Five for Forever (30 page)

“I have to stay here?”

“Let’s put it this way: your treatment must start immediately. It is up to you where you want to receive it. In the Southern California region there are some excellent options beside us, like Dana-Farber. Leading in the States is Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. My colleague, Dr. Singh, has some very advanced approaches to AML.” Dr. Fenshaw paused and looked at Louise. “Independent of the treatment location, make sure that you rely on your personal network. You and your body will undergo severe changes in the coming weeks and months. There will be good days, bad days, and very bad days. Having family and friends around you will help you to cope with any situation and provide you stability during the difficult times.”

Louise never felt so lonely in her life. She wouldn’t even know who to call. Izzy, sure. He would be there for her. The conversation she had in the car with Josh the first time they drove to Oxnard came back to her.

“I’ll give you a few minutes. Do you want to call anyone?”

Louise’s head was empty, she couldn’t talk to anyone now; all she wanted to do was cry and to be held. Tears came back in full force and effect.

“Could you please ask the large man outside to join me?” she sniffled between sobs.

“Sure. I’ll be back in an hour or so. Hang there.”

Floris came in, unsure of his role in this. He had never been a big talker. “Can I help you with anything, Miss Waters?” he mumbled. He knew where they were, and the state of Louise told him everything.

Louise patted her hand on her bedside, and Floris sat down shyly beside her bed. “Can you hold my hand for a minute and let me cry, Floris?”

“Sure, Miss Waters.” Floris put his giant hand on Louise’s hand and held it awkwardly. Louise closed her eyes, and her body shook while she cried and cried.

The rest of the afternoon and night was a blur. Additional tests, options discussed, and phone calls made. There was one unpleasant situation when Izzy barged in, demanding to talk to Louise, which she rejected, and the nurse had to drag him away. But Louise had gathered some strength from her previous tearful release, determined to set the course of treatment with Dr. Fenshaw and not be distracted by things that were not relevant anymore. Everyone commented on how brave she was, but Louise felt that they likely say this to everyone who has received such a diagnosis. An experimental drug on trial was the first option they had decided upon, conducted by the Johns Hopkins cancer center in Baltimore. Phone calls were made, and, through luck and name recognition, Louise was able to enter the trial, pending the outcome of various analyses. It offered a new way of activating the immune system against the cancer; however, the side effects were not yet controlled, so Louise had to stay under hospital observation at all times. It was a gamble between almost total possible cure and losing time. The several weeks of waiting and hoping for the drug to kick in were lost for the other treatment options. Precious time, not to be recovered.

Floris drove her the short way to Bel Air at around nine in the evening. Sleep had come late, and she woke up early around five. The night was cold, so she wrapped herself in a comfy oversize poncho and sat down on the terrace, the early morning city shimmering gold below. She made some notes to herself, a to-do list of things to take care of during her upcoming absence. The doorbell rang, and Louise went to open the door to her lawyer Jane Schuster, who had arrived with two oversize Starbucks cups in her chubby hands. Jane was a bleached blonde with an oversize hairdo and ego; she loved Italian food and looked like it, and was married to and divorced from a Jewish lawyer.

“Thanks for coming so early, but time is of essence, my limo arrives at eight.”

“Honey, you are the client. And you are paying me well. Who did you kill?”

Louise simply motioned toward the seat at her side. “I killed no one, but I might be killed within the next few weeks. I have a blood cancer called AML.”

Jane turned white as a sheet. “You are joking, right?” Then she saw Louise’s serious eyes and determined face. “No, you are not.”

Louise explained her situation—the experimental drug program and the outlook to beat her progressed cancer. “My doctor told me to get my affairs in order, and this is where you come in.”

“Sure, honey, anything you need.”

“Read this please and tell me if it fits the formal frame of a last will. And what we need to do to make it legal.”

Jane put on her reading glasses and started to read. “It’s in your handwriting and you appear to be in a sane state of mind, event after such a devastating diagnosis. So that is a good start. Who are these four people? Family? Your family name is Waters, right?”

“Close. Though I was not born Louise Waters, my birth certificate reads Cherry Louise Charlotte Waterman. I had it legally changed in my early twenties.”

