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Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Cast of Characters
  7. Part One
  8. One
  9. Two
  10. Three
  11. Four
  12. Five
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. Thirteen
  21. Fourteen
  22. Fifteen
  23. Sixteen
  24. Seventeen
  25. Eighteen
  26. Nineteen
  27. Part Two
  28. Twenty
  29. Twenty-one
  30. Twenty-two
  31. Twenty-three
  32. Twenty-four
  33. Twenty-five
  34. Twenty-six
  35. Twenty-seven
  36. Twenty-eight
  37. Twenty-nine
  38. Thirty
  39. Thirty-one
  40. Thirty-two
  41. Thirty-three
  42. Thirty-four
  43. Thirty-five
  44. Thirty-six
  45. Thirty-seven
  46. Thirty-eight
  47. Thirty-nine
  48. Forty
  49. Forty-one
  50. Forty-two
  51. Forty-three
  52. Forty-four
  53. Forty-five
  54. Forty-six
  55. A note on the Author

“I’m not terribly concerned with prettiness,” I replied sternly. The first living words out of my dead-asleep mouth, they worked their way up my throat past phlegm soaked in black calcium.

“Bullshit!” laughed Sebastian, squeezing my hand.

“No. Beauty, I’m obsessed with. Ugliness too. But what the hell is pretty? Who could possibly be interested in that? Doesn’t it suggest,” I paused because my throat was raw from the tubes that had been shoved down there to pump my stomach, “the desire to please? Have I ever, as long as you have known me, exhibited any desire to please anyone except myself”

“No,” he said solemnly. “I guess that’s why you’re here.”

He pulled up a chair and sat beside me. He traced, with his eyes, the tubes in my nose, the tube in my hand, adding, as best he could, a protective force field to the ones in plastic, already in place. I knew what he was doing, even if he didn’t, and I was grateful for his effort.

“Sebastian,” I breathed, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he answered, although I could tell, in a flash, that he no longer did.

When, standing by my ER bed, Cyrinda and Sebastian were told that I would pull through with no physical damage, they both left, Cyrinda to attend a party at Lot 61 and Sebastian anywhere at all, so long as it was the hell away from me, forever and ever amen. Though their destinations were different, Cyrinda and Sebastian opted to share a cab and clung to each other within moments of the ride. When Cyrinda got out at Lot 61, so did Sebastian, determining, correctly as it happened, that that was the last and final stop on the “Away From Ruby” bandwagon.

Thirty-eight

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Eastern European irritation

I was transferred from ER to the intensive care unit, where I was put on constant, around-the-clock watch. The first six hours a middle-aged Polish lady sat on a chair by the foot of my bed and watched me sleep, watched me breathe, watched me joylessly consume a packet of saltines and a bowl of tomato soup. I felt pangs of middle-class guilt as I tried to work out how much she might be getting paid to stop the princess from doing it again.

“Hey, Daddy, I wanna pony! I wanna go to Miami! I wanna bracelet from Tiffany! Hey, Daddy, I wanna die! Hey, everybody, watch me die! Ya ready?” On tiptoes, tan legs, white bathing suit, no breasts yet, forcing everybody to watch a fairly ordinary dive. “Did you see it? Did you see me dive?”

Did you see me die? Did you see me die? Are you watching?

The sense of profound irritation I felt transcended the period of spiritual questioning one expects to enter following an unsuccessful suicide attempt.