He was inclined to place blame on people for decisions he didn’t agree with so Kat already had one strike against her, as the reason why Toni left Monica. That certainly was an incorrect assumption on his part but that’s how he’d chosen to write his version of the story and nothing short of forced erasure was going to sway his historical revisionism.
“Is your being here at this crucial point in time merely a coincidence, boys?” Kat asked in a tone rife with angry rhetoric. Their downcast eyes told her all she needed to know about their complicity in Monica’s death drama.
“Well, now that the curtain is lifted we can at least operate on an even keel,” she sarcastically continued.
They chose to ignore her commentary and evade her inquiry as the proceedings would not benefit from terse words being flung at one another. Richard found Kat’s sharp, accusatory tongue to be deeply offensive. He continued to harbor a measure of animosity against Toni because once she was no longer by Monica’s side, he had no choice but to pick up the slack and worry about her non-stop, having to be there to support her through each subsequent breakdown. At the time of Toni’s departure, his emotions flew out of balance as incensed as he was that his own responsibility toward ensuring Monica’s continued well-being was certain to increase ten-fold; he did love Toni but believed she could have tried harder to decouple her emotions from her intellect and remain with Monica regardless of how horrid the situation became.
Desmond was far more tolerant than his counterpart but even so, their reunion was fraught with enough blame to go around. He suggested that they wait in the building’s lobby, warm and dry, for the police to arrive – no need to further dampen the bleakness of the evening’s proceedings. Kat sniffed after their role in Monica’s little death drama once she realized they had already contacted the authorities.
‘A weak, wet fish’ was the first thought Kat had when shaking Richard’s hand. She knew straight away that he did not care for her, nor she him, and would have preferred her not to be present yet had accepted the necessity of it as it was one of Monica’s adamant requirements.
Within minutes, the police arrived. Desmond immediately initiated the script so they could get on with the discovery and get the hell out of there, after which he planned on getting slamming drunk. Kat held onto the hand of a visibly shaking, distraught Toni, whispering ‘it’s okay my love; I’m right here’, lightly kissing her temple as they rode the elevator to the third floor.
Desmond asked the police officer if he preferred to open the door to which the reply was a curt, “Why, don’t you know how?”
That was the last time Desmond would smile that evening. They entered the studio, Richard punching the light switch that would provide illumination for the entry foyer and kitchenette section of the room. Apparently, Monica had thought of everything; the light switch was rigged to execute a program on her iPad, which also had wireless connectivity to a set of powered, hi fidelity speakers.
“Anesthesia” started blaring out of the speakers to which Toni’s response was to clasp her hand over her mouth to stop from screaming. At first, she thought that the initial sound effects in the song’s introduction originated from outside but soon realized, with the introduction those nihilistic lyrics and booming basso vocals that Monica had chosen to enhance her death scene by including some explosively intense exit music. Toni loved the music of Type O Negative but now her future enjoyment of that song would be sullied for life.
It wasn’t until Toni realized that Monica’s selection of songs, and the content of the lyrics were selected specifically to separate the flesh from her bones that she lost her composure, reeling into a crying jag followed by a deep-throated yell, as it coincided with her discovery of Monica, sitting in a recliner behind a painted, six-piece folding partition, head leaning back, arms extended, hands comfortably situated on the arm rests, legs extended, crossed at the ankles. She could have been asleep save for the balloon covering her head – around her long, lovely neck was a bow, expertly tied, adorned by the complete rainbow of colors. “My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend” was the next song on her suicide playlist.
Into the room, at no one in particular, Toni yelled, “Where’s the fucking music coming from!”
She assumed that Monica’s intentions were intended to inject a measure of humor into otherwise untenably morbid proceedings, but she was in no mood for levity let alone willing to sit idly by and allow Monica to make a mockery of her own death. Toni profoundly felt the depth of her tragic life and no manner of humor would make her believe it was anything other than horrific and heartbreaking. She didn’t locate the iPad until after “Die With Me” started to play but by then her tolerance for being mocked by her dead ex had been all but expended. She picked up the device and flung it, Frisbee style, across the room to a startled group. She’d had quite enough of Monica speaking to her from the grave.
“Fucking bitch!” flew out of Toni’s mouth before she was able to control her reaction. Her desperation echoed throughout the now quiet studio, with Monica’s fatal recriminations continuing to bounce off of the walls, screaming, pleading, for the misery to stop.
“Miss, do you mind composing yourself and not disturbing anything else? This is a crime scene until I say it isn’t. If you can’t control yourself then go wait outside. You got that?” said Police Officer #2.
Police Officer #1 had been questioning Richard and Desmond over the din while Kat was doing her best, yet failing miserably, not to become fixated on Monica’s corpse but finding the proceedings to be nothing short of fascinating. She decided it best to instead return her focus to Toni to try and minimize her emotional fallout.
“What the fuck was that all about? Is she accusing me from the grave? What the FUCK!” Toni practically yelled.
Kat pulled Toni close to her body, whispering in her ear, begging her to shut up until they left, advising her that not one incriminating word should be spoken within ear shot of people who are trained to look for suspects even when looking into their own mother’s loving eyes, so if she didn’t want to find herself the subject of an investigation, down at the police station trying to talk herself out of something with which she had no culpability, she should just keep silent and share her commentary at a more appropriate time.
