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Chelsea

Michael Summerleigh

Part One - Chelsea Mourning

1.

    He walked every day. Had to. His doctor said.
    “You’re gonna die if you don’t, Charlie...so bundle up in the winter and strip down in the summer but don’t stop walking because it’s the only way your heart is gonna keep ticking. And stop drinking, for god’s sakes! I know you have no idea how t’deal with the world but there are people out there who love you Charlie...and they’re happy to drink with you but not one of them is booking passage on the same Titanic you’re on, so cut yourself some slack and spare us a fucking funeral!”
    So he walked. Every day. Down Riverside Drive and up West End Avenue from wherever he happened to turn left to go home...rain or shine...no icebergs but always the threat of one looming up somewhere in the vast frozen Atlantic Ocean of his life...
    He wasn’t writing anymore...hadn’t been able to put a sentence much less a paragraph together since the day he’d walked out of the hospital...months ago...still sleepless and haunted by the latest four-hour sojourn to black empty nothingness while the surgeons bought him some time...
    Chelsea was a name he learned later...but on the day he met her she was hunched over the passenger door of a late-model Lexus, armed with a coat hanger and an attitude ...trying desperately to fuck her life up a little bit more than it had been when she woke up that morning.
    He said, “Stop it. C’mon I’m standing right here. Whatever it is you were hoping to accomplish without witnesses is now a memory.”
    She said, “Piss off old man or I’ll kick your ass.”
    And he said, “Knock yourself out little girl, I been waiting a long time for an offer like that.”
    She stepped away from the car threw down the coat hanger and took his breath away. There wasn’t enough mascara in the world to darken the blue sky in her eyes... nowhere near enough black hair dye to disguise the pale Spanish galleon gold in her roots, or lip gloss in any colour that could cover the pout and the glory of her mouth. Charlie remembered growing up thinking Marilyn Monroe had been too heartbreakingly delicious to be human. This one made Marilyn seem ordinary.
    She flipped him the finger and said “Fuck you...” before she walked away... chains and dirty denim and a threadbare patch on her ass showing pale flesh that flexed with muscle every other step...

***

    He saw her again about a week later...on Broadway near the Barnes & Noble...hanging with her friends. He recognised her from a block away and for a second or two he was certain she had seen him.
    And it went on like that for most of the summer. Granted the extent of his grazing ground was limited by the shortcomings of his damaged heart muscles, but suddenly it seemed like she was pretty much everywhere...that they were a pair of pinballs from two separate games bouncing up against one another constantly. She became a regular background cast member in the ongoing soft-soap opera of Charlie’s life, and when he thought about her — which was way too often...and with a clarity of detail he normally reserved for the ravenously emancipated heroines in his novels – it was with such a hurricane of conflicting emotions that he usually had to find a place to sit down until the storm clouds had gone.

2.

