by CD Reiss
“All right.”
“Over dinner.” He must have seen me turn to ice. “Platonic, With Mr. Drazen, if you like. If you knew me better, this wouldn’t have happened. That’s all I want.”
“I guess I owe you.”
“You do.” He walked away. Jonathan wouldn’t be thrilled, but Brad didn’t expect Jonathan to be around, did he?
thirty-eight
MONICA
I had to see him once again before I did it and they dragged me away. I just had to put my fingers on his lips before I faced what I had to face. I wouldn’t tell him what I was doing because he’d be an accessory if he didn’t stop me and suicidal if he did. I would stand with him clean, as his mate, if even for an hour.
I got out of the elevator on Jonathan’s floor and made a right instead of a left to check the placement of the stairwell closest to Patalano’s room. I stopped at the turn as if a brick wall was in my way.
Margie and Will Santon stood in a corner, too close for friendship, too far for intimacy. Their hands were up, Margie pointing and accusing, Will in supplication. Their words were inaudible, but their faces shouted rage, hurt, and frustration. I’d have to check the placement of the stairs on the little map by the elevator because I couldn’t just stroll past them. I turned and walked away.
I got two steps before I felt a hand on my arm. Margie slowed me down. She looked drawn and upset. Though I didn’t know her well, I was sure she didn’t want me to ask her what was going on with Will.
“I was just—” I started to explain exactly nothing and was grateful for her interruption.
“Forget it.”
“Where have you been?”
She said, “This family’s a full-time fucking job. Congratulations, by the way. Well done. One less pre-nup to argue over.”
“It didn’t even occur to me.”
“Him either, I’m sure. But I want to tell you, if he doesn’t make it through tonight, I have your back. I’ll do what my brother wanted.”
“He’s not dead yet.”
She grabbed my shoulders and put her eyes square with mine as if she wanted to tell me something, something critical and painful. Instead, she threw her arms around me and held me so tightly I thought my ribs would break.
“I envy you,” she said. “You know that?”
“If something goes bad, like if I do something wrong, would you represent me? No matter what?”
She pushed me away, holding me by the shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
“Stuff. Life. Say yes.”
“Fine.” I saw Will out of the corner of my eye. Her gaze flicked to him then back to me. “Go see him. I’ll be there in a minute.”
thirty-nine
MONICA
There were doctors and nurses everywhere. Clean white sheets and sage scrubs. Trays of uneaten food and plastic detritus in soothing, meaningless colors. The lights were pinpoint and dull as if that would help him sleep with all the human traffic in the room. The doctor wasn’t much older than I was, but I knew her from the way she asked questions instead of answered them.
“Hi,” I said.
“You’re the wife?”
The title still hit me like a bag of flour. “Yeah. I’d like… I don’t know. Time. A little.”
“You got it.”
She hustled everyone out, and it was just me and him. He looked as if someone had painted him white. If I thought it was hard to see him after his disastrous operation, well, that was worse. That night came down to me accepting the situation for what it was or me living in a fucking illusion.
“Good evening, sir,” I said.
“Get over here.” His voice was no better than a whisper breaking through a stone wall. It took too much effort, as if he carried me uphill.
I put my elbows on either side of his head and touched my nose to his. “Jonathan, I—”
“If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering—”
“Oh, I remember how that goes. Schiller was the poet. I looked it up.”
“I always thought it was the object’s suffering. But I think it was the viewer’s, now. I think seeing you, I’ve seen beauty for the first time.”
“You’ve made me so happy. I wanted to tell you that.”
“I played with you in the beginning. I wasted too much time lying to you.”
“That’s over now.”
“Actually...” He paused, and I knew why.
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“The night of the Eclipse show, when I went to Jessica’s—”
“La la la, I don’t hear you.”
“There was more than kissing.”
I let my neck release the weight of my head. My forehead dropped to his shoulder. “Go ahead.”
“Second base.”
From the way he stroked my arm and nuzzled my hair, he must have thought my shaking shoulders and hitched breaths were signs that I was crying. But when I picked my head back up and he saw that I was laughing, he smiled.
“So it’s okay?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s okay. Is there anything else? I mean, seriously. Something that matters?”
“No. But my brain’s not working well. So something might come up later.” I put my cheek to his because he spoke about later as if it would happen. He felt cold already. “You never told me about our wedding night. I carry you into our house over my shoulder.”
I bite my lip. He doesn’t want sad. He wants to have a life in his mind. I could give that to him. “I’m laughing because Lil can see us, and the whole caveman thing is hilarious. I know you have something planned, but I have no idea what. The house is on a hill in Beechwood Canyon. Can we do Beechwood Canyon?”
“For the sake of this conversation.”
“It’s a modernist masterpiece in the hills with walls of windows looking over the city. You close the door and carry me through the dark house out to the backyard. It’s lit with tea lights, and the pool has lights in it. Everything shimmers like it’s under water. You get me to my feet, and say, ‘Take your hair down.’
