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and many expensive tests that further traumatized my father’s body, everybody agreed unanimously, without a doubt, Jonathan Dante would die.
    I’d been in the ICU waiting room only a few minutes when a jittery, high-strung transvestite calling himself Copacabana made his own entrance. He was wearing black stretch pants and a fitted top that came to just below his rib cage.
    Copa joined Dwight, a straight-looking college-type young guy who’d been watching TV. They sat on the couch across the room, opposite the one my mother, sister and Benny Roth sat on.
    Cedars is only a few blocks from Hollywood, and it made sense that many emergency OD’s and drive-by shooting casualties would show up there, instead of going to hospitals in L.A. that were further away. I didn’t give a shit what misadventure had occurred to bring Copa and Dwight there, it just pissed me off to have to tolerate them. Copacabana was whacked on something that impelled his body to get up frequently and change the TV channel. When he wasn’ttalking, he’d suddenly lurch to his feet and hurry across the room. He would then look around defiantly at everybody, adjust his tank top or cinch up his tights, dial the set wildly in one direction, then back the other way. He seemed to prefer sitcom reruns. After he’d found a program, he’d return to the couch, laugh crazily at things that weren’t funny, get bored quickly, then do the same thing again.
    Copa’s roommate and lover, Paris France, had eaten a bottle of Percoset and choked-down several mouthfuls of drain cleaner because the day before, Copa had admitted he was in a new relationship. It was Dwight that discovered Paris France on the kitchen floor.
    I was embarrassed by their conversation about the suicide attempt. My family knew that I knew about insanity and self-killing. They also all knew that, concealed under the sleeves of my shirt on my wrists, were six deep scars with stitch marks. Razor tracks. The recent sutures from the operation after my stomach mutilation with a steak knife were not yet healed. I hoped they didn’t know about them. But, as Dwight and Copa talked more about the details of Paris France’s attempt, I could sense the eyes of my family on me. I realized then that Agnes must have filled them in.
    We were allowed back in to my father’s bedside after a final try to revive his kidneys had failed. We formed two groups: Mom and Maggie and Benny Roth would go first, then after they returned, Fab and I would be allowed in to say our last goodbye.
    Loving Jonathan Dante had not been an easy thing for anyone to do. I was sure his intense pride would haveprevented him from conceding to have anything other than a doctor or a priest at his deathbed. I didn’t want to see him there, alone, his power gone, without hope. I didn’t want to see him at all.
    When Fab and I entered his room, I realized how unprepared I had been. My eyes confronted a blind, legless torso and my brain was unable to accept the input of my senses. I did not recognize the shriveled half-person that was now my father.
    Diabetes had hacked off his toes, then his feet and legs, then caused complete blindness over the last five years. I knew these facts. I’d been told everything in phone calls. Now I was seeing.
    I went to the bed and picked up one of the hands. The fingers were short and thick. Hammer handles. I recalled those fingers. I remembered once thinking Michelangelo must have had fingers and hands like these. My father’s stubbed fists had fashioned priceless words that had spilled from his typewriter on to acres and piles of paper that had created an extraordinary river of honesty and pain that became Jonathan Dante’s work. Dante novels. Now the river was dry. I bent my head and put one of the hands to my cheek, hoping to say something to this ghost. But no words came.
    Instead, I could hear his breath, thick and congested, coming in gasps. I knew that he could not hear me, that his brave heart