Home Again
Sweat slid in a cold streak down his hairline. The rickety wooden steps that led up to the dance floor seemed to magnify before his eyes
. The dark slats blurred into one another, elongated like the hallway in that movie Poltergeist, For a split second he saw JoBeth Williams, racing down the doorless expanse, screaming.
What had she been screaming about? He tried to concentrate on that single meaningless question. Anything to still the racket in his chest.
“Angel?”
It took a moment to recognize his own name. When he understood, he tried to look up, but he could barely move. His heart clattered and pounded, an unoiled gear slipping on and off its track. He wet his powdery lips and tried like hell to smile as he slowly lifted his head.
The woman—Judy, he remembered suddenly—stood in front of him, holding a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses. A shaker of salt lay cradled in the vee of her cleavage.
Her pretty, made-up face scrunched in a thoughtful frown. “Angel?”
“Don’t…” The word shot out on a wheezing breath and hung there. He tried to add to it, but he couldn’t think straight, couldn’t see. Christ, he couldn’t breathe, it hurt so bad. “Don’t feel good. Get Val over here.”
Panic darted across her face. She glanced quickly up the stairs, to the throng of partygoers, uncertainty pulling at her penciled brows.
He let go of the handrail and grabbed her slim wrist. She made a quiet gasping sound and tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let her, he held on with everything inside him. He stared at her, trying to remain calm, trying to breathe. “Get—”
It hit. Red-hot pain, exploding, crushing his chest. He couldn’t do anything except stand there, swaying, gasping, his hand clamped over his heart. Hurting, oh, Jesus, hurting like he hadn’t hurt in years.
“Please …” he wheezed, “don’t let… me …”
Die. He wanted to say, don’t let me die, but he couldn’t get the word out before the world went black.
He woke to the electronic blip-blip-blip of the cardiac monitor. Computer-generated sound, electrical and inhuman.
And beautiful. Christ, so beautiful.
He was alive. He’d done it, beaten the son of a bitch grim reaper again.
He could sense the drugs in his bloodstream, the blurry softness of Demerol that made him feel as if he were drifting on a warm, soothing sea. He knew that soon the drugs would wear off, and the pain would be back, tightening his chest, stabbing through his lungs and heart, but right now he didn’t care. He was alive.
The door whooshed open with a whining creak. Rubber-soled shoes squished across the floor—speckled white linoleum, no doubt—and paused beside the bed.
“Well, Mr. DeMarco, you’re awake.”
It was a deep, masculine voice. No nonsense.
Doctor. Cardiologist.
Angel slowly opened his eyes. A tall, undernourished man with a deeply etched face and flinty black eyes stared down at him. Untamed gray hair stood out in a dozen different directions around his face. Einstein on Slimfast.
“I’m Dr. Gerlaine. Head of cardiology at Valley Hospital here in LaGrangeville.” He bent and pulled up a chair, sitting down as he flipped through Angel’s charts.
Here it comes, Angel thought. The stand-up routine.
Gerlaine closed the chart—so goddamn symbolic, that quiet closing. “You’re a very sick young man, Mr. DeMarco.”
Angel grinned. He was still alive, still breathing, and he’d heard this doctor’s shtick for years. You’re playing on borrowed time, Mr. DeMarco. You need to change your life—change your life—change your life. The conversation lived on tape in his brain, winding, rewinding, replaying a million times in the darkness of the night, but he didn’t want to change his life, didn’t want to eat right or exercise or play by the rules.
He was thirty-four years old, and years ago he’d started down a dark road of rebellion for rebellion’s sake. He knew it was a useless, meaningless existence—that’s what he liked about it. No one counting on him, or needing him. He flitted from party to party like an acrobat, swinging through, swilling booze, having sex, and moving on.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he answered. “No shit.”
Dr. Gerlaine frowned. “I’ve spoken with your doctor in Nevada.”
“I’m sure you have.”