Babylon Confidential

for us. He had blue eyes and looked a little like Andy Kaufman, but with a braid of dark-brown hair that hung all the way down to his butt. Another guy sat by the back of the pen, a handsome Native American fellow with chiseled features and long hair. He was bare-chested and had brown, weathered skin and looked as if he’d stepped out of an old Edward Curtis photo. The handsome guy didn’t say a word, he just sat there staring at us while the first guy, whose name was Phillip, brought out a long pipe.

“You’ve got to smoke this before you can see the buffalo.”

So we all joined in this ritual. We stood in a circle and Phillip sang a prayer. It turned out that he was a Lakota traditional singer, and he started drumming and singing a high-pitched, wailing song that sent chills up my spine. Then we sat down and smoked some tobacco and sage from the sacred pipe, and I’m telling you right now that was all that was in the pipe, no hallucinogens or anything like that. When the ritual was done, the hot-looking guy pointed to the pen, and when we turned to look, the previously empty pen now had two white buffaloes walking around in it.

There was only one entrance to the pen, right next to us, and it hadn’t been opened. There was no way someone could have let the animals in while we were doing the ritual. We were right there. There weren’t any flashes or smoke or magic curtains. Then Phillip said, “I put a medicine spell on them, to keep them hidden. You smoked the pipe. Your medicine is good. You can see them now.”

We were totally blown away. It was one of the most bizarre, mystical things that’s ever happened to me. We received permission to film and photograph the buffaloes as reference for the CGI4 white buffalo calf we were going to create. It was a huge thing, a great privilege, and we drove out of there feeling really good about the movie’s prospects. I could feel that white-buffalo medicine working its healing magic. I’d almost made it to the end of the tightrope.

That magic took on an additional dimension when I struck up a romance with Phillip, the half-Indian guy, and found out that he was of the elk medicine. I knew that the elk had something to do with sexual energy, but I didn’t understand the significance of that until we went to bed, and then, holy shit, did I get the whole elk thing!

We embarked on a very odd relationship. He was completely broke, never had more than a dollar to his name, but he’d do cleansing rituals at my house and stay there when I traveled. Eventually we stopped seeing each other, but things ended amicably, and we stayed good friends.

Another happy relationship, one more step forward, but I still wasn’t back to my former strength. There were still dents in the armor from my previous relationships that hadn’t been hammered out. They were the places the monster pressed on, but things were looking up.

The White Buffalo movie was rolling along beautifully. It was one of those projects that wants to come into the world. We had investors. We were going to do the whole thing for a million bucks. Things were all lined up. Only a few more steps and I’d be clear—my life, my career, my emotional healing would be complete, and my life would move forward into a new phase of growth and prosperity.

And then there was Kenny.

* * *

I’d met Kenny only once, very briefly, before the night my friend Hilary brought him to my house. He was a wannabe producer, which is a nice way of saying he was unemployed, and he was very interested in the projects I was working on. There was a sci-fi time-travel show in development called Hourglass that I was going to star in with Alexandra Tydings, who played Aphrodite on the TV series Xena: Warrior Princess. We were to play two scientists in neoprene catsuits who get sent into the past by accident and have historical adventures. Then there was a reality TV show, Wild Cooking, where people would be given twenty dollars to buy their own ingredients. They’d hike to a remote location, cook a meal in twenty minutes on a camping stove, and be judged by a famous L.A. restaurateur. And of course there was The White Buffalo.

That night we were drinking, and as the night wore on my tendency to make stupid decisions increased proportionally to the amount of red wine I imbibed, and that was a lot.

“Claudia, Kenny was going to stay with me, but I’ve got the kids, and it’s a long way to Agoura Hills. Can he stay here? It’ll only be for a few days.”

“Sure, why not? I’ve got three spare bedrooms.”

I invited Kenny to stay for two nights, and that turned into a week. He started talking about my film and TV projects as if he owned them, and I started hinting, fairly bluntly, that he should go and find his own place. He promised he would, but instead he’d spend every night drinking and cooking. He’d encourage me to join him, and at that time I didn’t need to be asked twice to do either.

The conscious checks I’d put in place, those little reminders to keep an eye on my tendency to overconsume, were banished. I could control myself when I was alone, but now I had an enabler, someone who was actively tempting me on a daily basis. Within a week I found myself in bed with Kenny, things turned romantic, and without asking he decided that his guest status had been upgraded to that of live-in partner.

Kenny had dark hair and brown eyes. Sometimes he looked handsome, and sometimes he looked dorky. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t feel embarrassed about shuffling around the house in novelty slippers and pajamas covered in cartoon moose. But Kenny was insidious, like a creeping vine. He knew exactly how to find the gaps in my armor and the old wounds that lay below it—he just had to keep me eating and drinking. He was an emotional eater, and I got hooked into his trip. I’m usually a salad-and-grilled-fish gal, but with Kenny my intake of red wine increased along with my diet of fatty foods. I was chowing down pizza and going halves on big plates of lasagna, which was totally unlike me.

Kenny wasn’t a dark soul like Angus, but he was a user. He saw a way to live off me and help his career at the same time, and so he moved in, stretched out, and made himself at home.

I’m not saying I was without fault. It takes two to tango. If I’d met a healthy, successful, straightforward guy who drank lightly or not at all, I probably could have held off the disease for a few more years. But I didn’t meet that guy. I believe you attract people at certain points in your life, that you send out signals letting people know what you want, and sometimes what you’re looking for isn’t a good thing. My monster was whispering in my ear, and it wanted to drink bad medicine.

* * *

Kenny and I went on holiday to Havana and spent New Year’s Eve in a musty room at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba drinking champagne and making love. If the heroines of Hourglass had appeared suddenly in modern-day Cuba, you’d have forgiven them for thinking they were in the 1950s. The cars were rusted classics, men wore suits and hats, and no one had built anything new in fifty years.

We ate and drank and then drank some more. People opened up their homes so you could go in and have dinner, which was pretty wonderful. An older woman sang soulful songs while we ate yet another variation on chicken and beans. We went to Hemingway’s favorite Havana bar, El Floridita. The daiquiris were mediocre, so we gave up on them and started downing cubanitos, a concoction of rum and tomato juice, and man, did they have a kick! At other times, when I’d consumed too much wine and passed out, I’d wake up at 2 a.m., after the alcohol wore off and the sugar kicked in, but spirits, and those cubanitos in particular, knocked me right out.

Even at that early stage in our relationship Kenny didn’t want to let me out of his sight or do anything on his own. At first I thought his need to be near me all the time was sweet, but by the end of that trip I felt slightly claustrophobic around him.

I came out of that holiday with love handles that had their own zip code and a roll of fat hanging over my jeans. I had Holly book me into a convention straight away. I had to get some distance from Kenny, not just personally but also professionally. He hadn’t just elbowed his way into my life; by then he was also trying to take over any of my projects that looked like they might be going somewhere, especially The White Buffalo.

Kenny’s producing background meant that he could calculate budgets and that seemed reasonable (when you’re pitching a show it helps a lot if you’ve got budgets drawn up), but that benefit came with a much greater liability—Kenny himself.

This was in the day when cell phones had a walkie-talkie feature that could be used by two people in the same vicinity—someone could start talking to you without having to place a call. It got to the point where Kenny was buzzing me every five minutes. It was like having Jim Carrey’s character from The Cable Guy in your life—it was driving me crazy. I’d be driving along and I’d hear his voice coming through the