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 ass**le 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 f**k 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 angry 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.