    One day in October the three-plus blocks to the park turned out to be a bit more than he’d bargained for, so he camped on a bench on the West Drive...watched the leaves dancing across Strawberry Fields...turned his face up to the sun let his nose catch the crisp musty smell of them...and saw her out of the corner of his eye...the same tattered black jeans, a hoodie sweatshirt under the same tattered black denim jacket she had her spiky-haired head down and seemed intent on rushing headlong into some new disaster. He said Hi and her head snapped up he saw recognition in the impossible blue eyes. She stopped three or four paces away facing him hands in the pockets of her jeans...
    “What the fuck d’you want...and why’re you following me everywhere I fuckin’ go there you are...”
    “I’m not following you,” he said, shaking his head. “We just seem to be ending up in all the same places.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “No it’s not bullshit. Besides...I could never keep up with you. You move too fast.”
    “You’re not that old. You’re like maybe fifty or something...”
    “Tell that to my heart.”
    He tapped his chest where his heart was and felt it bump and flutter as a gust of wind ruffled her hair...rippled it like a wheat field in midnight she tilted her head and sunlight caught something silver dangling from her left ear.
    “What’re you staring at?”
    He didn’t realise he’d been staring...or that it would be so obvious...
    “You. It’s rude and insulting and you’re young and very pretty and most men just can’t not stare...no matter how old they are. I’m sorry.”
    She seemed unfamiliar with apologies...or honest lechery...
    “Is your heart really fucked up?”
    “In spades.”
    “And they can’t fix it?”
    “Not any more...not without some serious shit that would just as likely kill me as cure me.”
    “Well that sucks.”
    Charlie nodded. “It surely does. Worse than that...I have to depend on blind chance to keep bumping into you.”
    Something hard and cold and empty swept over her face...
    “Now you’re gonna offer me a joint,” she said softly. “Maybe invite me home t’see your fuckin’ etchings...?”
    She whispered the words venomously. Angry. He shook his head.
    “No...why would...hey! you think I’m hitting on you? I may not be that old, but I’m old enough not to be an idiot.”
    “So what is this...and bumping into me...what’s that supposed t’mean?”
    Charlie listened to her throwing his own words back at him, forcing him to take stock of what he actually had said...not words on a page to create a frame of mind or emotion for one of his characters...
    He said, “I like looking at you...”
    Very slowly...
    “You’re a fuckin’ sicko—!”
    “Let me finish sorting this out okay...?”
    She folded her arms across her chest...not defensively...waiting for him...
    scornful...he went searching for what he wanted to say...carefully...he realised he was desperate not to offend her.
    “Y’know how you are when you listen to music that you really like...you turn it up...or play the song over and over again? It makes you feel good...delights you...you want to keep on feeling that way...
    “I don’t participate that much anymore...not physically...so my sense of smell...eyesight...hearing...I soak up pleasure through them...”
    “So what you’re saying is you’re not gettin’ laid and you wanna watch.”
    She sneered at him, which suddenly was perfectly acceptable because it wasn’t what he was saying at all.
    “What I’m saying is that I think you’re lovely, okay...my heart almost stopped when you looked up at me from that Lexus...and from that moment on I kept seeing your face in my mind...kept trying to soak up everything about it that I found so lovely...like just now when you curled your lip at me for being a pervert...it was wonderful...it added a new totally different dimension of loveliness to your face.”
    He saw a change in the loveliness...a slight softening of the attitude...like the words had sunk in and somehow had managed to convey to her the essence of fascination ...his own...anyone’s...as if he had somehow described something she herself knew very well.
    “My name is Charlie,” he said, holding out his right hand. “Charlie Stinson.”
    He watched himself become someone else in her eyes...cautiously weighed and measured...in some mysterious way grudgingly accepted. And then she said:
    “I’m Chelsea...”
    In a different tone of voice than before she reached to shake his hand still keeping a bit of distance between them. He asked her if she was hungry because he was starving and she showed him how beautiful she could be when she was caught off-guard so casually and puzzled in the bargain.
    “Are you asking me out on a date?”
    Charlie hazarded a grin. “Hell no. I’m forty-seven...”
    And a theatrical sigh.
