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.”

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.

“I need you to do your work,” he said.

“Jonathan, I won’t do it right if I’m worrying about you.”

I felt his hand on my waist, a light touch through my shirt. It slid up to my rib cage, the memory of everything we’d been together, when his hands were forceful and cruel, responsive to desires I didn’t even know I had. He fingered the black Bordelle bra I’d worn at his command.

“You’ve come so far,” he said. “You’re not the same woman I met. You have control. You can take it all and channel it into the work. If I promise you that, would you believe me?”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t know your own power. Please. Go sing. Sheila will watch me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He nodded as much has he could, and I pressed my lips to his. I kissed him like I kissed him every time since he fell into my arms, like it might be the last.

MONICA

I’d gone home to shower and rest. I shouldn’t have. The Drazens had a suite at the hotel across the street and I should have eaten humble pie and just gone there. But I couldn’t ask Sheila for the key, and I didn’t have a change of clothes or the extravagance to buy new. Fucking pride, and now I was stuck in traffic ten blocks from the goddamn hospital. Another hour lost.

Sitting in traffic in thebestfuckingthingever was far better than sitting in traffic in the Honda. And it beat the bus by a mile. But traffic was traffic, and sitting still in a Jaguar while helicopters beat the air overhead was infuriating. Having grown up in Echo Park before it was a real estate investment opportunity waiting to happen meant I was familiar with this type of police action. A perimeter was being sealed off so every car could be checked. Usually, it was a cop killing that created this kind of chaos. Or a gang assassination. Maybe a child abduction. I ticked off the list then closed the windows and sang a couple of the songs I’d prepared for the EP, belting it out in the shitty acoustics of the car.

I flipped the news on. Music was just messing up the rhythm in my head, which I needed. Talk talk talk, and I half listened to the clipped chat of a mob shooting outside the golf course. No child abduction, but a typical drive-by. I felt like I knew the details without even hearing them, and I internally restated my belief that penalties should be harsher for crimes committed during rush hour. This was going to be awhile. I sang to the leather dash, letting the news drift away.

Yea, though he stands in the fear of the dark

I shall walk at his right hand

I have drawn rod and cudgel

In his defense

I shall lead him to the gate

And if he seeks his end

My heart shall keep him safe

I can walk