She ran up to the bathroom and doled two more Enabletals into the bottle to replenish the ones she’d taken.
In the car she restarted the Tom Waits playlist from the top and was inclined to sing along, loudly. The phone wasn’t going off because it was still in airplane mode. She opened the sunroof and the breeze picked up in her hair and Abbott sat in the car seat pretending to sing along. She felt his feet kicking the back of her seat, perfectly off time. She hadn’t changed out of her running attire and this for some reason was funny to her. It appeared she would wear the outfit all day. Who was going to stop her, anyway? What difference did it make?
Everything should have been overwhelming her. The rational part of her brain knew this. Abbott was school-less. Again. Her marriage was locked in its weird stasis chamber. She and Rey never talked about anything, never did anything together, except argue about how to handle Abbott. Then why was she smiling? Why was she turning up Tom Waits, currently “Downtown Train,” and thrumming along on the steering wheel? Why was she singing? Why did the California air fluttering through her hair feel so perfect?
She stuck to the surface streets, past the Vista Theatre, through Los Feliz, and on into “shitty” East Hollywood, up Crescent Heights Boulevard, which became Laurel Canyon Boulevard, back up into the hills and over the hills and down into Studio City. Whoever was trying to reach her—her mother, Melody, Rey—they’d have to wait.
Buster was on duty at the studio gate. Charlie inched up so Abbott’s window was parallel to the booth. Buster leaned out. His teeth were beige and his sunglasses reflected the low-slung white stucco soundstages. He wore a sun-faded Dodgers cap. “Hey there, little man!”
They high-fived.
“Say hi to Abbott and Mommy and Ernest donkey,” Abbott said.
“Hello there, everyone!”
“I broke Max’s bones.”
“You did?”
Charlie leaned out the window. “Hey, Buster.”
“Hello there, Mrs. Westfall! Looking for the big M?”
“Yup.”
“Her highness is on the back lot.”
“Thank you, Buster.”
“Hope you have a very nice day!” Abbott sang as they pulled through.
Melody’s small but quite luxurious trailer reeked of weed. Charlie was not surprised to see Surfer Charlie sprawled on the couch taking a long pull off a joint and Melody slumped in a leather lounge chair. The flat screen showed dailies from Thornglow—Melody bursting through the main doors of the mansion, a gigantic Victorian house they found up in Angelino Heights—into the waiting arms of Hunter Samuelsson, whose character, Stuart, at last united with Serena in the final installment. Charlie prayed Hunter would not find his way into Melody’s real-life bed.
Melody’s eyes were closed, her arms hung down at her sides, fingers pinched in a sort of meditative pose. “I texted you,” she snapped, “oh, maybe like a million times.”
“You again!” Surfer Charlie said. He offered up the joint.
“No thanks,” Charlie told him.
“Ernest says ‘smelly,’ ” Abbott said.
“Is Ernest a narc?” Surfer Charlie asked.
“Ernest is a donkey,” Abbott said. He pulled the puppet out of the My Little Pony backpack, inserted his hand, and began to move Ernest up and down.
Melody opened her eyes. “Abbott’s here!” she said, as though just connecting the dots that the child’s voice signified his presence. She stooped to hug him. He tightened like a rod.
“You don’t want to touch him,” Charlie said.
Melody hovered over the boy, her arms outstretched but short of actual contact. “Dustin will be so happy to see you!”
“We’re going to be late to pick him up. We need to get a move on.”
“Is there a reason you were ignoring me?”
“I turned my phone off. It’s been a crazy day.”
“I’m paying you a lot of money to answer my texts. I didn’t eat lunch!”
“I don’t technically work for you. Let’s go. We’ll get Zankou on the way.”
“No fair,” Surfer Charlie said.
“We don’t have room for the entourage.”
“It’s just me!”
At the car Charlie saw they had only the one car seat. “Shit! I forgot.”
“It’s fine,” Melody said. “Dustin can sit in my lap. We’ll buckle up.”
