The Final Act

by Dee, Bonnie

  Jake rose and stood before her, stoically accepting her slap across his face. Finally he answered her litany of questions in a quiet voice. “I’m sorry. We never said we’d be exclusive. I thought you understood.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

  “It was nice.” His green eyes stared just over her shoulder. At the time she’d been too furious to register anything except the blood rushing in her ears and the feeling she was about to pass out. Later, she realized he’d seemed too resigned, like a condemned man receiving exactly what he expected. The fact he’d brought the girl to his room and left the door unlocked when he knew Gretchen was coming was an intentional sabotage of their relationship—his way of breaking up without actually having to say the words. It was a coward’s way out, and she despised him for it.

  All in a moment, the painful memory rushed through her like a forest fire, leaving her ashen and empty, still standing in the alley, staring at Jake. Their eyes locked for a moment, although it seemed much longer, and then his gaze slid away.

  Gretchen retreated into the building, closed the door and leaned against it, fighting tears. She’d cried enough over the past weeks. She would waste no more time or tears on Jake. Searching through her purse, she found another Xanax and dry swallowed it. In a little while, she knew the knots in her stomach and mind would start to unwind, the sharp edges soften.

  She floated through the first act of the play and at intermission sat in a chair gazing at a spot on the wall.

  Denny dropped onto the chair beside her. “What are we looking at?”

  “Just zoning out.” Gretchen forced a smile, quashing her annoyance at being disturbed. “What’s up? How’s Tom?”

  “His test results are inconclusive. I told Peters I have to take a couple of days and go home. He was actually human about it. I was shocked.”

  “That’s good. I mean, that you’re going.”

  “How about you?” Denny bumped his shoulder against hers. “Are you okay? Really okay, not just putting on an act?”

  “I’m fine. I wish everybody would quit asking. Jake and I broke up. No big deal. People do it all the time.” Gretchen’s face felt permanently fixed in a smile. She didn’t think she could get rid of it if she wanted to.

  “’Cause if you need to talk, you know I’m here for you, sweetie.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled harder, willing Denny to leave so she could continue contemplating the wall.

  He rose from the chair. “All right. No more father hen, I promise, but if you change your mind, I’m here.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief when he walked away. For a moment she considered one more Xanax, but the tablets were running low. She needed to conserve what she had left. After the show was over, she’d go back to her room, take a hot bath, pop a couple of sleeping tablets and crash for the night. Oblivion was good.

  Michael let himself out of Elena and Renée’s room, feeling like a traitor for leaving his girlfriend alone with Renée. The woman had been bitching non-stop since the evening’s performance. They would have gone to Michael’s room, but Logan had hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob.

  God, he was sick of living with no privacy, no space and no place that felt like home. Moments in Elena’s bed came closest to what Michael thought home should be—more than anyplace he’d ever lived in his life.

  Once he had suggested to Logan they switch roommates. He’d live with Elena while Logan took Renée.

  “If I can keep her in a ball gag and handcuffs, maybe,” Logan had said. “She’s hot and I wouldn’t mind banging her if I just didn’t have to listen to her bitching. I can hear it now: ‘Logan, you’re not doing it right. Too fast. Too slow. A little more to the left’.”

  Michael smiled at the memory as he walked down the hall.

  Actually, Renée had been surprisingly agreeable about giving Elena and Michael time alone in the room, but tonight they were the audience for her litany of complaints. “Gretchen was absolutely unprofessional tonight, and it isn’t the first time I had to cover for her mistakes. She stumbled over lines and would’ve tripped during the wedding scene if I hadn’t caught her arm.”

  “That wasn’t her fault,” Elena argued. “A prop was left out. Could’ve happened to anybody.”

  “Why do you make excuses for her? We all know she has a problem and it’s getting worse. Well, after tonight, Peters will make sure something gets done.”

  “There’s no reason to go to management. We can take care of it.”

