Текст книги "Sing"
Автор книги: C. D. Reiss
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 10 страниц)
CHAPTER 16.
MONICA
I slept in a random waiting room, despite promising Brad I’d go home. I got up aching everywhere and sat in the cafeteria, writing a song on a napkin. Something moved on the table. I snapped out of it. My notebook, with the NOPA inside was being slid toward me. Declan stood over the table.
“I thought you might want this,” he said. “You left it here the other day.”
“Thanks.” I stuffed it in my bag. “You’re like a regular here, these days. Piece of furniture.”
“Like fiberglass and cheap chrome?”
“The Drazen sense of humor is genetic, apparently.”
“Not so apparent.” He sat down. “I haven’t heard my boy crack a joke in twenty years.”
“He’s funny.” My voice cracked. I put my head down. I couldn’t look at him, because I was about to say ‘he was funny.’ My eyes were stinging and my face got red. I didn’t want this man made of fiberglass and chrome to see me cry over his prodigal son.
“Margaret told me,” he said.
I sniffed and tried to get my shit together. “Why aren’t you ever upstairs with them?” I clutched my tea, letting it heat up my icy hands.
“This is as close as I’m allowed. They don’t want me there. My wife, at least. We sleep on opposite sides of the house. Decades of neglect will do that.”
“I’m sure it was purely benign.” My raw emotional mood made my feelings hard to hide, and in that unguarded moment, my voice dripped with inappropriately rude sarcasm. I wasn’t being a woman of grace.
But he seemed to take it in stride. “I had a very, shall we say, intense mid-life crisis.”
“You shared a mistress with your son. Pretty intense.”
“Is that what he told you? Interesting. I guess he could have seen it that way. She was a very manipulative girl, but yes, I did plenty I was pleased with at the time, and now...well now I need a golf cart to get to my wife’s bedroom and my son won’t see me.” He massaged his coffee. “Would he be upset if he knew you were at a table with me?”
“Yeah.” I suddenly felt guilty for being there. Jonathan would not like it. Not one bit. If he was going to get well, he needed to know that I was safe, and I was sure he didn’t think of me as safe around his father. I put the granola bar in my bag.
“I should go upstairs. It was nice talking to you.”
“Yes, it was.”
CHAPTER 17.
JONATHAN
I’d already tried to take the fucking little tubes out of my fucking nose. The room lit up like Griffith Park at Christmas and it was Jingle Bells all over again. In my life, I’d be okay if I never get defibrillated again. Odds were not in my favor.
I had a hard time staying awake for long. Exhaustion from lack of oxygen and a body worn out working for nothing, pumping blood that went down a tube, sucking up more blood from a bag. There was medicine too. Bags of it, going into my hand. And a bag of blood that kept getting replaced like a pot of coffee.
I remember one of them saying was that I was a lucky man. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I thought it didn’t have a damn thing to do with my health. He was blond. Nordic looking, and I asked him what he meant, but he just went on with another battery of questions that seemed like every other battery of questions every other white lab coat had asked either me, or the person next to them. If I had a dime for every doctor that walked in and talked about me like I wasn’t there, I could buy and sell myself. The non-entity of me. The skin bag of pain and discomfort. I didn’t feel like I owned my own body any more. I felt like a piece of meat being kept alive until some day when something happened. Some miracle. Or some news.
“I’m not here to make you upset,” I felt lucid when Margie said that, my brain snapping to attention at the thought that there was something I should, but shouldn’t be, upset about.
“Oh, good. You’re here to tap dance.”
“I love that you have the energy to joke, but not give a shit about your condition.”
“I give a shit.” The effort it took to speak was monumental, but contact with someone wearing real clothes and not wielding a needle was too welcome to not answer in full. “Guy just came and told me I’m in a world of trouble. There’s just nothing I can do about it.”
“They called us into a meeting. This must be what it’s about. What did they say?”
“Let them do their jobs. I can’t...” I drifted off. I couldn’t repeat what the guy with the silver hair had said. Dr. Emerson. Like the poet.
As if understanding she put her hand on my shoulder.
