Chapter Twenty

Angel shifted uncomfortably and punched his pillow into a little ball, then shoved it behind his head. Above him, the television spewed commercial jingles.

He reached for the remote control and flipped through the channels. One of those tabloid pseudo-news programs splashed his picture across the screen. The picture switched immediately to Angel’s cleaning lady from Las Vegas—wearing more makeup than Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire. She was babbling about how Angel never dusted behind his bed and sometimes forgot to leave a check for her services. Then the bleach-blond reporter returned to the scene, offering a plastic smile as she said, “It is believed that Angel DeMarco is currently in a hospital somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. There’s been no confirmation of his illness but the word AIDS has been whispered at more than one Hollywood party in recent days. Sources close to the bad-boy star say—”

In a burst of irritation, he jabbed the Off button and threw the remote control across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying clatter and crashed to the linoleum floor.

He crossed his arms and sighed heavily.

He couldn’t stop thinking about yesterday. No matter how hard he tried to push Madelaine’s words away, they kept coming back, turning up again and again as he lay in this lonely room.

Her name is Lina.

Finally he gave up and lay back down. Wishboning his arms behind his head, he stared up at the white acoustical tile ceiling.

A daughter.

He tried to imagine what it would be like, having a kid. He’d never spent much time thinking about that sort of thing. In fact, the only time he ever thought about children was just before sex—it was the thing that made him reach for the rubbers in his pocket.

He wanted to push the whole discussion aside as irrelevant and ridiculous. And he was certain that before the surgery, he could have done just that. He could have met Madelaine at a concert or a movie premiere, heard about the amazingly wonderful child she’d given birth to sixteen years ago, and felt nothing. Less than nothing.

He would have offered her a straight shot of tequila and drunk a toast to the kid he’d fathered. But that would have been the extent of it. After he drank the tequila, he’d have exited stage right.

But he was beginning to understand that running didn’t always get you anywhere, that sometimes you ended up right where you’d started.

He didn’t think of himself as immortal anymore. How could he with the stranger’s heart pulsing in his chest and the bright red Frankenstein scar in his flesh? Every time he got a shot or took a pill, he was reminded that he was alive by the grace of God—and the gift of a stranger. It was the sort of thing that made a man think about his life—even if he didn’t want to.

Even before the surgery, he’d been tired of running and getting nowhere, tired of parties with women he couldn’t remember and friends who disappeared when the cameras turned off. But he didn’t know how to do anything else.

He’d never created a life for himself, not a real, honest-to-God life. He had an existence—a condominium in a high-rise tower in Las Vegas, friends who came and went as easily as film roles, cars that he drove for a year and then traded in, a job that kept him rolling in money and working less than four months a year.

What had he done the rest of the time? He could hardly remember now. When he thought back on his life, all he got were random images of parties and hangovers.

He wanted to remember the early days, when he’d been a serious actor who went on one grueling audition after another, playing Shakespeare in the Park. But that was the history he had devised—the fiction he’d given to the press as they created the persona of Angel DeMarco from snippets of reality and piles of fantasy.

The sad truth was, he didn’t know anything about acting. He’d been hired for his looks on his first audition—an audition he’d attended on a dare. Val’s mother had told a producer that her son was an agent, and voila! Val was an agent. And when Val became an agent, it was only seconds until Angel became an actor.

Maybe getting that first job wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been a bit player and found a calling, but he was the star and the movie grossed over $150 million. After that, they would have let him play Othello if he’d wanted to. A star was born.

He frowned, wondering why he hadn’t worked harder to learn his craft. Why hadn’t he taken the spark of talent the critics saw and honed it into something special?

He couldn’t remember the whys; even the whens and hows were beginning to blur for him. Everything about his life before the heart attack was beginning to feel like an ephemeral memory that belonged to someone else.

And yet he remembered things like the carnival in crystal clarity.

A dream, you forget, Angel. Have you forgotten me?

He had. Until he woke up in that damned hospital in Oregon, he had practically forgotten Madelaine; their time together had faded to a hazy memory of first love, tucked like all high school memories into the tattered scrapbook of the soul. But now it felt real, so real he could touch it. Maybe the only real thing in his life.

She wanted him to be a father to their daughter. It was the only thing she’d ever asked of him.

She needs you, Madelaine had said.

God help him, he didn’t know what to do. In some small pocket of his soul, he wanted to reach out to this daughter who looked so much like him. He wanted to take hold of her and bring her into his life, and know he’d done something right in this world before he died.