    “Thirty years too old to be asking you out on a date.”
    “Thirty-two years too old,” she corrected him.
    “You’re fift—”
    “Yeah,” she said. “So just behave yourself, okay.”

***

    It took a while to get there...she constantly had to stop and wait for him...or backtrack a dozen paces whenever she forgot.
    “Don’t be racin’ any fuckin’ turtles, Charlie.”
    Eventually they stopped in front of the Arte Café on 73rd where Charlie had been a regular since his first best-seller. She said she didn’t have any money for a place like that; he told her not to worry he had plenty and dinner was on him. Then they went inside and he said hello to everybody and watched their eyes follow the fifteen-year old Goth girl to his table beside the fireplace...stripping off her jacket and hoodie along the way and plunking herself into a chair as if the ragged Metallica t-shirt she had on under them was an ATM or Alex Wang. Charlie followed her following the hostess and would happily have done that for the rest of the evening.
    “They know you here,” she said, looking around as if they’d landed on an alien planet.
    “I live close by. The food’s pretty good and there’s usually somebody around can take me home if I have too much to drink.”
    He ordered a Maker’s Mark neat with water on the side. Chelsea ordered a Coke, glared at him when he winced.
    “What?!?!”
    “That stuff is no good for you.”
    “Oh like whatever it was you ordered is?”
    The firelight danced across her face...turned her bronze and gold while the warmth baked the chill out of their bones and crept into the way her voice sounded when she spoke to him.
    She smiled...pretending to be at ease...dazzling...Charlie sipped his bourbon and felt sleepy...happy... bathed in the heat and soaking up the luxury of nearness to her... drinking in the way she drank Coca Cola through a straw...how her blue eyes blazed green in yellow firelight...
    “Shouldn’t you call somebody...let them know you’re—”
    “Havin’ supper with my grandfather?” she said not unkindly, and then all the warmth fled from her. “I don’t go home if I don’t have to.”
    Charlie didn’t say anything. A lot of it was selfish he didn’t want to piss her off by pushing...prying into things she didn’t want to talk about...but suddenly she seemed vulnerable where before she’d had the armour of her attitude...and like everything else about her it was another facet of what she was and he knew he was hopelessly infatuated ...that she could blow her nose into no-name toilet paper and he would hang on every moment of it and then go out and buy the toilet paper in case she ran out.
    He said, “Okay let’s have dinner then...anything you want is okay.”
    “What’ve they got?”
    “That’s what the menu is for,” nodding towards hers.
    She picked up the parchment folder...opened it...
    “What is this...Italian...can I have pizza?”
    “Anything...whattaya want on it...?”
    “Pepperoni and onions and mushrooms.”
    “Done...”
    He ordered a large pizza with pepperoni and onions and mushrooms along with some deep-fried mozzarella sticks and a dinner-size salad for himself.
    “That’s all you’re gonna have?”
    “I might have another couple of these,” he said, nodding at his whisky glass. “Is it all right if I steal some of your stuff?”
    “Shit...you can have whatever you want Charlie it’s your fuckin’ money.”
    As it turned out Charlie mostly just drank bourbon...picked at his salad and watched her eat...gently disengaging slices of pepperoni with (surprisingly clean) fingernails devoid of any kind of polish she left the mushrooms and onions to be neatly disposed of with the rest of the pizza...knife and fork cutting small mouthfuls she ate two slices and trimmed the crusts...
    “I feed the pigeons...can I have the rest of this t’take with me?”
    He nodded. She excused herself to go to the restroom while his salad and the pizza got boxed up...took her jacket with her and was gone just long enough for him to start conjuring images of her sneaking out a back window never to be seen again. He was waiting for the credit card tab when she came back, picked up her pizza box and said:
    “I gotta take off Charlie. Thanks for supper I’ll see ya okay...”
    And she was gone before he had a chance to make a fool of himself with stupid questions like when will I see you again or have you got someplace to stay tonight... signed his card receipt and nearly missed the folded rectangle of almost-card stock paper she had left on her chair...ragged along one edge...torn from a small spiral notebook...he checked the perspective on it and realised the pencil sketch had been drawn from the door of the restroom...
    He thought the person she had drawn looked old and a little bit lost...paid cash for another bourbon and took a cab home.