  “Everyone’s tried talking to her. She won’t admit there’s anything wrong,” Renée said.

  “Gretchen isn’t that bad. She just needs her friends to help her.” Elena looked to Michael to back her up.

  He happened to agree with Renée, so he simply shrugged, earning Elena’s frown. He decided to leave the two women to fight it out.

  “See you tomorrow.” Giving Elena a quick peck on the lips, he was out the door before she could protest.

  Michael was almost to his room when Cara burst from hers into the corridor practically in front of him. “Help! Somebody help!” she screamed before catching sight of him. “Michael! I called 911, but you have to help me. She’s too heavy.”

  Cara grabbed his arm and dragged him toward her room.

  His stomach dropped and adrenalin shot through his veins. “What happened?”

  “I found her…I came back from the bar and she was in the bathroom. She was taking so long and I needed to pee. So I knocked on the door and, oh God, I can’t believe I was yelling at her to hurry up!” Cara spoke faster and faster. “I shook her, trying to wake her up. She was so cold I thought she might be…but I felt for her pulse and she’s just unconscious. I couldn’t get her out of the water by myself, though, so I called 911 then went to find help.”

  Michael followed her into the bathroom, steeling himself for what he might see. Past Cara’s arm, he glimpsed the top of Gretchen’s head leaning against the tile. Cara stepped aside and there was Gretchen, lying in the tub, eyes closed, as still as a mannequin. A towel was draped over her upper half; the rest of her body was naked. There was a gurgling sound as water finished draining from the tub. He looked for red in the swirling water, but there was none.

  “I let the water out, but I couldn’t lift her. She’s so heavy…” Cara started to repeat herself. Her voice was thick with tears and she sounded close to breaking down.

  “Okay,” Michael said, faking calm when inside he felt as panicked as Cara. “Get a blanket to wrap her in, and we’ll lift her out together.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t. They always say don’t move people.” Her eyes were wide and glassy.

  “She’s just passed out. The most important thing is to get her warm.” He sounded like he knew what he was talking about. What if he didn’t? Maybe they should cover her and leave her in the tub for the paramedics to deal with.

  Cara left the room, and Michael knelt on the bathroom rug. He lifted Gretchen’s wrist and felt the slow thud of her pulse. Her skin was white and cool. There was a flutter of movement behind her eyelids. That was promising.

  “Gretchen! Wake up!” He shook her shoulder. The towel slipped down and bared her breasts. He pulled it back in place and tossed another one from the rack over her hips and legs.

  Cara rushed back in with a blanket.

  “Lay it on the floor and we’ll move her onto it. I’ll lift her upper body. You guide her legs.”

  Her skin was as slick and cool beneath his hands as he would imagine a corpse’s to be, but underneath there was warmth as blood continued to pump through her veins. Together he and Cara lifted Gretchen’s dripping, awkward weight onto the blanket, then Cara wrapped it around her like a cocoon. She pushed strands of Gretchen’s damp hair off of her slack face.

  Michael crouched nearby, uncertain what to do. It occurred to him that Gretchen wouldn’t want everyone watching as she was taken away.

  “I’m going to meet the paramedics, see if we c
an’t keep this quiet.” He rose, headed for the door, when there was a knock on it and Kurt Peters entered the room. The stage manager took charge, telling them to look for empty pill bottles or anything else that might explain Gretchen’s unconscious state.

  The hotel manager showed up almost immediately after. “The ambulance should be here soon, but I have CPR training,” the woman explained as she crouched beside Gretchen and pressed her fingers against her neck.

  Michael watched from the doorway for a moment, and then the emergency team arrived and it was too late to keep Gretchen’s business private. People poured from their rooms into the hall to find out what was going on. Cara told her story to the gathering group while inside the bathroom the paramedics tended to Gretchen.

  Overhearing whispers about suicide, Michael raised his voice, determined to nip the gossip in the bud. “Hey, everybody, we don’t know what happened, so don’t make shit up. We’ll find out more after Gretchen regains consciousness.”

