Текст книги "Sing"

Автор книги: C. D. Reiss

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 10 страниц)

CHAPTER 28.

MONICA

Sona and the staff had cleared out. Darren hugged and congratulated me, fist-bumped Jonathan, promising him a wild night of beer-slinging and bar-hopping in Silver Lake. He kissed me on the cheek and left, promising he’d call.

Irene had warned me clearly, while ignoring Jonathan, that there was to be nothing going on behind the closed door that might bring a heart rate up. But, just in case I didn’t know, he was being monitored from the nurse’s station. So no quote, funny business, unquote.

We laughed when the door closed. I wanted to lie on top of him, press my thighs to his, and tuck my head into the crook of his neck, but that was impossible. I leaned over, sitting in the adjacent chair, and kissed his cheek.

“Do you regret it?” I said.

“I feel relieved.”

“I’m glad.”

“I wish I could give you a wedding night. Throw you over my shoulder, dress and all, and carry you over the threshold. We wouldn’t even make it up the stairs.”

I made a satisfied purr. “I can just imagine it. Who’s house?

“Our house.”

“Is there a porch?”

“More than one, and I’ll have you on all of them, regularly. Breakfast in the back. Lunch on the side, and after dinner, we’ll drink wine on the front porch and I’ll make love to you in the night air.”

“Can I still call you sir?”

“I expect no less.”

“Thank you, sir.” I kissed his hand, letting my lips linger on his skin.

“And here we are,” he said, “married, and we never even talked about children.”

“Can we pretend we had them?”

“Four,” he said with a slight smile.

“Don’t be greedy.”

“Three. Can we settle on three?”

I should have agreed to ten children, because there were going to be exactly none. There was going to be no house, no porches, no family.

“Can I admit something to you, my beautiful wife?”

“Yes.”

“I’m scared.”

I squeezed his hand and laid my head next to him. That was when the machine’s beeping was replaced with a high, constant whine.

CHAPTER 29.

MONICA

I stood in the hall, staring at his door.

They’d just done CPR. Changed the tube. Pumped more drugs into him. Assured me there wasn’t a spare heart with his blood type anywhere but Paulie Patalano’s chest.

What the hell were we made of? Sausage casings and prime cuts to be wrapped up and swapped out as needed. I felt ill. The twisting in my gut told me to run into the bathroom and bend over the toilet. But nothing came, because I hadn’t eaten in Lord knew how long. When I returned, panicking , he was alive, stable and unconscious.

All the wrong things seemed definite and secure. I knew he loved me. I knew he was right in my life. But the very life that fit mine so perfectly, was going to end. Soon. Tomorrow. The next day. Didn’t matter. Too soon. And the house of our love would crumble under a cracked foundation.

I found myself outside Dr. Thorensen’s office. He’d have answers, or at least different questions.

“You’re here,” I said.

He was in the dark again, shades drawn, screens flashing. “Come in. Wanna play?”

“I can’t believe you get away with this.”

“I’m waiting to hear about something.”

“Jonathan?”

“Sit.”

“Is there a heart somewhere?”

He sighed. “I’m getting him put on the emergency list. I’m pretty sure it’ll go through in an hour, but I don’t want to leave until I see it. Come on. Sit. Your avatar’s on the cloud. We can start you from the beginning.”

I hesitated. He patted the seat of the couch behind him. “Come.”

“Fine.”

I sat, kicking off my shoes and tucking my feet under me. He rolled his chair back until the back of it pressed against the couch, where it was already indented from hours of play.

“You ready? There you are. I made you look like you.”

“Jesus, I don’t look like that.” My avatar was ravishing.

“Yeah, you do. Okay, so we start out in the wood. Forest all over, and we’re lost. We have to solve this puzzle before our guide comes, hold on there! Get them!”

We shot down a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. We avoided shooting a blind guy. As a reward he set us a puzzle to solve. We had that sorted out in no time, and I saw something I recognized.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE

“Such a cheerful game, Brad. Don’t you have something with bunnies?”

“You can come over and play that next week.”

There won’t be a next week, Dr. Thorensen…

I had no time to make that into a joke. We had to navigate a parade, and a flag, right, left, left, right and still get to our destination, a boat on a black river.

“Tell me something,” I said. “What are the odds of him getting a heart in time?”

“Can’t say. Hit left, left. Nice.”

“Do I duck the guy in the Pope hat?”

“God, yes.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t or won’t what? Just don’t let him touch you.”

“Can’t or won’t say about the heart. Fuck.”

