“But she’s dying,” I said, understanding where he was coming from.
“Yeah, but she still looks pretty shitty,” Derf said, waxing the board while I looked over at her, nodding.
I wave over at Mona and Griffin as they pass by on their way up to the house, then I look over at the pack of Benson & Hedges menthol by her side, next to an ashtray from La Scala and the tape player. She started smoking when she found out. I’d lie on her bed watching MTV or something on the VCR and she’d keep lighting cigarettes, trying to inhale, gagging or closing her eyes. Sometimes she couldn’t even do it. Sometimes she’d put the cigarette out in the ashtray, which usually already had five or six crushed, unsmoked cigarettes lying in it, and light another one. She couldn’t stand it, the smell, the first inhale, the lighting of it, but she wanted to smoke. Reservations made at Trumps or the Ivy or Morton’s would inevitably end with me asking, “Smoking section, please,” and she’d say it didn’t make any difference now, looking over at me, like hoping that I’d say it would but I’d just say yeah, cool, I guess. So she’d light, inhale, cough, close her eyes, take a sip of the diet Coke (“No problem there,” she’d groan. “Fuck NutraSweet”) that would be sitting warm on her makeup table. Sometimes she’d sit there for two hours and watch cigarettes turn to ash and then she’d light another one and she told me that sooner or later she would get it right, and it would all kind of bum me out and I’d just watch her open a new pack and Mona would watch too and sometimes she would wear her sunglasses so that nobody could see that she had been crying and she’d mention that the sun bothered her or at night she’d say the lights in the house did it, made her put the Wayfarers on, or the glare from the large-screen TV, which she would watch anyway, made her eyes sore, but I knew that she was bummed out, crying a lot.
There’s nothing to do but sit here in the sun, on the beach. She doesn’t say anything, barely moves. I want a cigarette but hate menthol. I wonder if Mona has any pot left. The sun is low now, the ocean’s getting dark. One night last week, while she was getting treatments at Cedars, Mona and I went to the Beverly Center, saw a bad movie and had frozen margaritas at the Hard Rock and then came back to the house in Malibu and had sex in the living room, stared at the tendrils of steam rising up from the jacuzzi for what could have been hours. A horse rides past us and someone waves but the sun’s setting behind the rider and I have to squint to see who it is and I still can’t tell. I’m starting to get a major migraine, which will only be helped by pot.
I stand up. “I’m going up to the house.”
I look down at her. The sun, sinking, reflected in her sunglasses, burns orange, is fading. “I’m thinking about leaving tonight,” I say. “Heading back into town.”
She doesn’t move. The wig still doesn’t look as natural as it first did and even then it looked plastic and hard and too big.
“Want anything?”
I think she shakes her head no.
“Okay,” I say and move up toward the house.
Mona’s in the kitchen, staring out the window, cleaning a bong, watching Griffin on the deck. He takes his bathing suit off and, nude, washes sand from his feet. Mona knows I’m in the room and mentions that it’s too bad the sushi we had for lunch didn’t cheer her up. Mona doesn’t know she dreams of melting rocks, meeting Greg Kihn in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont, conversations with water and dust and air, the sound track an Eagles medley, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” playing loud, booming, sprays of turquoise napalm illuminate the lyrics to “Love Her Madly” scrawled on a cement wall, a tomb.
“Yeah,” I say, opening the refrigerator. “Too bad.”
Mona sighs, keeps cleaning the bong.
“Did Griffin drink the rest of the Corona?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she murmurs.
“Shit.” I stand there staring into the refrigerator, my breath steaming.
“She’s really sick,” Mona says.
“Yeah?” I say. “And I’m pissed off. I wanted a Corona. Badly.”
Griffin walks in, towel wrapped around his waist. “What’s for dinner?” he asks.
“Did you drink the rest of the Corona?” I ask him.
“Hey, dude,” he says, sitting down at the table. “Like, mellow out, lighten up.”
“Mexican?” Mona suggests, turning the faucet off. Nobody says anything.
Griffin hums a song, in a trance, his hair wet, slicked back.