  “We should contact her parents.” Elena had come up beside him. Her eyes were huge and her arms were folded over her chest.

  “Or we could wait until we’ve talked to her. We don’t want to alarm them.” And she might not want them to know, he added to himself. He slipped his arm around Elena’s shoulders.

  Jake arrived just as the paramedics wheeled the gurney from Gretchen’s room. He pushed through the group of watchers. “Jesus Christ! What happened?”

  Michael grabbed his arm and held him back from the emergency team. “She’s okay. Peters is going with her in the ambulance. We’ll take a taxi to the hospital.”

  Jake stared past him at the sheet-covered form on the gurney as the paramedics guided it into the elevator.

  “I have to go.” He pulled away from Michael’s restraining hand and followed.

  Michael squeezed Elena’s hand, reassuring himself of her solid warmth. “I’ll go with him.”

  She nodded. “I’ll come as soon as I get dressed.”

  He hurried after Jake, joining him in the other elevator. As they rode down to the lobby, Michael told him what had happened.

  “They’re going to want to know what pills she took, how many, and where she got them,” he pointed out when they were seated in the back of a taxi.

  Jake nodded, gazing blankly out the window.

  “She’ll be okay,” Michael added reassuringly, not at all sure it was true. The feel of her cool, damp and seemingly lifeless flesh haunted him.

  “It’s my fault,” Jake said quietly.

  Michael didn’t answer. He gazed out the window at the neon and streetlights and wished he were back at the hotel in bed with Elena and everything was safe and normal. He might not have spent much time with Gretchen, but he liked the girl. Hell, who didn’t? She was a sweetheart. If anything happened to her, it would be sort of like losing a little sister.

  Gretchen was still in the ER when they arrived at the hospital. Peters met them in the waiting area. “She woke up briefly, long enough to tell the doctors she only took a couple of sleeping tablets, but it was on top of Xanax earlier. I guess the combination…” He trailed off. His eyes narrowed as he glared at Jake and Michael. “It seems everyone’s been hiding Gretchen’s little problem for quite a while.”

  Renée must have talked to him after all.

  “Nobody wanted to overreact or get her in trouble,” Michael said.

  “Well, we’re in a shitload of trouble now.” Peters’ bushy eyebrows jutted over snapping black eyes. His hair stood up in all directions, making him look like a deranged, belligerent Santa Claus.

  “It’s my fault,” Jake said, barely louder than he had spoken in the taxi. His face was pale and his jaw was a knot of tension.

  Peters leveled his formidable gaze on him. “You’re an idiot, Bosch, but you didn’t make the girl take the pills. She did that on her own. Anyway, it sounds like she’s going to be okay. They wrapped her in a thermal heat blanket to bring her body temp back up and other than that, they’re basically going to let her sleep it off.”

  Jake’s worried eyes scanned Peters’ face. “She’s all right then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I could see her?”

  “When they move her from ER into a room.”

  “No. Now. I just want to look at her once, before she wakes up, then I’ll go.”

  From Jake’s shadowed eyes and horrified expression, Michael knew he wasn’t a man who’d casually cheated on a woman he didn’t care about. Jake was deeply in love and deeply fucked up. It seemed the two often went hand in hand.

  Scene Twelve: Home

  Gretchen’s accidental overdose may not have been life threatening, but it sure scared the hell out of Denny. Seeing her still, white face as the paramedics wheeled her away made him think of how fragile life was. What if Tom’s cancer suddenly escalated and attacked another part of his body? What if he got really sick or even died before Denny could see him again?

  Prostate cancer usually followed a predictable and treatable course. Many men had it and survived. But knowing that didn’t stop him from worrying, and he could hardly wait to ensure with his own eyes that Tom was alive and well.

  With Gretchen in recovery, Denny feared Peters might rescind his promised vacation days. Instead he’d pulled him aside and said, “Meet up with us again in Fargo. I hope your friend is all right.”

