Note to Self: Love

Chapter 1

Nothing was unusual about Morgan Miller’s life compared to the lives of the other 1.6 million people in Manhattan, except for the fact that she had decided to end hers.

It was December 7 and colder than ice in the city. As soon as Morgan opened the door of her apartment building, a blast of frigid air stung her cheeks before her nose registered the ever-present smell of raw fish from the Chinese grocery next door. Despite the cold, the street was as busy as usual. Some part of Morgan’s brain noted the familiar blend of languages and accents of people calling to each other—the Chinese grocer, the Jewish pickle guy, the Puerto Rican hat shop owner.

Morgan looked at the heap of dead fish in the barrel and prayed she wouldn’t collapse over it. She wanted to walk farther north where the shops and streets were cleaner. Before she did, she turned and gazed at the building she had been coming home to each night for the last eight years. A thick film of grime over its brown brick face obscured the early twentieth-century architectural details. The stone arches above each window were barely distinguishable anymore, especially when Morgan’s vision began to blur. The last thing she noticed before falling over the fish barrel and landing on the sidewalk was the chipped green filigree fire escape…spinning, spinning, spinning.

What’s happening? I can’t feel my body at all. It’s like having Novocain at the dentist. Oh God, I hope I’m not drooling! Shouldn’t I be seeing a light? Or maybe that story’s a load of crap. I’m probably on my way to a big fire pit.

A flowing figure of a woman surrounded by white light came toward Morgan from far away.

Who’s that? She looks like an angel.

Oh, angel…miss? Where am I?

Then everything went black.

Two hours earlier, Morgan had been sitting at the MAC counter at Saks having her makeup expertly applied by a saleswoman. It was the last of a series of pampering appointments she had scheduled—a mani-pedi, brow wax and tint, and haircut, color, and blow-dry. She planned on looking fabulous for her final performance on earth. She also didn’t plan on being around when the credit card bill arrived.

After Saks, Morgan returned to her tiny studio apartment in the Bowery holding a white cardboard pizza box and a fake designer purse. After hanging up her coat and dropping her purse and keys on a chair, she placed the pizza box reverently on the small bistro table that served as her dining area. Opening the box, she leaned in to inhale the heady aroma of two piping hot jumbo slices of pepperoni pizza. Then she uncorked a bottle of wine, thought about getting up for a glass but decided to drink right from the bottle. She alternated between the pizza and the wine, savoring every bite and sip, and licking the oil off her fingers. No need to blot it with a napkin as usual. Calories didn’t matter now. She eagerly pried the last bit of cheese from the inside lid of the pizza box and popped it in her mouth. Another gulp of wine preceded a huge burp.

Disgusted with herself for eating so much, even on the last day of her life, she tried, unsuccessfully, to stuff the pizza box into her tiny trashcan as if she could hide the evidence of gluttony. She walked the few steps it took to reach the bathroom, which was so tiny that the door hit the toilet seat as she entered. Frustrated, she slammed the door against the seat several times before going in. Looking at herself in the hazy old bathroom mirror, she thought her makeup looked impeccable except for the lipstick she had eaten off with the pizza. That was easily remedied with the tube of red lipstick sitting on the edge of the sink. The job done, she examined her face one more time; her piercing blue eyes stared back at her. Who was the person in the mirror? She didn’t know anymore.

For her last outfit, she had carefully chosen designer separates purchased on clearance at various discount stores. Ralph Lauren tailored black trousers, a brick-red cashmere Gucci sweater, and her favorite black and red stiletto pumps from Chanel. On the outside, she looked like a million bucks. On the inside, she felt worthless.

Morgan was a derailed train—stuck and disconnected. She was too weary to get her life back on track and too ashamed to ask for help. This was not the life she had expected to have. She had come to Manhattan with big dreams of becoming a star. But after eight years, still only able to earn a meager living as a waitress in an Italian restaurant, she was broken beyond repair. Worn down by producers who rejected her, boyfriends who disrespected her, and customers who didn’t tip her, she never felt good enough for anyone or any job. She was thirty-five years old, had never been married, and had nothing to show for a lifetime of trying to succeed.

