Diamond Girl (41 page)

It’s always been so confusing to me what people, especially my family, wanted from me. Sometimes its best just to ask straight out. After being left with no money in a dirty rodent-infested house, and losing my child and my little Petal, and after being arrested for fuck's sake, I didn’t much care if people thought I was too much of an idiot to save myself. I obviously was too much of an idiot.

Since I couldn’t drive my car as I was not only out of money but keeping it hidden in the garage so that the repo people couldn’t take it, I made myself walk every day to the corner Kinko’s. Six blocks probably sounds like a cake walk. Well maybe it is but I can’t eat cake and I wasn’t used to walking anywhere anymore, and I was sick by then. When my doctor had told me my diabetes had become brittle, I had laughed, mainly because I didn’t have a clue what it meant.

My whole life I had been getting dire warnings about my disease, and as near as I could tell, I was pretty much always the same, somewhere between mildly sick and about to go into a coma. But I had noticed some new stuff going on with me. I was dizzy all the time and so thirsty that I could drink two half-gallon Gatorades from the Seven Eleven beside the Kinko’s and still be dying of thirst a minute later. The worst, though, was that I was starting to be confused a lot. There were times I would be going to the Kinko’s or coming back, and I would forget where I was at.

A couple of times my nice neighbor would find me outside my own gates, just standing there staring at the odd words on them. His name is Richard, I think. He’s told me a few times but I have trouble remembering things. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that’s his name. He would ask me if I was okay and he would guide me into my overgrown garden and help me to sit down at the old rusted iron table someone had left there.

I could tell he wanted me to ask him inside my house, but I never did because he seemed to like me and that would have changed things. Sometimes, if I sat out there for a long time not wanting to be inside my little horror McHouse, he would bring me a pitcher of iced tea. I always gulped it down and thanked him, hoping for more, and he started to look more and more worried each time he saw me. Finally, tentatively, Richard asked me if there was anyone he could call for me. I told him the truth. No, there was no one.

I was trying to change that, though. That was what my daily pilgrimages to Kinko’s were for.

Every day I sent an email to Daddy. “Good morning, Daddy, Carey K here, Daddy. I know you are still mad but I want to be better, I want you to be proud of me again. Please write me and tell me what I can do to make that happen. I don’t feel very good these days but I know if I could talk to you that would change. Love, Carey K.”

He never answered. Maybe he hasn’t even discovered email yet,
though, if he hasn’t, it's funny that he has an account. Sarah gave me his address and I kept reasoning that he was on vacation or busy with the Lions. I had read on the AOL news site that they might make the play-offs for the first time ever. I was glad for him and planned to talk football with him to lighten things up as soon as he wrote me back.

My emails to my mother were less pathetic. “Good morning, Mother, just a note to let you know I’m still alive. Ahh, poor Mumsy, well keep hoping, maybe you’ll get lucky. Anyway, please kiss my daughter for me and tell her I love her. The cable and the lights are off, and I have no gas and no money, and they want to repossess my car. I’m down to my last few vials of insulin and I feel like holy hell. Other than that, everything is great. Oh, I have rats, so that’s been nice for me because you know how much I love pets! If you are reading this, if you have an ounce of love for me, please tell me what to do so that I can please you enough not to die out here. Please write and tell me. Carolyn.”

I wrote Milan every day too, bright hopeful little emails. “Hey, Mills, just thinking of you and my Petal dog. Hoping you two are doing good. I’m fine, just getting my head together. Love Carey.”

Each day my inbox had a return note from her. “Hey, Carebears, glad you are better. Petal and I are fabu, love M.” 

I would sometimes spy on her through Twitter. That’s how I kept up with the parties and openings she was attending. I didn’t bother to write Christy. I knew she would see me only if and when Milan did.

