Page 18 of Angels Fall

I turn to face Tyler for this last part. Because I’m just about done here. “I was high, Tyler.” He squints his eyes at me, puzzled. “High up on Mount fucking Everest. On the tippy top of life. And you were supposed to be there next to me. You promised to be there next to me. And you let me fall down that fucking mountain. You never looked back, you just kept going.”

“Maddie—” he says.

But I hush him with a hand as I shake my head so that my tears fall down my cheeks. “No. Just go away. Just go back where you came from and never come back.”

I take one more look at my roommates, find them all frowning, and then walk to my room and slam the door.

TYLER

The problem with what Maddie just requested is that I already am back where I came from. The whole reason I’m here is so I can try to live out the rest of my probably short life just kind of anonymous and doing as little damage as possible.

Shit.

I turn to face the three women who are staring at me with trapped-in-between-knowing-what-to-do looks on their faces.

“We used to be friends,” I smile and say.

“So,” the one with the empty wine glass—Caroline, I think—says. “A millionaire?”

“OK!” intervenes the apparent leader of this bunch, whose name I caught earlier as Annie. “So, uh, we’ve gotta get to work. We’ll leave you guys to talk. Or whatever.”

I nod. “Yeah. Thanks. Where do you guys work?”

They don’t answer right away. They just sort of all look at each other like maybe they forgot what they do for a living.

“On the Strip/WE’RE CALL GIRLS,” Annie and Wine Glass Caroline say at the same time.

“Oh,” I say, “Well, that’s, uh… I’ve known quite a few call girls in my day. You guys… um”—wow, this is awkward—“look like you’re very… good? At your job?”

The looks have now traversed over into a very precise direction. It’s the visual equivalent of someone saying, ‘Bitch, is you stupid?’ (I am, is the answer.)

“OK, well, it was… nice to meet you,” says Annie.

“Yeah, and listen, if you ever feel like you just need to talk, or…” begins Wine Glass Caroline before Annie and the other one push her out the door, her going, “What?”

After they’re gone, I stand there for a moment, suddenly unsure how to proceed. I know what to do in the abstract, I’m just not sure how to go about it. What I need to do is to prostrate myself. Lie at Maddie’s feet and beg for her forgiveness. The way she begged for me to come help her when she needed it.

That’s what I need to do. But at the same time, I can’t. I can’t do that. Because I am not all in the wrong. I just can’t let myself believe that. I don’t have a bunch of ego about apologizing when I know I’m at fault. I’m a super-vulnerable and sensitive motherfucker. Everybody says so.

So I’m not wary of asking for forgiveness to protect my image or any moronic shit like that. I’m wary because an additional truth of this matter is that I was staying away from her to protect her. To protect her from me. To avoid exactly the kind of something that’s happening between us right now.

And, y’know, oh, well, that didn’t work out, so now we just kinda have to deal with it. So I think we both have to just sack up and admit that while the way things went was shitty, the past is the past, and living in the past is no fucking good for anybody, and the best thing for us now is to give in to the reality of the present and move forward.

What did James Franco say when I was dead or dreaming or whatever the hell that was? I can make a heaven on earth with Maddie? That seems pretty fucking far away at the moment, but I think there is a shot that I can make her tolerate being next to me for five minutes. And if I can start there, then at least it’s something to build on.

I stand in front of the door to her bedroom knowing she’s on the other side, hurt, shocked, and pissed. It’s just a regular, normal-sized wood door, but right now it might as well be a steel gate that reaches to the sky protecting some forbidden city. So, I calculate what I’m going to do to charm her and win her confidence long enough to get her to listen to me. I can’t just barge in like a bull in a china shop, as is my usual wont. I have to be very, very tactical about how I infiltrate the precious lands on the other side of that gate if I hope to have any chance of the queen letting me stake my claim and till the soil so that I can plant my seed.

Hm. I didn’t really intend for that imagery to wind up taking me there, but it sure did.

Ha.

That’s funny.

MADDIE

I don’t know how long I lie there in bed, face buried in my pillow to mop up the tears, but it feels like eternity. It feels like I’m stuck in purgatory. Neither here nor there, just waiting for my sentence to be handed down.

Just go away. Please. Now.