Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

Instead, she said, “I called someone the other day, and his message gave the number of his car phone. I left my home number and said that if I wasn’t there, I could probably be reached in my crop duster.”

“I consider it a kind of defeat to call someone in their car,” Jesse countered, stifling a yawn.

“Do you want to stay over?” she asked, her chest tight.

“I really should go. I’m writing in the morning, but I—”

“Okay,” she interjected quickly. “Okay,” she said again, this time quieter.

“I’d love to, though,” he said, nuzzling her affectionately. “You’re so calm, so still.”

“I’m like a peaceful flesh rock,” she said moodily.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said ironically. He turned her toward him and put her head on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.

“Which nothing?” he asked.

There was a beat, after which Suzanne said quietly, “You’re leaving me.”

“I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving to write. I have to—”

“It’s okay,” she sighed. “I’ll get over it. I’m getting over it already, look.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “My hand on your chest looks like a flesh shell on a hairy beach.”

“Do you have an alarm clock?” Jesse asked wearily.

She had had relationships before. Well, people had had relationships with her. Eventually, she would always end up on drugs, and there were only two roles you could play with someone doing drugs: you could either do them, too, or you could object to doing them. Or both. In any case, the relationship then became, in part, about drugs, and then it was just a matter of time until the drug part wore away whatever it had been about before.

Jesse had done coke twice and found it wanting. Occasionally he smoked dope, but never around Suzanne. Her only other relationship with a nondruggie—that is, with someone who wasn’t taking drugs while she was involved with him—was her nonrelationship relationship with Jack Burroughs. Suzanne had recently heard Jack had begun free-basing again now that Ziz! II was such a hit, but then, that could just have been a rumor.

She was horrified at the surges of sentiment that rose up in her. She fought the tenderness, kept it down like nausea. When she finally started saying the barest of nice things to Jesse, they were accompanied by facial expressions more appropriate for swallowing cough medicine. It was like a punishment to fit the reward.

She explained to him that she hated “the L word”—that she always felt like she was under some kind of obligation when she heard it. “Why do you tell him these things?” Norma had asked. “One day you might want him to say this terrible phrase.”

To Suzanne’s surprise, that day came. She began watching his mouth, imagining what it would be like if he ever said the sentimental trio. One night while they were kissing, he looked into her eyes, his expression almost sad. After the briefest moment—she hadn’t even realized they were gazing at each other through pounds of air—he cleared his throat and looked away shyly. “I wasn’t going to say, ‘I love you,’ I swear,” he said. “I know it looked like it, but I wasn’t.”

“He’s smart,” Lucy said. “You told him it freaked you out to hear all that mushy, romantic, great stuff, and so now…” She shrugged. “Hey, why don’t you tell him? You love him, or at least you do have great big cheerful feelings for him.”

“You think I should tell him I love him?” Suzanne said.

“Why don’t you write him a note?”

“What if he showed it to people and laughed?” Suzanne said.

There was a period early on, when she knew for certain he liked her a lot, that was decidedly unpleasant. Suddenly, everything he did annoyed her, everything he did after liking her.

The Sleeping Giant reigned. Jesse held his head too still. He walked like a burglar. He touched his hair a lot, and he chewed too much gum. It was prissy to be so smart, he wasn’t that smart, why was he that smart? Who was he, anyway? Why had he been available? Who had put him up to this? The Russians? That was it. The Russians had trained Jesse to impersonate a great guy on a date in order to penetrate Hollywood through Suzanne Vale. Well, she could see through their game. Did they think she was a fool? Maybe they should try being apart for a while. Maybe they should see other people. Maybe there was someone better.

All this would go on and on in her head, and she would just clench her jaw until it subsided, trying to keep the withering contempt out of her eyes. She refused to let the Sleeping Giant win. This was a nice guy. He didn’t deserve the horror that hid inside her. She held on, and after a while those feelings began appearing less and less frequently, like reverse labor.

Suzanne asked her mother for some “relationship advice,” to which Doris replied, “For what age?”

“Thank you,” said Suzanne.

She wanted to walk up to couples in the street and find out what their relationships were, as if that would somehow help her determine how hers was going. One Thursday she spent the entire afternoon in the Bodhi Tree bookstore. She discovered two things: you should communicate openly with your partner, and red meat is bad for everything, including relationships.

She also found a book about the trend in world history of westward migration. Suzanne figured that meant that eventually—probably right after she was dead—all the intellectuals would finally get to L.A. She imagined them arriving just in time for her funeral, and talking about how they wished they could have gotten there just a little bit sooner, because they had this incredibly salient point they wanted to make to her so she could carry it into the afterlife. At this point, though, she thought, it appeared that the intellectuals were only in New York, and the people they wanted to fuck were out here in L.A.

“I think we have compatible kissing styles,” Jesse said one afternoon, brushing her hair off her forehead.

“You have a very soft mouth,” she said darkly. “Why is that, do you think?”

“Probably because I chew so much gum,” he said. The Sleeping Giant was strangely silent. “I like everything about you,” Jesse said, stroking her hair. “That probably bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“No,” she said, smiling sweetly, “because I don’t believe you.”

He was suspiciously nice. He had to be hiding something. “You leave him alone,” warned Norma. “He’s fine. You’re the weird one. You just don’t know what to do when there’s no trouble. You’re looking for something to fix. Watch out you don’t fix it till it breaks.”

“You sound like a bumper sticker,” Suzanne said.

“Don’t sulk.”

“Am I sulking?”

“You’re sulking because you’ve lost your favorite toy,” Norma said, “the exploding man. Now you have a nice gentle man, and you want him to explode.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re having a normal relationship,” Norma said firmly. “You don’t feel normally about it, but that’s another step.”

“I don’t wonder if he’s a murderer anymore,” she said.

“ Very good.”

“I think he’s a narc.”

Jesse did the thing Suzanne had always imagined her ideal mate would do: he read the paper. The whole paper. He was stunned that she had never done this.

“That’s a guy thing to do,” she said, by way of explanation.

“I hardly think it’s the province of one particular gender.”

“So, you tell me what’s in the paper,” she said. “Like it’s gossip.” Sometimes he did. He told her what was happening in the world that he belonged to and she visited.