I couldn’t recall the last, if any, Arnold Schwarzenegger film I’d seen, so my action hero self wasn’t quite sure what to do next. Stupidly I stood there with the front door hanging open and 113

watched Kerry peel out of our driveway in a Trans-Am. Not only were we in an Arnold movie, but one that apparently took place in a heavily Italian populated area of the Jersey shore. Clearly my love for Janine had, in fact, driven me out of my mind. Why else would someone like me, a thirty-six year old lesbian author, with a nice house and cool job in Manhattan, think it was an everyday occurrence to go around threatening the lives of drug dealers? Insanity was the only plausible explanation.

“Maggie, look…”

There was Janine, bringing me back into the blinding light of reality. The sound of her saying my name weighed on me like lead. Then she was near me, the soft hand of obsession and passion gently on my back. Words were always followed by touch, it was how she operated. In all this time, I couldn’t recall even one conversation with her at one end of a room, or even a couch, and me at the other.

“I don’t blame you for being angry with me. I’m angry with myself. The last time was about a week ago, I won’t lie to you.

Frank was here (a colleague from Sam’s recording studio) and he was really depressed. He asked if I’d get high with him and I did. It’s hard to say no, Maggie. You don’t understand because you’ve never done it.”

Apparently this was a great flaw of mine. Because I’d never indulged in a drug that scared the hell out of me, I was unable to commiserate with her as I could with other drugs. I knew how hard it was to become a functional person who was still a heavy drinker but wouldn’t cross the line anymore into the behavior of a raging, maniacal alcoholic. And I knew how it felt and what it meant to continue with a woman I inherently understood would destroy me, but that didn’t seem to count either.

“That was the first time since Florida. I swear. Please look at me.”

I was still standing at the front door. I’d closed it, but stood staring at it, wondering what miracle of strength would allow me to walk through it and never return.

“Baby, Maggie, please…”

She slipped between me and the door. There were tears 114

on her face, little wet spots on her shirt. I noticed because it was a light gray color, then I thought it was strange to notice such a thing at such a time. Never would I need heroin, or any drug, even liquor, because life with Janine was mesmerizing and intoxicating enough.

It was so strange, even after four years together, to be face to face with her like this. To know I was the only person in the world to touch her the way I did. Gently she buried her face in my shoulder and wept. I brushed her hair back from her shoulders and took her face in my hands. She told me she loved me and I believed her.

Sometimes I hadn’t been so convinced, but in that moment I was, which seemed strange since she had just betrayed me. But something in her I had been waiting for to change finally had. It was almost a noticeable change in the air, or weather, some little piece of her that had been un-surrendered to me gave way.

“I love you. So much,” she repeated.

She kissed me as she often did after a fight, testing to see what I would do, if I were still angry, if I’d resist her or hold something back. I didn’t. We made love in front of the living room door, an irony that had not escaped me. It was a door to the outside world, which after all meant so little to me in comparison to this woman, this hold on my being who had stepped off a merry-go-round and into my life. As we laid there not speaking, not having any desire to get dressed, or even get off the floor, I had a crushing feeling of something inside me, screaming, that turned to a soft whimper, defeated again. Janine lay with her head on my shoulder, an arm strewn carelessly across my waist.

I stared at the faint scar of a pinprick and the moment lasted a long time, an eternity, and I finally knew and understood. I would never leave her, and she would never stop using.

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