Jae smiled. “How much do you think we have?”
“Enough money to go away once I can breathe without wanting to die.”
Jae coughed again. “Good.” The coughing got worse. She could hear his chest rattle.
“Seriously, Dad. Can you ask a nurse to check you out?” Fantine closed the briefcase and set it down at the side of the bed. “We were out in a pretty nasty spot.”
Jae stood up. “Fine. I’ll ask if they can get an accurate temperature with those special thermometers.”
“The ones they put up your ass?”
“I need a little action in my life.”
Fantine laughed, this time it hurt. “Go, go,” she said waving him away, “before I actually bust my gut.”
Jae walked to the door and turned. “You did good, Fan. Lily would have been proud.”
“Mom would have kicked my ass. Don’t play that sentimental crap with me.”
Jae nodded. “You’re right, but I like to think a little bit of her would have been proud. At least while she was kicking your ass.” He smiled. “Get some rest.”
Fantine leaned back. “Can I at least have the remote to change this crap?”
“No.” Jae walked out of the room and into the hall.
“Love you too, asshole.” She smiled and closed her eyes.
The head nurse came to tell Fantine about her father only hours later. A seizure from a fever. The old bastard’s temperature clocked in at over 105. Old man like that couldn’t handle that kind of stress and his heart gave out before they could do anything to stabilize his condition.
Fantine wanted to say something clever, something that would let them know she could handle hearing those words—like she did when her mother died. She failed at that. After asking the nurse to give her some time alone, she spent it crying and cursing her father for letting this happen. That was wrong, though. The poor man had gone through twenty years of stress in three weeks alone. It was a wonder she hadn’t lost him the night of the storm.
Fantine pushed forward with recovery. The damage from Sandy took her story out of the limelight almost immediately. This was a good thing; Fantine didn’t need focus to be on someone like her when people needed real help. It also didn’t hurt that it maintained her freedom as well. The fear of the police rolling in to cuff her was ever-present, but she had distractions—thankfully. She became a real big fan of mid-day soap operas after the news. For the next few weeks, she watched and recuperated. Did as she was told by the doctors and by the time her staples came out, they told her she’d be good to go in as soon as a day.
“I’m glad nothing got infected. You’d been in some nasty water,” her doctor told her. “A lot of people came down with severe bronchial infections just from breathing some of that in.”
Fantine shrugged. “I’m a lucky girl, I guess.”
She had to make all arrangements for Jae while at the hospital. By the time she was ready to leave, Jae was with her again—albeit in an urn. Fantine wondered why he’d asked to be cremated instead of buried with her mother, but if that was what he wanted, that was what he got. There was a proviso to leave the urn at her mother’s grave—another odd request—but her father was an odd man.
Jae was smart enough to not only go back for the briefcase, but for Fantine’s bag too. All of Aleksei’s goods were gone, but there were still some fake IDs and extra spending money. He’d left her a note on a particular ID with a picture of her mother where she and Fantine would have been hard to tell apart. The note read, This is your name downstairs. Fantine smiled at the picture of her mother and at the name listed next to it, Cosette Lee.
“Cute,” she said.
Everything collected; Fantine gleefully accepted her wheelchair ride to the entrance of the hospital and outside. She wished a few nurses a fond farewell and thanked the orderly as she stood up and took her first real breath of fresh air in almost a month. The sun was out, but it was cold. She’d heard on the news that some people were still feeling the effects of the storm—just like her. That was okay, she thought, we all have our damage—it never needs to go away completely. Fantine—now Cosette—took her briefcase and bag, hailed a cab, and slipped in.
“Where you going?” The cabby looked how he smelled.
Fantine rolled down a window. “I have to make a stop at Saint Raymond’s cemetery in the Bronx—the Holy Cross section. After that, the airport.”
“Which airport?” the cabby asked.
“Whichever’s closest,” she said.
The cab pulled out of the hospital carport and onto the streets. Fantine leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. She wondered what the weather was like in France.
She practiced her French on the drive to the cemetery.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Big thanks to Eric Campbell and the crew at Down & Out Books for taking a chance with a story initially hatched from the simple idea: death by bukkake. You folks may be a little stranger than I am.
As always, a big thank you to my Shotgun Honey family: Jen Conley, Nick Kolakowski, Chris Irvin, Erik Arneson, and Ron Earl Phillips. You guys are always a big inspiration.
To the poor bastard that’s heard me talk about this goddamn story for longer than most; thanks Todd Robinson. Hope my dashing good looks make up for the shit conversation.
Super, super big thanks to my only beta reader (other than my wife, but that lady’s biased), Holly West. Holly, you rock and were absolutely instrumental to me getting my head around the story of Fantine Park. I owe you many beers!
And finally, thank you to my wife and kids for their infinite patience and their love. Not a damn thing gets done without you guys. Every last word is yours.
About the Author
Angel Luis Colón is the author of The Fury of Blacky Jaguar, No Happy Endings, and the in-progress short story anthology Meat City on Fire (and Other Assorted Debacles). He’s an editor for the flash fiction site Shotgun Honey, has been nominated for the Derringer Award, and is published in multiple web and print pubs such as Thuglit, Literary Orphans, All Due Respect, The Life Sentence, RT Book Reviews, and The LA Review of Books. He’s currently repped by Foundry Literary + Media. Keep up with him on Twitter via @GoshDarnMyLife.
ALSO BY ANGEL LUIS COLÓN
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Meat City on Fire and Other Stories (*)
(*) Coming soon
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