“I live in Echo Park. If you stayed close, I’d like that.”
“I’ll stay in the basin. More or less. Not the west side. Too many people I know. And it’s far from you.” He turned his head, pressing his lips to my hair.
I didn’t think he could get up and walk me down the hall without collapsing, but he still managed to make me feel protected. That hospital room, that bed, his body next to mine, had become my world in the previous week. I came at night and when he turned the light off, he was my beautiful, healthy Jonathan again, and I his goddess. The troubles of the day melted away. In that dark room, with only the light pollution of Los Angeles coming in through the windows, he told me about a losing game he’d pitched at Penn, walking in home a run in the ninth. He told me about the out of control years before his suicide attempt, he and his friends drifting their cars on rainy nights in the Valley, breaking onto schooners on the piers of Seal Beach; and Westonwood, where he got into a fistfight over a French fry his first night and, over the course of the next months, learned to maintain the tight control over himself he exhibited to that very day.
I exchanged stories of my father, who couldn’t play a note, but who made sure I had everything I needed to make music; his gardening, his lust for life, and my mother.
“Why don’t you talk to her?” he’d asked.
“She doesn’t approve of me, and I won’t change into something I’m not to please her.”
“You live in her house. You could say hello.”
“It was by default. I was already there when she called Kevin a seducer and a slimeball. I just kept paying the rent and she kept cashing the checks.”
“It’s unlike you to be so passive.”
Every word expressed in that bed was said and heard without judgment, an unspoken rule that I’d been able to obey without trouble, until Jonathan implied I should see my mother. He’d felt me stiffen, and tightened his arm around me.
“It’s true,” he’d said. Back then, a few days before, his voice had been weak and breathy. He’d had oxygen tubes in his nose, and talking was difficult.
He sounded so much better now. Almost like his old self. Soon, they’d give him the surgery he needed, and he’d walk out with a healthy heart. I could go back to work. He’d fuck me blind as often as I let him. All this would be over.
CHAPTER 4.
MONICA
Another nurse came at the 2am shift change to kick me out. She took Jonathan’s blood pressure and tapped on the computer. This happened every night, as if he didn’t need a full night’s rest. I slid off the bed, kissed him goodbye and left.
My studio time started at 11am, and I wanted to be fresh. I tried to pick up another hour of sleep, but succeeded in two things. Worrying about Jonathan’s arrhythmia, which would postpone his graft yet again, and thinking of new ways to add percussion to Collared, which needed some kind of thump with the stringed hum.
So freshness was a fail, but punctuality didn’t have to be. I decided to conserve the gas in the car by getting ready early and taking the bus to the studio. This would have been considered a major faux pas, unheard of, even shocking by most of my friends. One simply didn’t take the bus.
But it was a straight shot across Sunset, and I found looking out the window while someone else drove meditative enough to make it worth my while, and it wasn’t rush hour, so I wouldn’t be late. I didn’t need to bring anything but my vocal chords and my viola, so I didn’t need to lug instruments in the trunk. Just me, and my thoughts, and Los Angeles lumbering by my window.
I was imagining Jonathan naked, and tapping my thumb to a song without words, the tempo an expression of his curves and edges, the notes colored by the flavors of his skin, the dynamics became his voice when he commanded me for his pleasure. My mind curled into itself, conjuring a song from his body as the bus lurched and heaved to its own time, drawing me to a state of melancholy contentment.
The phone rang. I considered letting it vibrate my hip until it went to voice mail, but it kept ringing, and the protective coil around my song shattered, leaving me with the music, but not the mood. Might as well answer.
It was Margie. Up until the day before, I didn’t know if she was calling about my contract with Carnival, or Jonathan. I spoke to her more than I spoke to myself.
“Hi,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Santa Monica and Canon.”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was taut. “Did you guys discuss you not coming or something?”
“No?” I sat upright. “What’s going on?”
“He’s in surgery today and I thought you might want to be here when he got out. Unless something changed with you two.”
“No!”
Fuck. I rang the bell to get off at the next stop. If I picked up a connection, I could make it in an hour.
“What was that?” Margie asked. “Are you on the bus?”
I anticipated a full-on shitstorm. In my haste to get off the bus, I dropped the viola case and it popped open next to the driver, who yelled at me, leaving me to scramble to get it together before it got stepped on, while the phone was pressed between my jaw and shoulder. I didn’t have a free hand to pick it up, so I had to listen to Margie have a fit over my location and circumstance, which irritated me enough to shoot back at her. “Parking is fifteen dollars and it’s permit parking on the street over there at this hour and I don’t need to blow gas money when the bus is fine.”
The bus dumped me in front of the Beverly Hills Police station. I headed across Santa Monica, scuttling to make the light.
“Wait,” Margie said, and I immediately regretted blowing off steam at her. “Did you know about the graft or not?”
“I was on my way to the studio, but I can make it there in an hour if I get the Rapid at Beverly.”
“Stay where you are. Lil is coming for you.”
CHAPTER 5.
MONICA
I sat in the back of the Bentley, wanting to absolutely die. The idea of being in the studio when Jonathan got out of surgery was unacceptable, yet the thought of not showing up to sing for any sickness besides my own seemed ridiculous. This was going to cost Carnival a fortune. Everyone would have to be paid. An orchestra full of people. Assistants. Session guys. Whatever executive felt like showing up to see Miss Taking-The-Bus cut her debut EP. I was a complete career fuckup. Who would set up another session for this bullshit?
Margie met me in the hallway as soon as I got out of the elevator.
“They just wheeled him into the OR and he didn’t ask for you which tells me he knew you weren’t coming.” She walked me down the empty corridor.
“I told him I was laying something down for Carnival Records this afternoon. If he told me his graft was today, he knew I’d cancel.”
“Is it important? The studio thing?”
“Not as important as being here.”
“Spare us the emotional comparisons.” Her impatience must have been a sign of how tightly wound she was. Her words were clipped and her intent unmistakable. I felt compelled to give her any answer she asked for. She must have been a magician in a courtroom.
“It’s going to make my career,” I said. “But not today.”
“First of all, you don’t ask my brother ever again about his condition. He’s a notorious liar of convenience.”
“No shit.”
“Secondly,” she stopped and stood in front of me. “How broke are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“You two are so sweet together. Really. He lies so you go to the studio, and you omit your destitution so he won’t worry about you. It breaks my fucking heart to see this level of well-meaning duplicity.”