“Oh! Nice move. Both. His blood type’s rare, so a good heart is hard enough but…okay, see that opening right there? Hit your blue button and the joystick at the same time.”

“Is there any way to speed it up? The heart thing? Shit! Wait…”

“You got it…no. Only what I’m doing. Pushing him up the list.” His shoulders slumped. “We’re in. River Acheron. Good job. You earned the coins so give one to the guy in the hood.”

I clicked my buttons. “He won’t take it.”

“That’s weird.” He took the controller from me.

“What about the mafia guy? The brain dead one. If he died, would Jonathan get his heart?”

Brad was focused on the controls. “I can’t promise anything. Crap. I heard this happens sometimes.”

“What?”

“You’re stuck in the vestibule. That’s your sin. Wow. I guess we can make you a new avatar.”

“My sin?” I asked. “Which one?”

He threw the controller down and kicked his feet up on the couch. “The vestibule is where you go when you don’t take sides on an issue. Like when you could have taken action, but didn’t. Or, look. I’m not going to pretend to be a philosopher. But you were probably just feeling passive when you answered the questions. Wanna do it again?”

I thought for a second. Did I want to sit in Brad’s tiny office until sunrise, waiting for Jonathan to get bumped up a list, or did I want to make a decision, one way or the other, about helping him?

“I’m going to brush my teeth and find an empty waiting room couch.”

“Suit yourself.”

“When you know something, can you tell me?”

“I will. You tell me if you need anything, okay?”

“Sure, and thanks.”

I was pretty sure he didn’t really know what I was thanking him for.

CHAPTER 30.

MONICA

He was still sleeping when I got back. I sat in the chair by his bed and looked at his hand in the light of the moon and the little light-up Christmas tree on his nightstand. The fingers were set in a relaxed curl, veins and light hair, the keyring wedding band half falling off. I knew those hands. They were strong. They were his instruments. I couldn’t see past his elbows, but I knew the rest of him. I read it like a book. The velvet of his skin. His scent when his cologne’s worn off. The warmth of his touch, its perfect pressure on me. The tones and cadences of his voice, rising and falling; clipped to command, breathy to soothe, chopped fine to laugh. I put my palm on his cheek, in my mind, and his eyes close for a second before he turns his head and kisses my hand, my wrist, the inside of my forearm, stubble scratching, lips awakening, tongue taunting, fingers closed on my wrist like a vise. I feel bound, secure, safe, my tingling body is an exploding cage of sin.

He is before me, dressed in his business clothes, and I am naked. We are in the hotel room where he spanked me the first time, the night I tried to hide my navel from him, and he gave me my voice back. He’d told me to be naked, and this is how I imagine it would have gone if I had been obedient.

He tells me to put my hands behind my back, then kicks my legs open. He tells me that he won’t fuck me until he hears my voice, and I whisper my doubts that it will work. He smirks in that way he does, and runs his fingertips across my shoulder, then down my chest to my nipple, which he strokes until it’s hard, bending it down, then circling it.

He switches the light on and turns me toward the windows.

It’s night, we’re on a high floor and Los Angeles is covered in a blanket of lights. I can see myself, naked, reflected in the windows, a ghost over the city.

“Put your hands on the glass,” he says. I do. The basin is spread before me, a checkerboard of pinpricks, exactly as Mondrian had envisioned, squares of light, blinking signs of life to a haze in the distance. Above it all, my body, leaning into the window, stretched across miles of Los Angeles, bent at the waist as if I was about to fuck it.

“Anything that sounds like ‘no’ or ‘stop’ is effective. But you have to say it.”

He draws his palm across my ass in a hard slap. At that point, he hadn’t spanked me yet, so my surprise overwhelmed the arousal. I was immediately angry and defensive.

“You have to use your voice. Do you understand?”

He puts his left hand on my rib cage, fingertips brushing my breast, and slapped me again.

I am not surprised the second time, nor am I angry. The raw tingle is arousing enough, as is the stroke and grab that follow. But what really arouses me is letting him do it. I submitted to it, making myself beneath him, under his command and control. I want it. I want every sting, every brush of his fingers against my sensitive skin. He slaps the back of my thighs and I gasp.

“Monica, was that you?” he asks. I see him in the window, just behind me, his dark suit nearly invisible against the night city. I want him to take me, use me, fuck me like a whore.

He reaches between my legs and jams two fingers in my cunt. My knees nearly buckle under the weight of my arousal.

“You’re wet.”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“You want me to fuck you?” He slaps my ass again, hard.

