Sex and Violence in Hollywood (22 page)

Adam stopped and leaned against a wall. His face glistened with sweat. He whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Jesus Christ, Adam, you look like shit,” Carter said. “Are you sick? You’re shaking. You look like Don Knotts in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just don’t hurl, okay?”

“I’m serious, Carter, I don’t know if I can do this. My body won’t let me.”

“Hey, I’m with your body. As Winston Churchill said to Groucho Marx, this is some seriously stupid shit. Close range? A shotgun? He’s not comin’ outta that coma. You’re gonna get yourself arrested doing this. Just don’t do it and tell Rain you did.”

“She’d find out. She’d—”

The doors opened and spit out two uniformed police officers. Adam and Carter froze in place. Statues with panicked expressions.

One officer spoke while the other chuckled and nodded his head agreeably. They walked by without giving Adam and Carter a glance.

Adam coughed to find his voice. “I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” he said.

“Me, too,” Carter said, nodding.

Flopping onto a bench outside the hospital, Adam said, “I can’t live like this. And if I don’t go in there and do this thing...this is exactly how I’m going to live. Petrified. All the time.”

Carter paced in front of Adam a moment, cursed under his breath. He stopped and said, “Okay, but let’s do it before I change my mind and get the hell out of here.”

Adam stood and they went into the hospital.

NINETEEN

The Intensive Care Unit
in LAC/USC Medical Center was on the third floor. Adam stopped in front of the double doors and looked around, as Carter walked on. There was no telephone outside the doors. Each door had a small, square window in the top, which gave limited views of the corridor on the other side, part of a nurses’ station. The doors had no knobs or handles on the outside.

Carter came back and whispered, “You think if we both stand here and stare at these doors like a couple methadone patients, we’ll be less conspicuous?”

Adam crossed the corridor and leaned his back against the wall. His ears rang like church bells and his stomach burned like Hell. Legs shook visibly as he leaned against the wall, no matter how hard he willed them to stop. One question repeated itself in his head: Can I do this?

He did not think he could. Killing his dad was one thing. But taking someone’s life with his bare hands was very different. Pressing the pillow down with his hands. Holding it there until whatever life remained had left Monty’s body. It made Adam’s upper lip curl into a nauseated sneer.

“Let’s go in here,” Carter said. He stepped through an open doorway just inches to Adam’s right. The plastic rectangular sign against which Adam had been leaning his head read,
WAITING ROOM.

The waiting room contained one sofa, fifteen or twenty chairs, and a few end tables scattered with magazines. A television mounted up on the wall was tuned to Court TV. A water cooler and large chrome coffee percolator stood in the corner. Posters of kittens and puppies and sunsets offered pearls of treacle. Some plants by the windows, two shelves of magazines and paperbacks. A phone on the wall with no keypad or dial. Everything smelled of pine scented cleaner.

Adam and Carter looked from the phone to each other.

“Maybe that’s it,” Adam whispered.

Carter nodded. “I want some coffee.”

They went to the corner and each grabbed a Styrofoam cup from a stack beside the percolator.

A young man and woman sat on the sofa. He was thin and fragile-looking, with mocha skin, a narrow, angular face, close-cropped hair. Puffy eyes, moist cheeks. He had been crying. The young woman looked like she had been sleeping, or had not gotten enough sleep. She was black, too, but much darker. Her hair went in all directions, and her heavy-lidded eyes stared blankly at nothing.

Adam tried not to stare, but she was familiar. It was a gnawing, worrisome familiarity. He took his black coffee to a chair, sat down and tried to get comfortable.

An old woman sat in a chair reading a book, oblivious to everyone else in the room.

Two middle-aged women sat together, crocheting and talking. One of them was talking, anyway. A morbidly obese woman with glasses, large brown hair, and too much lipstick. Probably in her mid-fifties. She wore a muumuu that swirled with muted earth tones. Her voice was a pulsing hum of background noise about her sister-in-law’s gall bladder and her cousin’s arthritis.

A man in his forties, balding, chunky, in jeans and a blue short-sleeved shirt, fidgeted in a chair. As Carter took a seat, the man got up and walked to the window, where he stood and stared at the swirl of earth tones in the air.

The room was filled with tension. Adam wondered if it was just his own, or came with the territory.

“You okay?” Carter said.

“No. I’ll never be okay again.”

“Oh, cut it out. I’m not exactly enjoying this, you know.”

“You don’t have to do it.”

“Neither do you.”

“Now you cut it out.”

On the sofa, the young man turned to his dull-eyed companion and said in a trembling voice, “I don’t know how much longer I can wait. What time did she go in there?”

“I dunno,” the young woman said in a low monotone.

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t let me in to see her.”

“Family only”

“I know, but, Jesus!” He began to cry again, until his gaze fell on Adam and Carter, who watched him carefully. “What’re you staring at?” he snapped.

Adam and Carter shrank in their chairs. They had not meant to be rude. Their stares had been absent-minded.

Adam blurted, “Bluuhhh, nothing!”

“Sorry, really,” Carter said.

Adam’s eyes moved to the black girl. Why did she look so familiar?

“What do you want to do?” Carter whispered.

“Go home.”

“Fine with me.”

Adam leaned forward, put an elbow on his thighs and held his head in one hand. Thought awhile. He sat up suddenly, put his coffee on a nearby table and whispered, “Okay, we need to find out if that’s the phone we’re supposed to use.”

Carter put on a smile and said, “’Scuse me, um...ma’am?”

The chattering woman in the muumuu turned to Carter. “Yes, hon?”

“Sorry to interrupt, but my friend and I were wondering—” He pointed at the telephone. “—do we have to call ahead on that phone before they’ll let us in?”