Charlie fished her cell phone out of her bag and switched it off airplane mode. Six texts from Melody popped up, each with more capital letters than the last. Plus one from her mother.
Mom: DAD IN ICU BAD REACTION TO MEDICINE WHERE ARE U????
“Shit. I have to call my mother.”
Melody lifted Abbott into the car seat and strapped him in. Surfer Charlie sat up front, buckled himself in, and rolled down the window. Melody slid in back next to Abbott, who hummed to himself. Her mother picked up on the second ring, her voice broadcasting through the speakers. “I texted a million times!”
“What the hell is happening out there?”
“She should keep her phone on at all times!” Melody chimed in, leaning forward between the seats.
“You’re on speakerphone, Mom.” Charlie put the Volvo in reverse. Surfer Charlie turned the radio on and spun the dial to a hip-hop station. Charlie swatted his hand and turned the radio off. “Mom, are you there?”
“I can’t get a straight answer out of these people. They think your father had another cardiac episode. They won’t call it a heart attack, of course. They won’t say anything definitive.”
“Is he okay?”
“I’m not sure. His blood pressure won’t stay put. And, well, you know, they’ve intubated him.”
“They what?”
“He stopped breathing. It’s fine, though. No need to worry. No need for alarm!”
“I’m worried, Mom, I’m really worried.”
They were on Ventura now, heading west into traffic.
“Karnam is confident he’ll come out of this.”
Charlie wasn’t sure, but it sounded, over the noise in the car and the wind blasting through the open window, like her mother was crying. Charlie felt the tickling urge for another Enabletal. “Okay. I’ll be home in an hour. Let me know if anything changes.”
She hung up and drifted into the intersection at Coldwater Canyon. Cars veered around her, honking. She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Melody, who, in her incognito floppy hat and sunglasses, looked like a Gothic scarecrow. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “Promise.”
“Yeah, Mommy,” Abbott echoed. “Promise.”
“We’re, like, in the middle of this intersection,” Surfer Charlie said.
When they got to the Zankou Chicken in Toluca Lake, Melody sat in the car with Abbott while Charlie and Surfer Charlie did the ordering. Charlie went to the restroom and took an Enabletal. She considered the fourth. Would he die this time? Did she feel guilty she wasn’t there with him? She was left wondering, as she often did, if she felt anything, or was the medication dampening her emotions? She took the last pill out and fumbled it. It skittered around the sink and bounced into the drain.
In the car she gave Abbott a piece of her wrap and devoured the rest. It dawned on her as she inhaled the food that she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. At 3:45 they pulled into the parking lot at the Balmont Hall School.
“Go get him,” Charlie said.
“Everyone looks at me funny in there,” Melody said.
“Fine. I’ll go pick your kid up from school.”
“Thank you!”
At the classroom door Dustin was presented, backpack already on. His teacher, who looked about eighteen, guided him out into the hallway, not looking all that pleased.
“Mrs. Perrin, I need to remind you—”
“Westfall.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Yeah, we won’t be late again, okay, take a chill pill.” She turned before she saw whatever face the girl was making.
&n
bsp; At the car Dustin scampered into his mother’s lap. “Are you sick, Mommy?”
“I feel just great!” Melody said. “Did you say hi to everyone?”
“Hello,” Dustin said.
Abbott raised his hand from the car seat without speaking. Dustin leaned over and they high-fived.
Charlie’s phone was silent. No word from her mother. No word from Rey.
She thought about her father. Gestures he made. How he rested his fingers under his chin when deep in thought. The slant of his eyebrows when he was angry. She thought of her brothers. She remembered when Armie had called to ask her if he should take the job that Josef’s friend had found him at the mining company. Josef had apparently been persuading him that he needed to make some decisions about his life or something, and Armie had felt overwhelmed. He had spoken to her about his increasing feelings of inadequacy. “I’m not a real man,” he’d said. She’d tried her best to keep him thinking positive, but it was a hard goal to achieve over the phone or with an email. Come to California, she’d suggested. Now she wondered if she’d done that for his sake or her own. She missed him. She shook her body in the seat to jolt herself out of the memory spiral. “Woo!” she hooted, to clear her head, then turned up the music.
