by Lexie Ray
I shook my head. “I basically threw myself at him. You’re not responsible for me having feelings for an asshole.”
A high-pitched beeping sound interrupted whatever Nick had been about to say. He fished out a cell phone from his pants pocket and swiped at the screen.
“Yes,” he stated. “Right now? Fine. I’ll be there shortly. No, don’t send a car.”
He ended the call without saying good-bye — that wasn’t the Nick I knew, it was definitely Nicholas Mason, going about his business as a millionaire heir. I felt like I was intruding on a stranger’s life, just standing there like an idiot.
“I have to go back to the hotel,” he said, frowning at me. “Would you like to come with me?”
“I don’t mind, I guess,” I said. “I don’t want to overstep…um, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying. If you want me to go with you, I’ll go. What’s back at the hotel? Some kind of business thing or something?”
“Business or something,” Nick agreed. “Pretty urgent. I wanted to take you to some more places. I know you’re not full off of one hot dog.”
“The tummy can wait,” I said, patting it exaggeratedly. “We can go back. You can get your business taken care of. We can start again tomorrow. Or whatever. Whatever you need to do.”
I was babbling because I was nervous. Nick whistled sharply and stepped off the curb, hailing a speeding cab. It was an impressive move and something quintessentially New York.
“Nicely done,” I said, getting into the yellow chariot. “But we can’t have wandered too far from the hotel. Wouldn’t it be easier just to mosey on back? Is your business really so pressing that we have to take a cab?”
“Mason Hotel,” Nick told the driver. “As fast as you can.”
We were both thrown backward as the driver floored the gas pedal, and I gasped before giggling nervously.
“Where’s the fire?” I asked, Nick helping me back to a seated position before eventually just giving up and hanging on to me like a human seatbelt as the driver executed a hairpin turn, tires squealing. “Surely there’s not really pressing hotel business at this time of the night.” It was fully dark at this point, and New York was a sea of lights, buildings glittering all around us. I fully believed that the city was prettier at night, all dressed up and ready to impress.
“It’s pretty pressing hotel business when my father’s dying,” Nick said lightly, the cab skidding to a halt in front of the building.
I swallowed, at a complete loss for words, and followed him into the crush of security personnel, sweeping both of us forward into the hotel.
Chapter 14
I hadn’t really ever experienced death before. I’d never had a pet, never gone to a funeral, wasn’t sure even as to the status of my grandparents.
And yet here I was, being hustled right alongside Nick to his dying father’s side. I looked down and realized that I was clutching his hand — or he was clutching mine. I couldn’t really tell.
“Are we talking days or weeks?” Nick was asking a man rushing along with us. I didn’t have time to notice anything. We were crushed in the middle of a group of people, most of them security people, but this man obviously had something to do with medicine, something to do with Nick’s dying father.
“We’re talking minutes or hours, really,” the man said, looking pained to do so. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mason.”
“Don’t apologize,” Nick said curtly. “He’s an old man. Old men die. Young men, sometimes, too.”
The man was chagrined, and I felt a little bad about Nick’s curtness. The doctor — or whoever he was — had only been trying to show a little sympathy. Then, I remembered the closeness of Nick and his father, the elder Mason — or lack thereof. I squeezed his hand convulsively, not knowing what else to do to convey the fact that I was here; I was with him. Even if I didn’t know what to say or how to act, I was here with him.
We’d reached a closed set of doors in a part of that massive wing I hadn’t been in yet. I could smell the odor typical to nursing homes and hospitals, though — something that set my teeth on edge and made the hair on my arms prickle. I’d worked for a time at an elderly care facility, and it hadn’t been pleasant. My tenure there had lasted all of two days, when I’d walked out on the job, worried that I’d become depressed at the sight of all those old people looking out the window, longing for the freedom of the outdoors, of anywhere else but that place.
Nick flung open the doors and I was treated to the sight of a withered old man ensconced in a hospital bed, beeping monitors and state-of-the-art machinery surrounding him.
Our entourage pressed around us as Nick and I halted at the threshold of the room, and I looked up at him. His face was stone, and I held my breath.
“Leave us,” he said suddenly, and the majority of the people walked away. The doctor stayed at our side.
“You should know…” he began, but Nick waved him silent.
“Has the old man been made comfortable?” Nick asked.
“Yes, but…”
“Is he in any pain at all?”
“No, but…”
“Then please stop wasting whatever minutes he may have left by talking to me.”
The doctor finally got the hint and stepped out. Nick closed the doors behind him, and we were alone with the beeping pulse and whooshing hiss of the elder Mason’s breath.
“I can leave, if you want to be alone,” I said, aware that we were still holding hands. Whether or not Nick realized it was the question.
“If you can stomach it, I’d like you to stay,” he said, glancing down at me before returning his stare to the shrunken shape of his father beneath several blankets.
“It’s fine,” I lied. I didn’t know if I actually could stomach it, but if Nick needed someone to lean on, I could at least try to be that person. How would I feel if the roles had been reversed? If it had been my father in that bed and Nick at my side, supporting me? I was so far removed emotionally from that idea that it might have been some kind of fairy tale I didn’t believe in anymore.
