One Life With Him

by CD Reiss

  “Why don’t you talk to her?” he’d asked.

  “She doesn’t approve of me, and I won’t change into something I’m not, to please her.”

  “You live in her house. You could say hello.”

  “It was by default. I was already there when she called Kevin a seducer and a slimeball. I just kept paying the rent, and she kept cashing the checks.”

  “It’s unlike you to be so passive.” Every word expressed in that bed was said and heard without judgment, an unspoken rule I’d been able to obey without trouble until Jonathan implied I should see my mother. He’d felt me stiffen and tightened his arm around me. “It’s true.” Back then, just a few days before, his voice had been weak and breathy. He’d had oxygen tubes in his nose, and talking was difficult.

  He sounded so much better now. Almost like his old self. Soon, they’d give him the surgery he needed, and he’d walk out with a healthy heart. I could go back to work. He’d fuck me blind as often as I let him. Our nightmare would be over.

  Chapter 4

  MONICA

  Another nurse came at the two a.m. shift change. She took Jonathan’s blood pressure and tapped on the computer. That happened every night, as if he didn’t need a full night’s rest. I slid off the bed, kissed him good-bye, and left.

  My studio time started at eleven a.m., and I wanted to be fresh. I tried to pick up another hour of sleep, but I only succeeded in two things: worrying about Jonathan’s arrhythmia, which would postpone his surgery yet again; and thinking of new ways to add percussion to “Collared.” It needed some kind of thump with the stringed hum. So freshness was a fail, but punctuality didn’t have to be. I decided to conserve the gas by getting ready early and taking the bus.

  That was considered a major faux pas, unheard of and even shocking to most of my friends. One simply didn’t take the bus. But it was a straight shot across Sunset, and I found looking out the window while someone else drove meditative enough to make it worth my while. It wasn’t rush hour, so I wouldn’t be late. I didn’t need to bring anything but my vocal chords and my viola. Just me, and my thoughts, and Los Angeles lumbering by my window.

  I imagined Jonathan naked as I tapped my thumb to a song without words. The tempo was an expression of his curves and edges, the notes colored by the flavors of his skin, and the dynamics became his voice when he commanded me for his pleasure. My mind curled into itself, conjuring a song as the bus lurched and heaved to its own time, drawing me into a state of melancholy contentment.

  My phone rang. I considered letting it vibrate until it went to voice mail, but it kept ringing. The protective coil around my song shattered, leaving me with the music but not the mood. Might as well answer. It was Margie. Up until the day before, I didn’t know if she was calling about my contract with Carnival or Jonathan. I spoke to her more often than I spoke to myself.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Santa Monica and Canon.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice was taut. “Did you guys discuss you not coming or something?”

  I sat upright. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s in surgery today, and I thought you might want to be here when he got out. Unless something changed with you two.”

  “No!” Fuck. I rang the bell to get off at the next stop. If I picked up a connection, I could make it in an hour.

  “What was that?” Margie asked. “Are you on the bus?”

  In my haste to get off the bus, I dropped the viola case. It popped open next to the driver, who yelled at me. I scrambled to get it together before my viola got stepped on, while the phone was pressed between my jaw and shoulder. I didn’t have a free hand to pick it up, so I had to listen to Margie have a fit over my location and circumstance, which irritated me enough to shoot back at her. “Lot parking is fifteen dollars and it’s permit parking on the street over there at this hour. I don’t need to blow gas money when the bus is fine.” The bus dumped me in front of the Beverly Hills Police Station. I headed across Santa Monica, scuttling to make the light.

  “Wait,” Margie said, and I regretted blowing off steam at her. “Did you know about the surgery today or not?”

  “I was on my way to the studio, but I can make it there in an hour if I get the Rapid at Beverly.”

  “Stay where you are. Lil is coming for you.”

