I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner Page B

sorry.”
    â€œIs she okay?”
    â€œLook, you have to leave, okay? Thank you very much.”
    He jostled Simon out without even taking the flowers. Had Serena died? She’d been sick enough that her death shouldn’t have aroused such mayhem. What did Donny’s words in the hall mean? The mood of the house seemed more interrogatory then postmortem. Might she have been killed by a burglar? That was too farfetched…maybe the old woman took an overdose and that’s why the nurse was being grilled. Yes—that made most sense. Or maybe she wasn’t dead at all. But if that were true, where was the ambulance? And if she was already at the hospital, what was the son doing here? If she
was
dead, who were these people? Where was the coroner? It felt like something had just happened: they never rushed a body out of a house like that.
    His car was parked curbside. Simon tossed flowers and incenseonto the front seat through the open window. A policeman left the front porch of the home across the way. A woman in a bathrobe covered her mouth with a hand, stricken.
    â€œDo you think she’s wandering the streets somewhere?”
    â€œIf she is, I would hope someone will take her in and give us a call.”
    â€œPoor darling! She’s been
so
ill.”
    Simon ran to the side of the house.
    He could smell her as he shimmied through the access. She was ten yards in, sitting against a post. He whispered “Serena” and hunchbacked toward her. The eyes were open. A horde of disorganized ants in the superheated throes of discovery laid claim to the darkening ground beneath the bloody, blown-out engine room of her bowel. They would say it was delirium, but Simon knew why she had come. He choked back tears, wondering what to do next. She looked so perfect there, timeless and untroubled—Serena. He would keep her from the maggots.
    Above came the querulous footsteps of the son and the men, and Simon wished this house could lift off, basement jettisoned, to find its lonesome orbit somewhere near the Fellcrum Outback. The Dead Animal Guy in Space would petition the Vorbalidian Elders for mercy and they would grudgingly comply, resuscitating her with the proviso she could never return to Earth. Together, they’d cross the firmament of the cellars of eternity, performing obsequies over the dead.

    On the eve of burying Serena, the agent had a massage. He got a name from Laura Dern’s chore whore. The masseuse spent a lot of time moving her hands over his body without touching—“dispelling dark energy,” she said. Someone must have blabbed about his mom dying. It was lovely being rubbed out there on the patio. He got sleepy. The fountain tinkled and the hill rustled with scavengers. The girl said she saw a big raccoon.
    All day long, he’d been airing the place out. Donny loved this house; maybe he’d move in for a while. Strange, but he’d never bought, always rented—he thought he must have got that from his father. Bernie was always bouncing from duplex to hotel. Serena had kept things up pretty well, though the lot was probably worth morethan the house itself. Whole thing might bring two-point-seven—with the market the way it was, who knew. Maybe two-three, two-one. He’d find some Persian schmuck-Jew or Big Star wannabe, sell it for cash, then buy a place in Mandeville or Rustic Canyon. Three acres felt about right. He could actually afford to spend five mill, if he had to. Five mill on a house. You could get something really decent for that. Lying there, getting his bad energy laundered, Donny performed a sprightly minuet of acquisition: he could retire in Fiji or the Côte d’Azur if he chose, or spend a million on a Pissarro. Lasso koi from the Sargasso or bid on a boulle Louis XIV
bureau plat
at Sotheby’s, three million for a piece of fucking furniture, thank you very much. Something to set the teeth of his colleagues on