real."
"That's because you're a writer," she says. "That's because you make things up for a living."
"And?"
"And" - she shrugs - "I've noticed that writers tend to worry about things like that."
"About what?"
She gets into the car. "Things like that."
Dr. Woolf has an office in a nondescript building on Sawtelle. He's my age and deals primarily with actors and screenwriters, the three-hundred-dollar sessions partly covered by Writers Guild health insurance. I was referred last summer by an actor whose stalled career hastened a relapse, and this was in July after the breakdown over Meghan Reynolds entered its most intense stage, and during the first session Dr. Woolf stopped me when I started reading aloud the e-mails from Meghan that I saved on my iPhone, and we proceeded into the Reversal of Desire exercise - I want pain, I love pain, pain brings freedom - and one afternoon in August I left midsession in a rage and drove up to Santa Monica Boulevard where I parked in an empty lot and watched a new print of Contempt at the Nuart, slouched in the front row slowly crushing a box of candy, and when I came out of the theater I stared at a digital billboard overlooking the parking lot, its image: an unmade bed, the sheets rumpled, a naked body half lit in a darkened room, white Helvetica lettering curved against the color of flesh.
The nude pics Rain sends me later that afternoon (they come so much sooner than I expected) are either artistic and boring (sepia-toned, shadowy, posed) or sleazy and arousing (on someone's balcony, legs spread, holding a cell phone in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other; standing next to a blue-sheeted mattress in an anonymous bedroom, fingers splayed against her lower abdomen), but every one of them is an invitation, every one of them plays on the idea that exposure can ensure fame. At the cocktail party in a suite at the Chateau Marmont - where we needed to sign confidentiality agreements in order to attend - no one says anything nearly as interesting as what Rain's pictures promise. The pictures offer a tension, an otherness, that's lacking in the suite overlooking Sunset. It's the same dialogue ("What's happening with The Listeners?" "You've been in New York the last four months?" "Why are you so thin?") spoken by the same actors (Pierce, Kim, Alana) and the rooms might as well be empty and my answers to the questions ("Yeah, everyone has been warned about the nudity." "I'm tired of New York." "Different trainer, yoga.") might as well have been made up of distant avian sounds. This is the last party before everyone goes out of town and I'm hearing about the usual spots in Hawaii, Aspen, Palm Springs, various private islands, and the party's being thrown by a British actor staying at the hotel who had played the villain in a comic-book movie I adapted. "Werewolves of London" keeps blaring, a video of a ceremony at the Kodak Theatre keeps replaying itself on TV screens. A horrible story has moved rapidly through town involving a young Hispanic actress whose body was somehow found in a mass grave across the border, and for some reason this is connected to a drug cartel in Tijuana. Mangled bodies were strewn through the pit. Tongues were cut out. And the story gets more outlandish as it keeps being retold: there's now a barrel of industrial acid containing liquefied human remains. A body is now dumped in front of an elementary school as a warning, a taunting message. I keep checking Rain's pics that were sent through earthlink.net from allamericangirlUSA (subject heading: hey crazy, let's get cracking) when I'm interrupted by a text from a blocked number.
I'm watching you.
I text back: Is this the same person?
I'm staring at a wall, at one of Cindy Sherman's untitled film stills, when I feel the phone vibrate in my hand and the question is answered.
No, this is someone different.
A group of guys booked a table at a new lounge on La Cienega and I allow myself to be invited as I'm waiting for a cab and they're waiting for their cars in front of Bar Marmont and I'm staring up at the parapets of the Chateau and thinking about the year I lived there, after I left the El Royale and before I moved into the Doheny Plaza - the AA meetings on Robertson and Melrose, the twenty-dollar margaritas from room service, the teenager