  Chapter 5

  MONICA

  I sat in the back of the Bentley, wanting to absolutely die. The idea of being in the studio when Jonathan got out of surgery was unacceptable, yet the thought of not showing up to sing for any sickness besides my own seemed ridiculous. Cancelling studio time would cost Carnival a fortune. Everyone would still have to be paid. An orchestra full of people. Assistants. Session guys. Whatever executive felt like showing up to see Miss Taking-The-Bus cut her debut EP. I was a complete career fuckup. Who would set up another session after this bullshit?

  Margie met me in the hallway as soon as I got out of the elevator. “They just wheeled him into the OR. He didn’t ask for you which tells me he knew you weren’t coming.” She walked me down the empty corridor.

  “I told him I was laying something down for Carnival this afternoon. He knew if he told me he was going under the knife today, I’d cancel.”

  “Is it important? The studio thing?”

  “Not as important as being here.”

  “Spare me the emotional comparisons.” Her impatience was a sign of how tightly wound she was. Her words were clipped, and her intent unmistakable. I felt compelled to give her any answer she asked for. She must have been a magician in a courtroom.

  “It’s going to make my career,” I said. “But not today.”

  “First of all, you don’t ask my brother ever again about his condition. He’s a notorious liar of convenience.”

  “No shit.”

  “Secondly”—she stopped and stood in front of me—“how broke are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You two are so sweet together. Really. He lies so you’ll go to the studio, and you omit your destitution so he won’t worry about you. It breaks my fucking heart to see this level of well-meaning duplicity.”

  We stared at each other for what seemed like a minute and a half. She had that Drazen thing where she looked perfectly put together even though her family and her work were eating her alive. Her hair sat up in a copper bun, her skin was luminescent, and her lavender business suit looked as if it should still be in the dry cleaning bag.

  “How broke?” Margie asked.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to tell her. It was shameful, but I couldn’t avoid it any longer. “I haven’t had a roommate in months. I haven’t worked since before I left for Vancouver. I bought clothes I shouldn’t have. I fixed a car I didn’t need to. Here I am.”

  “Is he not taking care of you?”

  “I’m not his whore.” I said it in a sotto whisper, but it seemed to amplify and echo against the hard walls and floor. Margie took me by the bicep and pulled me into an empty room. I followed because I didn’t want to make a scene, but by the time she closed the door, I was livid. “Is bossiness a Drazen thing?”

  She held up her finger. “Don’t posture with me. No one who ever saw you together would call you his whore, so stop it. How much do you need?”

  I held up my hands. Taking gifts from Jonathan was one thing; having his sister write me a check was viscerally offensive. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “How? What’s your plan to stay with him and go to work at the same time?”

  I didn’t have one, except closing my eyes and hoping I’d wake up at the end of it with a healthy Jonathan and an undamaged career. The signs did not appear to be in my favor. I was pretty sure I’d wind up unemployed, ten pounds lighter, and evicted by my own mother. My EP wouldn’t get cut, and I’d have a reputation as a flake.

  “I’m going to be there for him,” I said. “If it makes me broke and ruins my career, that’s the deal. I’m not tak
ing a dime from you or anyone else. If you have a problem with that, you can take it up with him when he comes around.”

  “You’re a real pain in the ass.”

  “Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”

  “Welcome to the family,” she said, as if I’d ever been welcomed. “Speaking of, we have good attendance today.”

  “Can I have a roll call?” I leaned on the foot of the empty bed.

  “Theresa’s calling, but she can’t come in. Deirdre’s in chapel. Leanne is here but running off to some Asia backwater in three minutes. Fiona’s in and out with her entourage. Sheila’s ripping paper. Carrie’s still not coming.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Fully medicated. I spoke to her.”

  From what I could see, Margie and her mother had a sisterly relationship. The elder Drazen was only fifteen and a half years older. “I spoke to her” meant Margie had reprimanded her own mother over how she’d treated me, which included stone cold silences, saccharine kindness, and blatant disregard when she was tired.