3.

    “You didn’t tell me you were famous...”
    She scared the crap out of him...roaring up behind him on Broadway just round the corner from Beacon Wines & Spirits he almost dropped his brand new bottle of Maker’s Mark. She was wearing the same sloppy denim gear from dinner three days before... somehow still managed to seem fresh and bouncy attractive even with the safety-pin that had replaced the silver dangle in her left ear.
    “Jesus don’t do that!”
    “I forgot I’m sorry,” she said, falling into slow motion beside him.
    “I write cheesy soft-porn romances disguised as contemporary thrillers. That’s not famous...it’s something else...”
    “Well known then. You got a whole shelf t’yerself at the B&N.”
    “That’s because I live in the neighbourhood. Other stores hide my books in the back.”
    “I read a little bit from one of ‘em...you got a thing for boomers, dontcha?”
    “Baby-boomers?”
    “No Charlie...big zzz-oomers...”
    “So I’m an American male Chelsea...sue me...”
    She wiggled her front at him and grinned. He could feel himself going red.
    “So how are ya?”
    “Same as most days, thanks for asking...and thank you for the drawing. You didn’t tell me you were an artist.”
    “I just doodle...it gives me somethin’ t’do in class...”
    “Then you doodle pretty damn good. I thought it was somebody else until it occurred t’me it was so much me that I didn’t recognise myself. Are you feelin’ okay today?”
    “Huh?”
    “I haven’t heard too many four-letter words yet I thought you might be under the weather.”
    “Fuck you Charlie.”
    “That’s better.”
    He smiled just in case it had been a serious fuck you...let her know he was just teasing...astonished to find himself trying to be charming they walked most of a block in the silence of traffic noise...other people having conversations in passing...occasional blindness when the afternoon sun ducked past a building on the west side of the street and smacked them in the eyes.
    “What’re you doin’ today?”
    “Just walking, Chelsea...couple of times a day...”
    “Takin’ a break from the boomers,” she said knowingly...jammed her hands into the front pockets of her jeans...sideways glancing to see if he’d risen to the bait.
    Charlie shook his head. “I been takin’ a break for almost a year now,” he said coldly. “People say major surgery of any kind is a big thing...a game-changer...I guess they’re right. I was sort of hoping I’d’ve gotten used to it by now.”
    He held up four fingers in answer to her unspoken how many times. She said Shit under her breath, hop-skipped into slower motion beside him.
    “Charlie could we get somethin’ to eat? We don’t haveta go to a real restaurant or anything...”
    It became a ritual. Early on he entertained the almost-certainty she was sponging off him. Early on he knew he didn’t care...that if she wanted to play him he was more than willing to be played.
    As time went by he became familiar with her moods and habits whenever she was with him...the quirks of behaviour that made her physical beauty truly interesting...the times when she was troubled by something and would get angry over what he felt was not even the slightest of provocation...glower at him from across the table...
    And the other times when she forgot to put the chip on her shoulder...allowed herself to be a fifteen-year old... enthusiastic... inquisitive... they’d walk outdoors if it wasn’t too cold... go to an afternoon movie...sit somewhere for snacks she’d trot out a sketchbook and he’d sit quietly... amazed that she required only a few lines to capture the essence of a winter sparrow feasting on a cast-off McDonalds french fry...the momentary scowl of someone across the room that seemed to encompass the entirety of a personality ... he watched her...drank in every nuance of what she said and what she did and realised that for him, the only unrest in what passed as their relationship was the feeling that she was like a chapter in someone else’s fictional account of his life... that her visits always had to end... and there was always a distinct hole in the plot until the next time she appeared in the story-line.

