Head Case Read online

  Lillianne sighed with Oscar-worthy exaggeration. “I don’t have time for this shit. How am I supposed to get a prescription filled right now? Damn it.”

  Oh. That kind of drug. A prescription drug. “Are you sick?” Polly asked, perking up at the chance to somehow be helpful. She did that. The ruder someone was to her, the more she wanted to placate them. It drove me crazy, but I guess it was what made her good at her job. I’m not like that. Or I wasn’t. If someone was bitchy to me, I usually just turned my back.

  Lillianne rolled her eyes. “No, silly. I’m not sick. It’s for Sentofel. I just need it to keep focused while doing this crap.”

  Oh. Those kinds of prescription drugs. Polly had some in her own bathroom. We all did. We all do. Well, most of us do. Polly had been popping them since she was seventeen. It started with Prozac. Well, it wasn’t actually Prozac. Not at first. By the time Polly went on the medication, the generic version was available, so instead of the $50 co-pay, her folks only had to cough up $10 a month. Which really wasn’t much, considering. But later, after college, when her dependent status insurance ran out, those $10 became $150, even for the generic. She would have just gone off it except that her dad, a psychiatrist himself, was able to provide her with some free samples. He had a large supply; well-groomed pharmaceutical reps were constantly parading through his clinic. The sample-filled gift bags and boxes they gave to doctors came complete with branded coffee cups, mouse pads, and even, upon occasion, Prozac-shaped and colored cookies as holiday treats. The cookies were oval, like a pill, with green and cream-colored icing. Kind of like those half-black half-white sugary affairs, but this time with food dye and no chocolate. When Polly first told me about all of this, I said that I thought it made some logical sense that they didn’t distribute chocolate cookies because, as I knew from my own research, chocolate has antidepressant properties and pharmaceutical companies were already having enough trouble from the generics and the competition as it was.

  Polly told me she ate them anyway.

  She said she brought them to parties, where everyone got a big kick out of the confections. The cookies were even funnier, more ironic, than the silver rings and pendants that were in vogue back then, the ones that had names of medications stamped on them so that everyone could announce their drug of choice with proud detachment. RITALIN circling the ring finger, ZOLOFT worn almost aggressively on the thumb. The dean of her school actually banned what he called “sardonic (he had to get the SAT word in there) accessories” after a point, because, he said, they were fostering a disturbing sense of self among the student body. Polly just thought they were clunky and unattractive.

  It wasn’t that she was all that depressed. Not at the beginning. It was more like she was not not depressed. Or something like that. But tell that to the parents of any teenager, not to mention parents who are themselves particularly sensitive to the mental health issues surrounding the later stages of adolescence, and it wasn’t so much a hard sell as a cry, well really a whimper, for help. Polly recognized that now. But the real reason, or at least what she told herself then, that she had asked her parents to get her the prescription, or at least the referral to a doctor who would, since it wasn’t ethical for her dad to write it himself (and if anything, her father was ethical), was as simple as the main reason that teenagers have been doing things for millennia—everyone else was doing it.

  After realizing one night during her junior year of high school, at a party at Seth Walden’s house, when everyone put one of their own pills—the sedatives, the stimulants, the antidepressants—in the candy bowl (these weren’t street drugs after all, so what was the harm?) and then, blindfolded, pulled another one out and popped it, that she was in the small minority of students at her school who wasn’t on something, Polly decided it was time to brand herself along with the rest of them, claim an identity. Funny how things can come full circle like that, because if you ask me, those drugs are a big part of her identity now.

  Anyway, Polly said that what was weird was that when she started to take the drugs back then, she really did feel better. Eventually. More confident, less indecisive, less like an insecure teenager and more like an adult. Or at least what she thought an adult should feel like. Which was in fact one of the diagnostic criteria for the drug; if it worked, it meant it had something to work on, so by deduction, that meant that she, Polly Warner, like tens of millions of other Americans, suffered from depression, and therefore needed to do something about it. She’d been doing something about it for more then ten years by the time she was riding in that car with Lillianne Farber.

  Lillianne was looking out the window, sighing repeatedly, acting like she was on the verge of a major crisis. Maybe she was. But Sentofel wasn’t exactly a big deal drug. I mean, it wasn’t addictive or anything and it was about as common as Tootsie Rolls. I swear it was the only way half of us passed our college finals. I’m sure it was how Lillianne passed hers. She was one of those Hollywood starlets touted as being smart because she graduated from an Ivy League college. It was like this huge deal that not only was she beautiful, she could also calculate hundreds of digits of Pi. Or something. Although I can’t imagine that having a filmography like hers hurt her college application process. Seriously, what college would turn away a hot young actress who, at the tender age of ten, had already been nominated for not one but two Oscars? Not that she won. But still. And then there was all of her humanitarian causes, all of those photos of her in People and Us playing with AIDS orphans in Africa and helping to distribute food in Sudan. When she was thirteen. It sure put Polly’s sophomore year stint as a candy striper at her father’s hospital in perspective.

  “So?” Lillianne said, still looking at the passing buildings and street signs and pedestrians and God knows what, rather than at Polly.

