The Comeback(92)

I tell the hospital that I don’t want any visitors, and the doctors and nurses fall over themselves to tend to me over the next couple of days, to tell me how lucky I am and how well I’m recovering. They list other actors with facial scarring, and tell me that they’ll put me in touch with the most prolific cosmetic surgeons for my second rhinoplasty. Every hour a new delivery of flowers or presents arrive. Even from my hospital bed, I understand that I’m infinitely more interesting after surviving this crash.

I have to give a statement to the police, a simple process that ends when one of the detectives asks me to record a video message for her daughter. I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but somehow I still am.

“Why are you sorry?” I ask the male one after he apologizes for what happened to me for the fourth time. His skin is fleshy and pink, like a rare steak.

“We know you were just doing the guy a favor. His blood alcohol level was through the roof.”

“Through the roof,” I say, forcing a smile. “I get it.”

I’ve always hated puns.

The officer shifts uncomfortably in the plastic hospital seat, and the other cop takes over. She’s small with bad skin and perfect hands. I can’t stop staring at her hands, which become self-conscious under my gaze, twisting and eventually slipping underneath her legs. I force myself to meet her eyes instead.

“Guys like this think they can just do what they want, huh? He was lucky you were there. You must be his guardian angel or something, mama.”



* * *



? ? ?

I stop in at Able’s room on my way out of the hospital. My nurse told me that he has a cut that is almost an exact mirror image of mine, over his left eyebrow, acquired when a large piece of the windshield flew into the back of the car, slicing us both neatly on its way. Mine needed exactly two more stitches than his, twelve in total, but other than that they are almost identical. We will now forever be bound by our scars, along with everything else.

Able’s room is filled with flowers and cards, most of them also identical to my own. We each received an enormous bunch of blooming white lilies from John Hamilton that are nearly indecent in their fleshiness. Able is asleep, secured to the bed in a web of needles and tubes. The nurse told me that his recovery has been slower than mine because of the alcohol in his blood, despite the angry pain that fills every nerve in my body when I put any weight on my right leg.

Even though the gauze dressing on his head is spotted faintly with coppery blood, Able looks peaceful, maybe even well rested. This is probably the longest time he’s taken off work in decades. I didn’t kill him, I gave him a vacation.

I watch a monitor showing his heart rate and brain activity, and I figure that he’s just pretending to be asleep when he licks his lips quickly. I don’t get any joy from thinking he may be scared to be alone with me now. Whatever happens, he always wins.

Laurel comes up behind me and tells me it’s time to go. I walk out of the hospital slowly, trying not to show my limp as I grip her arm. The wall of paparazzi, who have been camping outside the hospital for days, calls out for me like I’m a war hero.



* * *



? ? ?

“So how about this weather?” Laurel says, once we’re in her car, and I look at her blankly, because of course the sky is forget-me-not blue, impossibly blue, always exactly the same blue in LA. My head is throbbing and it feels like the worst hangover I’ve ever had, squared. Or it could be approximately 980 percent of the worst hangover I’ve ever had, a hangover to the power of infinity, if I were a different person and had no respect for the rules of math.

“It’s a joke, Grace. What the fuck were you doing?” Laurel says wearily, when I don’t respond.

“I guess I lost control,” I say, and then when she turns to study me, I add, “of the car.”

Laurel turns the engine on. I tightly grip the bag of prescription painkillers the doctor sent home with me, my fingertips leaving damp patches on the paper.

“Are we really not going to talk about why you did it?” Laurel asks.

“Were you really clean for six months before I came back?” I ask in response, remembering something she told me.

Laurel shrugs and keeps her eyes on the road ahead.

“Yeah.”

“Why did you come over that night? What a dumb move.”

“You’ve always been my blind spot,” Laurel says, and I shift in my seat because I can’t help but remember all the times I’ve either blown her off or used her since I’ve been back in LA.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and she looks like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t.

“Thank you for picking me up,” I say, watching the smoke shops and trashy lingerie houses of Hollywood Boulevard slide past in the window. “But I’m so fucking exhausted.”



* * *



? ? ?

We pull up outside Laurel’s house, a white craftsman bungalow just off Sunset in Silver Lake. Laurel’s girlfriend, Lana, is sitting at the kitchen table doing a sudoku or something on an iPad, her long fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee, and for some reason, when I walk in, I have to swallow a thick, unexpected lump in my throat. I lean against my crutches as Lana assesses me over her iPad in a not-unfriendly way. I wonder whether Laurel has told her to be nice to me, since I’m possibly both suicidal and homicidal at this point.