Proof of Angels

by Mary Curran Hackett

  “Okay. Okay. Chief, buddy. Keep an eye on him.”

  Chief seemed to nod and move alongside Sean toward the door.

  Tom walked around the truck, hopped in and sat in the car, and watched as Sean disappeared behind the door to the apartment building.

  “Here goes nothing,” Tom said to himself, pulling off.

  Chapter 16

  ONCE INSIDE THE APARTMENT BUILDING, SEAN LOOKED across the lobby. He had lived here for three years, and the space had never looked quite so palatial.

  “All I gotta do is make it to the elevator, Chief. Twenty feet and I’m there.”

  Chief walked alongside Sean, and when he got to the wall, he hopped up on his hind legs and pressed the Up button just as Libby had trained him to do several months before.

  “Good boy, Chief. Good boy.”

  Sean entered the elevator and felt the sweat pouring down his back. He was beginning to feel lightheaded. Between the exercise with Tom during PT and now this walk, he was about done in.

  “How am I going to get to Italy, Chief? Huh? How am I going to do that if I can’t make it across my own lobby?”

  Chief grunted as if he agreed.

  “I am such a jackass. I can’t do this. I can’t. What am I doing? You think Tom is right? You think I need to get my act together before I go find Chiara?”

  Chief looked blankly back at him and cocked his head to the side.

  “That’s what I thought, buddy. I don’t know what to do, Chief. Tell me what to do,” Sean demanded, having grown so accustomed to ordering the dog around and talking to him that he half-expected Chief to start talking like the dog in the Bush’s baked beans commercials. Roll that beautiful bean footage.

  Just then the elevator door opened and Sean and Chief arrived outside his apartment.

  Sean had put the keys in when Chief started barking.

  “Settle down, boy. It’s okay!”

  Chief continued to bark. Unaware that the dog was trying to warn him that he was the one in danger, Sean thought something was wrong with the dog.

  Suddenly, Sean felt the blood draining from his head. A hint of nausea rose from within. He thought he might faint or throw up. He was unsure which. “Quiet, boy, I have to go lie down for a minute.”

  As the keys went in the door Sean’s body gave way and he landed with a thud on the tile floor in the foyer. On his way down, he hit the left side of his head on the adjacent kitchenette counter. The impact of the blow caused his eardrum to burst and a smattering of blood shot out of his good ear and pooled around him as he lay unconscious on the cool tiles.

  Chief circled Sean calmly two times. He put his paw up on his back. If anyone didn’t know better, you would think he was feeling for a heartbeat or checking Sean’s vitals.

  He tried to revive Sean by nudging his face with his own nose. He licked him over and over, and then put his paw up on his back again and tapped him, as if to say, “Come on, chap. Up and at ’em.”

  Sean didn’t budge.

  Chief lay close beside Sean, so that his torso touched Sean’s. He propped his head on his paws and waited for Sean to wake. After some time had passed and Sean did not wake, Chief got up on all fours and walked out of the apartment, deciding it was best to wait by the elevator should a human arrive to help.

  It was Libby who found Sean.

  James and Libby had been relieving Tom each night for weeks. They bridged the hour and a half before the night nurse came at seven. One or both of them, given James’s shift schedule, brought or helped Sean make dinner. And, if Sean had managed to make something himself, they’d take him out for a walk along the boulevard.

  When the elevator door opened and Libby saw Chief, she knew immediately something was terribly wrong. “What is it, boy? What is it?”

  When Libby approached the apartment, she found Sean just about to sit up and holding on to his good ear, where blood had coagulated.

  “Oh thank God!” Sean said, seeing Chief walk in beside Libby. “I thought I scared him, crushed him, and he ran away.”

  “What happened, Sean? Where’s Tom?”

  “I sent him home early from the gym. I thought I could manage taking a damn elevator ride up to my apartment myself. I thought I could do it all on my own. I’m ridiculous. I think I just passed out. Hit my head and then just fell asleep here. I think I slept the entire day. I’m no worse for wear.”