My parents didn’t acknowledge my emails but they must have been reading them because Herbert wrote me with his usual warm style.
“Dear Carolyn, your parents have apprised me of your desire to communicate with them and our (hopefully sincere) desire to rehabilitate your life. To that end, they have instructed me to let you know that they have prepaid ten appointments with a Dr. Abrams in Beverly Hills. In an effort to assist you making the appointments, I have included the number of a car service that will remain at your disposal for transportation to the doctor, and to any other places you might wish to travel, in order to effect your self-improvement. After Dr. Abrams has reviewed your situation, your parents may be willing to reinstate your allowance on a month-by-month basis. Yours sincerely, Herbert Raymond Esq.”

How kind of them. Nothing, of course, about my immediate needs for food and medicine and, oh hell, why not go crazy and get my utilities turned on.

Still, I knew I could use a car service and I had promised myself to do anything and everything to please my family, so I called Dr. Abram's office, and when his receptionist heard my name, she said they’d see me that afternoon. Then I called the car service and was told they’d pick me up in a half hour. A half hour can be a killer, literally. It was during that half hour that I decided to look through my bulging spam file. I deleted a few hundred ads for sexual enhancement drugs, and while I was going through it, I kept seeing and deleting this same name over and over. Dina Vodka.

I got curious and opened one of them.
“Hi, Carey! OMG, I hope you are reading this! Listen, girl, I’ve seen your pictures and read EVERYTHING about you. You are BANGIN! I want to meet you so bad. My name is Dina and I am the biggest star on My Space. I run a 24/7 video chat room for my fans. It’s called Dina’s peeps and I want you to be interviewed on it sooo bad! I read that you are having some money troubles, but be cool, gurl, I can relate! If you email me back, I will come and pick you up from anywhere and take you to my bangin house for the interview. That’s where all my camera stuff is and I’ll give you five large for a half hour interview. I know Dina’s peeps will love you too, just like I do. Please say yes. We’ll just chill and talk. You are BANGIN! So write me, okay? Xo xo xo and then some, Dina.”

If Dr. Abrams hadn’t been an ice cold asshole; if he hadn’t responded to me telling him that I was getting sicker by smiling, and telling me that my parents had assured him I was getting the “best possible medical care available,” and that any mental confusion I was having must be from my “prolonged drug use”; if he hadn’t told me that seeing rats was a “common symptom of drug paranoia”; and if he had only said something else when I started crying and begging him to ask my parents to bring me home besides, “We’ll see. It all depends on how your treatment progresses”, I wouldn’t have had the car service take me back to Kinko’s so I could send Dina an email asking for her address and saying I wanted my interview right then.

She must have lived on the internet because one second later she shot me back her address with about ten OMGs, and I went back outside to my waiting driver and gave him her address.

He took me to a small nice contemporary house in Studio City, a place I had never been before. It had started pouring rain on our way and he asked me reluctantly if I wanted him to wait. I said no, it was
okay, either my hostess would drive me home or I could call him back.

I didn’t go to the door right away. I stood outside nervously in the cold rain but I guess Dina had been watching for me because the door flew open and out came a girl even tinier than me. She was a super-pretty Asian girl and she didn’t look crazy in a plain white wife-beater and Daisy Dukes. She looked like a really good looking, very friendly high school girl.

She spoke in a rush. “Oh my God, oh my God, I can’t believe you're really here, and, God, you are ten times prettier than you look in your pictures. Oh God, come inside, it’s freezing out here and you're soaked.” 

Smiling tentatively, but already grateful to be wanted and admired for the first time in ages, I shyly said hi and followed her into the house.

I liked her house. It was small, all white, and so clean, and she had a big fuzzy dog, Riley. When she asked me if I wanted to get my buzz on, I said no, so then she asked me in the sweetest voice if I was nervous and I said yes, and she hugged me like we were old friends.

I was so lonely and so grateful for affection that I hugged her back, and when she started to kiss me, I didn’t like it but I didn’t want her to be mad at me, so I let her. Dina smiled then and said that all I needed was something to make me relax and bustled off to her kitchen, coming back holding a vial of OxyContin and a glass of orange juice, with this proud excited expression like she had just made me a Cordon Bleu dinner.