  So?

  Polly didn’t respond because she wasn’t sure what Lillianne expected her to say. She was still thinking through her plan. She had already ruled out calling her father; he was so ethical that it wouldn’t prove any less cumbersome than calling Lillianne’s doctor. And even if he would agree to call in a prescription, they’d still have to go to the pharmacy. They’d still have to wait at least another half hour to get it filled.

  Lillianne, meanwhile, was losing what little patience she had. “Nancy, you can’t really expect me to go on the next round of interviews like this, can you? It isn’t going to look very good for me or for the film if I can’t focus. And that isn’t going to look very good for you, now is it?”

  “Um … it’s Polly …”

  “So I suggest you figure this out.”

  Which was how Lillianne Farber—gazillionaire Hollywood starlet, woman all men want to be with and all women want to be, and fearful of being left alone with the limo driver—ended up climbing the six flights to the apartment I shared with Polly, bitching every step of the way.

  4

  March 7 (B.D.)

  Thirty Seconds Later.

  Polly had a history of interrupting me at awkward moments, and there I was, sitting on our battered loveseat, supporting an oversized neurochemistry textbook on top of my knees, my feet splayed out on the milk crate that doubled as a coffee table, my toes each separated by a foam pedicure pillow, giving ample air flow to the glistening red polish I had painted on my nails in anticipation of the forthcoming open-toe shoe season.

  “Hi?” I said quizzically, putting the book down and trying to act like it was an everyday occurrence that a celebrity like Lillianne Farber came traipsing through our home. “Um, are you guys taking a break?” Like they would normally take a break here and not, say, at the Presidential Suite at the W.

  “We came to get something,” Polly said. She motioned for Lillianne to have a seat on the couch next to my book (there was no other place to sit besides the floor). “That’s my roommate Olivia. She’s a PhD candidate at the Leary Institute. You know, f
or the Advanced Study of the Brain,” she said, as if apologizing for the half-tangled ponytail coming off the top of my head. “Olivia, this is—” she didn’t bother to finish. Of course I knew who “this is.”

  Lillianne’s perfume wafted into the apartment, but Lillianne held herself back at the threshold. She looked shocked, like she couldn’t believe she was even associating with people who lived in a place like this, or that apartments this small even existed.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as I placed the nail file on top of the textbook and rolled the cuffs of my jeans down to hide the two-week-old stubble that was peeking out.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. You know what? Is it okay if I sit there?” Lillianne gestured at the very spot Polly had just offered her.

  Polly and I glanced at each other, acknowledging the weirdness of the situation.

  Polly said sure, and that she would be right back.

  She went into her room, and when she returned two minutes later, shaking the two small boxes in her hands, Lillianne and I were chatting it up like long-lost friends.

  She was actually kind of cool, Lillianne. She wanted to know about what I was studying and I told her about my research on the impact of emotional changes on the molecular structure of brain chemistry. She said she never thought research scientists would have such bright red toenails, but that maybe her misconception of science and scientists was part of the reason she had nearly failed a biology class at Harvard. It was the worst grade she’d ever gotten. I laughed and told her that in fairness, I didn’t know the first thing about acting. I was in the chorus of Guys and Dolls in high school, and the director asked me to lip-sync because I couldn’t carry a tune. She complimented my sweater. I laughed and told her I was a scientist with a shopping problem.

  “You should see her closet,” Polly said as she emerged from the bathroom.

  I laughed. “You should see my Visa bill.”

  Polly placed two small white plastic bottles on top of the textbook. “I found these,” she said. “Sentofel.” She turned a bottle so that we could see the label faced us. “It’s about to expire, but that’s what you take, right? I also have some Fralenex,” she said, turning the other one around.

  “What do you think, Olivia?” Lillianne asked me, quite deferentially. “You’re the oddly fashionable doctor of neuroscience.”

  I laughed. “You’re getting a few years ahead of my life.” I said, since at that point I was still scratching up the funding I needed to finish my research project and hence my PhD. A doctor I was not. Not yet. And I wouldn’t be anytime soon if more funding didn’t come through.

  I told her about a study I’d recently read about Fralenex. “Basically, it said that it’s really similar to methylphenidate—Ritalin. But there’s a tiny difference in the molecular structure, just enough for the company to get a new patent and market it as a different drug. It’s fairly typical of the new releases, so sometimes it’s probably better to just …”

  “Ols,” Polly interrupted, shaking one of the bottles to get my attention. “I think Lillianne was just wondering which one she should take?”

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry. I guess you should just go with the Sentofel since you’re familiar with it and know how it feels. You don’t want to have some weird side effect hit you in the middle of an interview.”

  Lillianne raised her eyebrows approvingly and then looked at Polly, and, finally getting her name correct asked, “Polly, have you taken both of them? What do you think?”

  “Well …” Polly put the drugs down on the crate next to my drying toes. “I haven’t taken the Sentofel in a while. I’ve never tried the Fralenex.”

