I click the latch, swing the door open wide.
“Jesus Christ,” I say, my hand covering my mouth instinctively. He is wan and disheveled and appears to have puke on his dirty jeans.
It’s Leo. He sees me, and he starts to cry.
He tells me the drugs started out just for fun.
“Those lines in Toronto, remember?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“When I met you at the film festival. That was the first time: that coke—that party the first night?”
I remember then. I flew him up to meet me. I wanted to watch out for him, said Iwouldwatch out for him. I’d do better, be better, with my dad gone.
Leo drops his head into his hands, then folds himself atop the kitchen table. I brew some black coffee, pour us both too much, and it spills on the counter, where I leave the mess and hand him a mug.
I do the math. “I don’t understand ... this has been going on, you’ve been using for six years?”
Where have I been? How did I miss this?
“I called you once,” he says, his eyes filling again. “A few years back ... I think ... you were in Dallas? On a shoot? That Kennedy thing? I don’t know. Anyway. I called you to tell you that I thought I needed ... help. But then I lost my nerve. Thought I could do it on my own. Then, I mean, obviously, this nightclub investment thing was not the best move.”
“Nightclub thing?”
“I invested, remember?”
I shake my head. It sounds familiar, but I often only hear Leo through a tunnel: I pay close enough attention to ensure that he’s checking off the boxes, then tune out the rest of the clatter because there is so much clatter. Everywhere he goes, there is noise. Tatum would probably say I do much the same with her.
He sighs. “I went in with some buddies on a place in Miami. Disposable income isn’t my problem, thought I could invest it and have fun at the same time.”
I nod. I have no recollection of a nightclub in Miami. I chastise myself. “So you’ve tried to stop?”
He shrugs, something small and pathetic, which is to say no, he really hasn’t tried all that hard to stop. Even though one look at him—dirty, disheveled, bruises beneath his eyes, cracks along the edges of his lips—informs us both that he is teetering on the edge, close enough to stumble off it and maybe never come back. He tells me that he hasn’t slept in three nights, that he was downtown partying and a girl he was with OD’d, that he knew if he didn’t get on a plane and tell me now in person, ask for help, he’d be next.
“So you haven’t tried to stop?” I hear my voice, the judgment. I hate myself for it but it’s there all the same. Tatum hears this all the time with Walter; this is the first time I’ve really heard it for myself.
“It could have been me, Ben.Shit.It could have been me.”
“Have you told the people at work? Because if you haven’t, then you shouldn’t. They can fire you.”
He slaps both palms against the table. “This isn’t fucking about work, Ben!”
“It’s not, I know.” I sit beside him, rest both of my hands on his knees. I have to do better at this. If Tatum were here, she’d be better. I try to intuit what she’d say. “I just meant ... Look, we’ve been through this with Walter, Tatum’s dad. We’ll get through it, but you’ll need the month. Thirty days to get straight.”
He nods. “I’m their best trader. They’ll give it to me.” He pauses. “Ironic, isn’t it? How good I am at something I hate?”
He loathes me when he says this. I know it; I can feel it cutting through my soul. As if the words are fingers pointing at me saying:You made me stick with it; you tried to be my father when I just needed a brother.
“I just tried to do what I thought was right,” I say, sliding my hands back into my own lap. “I thought it was time for you to be a grown-up.”
“Whoever gave you the right to tell me how to be a grown-up?”
“Dad did,” I say, and regret it immediately.
“You’re not Dad,” he says, intuiting my thoughts. He rises and heads toward the bathroom. I hear him vomiting for a good five minutes. And I know I should go in there, rub his back, offer some comfort, but I find that I’m unable to, unable to stand and do what’s best for him, when what’s best for me is to stay here, stuck in my chair, without having to confront the reality of all the ways I have failed him.
Tatum handles all the things that I cannot. Her tank top is still sweat-pocked, her cheeks still pink by the time she has called Commitments, spoken to the staff as if they are old friends, secured Leo a bed. She phones her agent, tells her she’ll make it to set that day—she’s a pro, after all—but will be leaving immediately after the crew breaks for the union-mandated lunch. She often lingers around to shadow the director, to play scenes with her costars off camera, a benevolence the pros afford their peers when they all get along.