“There’s something I took care of while you were down,” she said. “It’s going to create drama.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, you have no problem with it?”
“Okay, tell me what it is.”
“Monica’s broke. She hasn’t been going to work because she’s been hanging around Sequoia Hospital like she works here.”
“Fuck.” My life spinning out of control was bad enough, but I was taking Monica with me.
“I’m giving her money and saying it’s from you. You’re going to back me up.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Margie?” I raised my hand a little and she took it, coming closer to me so she could hear.
“What?”
“You’re my new favorite. Thank you.”
“I’m keeping tabs on every dime, because you’re going to get better, you little fuck. I don’t know how, but this isn’t how it ends. Do you understand me? It’s not ending like this.”
CHAPTER 18.
MONICA
The closer I got to Jonathan’s family, the more I understood where he came from. His ability to laugh through anger and tears, the happy face he put on over his worries, the Oscar-worthy show of confidence, came from his mother. The deft manipulations of people and situations, the sadism, the raw hunger, the social charm, came from his father. The passion and protectiveness were learned through his sisters.
Margie had handed me five thousand dollars in an envelope and told me if I didn’t take it she was going to tell Jonathan and it would upset him enough to give him another heart attack. She was exaggerating and being cartoonish, but I got the point. He’d arranged the money, and refusing it would cause him stress.
“I told you not to tell him,” I’d said, holding on to a shred of pride even as I clutched the envelope.
“I ignored you. Tough.”
“I hate this.”
“Take it up with God.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate it.”
I needed the money. Badly. After spending a morning on the phone, I found I had long odds of saving the house. I could rescue my mother’s finances by arranging a short sale, but I’d still have to move, and one of the banks was adamant about the current resident vacating the premises. I could have waited for an eviction, and then fought it, but I had too many balls in the air as it was. I needed to find a place to live, a place to store my stuff. I needed to rent a truck, pay a security deposit and first month’s rent. Five thousand would just about cut it.
And now I had other business to attend to. Accepting five grand in cash from my lover’s sister was something I never thought I’d do. Today would be a day of firsts.
I dialed Eddie’s cell phone. He picked up. Oh, the privilege of being me. Six months ago he wouldn’t have returned a voice mail from me, much less taken a call on the second ring.
“What’s happening, Princess?” he answered through a wave of ambient noise. I didn’t like the new nickname. It was too close in concept to “flake.”
“I can’t do a session,” I said. “Jonathan, he’s...it’s bad. I need to be here.”
“How bad?” The ambient noise disappeared as if he’d closed a window.
“Something went wrong. He’s bleeding. He needs a transplant. Maybe. Probably?”
“What?”
“If you have a heart lying around in the next few days...”
“Days?”
My head was screwed up. I was a monster. I’d thought Eddie cared that I was cancelling my recording session, but Jonathan was his friend, and he was dying, why the hell would he care about my fucking EP?
“You should come and see him,” I said.
“Fuck.”
“Are you all right? I’m sorry, I’ve been dealing with this for days. I should have broken it to you better.”
He didn’t answer right away. I thought I’d lost the connection, then he finally spoke up. “When I banged up my dad’s Maz, he took me all over LA to get it fixed. We got it home before my parents got back from Maui. By like, minutes. He drove like such a dick.”
I sniffed, “Don’t eulogize yet, please.”
I had the sudden, physical need to see Jonathan immediately, to stop wasting time in a cold stairway when I could be taking up space with him.
I pushed through the stair doors into the hall.
“Sorry, I...” Eddie caught himself. “Tell him he’s an asshole for me. All right?”
“Sure thing.”
The elevator dinged, and I blocked traffic by standing there, looking at my phone, wondering why I didn’t give a shit about a blown opportunity.
“Monica,” came a voice in the crowd. I turned to the source.
“Jessica.”
“I’d like to speak with you.”
“Sure.”
We stepped away, into a corner by a six foot tall potted plant that looked too fake to be real, or too real to be fake.
“What?” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “You’ve got no business being sharp with me.”
“Thanks for letting me know my business.”
“I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came to see him.”