  “Jesus, Sean. That was stupid. Tom should have known better than to leave you alone,” Libby said angrily, but still rubbing Chief’s side. “You might have a concussion. We have to get you to a doctor. What if your brain is injured again? Damn Tom. That was so thoughtless.”

  “It’s not his fault. Don’t be mad at him. We were having a heart-to-heart of sorts at the gym, which we never really do. Against his own rules, you know. But I brought up his wife and one thing led to another and I told him he needed to go home to her. Seize the moment, as James would say. And you know Tom. How he can be. Not much of a talker and doesn’t like to get too deep. But he got deep and thought: It’s now or never. He has to go and tell his wife the stuff he is telling me. She is the one who needs to hear this. Not me.”

  “Your own love story not enough, Sean? Now you’re playing cupid with Tom, too? First James and me? Now Tom and Melissa?”

  “Hey, hey, I had nothing to do with you and James. You went off and did that all without me, remember? Didn’t even consult me or ask me how I felt,” Sean teased.

  “Oh, Sean.” Libby shook her head, and with it, tried to shake the memory of telling Sean about James and her. She assessed Sean’s injuries. Still seething with anger, she placed a call to Tom. “I’m getting his voice mail,” she said, cupping the edge of the phone and moving about the room frantically. “Where could he be?”

  “Lib, Lib, calm down,” Sean said, still sitting on the ground, unable to pull himself up. “The night nurse should be here soon. Just relax.”

  “This is serious, Sean. Really, really serious. Do you know what could have happened to you? What if your brain is bleeding inside and we don’t know it?”

  “No worries, Lib. Please. I’m all right. Will you please calm down? I have you here. I have Chief. Don’t I, boy?” Sean said, grabbing him in a hug.

  “You could have been hurt, Sean. Seriously. And how am I supposed to get you up? Get you into a chair?” Libby said, looking around.

  “Will you please just relax? What’s going on with you? Something’s off . . .”

  “Yeah, with you. You’re lying on the ground and I can’t get you up.”

  “Just sit here with me. I’ll have my strength back in a few minutes. You can pull my walker over and I’ll be able to leverage myself up. No worries. If I am going to get to Italy next month, I need to be able to handle little slips like this.”

  “Slips? You fell flat on your face, Sean. This is no slip. And wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Hold up. You’re out of your ever-loving mind. You couldn’t make it across the lobby and up an elevator today without passing out, and you think you can navigate international airports? International travel?”

  “Oh, come on. People in worse shape have traveled. I can do this. I am ready. I don’t want to waste another minute.”

  “Sean, be real with me for a second. I want you to be one hundred percent straight-up and real.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Are you using? Or are you drinking?” Libby asked, propping one arm on her hip and then scanning the room for bottles, all the while tapping her toes and biting the nails of her free hand.

  “God, you’re fidgety today. You feelin’ okay?”

  “It’s not me we’re talking about, Sean!” Libby snapped. “Do you have stuff in here? Where is it? I am taking it with me.”

  “What?” Sean said with a high-pitched laugh.

  “Are you?” Libby asked sternly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about or why you would say that.”

  “Really, you don’t? Look at you. You�
�re the one whose hands are shaking. You’re the one who passed out. You’ve got this bee in your bonnet to get to Italy. It’s like you’re on something. Some sort of drug. I don’t know.”

  “Libby, I appreciate your concern. I do. I know what it looks like. I totally agree, but I assure you, I am not. I am not using. Haven’t had a drop.”

  “But you think about it? You do?”

  Sean stopped and looked at her for a long time and was about to open his mouth and lie, but then said, “Yes. Every second.”

  “And so this new fixation, this quest-to-go-make-nice-with-the-love-of-your-life, is your new Jameson. It gets you through each hour, each day. Am I right?”

  Sean held up his hand to interject, “Hey, hey, hey. What’s going on? First Tom and now you. A few months ago at James’s birthday party everyone was all: Go to her. This is a great idea. We’ll help you. And now you’re all flaking on me. What gives?”

