C Reiss - Sing

I sat at my usual table. I could have gone up to Jonathan, but I had business in the cafeteria, and I was perfectly willing to sit and work on a song until that business came to me.

Take these rolling hills

Shorn grass and dewy mornings

Dump a street on them

Shove a house, then ten times ten

Take this starry night

Clean air and sparkling skies

Spray paint it with poison

Send up bleating sirens

I’m gonna rise through

My jawbone on your throat

Gonna get black tarred again

My heels dug in

Feasting under the surface

Death on life, me on you

Claws dig, teeth cut

Locked in a forever fuck

I was considering changing the last verse to a chorus when I felt someone above me, and knew who it was without looking up.

“Mister Drazen,” I said.

“Miss Faulkner, or should I call you by your new name?”

“How did you know my last name?” I leaned away from my notebook, closing it so he wouldn’t see my anger spit up on the page.

“I could start with you next to my son at the Eclipse show. The journalists had you figured out at publication. Or my daughter, Theresa still speaks to me, sometimes. She told me about you. May I sit?”

“Sure. Could have been the notice you pulled out of my notebook?”

“Shouldn’t leave it lying around if you don’t want people to see it.”

“You bought my mother’s house.”

“Both of them. I didn’t actually want property in Castaic but—“

“You almost sent Jonathan over the edge.”

He folded his lips between his teeth, a move so like my lover’s I had a quick vision of what Jonathan would look like if he was ever allowed to age. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“Maybe.” I paused, dunking my tea repeatedly, this had no effect at all, but it gave me something to do with my hands. “What do you do down here all the time? You’re a fourth generation billionaire, for Chrissakes. Can’t you pay someone to wait around here for you?”

He laughed. I didn’t know what it was with the Drazen men. Every time I mentioned their money they thought it was hilarious. He twisted to the side and put his back to the wall, stretching his feet out, a gesture for a younger man. A man who wanted to take up a lot of room.

“It’s always amazing to me,” he said, “not what people do for money or revenge, but what they do for love. That woman I was just talking to?”

“Yeah.”

“Her husband just got beaten near to death in a parking lot two blocks away. They wanted his car, but he worked for it, and he wouldn’t give it up. She said, the only way they got the keys away from him, was when they threatened to rape her.”

“That’s awful.”

“It wasn’t even that nice a car,” he mumbled, flicking a crumb off the table.

“But why’s she down here talking to you?”

“That’s the interesting thing. See, he was in surgery, getting his internal bleeding sewn up, but it was so bad, and it was taking too long. Two doctors came out to talk to her every hour.” He held up two fingers to make his point. “They said, we’re working on it. He’s stable. Then after four hours, three doctors come out.” He held up three fingers that time, as if this illustrated more strongly. “And she knows from when her father had cancer, three doctors coming out after surgery? Bad news. If one doctor is attacked by a violent family member, the other is there to hold him down, and the third is to call security. So she saw three and ran down here before they spoke to her.”

“And like a shepherd with a lost lamb, you found her.”

“If my son won’t see me, at least I can do some good down here.”

“Like buying my mother’s house.”

“You’re getting the idea.”

I didn’t trust him, not one bit. I didn’t believe he stayed in the cafeteria to be in the sphere of his estranged child. I didn’t believe Jonathan had misconstrued a lifetime of manipulation and bad deeds. It wasn’t the facts before me that drove my mistrust, it was simply that I had to pick someone to believe, and I chose my husband.

Yet, if I was going to do what needed to be done, I was going to have to trust him just enough to keep his word.

“He’s dying, Declan. That suture tears a little more each day. He bleeds into himself. A couple of days is all he’s got. Tell me you’re down here to do some good, and we can talk about something.”

He shifted in his seat until he faced me, elbows on the table.

“Go on.”

“I’m a distraught wife. I might just suggest things I shouldn’t.”

“Grain of salt taken. And congratulations, by the way.”

I ignored his glance at the borrowed ring and the spiral that could lead down. “There’s a heart with the right blood type in this hospital,” I said. “It’s connected to a dead fucking brain. I want it.”

“The Italian. Patalano, I believe? Paulie Patalano?”

“He filled out a donor card, but there’s no living will. His family’s keeping him alive with machines and prayer. It’s time for the machines to give the prayers a chance to work.”