“And the Flint beneficiaries? Ah, your former boyfriend’s kids.”

Louise took the liberty not to answer. “Is it solid? Can I make them beneficiaries of equal terms of my fortune? Three of them are minors.”

“Ages?”

“Between four and fourteen.”

“Sure, no problem. The parents still have guardianship and will be administrators until the kids reach a certain age. That works for you?”

“There is only the father; the mother died a while back.”

“Doesn’t matter—I was just asking about background. He is not a gambler, a druggie, or a crook?”

“No, he is a fine man.” Louise had to swallow and to unclench her hands by force.

“You want to name an executor of the will?”

“Will you do it?”

“For money, I’ll sell my cat to you. It’s a bit morbid having this conversation with a woman in her midthirties and not with a seventy-five widow, though. Just write it down behind your initial provision. I also suggest to ask for a regular audit of the estate by a third party until the kids reach the age of consent. Parents aren’t what they used to be.”

They finished the will. Then Louise called the maid and Floris so that they could witness the signature. Ten to seven. Louise gave Jane a firm handshake. “Thanks, Jane. I won’t forget this.”

Jane looked at Louise. “Good luck. Don’t be a tough dry cookie in this. I see those firm lines around your mouth, trying to hold up. Cry a lot, hug a lot someone you like. My father battled cancer successfully when I was in my teens. You need to be in it for the long haul. There are good days—”

“Bad days, and very bad days. I know. Thanks, Jane. Find your way out; I need to get finished.”

Floris appeared, and Louise nodded. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes, Floris.”

Louise looked around the living room, the room she liked best in the house, extending to the large terrace. Otherwise, the Bel Air estate had never felt like home. The view was the only benefit, and the close distance to the studios. But the house had always been too big for a single occupant. She preferred the Malibu beach house whenever she was able to stay there.

Was this it? She felt an endless sadness. Not because of the possibility that she could die in the coming weeks but because of how fast the time had flown by over the last twenty years, from the second she had stepped out of the Greyhound in downtown LA until today. Twenty years like twenty seconds, every moment frozen in little miniatures in her mind, but in the end pressed together like a stack of cards. She had built a little altar of memorabilia on an old, original Chippendale table in one corner of the room. Tidbits, knickknacks and memories of stand-up comedy gigs, movie shots, run-down apartments, paychecks, friends, and planes and moments of fun, fear, humility, anger, and tears. Dust free but some of it already bleached by light and time. She had thought of taking the whole altar along with her on her journey but the danger of losing pieces was too great.

A last look around, and Louise walked toward the hall, ready to leave, then stopped, and walked back to her memento altar. She gave it a quick glance and picked out the Polaroid of the Malibu house that she had shot during her hunt for a home after the paycheck for her first major role had come in. A reminder of goals to aim for. No goal could be high enough, in ten years from fifty-five dollars to fifteen million. Beating the cancer was the goal. She was back at the beginning with a suitcase and a bad hairdo, a fish out of water, with only wits and the fierce courage to walk on a stage and tell complete strangers about life in the Midwest with sassy conviction and dry humor.

We are back to that, Lou. Back to wits and fierce courage. And a mouth. This time not to crack jokes on stage but to swallow medicine.

Anything else? The Polaroid would do. But no. She briefly hesitated again and then picked up the small toy that Dana had gifted to her the first time Louise had played with her. She put both items into her handbag and left the house without looking back. One way or the other, she wouldn’t come back to this house.

A week before Christmas, Rick got woken up by harbor security long after midnight. He squinted at his alarm watch and fumbled with his smartphone on the nightstand. “Huh?”

“Rick, it’s Smitty from patrol. I got a situation at your shipyard.”

Rick almost corrected him; it was no longer his shipyard, as the banks had taken over. After the first meetings, it had become clear that indeed Chapter Eleven would turn into Chapter Seven, liquidation, as Charles had predicted. But Smitty wouldn’t know that.

“What’s up?”

“There has been a break-in, and I confronted the guy. He is piss drunk and shouting like a madman.”

