A nurse named Ashley runs in and she looks like Karen Minty and I didn’t kill Karen Minty. I set her free and she’s alive and well in Queens married to a cop, pregnant for the second time in a year. I’m alive too. I lived. I ask West Coast Minty what happened and she smiles. She has long blond hair and she wears too much eyeliner. “You got shot, honey. But you’re okay. The doctor will be in soon.”
“How long has it been?”
She points to a whiteboard and it’s been who the fuck knows how many hours and thirteen days and I tear at the sheets because I missed Nomi’s graduation—did my balloons arrive and do you think I bailed on you?—and where is my goddamn phone? West Coast Minty wants me to calm down and I have rights. I want my phone.
“Honey,” she says. “Your dad has your phone. He’ll be back soon. Just take it easy.”
I don’t have a dad and I might not have a girlfriend anymore—Do you hate me? Do you know where I am?—and as promised, as threatened, the doctor is here with a herd of nondoctors and where the fuck is my “dad”? West Coast Minty deserts me and my doctor looks more like a real estate agent than a physician and I really do fucking hate L.A. He flips through my chart. “So how are we doing, Joe?”
I tell him I need my phone and the not-doctors laugh and say that my sense of humor is intact. The doctor points at my head. “I have three words for you, Joe. Location, location, location.”
He really did miss his calling in real estate and he brags about his work, how he “saved” my life, as if that isn’t his fucking job, as if I care, as if I don’t need my fucking phone and all the details go in one ear and out the other and I don’t care that less than five percent of people recover from this kind of gunshot. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PHONE?
“We’ll keep you here for a couple more days.”
In the great tradition of Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory and countless other survivors who claw their way out of hospitals, I smile. “That sounds good.”
“You’re a lucky man, Joe. I’m not sure if you’re religious, but if there’s someone you want to talk to, we have plenty of people.”
I want to talk to you and I need my fucking phone and he leaves—nice bedside manner—and I’m not lucky. Love kidnapped my son and shot me in the head and where is she? Where is my son? Where is my fucking phone?
I press my emergency button and I sit up in my bed. Calm now. “Ashley,” I say. “Can you tell me what happened?”
* * *
Ashley knows it all.
She freaking loves The Pantry and she moved here from Iowa hoping that she would meet famous people and she did. She saw Love’s movie and that’s why it’s so hard for her to tell me what happened but it’s also why she’s so excited to do it.
“Love shot you,” she tells me and then she checks the door for the tenth time. “And you do promise you won’t tell them I told you? I don’t wanna lose my job.”
“Ashley, I swear to God.”
She holds my hand and I look at her knuckles and think of your knuckles and then Ashley Minty tells me that Love Quinn is dead.
The words are garbled. My brain won’t let them in. My heart flexes. No. Love Quinn can’t be dead. Love Quinn gave life to my son and it’s not her time and yes, she was upset. She was down on herself. But we’ve all been there and she wouldn’t do that to our son. She couldn’t do that to our son. Ashley is wrong because she has to be wrong.
“No,” I say. “That’s impossible.”
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“Ashley, wait.”
But Ashley Minty does not wait. She grabs her charts and makes me swear again not to tell anyone and I look around the room. “Who is there to tell?”
She leaves and I start crying and I’m still at it an hour later and Bon Jovi can fuck off because true Love isn’t suicide after all. It’s attempted murder-suicide and my son has no mother, not anymore, and the only thing worse than a bad mother is no mother. I have no father—Your dad has your phone—and I’m alone, as if I have no son, no girlfriend, no stepdaughter, and my eyes are pounding, my head is throbbing and then my chest is on fire and there is a voice.
“Easy now.”
The voice belongs to Ray Quinn, older and a little wider, so many more liver spots on his face. He’s standing in the doorway and comes to sit in the chair by my bed. He hands me my phone—a dad, not my dad. Love’s dad.
“All right,” he says. “So it’s like this. We’ve told our friends and family that Love had cancer.”
