She lingered by the exhibit on the First World War. There was an old sepia photograph of a young soldier with his wife and children before he marched off to battle. The shot was posed in the serious formality of the day but the family looked so real, so normal. Mum, Dad, and three kids, dressed for a Sunday. She looked at the soldier and was struck by how handsome he must have been, Lance Corporal Adam McLachlan.
At that moment, the one sperm of George’s that had survived its long and perilous journey stormed Claudette’s egg. It dug in like the battle-hardened trouper it had become, and together the new allies advanced on the uterine wall.
Hallelujah.
George and Nancy went to the City Bakeries tea shop in the town center. They had hot, sweet Earl Gray and cream cookies. They hadn’t done that in years. They talked for two hours. George told her what the doctors had said, what decision he had made about his life and how it would end, and then for some reason they started talking about family holidays years ago, when she was a kid. They got calm for a while, then it was time for him to go. She begged him to stay but he said that he had to go, that apart from anything else he was not going to die slowly in front of her until finally he expired and was released from his agony and everyone would be relieved.
“Don’t be selfish, Dad,” she said.
“Don’t you be selfish,” he said.
The pain was returning, stronger and more urgent, and he wanted to get to Claudette and the magic bottle. He needed the genie.
They stood outside the little tea shop. She wanted to leave first.
“Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye,” he said.
She turned and walked a few yards, then she looked back at him.
He smiled at her. “Help others,” he said.
She nodded, and ran off.
On the evening plane back to Paris, George slept, the morphine soothing his furrowed brow along with the cool hand of his love.
THE ROAD TO GOD: NINE
THE PUNISHMENT THAT SAUL’S BODY HAD TAKEN over the years in Hollywood showed in the broken veins on his nose and cheeks, his high-blood-pressure readings, and his ever-increasing obesity. His face had gotten so fat his eyes were little bloodshot dots of mistrust. The punishment that his soul had taken was visible in his acts of depravity and greed. He truly had become a monster inside and out yet his mind still functioned as sharply as it did when he was scoring homemade acid from Benny Alderton. This was fortunate because when Big Friendly American Wedding Celebrity came out to horrific reviews, he had to spin as much as he could to try to keep from looking like he was to blame, which this time he actually wasn’t.
That doesn’t matter, though, his reputation was distasteful enough for the town to turn against him. The hyenas of Hollywood sensed his weakness and gathered for a wilding, the bloody orgy when they bring down one of their own.
Saul might have survived but he was ugly and fat, so he was really despised. Advance word on the movie was dreadful. It performed badly in front of test audiences, who had expected a feel-good comedy about a big, friendly American who went to a wedding and became a celebrity or something. They had not expected a ridiculous, confused musical about a serial killer. It got a big thumbs-down.
The studio gambled, trying to snow the public with a massive advertising campaign and putting the movie on a huge number of screens its opening weekend. This is standard industry practice; they figure that if they sell the movie hard and all the suckers go the first few days, by the time the chumps have figured out the film is a piece of shit, their money is safely on its way to the bank.
This is done time and time again and people still fall for it, but every so often the audiences get a whiff of something, some kind of warning flare goes up in the collective unconscious, and they stay away.
So it was with Big Friendly American Wedding Celebrity. The movie stiffed, it did not even recoup the cost of paying its stars’ salaries, never mind production or advertising costs.
Saul began to teeter.
Sensing that the time was right, the publishing house Havering announced they had purchased the rights to a tell-all book about prostitution in Hollywood as written by a genuine madam to the stars, Candy Chambers.
The book, Hot Lunch/Cold Hearts, graphically described the sexual predilections of, among others, Bo Ness and Saul. (Leon was actually a little too vanilla to be interesting; he only ever had sex with one woman at a time and didn’t use prostitutes.) The publishers released some advance material from the book to Peephole magazine.
Saul became a laughingstock. His power disappeared almost overnight. He still had money but CAM took over the day-to-day running of Leon’s life and left Saul with looking after “development,” which meant he would be given a salary by Leon if he just kept out of the way.