“Why? To upset him? I’m sick of this. I’ve never seen anyone crush a man so hard then try to get him back like it was her job. For Chrissakes, I wish he’d just give you your money so you’d leave him the fuck alone.”
“He did,” she said, her face darkening like a desert under rare clouds. “This is a long term hospitalization. The trust will move to irrevocable in a week. He’ll be here.”
It hit me then, her motivation in being there. It was sick. Unbelievably venal.
“Unless he’s dead, right?” I said through my teeth. “If he dies while the trust is revocable, you lose.”
I started to walk away, but she grabbed my elbow hard.
I looked at the place where her fingers dented the fabric of my shirt, then at her.
“You listen to me,” she said through her teeth. “I loved him. Make no mistake. He wasn’t for me, but I loved him. That doesn’t go away.”
“He. Is. Mine.”
“Under the circumstances, he’s everyone’s. He needs all of us. We can have this fight now or after he’s dead. Would that suit you?”
Something seethed in me. Something hot and black and angry.
Before Los Angeles was a place, it had a tar pit. Three times in prehistory, an animal got stuck in it, and a predator came to eat the animal. The predator, even as he ate his prey, got stuck. Carrion came to feast on the weakened bodies, and all were stuck. Multiply, as more, driven by instinct and hunger, fell into the trap. Masses of mammals, winged creatures, crustaceans came to feast as the black goo pulled them down to their death in a years-long chain of seething, building, predatory hunger. Ripping throats, blood-covered-fur, a routine orgy of violence and death, multiplied by an order of fear, melted into the tar, adding to the organic mass of boiling, black pitch.
On LaBrea Ave, there’s a park, and in the park, the tar pits bubble underground, leaving puddles of sticky black goop in the grass. They come up where they want, and everything sinks into them.
So when Jessica suggested Jonathan would die, I wanted to claw her eyes out. Pull her hair at the roots. Like I’d put a lawn of sweet words over an aquifer of tar-sticky rage, and her presence triggered a bubbling geyser of anger. But let’s face it, I wasn’t angry at Jessica, and I wasn’t angry that she had the gall to bring death into the conversation like a threat. I was angry at death itself. Angry that it dared to black the light from the window. That it should come between Jonathan and I, when we’d overcome so much. What did it want? What was I supposed to do? And life? How dare it bring him to me just to take him away.
The elevator doors opened with a ding, but Jessica and I continued to stare at each other as if guns were drawn.
“It’s nice you kids are getting along.” Margie’s voice cut through the stare.
Jessica let go of my arm, and when she did, I realized something.
I didn’t like her. I didn’t trust her. But I couldn’t pretend it was her I was angry at her.
As if shunned, Jessica ran into the elevator at the last second.
“Cute, you two,” Margie said. “Almost like you could stand being in the same room together.”
“She’s just going to upset Jonathan.”
“No she’s not. He refused to see her. She’s a little pissed off.”
Margie headed down the hall, her gait quick and sure.
“You look pretty pissed yourself.” I chased after her.
“I got big news from the Department of Bad Shit. They can’t get in to fix the suture. It’s a transplant or nothing.”
CHAPTER 19.
MONICA
He was lucid. I knew because he smiled when he saw me.
“Goddess.”
“Sir.”
“I’m very upset with you.”
“I’ll skip the spanking joke.”
“You need to ask for what you need.”
He was talking about the money.
“Thank you,” I said. “But I couldn’t ask.”
“I can’t read your mind.”
“Can we have this discussion when you’re better?”
“Did anyone explain the odds of that to you yet? Because—“
“Stop it.”
I held up both hands, and he took one. He was going to start talking. He was going to start telling me what I already knew from Margie and Brad and any doctor I happened upon in the halls. But I didn’t want to hear it. I especially didn’t want it from him, because he was going to be Mr. Control and hearing it from him, in that measured, if shredded voice, I was going to either scream or run out.
“Tell me what’s happening with you,” he whispered. “I hear about me all day.”
“Eddie asked about you.”
“Tell him he’s a douchebag for me.”
“I will.”
“Did he get you a new date to record?”
“Not yet. Christmas is coming so it’s dead.”