We approached the side of the hospital bed, neither of us making a move to let go of the other’s hand, and observed the old man. His face was gray, and his shallow breath fogged up the oxygen mask that had been secured to his mouth.
He was so old that I couldn’t tell whether Nick took after him in appearance. His face had long collapsed into an expanse of wrinkles. He might’ve been tall and strong and handsome at some point of his life, but this wasn’t that point of his life. This was the tail end of it, just about the period at the end of his story.
“I don’t remember him ever being young,” Nick mused, seeming to pick up my train of thought. “This probably sounds cold to you, but I’ve honestly been waiting for this to happen my entire life. When I was in boarding school, friends with grandparents as old as my dad would leave campus to go to their funerals. I always expected to be called away one day, the principal telling me this old man had finally kicked the bucket, and then I’d vanish from the dormitories for a couple of days for the funeral.”
I absorbed those words. Nick didn’t seem like he expected me to say anything, and I figured that maybe he just needed someone to be there to listen.
“And now that it’s happening, I don’t know how I should feel,” he continued. “When I got back to the city, the hospital bed wasn’t even a new edition. He’d reached a certain age long ago to necessitate automated beds, with railings on them so he wouldn’t tumble out and break a hip. It’s just…the expected end to a story. No surprises. No twists. Just an old man, alone on his deathbed.”
The elderly man took that opportunity to blink his rheumy eyes open and lock gazes with first me, then Nick. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I felt dizzy and sucked one in.
“Dad? Can you hear me, Dad?” Nick leaned forward as his father worked his mouth. It tore at something inside of me to hear Nick say “Dad.” Up until this point, he’d referred to his father mostly as
“the old man.” There was something raw and heartbreaking about Nick right now. He bent over his father as if trying to glean some meaningful last moment with the old man. It was excruciatingly private, and if Nick hadn’t still been gripping my hand, I would’ve tried to creep away, to fade into the background of a very personal moment.
The elder Mason muttered something, but the oxygen mask turned the words into gibberish.
“Hang on, Dad,” Nick said. “I’m going to take this mask off you for just a minute. Then we can talk.”
After some brief fumbling, the mask was off and the old man wet his lips feebly. I remembered what the doctor said — that the elder Mason’s life only had minutes or hours remaining in it. How did that feel, to realize you had already drawn the vast majority of your breaths? That the next one, or the next one, or the next one might be the last one?
“What did you say, Dad?” Nick called, overloud, as if his father was already drifting away, out of hearing, out of reach.
“I asked what kind of respect you had for me, bringing a whore to the side of my deathbed,” the old man rasped. “I’m dying, you son of a bitch. You don’t bring a streetwalker to my home.”
I blinked, aghast. If it had been anyone else who had called me a whore, I would’ve slapped them, giving them a little sense to chew on. But this man was dying. The doctor had said so. He was dying and he was a huge asshole. Fuck this guy. What could I have really done?
“I should probably step out,” I said uncertainly. “Leave you two to it.”
“You should probably stay,” Nick said, emotionless. “I can tell you stories about my life until I’m blue in the face, and until you’re sick of hearing them. But now you’re really going to get an education. No one can understand the reason why I hate my father so much until they spend some time with him. You’ll see. Good thing, too, that you’re right in the nick of time. Death’s about to whisk him off to hell.”
“You little bastard,” the old man sneered.
“You would know, old man!” Nick bellowed, his fury igniting.
I wanted to be anywhere but here, bearing witness to the literal death throes of a toxic relationship between a father and a son.
“You should’ve stayed gone,” the elder Mason wheezed. I was aware that the oxygen mask rested against his neck, hissing softly, and wondered if he needed it. I wondered if I would have to secure it again, or beg Nick to do it. Would Nick realize if his father needed it to breathe?
“I should’ve,” Nick said, his tone almost amicable again. “We can agree on that. There’s something positive that you can latch your black soul on.”
“I regret sending people out to find you,” the old man continued. “I should’ve…cut you out. Written you out of the will.”
“And who would you have left all this to?” Nick asked, his tone mocking. “You were selfish to the very end. Hateful to anyone who put forth the effort to try to get to know you. Dismissive, at best, of strangers. Insulting, at worst, to people close to me. This is Jennet, Dad. The person most important to me. The person I care more about than anything else in my life. Not a whore. Apologize to her.”
I fought the urge not to cower as the old man turned his attention back to me, tried to draw strength and courage from Nick’s fingers, still woven between mine.
“Money hungry,” the old man said, looking back at to his son. “A dalliance. Sign a prenup, at least, if you find you must put a ring on the slut.”
Nick expelled his breath harshly, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything else. The old man had expelled a breath even harsher than his son’s, and the beeping of his pulse spiked for an instant, before slowing to a crawl.
Nick and I watched, speechless, as the old man gaped at us, surprised, perhaps, that death had come for him at long last. There wasn’t anything else to say, I realized. The old man would fight to his last breath — and had.
