, Sven.”

“Who is this?” asked Sven politely.

“A friend of Suzanne’s. Ruth Buzzi,” said Suzanne.

“Well, thank you, Ruth.”

“Thank you, Sven. Good-bye.” Suzanne replaced the receiver and shook her head. “Ruth Buzzi,” she thought with disbelief. “Maybe I should go on a verbal fast.”

The storm of sleep had blown her nightgown around her body in such a way that it was cutting off circulation in her left arm. She threw off her blanket as though it was a magic cloak and stood up, preparing to enter the dangerous arena of her day without its much-needed protection.