But I did answer. And then the sobbing, like I said. The hysterics.

“I’ll come over,” I said. “I’ll be there soon.”

I knew before I got into the car I’d made a mistake. I also knew I didn’t want to keep doing this. Seeing her. I needed to move on, get things back to normal. Get normal friends and find a job. My savings account was running thin and I felt more emotionally and psychologically stable than I had in years.

Resolute in my thinking, I started the car, let out a kept breath, and drove to Crystal, knowing in my heart I would be seeing her for the last time.

6

THIS IS A great time to tell you about the one and only group session I ever participated in, and I’d only done it because Crystal had insisted. “It’ll be hilarious,” she’d said.

In group, everyone talks about how depressed / upset / scared / fucked up they are. About their horrible lives and their chemically-imbalanced brains. About their suicide attempts or the fight they had with their girlfriend / boyfriend / parent / kid / husband / wife that finally pushed them, arms flailing, over the edge and down.

It was during this singular group session that I learned, for the first time, about Bobby.

Bobby was Crystal’s ex-boyfriend. It was his dumping of her that sent her into the final, deathly spiral, her own futile run for death’s door and ensuing psychotic break. Apparently, she’d been caught outside his house a few hours after he’d delivered the bad news of their relationship’s demise (the deed apparently done in a red corner booth at the neighborhood Denny’s). After said pronouncement, he quickly left, dropping enough cash to cover the bill and a generous tip before high-tailing it out of there, riding bent-for-hell on his Kawasaki before she could come to her senses and chase him down. Later that same night, the police, who’d been called by a neighbor, spotted her hiding in a cluster of bushes beneath his living room window. She tried to run but they chased her down easily as she struggled to locate where she’d parked her Honda, her clothes muddy and ripped.

It’s a testament to her slight frame and nightclub appearance that they didn’t use the cuffs until they spotted the kitchen knife she clutched in one tight fist.

She spent a night in jail despite Bobby’s refusal to press charges (later she revealed that a restraining order had been put into motion), and after a psych eval had ended up assigned to the Green Ward until such time as the supervising psychiatrist deemed her stable enough to release.

At the time, I’d thought the story pretty funny. Like an episode of some cable comedy. But as I spent more time with Crystal, I became more attuned to her “off” moments – like the slap – or the time she pretended to run me over with her car and then almost inadvertently did just that. Or the way she acted around her mother at times, sulky and absent both, as if she’d gotten lost in a memory that was too sad for her mind to properly process.

I think those lost moments was her thinking of Bobby.

7

I ARRIVED AT Crystal’s house twenty minutes after we spoke on the phone, simultaneously worried and sickened the entire drive there. Worried about her, about what might be wrong, hoping it wasn’t a serious relapse. Sickened that I had to go there again, not able to shake the feeling I was somehow being trapped, ensnared in this strange web she had spun, a surreal funhouse friendship that clung in tatters to parts of my mind like elements of a bizarre and troubling dream; nightmares of the distorted physicality of her reengineered visage, the ghost-like way her mother plied us with alcohol at every given turn then slipped away like a wraith, face split with the not-so-sly smile that intimated the blessing for a conjoining that would never occur.

Almost as haunting were the absences in her life. The holes between the taut webbing. The father always spoken of but never seen. The mysterious, nameless brother mentioned only as if by accident, and always dropped abruptly, as if it had fallen into the conversation like a spilled drink that’s quickly sponged away before it can do any real damage.

And the ex-boyfriend. Bobby. What had ever become of her obsession with him? Was her love cured so quickly? A raging, burning flame extinguished with nothing more than the passing of a few weeks and a slight alteration in medication? Was it possible? But if not, then why the silence? Why wasn’t she still mooning over him, or insulting his name, or insisting on some form of revenge?

Unless I was the revenge. Ah, yes. Of course. But I was being an uncooperative weapon. A dulled knife. An empty-chambered pistol. I mean, what was the point of finding a new lover, someone who allowed you to throw the heat of newfound burning lust into the face of the one who had hurt you… if only to be spurned? Rejected once more. And worse, denied the satisfaction that comes with one-upmanship. With dominance.