“I raise my arms to pull a hundred pins and braids out of my hair. My arms are out of the way, and you use the opening to kiss my cheek, my neck. Your hands follow, landing on my collarbone. You drag your thumb across it and down. You find the zipper to my wedding dress on the side and pull it. I’m still not done with my hair. I admit I’m going super slow, but it’s falling out of its arrangement. You pull the dress down until it pools at my feet. Your hands find the edges of my underwear. It’s all straps and rings. My hair falls totally. You step back and look at me. I feel beautiful. You’ve made me feel like that all day, looking at me like that in your black tux. I say, ‘What do you want, sir?’ And you say—”
“I say this,” he interrupted. Even with his rasp of a voice, I stopped. “I say, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to destroy you. I’m going to mark your body and ruin your mind. By noon, you won’t know whether to laugh or cry. But tonight? Tonight, I will revere you. I will build an altar of myself. I will frame you in stars.’”
“God, you make me crazy when you talk like that.”
“There’s a blanket on the grass. I lead you to it. You lie down.”
“The night is clear. The stars are out.”
“My lips on your body trace the story of my love.”
My eyelashes fluttered on his cheek. “I try to touch you, but you won’t let me. God, you’re still in that tuxedo.”
“I took it off.”
“When?”
“When I say, goddess.”
I sighed, going with him. “You’re perfect. Shaped for me.”
He swallowed thickly. “I kiss your ankles. Pull your legs apart. I draw a map to your sex with my tongue. I feel overtaken. In my guts, I need to yank you, pound you with my dick, make you scream and beg. But I hold back. I kiss behind your knees. I control myself for you.”
“I want you. You’re all I can think about.”
“I’m losing steam.
”
His eyes filled my vision, red rims and pale skin. He was soaked in exhaustion, but he needed me to create the story for him, for us. I took a deep breath and kissed his cheek, letting my lips linger on him. “Your lips inside my thighs. Your tongue finding its way to me. You kiss my clit. You finger my nipples. You’re touching me just enough to drive me crazy. Your mouth works between my legs, sucking and twitching. I arch my back. I’m so close when you stop, and you know it too. You pull me to you. We kiss. I taste my pussy on you.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I turn you around. We’re both on our knees. Your back is against me. I push you up, spread you. I put my dick in you, and you push down.”
“You’re so hard, and I’m so wet. It’s so easy isn’t it? Wasn’t it always so easy for you to put your cock in me? Like you were meant to be there.”
“I pull your head back until you’re looking at the sky. I hold your face up. My hand is on your throat.”
“Your other hand slips between my legs. You touch where we’re joined.”
“I look at the stars with you.”
“I move with you. I’m safe under the sky. I feel you everywhere on me. I’m filled with you. I tell you I’m coming.”
“I say, ‘yes.’”
We stayed silent for a minute, deeply joined as if he were inside me, expanding together, into each other, fully unified, merged, consciousness where our bodies should have been.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Please stay with me.”
I didn’t answer for a long time. I kept my face buried in his neck and listened to his breathing. At some point, I would have to leave and meet with Declan. If not to get the whens and wherefores, then to kick his ass for not holding up his end of the deal. “Your family’s going to want to see you.”
“You ever want sisters?” he asked.
“Always.”
“You’re welcome.”
I laughed. He smiled. “They’re outside. I’m going to take care of some business and come back, okay?”
“Stay.”
I kissed his cheek. It felt warmer than it did before our pretend wedding night, and I lingered there. “I’ll be back.”
“Stay.”
“I can’t. I promise—”
“Stay.”
I backed up and let his hand slip from mine.
forty
MONICA
When I walked out, I must have been a sight. The bright hall lights hurt my eyes, and my hair was a rat’s nest pressed in the shape of Jonathan’s fingers.
Eileen approached. “How is he?”
I didn’t say anything. Doctors would report facts to her. All I could say was something like, “He can barely tell me how he’s going to fuck me because he’s dying.” But that wouldn’t be helpful, least of all to me. Eileen passed me, then Sheila, then Margie and Deirdre. Leanne in Asia. Carrie far away. Theresa in some kind of trouble. Fiona, entourage-free for once, scuttled down the hall and blew past me.
Declan drew up the rear and whispered in my ear, “Fifteen minutes to a fire drill on the second floor. They don’t move brain dead patients for drills. He’ll be alone. Staff’s been arranged. Cops are a wild card. Good luck.” He winked at me with real élan, as if the situation was just delicious. As much as I’d doubted Jonathan’s fear and hatred of his father, in that moment, I knew it wasn’t completely unfounded.
forty-one
MONICA
I had fifteen minutes.
I felt far away, my body a borrowed suit, my mind a blunt instrument, my soul in a room full of family curled up next to a dying man. Fifteen minutes to kill. I couldn’t sit still. I went to the vending machines and stared at cheerful paper packets of synthetics, crisp under the unappetizing blue light. At a refrigerator-sized box of cola containers, eleven buttons all yielding the same drink, I felt like an alien standing in front of something new and unknown. People about to commit murder in movies seemed so sharp and aware. They could kick and punch with lightning reflexes. I didn’t feel like that at all. I felt more as if I was walking under water.
Ten minutes.