As Kat held onto her, she glanced over Toni’s head to steal another look at Monica. She cursed herself for behaving like a macabre groupie but at that point stopped feeling badly about the suicide. This was Monica’s swan song – she orchestrated everything, from artistic flourishes of the painted partition, to the stylish balloon, down to the music and for that, Kat was impressed, respecting her more than she thought possible. Overall, it was a powerful performance piece – morbid but wildly entertaining. Too bad, Kat thought, this could never become an installation at Monica’s gallery; it would be a smashing success.
Monica had selected a Mylar balloon emblazoned with a painting that only Richard recognized. That it would end up being the piece that Monica had willed to Kat and Toni would be a cause for consternation, debate and disagreement between Kat and Toni for the remainder of their lives, alternately finding its way onto a wall only to be pulled down and stuffed back into its crate from whence it came, whenever Toni’s tolerance for it returned to tenuous.
Kat was waiting for attentions to be diverted as she wholly intended to scoop up and snag Monica’s iPad, hoping to salvage it to assuage her curiosity regarding each selection from Monica’s entire death-as-installation-art playlist; it was quickly becoming an obsession. Fascinating, she thought even as she held Toni close in her role as compassionate giver of comfort. Her eyes were wide with wonder and she nearly salivated with excitation when she spotted the digital recordation device that Monica had taped to her jaw wondering if, as executrix, she’d have legal right to it. She caught Desmond observing her emotionally detached, unabashedly entranced observation of the scene. They exchanged a quick glance, Kat incapable of containing her smile, Desmond breaking their eye contact lest he
allow her dispassionate perspective to disgust him and cloud his mourning.
Despite Monica and Richard’s negative commentary about everything Kat, he had already decided that he would judge for himself whether she was the monster they portrayed her to be or simply someone Monica chose to dislike since she had been unable to manipulate her to her own benefit. Thus far, he was inclined to agree with Monica. Toni was malleable, with a sweet, likable disposition whereas the intensity of Kat’s stare could send most people into a state of apoplexy, scurrying away for dear life. Like himself, Richard hadn’t met her either yet he deferred to Monica’s aspersions as if they were unassailable truth.
Kat thought it best not to have either of the police officers witness her reaction to the scene knowing that, being trained to observe behavior and see a suspect at every turn, and not having a working knowledge of the characters involved in this swan song, they might not appreciate the built-in irony of the situation, easily misinterpreting her wondrous, hungry eyes as smugly satisfied because by gosh, she must have orchestrated the whole thing to look like a suicide. Book the dyke!
Police officer #2 left the studio to answer a call in which privacy was required. Desmond saw Kat motion toward the iPad, having spotted it moments before, which prompted him to move several inches to his left. Police officer #1 similarly turned as having anything other than face-to-face visual with a possible suspect would have left him unable to close-down the scene with any reasonable amount of assurance that this indeed was a routine suicide. Kat took advantage of that opportunity and disengaged from Toni, walking quietly over to where the iPad had landed, which was propped at an angle between the baseboards and the floor. She scooped it up and gingerly, silently, placed it into her bag. Toni’s open-mouthed shock and burgeoning protestations were silenced by Kat’s lips being positioning directly on top of Toni’s until she agreed to calm down. She then whispered into Toni’s ear that perhaps she should turn around as she also intended to abscond with the recordation device. Once again, Kat’s lips were employed to silence Toni’s vociferous objections.
After fifteen interminably long minutes, it was finally Toni and Kat’s turn to be questioned. Only the most perfunctory of questions were posed, ‘how were you acquainted with the decedent’, ‘when is the last time you spoke with her’, ‘how did you come to be here this evening’, ‘do you know of anyone that would want to harm her’, ‘can anyone corroborate your story’, etc., were apparently satisfactorily answered as Police Officer #2 came back in, confabbed privately with his cohort and advised the crew that the coroner had been dispatched to advise the scene and that all four should provide the officer with complete contact information.
Kat then chimed in insistent that, even though she didn’t care a whit for Monica, her last wishes must be respected. She reminded them that she was Monica’s proxy and executrix, this time providing them with a photocopy of the notarized, legal document attesting to the legality of her position, and that Monica indicated her desire to be cremated, with one pint of her ashes saved in an air-tight urn on which Monica had already painted a series of delicate flowers and given to Richard and Desmond, the rest to be tossed into the heap with everyone else’s at the crematorium.
Both men blanched when they heard Kat speak those words, to which Kat simply held out the document, pointing to the specific sentence of the instructions as she excitedly said, “It’s right here, see?” Kat was clearly enjoying herself although she was the only one feeling elated. No one knew why, but Toni suspected it was because her only competition had been permanently eliminated from their romantic equation but Kat refused to confirm that suspicion so no one ever knew for certain. Kat had also been given the contact information for Monica’s legal representative, who would ensure that the remainder of her last wishes would be carried out to the letter. Even so, Kat insisted that they wait around for the coroner, partly out of curiosity but primarily to make certain Monica was dead.