***

    It changed on the day he found the photographs. Spring and a new summer had been in their own way...for him...idyllic...the happiest days of his life. They went to the zoo and commiserated on how fucked up the world must be if the only way you could keep animals alive was to put them in prison. Went to art galleries...the Museum of Natural History where they were seconds away from calling 911 for him after she looked up at the T-Rex skeleton and totally deadpan said Holy shit he was a big motherfucker! with the entirety of a second grade class from a Catholic school standing nearby...nuns included...
    They had breakfast for supper at the diner in the Beacon Hotel and after she asked him if she could crash at his place...if he had room...as she took off her jacket one of the sketchbooks fell out onto his living room floor and a handful of photographs fell out of the sketchbook he knelt to pick them up...felt his heart doing things it shouldn’t do... “Chelsea...what are these...?”
    And she looked at him horrified...and then like it was something she had to be ashamed of...and she screamed at him...
    “Whattayou think they are Charlie? They’re photographs. I was ten years old when my mother disappeared and right after that my father started fucking me and he took pictures so I could show ‘em t’my fucking grandchildren. I stole them why the fuck are you lookin’ at my stuff anyway just because you let me crash here doesn’t mean you get t’do that...”
    She flung the sketchbook and photographs at him...stormed across his living room and spent five minutes cursing and crying as she undid the deadbolts and stumbled herself out past the door.
    She was gone for two month’s-worth of the most miserable chapters in the story of his life...

4.

    ...Until he found her again, one day in October sitting on a bench on the West Drive in Central Park watching leaves dance across Strawberry Fields he said:
    “Hi Chelsea.”
    She looked up at him and took his breath away all over again said:
    “Hi Charlie.”
    “Can I sit down?”
    “I think you fuckin’ better, Buckwheat. You look like shit.”
    “Well if it’s any consolation to you I feel like shit too.”
    “Are we guilt-tripping now?”
    “No. I worried about you. And I missed you....”
    “I’ve had some strange stuff goin’ on in my life, Charlie. You wouldn’t happen t’know about any of it, wouldya...?”
    He was cold. Felt like he had shrunk in on himself half size normal there on the bench beside her.
    “I gave those photographs to a friend of mine, Chelsea. I told him I needed to have something fixed and I really didn’t give a fuck how it got done. And I then gave him a pile of money t’make sure it did...”
    He’d seen startled on her face before...but not that kind of startled...
    “My friend made copies of the photographs and they went to a friend of one of his friends...someone you’ll never meet and who will never meet you...and this guy somehow managed to bump into the sonofabitch in the photographs...showed him the copies...explained to him that if he ever had anything to do with the little girl in those photographs ever again...ever again...then he could expect some serious shit to enter his life and probably end it for him...
    “It’s also possible that this guy...this friend of a friend of my friend...may have beaten the crap out of this sonofabitch...just t’make sure he was paying attention...”
    A gust of wind swirled around them...leaves crackled between them trying to escape... the wind...and she turned to look at him sitting beside her...
    “Why’re you crying Charlie?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Paradise Lost...?”
    She put her hands down between her knees, stared at her feet...he realised she had always worn sneakers...black...low-slung...hardly anything that qualified at all as footwear probably cost a half million dollars a pair if you bought them new...
    “That would be the reason he was dumpin’ painkillers...and why he threw my ass out and told me never t’come back...”
    She stared out into the sunset beyond the Strawberry Fields...out past Columbus Av and Amsterdam and the West Side Drive...the Hudson River and the Palisades... whispered:
    “Imagine.”
    And he hugged himself harder trying to do just that...
    “I’ve read shit...he was like a real nut case sometimes...”
    Charlie nodded. “I guess we all got baggage.”
    She said, “Yeah...but if we all imagined at the same time and suddenly the world was fuckin’ rosy...who would be the crazy people then, Charlie...?”
    He said, “That’s probably the best goddamn question I’ve heard in all the years since that asshole shot him... “
    “I gotta sort things out.”
    “Will you promise t’be careful...and not do anything really stupid...?”
    “I promise, Charlie.”
    “Okay then.”
    He pulled a small notebook from the inner pocket of his coat and wrote an address on one of the blank pages.
    “This is where I live. The doorman’s name is Jeremiah Stokes...he’s a good gentle man... and if you show him this piece of paper and tell him I gave it to you he’ll make sure you get upstairs off the street.”
    She looked at it for a second... folded it up... scrunched it into one of the front pockets of her jeans... the black ones...a year more threadbare than when he’d first met her...
    “‘Kay thanks Charlie. I’ll find you again soon...I promise that too...”
    She kissed him fast on the cheek and he almost froze to death watching where she’d run away north on West Drive...long after the sun had gone down...

5.