Uniwarn canceled Saul’s production deal under a morality clause. It had stated that the studio could terminate any agreement if a producer brought them into disrepute, which technically meant they could fire anyone who made a movie that got a bad review, which technically meant they could fire anyone they pleased. Which they did, often.
Hollywood turned its back on Saul. He couldn’t get his calls returned. The only person who would talk to him, through the miracle of electricity, was the spotty teenage screenwriting hopeful who manned the night shift at the Fatburger drive-thru.
Saul and Leon still lived together in the big house in the Hills but they rarely saw each other. Leon was out at work all day and Saul became practically nocturnal. He would get up around five P.M., get on the phone to do some business, that is, phone some people who didn’t want to talk to him, then he got moving and shaking with his slimy retinue of party friends—the hookers and dealers and hangers-on who didn’t have a better gig or contact—at around nine.
Saul had gone the whole hog, he had tinfoil put on the windows of the rooms in his area of the house so that sunlight could not find him, and he lived for drugs, food, and the next orgasm.
Then it ended.
It was fast.
He got up one afternoon and went to the bathroom. Leon wasn’t home yet. He sat his massive bulk down on the bowl and suddenly felt tingling, intense tingling, all down the left side of his body. He picked up the telephone next to the toilet but he couldn’t remember what to do with it. He dialed 911, the only number he could think of, and when the emergency services operator came on he said, “Mommy, I want bananas—” then collapsed on the floor.
Emergency services traced the call—the line was still open and the operator could hear Saul convulsing.
Fifteen minutes later the paramedics burst down the front door and found Saul on the bathroom floor.
He was breathing but the stroke had done a massive amount of damage to his brain. They rushed him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he was immediately taken into the ICU. Tim Flannigan, the paramedic who drove the ambulance, called the news channel he had a deal with, then called the studio to alert Leon.
At first Leon came to see him every day before he went to work. Saul regained consciousness and he could see and hear but he couldn’t speak and was paralyzed from the neck down. He had no sense of up or down or time, he never really knew when he was sleeping or when he was awake.
He was half dead.
One day, Leon came in and sat next to the bed and told him that he had talked to the doctors and they said that sometimes people recovered a little bit, one day he might even walk again. Saul just sat and glared out from his fleshy prison, vaguely aware that every now and again a nurse would come and change the TV channel, his drip, or his diaper.
Over time, Leon’s visits got a bit more spread out. He got very busy, the ratings for Oh Leon! were beginning to dip, and he had to do a lot of extra publicity. Also, he was getting more into Brainyism and attended meetings as often as he could. He made sure Saul had fresh flowers in his room every day and a little bowl of fruit. Saul couldn’t eat the fruit, of course, he could only look at it. Saul got his food through a pl
astic straw, a sickly sweet mush prepared for him in the hospital kitchen.
Sometimes one of the orderlies would take the fruit and give it to one of the children in the pediatric ward or even just put it in the staff room.
They figured Saul wouldn’t mind.
When he noticed, Saul was furious. He tried to convey his rage at the fruit theft by blinking his eyes furiously but everyone thought he was just asking for his bedsores to be treated or he had sweat in his eyes, and indeed sometimes that was all it was.
Sometimes Saul got a hospital visitor. Well-meaning volunteers who would sit by his bed and read him books or entertainment magazines. He hated this more than anything, he hated the sound of their chip-per, upbeat voices, he hated hearing how the world was moving along just fine without him. He screamed for death but no sound came and neither did the Reaper.
But someone did.
It was a smoggy California afternoon and the air-conditioning in Saul’s room was on the fritz. The hospital was chockablock and there was nowhere to move him to. He lay in bed, a light sheet covering his useless bulk while a fan blew warm air over him. The saline drip in his arm kept him from dehydrating and every so often a nurse would come in and pour a little water into his mouth and swab his face and neck with a cold towel.
When the fat, shiny-faced man came into the room, Saul presumed he was a volunteer visitor, but this one was different. Usually they were timid and tried not to look at him too much. He guessed he must be hideous. He certainly was no oil painting when he could move around but lying here naked and helpless like the carrion of a beached whale that had begun to rot even before it died probably hadn’t enhanced his beauty. He supposed he smelled pretty bad too.
