Home Again

“You look like shit.”

Angel heard the drawling, southern-fed voice and almost smiled. Would have smiled if he hadn’t felt so damned low. He cracked his eyes open, blinked hard as the fluorescent lighting stabbed through his brain.

’Thanks.” Angel inched his way to a sit. The needles in his veins pinched with every movement. By the time he was upright, he was winded and his chest hurt like hell.

Val stood in the doorway, his thin, designer-clad body angled against the doorframe, his tangled blond hair tucked self-consciously behind one ear. He pushed away from the door and glided into the room in that slow, loose-hipped walk that always drew attention from the media. He reached out, grabbed the bedside chair with long, delicate fingers, and twisted it around, slumping casually onto the hard seat. Leaning forward, he rested his chin on the chair back and dangled his arms over the mustard-colored fake leather. A slow frown pulled at his eyebrows as he studied Angel. “I mean, you really look like shit. Even worse than last time.”

Angel didn’t have the strength to smile. “Give me a cigarette, will you?”

Val reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. Flicking the hard pack’s top, he checked the contents and shrugged. “Empty. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” He pulled a pint of tequila from inside his coat and grinned. “But I’m not completely useless.” He set the bottle down on the bedside table. “I just watched the dailies for yesterday. That death scene of yours was unbelievable—even I didn’t know you were that good. The writer went ape-shit. When you get out of here, we’re going to start the Oscar hype immediately. The publicist thinks…”

Blah, blah, blah. Val’s voice droned on and on, but Angel stopped hearing, stopped listening, anyway.

He stared at the man who’d been his friend, and then agent, for sixteen years and tried to summon a smile—to act like a film performance mattered right now. But he couldn’t do it; he wasn’t that good an actor.

He remembered suddenly the night he’d met Val—it had been in New York, the middle of a winter’s night in a seedy tavern, when they’d both been cold and hungry and lonely. Angel had been just a kid then—barely eighteen and already on his own for over a year.

They became friends almost instantly and spent the next year moving from town to town, running and running until it wasn’t fun anymore—just a series of fleabag motels in towns with no names, swilling booze and eating from Dumpsters.

Amazingly, it had turned around in a single day … a day that started with old tuna. Val had gotten violently ill from a tuna sandwich he’d stolen from a hot Arizona lunch counter. At the hospital, he called his parents. Within hours, the two boys were ensconced in the Lightners’ gorgeous New York penthouse apartment.

Val’s mother was the most beautiful woman Angel had ever seen. Cold as ice, hard as diamonds. Val delighted in telling her where they’d been and what they’d done. She was horrified, of course, and Val made her promise to give them an apartment and put them in college.

“But you haven’t even finished high school,” she said in a nasal, white-bread voice.

Val only laughed. “Please, Mother. You’re rich.”

She’d wagged a ringed finger at him. “Life will not always go your way, Valentine.”

He’d given her a disarming smile. “You can always hope, Mother.”

Angel shook his head to clear the memories. Then he looked at Val. “They want to cut my heart out.”

Val patted another pocket, still looking for smokes. “They’ll have to find it first.”

“I mean it, Val. They want to do a heart transplant.”

Val’s smile faded. “You mean, take your heart out and stick in a dead guy’s?”

Angel felt sick. “Close enough.”

“Jesus.” Val slumped forward.

Angel sighed. Somehow, he’d expected more of Val, but he didn’t know what that more was. “I need a donor,” he said, forcing a smile. “A really good agent would offer.”

“I’d give you my brain, buddy. God knows, I don’t use it. But my heart…” He shook his head. “Jesus …”

“Unless you’re praying,” Angel snapped, “try to say something more helpful. I need advice here. Hell, if I’d known a transplant was in my future, I’d have quit smoking and drinking years ago.”

It was another lie, another in the long string of lies he’d told himself. He’d known for years that his heart was bad—and it hadn’t stopped him from drinking or smoking. His only lifestyle change was to drop a heart pill before snorting a line of cocaine.

He had never wasted time thinking about the future. His life had always been a roller-coaster ride, with him strapped willingly in the front seat. The days and nights hammered forward at blinding speed, turning, dipping, plunging. Never slowing, never coming to a bump stop.

Until now, until yesterday, when the coaster had rammed into the brick wall of his own mortality.

And as if death weren’t bad enough, they wanted him to go to Seattle for the surgery. Christ, what a mess …

The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t deserve this. Sure, he’d been an asshole in his life, he’d hurt people and lied to them. But he was supposed to go to hell for that. He’d been raised Catholic, he knew the rules.