I shrugged and swallowed. Good old Oxy. Apparently it really was the drug of choice for lesbians and all quasi-reluctant maybe-not-sure-they-are-gay girls. Oxy used to make me dizzy and overheated even when I wasn’t sick so, in minutes, I was drenched in sweat and worried that I would disgust her, but she was so nice to me, she smiled and held out her hand. “Come on, baby, you need to lie down. Come with me. All my camera stuff is in my bedroom, it’s where I do my best work.”

She giggled and I took her hand, a fixed object in a suddenly blurry room. I know she must have helped me take off my wet clothes and maybe even arranged me in a half-seated position on her bed, but it
’s vague. The room came in and out of focus, and when she took off her own clothes and joined me on the bed, wearing only her bra and panties, I thought she was going to want to have sex with me, so I was relieved when all she did was gently grasp my chin and point my face towards a camera attached to the computer right in front of her bed. 

She fumbled around with my hair and pulled down my bra cups until I was arranged to whatever her vision was, and then she leaned forward and punched some buttons and whispered to me that we were live and that all I had to do was smile. She was just going to have some fun now. I tried to smile for her. I wanted to please my new friend.

She started talking. “Hey bitches, I’m baaack, and tonight I’ve got my girl Carey Kelleher here with me, and she is my baby and she is banging!  Me and Miss Kelleher are in fucking mad love and she is going to be my little bridey bride, and if you all ignorant bitches doan know who she is, well check your med stash. Cuz she is the Kelleher on all the Kelleher pills that make us all feel so good! Say hi to my peeps, baby.”

I wasn’t’ sure if she was talking to me or not, and I was less sure what she meant by bridey, but I smiled obediently anyhow.

After a minute words began scrolling on her computer. She giggled with excitement. “Look baby, those are all messages from my peeps. They love you, bridey.”

I couldn’t make out the words. My vision was dim, so she read me some of the comments.

“Wow, she’s beautiful.”

“Way to score, Dina gurl!”

There was another message that she repeated but she sounded annoyed when she read it. “She looks so sad. She doesn’t belong there.” 

I didn’t know if I was supposed to talk or what, so I stayed quiet, and after a long time even Dina noticed that I was falling asleep, so she made some suggestive comments about what we were going to do on our 'pre-honeymoon' to her viewers at home and finally turned off the camera.

Briskly, her voice no longer loving or excited, she told me I could get some sleep if I wanted to.

What I wanted was to leave but I was way too far gone for that by then, so I slept or passed out for a few hours. When I woke up in a strange room, I was terrified. When I remembered where I was I wished I were dead.

Dina wasn’t in the room and shakily I dressed in my still damp clothes which she had thrown on the floor. As silently as possible I opened the bedroom door. I didn’t see Dina or her dog, and for less than a second I considered looking for her to ask if I could have my interview money but I wanted to get away without having to face her more than I wanted the money.

I walked outside her front door into the freezing rain and didn’t close it behind me. I was lost and my cell was dead, so I staggered through her strange neighborhood, soaked and shivering, until at last I saw a gas station. Walking inside, I asked the attendant if she would call the number of my car service. She told me she would if I waited outside.

Obedient and ashamed I did as she asked. When my driver came, he opened the door without saying a word. He didn’t ask me where I wanted to go, he just began driving me back to my bad house. When he turned onto my street, I spoke for the first time. “What day is it?”

He sighed. “December twenty ninth, almost New Year's.” I had missed Christmas.

With the last of my old Kelleher girl vibe I ordered him to stop at Kinko’s first. Once there, I went inside and, ignoring all the curious looks at my dead white face and soaked hair, I inserted my Kinko’s card into the machine. I had two dollars and forty six cents credit.

I typed in, “Happy almost 2010 everyone, and sweet dreams.”

It was only eight in the morning but I figured everyone would just think I was loaded on something and write it off to that.