“Yes, please,” I reply in breaths.

“Say it.”

I can’t. I can’t engage my vocal cords. I can’t make sounds. My voice kills people, I am convinced of it.

He takes his belt off and loops it once.

“You don’t know the power you have,” he says, and then whacks me with the belt. God, it hurts. I am more aware of the presence and place of my cunt. I can feel it hanging between the raw singe of my ass cheeks. It’s heavy, bloated, engorged with desire. He hits me again, lower, the leather kissing my wet opening.

“Say it.”

“Please fuck me.”

“With your voice.”

Whack.

The sting is definite, lingering, burning as if I’d sat on a hot stove.

“You don’t know the power you have,” he hits me repeatedly on the word power, until my ass is on fire and my clit is so engorged the belt touches it when it snaps, and I scream.

“Monica, was that you?” He’s breathless himself.

I can’t make the noise again until he drops the belt and slaps my cunt twice, hard and fast, and the sting, then the rush of pleasure pulled one long vowel sound from my throat.

“There it is. That beautiful voice.”

Behind me, he takes his cock out and places it at my opening.

“Say it.”

“Fuck me. Fuck me please.” The air from my lungs vibrates my vocal cords, and I can hear myself cry out as he rams into me. His hips touch my raw behind, making me feel every thrust as pleasure and pain, filling the spectrum of sensations, every thought, every cell, every warp of my soul feeling him move inside me.

He pulls me up. My hands leave the cold glass, and I stand again, draped over the city, Jonathan fucking me from behind. I see him in the window, and he knows what I’m looking at, my giant self over the basin, and he whispers in my ear.

“You’re not the same woman I met. You have control.” I realize I’m hearing him say it the way he said it to me the yesterday, when he was trying to convince me to cut that EP. That same weak, enervated voice that I’d infused with muscle in my mind. I had stolen it and pasted it into the scene like a collage.

His fingers slip between my legs. I am sopping for him, my clit a hard knob under his touch, and I watch my own face in the window as I open my mouth the yell with pleasure as he whispers in my ear.

“You don’t know your own power.”

I put my head by his shoulder and fell asleep for a few hours.

CHAPTER 31.

MONICA

I went to the cafeteria aching from sleeping like a pretzel. I felt like the ghoul of Sequoia whenever I walked in there, until I saw Declan. He was the ghoul, of course. I was an amateur.

He sat with a young woman who was twisting her long dark hair in the fingertips, making a single, lacquered curl at the end. They spoke earnestly, emotionally, much as he and Jessica had spoken the other day. Or, to be more accurate, she was talking, and he was nodding in the way a therapist might nod. He understood. He heard every word. He had answers posed as questions, but nothing would stick. He’d go home and forget it.

I sat at my usual table. I could have gone up to Jonathan, but I had business in the cafeteria, and I was perfectly willing to sit and work on a song until that business came to me.

Take these rolling hills

Shorn grass and dewy mornings

Dump a street on them

Shove a house, then ten times ten

Take this starry night

Clean air and sparkling skies

Spray paint it with poison

Send up bleating sirens

I’m gonna rise through

My jawbone on your throat

Gonna get black tarred again

My heels dug in

Feasting under the surface

Death on life, me on you

Claws dig, teeth cut

Locked in a forever fuck

I was considering changing the last verse to a chorus when I felt someone above me, and knew who it was without looking up.

“Mister Drazen,” I said.

“Miss Faulkner, or should I call you by your new name?”

“How did you know my last name?” I leaned away from my notebook, closing it so he wouldn’t see my anger spit up on the page.

“I could start with you next to my son at the Eclipse show. The journalists had you figured out at publication. Or my daughter, Theresa still speaks to me, sometimes. She told me about you. May I sit?”

“Sure. Could have been the notice you pulled out of my notebook?”

“Shouldn’t leave it lying around if you don’t want people to see it.”

“You bought my mother’s house.”

“Both of them. I didn’t actually want property in Castaic but—“

“You almost sent Jonathan over the edge.”

He folded his lips between his teeth, a move so like my lover’s I had a quick vision of what Jonathan would look like if he was ever allowed to age. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“Maybe.” I paused, dunking my tea repeatedly, this had no effect at all, but it gave me something to do with my hands. “What do you do down here all the time? You’re a fourth generation billionaire, for Chrissakes. Can’t you pay someone to wait around here for you?”

He laughed. I didn’t know what it was with the Drazen men. Every time I mentioned their money they thought it was hilarious. He twisted to the side and put his back to the wall, stretching his feet out, a gesture for a younger man. A man who wanted to take up a lot of room.