“Did she?”
“No,” he says. “Let me finish because you need to hear every word I say and make sure you remember every word. Understood?”
I nod. As if I’m in a position to remember anything.
“We told the authorities that you were mugged in that casino.”
I wasn’t mugged. Love shot me. And then she shot herself. “Okay.”
“It’s a nasty place, that Commerce, and the drug fiend… the shooter… well, he knew where the cameras were, so that’s why there’s no security footage.”
I glance at my phone and Ray is old school. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I say, and I finish my text to you: I’m sorry. Can I call you?
“So basically, if I’m asked… Love died of cancer.”
“Cancer.”
“What kind?”
“Women’s cancer.” Really old school and he rubs his eyes. “Cervical,” he says.
“And I got shot in the hallway.”
He stares at me. “Yes, you did, Joe. Yes you did.”
My phone is deathly silent and Love is dead and death is all around me, it’s in Ray’s hollow eyes. I want you. I need you. You ignore my texts and I get it but I got shot. My son is an orphan. This is too much at once and Ray sighs. “If you’ll excuse me.”
The second the bathroom door closes I call you and I get voicemail. “Mary Kay, it’s me. I’m sorry. I got…” I don’t want you to worry. “I’ll be home soon. I’m okay, and again, I’m sorry.”
I go on Twitter and sure enough, there’s Tressa posting a Beatles song she doesn’t know by heart: This is for you, Love Quinn. Still can’t believe it. Kombucha smooches forever. #RIPLove #FuckCancer. I click on Love’s obituary. It’s all lies. They don’t tell us that she lied about being sequestered with a jury. They don’t tell us that she bought a weapon of mass destruction in Claremont and they don’t tell us that she tried and failed to kill me, that she succeeded in ending her own life. Los Angeles can fuck off and die because it really is the loneliest place in the world and I stare at the last line of the fake news story.
In lieu of flowers, we ask for donations to the American Cancer Society.
Ray comes back and he must hate himself right now. He had two children and neither one made it to forty. He sits in the chair by my bed, the chair that’s meant for the people who love you.
“So,” he says. “How ya feeling?”
“I’m in shock. You?”
Ray ignores my question and lugs his body off the chair. He moves like a Mafioso and time hasn’t been good to him, shuffling in shiny crocodile loafers. No socks. Doused in cologne, as if that isn’t rude to do when you go to a hospital. He locks the door and is that allowed?
“You okay, Ray?”
Then he turns, flying across the room. He takes off his necktie and comes at me and wraps that tie around my neck and I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I just die underneath and I punch the air but I’m weak. Finally he loosens his grip. And then he throws the tie at me and spits. “Dottie,” he says. “The only reason I can’t do it is Dottie.”
I still can’t breathe. He said he won’t kill me because of Dottie, but he wants to kill me, and if he did, I too would get “cancer.” He picks up his tie and he’s meticulous with it, looping it around his big fat neck, making that knot just right, casually talking about his father, who taught him how to properly tie a tie. Ray had a great dad. I had no dad. I still don’t know how to tie a fucking tie. But a
good childhood doesn’t mean shit because I’m not the one in here trying to murder someone.
“All right,” he says. “You woke up and they warned me that might happen. So how much more is it gonna take to get rid of you once and for all?”
I don’t want money—I survived a gunshot—and the “family man” should know better. “I just want Forty, Ray. That’s it.”
“Forty grand?”
Unbelievable and yet I should have expected it. “My son.”
He makes a fist and he lowers his hand. “He’s not your son. You walked away.”
“You pushed me away and I went because that’s what Love wanted.”
“Icicles,” he says. “Icicles in your veins.”
“He’s my son.”
“And you tell me you’d take good care of him?”
“Yes, I would.”
“So you’re a reformed man. Mr. Community Service up on Bainbridge Island?”
“We’d come to visit once a month. More than that.”
“And you’ve been doing well up there?”