    A week later he got home from a sit-down with his pissed-off-as-usual cardiologist and she was sitting on the floor in the hallway in front of his door, surrounded by a small mountain of boxes and sketchbooks and a gym bag full of clothing. She wouldn’t look at him... mumbled hello... ruefully asked if she could borrow twenty dollars so she could give it back to the doorman.
    “...I didn’t know the cab would be so expensive. I was out on the sidewalk with this guy givin’ me all sorts of shit ready t’call the cops on me. Mister Stokes came out t’see what was goin’ on and I showed him that piece of paper you gave me. He just paid the guy, apologised for the misunderstanding said he should’ve been outside when I arrived. And then he helped me bring all my shit up here...”
    Charlie smiled. Began the process of unlocking his door before he took off his coat, poured a bourbon, and watched as she moved all her stuff in from the hallway. She sat down on the sofa across from him in the big overstuffed armchair, looked down at five twenties and a set of keys on the coffee table and whispered something that might have been thank you Charlie he said:
    “Tonight you gotta sleep on that couch, but tomorrow I’ll get somebody in to air out the extra bedroom for you. It’s the first door on the left and it’s got its own bathroom. If you need or want anything just tell me okay? And don’t ever think like you’re taking advantage of me because I know you won’t...or that you’re gonna owe me, because that is bullshit.
    “If it’s what you want, you live here now. This is your place too. Just promise me you’ll finish school the best you can...and don’t let your weird friends fuck with my record collection. Have we got a deal?”
    She nodded.
    “Are you hungry?”
    “Charlie I’m fuckin’ starvin’...”
    She looked up and smiled like a ten-year old. Sunshine on a cloudy day...

6.

    He didn’t have another doctor’s appointment for four weeks so he made mac & cheese with bacon and all-beef Kosher hot dogs for dinner. She said it was one of her favourites when she was a kid, but she had to have milk with it so he sent her down to the West Side Market on Broadway with instructions to put whatever she bought on his account.
    After dinner she tried green tea and he had bourbon and he played old Joni Mitchell records for her...some Styx and Neil Young before the grunge...and later on Beethoven ... the Ninth...and Chelsea had never heard anything but snatches of it before...in the middle of the Ode to Joy she suddenly curled up on the couch and started sobbing...put her hands out front of her to warn him away when he instinctively stood up...
    When it was over there wasn’t enough silence to hold them. He got sheets and pillows for her while she took a shower... turned his head away when she came out of the bathroom in a long t-shirt... toweling her hair he noticed there wasn’t as much black as there used to be... went down the hallway to his bedroom and stared at nothing until he saw the sliver of light in the hallway go dark... got out of bed and padded back into the living room... stood over her for a while listening to his heart pound and her breathing watching her sleep he leaned over... kissed her forehead... said G’night Chelsea and went back to bed...
    Stared up at the ceiling and imagined the digital clock ticking away seconds and minutes of his life until he started to drowse...drifting off into sleep he thought he heard his door open felt another presence in the room...his bedsheets moving over him...then her hands...it had been so long...and it was so wrong he said:
    “Chelsea...”
    And she said “Shut up Charlie,” so very gently. “You just shut the fuck up...” before she put her arms around him and her head down on his chest...

***

    He slept in...forgot his life had been radically altered... remembered... looked around his bedroom and listened...put on some pyjama bottoms and went exploring... found a note beside the sink... I had t’go to school...the muffins didn’t turn out so good...see ya later...with a heart at the end...
    He found things that resembled blueberry muffins in the trash bin...

***

    He started taking his walks early in the day so he would be home when she got home... found out what she liked to eat and started learning how to cook other stuff... real food... instead of going out for dinner all the time though mondo mac & cheese was once a month no fail...
    Every now and again she would give him advance notice of a punker invasion...friends coming to visit he gave her lots of her own space until she insisted on inviting him into it, introducing some of her friends who turned out not to be too much of a trial except for the times when they ragged him over some of the albums in his collection.
    “...Karen Carpenter...?!?!?!?!”
    Charlie told that one to Fuck off she was a damn good drummer and good at what she was doing at least you could tell if it was good or bad, as opposed to whatever it is the drummer in Drunk Pussy Hotpants thinks he’s doing...”
    Chelsea laughed herself sick.
    He kissed her forehead goodnight almost every night...

***

    ...And after a while stopped feeling guilty. He loved her. Would do anything for her.
    Her bedroom began to resemble his idea of what a teenage girl’s bedroom ought to look like, with some of the dark stuff giving way to teddy bears as she got comfortable... walls covered in posters... her pencil sketches and then water-colours. As they got comfortable with what they had she could spend hours looking at his books... making fun of the ones he had written and feeling bad after...asking which ones were really worth her time to read, she trusted his judgments entirely...
    On the weekends she rambled...partied with her friends...brought them home...or not...
    School nights after homework and dinner they watched videos... classic movies... listened to his records he never stopped being totally hypnotized by the play of her emotions...how they became more and more spontaneous as her daily life became less and less threatening... an easy routine that took what had gone on before and gradually let it become transformed into a something with blurry edges.
    In the dark he tried not to think too much...rationalised as much of it as he could on any given day...she didn’t seem to mind...he finally stopped staring into nothingness for most of the night...got to rest...sleep...dream...

7.

