Where It Began(25)

“Come on, Kaps,” Billy says. “The woman will be gone by summer. I give her six months on the outside. They’ll be in court by Labor Day.”

“Well, at least she won’t have much to pack,” I say.

Andy is laughing so hard he snorts vodka out his nostrils and puts his arm around me.

“I praise the day Benitez jerked off Hank Peterson,” he says.

“What?”

Billy says, “Shut up, Andy.” But Andy is too drunk to shut up.

“When Benitez got friendly with Hank Peterson at Hibbert’s party and Billy broke up with the bitch and we got you.”

Billy says, “Will you shut up?”

Andie, seeing the possibility of impending drama, says, “All he’s saying is that Gabby’s really nice. That’s all. Gabs is a really nice girlfriend.”

Billy shakes his head and takes Andy’s arm off my shoulder which results in Andy, who is not only too drunk to shut up but apparently also too drunk to stand up without assistance, being held up by Andie and a Doric column that is just poking up out of the pool deck looking decorative, and takes me into the pool house. Billy looks righteously pissed off.

“I am a really nice girlfriend,” I say, leaning my face into his tight, pissed-off neck.

“I know, Baby,” he says. “You don’t need to listen to that shit.”

I don’t know what to say, but fortunately, it isn’t necessary to say much, and even though I had been really looking forward to kissing him exactly at midnight, I don’t even notice when midnight comes.

So here I lie, in the land of infinite gray space, hooked up to tubes of liquid and whirring machinery in a hospital gown, and who owns me now?





part two





XIX


AN ORDINARY MIDNIGHT IN THE HOSPITAL IS LESS festive and a lot less eventful. The fluorescent light is still on when the hands on the green, glowing clock over the door click together for a moment until, quivering, the second hand sweeps by.

Vivian has left the room and gone home on the thankless quest for beauty sleep. I have progressed to the point that I can reach over and pick up the phone without throwing up or falling off the electric bed, big whoop, but the sides are locked in their full upright position 100% of the time. If I want to get out of that bed, I have to buzz the nurse.

I am so bored, I am thinking about pressing the buzzer. I am thinking about reaching over and phoning some random person, some late-night wrong number, just to hear a voice.

When Billy calls.

It is such a shock, it is so hard to breathe, that it hits me that in the back of my so-called mind, I really was hanging onto the idea that he was actually dead, that I actually killed him, the eucalyptus tree crushed him, only everyone is keeping it from me, like mirrors and friends.

“Babe,” he says. “Are you alone?”

“Yes.” Tears start pouring down my cheeks and rolling into my ears and soaking the pillow behind my head. “God, Billy, where are you?”

Billy says, “Shhhhhh, Gabs, don’t say my name.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you right now.”

I have this sudden reprise of the Agnes Nash vision, the one with the horns and the pitchfork and the little cloven hooves.

“Jesus, Billy,” I say. “I know Agnes hates me, but I’m in the hospital. My head got smashed. Aren’t you even allowed to show up and go ‘hey, get well soon’ and be somewhat polite?” I am, I admit, somewhat shouting by then, unhinged, I guess, by the mashed head and the weird drugs in the drip bags and my general state of brainlessness.

“Shhhh, poor baby girl, poor Gabs,” Billy whispers in his beautiful, gravelly voice. “Are you all right?”

“No. I’m not all right. I look like an ad for fastening your seat belt and I can’t even believe this! You aren’t supposed to talk to me! Your mom—”

You could hear Billy’s jaw snapping shut, like it does when he is trying to gain control over things so dire that a person just can’t get through them with his mouth hanging open.

“It’s not my mom,” he says. And in the three-second pause I think: Oh my God, if it’s not Agnes, it’s HIM. He’s calling to break up with me. Probably he isn’t here because he already broke up with me and I’m such an idiot I didn’t notice. My life is officially over.

“It’s my probation,” he says. “You know how I’m not supposed to drink or be around drinking or go to parties with drinking, right? This is major. Major like I could go to jail. I have to lie low until we see how this shakes out.”

No doubt my mouth would have snapped shut too had any part of my body been capable of fast action, if there was one single part of me that didn’t go mushy and stupid as soon as I heard Billy Nash breathe.

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“I could end up in really deep shit here, Gabs. I have to be careful.”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t you talk to me?”

“Gabby, you’re the one they caught. With the car.”

“So?”

“Babe. I am on serious probation and my PO could yank it. Remember? I can’t go near drinking. Just thinking about you violates half my conditions of probation.”