More than anything, I wanted to rest. The thought of finding a waiting room and falling asleep on a couch seemed appealing. I’d sleep through my opportunity, and none of it would be my fault. Jonathan would die tomorrow or the next day, but I’d be okay. I’d go to work on Tuesday, and go on like I had before. Except for never touching him again, or hearing his voice, or kneeling before him like the slave I was. All the other chunks of my life would be the same.
Ultimately, I was being selfish. I wanted him to live for my sake. Because knowing he was there soothed me. Because I didn’t truly believe I had any control over myself or my life if he wasn’t there. Because without him, things were wrong. The wrongness was my perception. The world would be fine without him. Really. He wasn’t Mother Theresa.
Five minutes.
Are you talking yourself out of this?
Calm yet somehow panicked, like a wheel moving so fast it appeared to be still, I went up the stairs. I knew where I had to go physically, but mentally, I felt as if I’d painted the floor from door to corner in blood. I pushed open the door with my fist and walked into the second floor. It was after two a.m. Skeleton crew. No visitors. I made eye contact with the cop reading the paper because anything less would make me out to be suspicious before I did this thing. And this thing needed doing.
Three minutes.
I went to the bathroom. The mirrors were streaked with cheap cleaning fluid, and my face looked poorly-wiped, tired, too fucking thin by a lot. I didn’t look strong enough to do it. I looked like a wax doll.
One minute.
No. I couldn’t do it. I would have to just deal with life without him and everything we could have been to each other. I would have to let him die. I couldn’t rescue him. I wasn’t strong enough. It wasn’t the consequences that would break me but the act itself. I didn’t have the spine for brutality. I was a child in over her head. A spineless coward, and an exhausted, hungry, stupid child.
A light flashed, and a squeal cut the air.
I would stay in the bathroom and watch myself fail. When they came to evacuate me for the drill, I’d run out with the crowd in a nice, orderly, single-file line.
I wasn’t going to do it.
forty-two
MONICA
People in movies, apparently, obtain reflexes in moments of stress that the rest of us dream will happen to us. We dream that when we’re at the edge of the cliff, we can jump to safety or to rescue, magically stronger and faster than we’d been an hour earlier. We’re entertained by the idea that we could be that capable when it’s necessary, and our daily incompetence is simply due to the fact that we’re not challenged enough.
That never happens, of course, because life doesn’t happen on the edges of cliffs. It happens in bathrooms and hallways. It happens when a fire alarm goes off, and all the avoidance slips away like a silk nightgown. For me, it happened by the second whoop of the siren when everything clicked together.
Go time.
Every choice I’d made had led me there. If I denied it, I’d be the walking dead.
Humanity scurrying and shouting. Parts of a machine spinning and thrusting. Patients wheeled down the hall. A nurse demanding I go left, me doing it, then flipping back as soon as she turned away. A security guard shouted to me. I gave him a thumbs up and continued. I grabbed some coat slung over a chair as if I’d turned to retrieve my things, and again, I turned another corner when his attention shifted.
There would be cameras, and they’d see me. I didn’t waste my time trying to dodge them. I would get caught, and I would take my lumps. Shame. Prison. A destroyed career.
Patalano’s hallway was clear. Declan must have taken care of that. A fire drill was a diversion so obvious that the police would have planned for it. Even the stupidest mobster would have dismissed it, yet they were gone.
I
walked into his room. It was dark, and he was alone, lying on his back. Everything was exactly what I expected, as if I was walking into a familiar place. The whoosh and hum of the machines was drowned out by the siren. The machines were bigger than the ones in Jonathan’s room, with more dials and gauges. Patalano’s face was hidden by tubes going down his throat and a bandage on his head. His neck was kept stable by a plastic apparatus, and the eyes taped shut.
I waved my hand in front of him. Nothing happened. I don’t know what I was checking for or what about that mattered. He was brain dead. His body was a life system for a functioning heart muscle. End of story. I focused on the machines. There had to be a switch or a plug. Right?
There were switches and plugs everywhere and nowhere. All the wires ran behind a two-ton apparatus and disappeared. Fuck. Why did I think it would be simple? I flipped any switch I could get my hand on. Though the thing whined, I had no way to tell if what I was doing was having the necessary effect.
“That does absolutely nothing,” came a voice behind me. I recognized it immediately. Jessica.
“Get out,” I said.
In two steps, she was at the machines, flipping everything back to the way it was. “You don’t move a girl in a vegetative state and care for her for ten years without learning something.”
“Get out!” I shouted.
“Declan said you wouldn't know what to do,” she shouted back. Our voices were covered by the fire alarm, but for how much longer? “Find his catheter.”
I froze for a second, battling everything I believed about Jessica and analyzing what I saw in front of me. She was trying to help me. Was it love? Or was she saving the goose and the golden eggs? Did it matter? I found the tube coming from the center of the bed and ending in a sealed bag under it.
She saw me look at it. “Put a kink in it. It’ll back up, and he’ll die of septic shock in an hour.”
A few drops of yellow liquid flowed through the tube. Jessica put her hand on my arm. She wasn’t going to do it. It was all me.