Morgan remembered a time when her life had been different. When she felt like somebody who was worthy of life. Growing up in Harnerville, New York, she had enjoyed the perfect suburban existence, complete with a loving family and a swing set in the backyard. That was before her father had left and never come back. Before her mother had died a long painful death. Before her brother had moved to Colorado and become unavailable.

Morgan opened the medicine cabinet and took out an amber-colored plastic prescription bottle. She laughed out loud at the prominent warning: May Cause Dizziness. Her plan was to bypass dizziness and go directly to death. She walked back to the kitchen, pills in hand. They went down smoothly with the second bottle of wine. As soon as she finished, she wanted to get out of the apartment as quick as possible. She certainly didn’t want someone finding her there a week later—a bloated, decomposed corpse covered in maggots. That would defeat the time and effort spent on makeup and hair.

As Morgan reached the door, her eyes fell on the rug in front of it. She immediately thought of Jack, the stray mutt she had taken in a year before. This was his favorite spot. She swallowed hard, trying to suppress the lump in her throat. She was going to miss Jack. She had asked her friend Cassie to take care of Jack for a few days, saying she was going to be out of town; she hoped Cassie would keep him. Jack was the only one in her life who loved her exactly as she was. She held back her tears, determined not to run her mascara.

She turned around to look at a photo of Jack, which sat upon her miniscule desk. She picked it up, closed her eyes, and kissed the smooth cold glass. Next to Jack’s photo sat another one of Morgan with Cassie. Arm in arm, they were holding up martini glasses, smiling ear to ear. Morgan sat down at the desk for a few minutes, contemplating whether to write a note to Cassie, but then decided against it. The drugs and alcohol had started to cloud her mind, and she had already stayed in her apartment longer than planned.

I’m sorry, Cass. I know you’ll hate me for this, but I can’t do it anymore. I need to put an end to this pitiful story called my life.

Seconds later, Morgan wrapped her red cape-style coat around her shoulders. A whirling collage of red and black could be seen as she hurried down five stories to the street level of her apartment building.

Chapter 2

Mario Toglioni was taking a walk after having Sunday lunch with his family before heading back uptown to his apartment. The cold air helped clear his mind. Got it ready for the week to come. The mergers. The wheeling and dealing. The late-night negotiations over business dinners. Since his promotion to vice president two years ago at DAG Financial Enterprises, the firm’s revenue had increased 55 percent, for the most part due to Mario’s standing and contacts in the financial and real estate communities. He was the golden boy at DAG, and he loved every moment of it. The guys at the top thought he was entertaining offers from a number of firms pursuing him, but Mario wasn’t planning on leaving. He had DAG right where he wanted. It all came down to leverage. Mario knew how to play his hand—when to bluff and when to come clean. Either way, he always got what he wanted. And what he wanted was the president’s seat at DAG. Not for the money—he had already made enough of that to last a couple of lifetimes. He wanted the power. The thrill of being at the top.

Looking around his childhood neighborhood, Mario chuckled to himself. At thirty-eight years old, he could probably buy any building on the street. He was living a life beyond his wildest dreams. An Italian boy from the East Village who spoke little English until he started school. Who would have thought he would have made it this big? Sure, he had worked hard, got the Harvard MBA, had the looks, and played the game he needed to get ahead, but that didn’t give everyone a ticket to paradise and all the perks that went along with it. And Mario loved the perks, especially those of the female persuasion, who came around like bees to honey.

In a split-second decision, he turned east toward the Bowery, a neighborhood that had been the armpit of New York City twenty years ago. Like the rest of the lower Manhattan communities, the gentrification process had begun, bringing in new investors, upscale business professionals, and chic restaurants. There was a building Mario wanted to check out for a client.

Once he got to the Bowery, he turned the corner onto one of the side streets, taking notice of the stores and buildings. It was definitely a neighborhood in transition—a checkerboard of new and old, dirty and clean, upscale and out-of-date. Of course, Starbucks had already moved in.

