C Reiss - Sing

MONICA

I was nearly out of gas, and I had five dollars in my pocket, one maxed out credit card and a bank account dangerously close to scraped clean. I could get to work and make some cash, but without that eighth of a tank, I’d be taking the bus to the hospital for the duration and paying the fare with change found between couch cushions.

I didn’t dare tell Jonathan things had gotten that bad. I went to him every night with sunshine in my voice and rainbows in my pocket.

But when I wasn’t at Sequoia, I let the panic come. Slamming my locker closed, I painted on a customer service smile for no one in particular.

“Monica?” Andrea came up behind me, her hair dyed blue that week. It was always something new with her, and I seemed to have missed this change, because the color was already fading back to green.

“Hey, how are you? Love the color.”

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s my shift.”

She rolled her eyes and twisted her mouth around. “Uhm, we’re kinda in the habit of swapping you out. So, I’m working.”

“No,” I heard the squeak in my voice. “I need the cash.” God, I hated sounding like that. I hated whining about money.

She shrugged and walked out to the floor. I went to Debbie’s office.

“Come in,” she said after I knocked. She was alone, behind her desk, shuffling through God-only-knows. She looked up as if she was pleased to see me, standing and putting her arms out for a hug. “Monica. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I came to work, but Andrea says she’s got my shift?”

“You’ve missed five shifts, Monica. And you were out the week before. I need to run the floor.”

“I need my shift.”

She put her hand under my chin. “You’re in no condition to work. You lost weight. You have circles. A little lipstick?”

“Please.”

“What’s happening? Sit. Tell me.”

I lowered myself in the leather chair. Debbie sat on the arm of the one next to it. The nightly mist that descended on Los Angeles dotted the window. It was the wettest year in history. The bar would be slow, tips scarce, tourists who had nowhere else to go and regulars who came out of habit. The Hollywood hitters would be in clubs Downtown or Silver Lake venues.

“They’re trying to stabilize him so they can do a valve graft,” I said. She looked at me blankly, as if she was waiting to understand what I’d just said. “He damaged his heart when he was sixteen—” I stopped abruptly. I knew Debbie and Jonathan had been close, but I couldn’t be sure he’d told her about the fistful of drugs he’d taken. He hadn’t known he was broken. He’d been fine, until the stress of the past weeks broke him.

“Here,” Debbie said, handing me a tissue. “Go ahead.”

“They have to replace parts of his heart.” I felt strongly that I didn’t know what I was talking about, because I didn’t. “He hasn’t been stable enough for the surgery.” I pressed the tissue to my eyes. It came back with blobs of mascara. Now I really couldn’t work the floor. “I go in every night and talk to him, but I need to work tonight.”

“No, you need to go in to him.”

“I need the money. I’m sorry. I know it seems gross.”

“He can’t give you money?” She seemed shocked at the idea, as if he wouldn’t, which wasn’t the case. Money would sully the sunshine and rainbows.

“I don’t want him to worry.”

“What about his family?”

“Outside of Margie, they all tolerate my existence. Which is fine. But I’m not asking.”

“He hasn’t given you something you can sell?”

Had he? The title for the Jag, which was my only transportation, had been in the glove compartment when Lil drove it to me. The platinum lariat that symbolized our bond twisted around itself on my dresser, binding sea and sky between it. The diamond navel bar was where he’d put it when he committed to me.

“No,” I said. “I have nothing to sell.”

Debbie got up and walked behind her desk. Bending at the waist, she opened a drawer and pulled out her wallet.

“I don’t usually do this,” she said.

“Don’t. I’ll manage.”

She took a pile of bills out and folded them once, coming around the desk.

“We can cover your shifts another couple of days before we have to put you on personal leave. That’s unpaid.” She picked up my hand and slapped the bills into it. “Figure it out.”

I squeezed the money. I couldn’t refuse it, and taking it meant I could see Jonathan.

“You’re very nice to me,” I said.

“Jonathan helped a friend of mine through a rough time. You make him happy. So helping you, is helping him. Now go. I have work to do.”

MONICA

One hundred fifty seven dollars in smallish bills. God bless Debbie, I loved her. I put gas in the car, first thing. Then I bought a container of cubed cantaloupe at Ralph’s for dinner. I parked three blocks away so I wouldn’t have to pay for the lot, and walked. Night was falling and it was getting cold. I was bundled in a scarf and light coat, having forgotten a hat in my rush to get to work.

Sequoia was huge. Half the babies in LA were born there, and everyone else managed to die there. The charge nurse in the cardiac unit knew me by sight, and nodded at me and my cantaloupe.

“Hi,” I said when I walked into the room of bland pinks, beiges, hard edges and the smell of sickness and alcohol. I’d gotten him a little light-up Christmas tree for the table by the bed, and every night he made sure it was on.

“I thought you were working tonight,” Jonathan said. He was sitting up, reading by a single lamp. I’d seen him in that bed every might for the past week and a half, and he’d gotten better and better. I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t let him just walk out with a pat on the head.

“It’s raining. Debbie didn’t need me.” I sat on the edge of the bed taking his hand in mine while trying not to disturb the IV in it. Machines beeped and hummed. The stylus scratched on paper, tracing the lines of his heartbeat. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I want to punch someone. You?”

“The contracts are signed. Margie was a hero, seriously. I couldn’t have done it without her. I’m finalized to record tomorrow. I’m singing Collared with full production value.”