My face was close to his. Close enough to own my attention, shutting out the scritch of the stylus and the hissing of the oxygen tubes. Close enough for him to look at me long and deep to see the contents of my heart.
“Don’t lie, Goddess.”
“Carnival has to wait. A four song session will take all day. If something happens I need to be here.”
A machine beeped.
He pressed his lips in his teeth. It was an expression he’d used when he was healthy, and it made me want to beg him to take me.
“I need you to do your work,” he said.
“Jonathan, I won’t do it right if I’m worrying about you.”
I felt his hand on my waist, a light touch through my shirt. It slid up to my rib cage, the memory of everything we’d been together, when his hands were forceful and cruel, responsive to desires I didn’t even know I had. He fingered the black Bordelle bra I’d worn at his command.
“You’ve come so far,” he said. “You’re not the same woman I met. You have control. You can take it all and channel it into the work. If I promise you that, would you believe me?”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t know your own power. Please. Go sing. Sheila will watch me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He nodded as much has he could, and I pressed my lips to his. I kissed him like I kissed him every time since he fell into my arms, like it might be the last.
CHAPTER 20.
MONICA
I’d gone home to shower and rest. I shouldn’t have. The Drazens had a suite at the hotel across the street and I should have eaten humble pie and just gone there. But I couldn’t ask Sheila for the key, and I didn’t have a change of clothes or the extravagance to buy new. Fucking pride, and now I was stuck in traffic ten blocks from the goddamn hospital. Another hour lost.
Sitting in traffic in thebestfuckingthingever was far better than sitting in traffic in the Honda. And it beat the bus by a mile. But traffic was traffic, and sitting still in a Jaguar while helicopters beat the air overhead was infuriating. Having grown up in Echo Park before it was a real estate investment opportunity waiting to happen meant I was familiar with this type of police action. A perimeter was being sealed off so every car could be checked. Usually, it was a cop killing that created this kind of chaos. Or a gang assassination. Maybe a child abduction. I ticked off the list then closed the windows and sang a couple of the songs I’d prepared for the EP, belting it out in the shitty acoustics of the car.
I flipped the news on. Music was just messing up the rhythm in my head, which I needed. Talk talk talk, and I half listened to the clipped chat of a mob shooting outside the golf course. No child abduction, but a typical drive-by. I felt like I knew the details without even hearing them, and I internally restated my belief that penalties should be harsher for crimes committed during rush hour. This was going to be awhile. I sang to the leather dash, letting the news drift away.
Yea, though he stands in the fear of the dark
I shall walk at his right hand
I have drawn rod and cudgel
In his defense
I shall lead him to the gate
And if he seeks his end
My heart shall keep him safe
I can walk
Without it
I can work
Without it
I can sing
Half a woman
Surely goodness and mercy
Prevail in a city of sin
As barter for a life
Beats for beats
Breaths for breath
Trade a heart for what’s mine
I can breathe
Without it
I can see
Without it
I can sing
Half a woman
I was leaning my forehead on the steering wheel when I finished. I couldn’t get the rest of the song out. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see through my tears. This sucked. He didn’t have long, I could see it in the doctor’s faces when they spoke with a sense of urgency, like their own careers were on the line if he died. The inconvenience of it would be epic for them.
Meanwhile, I’d die with him.
The phone rang. Fuck it. It wasn’t like I was moving. I picked up Margie’s call.
“Hello?” I didn’t realize how snotty and blubbery I sounded until the last vowel came out in a froggy croak.
“Are you okay?”
“The love of my life is dying, so, no.”
“Well, I called with a little something. Guy just came in with half a brain and a working heart. We’re fighting our way up the list and they’re checking for a match. But he’s the same blood type.”
“Oh, God. Really?” My face exploded in prickly happiness and tears sprung into my eyes.
“Top secret, ok? This is not public knowledge, but I know people who know. Don’t get your hopes up. The family’s going to be an obstacle. Donor cards don’t mean anything without a living will, and they’ve got more hope than Jonathan has time.”
“Is it evil to hope he dies?”
“Yes. You and I both.”
“See you in hell,” I said, with a little less cry my voice.
