by C. D. Reiss
“Okay, tell me what it is.”
“Monica’s broke. She hasn’t been going to work because she’s been hanging around Sequoia Hospital like she works here.”
“Fuck.” My life spinning out of control was bad enough, but I was taking Monica with me.
“I’m giving her money and saying it’s from you. You’re going to back me up.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Margie?” I raised my hand a little and she took it, coming closer to me so she could hear.
“What?”
“You’re my new favorite. Thank you.”
“I’m keeping tabs on every dime, because you’re going to get better, you little fuck. I don’t know how, but this isn’t how it ends. Do you understand me? It’s not ending like this.”
CHAPTER 18.
MONICA
The closer I got to Jonathan’s family, the more I understood where he came from. His ability to laugh through anger and tears, the happy face he put on over his worries, the Oscar-worthy show of confidence, came from his mother. The deft manipulations of people and situations, the sadism, the raw hunger, the social charm, came from his father. The passion and protectiveness were learned through his sisters.
Margie had handed me five thousand dollars in an envelope and told me if I didn’t take it she was going to tell Jonathan and it would upset him enough to give him another heart attack. She was exaggerating and being cartoonish, but I got the point. He’d arranged the money, and refusing it would cause him stress.
“I told you not to tell him,” I’d said, holding on to a shred of pride even as I clutched the envelope.
“I ignored you. Tough.”
“I hate this.”
“Take it up with God.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate it.”
I needed the money. Badly. After spending a morning on the phone, I found I had long odds of saving the house. I could rescue my mother’s finances by arranging a short sale, but I’d still have to move, and one of the banks was adamant about the current resident vacating the premises. I could have waited for an eviction, and then fought it, but I had too many balls in the air as it was. I needed to find a place to live, a place to store my stuff. I needed to rent a truck, pay a security deposit and first month’s rent. Five thousand would just about cut it.
And now I had other business to attend to. Accepting five grand in cash from my lover’s sister was something I never thought I’d do. Today would be a day of firsts.
I dialed Eddie’s cell phone. He picked up. Oh, the privilege of being me. Six months ago he wouldn’t have returned a voice mail from me, much less taken a call on the second ring.
“What’s happening, Princess?” he answered through a wave of ambient noise. I didn’t like the new nickname. It was too close in concept to “flake.”
“I can’t do a session,” I said. “Jonathan, he’s...it’s bad. I need to be here.”
“How bad?” The ambient noise disappeared as if he’d closed a window.
“Something went wrong. He’s bleeding. He needs a transplant. Maybe. Probably?”
“What?”
“If you have a heart lying around in the next few days...”
“Days?”
My head was screwed up. I was a monster. I’d thought Eddie cared that I was cancelling my recording session, but Jonathan was his friend, and he was dying, why the hell would he care about my fucking EP?
“You should come and see him,” I said.
“Fuck.”
“Are you all right? I’m sorry, I’ve been dealing with this for days. I should have broken it to you better.”
He didn’t answer right away. I thought I’d lost the connection, then he finally spoke up. “When I banged up my dad’s Maz, he took me all over LA to get it fixed. We got it home before my parents got back from Maui. By like, minutes. He drove like such a dick.”
I sniffed, “Don’t eulogize yet, please.”
I had the sudden, physical need to see Jonathan immediately, to stop wasting time in a cold stairway when I could be taking up space with him.
I pushed through the stair doors into the hall.
“Sorry, I...” Eddie caught himself. “Tell him he’s an asshole for me. All right?”
“Sure thing.”
The elevator dinged, and I blocked traffic by standing there, looking at my phone, wondering why I didn’t give a shit about a blown opportunity.
“Monica,” came a voice in the crowd. I turned to the source.
“Jessica.”
“I’d like to speak with you.”
“Sure.”
We stepped away, into a corner by a six foot tall potted plant that looked too fake to be real, or too real to be fake.
“What?” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “You’ve got no business being sharp with me.”
“Thanks for letting me know my business.”
“I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came to see him.”
“Why? To upset him? I’m sick of this. I’ve never seen anyone crush a man so hard then try to get him back like it was her job. For Chrissakes, I wish he’d just give you your money so you’d leave him the fuck alone.”
“He did,” she said, her face darkening like a desert under rare clouds. “This is a long term hospitalization. The trust will move to irrevocable in a week. He’ll be here.”
It hit me then, her motivation in being there. It was sick. Unbelievably venal.
“Unless he’s dead, right?” I said through my teeth. “If he dies while the trust is revocable, you lose.”
I started to walk away, but she grabbed my elbow hard.
I looked at the place where her fingers dented the fabric of my shirt, then at her.
“You listen to me,” she said through her teeth. “I loved him. Make no mistake. He wasn’t for me, but I loved him. That doesn’t go away.”
“He. Is. Mine.”
