You Love Me(You #3)(110)

42





The black hole succumbs to white light and white light reveals white walls and all the beeping tells me that I’m not in heaven. I’m in a hospital and the beeping is incessant and where are you? Where am I? There was a gun. Love had a gun.

A nurse named Ashley runs in and she looks like Karen Minty and I didn’t kill Karen Minty. I set her free and she’s alive and well in Queens married to a cop, pregnant for the second time in a year. I’m alive too. I lived. I ask West Coast Minty what happened and she smiles. She has long blond hair and she wears too much eyeliner. “You got shot, honey. But you’re okay. The doctor will be in soon.”

“How long has it been?”

She points to a whiteboard and it’s been who the fuck knows how many hours and thirteen days and I tear at the sheets because I missed Nomi’s graduation—did my balloons arrive and do you think I bailed on you?—and where is my goddamn phone? West Coast Minty wants me to calm down and I have rights. I want my phone.

“Honey,” she says. “Your dad has your phone. He’ll be back soon. Just take it easy.”

I don’t have a dad and I might not have a girlfriend anymore—Do you hate me? Do you know where I am?—and as promised, as threatened, the doctor is here with a herd of nondoctors and where the fuck is my “dad”? West Coast Minty deserts me and my doctor looks more like a real estate agent than a physician and I really do fucking hate L.A. He flips through my chart. “So how are we doing, Joe?”

I tell him I need my phone and the not-doctors laugh and say that my sense of humor is intact. The doctor points at my head. “I have three words for you, Joe. Location, location, location.”

He really did miss his calling in real estate and he brags about his work, how he “saved” my life, as if that isn’t his fucking job, as if I care, as if I don’t need my fucking phone and all the details go in one ear and out the other and I don’t care that less than five percent of people recover from this kind of gunshot. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PHONE?

“We’ll keep you here for a couple more days.”

In the great tradition of Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory and countless other survivors who claw their way out of hospitals, I smile. “That sounds good.”

“You’re a lucky man, Joe. I’m not sure if you’re religious, but if there’s someone you want to talk to, we have plenty of people.”

I want to talk to you and I need my fucking phone and he leaves—nice bedside manner—and I’m not lucky. Love kidnapped my son and shot me in the head and where is she? Where is my son? Where is my fucking phone?

I press my emergency button and I sit up in my bed. Calm now. “Ashley,” I say. “Can you tell me what happened?”



* * *



Ashley knows it all.

She freaking loves The Pantry and she moved here from Iowa hoping that she would meet famous people and she did. She saw Love’s movie and that’s why it’s so hard for her to tell me what happened but it’s also why she’s so excited to do it.

“Love shot you,” she tells me and then she checks the door for the tenth time. “And you do promise you won’t tell them I told you? I don’t wanna lose my job.”

“Ashley, I swear to God.”

She holds my hand and I look at her knuckles and think of your knuckles and then Ashley Minty tells me that Love Quinn is dead.

The words are garbled. My brain won’t let them in. My heart flexes. No. Love Quinn can’t be dead. Love Quinn gave life to my son and it’s not her time and yes, she was upset. She was down on herself. But we’ve all been there and she wouldn’t do that to our son. She couldn’t do that to our son. Ashley is wrong because she has to be wrong.

“No,” I say. “That’s impossible.”

“I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Ashley, wait.”

But Ashley Minty does not wait. She grabs her charts and makes me swear again not to tell anyone and I look around the room. “Who is there to tell?”

She leaves and I start crying and I’m still at it an hour later and Bon Jovi can fuck off because true Love isn’t suicide after all. It’s attempted murder-suicide and my son has no mother, not anymore, and the only thing worse than a bad mother is no mother. I have no father—Your dad has your phone—and I’m alone, as if I have no son, no girlfriend, no stepdaughter, and my eyes are pounding, my head is throbbing and then my chest is on fire and there is a voice.

“Easy now.”

The voice belongs to Ray Quinn, older and a little wider, so many more liver spots on his face. He’s standing in the doorway and comes to sit in the chair by my bed. He hands me my phone—a dad, not my dad. Love’s dad.

“All right,” he says. “So it’s like this. We’ve told our friends and family that Love had cancer.”

“Did she?”

“No,” he says. “Let me finish because you need to hear every word I say and make sure you remember every word. Understood?”

I nod. As if I’m in a position to remember anything.

“We told the authorities that you were mugged in that casino.”

I wasn’t mugged. Love shot me. And then she shot herself. “Okay.”