  “Aren’t they yours?” Lillianne picked up one of the bottles to get a closer look at the label. She opened it and stabbed the safety seal with the tip of my metal nail file. “So, you don’t need these?” she asked, pouring a week’s worth of little green pills into her hand.

  “I have plenty,” Polly said. “They’re just samples. I get them from my dad’s office. I figured we should have them in case I was going on a date and needed something a little stronger than a peppermint Cert.” She laughed nervously and twisted a strand of long hair around her finger, as she was wont to do.

  It broke my heart a little, the way Polly so often exposed her lack of confidence. She was so pretty and so smart and she could be so funny. I just didn’t get it. That was one of my professional plans, actually—getting it. I wanted to develop a drug that targeted self-esteem, something that hit the correct synapses more accurately than the mood stabilizers on the market today. I never thought that Polly suffered from the depression that her antidepressant treated, and that was one of the things that got me interested in this field to begin with. My plan, my thesis actually, was to focus on very specific emotional ailments—self-esteem, guilt, anger, etc., and parse out exactly where they occurred in the brain and what hormones and chemicals they triggered. Why treat emotions so broadly, like most mood stabilizers do, when you could target exactly what ails you (or at least the predominant ailment) and treat only that? I was starting to make some good progress, and if enough funding had come through in time, who knows, maybe I could have actually pulled it off.

  Lillianne was shaking the other bottle like a rattle. “You got these meds from your dad?”

  “Sort of …”

  “Polly’s dad is a psychiatrist,” I explained.

  Lillianne perked up. “And he gives you samples?”

  “No. He’d kill me if he knew. But he has a home office and the reps come by a lot and, well …”

  “Aren’t those meant for patients?”

  “Yeah. But honestly, they give him so many samples that they expire before he can even unload all the pills.”

  “What a tragic waste,” Lillianne said with a grin. “Good thing you can help out.”

  “You should see his supply closet,” Polly said. “Sometimes I wonder why his patients ever have to actually pay for their medication at all.”

  “Man, the drug companies must spend a fortune on freebies.” Lillianne said, spreading the pills on top of my chemistry textbook.

  “Marketing,” I said. “That’s where all the money is. That’s all these samples are. Here, take this one. This is a good starting dose.” I handed Lillianne a small green pill. She picked up the Diet Coke I had been nursing and washed it down.

  “Do you think I could take along a few more? Maybe some of the Fralanex? For some of my friends?” she asked. I figured Lillianne certainly had friends who might welcome the access to certain mental assists without worrying about a paper trail of information that some hard-up-for-cash pharmacist could leak to US Weekly or Star.

  Polly and I looked at each other and shrugged.

  That was the beginning. And before you could say “stimulant,” Polly was stealing pills from her father (more on that later) and I was playing doctor and consulting about which ones to take. Lillianne was inviting us out to her VIP parties with her VIP friends, helping us cut the VIP ropes and covering the tabs for our VIP drinks (more on that later, as well).

  The rush of fabulousness was really more up Polly’s alley than mine. I was just as happy to sit on the ratty couch reading a book, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t impressed. Or that I didn’t enjoy the authority and the new friends. Again, more on this later, but it’s pretty hard to be blasé when the A-list entourages are hanging on your opinions and coveting your Z-list company. What’s the phrase? Zero to hero. That was us. It wasn’t every day, not even every week. But over the course of a couple of months, often enough there one of us was, the unidentified friend in the corner of the snapshot in that week’s People magazine, the unnamed companion climbing out of the car in the video posted on Gawker.com.

  That was almost a year ago. Then the samples dried up, and these days Polly and I have been living in
opposing worlds (well, we were living in them, anyway), and now Lillianne spends most of her time in ashrams, not after-hours clubs. And once I got deeper into my new pharmaceutical research, for which the drug company Pharmax started cutting me sizeable checks, I really couldn’t be bothered with clubs and trading pills. I was way too busy doing what I was supposed to be doing—advancing my career, paying off my bills, and acting like an adult for a change. So Polly was more or less on her own. Which was part of what our fight was about, mine and Polly’s.

  But the Russians? All of that stuff? Mitya’s troubles? I didn’t even know about any of that until today, until I found myself forced to go catapulting down to Brighton Beach to look for the bastard.

  5

  November 5 (B.D.)

  Eight Months Later (Today).

  5:35 P.M.

  I tried to get there as fast as I could. Or as fast as anyone would try to when responding to a friend who was crying hysterically, almost incomprehensibly, over the phone. Even if they were not currently on speaking terms, which we weren’t. Although yes, I admit that had it not been for the coincidence that my lab rats were settling into their early evening naps, I probably would have taken my sweet time. Because as distraught as she was, I wasn’t taking it all too seriously. Her histrionics, I mean. I just assumed Polly was freaking out because her loser boyfriend hadn’t called when he said he would, which was a fairly predictable occurrence with her. The guy wouldn’t call for a day or so and she would spiral into a blubbering vat of self-doubt that no amount of Prozac, Effexor or Chianti could fix. And then, just as she hit breaking point, inevitably the phone would ring and she would immediately perk up and start talking as if it was she who’d been too busy or preoccupied to be in touch.