An hour and a half later, Monica’s body was removed and the scene was declared clear for continued usage. The four of them hurriedly left the studio, perfectly silent save for the few words shared to decline spending even one more minute in one another’s company, and walked quickly to their respective destinations. Richard and Desmond cited exhaustion from a long flight and a bicoastal jet lag, but the truth was closer to them just wanting to put that gruesome evening behind them. They could not move on if they had to spend one more second looking into Toni’s large, inconsolably sad eyes or Kat’s bizarrely inappropriate elation.
Two days later, they met at the office of Monica’s attorney at which point the will was read and a crated piece of art was wheeled into the conference room on a hand truck by a burly bear whose name tag read Reynaldo, with instructions that Kat and Toni were to take it with them. Richard smiled, wishing he could be there to witness Kat’s horror once she recognized the piece from the studio. He didn’t expect it to be uncrated immediately, which is why he didn’t invite himself over for the unveiling. He had to suffice with a scene he personally created in which a disgusted Kat and a whimpering Toni fell over each other to stuff it back into the crate until they could find a buyer for it.
Once at a safe distance from Kat and Toni after leaving the attorney’s office, once again refusing a coffee or lunch or any other manner of social interaction that included them, Richard pulled out his iPad and booked a flight for the following day. He also secured a specialty moving company to go to the loft and properly crate and ship everything in it, westward bound. They both then went to the office of an old friend who was a real estate broker at CitiHabitats and listed the studio for sale, with a tacit agreement that Monica’s swan song was not to be mentioned to any prospective buyers. People suspected but all parties were like-minded in being disinclined to share such maudlin details with anyone outside of the innermost circle; unconfirmed rumor would be enough to drive up the sale price to an impressive level without scaring away the faint of heart.
The next day, two hours before Richard and Desmond were scheduled to fly back home, Kat and Toni were walking in the neighborhood, hand-in-hand, Dylan in tow, looking for a suitable place to have a light brunch. They spotted the duo jumping into a yellow cab, presumably heading to JFK, when the most fleeting eye contact was made, Desmond slightly raising his hand in a subtle gesture of acknowledgment while Richard quickly cast his eyes downward. That was the last time the quartet would see one another.
******
Chapter 5
1 Out Of Every 8, or, the Twelve Percenters
Toni walked up and down the corridors as she had been doing during the two long hours since her arrival, hoping to expend her fears and some of the anxiety that was gripping at her heart. The panic attacks had subsided considerably over the previous few days – aided in part by several lengthy discussions with Kat but as the big day was approaching, those intensely powerful feelings of dread, originating as a tingling sensation at her temples, expanding to encompass the entire circumference of her head, then converging at the back of her neck to descend her spine, settling in to liquefy the contents of her intestines, began to materialize anew, refusing mollification.
This was more than she could handle alone, yet her best friend, her lover, her lifeline, was incapacitated so could not provide any comfort. Toni worked diligently to conceal from Kat exactly how frightened she was; Kat needed her to be a pillar of strength as she was no longer able to act in that capacity for them both, which left Toni dazed and feeling inadequate to carry the weight of the burden looming before them.
Although the possibility exists for all women, Toni never thought it would happen to Kat – she was wonder woman, the amazing, invincible Kat with the indomitable spirit that all women envied. She was big, beautiful Kat, the female Atlas, effortlessly carrying the weight of her world, never buckling, never complaining. Even though they were assured that her prognosis for a full recovery was well into the ninetieth percentile, that assuming the worst was a waste of preciou
s energy hence best reallocated toward more positive thinking, Toni tended to revisit those darker proclivities whenever Kat was not by her side. Clouds of doubt, suspicions of false positivity masquerading as hope when the future promised to bring them only grief and desolation, infused her thinking process. Her mind cycled through multiple iterations of despair, unable to retain optimism as her default reaction.
She had been unable to sit still ever since Kat’s parents entered the waiting room. The entire Mangiarmi clan was also there to support their beloved Kat because they each, in their own way, had fallen madly in love with her and would rather have lost a limb than even consider a life without her in it.
Every time anyone would share with Toni a trite aphorism about fate or trusting the beneficence of god and that this god was the same deity who would never have foisted upon one of His subjects something that he or she couldn’t handle, her inclination was to aim for the throat and choke that person until they stopped speaking.
Sometimes, silence is the best response to bad news as that coupled with a big hug can convey support and love by providing the most beneficial comfort without offense. Just offering to be there for someone, letting a person know that if the situation becomes too heavy to handle alone, all that needs to be done is to make a call and you’ll be there to listen, works wonders – simple, elegant, compassionate. All of their friends were too freaked out to be of any value; they had scattered like roaches in the midst of a bug bomb, allowing Toni’s calls to go directly to voicemail and never responding to her texts or emails.
‘Useless fucking assholes!’, Toni screamed into an empty living room one day when Kat was out getting some much needed alone time to introspect about her dilemma. She too felt abandoned by them, disgusted that they had allowed their fears to overcome their compassion. She was perplexed at how two words could propel otherwise intelligent and rational women into a direction opposite of where she stood.
Love Finds Its Pocket Page 16