  I nodded. “Will she ever say more than two words to me?”

  “She and Deirdre love Jessica. That’s not going to change.”

  “I don’t expect it to.”

  “Good. There’s something else.” She glanced at the door as if making sure it was still closed. “Jonathan hasn’t spoken to our father in fifteen years. He’s here. You might not see him, he and Mom are on the outs, but he’s in the building. If he meets you, whatever he tells you, grain of salt, okay?”

  “I don’t know what he’d have to lie to me about.”

  “He’d say something just to see how you react. My brother thinks it’s evil. I think it’s just a shitty hobby.”

  “Can we go?” I collected my things and stood up straight, ready for the door.

  “I’m not done. About the money—”

  “You’re done.”

  Chapter 6

  JONATHAN

  When I first felt as if I was dying, I stood in a doorway at the L.A. Mod for half an hour, trying to control the tightness in my chest. I focused on my breathing, sat down, tried to think about anything else, but it kept getting worse. I kept sitting there, thinking I had to get to Monica before my father did, and I really started panicking. It had tumbled down from there to that ridiculously long hospital stay, to getting wheeled into an operating room for surgery at two-thirty.

  When I woke up, I had the feeling something had gone terribly wrong. I swam to consciousness feeling as if I was being choked. I panicked the same panic I had felt in that doorway. I couldn’t control my sensations, my body, my thoughts. I couldn’t see clearly. I couldn’t move my arms. I was bound like a prisoner. My voice was dead. My face itched. Was I warned it would feel like that?

  Or was I dead and in the hell of everything I’d ever done to every woman I’d tied down and fucked? I thought of Dante. His hells were the excess of our desires and, in the deepest circles, the pain of our victims. There I was. Fuck. I was terrified. I didn’t think I could stand it for eternity. The blackness, the crippling paralysis. No control. Utter submission to emptiness. I was breathing, but the pressure on my throat was enormous. I’d never choked a sex partner because I never believed I could control the results. How could my hell include that? I never believed life was fair, but was God so unjust?

  “Jonathan.”

  A voice. Female. I recognized it as Sheila’s. She always had a way about her that seemed as though she’d given birth to the world and loved it to maturity, even when her words cut deep and rage twisted her mouth.

  I realized I could open my eyes if I chose to. The whisper and beep of machines broke the silence of my anxiety. Okay. Not hell. Not dead. But the choking feeling was real, and I panicked again.

  Sheila’s face blocked out the light. “You’re intubated. The machine is breathing for you. Keep still. It’s okay.”

  I chose to believe her. I waited. It was five minutes to three. I couldn’t speak to ask her to unbind my wrists, so I stared at the clock. At three o’clock, I closed my eyes and imagined I could touch my lips.

  Chapter 7

  MONICA

  Three p.m. came unexpectedly. I figured it would, since I was supposed to be in the studio, so I’d set my phone alarm to remind me. It dinged as I listened to Eddie launch into a diatribe. I closed my eyes, shut out Eddie’s aggravation, and touched my lips, thinking of nothing but Jonathan. The warmth in my chest and the smile on my face didn’t last.

  His voice was tight enough to shatter my reverie. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “He’s your friend too. It’s not like you can pretend to think I’m lying.” I was in the third floor stairwell, avoiding the mob in the waiting room. It was nice that Jonathan had so many family members who cared about him, it was also overwhelming.

  “We got the contract signed in a week,” he said.

  “I know.”

  The fourth floor door smacked open, and Leanne Drazen tore down the stairs. Theresa’s Irish twin, she was two years and ten months older than Jonathan, but she looked and acted as if she was in her mid-twenties. A tote bag flew behind her, and her red cowboy boots clopped down the steps. She looked tattered and slovenly, strawberry-blond hair falling out of a ponytail and her bag open.

  “That’s fucking unheard of,” Eddie said. “We had to send twenty-two people home. Do you know what we paid to get them in there on two day’s notice?”