  “It’s just that you wouldn’t be the first person, Sean . . . you wouldn’t be the first person to think you had it all figured out. To think love would solve everything. You just wouldn’t . . .” Libby’s voice trailed off and she shook her head and patted Chief vigorously.

  “Seriously, what’s this about?” Sean asked, realizing she wasn’t talking about Sean anymore.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.” Libby walked into the kitchenette and grabbed a towel and ran cold water over it.

  “Libby, sit down,” Sean said, patting the floor where he sat. “Talk to me. I’m fine.”

  Libby walked over, knelt down, and pushed the cold, wet towel against Sean’s ear to clean him. “You popped your eardrum. You’re gonna need drops for that. And it’s gonna hurt for a couple of weeks,” Libby said, ignoring him. “Jesus, you’re lucky you didn’t split your skull open again. Good god, you’re the luckiest man on the planet.”

  Sean took her arm and held it, and brought her in close. “Look at me, Libby. Stop taking care of me, of everyone else, of James, of the dogs. Look at me. Talk to me. You can trust me with anything. I’m your friend. I won’t judge you,” Sean said quietly, matching her whisper with his own. “Is there something you came here to tell me? Why are you here so early anyway? What’s going on with you?”

  Libby looked at him and tears filled her eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t what?”

  “I was so stupid. I thought he loved me,” Libby said, collapsing in a heap next to Sean, resting her head against his chest.

  “Who, James? Of course he does! He’s crazy about you. Don’t be ridiculous,” Sean reassured her.

  Libby started to cry. Sean put his hand up over her shoulder and wrapped her in close. It had been a long time since he had wrapped his arms around a woman totally and felt the electricity between his and another’s body. Chief came alongside her and put his paw on Libby’s leg and tried to comfort her, too.

  “Who? Chief? He’ll always love you,” Sean joked.

  Libby sobbed even louder.

  “Libby, tell me what’s wrong. We can’t help you if we don’t know,” Sean said, realizing that since Chief came along, he now always answered everything with collective pronouns. We’re going for a walk. Would you like to come with us? We need to know what’s wrong before we can help you.

  “You just have to trust me, Sean,” Libby whispered. “I know what I am talking about. I know how easy it is to misplace one addiction for another. I’d never tell James this. He’s too kind and sweet, and I can’t tell you, because you’re his best friend. I can’t expect you to keep this from him, or for us to have a secret that he’s not in on. Everything is so complicated and all sorts of wrong. And you know James . . . he likes things simple.”

  “Libby, what’s going on? What happened? What did you do?”

  “Sean, you just have to believe me. I am worried about you. You say you love this girl. And I want to believe you. I want to believe that type of love exists, but I don’t know if it does. I was Chiara. For a long time, I was Chiara.”

  “What? You’ve lost me, Lib.”

  “Sean, I loved a guy like crazy. I loved him and I thought we were going to get married, and we’d have doves flying out of cakes and shit like that, and then after all that we’d go riding off into the sunset on his Harley and everything was going to be all big rock candy mountain sorts of happy. We met in rehab. So of course, there’s that. I know, I know. Huge red flags should have been going up faster than Old Glory on Flag Day, but you know, I thought he got me. Understood me. And, worst of all, I really believed I would be enough. I thought I would be all he needed to fill that hole inside him, the one he was filling for years with drugs. I thought I would be enough. Because he was enough for me. He was what I needed to feel whole again. But I wasn’t. He started using just a few months after we got out of rehab and he just up and disappeared one day. Gone. One day he’s lying beside me in bed watching Letterman and laughing, and the next he’s gone. It took me two years, Sean, two years, to go on a date. Two years to have the courage to put myself out there and fall in love again. I didn’t want to ache like I did after he left. But I risked it. I let James love me. And dammit, I love him. But I screwed up.”

  “Jesus, Lib.”

  “My ex came back, Sean. He came back a few days ago. Showed up on my doorstep.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “It’s like he has a happiness radar. It’s like he sniffs the happiness on me. As soon as I start getting my act together and start being happy, he shows up and tries to pull me back into his dark circle.”

