“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.”
“It’s a nasty place, that Commerce, and the drug fiend… the shooter… well, he knew where the cameras were, so that’s why there’s no security footage.”
I glance at my phone and Ray is old school. “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I say, and I finish my text to you: I’m sorry. Can I call you?
“So basically, if I’m asked… Love died of cancer.”
“Cancer.”
“What kind?”
“Women’s cancer.” Really old school and he rubs his eyes. “Cervical,” he says.
“And I got shot in the hallway.”
He stares at me. “Yes, you did, Joe. Yes you did.”
My phone is deathly silent and Love is dead and death is all around me, it’s in Ray’s hollow eyes. I want you. I need you. You ignore my texts and I get it but I got shot. My son is an orphan. This is too much at once and Ray sighs. “If you’ll excuse me.”
The second the bathroom door closes I call you and I get voicemail. “Mary Kay, it’s me. I’m sorry. I got…” I don’t want you to worry. “I’ll be home soon. I’m okay, and again, I’m sorry.”
I go on Twitter and sure enough, there’s Tressa posting a Beatles song she doesn’t know by heart: This is for you, Love Quinn. Still can’t believe it. Kombucha smooches forever. #RIPLove #FuckCancer. I click on Love’s obituary. It’s all lies. They don’t tell us that she lied about being sequestered with a jury. They don’t tell us that she bought a weapon of mass destruction in Claremont and they don’t tell us that she tried and failed to kill me, that she succeeded in ending her own life. Los Angeles can fuck off and die because it really is the loneliest place in the world and I stare at the last line of the fake news story.
In lieu of flowers, we ask for donations to the American Cancer Society.
Ray comes back and he must hate himself right now. He had two children and neither one made it to forty. He sits in the chair by my bed, the chair that’s meant for the people who love you.
“So,” he says. “How ya feeling?”
“I’m in shock. You?”
Ray ignores my question and lugs his body off the chair. He moves like a Mafioso and time hasn’t been good to him, shuffling in shiny crocodile loafers. No socks. Doused in cologne, as if that isn’t rude to do when you go to a hospital. He locks the door and is that allowed?
“You okay, Ray?”
Then he turns, flying across the room. He takes off his necktie and comes at me and wraps that tie around my neck and I can’t move, I can’t breathe, I just die underneath and I punch the air but I’m weak. Finally he loosens his grip. And then he throws the tie at me and spits. “Dottie,” he says. “The only reason I can’t do it is Dottie.”
I still can’t breathe. He said he won’t kill me because of Dottie, but he wants to kill me, and if he did, I too would get “cancer.” He picks up his tie and he’s meticulous with it, looping it around his big fat neck, making that knot just right, casually talking about his father, who taught him how to properly tie a tie. Ray had a great dad. I had no dad. I still don’t know how to tie a fucking tie. But a good childhood doesn’t mean shit because I’m not the one in here trying to murder someone.
“All right,” he says. “You woke up and they warned me that might happen. So how much more is it gonna take to get rid of you once and for all?”
I don’t want money—I survived a gunshot—and the “family man” should know better. “I just want Forty, Ray. That’s it.”
“Forty grand?”
Unbelievable and yet I should have expected it. “My son.”
He makes a fist and he lowers his hand. “He’s not your son. You walked away.”
“You pushed me away and I went because that’s what Love wanted.”
“Icicles,” he says. “Icicles in your veins.”
“He’s my son.”
“And you tell me you’d take good care of him?”
“Yes, I would.”
“So you’re a reformed man. Mr. Community Service up on Bainbridge Island?”
“We’d come to visit once a month. More than that.”
“And you’ve been doing well up there?”
“Ray, I’m the first one to thank you for all that you did for me. And you’ve seen me. I’ve been crying all day and I’ll never get over this and I’ll never forgive myself for not getting that gun away from…” I don’t want to say her name. I’m not ready. “Look, let me do the right thing here. Let me take care of my son…”
“Well…”
He doesn’t say yes but he doesn’t say no and I sit up. I look him in the eye. “You know it’s what she would want.”
“Oh, kid,” he says. “You’re in no position to speculate about my daughter’s wishes. She wanted you to go away.”