“Under the circumstances, he’s everyone’s. He needs all of us. We can have this fight now or after he’s dead. Would that suit you?”
Something seethed in me. Something hot and black and angry.
Before Los Angeles was a place, it had a tar pit. Three times in prehistory, an animal got stuck in it, and a predator came to eat the animal. The predator, even as he ate his prey, got stuck. Carrion came to feast on the weakened bodies, and all were stuck. Multiply, as more, driven by instinct and hunger, fell into the trap. Masses of mammals, winged creatures, crustaceans came to feast as the black goo pulled them down to their death in a years-long chain of seething, building, predatory hunger. Ripping throats, blood-covered-fur, a routine orgy of violence and death, multiplied by an order of fear, melted into the tar, adding to the organic mass of boiling, black pitch.
On LaBrea Ave, there’s a park, and in the park, the tar pits bubble underground, leaving puddles of sticky black goop in the grass. They come up where they want, and everything sinks into them.
So when Jessica suggested Jonathan would die, I wanted to claw her eyes out. Pull her hair at the roots. Like I’d put a lawn of sweet words over an aquifer of tar-sticky rage, and her presence triggered a bubbling geyser of anger. But let’s face it, I wasn’t angry at Jessica, and I wasn’t angry that she had the gall to bring death into the conversation like a threat. I was angry at death itself. Angry that it dared to black the light from the window. That it should come between Jonathan and I, when we’d overcome so much. What did it want? What was I supposed to do? And life? How dare it bring him to me just to take him away.
The elevator doors opened with a ding, but Jessica and I continued to stare at each other as if guns were drawn.
“It’s nice you kids are getting along.” Margie’s voice cut through the stare.
Jessica let go of my arm, and when she did, I realized something.
I didn’t like her. I didn’t trust her. But I couldn’t pretend it was her I was a
ngry at her.
As if shunned, Jessica ran into the elevator at the last second.
“Cute, you two,” Margie said. “Almost like you could stand being in the same room together.”
“She’s just going to upset Jonathan.”
“No she’s not. He refused to see her. She’s a little pissed off.”
Margie headed down the hall, her gait quick and sure.
“You look pretty pissed yourself.” I chased after her.
“I got big news from the Department of Bad Shit. They can’t get in to fix the suture. It’s a transplant or nothing.”
CHAPTER 19.
MONICA
He was lucid. I knew because he smiled when he saw me.
“Goddess.”
“Sir.”
“I’m very upset with you.”
“I’ll skip the spanking joke.”
“You need to ask for what you need.”
He was talking about the money.
“Thank you,” I said. “But I couldn’t ask.”
“I can’t read your mind.”
“Can we have this discussion when you’re better?”
“Did anyone explain the odds of that to you yet? Because—“
“Stop it.”
I held up both hands, and he took one. He was going to start talking. He was going to start telling me what I already knew from Margie and Brad and any doctor I happened upon in the halls. But I didn’t want to hear it. I especially didn’t want it from him, because he was going to be Mr. Control and hearing it from him, in that measured, if shredded voice, I was going to either scream or run out.
“Tell me what’s happening with you,” he whispered. “I hear about me all day.”
“Eddie asked about you.”
“Tell him he’s a douchebag for me.”
“I will.”
“Did he get you a new date to record?”
“Not yet. Christmas is coming so it’s dead.”
My face was close to his. Close enough to own my attention, shutting out the scritch of the stylus and the hissing of the oxygen tubes. Close enough for him to look at me long and deep to see the contents of my heart.
“Don’t lie, Goddess.”
“Carnival has to wait. A four song session will take all day. If something happens I need to be here.”
A machine beeped.
He pressed his lips in his teeth. It was an expression he’d used when he was healthy, and it made me want to beg him to take me.
“I need you to do your work,” he said.
“Jonathan, I won’t do it right if I’m worrying about you.”
I felt his hand on my waist, a light touch through my shirt. It slid up to my rib cage, the memory of everything we’d been together, when his hands were forceful and cruel, responsive to desires I didn’t even know I had. He fingered the black Bordelle bra I’d worn at his command.
“You’ve come so far,” he said. “You’re not the same woman I met. You have control. You can take it all and channel it into the work. If I promise you that, would you believe me?”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t know your own power. Please. Go sing. Sheila will watch me.”
“I’ll think about it.”
He nodded as much has he could, and I pressed my lips to his. I kissed him like I kissed him every time since he fell into my arms, like it might be the last.
CHAPTER 20.
MONICA
I’d gone home to shower and rest. I shouldn’t have. The Drazens had a suite at the hotel across the street and I should have eaten humble pie and just gone there. But I couldn’t ask Sheila for the key, and I didn’t have a change of clothes or the extravagance to buy new. Fucking pride, and now I was stuck in traffic ten blocks from the goddamn hospital. Another hour lost.