Surfer Charlie hung out the window like a dog and pounded the side of the car with his fist.
Nothing from her mother, which she took to mean that everything was okay?
In the circular drive at the Chalet, Melody took Charlie in her arms. “Look at me,” she commanded. Charlie did, but the sunglasses and the floppy brim of the giant hat obscured Melody’s face in shadow. Charlie focused on the full, pouty lips. The ones the gossip magazines made such a fuss over. “I love you,” Melody said.
“I love you too?” Charlie said.
“Ernest hungry!” Abbott yelled from his car seat.
“Tell Ernest we’re heading home for turkey meatballs,” Charlie said over her shoulder.
“Yuck!” Abbott said in the donkey’s voice.
“Thank you,” Melody said. “For everything.” Her arms were still on Charlie’s shoulders. Surfer Charlie and Dustin were waiting in front of the towering oak doors. The house looked stunning in the late-afternoon glow. “I mean it. You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had.”
“I’m not your assistant.”
“You’re more than that.” Melody nodded. “You’re my best friend.”
“Okay,” Charlie said.
A tear ran out from the bottom of Melody’s sunglasses and another on the opposite side. She threw her arms around Charlie and pulled her close. “I’m so sorry!”
Charlie rubbed Melody’s back. “It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be okay.”
* * *
Chelsea was a ghost town. Even the leather-daddy joints were closed. On Ninth Avenue, the water was at his ankles, so he did not walk on Ninth Avenue. Rain fell and was blown into his eyes. A guy in a hooded yellow slicker ran up holding a white cord, yelling, “I need to charge my phone!”
Josef didn’t respond and the guy ran on. He checked his own phone. The battery had fallen below 10%. The wind pushed him and he staggered and struggled to walk a straight line. His collar flapped. His suit was a plastered shell clinging to his shins and forearms and back. It was impossible to see farther than half a block ahead. The city assumed other, new dimensions. A gray, frazzled, dark, ominous, watery world. Two ambulances careened by, cutting wakes. The crests rolled up to the curb. He pressed on.
Two blocks south flashing lights blinked through the gloom. A small crowd gathered on the sidewalk. He saw the ambulances and also a fire truck with its ladder extended. As he drew close he saw that the façade of a three-story apartment building had sloughed completely off. He stared at the exposed guts of two apartments. Spotlights illuminated the building. He saw part of a bed, the side of a radiator, a bit of framed abstract artwork hanging on a blue wall, a mirror, the top of a floor lamp, bookshelves. A man stood in the middle looking down as firefighters urged him to stay away from the edge. Josef’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He stepped into a doorway to answer. He caught snippets of his mother’s voice over the howling wind. “ . . . leveled out here . . . dropped and Dr. Karnam . . . idea to give him chemo now . . . a precaution in case . . . texted Charlie . . . n’t heard back from her.”
“I see. Okay. When are they going to give him chemo?”
A firefighter ascended the ladder and waved the apartment man forward. Josef opened the outer door to the building and stepped into the vestibule to hear in clearer detail. “. . . says as soon as his pressure stabilizes. Where are you, it sounds like you’re in a tunnel. Can you hear me?”
“I’m on Eighth Avenue. They’re lowering a man down out of his apartment. The whole front of it came off.”
“I can’t hear you! Are you outside? You’ll catch cold!”
He did not want to talk to her. “You’re breaking up, Mom. Call me if anything changes with Dad. Love you!”
He hung up and kept walking. The crowd of onlookers clapped when the man mounted the ladder and, guided by firefighters, began to descend.
