“We will get there when we can get there. I’m sorry. I’m working with limited resources here. We have put everything on hold to deal with this. Oh no. Thank you.” I hear her hang up. Mutter, “Dick.”
She knocks softly on the door, pushes it open, and peeks in. “Sharon?” Her eyes are red. “Hey. You’re awake.”
Wyatt drops his butt on the carpet, drags his way back to me. Whinnies and pokes his nose into my ear. “Wyatt, no. Bad man,” Donnie says. She picks him up, all seventy pounds of him. He hangs over her shoulder, beating his tail against her hip. She sighs and buries her face into his coat.
My thigh vibrates. I shift, pull my phone out. 22 new messages. Donnie watches, her face pinched. “Hello?”
“Is this Sharon?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Sharon, I’m calling from Rolling Stone. We’re doing a short piece on Mel Vaught for our website and were wondering if we could get a statement from you.”
I lie back down. The words are all ones I know, but they’re not making any sense strung together like this. “Huh?”
Donnie shakes her head, holds her hand out.
“We’re getting reports that Mel Vaught died of a heart attack stemming from an overdose. Can you confirm this?”
“Huh?”
Donnie lowers Wyatt to the ground, then takes the phone from me. “This is Donatella Sogn. Can I help you with something?” Wyatt climbs on top of me, smooches my chin. Doesn’t protest when I roll over to spoon him. “Saying sorry doesn’t mean dick, Brian. You should have been going through me in the first place.” Donnie walks into the other room, voice trailing behind her. “We haven’t seen the coroner’s report yet. We know about as much as you do. We’ll have a statement ready by this afternoon. That’s the earliest it’s going to happen.”
Donnie returns, hands me my phone. “I don’t want you worrying about anything. You’re going to handle as much as you can and no more right now. If you see a call and you don’t want to pick up, don’t. Just give it to me. I will take care of it. Okay?”
“Uh huh.”
“How are you doing?”
I shrug.
“How are you physically?”
“Okay.”
“Any headaches?”
“I’m not gonna have another stroke, if that’s what you mean.”
“I just want to check in. You collapsed at the airport last night. Do you remember that?”
I sink farther into the couch. “Is this Wyatt’s blanket?”
“It is. Sorry about the smell.”
“He keeps sticking his nose in my snatch.”
“He’ll do that. Are you hungry?”
“Nuh uh.”
“The kitchen is full of stuff. Fruit baskets and cheese plates. Someone brought a huge sandwich platter over from Citarella.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“It’s there if you are later. Are you feeling well enough to go out?”
“Go where?” There’s shuffling and whispering from the hall. Someone mutters, She’s awake. “Who’s here?”
Donnie rolls her shoulders, presses her palms into her neck. “Company people. Friends. You think you could run an errand with me?”
“I guess.”
She sits next to me. “I’m very sorry to do this to you right now, but you were listed as Mel’s next of kin. I have to take you to identify the body.”
“Oh.”
“They flew her back here. She’s in Flushing. I have my car with me today, so we can go whenever you like.” She leans over, takes my wrist. Her hands are hot. “You have to identify her before we can do anything in terms of arrangements.”
I see the long, flickering hallway, smell the bleach and blood in the darkness. “Mel’s mom,” I tell Donnie. “We had to go to Florida. To identify her.”
“I remember that.”
“It was to make sure they had the right person.”
Donnie blinks. “Uh huh.”
I splay my hands out in front of me. I can’t remember anything after the emergency room. I want to ask Donnie how I got here, why I don’t remember being put on a plane in California to come back, what’s happened in the meantime.
It all falls apart as soon as I open my mouth. It’s from frustration that I tear up, pissed that I can’t say what I mean.
Donnie picks up a wool shawl and wraps me in it.
—
Donnie’s assistant waits with me, holding the shawl closed with her fist while Donnie pulls up to the curb. The ride over the Queensboro Bridge is mostly quiet. Donnie mentions arrangements again. She flicks the turn signal and wings the car onto a side street. “She hadn’t chosen a method,” she tells me. “She had a lot of stuff in place, but not that.”
“What other stuff.”
Donnie watches the road. “She did that next-of-kin document after her mom died. Made a will with a lawyer sometime after your stroke.”
“That’s weird. Considering I was the one who almost died.”
“Act of faith? I don’t know. You’d have to live to get the money. Right?” She glances over. Her eyes are still pink. “You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
She takes a long, deep breath. “A lot of us made wills when you had the stroke. And I’ll bet even more of us will be doing it now.”
I look out the window. “If she did all that other shit, she should have just picked if she wanted to be cremated or not.”
Donnie blinks rapidly. Her Roman nose flares. “She was thirty-three years old. She didn’t really think she was going to die.”