  As Denny turned away, Peters added, “By the way, Reeves, you’re doing a good job.”

  It was shocking. The man never gave out compliments. And was that grimace on his face meant to be a smile?

  On the flight to New York, Denny could barely sit still. He wiggled like a child in his seat, shifting and foot tapping, a bundle of nerves. He was going to tell Tom about his affair. They couldn’t carry on their relationship with such a secret standing between them. He worked and re-worked his speech. He would state the hard truth, asking for forgiveness, and not making excuses. If Tom turned away from him in anger, he’d accept the rejection he deserved like a man.

  The plane landed at JFK, and Denny took a taxi to the apartment, since Tom had been at a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t meet his flight. Letting himself into the apartment, he dropped his bags in the foyer and stood for a moment, breathing in the familiar smell of home. His chest tightened and his eyes stung from tears that threatened to burst before he even saw Tom.

  And then his lover rounded the corner from the kitchen, a huge smile on his face. Tom was thinner, his skin pale with shadows beneath his eyes, but his smile was undimmed.

  He walked toward Denny with open arms. “Hey.”

  Denny stepped into his embrace, hugged him tight and didn’t let go. If this was to be the last time they held each other before he told Tom the truth and everything went to hell, he wanted to make it last as long as possible.

  “Missed you so much,” he muttered against Tom’s neck. He breathed in a whiff of shaving cream and warm skin.

  “Missed you, too.” Tom stepped back, brushing a hand across his eyes. “So…here you are.”

  “Yeah.” Denny nodded. His gaze dropped to the floor. He couldn’t raise his eyes any higher than Tom’s feet. Shame and remorse churned in his gut. He felt his guilt must show on his face.

  There was a long pause. “What’s the matter?” The words hung in the hushed air like distinct objects that could be picked up and examined. “Something happened. Tell me.”

  A hot, wet drop rolled down his cheek. Denny squeezed his eyes shut and angrily wiped it from his face. He was not crying during this confession. Please, God, let him get through it with some poise.

  “Oh, Tom…” Don’t make me say it.

  “Tell me what happened.” Tom’s tone was grave.

  “It was after Philadelphia. I was angry, worried, scared you were seeing someone else…but I’m not excusing what I did. I’m not. There are no excuses.” Denny glanced up, gauging how upset Tom was.

  His lover’s face was composed, listening. “Go on.”
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br />   “One night in a bar there was a guy. We talked, just talked for a long time. That’s all I planned to do, but then… Christ, I’m sorry. I was sorry right after it was over, but it was too late. I couldn’t…I can’t undo it.” He shut his mouth tight before more useless apologies and explanations spilled out. He clenched his hands at his sides and waited.

  Tom nodded once. His intense eyes released Denny’s and focused on the floor. They glazed over slightly.

  Denny knew that look. It meant Tom was calculating, weighing and balancing things. His banker brain had kicked into gear as he examined the situation from every angle. It was the same look he had when Denny wanted to make an impulsive, expensive purchase for the apartment and Tom reeled him in and forced him to consider all the pros and cons.

  Denny held his breath, feeling like a prisoner awaiting sentencing.

  Several long minutes ticked by before Tom spoke. “All right.”

  “All right?” Denny repeated.

  Tom looked back up at him. “All right. I understand.”

  “Just like that?” He’d been so braced for anger and recrimination he was almost taken aback.

  Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I said I get it. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.”

  Denny nodded.

  There was another extended silence.

  “Thank you,” Denny finally said. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to—”

  “I know.” Tom raised his hand. “I know you didn’t mean to. Just…don’t tell me that, okay? I don’t want to hear an apology right now. You can apologize more later when I’m not so fucking upset.”

  A swell of bone-shaking love swept through Denny. All the reasons he admired and adored Tom shone clear and bright. Who else could be so rational, could take the news so calmly, forgive so readily?

  “I love you.” He searched Tom’s eyes for reassurance.