    Their winter was warm and Christmas was merry and bright. He bought her a giant set of Rapidograph drawing pens, woolen everythings in rainbow colours, and though he knew he would miss her old black jeans for one specific reason he bought her new ones anyway.
    As she stopped being wary of her own laughter, it became a soundtrack to his waking hours whether she was home or not.
    He started drinking a little bit more wine instead of bourbon... a little bit more water instead of wine...
    On her seventeenth birthday in April he had another one of his wonderful sessions with the cardiologist scheduled...primed himself to accept another hour of excoriation even though he’d tried to behave himself...
    He asked her what she wanted to do and she said he wanted to go back to the place where they had started...would be there keeping the chairs warm for him after his duel with the doctor...
    And she was. The hostess at the Arte Café said there was someone waiting for him at his table...surrounded by the dozens of red white and yellow roses he’d had delivered...
    “I missed your sweet sixteen party...” he said...
    ...To someone who stood up when she caught sight of him... looked really embarrassed... apologised for spending so much on a dress... and sandals... someone whose hair was miraculously free of black or purple or green... who cried when he said Happy Birthday... had no idea she was the most magical creature ever to walk through their doors...
    No idea she was the most magical creature to ever walk into his life...
    A couple of months later his share of the magic ran out.

8.

    “Hi. I missed it, didn’t I...?”
    “It’s okay Charlie. I’m pretty sure the doctor’s gonna give you a note.”
    “I wanted t’be there.”
    “I know. But it’s still okay and it was nothin’ special...except for when the principal had t’tell everyone I got an honours degree. That was pretty fuckin’ good.”
    She grinned down at him and he gave her a tired grin back, trying to figure out a way to tell her how proud he was of her. She pulled up a chair and sat beside the bed...took in the IV lines and the monitors...suddenly for the first time in a long time uncomfortable...
    “You look nice...didja get some pictures for me?”
    She nodded. “But I didn’t brush my hair until after...made good and sure it looked a bird had crapped in it and that they all knew I had my chains and shit on under the gown...”
    “Well you wouldn’t want ‘em t’think you were totally reformed...”
    “Fuck no!”
    “Well... I like your hair without all the different colours and stuff...”
    “Thank you, Charlie,” she said, putting her head down he thought he saw tears in her eyes. “I talked t’the nurse she said it’s bad.”
    “It is, honey. I don’t feel very well at all.”
    She was quiet for a few minutes he didn’t have the energy to do more than just watch her... still breath-taking, just breathing, he remembered the day they had met in the park and the couple of hours having dinner when it was all he could do not to stare at her.
    Two years had transformed her into something even more exquisite.
    “Charlie if I ask you somethin’ will you promise t’give me an honest answer?”
    Lost in daydreaming and sedatives he wasn’t paying close attention.
    “Charlie...?”
    And now he could see that she was crying for real.
    “What is it, Chelsea...honest...yeah of course I will...”
    She said “Charlie how come you never wanted t’fuck me?”
    And all the cobwebs went away; he knew his heart was betraying him...that if she looked up at one of the monitors she would know it too. He took three deep breaths that filled his lungs and made his chest ache.
    “Chelsea what makes you think I never wanted t’make love t’you?”
    She looked up and it hurt worse...tears running down her face through streaks of mascara didn’t do anything but make her beautifully grief-stricken.
    “You always locked your fuckin’ bedroom door.”
    “No I didn—”
    “Yes you did Charlie you said you wouldn’t lie!”
    He closed his eyes, couldn’t bear to see her suffering because of him.
    “That first night you let me stay at your place...I knew what you were doin’ I was sure you’d been playing me Charlie I just knew it...I was lyin’ there waitin’ and sure as shit a half hour later I heard your bedroom door open and you came right up beside me thinkin’ I was asleep...
    “I was so scared I couldn’t fuckin’ move and I knew nothin’ was any different with you than it had been anywhere else so I just lay there and said Fuck it! to myself what’s one more cock up my snatch...?
    “So I could feel you standing there...breathin’ the way you do when you’re upset or whatever...and then you leaned over and kissed me on the forehead and said G’night Chelsea and went back into your bedroom and locked the door...”
    She was bent over his hand where it lay on the sheet he could feel the back of it getting wet as she sobbed and choked on her tears. He turned his hand over and she put her cheek against it.
    “I don’t remember my father ever kissing me like that Charlie...or saying g’night to me ever...not even before he started using me Charlie I...I wanted t’be with you so badly after that I woulda done anything...”
    He took his hand away from her face...put it on her head for the first time felt the reality of how soft her spun gold waves and curls could be...stroked her head gently...
    “I didn’t wanna be one more cock up your snatch, Chelsea. I’d done that for years. I didn’t want to be somebody just adding to what’d already been done t’you.”
    “You would never have been like any of the others...”
    “But it might have felt exactly the same...and you didn’t need another pair of hands being laid on you like that...neither did I...”
    She picked her head up...not understanding. He reached for a Kleenex from his bedside table...started making the mascara tracks even worse he handed it to her...nodded toward the mirror over the sink in his bathroom. Talked her there and back again...
    “I spent the first twenty years of my so-called adult life doing every stupid thing I could think of and a ton of stuff other people thought up for me. Charlie Stinson was a legend on Long Island. He could drink more than anybody else...smoke more...drug and dance more...he just looked at the girls and the women and they stripped down for him anytime anywhere he fucked everything that moved and had a swell time doing it...
    “I was thirty-three years old when this book I’d written on a bet became a best-seller. My first book-signing tour was four months long and I went t’over fifty cities in North America. My second one was two weeks long three cities and it almost killed me. That was when I had my first heart attack...”
    She came back from the bathroom...no more mascara...no make up at all... Charlie had rarely seen her like that before it still didn’t matter nothing mattered if it was Chelsea...
    “When the doctors were done putting their heads together it was determined that Charles Stinson the New York Times best-selling author had in the course of his carousing and hell-raising thoroughly fucked the way his heart did business. And my life just stopped. I couldn’t do anything anymore. Almost a year just so I could walk to the corner and back...
    “So living in my head, and what I could put on paper, became my reality. I lived in my books. I watched the world going by and rearranged what I saw to suit myself and my devoted but mostly tasteless readers...
    “And then one day I see this girl doing a piss-poor job of trying to jack a Lexus in broad daylight and she’s fifteen years old and she’s the most beautiful female animal I’ve ever laid eyes on...every movement...every breath she takes...every inch of her from top to bottom is what every male from age eight to eighty wishes would walk into his life...
    “But all I can do...all I’ve done for fourteen years...is look...so now I have t’wait for her to cross my path again so this lovely gorgeous stunning creature can light up my retinas all over again...”
    There was mascara on his hand and fingers. She reached for it wiped it clean... didn’t let go.
    “I love you, Charlie. You taught me how to trust somebody. I wanted...wish you woulda let me give you somethin’ back...”
    He lifted their two hands together and kissed hers.
    “You did,” he whispered. “Every night. I locked my door and through the magic of my steamy Harlequin romance imagination you ended up in my bed anyway. Where Charles Stinson was living his life you gave Charlie the one thing he needed more than anything else... the chance to grow up and really love somebody... without all the bullshit and the terror and only a little bit of guilt for wishing I could have you... imagining what it might be like. But you put your life in his hands...and then you let him live up to the expectations you should have had from when you were a little girl...”
    “What am I gonna do, Charlie?”
    “You’re gonna find somebody to love you with passion and kindness, Chelsea... someone who’s gonna turn the garbage in your life into what it should have been all along...something deep and earth-shaking and joyous...and after that...well...whatever you wanna do. I’ll come along as far as I can, but thanks t’you I’ve gone as far as I need t’go...Shit! I remembered something just before you came in...you gotta do me a favour what time is it anyway...”
    “I don’t know three o’clock maybe...”
    “I was supposed t’be home today...meeting somebody there...”
    “Can’t you call them?”
    “I don’t have my phone.”
    “You can use mine.”
    “Will you go...just let him in and let him do what he needs t’do?”
    “Okay sure...can I come back after?”
    Charlie nodded and squeezed her hand. “That would be so swell...”