But he was afraid. What kind of father could he be? He was an alcoholic who’d just stopped drinking and a drug addict who’d quit using. He could drop dead of another man’s heart failure any second.

Hardly the best role model for a confused sixteen-year-old girl.

There was no doubt that he would let her down. No doubt at all.

Depressed by his own inadequacy, he reached toward the bedside table and flicked on the radio Madelaine had given him. Heavy-metal music blared out at him, and he winced. Without thinking, he spun the dial until the rich melody of “Phantom of the Opera” spilled through the tiny speakers.

He felt a shiver of peace move through him. The anger and fear that had tightened his stomach since yesterday began to go away. He lay back in the pillows, letting the music fill the room and calm his ragged heart.

Be her friend, Angel.

It was his brother’s voice, threaded through the music.

Angel sat up wearily, wedging his elbows beneath him. Be her friend.

It was exactly what Francis would have said if he were still alive. Francis always knew the right thing to do in life, and he’d always done it. Quietly, without hoopla or soul-searching or questions.

Could Angel be like that? Could he even try?

In the old days—before the surgery—the answer would have come with blinding speed, crushing any inkling to be good. He would have known that he couldn’t live up to a commitment like this. He would have laughed at the very idea of trying.

But now, lying here, listening to this music, he wondered. Maybe this heart of his had come from someone good. Maybe it had given him a chance his old heart wouldn’t have allowed.

He ought to laugh at the absurdity of the idea. He knew that the heart was just an organ, not the storehouse of the soul or any of that nonsense. And yet, no matter how often he told himself that, he couldn’t quite believe it. Since the surgery, he’d begun to feel different. He had different tastes in music, in food. One minute he’d be his angry self, and then something would happen—he’d hear a sad song or look out at the rain—and he’d know that there was something new inside him. A tiny thread of goodness that lay curled within the bad. It scared him, that feeling that he wasn’t alone in his body anymore, but it also mesmerized him. With every beat of the stranger’s heart, he felt a tiny surge of possibility, of goddamn near magic.

He wanted all of his pain and suffering to mean something. Madelaine and Chris and Hilda and Tom Grant had all told him that he’d been given a second chance at life. Maybe he could finally make a difference.

He wanted it suddenly, wanted it as much as he’d ever wanted anything.

It felt good to want something, to have a goal. Frankly, he hadn’t had too many of those in his life. He’d never wanted much beyond the next movie role or the next woman or the next drink.

He felt, amazingly, as if he were growing up at last.

He was so deep in thought, it took him a second to realize that someone was knocking at his door. “Come in,” he said.

Madelaine walked through the door. For a split second he almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing baggy Levi’s and an oversized green cardigan that had seen better days. Her hair was limp around her face, and no makeup relieved the pallor of her cheeks.

“Heya, Angel,” she said quietly, coming up beside the bed.

He looked up at her and felt a tightening in his chest. She looked sad and lost, not her usual self at all. In the old days he might not have noticed the ravages of grief, but his new heart knew things his old heart hadn’t.

He gave her a big, fake smile. “Hey, Doc. How ya doin’?”

She pulled the chart from the foot of the bed and studied it quickly, then put it away. “I’m sure Sarandon told you that the biopsy showed no rejection at all. You’re doing well.”

“That’s one of us.”

A frown darted across her pale face. “What do you mean?”

“Have a seat.”

She pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed. When she noticed how he was staring at her, she pushed a hand through her hair. “It’s my day off.”

He wanted to cut to the chase and ask how she was feeling, but it made him feel awkward and uncertain, that kind of intimate honesty. So instead he cocked a head toward the television that hung on the wall. “I just saw my picture on some tabloid show. Seems I’ve got AIDS. You should have told me.”

A quick smile quirked one side of her mouth. “I didn’t want to depress you.”

“What else are they saying, my beloved jackals of the media?”

“One of the supermarket tabloids reported a few days ago that you’d had a heart transplant—baboon, I believe, or maybe it was an alien. Another show is certain that a stripper in Boca Raton gave you AIDS.” She looked at him. “It appears you had quite a sex life.”

He couldn’t help feeling a little wistful. “Yeah, it was,” he said with a sigh.

“It can be again, you know. Some cardiologists recommend waiting six weeks to resume sexual relations, but I’m a little more lenient. Whenever you’re up to it …” She realized the double entendre of her words, and a pretty pink blush crept up her throat. “I mean, whenever you feel good enough, sex is okay.”