“No, you can just walk right in, who you here to see?” Her bright red lips continued to smile as she let her crocheting rest in her ample lap.

“Uuuhhh—”

“A friend,” Adam said.

The woman waved a hand, waggled her fingers. “Oh, they won’t let you in, then, you gotta be family, friends don’t count, not in I.C.U., you want I can call and see how your friend is, they know me in there, what’s your friend’s name?” The woman set her crocheting in the chair beside her with her purse. She was about to heave herself to her feet when Adam and Carter said loudly and at the exact same instant, “No!”

They startled her, and she dropped back into her seat. It startled everyone in the room, and all eyes were on them. Even the empty stare of the strangely familiar black girl.

The woman said, “Okay, you don’t have to shout, I just thought I could help, ’cause I been here almost two weeks and all the nurses know me, so, you know...”

“Thank you,” Carter said with a Boy Scout grin. “I really appreciate it. See, it’s my friend, his brother.” He pointed a thumb at Adam. “So he’ll be going in to see him.”

She resumed her crocheting, thick fingers moving delicately. “Oh, well, that’s nice, what’s wrong with your brother, honey? You know, my husband had an embolism in his head and had to have a brain operation, and he’s been in there ever since—” A nod toward the door. “—and it happened the day we were supposed to leave for Florida, gonna go see all them amusement parks, you know, but soon as we got to the airport, boom, he hit the floor, out like a light, and from what the doctor says, we probably won’t be getting any vacation, not this year, anyway, dammit all to heck and back, we planned that vacation for years, now that the kids are all gone, the honeymoon we never had, you know, but nope, not to be, not to be, just like the new refrigerator, not to be.” She shook her head and sighed.

Adam found the sigh to be the most amazing part of her monologue. Amazing because she had enough breath left to give life to a sigh.

“With my luck, I’ll end up taking care of him for the rest of our lives, not that I haven’t been doing that already for thirty-two years, but this would be everything, the doctor said he may be a vegetable, and I just don’t know what I’d do if that was the case, but I know one thing, Peggy, honey, you’d have to be my regular date—”

Peggy laughed a high, girlish laugh.

“—’cause I know I’d have to keep bowling, sweetie, you know I couldn’t live without my nights at the lanes—”

She went on. Adam took sneaky looks at the black girl whenever he had the chance. He had seen her before. She sat slumped low on the sofa.

Holy shit! Adam thought when he recognized her. He turned to Carter and whispered, “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Never mind, let’s go.” Adam stood and pulled on Carter’s arm until he stood, too, and put down his coffee. As they made their way to the door, Adam tried not to hurry but was unable to walk at a normal pace. He got through the door first. Carter was not so lucky.

“Hey, if you boys are gonna be around for a while, you be sure and let me know if there’s something I can do to help, you hear, just speak up, my name’s Angie and this is my friend Peggy, here, and I know how lonely it can get waiting in a place like this, I’d probably go crazy if it weren’t for Peggy, here, and—”

Carter backed out slowly, a grin frozen on his face. She was still talking when he finally got out of the room.

They walked down the corridor, trying to look casual. Adam walked as if something very cold were moving around in his shorts.

“Jeez, look at you,” Carter said. “You look like Don Knotts in Spartacus.”

“I recognized that girl,” Adam whispered.

“Back there?”

“Yeah. She was at Monty’s party.”

Carter was not very concerned. “You’re sure?”

“Positive. She was on the sofa and she threw up, and a girl—”

“Some chick was vacuuming her carpet while a few guys watched?”

Adam nodded. “She had a syringe in her hand.”

“Yeah, I saw her. Why did you want to get out of there so fast?”

“She could identify us!”

“Adam, that girl couldn’t identify her own reflection in a mirror last night.”

“What about the guy?” Adam said. “He doesn’t look familiar, but he could’ve been there. What am I saying? Look how upset he was, of course he was there, he’s obviously a friend of Monty’s. Maybe they’re lovers. Rain said he goes both ways. That guy in the waiting room was there and he could’ve seen us.”

“Hey. Oliver Stone. You need to double your dosage, you know what I mean?”

Adam groaned and scrubbed his hands over his face. They stopped walking and he leaned against the wall beside an abandoned gurney.

“C’mon, Adam, are you gonna do this, or not?” Carter said. “Because no offense, but I could be home working on my impaled eyeball.”

Carter was right. Adam had to do it, get it over with. He took a few deep breaths, clenched his jaw, his fists. Pressed the sole of his right sneaker against the wall and launched himself with a strong push. Walked briskly but clumsily down the hall as his legs continued to rebel. Carter was right behind him.

“Go to the car,” Adam said. “If I’m not down there in fifteen minutes, get the hell out of here.”

“Who’re you, Tom Hanks? You’re not storming Omaha Beach, you know. If it doesn’t look like a sure thing, then just get your ass outta there, Adam, I’m serious.”

“Just do what I said,” Adam said. A second later, he turned sharply to the right, toward the I.C.U. entrance.

TWENTY

Adam raised both hands,
palm out, to push the doors inward/ but held them close to his chest. The doors burst open and the edge of one landed in the center of his forehead. He stumbled backward as a large young woman with blonde hair and a round face emerged from between the doors. A roll of lazy flesh lolled like a tongue between her pink tube top and denim cutoffs, both of which were too small for her.

The woman gave Adam a sturdy shove and he slammed against the wall. She released a long, ululalating wail as she rushed into the waiting room, which suddenly filled with activity and loud, emotional voices.

“Shit, man, are you okay?” Carter asked.

“No. I’m gonna pass out.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, shaking his head firmly. He put a hand on Adam’s shoulder and guided him back into the waiting room. “Come sit down and—”

“Carter, I’m gonna pass out.”