9.

    She ran most of the way...dodged traffic...Stokes saw her coming from across the street.“...Affernoon, miss.”
    “Hello Mister Stokes.”
    “There’s somebody here waitin’ t’see you.”
    “I can open the damn door myself y’know.”
    Mister Stokes said, “I know that...but I gets paid to open that damn door so I do it...’specially for you.... Have you been to see him, miss?”
    Chelsea nodded.
    “Not so good, is it?”
    “Not so good at all. It sucks Mister Stokes...”
    “Well... I’ll do some prayin’ for him then... That gentleman is waitin’ in the office I’ll let him know you’re here...”
    She nodded again and went to wait for the ancient elevator...heard someone coming up behind her as the cab clanged and banged and opened up in front of her she turned...took in a suit and a briefcase and a guy that looked like the grey-haired dude in The Young & the Clueless, she saw his eyes go wide for a fraction of a second before he said:
    “You’re...Chelsea...?”
    She said, “I’m Chelsea who the fuck are you?”
    “I’m Charlie’s friend... Jeff... we went to grade school together in Oceanside... Long Island... he asked me t’meet you here...”
    He held the elevator door... followed her...hit the button for the fifth floor...“Charlie...” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “Always with the surprises.”
    “What about Charlie and the surprises?”
    “I’ve sort of known about you for what...six eight months now? You answered the phone a few times so word got round there was somebody else here besides Charlie. Those of us who know him well, we all got curious. When he asked me I said sure I’ll meet Chelsea at your place. I thought you’d be a little bit older, is all...”
    “Surprise then.”
    “He’s not gonna make it this time.”
    “I fucking know that will you stop fuckin’ acting like we’re pals or something I have no idea who the fuck you are!”
    She slammed her hands against the walls... turned away from him... the elevator shuddered to a stop and the door creaked open he held it again until she was in the hallway... stood well away from her as she turned her keys in all three locks opening the door he followed her into Charlie’s place.
    “Okay. I’m sorry. I’ve got a totally different set of reference points about Charlie and his life... and why I’m here. It never occurred to me that most of my assumptions could have no possible relevance for you.”
    She flung her shoulder bag onto the couch... lost in late afternoon sunlight curling around the curtained windows...stealing across the spines of shelved books... framed posters and prints on the walls...the couch where she had slept in this place for the first time...
    “He asked me to have you sign some papers, Chelsea. I’m his friend. I’m also his lawyer. Up until last year, in the last fifteen years I’ve spent a lot of time here... which now seems to be one of only a few things we really have in common...so I’m gonna make myself at home and pour myself a big glass of whisky and see if we can do this for Charlie without dying ourselves.”
    Jeff took off his jacket and undid cufflinks and rolled his shirt sleeves up on his forearms and poured himself a big glass of whisky while she watched him...began to realise that whatever it was that was making her heart hurt so much was something else they shared...began to feel numb with impending loss could feel it hear it coming like a freight train.
    Jeff swallowed three fingers of single malt and poured three more...opened his briefcase and started laying out a dozen paper-clipped files dotted with sticky Sign-Here-Post-It notes on the dining room table she watched stabs of sunlight twinkling with dust motes slowly dying...signed everywhere he pointed...on the dotted line she watched him countersign each one when there weren’t anymore he said:
    “Y’know Stokes downstairs...Charlie paid for his daughter t’go to college...and when his wife got sick and the HMO ducked through a loophole and wouldn’t pay for her surgery or homecare Charlie covered that too. Charlie took care of everybody he loved... all the time...
    “He has dozens maybe hundreds of friends...some of them are the biggest assholes in the world...but they’ve all known all along that if it comes down to rocks and hard places Charlie will always be there to stand up and take care of them...”
    She looked at him. Sat down on the couch hugging herself suddenly afraid of what was going on she said:
    “He set this up...”
    And the cold got deeper.
    “...Jeff...what is all of this...what’d we just do...?”
    For an instant, Jeff looked back at her without comprehension.
    “He didn’t tell you.”
    “Tell me what?”
    He cupped his whisky glass in both hands, took a deep breath and let it out.“The last time Charlie got a market appraisal for this apartment it came in at just over eight-point-five million dollars. Last year his royalties on all seven of his books totaled over two million worldwide. For the last two months we’ve been in a bidding war for the sale of film rights for one of them, and there’s also all the money that’s been invested in the last fourteen years. All together we’re looking at something between thirty and forty million dollars...”
    She stared at him. There was nothing in the world that could darken the blue sky in her eyes...nothing that could dim the light that wove itself through the pale spun gold of her hair, or lip-gloss in any colour that could cover the pout and the glory of her mouth.
    “A month ago he told me you’d gotten an acceptance from the Arts program at Cooper Union so I hope you’ll forgive me for contacting them...for letting them know you will be there in September...and then beating them over the head with an endowment that will not happen unless every penny of your tuition for as long as you want to be there is covered by a scholarship.
    “So now...whoever the hell you are after all...Chelsea...now you are the one who I hope will understand what he’s done because even if you’re not someone he shared with me...I do know that my best friend...Charlie...stopped being lonely after he met you.
    “You’ve already got keys and now all of it belongs to you,” he said softly. “I’m beginning to understand why...and that Charlie’s last gift to me was to be the one who gets to help you see your way through it. Christ! My daughter is your age. When my wife gets a look at you she’s gonna shit herself...”
    He stood up. Gathered up signed papers...his suit jacket...
    “I gotta go. My card’s there next to your copies from now on you call me any time for any reason....”
    At the door he stopped and swore softly.
    “I forgot something. This...”
    Reached into his briefcase, walked back into the room and laid a standard size manila envelope on the table.
    “It’s his original print-out for a short story...the only one he ever wrote...the only thing he’s written in the last two years. I’m not supposed t’sell it until after he’s gone...but it’s funny because when we were growing up he had this big big thing for Joni Mitchell. There was this one record he used t’play all the time...it was a gatefold...y’know what they are...? Inside Joni was standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean buck naked he was in love with her like you wouldn’t believe...”
    She said, “For The Roses. Charlie played it for me all the time...”
    “That’s the one. I thought this story was just...like an hommage to his teenage lust for Joni Mitchell. Now I know better...”

***

    After he was gone Chelsea sat watching the dust motes settle and disappear. She poured herself a glass of the sweet white zin that Charlie had convinced her had to be better for her than fucking Coca Cola. She gathered up all her papers but didn’t have the courage to look at the story inside the manila envelope.
    When the telephone rang and the nurse she’d met that afternoon asked for her by name she listened quietly...hung up the phone...picked up her shoulder bag and went back to the hospital to kiss him goodbye.

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