and feel the sun on my bare skin. No problem. First I have to clear myself out. That's part of the process. All around me people are making strange noises, stretching, getting their ya-yas out, preparing for their own exercises. I don't know—I'm just letting myself go limp in the head, then I'm laughing hysterically, and the next thing I'm bawling like a baby, really out of control, falling out of my chair and thrashing all over the floor, a total basket case having some epileptic apocalypse, sobbing and flailing around, trying to take a bite out of the linoleum. They're used to some pretty radical emoting in here, but apparently this is way over the top. I don't really remember all of it. Anyway, they take me to the doctor, who says I'm overtired and tells me to go home and rest.
That night my old man finally calls. I'm like, I must be dreaming.
Pissed at you, I go, when he asks how I am.
I'm sorry, honey, he says about the tuition. I screwed up.
You're goddamn right you did, I say.
Oh, baby, I'm a mess.
You're telling me, I go.
She left me.
Don't come crying to me.
I'm so sad.
When are you going to grow up, for Christ's sake?
I bitch him out for a while, then tell him that I'm sorry, it's okay, he's well rid of her, there're lots of women who would love a sweet man like him. And his money. Story of his life. But I don't say that, of course. He's fifty-two and it's a little late to try and tell him the facts of life. From what I've seen, nobody changes much after a certain age. Like about four years old, maybe. Anyway, I hold his hand and cool him out and almost forget to hit him up for money.
He promises to send me the tuition and the rent and something extra.
He sends the check but then completely forgets my birthday. Not even a phone call. His secretary claims he's in Europe on business. My sister tells me he's in Cancún with a new bimbo. At this point my period's already three weeks late. And if that's not, like, ironic enough, I see Skip Pendleton one night. He's with some anorectic Click model and pretends not to know me. I'm trying to work out dates and guys, and I figure that if I'm pregnant it could actually be his.
Of course with my luck it turns out I actually am pregnant. The rabbit dies, so I have to visit the clinic for real. I can't believe it. I use the check Dad sends for the month's tuition. They give me some Demerol—not nearly enough. I try to tell them I have this monster tolerance, but they say this is the dosage for your height and weight, and afterward it hurts like hell. While I'm getting my insides hoovered out, I swear off the so-called withdrawal method forever.
After it's over we have a party to celebrate, me and Didi and Jeannie and a bunch of other people. We start out at home, but it gets too small so we go over to Didi's place on Fifty-seventh, this zillion-dollar duplex that looks and smells like the city dump, but after a while nobody can smell anything anyway. No problem. The party goes on for three days. Some of the others go to sleep eventually, but not me. On the fourth day they call my father and he sends a doctor over to the apartment, and now I'm in a place in Minnesota under sedation, dreaming white dreams about snow falling endlessly in the North Country, making the landscape disappear, dreaming about long white rails of cocaine that disappear over the horizon like railroad tracks to the stars. Like when I used to ride and was anorectic and was starving myself and all I would ever dream about was food. There are horses at the far end of the pasture outside my window. I watch them through the bars.
Toward the end of the endless party that landed me here I was telling somebody the story of Dick Tracy. I had eight horses at one point, but he was the best. I traveled all over the country jumping and showing, and when I first saw Dick, I knew he was like no other horse. He was like a human being—so spirited and nasty he'd jump twenty feet in the air to avoid the trainer's bamboo, then stop dead or hang a leg up