“Ray, I’m the first one to thank you for all that you did for me. And you’ve seen me. I’ve been crying all day and I’ll never get over this and I’ll never forgive myself for not getting that gun away from…” I don’t want to say her name. I’m not ready. “Look, let me do the right thing here. Let me take care of my son…”
“Well…”
He doesn’t say yes but he doesn’t say no and I sit up. I look him in the eye. “You know it’s what she would want.”
“Oh, kid,” he says. “You’re in no position to speculate about my daughter’s wishes. She wanted you to go away.”
“I know,” I say. “But she made that plan when we were apart. She was, well…”
“It’s in the genes,” he says. “Dottie was postpartum, too.” He rolls his eyes and if only he could get pregnant and crawl on all fours and bleed and shit and give birth. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so cavalier about what it means to have a baby and that’s not what I meant but I nod. “Ray, you’re right. She made the contract. She wanted me gone. I know this will sound stupid… but she didn’t block me on Instagram.”
“Speak English.”
“She made all these Instagram stories, right? And when you make stories…”
“Movies?”
“Pictures. Videos.”
“Who wrote the scripts?”
I AM GONNA LOSE MY MIND. “They’re like home movies. You put them online and you decide who can see them. And it’s very easy to block people, Ray. But Love wanted me to watch our son growing up. And I think she’d want me to step in and watch out for him.”
“She shot you in the head.”
I have no fucking comeback for that and I never should have brought her stories into this mess.
“I’m a reasonable man, Joe…” He just tried to kill me too. “And Dottie and I aren’t getting any younger.”
“You look great, though.”
I count his liver spots and he smiles. “Thanks, son. Now you’re up in… Mercer Island, is it?”
“Bainbridge,” I say. “And it really is a great place to raise a family. The house is terrific, thank you for that. And I have a guesthouse. We could do this together. Forty could live with me. And you and Dottie, well you’d be welcome anytime, all the time.”
He reaches for his phone and is this really happening? I can see it now, Mary Kay, you and me and my son and your Meerkat and things really do work out for the best—Sorry, Love, but maybe you knew Forty needs me now, right now—and Ray is old school, a tad violent, but he knows right from wrong and he knows that what Love did was wrong. He’s a father and I’m a father.
He tosses his phone onto my lap. “Here’s a story that I watched recently.”
It’s like another bullet hit my head, only this time, I don’t black out. I’m in the video. I’m lugging RIP Melanda into the hole in Fort Ward and that “movie” is only telling half the story. I did not kill her. I did not do it. Oliver was supposed to be my friend. He gave me his word. This is not fucking fair and Ray just smiles. “We’re the same in that way, Joe. I too call ’em like I see ’em. And I see you.”
“Ray, that’s not what it looks like. And you can’t trust Oliver…” And I did trust Oliver. “He must have doctored that footage. I didn’t kill Melanda. She committed suicide in my house.”
“And I suppose you didn’t kill the rock star either… the one whose wife you’re schtupping up there?”
I’m not schtupping you and I tell the fucking truth. “No, Ray. I didn’t kill Phil DiMarco. He had substance abuse issues and he took some bad pills.”
His liver spots darken. “You’re poison, Joe. This Melanda person… this Phil you mention… Do I need to remind you that both of my children are also dead because of you?”
It’s not my fault that his kids are fucked up and a lot of rich kids don’t outlive their parents and my heart is pounding and did Ashley poison me with adrenaline?
“Now you listen here,” he says. “I am a father. You are nothing. You are a sperm donor.”
I am a father. “Ray, please.”
“I provide for the child. I make the money so I say what goes. And right now, I say you won’t get within a hundred feet of my grandson for the rest of his life. My daughter wasn’t a good shot… but if you try and get near my grandson… Well, Joe, my men don’t miss.
He slams a contract on my tray table and then he drops a pen. “All right, Professor. Sign.”
This is it. This is a moment of my life. This is my second chance, the second time a Quinn bullied me with a contract. “Ray, you’re making a bad decision. You have the wrong idea about me and Forty will want to meet his father one day.”