“It’s always amazing to me,” he said, “not what people do for money or revenge, but what they do for love. That woman I was just talking to?”

“Yeah.”

“Her husband just got beaten near to death in a parking lot two blocks away. They wanted his car, but he worked for it, and he wouldn’t give it up. She said, the only way they got the keys away from him, was when they threatened to rape her.”

“That’s awful.”

“It wasn’t even that nice a car,” he mumbled, flicking a crumb off the table.

“But why’s she down here talking to you?”

“That’s the interesting thing. See, he was in surgery, getting his internal bleeding sewn up, but it was so bad, and it was taking too long. Two doctors came out to talk to her every hour.” He held up two fingers to make his point. “They said, we’re working on it. He’s stable. Then after four hours, three doctors come out.” He held up three fingers that time, as if this illustrated more strongly. “And she knows from when her father had cancer, three doctors coming out after surgery? Bad news. If one doctor is attacked by a violent family member, the other is there to hold him down, and the third is to call security. So she saw three and ran down here before they spoke to her.”

“And like a shepherd with a lost lamb, you found her.”

“If my son won’t see me, at least I can do some good down here.”

“Like buying my mother’s house.”

“You’re getting the idea.”

I didn’t trust him, not one bit. I didn’t believe he stayed in the cafeteria to be in the sphere of his estranged child. I didn’t believe Jonathan had misconstrued a lifetime of manipulation and bad deeds. It wasn’t the facts before me that drove my mistrust, it was simply that I had to pick someone to believe, and I chose my husband.

Yet, if I was going to do what needed to be done, I was going to have to trust him just enough to keep his word.

“He’s dying, Declan. That suture tears a little more each day. He bleeds into himself. A couple of days is all he’s got. Tell me you’re down here to do some good, and we can talk about something.”

He shifted in his seat until he faced me, elbows on the table.

“Go on.”

“I’m a distraught wife. I might just suggest things I shouldn’t.”

“Grain of salt taken. And congratulations, by the way.”

I ignored his glance at the borrowed ring and the spiral that could lead down. “There’s a heart with the right blood type in this hospital,” I said. “It’s connected to a dead fucking brain. I want it.”

“The Italian. Patalano, I believe? Paulie Patalano?”

“He filled out a donor card, but there’s no living will. His family’s keeping him alive with machines and prayer. It’s time for the machines to give the prayers a chance to work.”

“And?”

He wasn’t going to give me anything. If he intuited what I was asking, he wasn’t going to step up and verbalize it. I was going to have to do all the heavy lifting.

“And I think that if someone could arrange an opening in security, that heart could be available real soon.”

He studied me, as if seeing me for the first time. The depth of it made me uncomfortable, as if fingers rooted around my insides, knocking around corners and dark places. I stayed still. Let the fucker try and figure me out. I didn’t have all that many corners, and at that point, I didn’t care what he turned up.

“Who would go through the opening?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted.

“Me.” I said it without question or lilt in my voice.

“I admit, I thought he cared about you because you were beautiful,” Declan said. “But I was wrong. You’re loyal to the point of martyrdom.”

“I’m tired of praying for miracles.”

“You might need a miracle after the deed is done.”

“I’ll take my chances with him alive.”

He smirked, and I saw Jonathan’s face again, in his one-sided grin.

“You think because Patalano’s brain dead already you can get off. If you play the distressed woman, of course. And who would doubt you? As his wife, you have more to gain from him dying than living. And with the Drazen machine behind you? How could any judge even send it to a jury, much less convict?”

Murder. It was the word he’d avoided.

“I’m sure it won’t be that easy.” Despite the conversation, I was struck by a thought I couldn’t get out of my head. I hadn’t even wanted to date Jonathan, and there I was, ready to commit murder for him. “For you, maybe. You’re Teflon.”

“More well-seasoned cast iron,” he joked. “But what’s in it for me?”

“There’s nothing I can offer you but Jonathan’s life.”

He nodded then, with a slight twitch of his hand, indicated the entirety of the cafeteria, and with that twitch, he told me that Jonathan’s life, simply spared wasn’t enough. He would still be relegated to the cafeteria at Sequoia Hospital.

“I’m no martyr,” he said. “My relationship with some of my family is painful. I don’t want any of them leaving this world a stranger.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything I can say that will change his mind.”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

That was it. That was the deal I was offered. Get Declan in to see Jonathan, give him a heart attack that’ll kill him for sure. Don’t get Declan in, and watch Jonathan die while some brainless mobster down the hall kept a heart alive for someone else.

