River and John stumbled in. There was a crowd coming in and out. River’s brother Joaquin—who went by the name Leaf back then—and his sister Rain were both there. They seemed like kids. Joaquin was nineteen, not even old enough to drink, and his sister was twenty-one. Somebody broke out the coke and passed it around. River was obviously wasted and was as unsteady as a boxer who had taken one too many head shots during a fifteen-round bout. His complete lack of motor skills made me suspect he was drunk. Heroin will make users lean when they stand still, but you almost never see them stumble and fall. Coke fiends may have hands that tremble, but the kind of stuporous shuffle River had made me think he was drunk. Sloppy drunk. He wobbled whenever he was on his feet. Frusciante was completely out of his mind. I had seen him like this before, and even though he was a friend, when he was in that kind of state, he could be very unpleasant. It was as if he didn’t operate in this dimension at that point. I sat at the desk and wondered if maybe we all shouldn’t go into the secret “party” room that Johnny and Sal had built when the club was under construction.
John and River stood up, unsteady, and went out to watch P do their set. I went out with them. They sat on the stage near the front door and watched from there. I hung back and enjoyed the show. They were always a fun band to watch, and tonight, they played well. It was great fun until I felt a hand tap my shoulder and turned to see River. He was a whiter shade of pale. “Bob, I don’t feel so good. I think I’m OD’ing.”
“What? Are you sure?” That’s something no one had ever said to me. Usually you just OD and that’s it. “River, you can’t just come up to me and say you’re OD’ing.” He stood there and rocked tentatively off the balls of his feet in a vain attempt to counter gravity. This club was no place for him at the moment.
“C’mon, man. Let’s get you home, then,” I said, and tried to guide him toward the door.
“I don’t know, Bob. I think I’m all right now.” Color returned to his face.
I tried to reassure him. “I don’t think it’s an OD. You can stand and you can talk.” He nodded and turned. I still have guilt that I dismissed his worries so casually.
I watched him zigzag back to the stage, where Frusciante still sat. I was dumbstruck. What the fuck just happened? I thought. It was a horrible moment. What was I supposed to do? From where I was, I could see him, so I kept an eye on him for any signs of imminent collapse, but he seemed okay. I wasn’t a stranger to overdoses. It was something that happened given the dope-fiend lifestyle. A few weeks earlier, at my place, one of the bodyguards for Ministry’s Al Jourgensen had collapsed after a night of heavy partying. I called 911 and an ambulance took him to the hospital. Later, after he had been revived and a Filipino orderly wheeled him through the emergency room lobby, where a few of us had waited for him, he said from his wheelchair, “If you guys stole my dope, I’m gonna kill you—and I’m looking at you, Bob Forrest.” He knew me too well.
Not long after I spoke to River, there was a sudden commotion in the club. Someone was shouting to call an ambulance. A current of panic shot through the Viper Room. I could feel it. There was a jam-up at the door, so I pushed my way through to the sidewalk. Samantha Mathis, River’s actress girlfriend, was screaming. River was seizing on the sidewalk. Flea was on the ground next to him and tried to do what he could to help. When I saw the scene, I stopped in my tracks. “What the fuck is going on?” I thought. It was only about thirty minutes after River had played onstage. Now here he was crumpled on the sidewalk. He was alive, because his arms and legs shook like he was having an epileptic fit. An ambulance wailed to a stop and the EMTs bundled him onto a gurney and quickly got him inside. Flea jumped in and rode with him to the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, not too far west in the Fairfax District.
I didn’t know the full extent of River’s condition, but I knew that whichever way things went, it would be trouble. And it would be the kind of trouble that made front-page news in a celebrity-obsessed town like Los Angeles. I could picture one of the tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair blasting out a teaser: “River Phoenix overdoses at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room.… Is Young Hollywood out of control?” This would be bad, it would be terrible, and we were all right in the middle of it. It never even crossed my mind that he could die. My emotions were tangled by all this. I felt awful that River had