I was as futile to her as I was to myself.

And yet I had a role to play. The platonic friend who came running when she called. The balm to soothe her ragged, frayed feelings, erase the despair of loneliness, to be steadfast in the face of the rising storm of anxiety that I was also so very familiar with.

When she answered the door, I had physically braced myself for the impact of her pushing herself into my arms, her waxen face smeared with tears, her body hot with the feverish exertions from sobbing her heart out.

Instead the door was thrown open to reveal a smiling, almost giddy, Crystal. Her hair was yanked into a tight ponytail, pulling her eyes – wide and glassy as a stuffed deer – even further apart than normal. She had a drink in her hand (gin and tonic by the looks and smell of it) and wore a tight black tank top above what I was fairly sure were black panties, and nothing else. She grabbed me roughly by the scruff of the shirt and yanked me inside.

“Oh my god what took you so long!” she yelled dramatically before releasing me, stumbling under my own forward propulsion toward the living room. “God damn I need another drink.” She tilted the remaining contents of the glass into her mouth, belched, then bellowed, “Mom!”

I heard glasses clinking in the kitchen. Ahead of me the television was on and turned up loud. A police drama by the sound of it. Sirens and screaming. Beyond the living room was the hallway that led to the back bedrooms. One of the doors in the hallway opened and Crystal’s mother stepped out.

It was as if she had been the one crying. I looked at her and saw what I had expected from Crystal: red-rimmed eyes, a slack, puffy face, clotted hair, blank expression. She wore a ratty bathrobe and appeared to have, possibly, just woken up, despite it being nine o’clock at night. Her feet were bare and her hands were clutching repeatedly at the fold of her pinkish robe, as if fighting to keep it tightly secured. She was mumbling to herself like a madwoman.

Then she saw me and the caul of madness and despair slithered off her face. She lit up, smiled wide, her eyes scrunched in a sort of delirious joy. “You’re here,” she said, then did something she’d never done before. She walked up to me, slipped her arms around my waist, lay her head on my chest, and squeezed me tightly.

“Jeez you guys, get a room.”

I turned my head, not wanting to move any other part of my body while being embraced by the small, frail woman, and saw Crystal approaching, a wicked smile on her face. She thrust a drink toward me. Her own, I noticed, had been adequately topped off.

Her mother let me go and I accepted the drink, my eyes not leaving Crystal’s as I looked for signs of her distress.

“Are you okay?”

She slurped from her glass loudly, studying me. She finally lowered the drink but said nothing. Her mother had moved. Circled around to now stand behind Crystal. She whispered something in Crystal’s ear that I didn’t catch. Crystal, her eyes never wavering, nodded, as if in agreement, then leaned into me and gave a couple loud sniffs.

“Mom’s right,” she said. “You really do stink.”

She looked me up and down, as if just noticing my sweat-stained gym clothes.

“Do you have anything else to wear?” she said, as if condemning me for showing up to a formal event underdressed.

“No…” I said, dumbfounded by the attitude of both women, overrun suddenly by that confused, confined feeling once more. “I came straight from the gym. You called…”

“Oh, that,” she said with a wave of her hand and another gallant pull from her drink. “I’m over that.”

I stood there, stupidly, not knowing what to do next. The television blared at my back. Guns were firing. The drink was cold in my fingers, the perspiration giving it the same texture as a slowly melting, fist-sized ice cube. I wanted to set the drink down. I wanted to get the hell out of there. I wanted to go home, shower, and crawl into bed with a book. But instead I just stood there, waiting to be told what to do next. Confined, I thought, wondering at the context of the word.

“Okay, well, first you need to drink that, because you look like you just ate something gross, or you’re tense, or something.” She eyed me suspiciously, and I had to look away. I was afraid she could see my thoughts, my desire to flee, my sense of being done with her. “Something’s wrong. I don’t know… you’re acting weird. He’s acting weird, isn’t he Mom?”

I looked up, saw the older woman nodding over Crystal’s shoulder.