“I’ll buy the handbasket.”
The traffic broke suddenly, and I was waved through blockade on Beverly and Rossmore.
CHAPTER 21.
MONICA
“I sold the house. Thank God, Monya. Cash. At market price.”
My mother had called just as I stepped into the elevator with nine other people. I was just about to tell her I hadn’t made any headway, nor had I found an opportune time to ask for Margie’s help on the house thing, when she blurted out her news like a kid blowing the date of a surprise party.
“That’s great, Ma.” I whispered so I wouldn’t annoy the three people in scrubs who pressed up against me. “Did they say when they were moving in?” I was happy for her. I really was. But the bank was going to have to put all my stuff in a Dumpster. I couldn’t leave Jonathan long enough to move out.
“That’s the good news! They’re okay with the tenant. Okay with your rent and everything. You have to make your checks out to an investment company. ODRSN Partners. The address is One four three, North—”
“Can I get it later? I’m in an elevator. I’ll call you back.”
We hung up, and I molted a few layers of anxiety. I must have bounced into Jonathan’s room, because he smiled when he saw me, the oxygen tubes gone from his nose. The sun shone through the window, and yes he had that auto-squeeze thing on his arm, and yes he was in that god damn hospital bed and his heart was ripped up, but he was in a half sitting position and he was as glad to see me as I was glad to see him.
“I don’t have to move!” I announced, kissing him.
“Good?”
“Oh, God you missed the whole thing!” I blabbered. “My Mom put the house into foreclosure and I thought I was going to have to move out really fast, which, hello I have twenty years worth of stuff in that house, so but some investor came and bought it.”
“Ah, who beat me out?”
“No, uh. Crap, she told me.” I wrestled with the granola bar, until he took it from me and got it open in one move, with a bad heart and IVs sticking out of him. “It’s such a load off. I can’t even tell you.”
He broke off a piece of the bar and held it up. “Was it Ganten Investments?”
I took the piece in my mouth. “No, it was a bunch of letters, like DRM, but five letters and not that. I made it into a word in my head but I can’t think of it.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess.”
“You have to move faster next time, if you want property in Echo Park.” I took another chunk of granola bar from his fingers. “Oh my God, this thing tastes so bad.” I felt light as a feather, waving my hands at him to indicate I wanted another piece. “It’s like, stinky.”
“Stinky?”
“With a touch of dredgy.” And then I remembered, as I chewed, the rhythm of the words and the taste of the stale barley malt brought it to me. “ODRSN. That was it. It sounded like odorous. ODRSN Partners.”
He was looking down at the bar, breaking another smelly piece, when he froze.
“Did you say ODRSN?”
“Yep.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, why? Is that the competition or something?”
He put the bar on the side table, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It wasn’t very deep at all. He breathed like he didn’t have room for air in his lungs.
I took his hands in mine. “Jonathan. Should I call someone?”
He shook his head, but I didn’t believe him, I believed the machines, which were silent. But for how long? He was struggling, if not with his breath or his heart, with his mind.
“I need you to marry me,” he said.
“What?”
“Marry me.”
“Are you insane?”
“If anything happens to me, I want to make sure you’re taken care of.”
“I refuse to believe you’re going to die. My God, we’ve been together a few months, maybe.”
“These are extenuating circumstances. I could leave you swinging in the wind.”
“No,” I shook my head like I was trying to get a fly out of my hair. “This is crazy. This is not how I want it. I don’t want you to get better then regret it. And it’s not your job to make sure I’m financially stable. What’s come over you?”
Midway through my little speech, stuff started beeping and lighting up. And by the time I was done, I was being pushed out with both hands by a woman in a blue facemask and gloves. I landed in the hall, back against the wall, trying to stay out of the way.
“What happened?” Eileen asked, standing close to Theresa as if her daughter held her up.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We were talking about something.”
He asked me to marry him and I said no.
I put my hands over my mouth when I realized what had happened, and ran down the hall without looking back. Even when I passed the cafeteria on the way out, and saw Declan in his usual spot talking to Jessica, I didn’t stop. I just kept on running.