“Call the police, Smitty, and let them deal with it. Don’t put yourself in danger. There’s not much of value left.”

“Eh, no way, this is Josh Hancock, your client. I call the police, and all hell will break loose . . .”

“Josh Hancock. Jesus, he’s back! You did the right thing, of course. Stay there until I come. Just don’t let him do too much damage, to the yard or to himself. Don’t let him get away, either.”

“That car of his is going nowhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you think he got through the gate?”

“I’ll be right down.”

Rick knocked on Agnes’s door and briefed her about what was going on, then left her bedroom door open so that she could sleep with an ear open. He then drove to the shipyard. Josh’s beautiful old Porsche was a crumpled piece of metal, entangled with the remains of the gate fence. The car had no airbags and other security features, and Rick wondered how Josh had survived the crash. Smitty was leaning against the gatepost, smoking a cigarette.

Josh’s voice could be heard from somewhere behind the
Vera
. “Such lovely leewardings! They must lead somewhere—to something else than common land, more palmy than the palms . . .”

Rick shook his head. “What is he shouting?”

“Melville,” Smitty said.

“Come again?”

“Leeward! The white whale goes that way; look to windward, then; the better if the bitterer quarter,” Josh continued, shouting over the water.

“I think it’s from
Moby Dick
.” Smitty shrugged, and when Rick raised his eyebrow he explained, “Always liked books about the sea. C. S. Forester, Melville, Hemingway.”

“Good that one of us reads books,” Rick said. “Thanks. I’ll take it from here. Do your rounds. And could I ask you to keep this out of the log?”

“Sure thing, Rick,” Smitty said and walked back to his Segway to continue guarding the rest of the yacht harbor.

“But good-bye, good-bye, old masthead!” Josh sang out from behind the
Vera
.

Rick peered around the corner. Josh was standing close to the bow of the dark ship, a liquor bottle in hand, taking a swig. Only his outline could be seen; there was not enough light for anything else.

“Hey, Josh, it’s me.”

“Ishmael, is that you?” Josh looked around, confused, with apparent difficulty focusing his eyes in the hard shadows of the sodium light coming over from the street. He seemed to be completely out of it.

“No, it’s Rick. Rick Flint. Long time no see, Josh. What brings you here?”

“It’s memories that I’m stealing,” Josh sang. “Oh, but you’re innocent when you dream . . .” He tried a little tap dance and Joe Cocker air-guitar jerks, almost falling flat on his face, but caught himself at the last second.

Tom Waits. Now here is a man who knows his classics, thought Rick.

“Want company?”

“Rick, that
is
you. Not hallucinating, all these bugs crawling under my skin and all those memories that I am dreaming . . .”

“Yeah, it’s me. Come with me—we’ll get a coffee somewhere.”

“No, I want to stay here. This is my boat. This was my boat. All those memories. All those plans.”

“Josh, it has been your boat for less than a year. Your memories are different ones.”

Josh looked at Rick with glassy eyes. “All gone. What would I have done to sail this boat!”

“You’ll get on your feet, make a few millions again, and then you can pay them to me to build it for you. I completed the plans shortly before we went bankrupt, Josh. Even with this piece of cursed wood gone for good, you’ll be able to rebuild it from scratch.”

“It’s memories that I’m stealing, but you’re innocent when you dream, when you dream . . .” Josh sang with a mournful voice. “Tom Waits sounds good while drunk, right?”

Rick gave up and sat down on the bench beside the workshop and watched Josh’s last performance. And what a performance it was. The actor, in his prime but broken, started reciting Melville again, hesitating at first, but then building up, his best stage voice, booming through the night. It was impressive and depressing at the same time, and Rick felt a sadness coming over him.
That could be me, Bella! That could be me, drunken, in self-pity and self-delusions. But you up there, guarding me, and the kids kept me sane.

Josh stopped, as if in midthought, looked around. The bottle was a good idea once more, and then he walked slowly over to Rick and sat beside him. He offered the bottle, and Rick thought,
Why not, it’s my shipyard going to hell, too,
and took a swig. He rarely drank hard spirits, and the mouthful burned in his throat and made his eyes water, the alcohol hitting him instantly.