by CD Reiss
“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 speaking took was monumental, but contact with someone wearing real clothes and not wielding a needle was too welcome to not answer in full. “Guy 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. “I took care of something while you were down. 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 so she could hear me.
“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, and the Oscar-worthy show of confidence came from his mother. The deft manipulations of people and situations, the sadism, the raw hunger, and 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 would tell Jonathan. That would upset him enough to give him another heart attack. She was exaggerating, but I got the point. He’d arranged 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. 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 already. I needed to find a place to live and a place to store my stuff. I needed to rent a truck and pay a security deposit and first month’s rent. Five thousand would just about cut it.
I had other business to attend to, as well. Accepting five grand from my lover’s sister was something I never thought I’d do. The day 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 over a wave of ambient noise. I didn’t like the 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 would care that I was cancelling my recording session, but Jonathan was his friend. Why the hell would Eddie care about my fucking EP? “You should come and see him.”
“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, and then he spoke up. “When I banged up my dad’s Maz, Jonathan took me all over L.A. 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 need to see Jonathan, 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 as I hung up, and I blocked traffic by standing there looking at my phone. I wondered why I didn’t give a shit about the 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 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 will.” Her face darkened 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 for being there. It was sick. Unbelievably venal. “Unless he’s dead, right? If he dies while the trust is revocable, you lose.” I started to walk away, but she grabbed my elbow. I looked at 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, bubbling to the surface and settling in.
Before Los Angeles was a place, it had a tar pit. I’d gone on three field trips to the La Brea tar pits. In prehistory, an animal got stuck in it, and a predator came to eat the animal. The predator, even as he ate, got stuck. Carrion came to feast on the weakened bodies, and all were stuck. The number multiplied as more, driven by instinct and hunger, fell into the trap. Masses of mammals, winged creatures, and crustaceans came to feast. The black goo pulled them down to their deaths 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 and added to the organic mass of boiling, black pitch.
On La Brea Avenue, there’s a park. 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.
When Jessica suggested Jonathan would die, I wanted to claw o
ut her eyes and pull out her hair at the roots like one of those animals. I felt as if I’d put a lawn of sweet words over an aquifer of tar-sticky rage, and her presence had triggered a bubbling geyser of anger. 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. I was angry that it dared to black the light from the window, that it should come between Jonathan and me. We’d overcome so much together. What did it want? What was I supposed to do? And life? How dare life bring him to me just to take him away.
The elevator doors opened with a ding, but Jessica and I stared at each other as if guns were drawn.
“It’s nice you kids are getting along,” Margie’s voice cut in.
Jessica let go of my arm. When she did, I realized something. I didn’t like her. I didn’t trust her. But I couldn’t pretend 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.
I chased after her. “You look pretty pissed yourself.”
“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 talk. He was going to tell 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 would be Mr. Control. Hearing it from him in that measured, shredded voice would make me 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,” I said.
“Did he get you a new date to record?”
“Not yet. Christmas is coming, so it’s dead.”
My face was close to his. He was 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 and 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 between his teeth. He’d used that expression when he was healthy, and it made me want to beg him to take me.
“I need you to do your work,” he said.
“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, bringing memories 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 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 as 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 from the hospital, and I should have eaten humble pie and gone there. But I couldn’t ask Sheila for the key. I didn’t have a change of clothes or the resources to buy new. Fucking pride. 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. It beat the bus by a mile. But traffic was traffic, and sitting still in a Jaguar while helicopters beat the air was infuriating. Having grown up in Echo Park—before it was a real estate investment opportunity waiting to happen—I was familiar with that situation. The police were sealing off a perimeter so every car could be checked. Usually, a cop-killing created that 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. I belted them out in the shitty acoustics of the car.
I flipped on the news. Music was just messing up the rhythm in my head, which I needed. Talk talk talk, and I half listened to the clipped chat about a mob shooting outside the golf course. No child abduction but a typical drive-by. I felt as though 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. I would be there a while. 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 beat
Breaths for breaths
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 out the rest of the song. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see through my tears. He didn’t have long. I saw it in the doctors’ faces when they spoke as if their careers were on the line. The inconvenience of his death would be epic for them.
Meanwhile, I’d die with him.
The phone rang. Fuck it. It wasn’t as if I was moving. I picked up Margie’s call.
“Hello?” I realized how snotty and blubbery I sounded when 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. Some mafia kingpin 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, okay? This is not public knowledge, as a matter of fact, me knowing is illegal. But don’t get your hopes up. The guy’s family’s going to be an obstacle. Donor cards don’t mean anything without a living will, and his family has 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 des
pair in my voice.
“I’ll buy the hand basket.”
The traffic broke, and I was waved through the 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 about to tell her I hadn’t made any headway, nor had I found an opportune time to ask for Margie’s help, 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 pressed up against me. “Did they say when they were moving in?” I was happy for her. I really was. But the bank would have to put all my stuff in a Dumpster because I couldn’t leave Jonathan long enough to move out.
“That’s the good news! They’re okay with a tenant. Okay with your rent and everything. You have to make your checks out to an investment company. ODRSN Partners. The address is 147—”
“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 were gone from his nose. The sun shone through the window. Yes, he had that auto-squeeze thing on his arm, and yes, he was in that god damn hospital bed, and yes, his heart was ripped up, but he was in a half sitting position and he looked as glad to see me as I was to see him.