He gave her a direct look, then blasted her with his best bad-boy smile. “Is that a proposition?”

He thought he saw her shiver slightly. “I believe I’ll let your new cardiologist have this discussion with you.” She got to her feet. “Now I’ve got to run.”

He reached for her hand and held it. “Don’t go.”

She stared down at him, long and hard, then quietly said, “Don’t treat me like that, Angel. I’m not some Hollywood starlet who’d kill to spend a night in your bed.”

He understood that he’d hurt her. “I’m sorry. Old life. Old lines.” He shrugged but didn’t let go of her hand. “You’ll have to be patient with me. Changing overnight is a little tough.”

Slowly she drew her hand back and sat down.

He waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t he knew it was up to him. “I … I’ve been thinking about Franco a lot,” he said, stumbling over the words like a fool.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and he could tell that she was battling for control.

“Is that his sweater?” Angel asked quietly.

She immediately touched her sleeve, her fingers stroking the worn wool. Wordlessly she nodded.

“When …” His voice fell to a raw whisper. “When does the healing start, when do we start feeling better?”

She swallowed thickly and looked up at him. “I don’t know if there is healing. There’s just … going on.”

He looked at her, realizing in that instant how much he cared about her, how much he wanted her to care about him. “I guess that’s what life is. Going on.”

She gave him a soft smile that for a second transformed her face. “I guess.”

He’d given her that smile—with nothing more than a few honest words and a glimpse of his own heart. The realization swept through him, made him grin like an idiot. “This new heart of mine … it came from someone good.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Yes,” she answered.

And for the first time, he felt like a new man.

*  *  *

Madelaine knew when the phone rang that it was something bad. Her stomach knotted up. Carefully she set down the novel she was reading and went into the kitchen, picking up the phone. When she heard Vicki Owen’s voice slide through the lines, she closed her eyes and sighed tiredly. “Hello, Vicki.”

“I’m sorry to bother you at home, Madelaine, but I wanted to let you know that Lina wasn’t in school today.”

Madelaine’s gaze cut to her daughter’s closed bedroom door. “I dropped her off at seven o’clock. She waved and went inside the building.” She sighed, too tired suddenly to deal with this anymore. “I guess I should have walked her into the classroom.”

“I saw you pick her up at three o’clock—that’s why I called. I’m afraid she’s headed toward real trouble if someone doesn’t find a way to reach her.”

Madelaine almost denied it instinctively, but instead she dragged the phone into the living room and sat down on the overstuffed sofa. Since Francis’s death, she didn’t feel like herself anymore. She spent every moment realizing how fragile life was, how uncertain, and she didn’t have the strength anymore to pretend she was perfect. She felt as if she were treading water in the deep end of the pool.

“I’m … confused, Vicki,” she confided, and the moment the words left her mouth, she felt as if a weight had fallen from her shoulders. “Francis was more than a friend, he was part of the family. Whenever I try to talk about him, we both end up crying and neither one of us feels better. I know she’s reaching out, but I don’t have anything inside to give her, and even if I try, she won’t wait long enough for me to stumble through the words.”

“I know how you’re feeling. My brother and his wife died last year, and I’ve been raising my nephew. For weeks afterward, we circled each other like wary lions. It’s an impossible time.”

“So what do I do?”

“Just keep trying, keep reaching out. And watch her for signs of real trouble. I’ll try introducing her to my nephew, but it won’t be easy.” She laughed. “Your daughter’s going to think he’s a total nerd.”

Madelaine smiled wearily. “I’d guess that means he’s a great kid.”

“He is … now. And see if you can find someone for Lina to talk to. I’ll keep trying, but she doesn’t want to listen to an authority figure.”

“Yes,” Madelaine answered. “I will. Thanks a lot, Vicki.”

After she hung up, Madelaine got to her feet and walked down the hallway She was at Lina’s room before she’d even formulated a plan. But the minute she looked at the closed door, she knew what she was going to do.

Someone to talk to.

She knocked on the door.

No one answered.

Steeling herself, Madelaine opened the door anyway.

Lina was sitting on her bed, listening to music through big black headphones and smoking a cigarette. She was wearing a sweatshirt that read: If you don’t like my music, you’re too frigging old. There were tears streaming down her cheeks.

The sight of her baby sitting all alone in her room, rocking back and forth and crying, was almost more than Madelaine could bear. She walked over to the stereo and clicked it off.

