Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

“How much?” Lucy asked. She turned to the saleswoman. “Excuse me, I’m her agent, her shopping agent, and I intervene on some of her purchases. She’s in a delirium, she’s had a near-fatal illness.” She took the bag out of the saleswoman’s hands and opened it.

“Four hundred and fifty dollars,” she said. “Four hundred and fifty dollars, and you have a bag almost exactly like it at home. I think maybe we should save this money now, don’t you, Peanut? Didn’t our business manager tell us not to spend money?”

“Yes,” said Suzanne.

“Honey, why don’t you think about this bag?” Lucy said. “Think about it, and if it stays in your mind like a shiny diamond, we’ll come back and get it. Okay?”

“All right,” said Suzanne. “Don’t condescend to me, though.”

“I’m not,” said Lucy sweetly. “I’m patronizing you. You are a patron of the store, and I’m patronizing you. Come on.”

She took off the scarf and put it on the counter next to the black purse. “Thank you very much,” she said to the woman. “I’m sorry that she had a shopping problem.”

“You had a shopping break,” she said to Suzanne when they were outside. “And now the break is closing, and maybe we’ll go put some food in the break, in case it’s not closing.”

They went to the Magic Pan, which Suzanne liked because they used lots of artificial sweeteners. They served crepes filled with all sorts of things, but things she could recognize as food. She ordered a crepe filled with cinnamon-covered apples with ice cream on it and a Diet Coke. Lucy ordered a spinach soufflé and an iced tea, and then lit a cigarette.

Suzanne felt depressed from lack of purchase. She eyed Lucy’s cigarette enviously. “I wish I still smoked,” she said. “I shouldn’t have given up everything . Now all I do for fun is park illegally.”

“It’s good that you did all that giving up stuff,” Lucy said. “Anyway, you did doing-it-to-death to death.”

“I do like my additives, though,” Suzanne said. “I ask them to add more MSG.”

Lucy blew out a cloud of smoke. “Don’t you have a secret thought,” she asked, “that if we got work right now, we’d feel better?”

“I don’t know,” said Suzanne doubtfully. “I don’t think you ever get to relax. I mean, sure, there’s a couple of people who could, but I bet they don’t. Because by the time they get to where they could relax, they’ve gotten completely used to not being able to. How do you just suddenly become somebody who relaxes? The kind of ambition you need to get to that place is not relaxing. It’s searing. I think there’s probably something about living your whole life in a popularity contest—trying to get people to like you who you couldn’t give a flying fuck about—that kills relaxation.”

“I know what you mean,” Lucy said. “I went up for a part in New York, and I walked in and I thought, ‘Remember those clothes that you see in stores that always make you wonder who buys them? Well, here they are. They’re on the casting woman.’ That’s who I had to impress.”

“Here’s a great story,” Suzanne said. “An actor friend of mine was up for a job, and the director said, ‘You have the job. You’re perfect. I just have to go to New York to look at some actors.’ And my friend said, ‘What are you going to New York for if I have the job?’ And the guy said, ‘Don’t worry. I just have to go to New York.’ So of course the guy called from New York and said someone else had the job, and my friend said, ‘Well, I don’t want the job.’ And the director said, ‘You don’t understand. You don’t have the job to not want the job.’ And my friend said, ‘No, you don’t understand. If you don’t want me for the job, then I don’t want the job. ’

“That’s how I feel about the whole thing,” she continued. “If you don’t want me for the job, I don’t want the job. If you don’t want me for the girl, I don’t want to be the girl. My want can only do so much in terms of changing what’s actually occurring with other people, and I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t want to feel that if I had wanted something more, or had said one other thing, or had worn a different dress, or had been more mysterious, or more open, then I would get something or someone I wouldn’t get otherwise.” She stopped while the waitress brought their drinks, then said, “Remind me. Why did we ever want to be actresses?”

“I didn’t want to be an actress,” Lucy said. “I was a singer, remember? Then I got an acting job, and it seemed exciting, and, I don’t know, the possibilities seemed endless.”

“Possibilities shouldn’t be endless,” Suzanne said.

“They are, though,” said Lucy. “There are so many different ways to be famous. You could shoot the Pope and he could forgive you.”

“What you don’t want,” said Suzanne, “is to be known as the person who shot the Pope who he’s still pissed off at.”

Lucy laughed and sipped her tea. “So,” she said, “I called him this morning.”

“The Colonel?” said Suzanne. “You asshole.”

“I admit it, I’m an asshole,” said Lucy. “I left him a message that said, ‘Hi, it’s me, of the Philadelphia mes,’ which was funny. I mean, if I’m going to be an asshole, at least I’m a funny asshole.” She took one last drag and put out her cigarette. “What am I going to do? Until I find someone else, I’m going to think about him. I have to keep a man in my head. It keeps my posture good.”

“And your grammar bad,” Suzanne said.

Lucy lit another cigarette. “Oh, you won’t believe who I ran into in New York,” she said. “Jane Peters.”

“Was she with Roland Parks?”

“No,” said Lucy, “but she did have the baby.”

Suzanne sighed. “She’s so beautiful, and she married one of the wealthiest men in the business, and they’ve got this cute kid… She’s got the perfect life, and she wants you to know it. She walks around like life’s helium is in her clothes.”

“Tell me about it,” said Lucy. “I met her in Bendel’s and she went on and on about how great their marriage is, and how their relationship is so solid they don’t even have to work on it. On and on. She actually said to me, ‘I never thought I would be so happy. If you had told me when I was young that I was going to be this happy, I would have laughed. I would have laughed. ’ She actually repeated it.”

“I don’t know,” said Suzanne. “Maybe there’s some kind of joy I’ve never experienced, where you’re just flouncing around and giving everybody minute-by-minute updates on your never-ending glee. I don’t know, or maybe she’s just relieved that it’s not as bad as she thought it would be.”

“On the other hand,” said Lucy, “you can’t expect her to walk around with a glum face saying, ‘This is a nightmare. I wish I was poor and living in a little apartment and not working as an actress again.’”

“I think Jane should have a brochure printed up with career and relationship highlights. You know, pictures of them entwined on the couch watching TV, pictures of them laughing gaily with their agents over lunch at Le Dôme, or flying on their private jet to their private Hawaiian island. Then when she ran into any of us who might not be quite so fortunate, she could just hand us a flyer.”

“You should tell her that,” Lucy said, laughing.

“I sort of did,” said Suzanne. “She was going on about this one day, and I told her I’d give her my address so she could send me the brochure. I mean, it’s not a conversation , you know? ‘Roland and I just bought a place in the south of France.’ What’s my comeback? ‘Cary Grant proposed to me the other day’? I mean, if someone tells you they feel bad, you say, ‘Yeah, I felt bad once,’ or, ‘I feel bad, too.’ You isolate the area where there’s a basis for comparison. But if somebody says she’s married to a billionaire and they have this perfect life—not just that they’re having a really good time, but that they have a perfect life —what’s your comeback? ‘Breakfast this morning was tough on my kidneys’? Where is the comeback? I said to her, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’”