LANA DEL REY

♡ KIKI ♡

my dreams are always the same. they’ve been that way for as long as i can remember, and we have a love-hate relationship. it’s not that a similar story unfolds each night, but that when i sleep, i return to the same place. a version of new york city that i can’t reach in my waking life.

♡ VERONIKA ♡

sage hands me a notebook. it’s covered in red, white, and blue sequins in the shape of an american flag. she flips through the pages, each one filled with random words connected by diagonal lines like constellations: 119 bowery. kundalini awakening. the deli on 9th. 333. lana del rey. there are concert tickets taped to some pages, and one citation from the cops for hopping a turnstile.

“when will she be released?”

sage shrugs. “she tried to kill me last night.”

“seriously?”

“right over here.” she points at the wall. “see those scratches? those are her fingernails.”

i picture it in my mind’s eye—her roommate’s acrylic nails leaving lines in the walls of their bushwick apartment. dark, matted hair in her face, staring up at me like a monster in an early 2000s japanese horror movie.

“i think it’s the ketamine.”

“really?” of course it’s the ketamine.

“i mean, you know how i am. like, i do a lot of k. but last night? i mean she did, like, a lot of k. like, a lot even for me.”

“fuck.” i don’t know what else to say. i haven’t touched powdered drugs since college.

addicts are so tragically unhinged that sometimes it’s almost funny. when luc got really bad, he’d suck on my tampons in public bathrooms like a vampire and argue with the walls. but i know i’m a horrible person for finding that funny, and so i conceal my laughter through a series of pretend hiccups. sage doesn’t even notice. she’s still reenacting last night’s events, her arms extending out like tree branches, casting purple shadows across the tv projector.

“she sat on me like this and started choking me out.” she kneels on her queen-sized mattress, forming ripples in the animal print duvet.

“so what time did the cops arrive?” i ask.

“i can’t even remember now. it’s all a blur.”

i agree to spend the night, even though the rain is loud in brooklyn and sage kicks in her sleep. i shut my eyes and spend the next few hours trying to guess what color the walls are in whatever ward her roommate has been detained in. the tv is still on for white noise, but in the morning i shut it off, leaving a post-it note on the fridge: text me with updates. smiley face. on the train back to manhattan, i reflect on the notebook—the miscellaneous ephemera glued to its insides and that address: 119 bowery. it stood out within the pencil lead cobweb of words. i’ve been there before.