He shut his watery eyes and didn’t open them again. The long wail of the heart monitor filled the room for a time until Nick reached up and switched it off.
We’d just watched a mean old man die. It was a bizarre feeling, inexplicable.
I opened my mouth to offer some kind of condolence, but instead giggled uncontrollably. I clapped both of my hands over my mouth, trying to shut myself up as Nick stared down at me.
“I am so sorry,” I gasped. “There’s nothing funny about this. Your father just died. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“His last word was slut.” I burst into full out laughter, embarrassed and bewildered. I couldn’t stop laughing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s not funny. I feel terrible. You didn’t get any kind of closure because he was too busy insulting me.”
Nick’s mouth worked, as if he was trying to search for the right words to say, but then he started laughing, too. We were both standing there, over the body of his dead father, laughing our freaking heads off.
Life was so strange.
“Oh my God,” he said, trying to calm his wild laughter. “Oh, Jennet. I haven’t laughed like this in too long. I’m sorry this is awkward. I’m sorry he called you those things. You’re not, obviously. And you’re the most important person in my life. I’m glad you’re here with me, in this room, having shared this with me. I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to do this alone.”
“An eloquent man, your father,” I offered, before breaking out into laughter again, Nick joining me instantly.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again, whooping with laughter. “He was never what you could call a sensitive man, but I’d had no idea just how crotchety he’d become.”
We hugged each other, laughing like we were two crazy people, and that’s how the doctor found us, guffawing over a dead body.
“Do you need anything, Mr. Mason?” he asked, concerned. “I have some tranquilizers. You’re in shock, maybe.”
“Tranquilizers are the last thing we need,” Nick said, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “And there’s nothing shocking about an old man taking his last breath.”
“Except that his last word was slut,” I offered, making us laugh again.
The doctor shook his head, and I didn’t even want to know what kind of professional opinions he was forming about us.
“I’ll call the funeral director,” the doctor said briskly, attempting to retake control of the situation. “He’ll help you make all the necessary arrangements.”
“There won’t be any need for arrangements,” Nick said briskly.
“But, the funeral…”
“There won’t be a funeral,” he said. “No one will come. He was a horrible old man. You know that. Let’s save everyone the trouble of having to dig out some semblance of respect for a man who deserved none of it. Call the funeral director, if you must. Have him cremated. I’ll figure out what to do from there.”
Nick led me out of the room, leaving the doctor behind, flummoxed.
“What did he want you to do?” I asked wonderingly, looking back over my shoulder. “Cry in his arms?”
“He’s probably never seen anything like this before,” Nick said, chuckling. “What a mess. And I bet you’re exhausted. This is a lot more than you bargained for, I bet, when you got on that airplane this morning.”
Had it only been this morning? I shook my head, wondering at the strange passage of time.
“Let me show you where you can stay,” Nick said. At this point, my hand in his felt like the most natural thing in the world, and I didn’t so much as question it anymore, letting him basically pull me down the hallway to yet another wing of the suite. I was too tired to fully appreciate the rich décor, the vast collection of paintings covering the wall, the lush carpets beneath my aching feet.
“They should’ve brought your bags up by now,” Nick muttered, swinging open a door to a room and examining its contents.
“Remember?” I said. “I don’t have anything else but the clothes on my back. I am completely unprepared.”
“That’s not a crisis,” he said, flicking on a switch to illuminate a sumptuous room, tastefully decorated, no expenses spared, by the first cursory glance. “This is New York City. It has everything you could possibly need. But, for now, I’ll scrounge up some pajamas for you.”
“Pajamas aren’t that important,” I scoffed. “I just don’t want to have to rock a mustard-stained T-shirt again tomorrow.”
“Then it’ll be taken care of,” Nick promised. “Jennet…I know today’s been crazy.”
“Just today?” I joked.
“Okay,” he allowed. “It’s been crazy for a while now. But I can’t imagine anyone else with me right now. I wouldn’t want anyone else to be here but you.”
“Where else would I be?” I hugged him. This was what friends were for — being there when shit got really crazy.
“Thank you,” he said, holding me tightly.
I leaned back to tell him something jokingly, to lighten the mood somehow, and then we were kissing. It was easy, completely non-awkward, and it seemed to be the thing the both of us needed. If either of us had questions or concerns, neither of us aired them.
What was the most natural thing to follow up death? Life.
We ran needful hands over each other. Nick’s button-up shirt unbuttoned itself. My mustard-stained T-shirt came off over my head of its own accord.
We’d never really been around each other naked — in bathing suits at the beach, sure, or wrapped up in robes and towels after showers. But this was just a new, comfortable frontier, skin against skin, a casual, comfortable friction.
We found our way to the bed, learning each other’s bodies by touch, saying hello to every inch of territory neither of us had claimed on the other. I arched into his touch, eager against the palm of his hand as he cupped me between my legs. We kept kissing. That was the only language we needed. There weren’t any words needed for this, nothing either of us had to say. This needed to happen. We had to affirm this right here, right now. We’d stared death in the face, and laughed at him, and now we needed to reunite with life.