  “No.”

  Leanne grabbed the bannister and swung around, inertia and centripetal force taking her to the top of the next set of stairs. She grabbed my shoulders. “He’s out!”

  “A fucking lot,” Eddie said into my ear.

  I put my hand over the receiver. “How does he look?” She put her thumb up and smiled then took off down the stairs with a wave. Sweet girl. Too bad she was never around. “I have to be here, Ed.” I bounded up to the fourth floor.

  “I’m not saying I don’t understand. I was at the show. I saw it. What I’m saying is, I don’t know if I can herd these cats again.”

  “Tell me what hoop I have to jump through to get a reschedule, and I’ll jump it.” I strode through the waiting room, past two sisters and a mother. Margie indicated a room, and I went in. Sheila, the most vulnerable-seeming of the bunch, was with him. With wild, wheaten hair and four children born close together, she was the one most visibly upset about her brother. Jonathan was there, lying on his back arms on top of the blankets and tubes everywhere.

  “When can you do it?” Eddie asked.

  “Next week. I think he’ll be better then.”

  “I need a guarantee.”

  I touched his arm, and Jonathan opened his eyes. When he saw me, he winked. “Guaranteed.” I hung up the phone. To Sheila, I said, “Well? It went okay?”

  “Yeah. They just pulled a tube out of his throat and unstrapped him.”

  Jonathan picked up his hand and flicked his fingers to Sheila. The international sign for shoo. She started to object, but Margie grabbed her arm.

  “Come on. The kids need you,” Margie said.

  “Onna has them.”

  Margie pulled her out, but Eileen, Jonathan’s mother, strode in. “Ma,” Margie said, “you were just here.”

  But Eileen ignored her. “Jon, how are you feeling?”

  “Tired.”

  “Should we go?” She put her hand on my arm as if I was going out with her.

  “Yes. I mean, let me talk to Monica for a minute.”

  She smiled the biggest, fakest thing I’d ever seen in my life. “Of course.”

  “Oh, ma?”

  “Yes?”

  He pointed at me. “Spot for Christmas Eve. Okay? Don’t forget.”

  “Of course.” Eileen looked at me. “You’re free?”

  “You bet.” I put on my customer service smile. Once she was out, I sat next to him. I didn’t say anything, but somehow he intuited what I was thinking.

  “That’s just how she is
.”

  He looked as pale as death, and his body was flat under the sheets as if he could have just sunk into them. His face looked slack, inactive. His eyes were unfocused, and the lids didn’t want to stay open. That wasn’t Jonathan. He was some other, powerless man who didn’t yank my head back by my hair as he pounded me from behind. Someone who didn’t fuck me in such a slow, controlled way I felt every inch of my orgasm. He wasn’t the man whose name I’d cried into the night; the man to whom I entrusted control, to whose dominance I submitted. He was another man entirely, and I loved him.

  I took his hand. “You look like shit.”

  “You look like an angel.” His voice crunched like gravel under a tire.

  “I should tie your elbows behind your back with a belt and spank you until you scream. To get your voice back. Works every time.”

  A smile curled the side of his mouth. He croaked so low I had to put my ear to his mouth to hear him. “A week. I’m going to do unspeakable things to your body.”

  “Really?” I kept my face to his and my voice low. “Like what?”

  I realized I’d asked too much of him when he licked his lips, paused, and said, “Secret.” He’d love to tell me, I knew that, but between having his chest cracked open and the tube down his throat, it probably hurt to speak.

  “I know already,” I said. He raised an eyebrow. “I can read your mind.”

  “Not this. It’s filthy.”

  I reached over until my body bridged his and touched his ear with my lips. “The great and powerful Madame Monica will predict the future with utmost certainty. Are you ready to hear your destiny, young man?” I was so close to him that when I looked into his eyes, I could see the blue flecks.