“Damn it, Mom!” Lina wrenched the headphones off her head and tossed them onto the unmade bed. “You have no right to bust in here and shut off my music.”

Wordlessly Madelaine took the cigarette from Lina’s mouth and crushed it in the littered ashtray on the floor. Then she sat down beside her daughter.

For a second they just looked at each other, and the wary resentment in Lina’s eyes hurt. Lord, how it hurt.

Madelaine reached out, brushed the ragged hair from her daughter’s eyes.

Lina flinched and drew back, laughing shakily. “I’m not getting another haircut.”

Madelaine sighed. So many misunderstandings. “I wasn’t thinking you needed a haircut, baby. I was thinking you need a father.”

Lina paled. “You said he doesn’t want to see me.”

“He thinks he doesn’t, but sometimes a person can’t see what’s right in front of him.” She gave her daughter a tentative smile. “Like you. I’m right here, I’ve always been right here, and yet you don’t see me.”

“Mom—”

“Don’t interrupt me. I haven’t been a good mother to you, Lina. I know that, don’t you think I know that? But it’s never been because I don’t love you.” She smiled softly. “I remember when you were born, and they set you on my stomach. You were so little, so perfect in every way, and I started to cry. Everyone thought I was crying because you were beautiful.” She stroked Lina’s damp cheek. “But I was crying because I was seventeen years old and afraid. I knew I’d never be good enough for you.”

“Mom, don’t …”

“Because I was afraid, I’ve been selfish. I’ve tried to keep you with me all the time, hoping that someday I’d get it right. But I haven’t gotten it right. If I had, you wouldn’t be skipping school and shoplifting and sitting alone in your room, crying. You need something I can’t give you right now.”

“I need Francis,” she said in a small, shaking voice.

“We both do, baby. And we’re going to keep on needing him every day for the rest of our lives. Maybe someday the pain will soften—everybody says it will—I pray it will. But for now, we have to go on with our lives, we have to grab for whatever happiness we can find. If there’s one thing I learned from Francis’s death, it’s how fast it can all be gone. One phone call in the middle of the night and your life is changed.”

“I want my old life back.” Lina gave her a watery smile and shrugged. “I know, I know, I hated it when I had it.”

Madelaine wanted to throw her arms around Lina in that moment and draw her close, but she was afraid it would end the conversation, and she still had a long way to go. Miles and miles. Instead, she cupped Lina’s chin in her hand and smiled. “I want to change where I’ve gone wrong.” She drew in a long breath and geared up for her next words. “I want to introduce you to your father.”

Lina’s eyes widened and she started to shake her head. “Not yet …”

“Yes. Now.”

“What will he do?”

There was the question, the stinging little fear that niggled inside and couldn’t be brushed aside. But the new honesty felt good, much better than all that hiding and pretending to be fearless and perfect. “I don’t know.”

“What if he doesn’t want to see me?”

“Then we try again the next day and the next and the next.”

Lina was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I don’t know if I can take that.”

“You’re stronger than you think.”

“No.”

Madelaine gazed at her daughter, loving her so much it hurt. She knew that Lina was right to be frightened, but that the fear wasn’t reason enough to stay away. If anyone knew that lesson, it was Madelaine. She’d been afraid her whole life, and what had it gotten her? A lonely bed and a daughter who felt unloved.

“If he hurts you, I’ll be there, Lina.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know. I am, too.”

Lina turned, stared at the huge poster of Johnny Depp that hung over her bed. Finally she sighed and looked back at Madelaine. “I have to try, don’t I?”

Madelaine felt a surge of pride for her daughter. “We all do. It’s all there is.”

Angel dreamed he was in the field again.

He stood there, looking around, feeling peaceful and contented. Birds were circling overhead, cawing and chirping and swooping down to the sweet green grass. He could hear his heartbeat, thudding away, pulsing and pounding in his chest.

He knew Francis was coming before he arrived.

Angel turned in slow motion and saw his brother standing at the edge of the trees. Francis was wearing his severe black priest’s clothes, and for a split second Angel almost didn’t recognize him. Then Francis started to walk toward him, floating above the flower-bright grass.

He could hear his brother’s laughter riding the breeze, joining with the crowing of the birds and the whispering of the leaves, and Angel found himself laughing, too.

Suddenly the world fell silent. The birds disappeared and the wind faded away. All he could hear was their two heartbeats, pounding out of beat in a rapid-fire rhythm.