“And?”

He wasn’t going to give me anything. If he intuited what I was asking, he wasn’t going to step up and verbalize it. I was going to have to do all the heavy lifting.

“And I think that if someone could arrange an opening in security, that heart could be available real soon.”

He studied me, as if seeing me for the first time. The depth of it made me uncomfortable, as if fingers rooted around my insides, knocking around corners and dark places. I stayed still. Let the fucker try and figure me out. I didn’t have all that many corners, and at that point, I didn’t care what he turned up.

“Who would go through the opening?” he asked, an eyebrow lifted.

“Me.” I said it without question or lilt in my voice.

“I admit, I thought he cared about you because you were beautiful,” Declan said. “But I was wrong. You’re loyal to the point of martyrdom.”

“I’m tired of praying for miracles.”

“You might need a miracle after the deed is done.”

“I’ll take my chances with him alive.”

He smirked, and I saw Jonathan’s face again, in his one-sided grin.

“You think because Patalano’s brain dead already you can get off. If you play the distressed woman, of course. And who would doubt you? As his wife, you have more to gain from him dying than living. And with the Drazen machine behind you? How could any judge even send it to a jury, much less convict?”

Murder. It was the word he’d avoided.

“I’m sure it won’t be that easy.” Despite the conversation, I was struck by a thought I couldn’t get out of my head. I hadn’t even wanted to date Jonathan, and there I was, ready to commit murder for him. “For you, maybe. You’re Teflon.”

“More well-seasoned cast iron,” he joked. “But what’s in it for me?”

“There’s nothing I can offer you but Jonathan’s life.”

He nodded then, with a slight twitch of his hand, indicated the entirety of the cafeteria, and with that twitch, he told me that Jonathan’s life, simply spared wasn’t enough. He would still be relegated to the cafeteria at Sequoia Hospital.

“I’m no martyr,” he said. “My relationship with some of my family is painful. I don’t want any of them leaving this world a stranger.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything I can say that will change his mind.”

“Let me know when you figure it out.”

That was it. That was the deal I was offered. Get Declan in to see Jonathan, give him a heart attack that’ll kill him for sure. Don’t get Declan in, and watch Jonathan die while some brainless mobster down the hall kept a heart alive for someone else.

MONICA

I stood outside Jonathan’s door, listening to the symphony of instruments that kept him alive. I hated them. They intruded, bullying me into remembering my place when he and I were alone together.

He faced away from the door, the tendons of his neck and the line of his jaw pale in the morning light. He turned when I tiptoed in, and held his hand out for me. I kissed it, then his lips.

“Goddess.” His voice was shredded, his breath was audible. I’d die myself if I had to watch him deteriorate like this.

“How do you feel?”

“With you here?” He touched my cheek, his fingertips electric on my face, even in his condition. “Like fucking, but probably a bad idea.”

“I have a headache anyway.”

“How does it feel to be Mrs. Drazen?”

“You didn’t need to marry me to protect me from your father.”

“He destroys everything of mine he’s ever touched. And look, he’s already stepped in to get control of you.”

This was going to be hard. How could I bring up seeing Declan now? He’d be convinced his father was a puppetmaster pulling my strings.

“I married you for the right reasons. Not out of desperation.”

“Desperation’s all I have. There’s something unfinished in my life, and it’s us. I needed you to be bound to me, in front of heaven and earth. I’m glad we did it.”

“I’m afraid I gave you permission to die.”

“I don’t need your permission.”

He seemed so collected when he said that, as if he was totally okay with leaving me, and marrying me was just him tidying up his affairs. I felt a spark of rage, and clenched my teeth. But as his thumb stroked my jaw, the anger melted into irritation, then mild annoyance, and into a liquid place that had been the base coat of my anger all day. The rush of sadness that came felt physical in its force, washing over me, pulling me into an undertow of grief. He was dead already. He knew it. A simple fact that I hadn’t come to terms with, holding out this ridiculous hope for a sickening accident. A dead man stroked my cheek, and the awakening between my legs from that touch was a ghastly perversion. I wanted a corpse. He looked ready for a coffin, peaceful at last, hands crossed over his chest, left ring finger bulging and swollen around his keyring band.