Sitting in traffic in thebestfuckingthingever was far better than sitting in traffic in the Honda. And it beat the bus by a mile. But traffic was traffic, and sitting still in a Jaguar while helicopters beat the air overhead was infuriating. Having grown up in Echo Park before it was a real estate investment opportunity waiting to happen meant I was familiar with this type of police action. A perimeter was being sealed off so every car could be checked. Usually, it was a cop killing that created this kind of chaos. Or a gang assassination. Maybe a child abduction. I ticked off the list then closed the windows and sang a couple of the songs I’d prepared for the EP, belting it out in the shitty acoustics of the car.
I flipped the news on. Music was just messing up the rhythm in my head, which I needed. Talk talk talk, and I half listened to the clipped chat of a mob shooting outside the golf course. No child abduction, but a typical drive-by. I felt like I knew the details without even hearing them, and I internally restated my belief that penalties should be harsher for crimes committed during rush hour. This was going to be awhile. I sang to the leather dash, letting the news drift away.
Yea, though he stands in the fear of the dark
I shall walk at his right hand
I have drawn rod and cudgel
In his defense
I shall lead him to the gate
And if he seeks his end
My heart shall keep him safe
I can walk
Without it
I can work
Without it
I can sing
Half a woman
Surely goodness and mercy
Prevail in a city of sin
As barter for a life
Beats for beats
Breaths for breath
Trade a heart for what’s mine
I can breathe
Without it
I can see
Without it
I can sing
Half a woman
I was leaning my forehead on the steering wheel when I finished. I couldn’t get the rest of the song out. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see through my tears. This sucked. He didn’t have long, I could see it in the doctor’s faces when they spoke with a sense of urgency, like their own careers were on the line if he died. The inconvenience of it would be epic for them.
Meanwhile, I’d die with him.
The phone rang. Fuck it. It wasn’t like I was moving. I picked up Margie’s call.
“Hello?” I didn’t realize how snotty and blubbery I sounded until the last vowel came out in a froggy croak.
“Are you okay?”
“The love of my life is dying, so, no.”
“Well, I called with a little something. Guy just came in with half a brain and a working heart. We’re fighting our way up the list and they’re checking for a match. But he’s the same blood type.”
“Oh, God. Really?” My face exploded in prickly happiness and tears sprung into my eyes.
“Top secret, ok? This is not public knowledge, but I know people who know. Don’t get your hopes up. The family’s going to be an obstacle. Donor cards don’t mean anything without a living will, and they’ve got more hope than Jonathan has time.”
“Is it evil to hope he dies?”
“Yes. You and I both.”
“See you in hell,” I said, with a little less cry my voice.
“I’ll buy the handbasket.”
The traffic broke suddenly, and I was waved through blockade on Beverly and Rossmore.
CHAPTER 21.
MONICA
“I sold the house. Thank God, Monya. Cash. At market price.”
My mother had called just as I stepped into the elevator with nine other people. I was just about to tell her I hadn’t made any headway, nor had I found an opportune time to ask for Margie’s help on the house thing, when she blurted out her news like a kid blowing the date of a surprise party.
“That’s great, Ma.” I whispered so I wouldn’t annoy the three people in scrubs who pressed up against me. “Did they say when they were moving in?” I was happy for her. I really was. But the bank was going to have to put all my stuff in a Dumpster. I couldn’t leave Jonathan long enough
to move out.
“That’s the good news! They’re okay with the tenant. Okay with your rent and everything. You have to make your checks out to an investment company. ODRSN Partners. The address is One four three, North—”
“Can I get it later? I’m in an elevator. I’ll call you back.”
We hung up, and I molted a few layers of anxiety. I must have bounced into Jonathan’s room, because he smiled when he saw me, the oxygen tubes gone from his nose. The sun shone through the window, and yes he had that auto-squeeze thing on his arm, and yes he was in that god damn hospital bed and his heart was ripped up, but he was in a half sitting position and he was as glad to see me as I was glad to see him.
“I don’t have to move!” I announced, kissing him.
“Good?”
“Oh, God you missed the whole thing!” I blabbered. “My Mom put the house into foreclosure and I thought I was going to have to move out really fast, which, hello I have twenty years worth of stuff in that house, so but some investor came and bought it.”
“Ah, who beat me out?”
“No, uh. Crap, she told me.” I wrestled with the granola bar, until he took it from me and got it open in one move, with a bad heart and IVs sticking out of him. “It’s such a load off. I can’t even tell you.”
He broke off a piece of the bar and held it up. “Was it Ganten Investments?”
I took the piece in my mouth. “No, it was a bunch of letters, like DRM, but five letters and not that. I made it into a word in my head but I can’t think of it.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess.”
“You have to move faster next time, if you want property in Echo Park.” I took another chunk of granola bar from his fingers. “Oh my God, this thing tastes so bad.” I felt light as a feather, waving my hands at him to indicate I wanted another piece. “It’s like, stinky.”
“Stinky?”