Without thinking, he reached out. He felt Francis take his hand, felt the warm strength of his brother’s grip, and he felt anchored and safe. Their heartbeats synchronized, became a single beat in the quiet field.

I don’t have long.

Angel heard his brother’s words, though Francis’s lips hadn’t moved.

“Stay,” Angel whispered desperately. “I’ve got so much to say.”

The words don’t matter.

“They do, I know that now. Stay.”

But Francis was already fading. His image shimmered and he pulled away.

He ran after Francis, reaching out, trying to take hold of the image, but it was moving faster than he was, disappearing into the dark shadows of the trees.

And Angel was alone. The sky overhead turned dark and ugly, throwing a shadowy pall across the field, burying the flowers and the grass.

“Angel?”

He lifted his face to the sky and stared at the gathering clouds. Come back, Francis, come back.…

“Angel?”

He woke with a start, and found Madelaine standing beside his bed. He stared up at her, his breath coming in great, wheezing pants. “H-Hi, Mad.”

She pulled up a chair. “You okay?”

“No,” he answered without thinking, throwing his vulnerability on the blankets between them. He almost yanked it back and said Yes, hell yes, then he looked into her gray-green eyes and realized that he was tired of lying, tired of covering up the truth. Yesterday he’d felt as if he’d seen a glimpse of the promised land, but today he felt lost again. Lonely and forgotten and sick. The dreams about Francis were killing him.

“No,” he said again, quieter this time. “I’m not all right. I keep dreaming of Francis. It’s not normal. It’s like … like he’s inside me. I feel him all the time, I hear him talking to me. Sometimes I even think like he used to.”

“You couldn’t have anyone better inside you, Angel.”

“I know.” He sighed. “Yesterday, in my dream, he said ‘live for me.’ ” He swallowed hard. “How could I do that—live for a man like him? He was so much better than I’ll ever be.”

She scooted closer to the bed. “You’ve been given the second chance he never got, Angel. Only you can decide what to do with it.”

“Oh, great, now pile a little guilt on me.”

“Not guilt. Hope.”

He grabbed the three-ring binder beside the bed. “How much hope can I have when this is my life?”

“Quit being so melodramatic. That notebook isn’t your life—it’s just your routine. The schedule of your new life. The medications you take—daily, I might add, if you want to see each new sunrise—and the foods you should eat. The exercises you’ll have to begin. The dates of each checkup and test for the next six months. A plain old schedule. Ordinary people follow them all the time.”

“Oh, I can’t wait.”

“It’s too bad you’re in such a foul mood today, because I have a surprise for you. Someone I want you to meet.”

“If you put me in a room with that damn shrink again, I’m going to blow your recovery stats through the roof.”

“No shrinks, no physical therapists, no nurses. Just a single sixteen-year-old girl.”

Angel froze. He heard his heartbeat thudding in his ears, and the sound made him panic. Then came Francis’s words, Be her friend.

He wanted to. Christ, he wanted to, but he was afraid. He was such a screw-up, and this was important. Not the sort of thing you could go into half-cocked and ready to run at the first sign of trouble. “I can’t do it, Mad. I don’t have it in me to be her father.”

She started to say something, then, instead, she did the strangest thing. She reached out and placed her hand on his chest. He felt the warmth of her touch through the flimsy cotton of his hospital gown, through the layers of gauze that covered his scar. “Oh, Angel,” she said, leaning close, so close he could see the silvery streaks in her green eyes, so close he could smell the subtle fragrance of her hair spray. “You have it in you, believe me.”

He was mesmerized by her eyes. He thought, crazily, that he’d seen her look at him like this before, but that would have been years ago. He couldn’t possibly remember …

“I’ll screw up,” he said, forcibly breaking the spell.

“Then I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

He knew she was serious this time, and he understood suddenly the risk she was taking here. She loved Lina, and she was scared that Angel would screw up and hurt their daughter. He knew, too, that if he did, there would never be a redemption for him. Never be a second chance.

“I don’t want her to know about the transplant—she’ll treat me like a freak.”

“No, she won’t. But it’s your decision when—and if—to tell her about the surgery.”

“How do I act? What do I do?”

“She loved Francis like a father, and she’s grieving over his death. She needs someone to listen to her, to care about what she thinks and feels. That’s a place to start. Be her friend.”

He gave her a nervous smile. “That’s what Franco … would have said.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She gazed down at him expectantly, her eyes bright.

Be her friend.