As he walked down the street, he saw her legs buckle just before she fell to the ground. The thump of her head sounded like a boulder as it met the unforgiving sidewalk. He wondered why she didn’t try to stop the fall with her arms; maybe she fainted. An old Chinese grocer standing a few feet away from her started yelling in broken English.

"Miss Mogen…you o’ right? Miss Mogen?

Mario rushed toward the woman. A couple of people stopped, but only to gawk. Others walked around Morgan’s inert body, continuing on to wherever they were going, with an air of annoyance at the interruption.

Mario looked at the woman stretched across the sidewalk. She didn’t appear to be a drug addict or a criminal. Well dressed and coiffed, she could even pass for some of the women in his own Upper East Side neighborhood, except there was something more downtown about her. He found himself wondering about it a few seconds too long before he pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. Responding to the operator’s instructions, he bent down to search for a pulse, pressing his forefinger on the side of her neck under her chin. He felt movement under his finger, although it was faint and slow. She was still alive, but he stressed the urgency to the operator as a red halo of blood started to envelop her head. Looking for an address to give the operator, he gave the number of the apartment building next to the fallen woman. The grocer brought a blanket to cover the woman. As they waited for the ambulance, Mario dug his hand into his pants pocket and retrieved a folded paper napkin with an address scribbled on it. The apartment building was the same one his client was about to buy.

Chapter 3

The waling siren could be heard a few blocks away, but it took another fifteen minutes for the ambulance driver to maneuver through the streets. There was no room for any vehicle to move out of the ambulance’s path. Bumper-to-bumper cars were jammed together trying to circumvent the trucks that were stopped making storefront deliveries. When the paramedics finally got there, each of the bystanders freely offered a theory as to what had happened.

I bet a mugger pushed her down when she wouldn’t give up her purse, one old lady stated.

She probably tripped over this fish barrel and hit her head, another younger woman chimed in.

She overdosed, said a young Latino teenager with conviction, as if he were an authority on the subject.

Mario offered no opinions. He was actually thinking about his client, concerned that the neighborhood surrounding the building might not be so desirable. If something shady was going on around there—like drugs or murder—he needed to find out before his client signed the contract. Dealers scared away renters, particularly renters with children.

Since Mario was closest to the body, the paramedics assumed he was with Morgan. He neither confirmed nor denied it. He wanted to learn more about why this woman fell (perhaps even died) in front of the building he was researching. Impulsively, he hopped into the back of the van, holding Morgan’s fake Prada. The siren started up again as they slowly made their way to St. Joseph’s hospital about fifteen blocks west.

No one in the van was paying attention to Mario while he examined the contents of Morgan’s purse. By the time they arrived at the hospital, Mario had learned Morgan’s full name, age, occupation, and address. She lived in the building his client wanted to buy. In her wallet, he found her SAG membership card, a photo of a cute little dog, and four one-dollar bills. He gave all the necessary information to the admitting nurse in the emergency room and told her he was a friend of Morgan’s. He figured he’d wait to find out what happened and then leave.

About an hour later, a tall, lean young doctor greeted Mario. His nametag indicated he was a resident. The deep purple rings under his eyes had developed sometime in the middle of two consecutive twelve-hour shifts. He had been about to leave when they wheeled in Morgan. He needed food and sleep, but sleep would surely overcome him first.

Hello, I’m…um…Dr. Baron. Are you the man that brought Morgan Miller in?

Yes, I’m Mario Toglioni. A…friend.

It seems as if…uh….Mary. Oh, sorry, I mean Morgan. She ingested a deadly overdose of muscle relaxants and alcohol. We pumped out as much as possible, but I’m afraid the affects of the drugs combined with the trauma to her head when she fell was too much for her brain to handle. The doctor chose his words carefully, making sure he spoke in plain language. His eyes shifted from the floor to Mario as he explained the situation. He still wasn’t comfortable doling out bad news to patients’ friends and family. In fact, he hated it. He felt the eyes of everyone in the waiting room piercing through him as they each awaited the fate of their own loved ones.

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