CHAPTER 32.

MONICA

I stood outside Jonathan’s door, listening to the symphony of instruments that kept him alive. I hated them. They intruded, bullying me into remembering my place when he and I were alone together.

He faced away from the door, the tendons of his neck and the line of his jaw pale in the morning light. He turned when I tiptoed in, and held his hand out for me. I kissed it, then his lips.

“Goddess.” His voice was shredded, his breath was audible. I’d die myself if I had to watch him deteriorate like this.

“How do you feel?”

“With you here?” He touched my cheek, his fingertips electric on my face, even in his condition. “Like fucking, but probably a bad idea.”

“I have a headache anyway.”

“How does it feel to be Mrs. Drazen?”

“You didn’t need to marry me to protect me from your father.”

“He destroys everything of mine he’s ever touched. And look, he’s already stepped in to get control of you.”

This was going to be hard. How could I bring up seeing Declan now? He’d be convinced his father was a puppetmaster pulling my strings.

“I married you for the right reasons. Not out of desperation.”

“Desperation’s all I have. There’s something unfinished in my life, and it’s us. I needed you to be bound to me, in front of heaven and earth. I’m glad we did it.”

“I’m afraid I gave you permission to die.”

“I don’t need your permission.”

He seemed so collected when he said that, as if he was totally okay with leaving me, and marrying me was just him tidying up his affairs. I felt a spark of rage, and clenched my teeth. But as his thumb stroked my jaw, the anger melted into irritation, then mild annoyance, and into a liquid place that had been the base coat of my anger all day. The rush of sadness that came felt physical in its force, washing over me, pulling me into an undertow of grief. He was dead already. He knew it. A simple fact that I hadn’t come to terms with, holding out this ridiculous hope for a sickening accident. A dead man stroked my cheek, and the awakening between my legs from that touch was a ghastly perversion. I wanted a corpse. He looked ready for a coffin, peaceful at last, hands crossed over his chest, left ring finger bulging and swollen around his keyring band.

I broke like an egg, splatting yolk and clear albumin, eyes falling apart under the weight of my tears, my nose clogged, lungs kicking air in hitched gulps. He touched my tears, but couldn’t do anything else. He could barely lift his own head. I turned my wet, ugly, twisted face onto his palm and let him feel my sobbing contortions.

“Goddess, please,” he said.

But I was past the point of reason. “I’d kill for you, Jonathan. If I could—“

“Shh. That’s enough.”

I couldn’t finish speaking anyway, by breathing was so charged with sobs. I swallowed a pint of gunk that had collected in my throat and squeezed my eyes shut until I stopped crying long enough to get a sentence out.

“If I can, I will,” I said. “You mark my words.”

“Okay. Just, hush.”

“I’m going to suggest something. I don’t want you to have a heart attack over it.” I snapped up tissues and wiped my face. My eyes felt swollen and pained.

“Funny girl.”

“Your father has been in the cafeteria for a week to be near you.”

“Fuck, Monica. No. What did he say to you?”

I put my hands on either side of him and leaned over his face, blocking the light from the window.

“I’ll make a deal with the devil to save you.”

“Don’t. Whatever it is, don’t do it.”

“I’m giving you a reason to live.”

He swallowed hard and stared past me, at the ceiling.

“You are my reason to live. Fuck.” His lips moved in a litany of fucks that had no sound. They were made of breath and panic. I glanced at the machines, they seemed okay, not that I knew what that meant. They weren’t beeping or honking, the stylus that kept track of his heartbeat was making the same scritchy noise it always did.

“It’s okay,” I said, but was it? I had no guarantee I wasn’t being fucked with royally. I had no idea who I was dealing with. Declan seemed to be a different person to everyone who spoke about him. Who was he to me? And would I find out the hard way?

“I’m stuck here,” he said. “I can’t do anything but trust you, can I?”

“No. You can’t. I love you, you have to know that.”

“I know it. But your decision-making...”

“I decided to wait you out when you left me. I decided to ask you for exclusivity. I decided to let you kiss me on Mulholland Drive. I could go on.”

“Maybe later,” he said weakly.

“Will you do it for me, though? See your father?”

I put everything into the question, and that was a mistake. He shouldn’t see any emotion from me with regard to Declan. I should have played blithe or irritated. But I’d played it honest and I didn’t realize my error until the machines started whining and Jonathan’s eyes closed.