Twenty-five minutes later Josef was in SoHo. With the electricity out, the security latch on the door to the building where One-PASS Inc. maintained a modest suite of offices ($5,000 monthly) was nonoperational. He walked in. He groped his way to the elevators and stupidly tried to call one before remembering there was no power. He used his cell phone as a flashlight and walked the six flights. The office was dark and eerie. Ariel had left the window open near her desk and a pool of water had collected on the ledge and was dripping onto the floor. He picked up a desk phone. Nothing. Wind and distant sirens. He closed the window and sat in Ariel’s plush ergonomic chair. He had fucked her in that plush ergonomic chair. He had sat and she had straddled his lap and lowered herself onto him with her skirt on and her panties torn off. In fulfillment of a major fantasy he’d bent her over her own desk, clearing it with a sweep of his hand.
His wallet was a sopping mess. He laid its contents across the desk. Three personal credit cards, Amex One-PASS Business Plum Card, One-PASS VISA business card, NYS driver’s license, Equinox membership card, loyalty card from the coffee shop near his apartment (seven out of nine stamps earned, irrelevant now because the card was so wet it had disintegrated), a picture of Isobel and Florence on the beach in Martha’s Vineyard (taken many summers ago, when he and Natalie were together, also water-damaged beyond salvaging), forty dollars in soggy bills.
He tried again to raise Marc Crawford on the cell. No luck. He called Nora. “I need your body.”
“You’re all riled up.”
He wheeled Ariel’s chair over to the window and placed his hand on the cold glass. “I’m serious. I need you. My father’s in the hospital.”
“I’m not falling for that.”
“Do you care about me at all?”
“I’m not your wife. You already have one of those.”
“Had.” He let out a deep, protracted sigh and took his palm away from the window to examine the hand-shaped outline it left. He tugged at his collar, jerking his tie down to loosen the stranglehold it had on his throat. He needed air. He reopened the window. Water coursed in from the blasting rain. It was dark out there. He pictured his father on a hospital bed, his yellowed eyes fixed on the wall, thin arms dangling. “I should call him.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
“Jo-Jo, I’m certainly not your therapist.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Jo-Jo needs attention. How about if I told you I’m touching myself.”
“I’m coming over. I’m coming now.”
“Ha! You’ll never make it.”
“Wanna bet?”
“How much?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“How about I suck your cock instead?”
“You’re on.” He hung up. The makings of a boner strained the confines of his boxer b
riefs. He felt bad. Conflated now with thoughts of dipping his head between Nora’s porcelain thighs and lapping at her, he also wanted to talk to his dad, even in the face of not having any idea what he wanted to say to him. Josef had never been able to return his father’s affections. Dr. Hammerstein had surmised this long ago and had told him what she thought.
“For some reason, and I want to explore possibilities as to why, you, from an early age, felt overwhelmed by your father’s affections.”
“Do you think that’s why my marriage failed?” he had asked her.
“Well,” she’d said, “the infidelity didn’t help.”
It was no family secret that George preferred Josef to his other children. For George, financial success = life success. George put money ahead of most everything. Armie’s ill-fated entanglements with the Plaxo-Mineral Consortium Inc. had ruined him, and Charlie had exiled herself to Los Angeles, in Josef’s opinion wasting her talents catering to literally the worst people in the world. The result of all this was that he hardly spoke to either sibling.
“Call George,” he told his phone.
One ring and straight to voice mail. He wasn’t surprised. After speaking to his mother, he didn’t think his father was in any state to talk on the phone. He called his mother back.
“Josef,” she said. “Nothing new to report here. Your father is resting! We’re up in ICU. I’m keeping a positive mind-set. This hospital is awful!”
“Stay calm.”
“I’m all alone. No one is here helping me and, well, things are complicated.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Josef, can I call you back, dear?”
“What are you not telling me right now? I want to know what’s going on. I want to talk to him. Put him on.”
“Well. That’s not entirely possible! He’s . . . resting.”
“Then wake him. I want to talk to him.”
“Why don’t you come up? Wait the storm out at home. I heard all of New York has lost power.”
“Just lower Manhattan. And I’m not going anywhere. I have this meeting. Plus there’s no way I can get there.”
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