  “You told him to get lost, right?”

  “I wish, Sean. He came to me with all of these lines. He said stuff that you’ve been saying you wanted to tell Chiara. And for a second when he was talking, I was thinking: Yes. Yes. Yes. He’s just like Sean. He’s turned his life around. He’s coming out of the dark. He’s making amends. He wants a second shot. We can have a second shot. This is what I have been praying for. This is what I’ve always wanted and wanted to believe in. Sean, he told me he wanted to make things right, that he loved me and that everything would be different this time around. He brought up all these beautiful memories, shared jokes, and hard times we faced together. He touched my face, Sean,” Libby said, touching her own without even realizing it, “and I swear to God, it was like a goddamn religious experience. I didn’t know my body missed his so much.”

  “Christ,” Sean said, shaking his head as if not wanting to hear anymore. “You didn’t . . .”

  “We did.”

  “Christ,” Sean said again, pushing Libby off his chest. “You’re right, I really wish you hadn’t told me. So what are you going to do? Break ol’ James’s heart? Send him packing? Where is Mr. Right Now, today? You guys taking advantage of James’s shifts for some lovers’ rendezvous? Is he downstairs?”

  “No. God. No. He wasn’t clean, Sean. He’s still using and he didn’t just want me, want us to work out. He wanted my money and wanted to score with me.”

  “Libby, Libby, Libby,” Sean said, shaking his head.

  “See, it’s complicated. If I tell James, I kill what we have forever. I kill all the hope and innocence and love he has inside and all the love, hope, and innocence he thinks he sees in me. No one has ever looked at me the way James looks at me. I don’t want to lose that. I can’t.” Libby’s voice cracked in desperation.

  “Libby, he won’t. You tell him everything. Everything you just told me. You be honest with him. He’s a good guy. He’ll understand. Love will see you through this.”

  “Sean, how can you be so blind? So damn hopeful? Don’t you see? Don’t you see what this means for you? For Chiara?”

  “No, Libby, I am sorry but I don’t.”

  “Your obsession with this woman, it’s no different from what just happened to me. You’re going to go blow into her life like a tornado and rip it to pieces, just so you can feel better. Get a hit. Get some juice. Score your thrill. At least my guy was up-front, he was just jonesing for a hit, th
e real thing. You’re worse! You’re replacing your juice with her. Your latest addiction is her! And what happens when you use her all up? Huh? What happens to her? Does she get to go on living her life? Does she get to pick up with the man she is probably very happy with right now? No. No, she doesn’t, because you’ve ruined it for her. Could you just please drop this? Drop this Chiara thing? There are a million girls right out there on Venice Beach. You’re in a city filled with the most beautiful people on the planet willing to be anything you want them to be and you can’t make do with one of them?”

  “Chiara is not an obsession, Libby. I am sorry about what happened to you, but I am not like that dirtbag boyfriend of yours. I am not. And from what I remember of Chiara, she has more common sense than you. And I would think after all of these months, after everything you’ve learned about me and know about me, you’d think better of me, of James, of humanity in general. It’s not rife with amoral assholes looking to score.”

  Libby was wiping the tears that were dropping off her face in quick succession.

  “I’m going to Italy, Libby. That I know for sure. I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I know what I want. I have known for a while now. I don’t think you can say the same. And the only person I feel badly for right now is James, because he has no idea what a pile of crap he just stepped into.”

  “Sean, I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”

  “Libby, no one ever does.”

  “I just wanted to believe that what we shared all those years ago was real. I wanted to be sure. I wanted it to mean something. I wanted to mean something.”

  “Libby, you know what I wanted? For a split second tonight while I was on the elevator, I had this crazy idea come into my head. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if Tom, his wife, and you and James all got on a plane and we went together, we all found love together? We all got our second chances. Because that’s what I believe in. That’s what I think is real. But you went and fucked it all up.”

  “Sean, I am sorry.”

  “I think you should go, Libby.”