“Over my dead body,” he says. “No. Scratch that. Over yours.”
The sun is bright today, showcasing Ray’s liver spots. He sees them in the mirror every morning, ominous blotches that remind him that he won’t last forever, no matter how well he does with his investments and his tax evasion. I will outlive this American Oligarch and that’s why he hates me, not because of what he thinks I did to his children. He knows that I know that he failed as a father. This is not a do-over. This is new territory.
He has the money. He has the power. He has guns. This is why it takes time to smash the patriarchy. People like Ray Quinn don’t just have the support of the Injustice System. They own it. If I want to live to meet my son, I only have one option: I sign the contract.
I have faith in my son—Hare Forty, Hallelujah—and Hare Ray’s liver spots, too. Cancer is coming for that bastard and who knows? Maybe it’s already here.
43
The doctor and the nurse wouldn’t let me leave, Mary Kay. They held me hostage—If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything—and on my third day of recovery, Howie had a seizure in the library. I read about it on the Bainbridge Facebook page.
I texted you—I know you’re mad, but how’s Howie? I’m worried about him—and I meant it. I was worried about the Mothball. But you ignored me.
I wasted sixteen days of our life in that hospital bed because sure, health is fun, but what good is health without love? I called you, Mary Kay. I texted you. You ignored me and then you ignored me some more. I ordered Bene pizza for you and the Meerkat on Postmates and the delivery was incomplete. Just like us. I missed Nomi’s graduation—unforgivable, like missing the birth of my son—and I can’t see you on Instagram—you blocked me—and the Meerkat has gone quiet on her own profile.
“Now, there’s no refill on this prescription, but these should get you through the worst of it,” the outtake nurse says.
I grab the fucking pills and my plastic bag of papers and I bang on the elevator buttons—come on—and I hightail it to Burbank Airport but my flight is delayed and I sit there watching planes come and go, listening to Stephen Bishop songs blur into Steely Dan songs and finally it’s time to board.
We land at SeaTac and now that I’m re
ally here, really close, it’s starting to hit me.
You might not ever forgive me. After all, Love never forgave me.
I call a Lyft and I get into the Lyft and I board the ferry and the I AM BROKEN clock is still broken and I disappeared on you. I broke my promise to you.
We reach Bainbridge and the parking lot is buzzing with tourists and bicycles and it’s not summer just yet, but the men are in sandals and the mommies are in light little jackets and time has passed. Is it too much time?
I walk all the way home and I turn onto my street and you were right, Mary Kay. This isn’t Cedar Cove. If it were, you would be watering our flowers and making a visor with your hand and waving at me. Joe! You’re here!
I walk into my house and it doesn’t smell like brownies and you filled the cat food dispensers and Licious stares at me as if he’s not sure who I am—Fuck you, cat—and Riffic hisses—Fuck you too—and Tastic doesn’t even get off the fucking couch, so fuck him the most but no. They didn’t do anything wrong.
I did.
Your shoes are not lined up on the doormat and I call Oliver and a woman with a Lebanese accent says there is no Oliver and that’s typical. He changed his phone number. He was never my friend and his house is furnished and people in L.A. just use you to get what they want and I walk to my guesthouse and I hope to see your things in here, but my second little house is empty too. You ghosted me and I have to breathe in spite of my pain. You only ghosted me because you think I ghosted you.
I would never do that to you and you know that deep down, don’t you?
I am a wounded soldier of Love home from WWIII. I clean myself up and I should probably drive to the library instead of walking but I like the idea of you seeing me wounded, struggling and sweaty. When I get there, I hesitate at the front door of the Bainbridge Public Library and then I take a deep, first-page-of-a-new-book kind of breath and I open the door and there you are in the same spot where you were the first day I laid eyes on you. You drop your book on the counter. Splat. Roxane Gay today, a far cry from our Day One Murakami, all but sucked inside.
You Love Me Page 33