He took the cantaloupe container from me. “They getting the LA Phil in?”

“I know you’re joking,” I said, compulsively putting my hands out to help him open the container. But in the past couple of days he hadn’t needed me, so I pulled them back. “But yeah. Fifteen pieces. String-heavy. Like, real. Then, next week we’re doing Craven. I laid down some scratch on a few others and they’re going to pick two more for an EP.”

He plucked out a piece of melon and held it up. I leaned forward and opened my mouth. He brushed the juice on my bottom lip before letting it touch my tongue. “Orchestras cost a lot of money,” he said. “They must believe in you.”

I took the cantaloupe gently into my mouth and closed my lips around it, catching his fingers, sucking them on the way out.

“We’ll see.”

“Is this what you brought for dinner?”

“I ate stuff at home,” I lied. If he knew my fridge was empty and I didn’t want to spend Debbie’s money getting takeout, he’d worry. Or he’d lose his shit all over the hospital room. He’d already had a code blue over his mother trying to shut me out.

“You’re supposed to have dinner with me,” he said, feeding me melon. He wasn’t mad or scolding. He missed me during the day when his family was here and I hung around in the shadows. That was the deal. I didn’t have to be front and center with his sisters and mother, but I came to him at night, alone.

“What did the doctors say? Will you be out for Christmas?” I changed the subject, deflecting away from dinner, which would lead to talk of my financial distress. “I have no idea what to get you, by the way.”

He paused, picking through the fruit, eyes cast down.

“Well?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he answered, holding up cantaloupe. I took it, but I sensed he was hiding something. I chewed slowly. As if sensing my recalcitrance, he said, “I’m strong enough, but the arrhythmia’s still there.”

“It was gone yesterday!”

He shrugged. “Eat. I want that body ready for me when I get the hell out of here.”

That was Jonathan. Focused on getting the hell out of what he perceived as a prison.

“This body’s always ready for you,” I said, parting my lips for his fingers. He pulled the fruit back an inch, and I followed, then he let it touch my tongue, then pulled it back. We played the cat and mouse game with the melon until he popped it in his mouth and grabbed me by the back of the head, kissing me. Our tongues tasted of cold fruit. I kissed him as if I’d almost lost him, pushing myself into him as if he was a delicate creature, living only by the grace of God and modern medicine. His tongue wove around mine as if he was as healthy as ever. As if an elevated heart rate wouldn’t kill him, or at the very least, send nurses running in with paddles and carts of beige machines. He could deny what was happening all he wanted. He was getting stronger, but if his doctors were to be believed, every day without that graft brought him closer to another heart failure.

“Goddess,” he whispered. “I have to have you.”

“No fucking way.” We’d tried two nights previous, and the word disaster would be used if we were underplaying the results. I’d gotten an earful from Nurse Irene on the matter, and had cried for hours from the stress and the scolding.

He pushed his finger under my waistband. I could feel the tubes from the IV on my skin. “Undo these,” he said.

“No.”

“Open your jeans and pull them down.” He spoke as if I hadn’t just refused him, and the command send waves of lust below my waist. “I swear to God I won’t get my heart rate up.”

“I’m scared,” I said.

“I’m not. Come on. Trust me.”

His face was inches from mine, his hand on my cheek, stroking my lower lip. Every night I curled up next to him and slept for a few hours before I was asked to get in my chair. Every night I wanted him, and every night I worried. He’d gone from distraught, to annoyed, to depressed, to this. A feeling that he’d lost control. He was using me to feel like he had it for a minute. I just didn’t know if I could trust him to take care of himself.

I unbuttoned my pants. He sighed and put the container on the table, his eyes still locked on mine as I straightened my hips, put a knee on the bed and pulled my pants down.

“Straddle me,” he said. I was restricted by the waistband, but got a leg out and wiggled around the instruments and tubes to get myself on either side of him. I made no move to shift the sheets away or touch him. I only did what I was told.

“The door’s ajar,” I said.

“The curtain’s closed.” He whispered, feeling my ass. “You’re wearing this cotton shit again,” he said, his left hand, the one without the IV, stroking my lower back and finding its way under my panties.

“It feels silly to waste to good stuff when you won’t see it.”

“You miss the point.” He pulled me forward. “Put your hands behind me.” I placed them on the wall behind him. With his left hand, he reached between my legs, caressing me over the fabric of my underpants. “The idea is that during the day, I’m present where no one can see. You dress for the world, but under that, you dress for me. I own your softest places, and what touches them, is mine.”

“How can I think about that when you’re sick?”

“I need you to. It’s the only thing that gets me through the day. Knowing I own you even from here. Can you do something for me tomorrow?”

“Anything.”

“At three o’clock, when you’re in the studio. Exactly three. Put your fingers on your lips and think of me.”

“Yes. I can do that.”

He brushed his thumbnail over the crotch of my panties. My clit throbbed at his touch, and I gasped.

“Remember the office?” he whispered. “On the desk?”

“How could I forget? You were cruel.”

He stroked the nails of four fingers over the cotton he so hated. It was damp already.

“I wanted you so badly,” he whispered.

“You could have had me.”

“Anyone else, I would have just fucked. Not you.” He brushed one finger under my panties, stroking my opening. “You were so wet. So responsive. A quickie on a desk would have been such a waste.”