The fat visitor didn’t seem embarrassed by Saul’s ugliness or helplessness. He seemed a little hostile, angry even. Saul wondered how his visitor could stand the heat; he was wearing a Harris tweed jacket and plus fours and a cap. Not a baseball cap but a cloth cap, like a turn-of-the-century longshoreman.
The visitor was almost as fat as Saul but he also had an athleticism, a grace that Saul had never had. Saul watched him as he wandered around the room, inspecting it, tapping monitors, and looking in cupboards.
Jeez, don’t you have any booze in here? I guess not, huh—hospital, he said to himself.
He helped himself to a piece of fruit. He bit into a soft plum and ignored the juice as it rolled down his chin and onto his dirty white shirt.
For some reason Saul was afraid of the visitor, who had been in the room for five minutes but hadn’t spoken to him or tried to communicate. Just eyed him with a kind of contempt. This was very unusual.
The fat visitor stood at the end of the bed. He grabbed the sheet and whisked it off, revealing Saul’s hideous naked body. The visitor stared at him for a long moment. Saul was terrified. He blinked for help but none came.
“You’re a fat one,” said the visitor. “Of course, I’m fat myself, but not like you.”
He walked around and sat on the chair next to the bed. He put his face close to Saul’s. Saul thought it looked as if his visitor was wearing makeup—lipstick maybe? He smelled of whisky and he seemed somehow familiar.
He thought the fat man was here to kill him.
“I’m not here to kill you,” said the fat man, as if reading the stroke victim’s mind. “But I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Saul blinked.
“Was that a yes or a no? Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make any difference now what you want or think, does it?”
Saul didn’t blink.
“I’m not a killer and I was never like you. Gossip and lies and ignorance would tell you different but that’s Hollywood, huh? Even when you’re not guilty, just being accused is enough in the eyes of this fucking place. A world to itself. I was never like you.”
The fat visitor got up and walked to the window. He looked out at the Hollywood sign, just visible up on the hill through the brown haze. “It used to read Hollywoodland, you know. Like it really was another country—England—Ireland—Hollywoodland.”
He turned and looked at Saul again. “I was framed, buddy. Railroaded.”
He walked back, took off his cap, and sat next to Saul again.
“My name is Roscoe. I’m a volunteer. Do you want to hear a story?”
Of course, Saul had no option.
THE SAINT
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a holyman who believed in the value of martyrdom. Francis was Italian, born into a family of wealth and privilege. His father was a successful cloth merchant and his mother was the daughter of an ancient and revered family. He was loved and adored by his parents, who indulged his every whim. He grew up spoiled and selfish and ran with a pack of other young men from similar backgrounds. They drank and caroused and had the time of their lives, giving no thought to those less fortunate than themselves. Every so often, though, as he paraded through town in smart livery, Francis would catch sight of a beggar or a cripple or a hungry child and he felt a snag, a tug at his heart. As he grew older, the enthusiasm with which he pursued his revels began to pale and he began to look for purpose, for a meaning in his life.
He resolved that he should enter the military. The austere life of a soldier would be a counterweight to his epoch of comfortable but empty luxury. He signed up with a local warlord, a noble who was intent on acquiring the land of a distant relative who lived on the other side of the hill.
Francis learned the arts of war but he was no soldier, and in his first battle he was captured and taken prisoner by the opposing forces, who also won the day.
The lord whom Francis had hitched his banner to was killed in the fray.
Francis was thrown in a deep dungeon and had to sleep with other prisoners on a dark, damp floor that crawled with vermin and disease. His constitution was weak and he became deathly ill. A fever gripped him and he began to hallucinate; wild dreams and visions came upon him in his cell.
He dreamed he was called to arms with another noble, one who flew the banner of a red cross on a white background. He dreamed of a beautiful woman in tattered clothes who wept for him, he dreamed of the Messiah in his moment of doubt.
In negotiation with his hometown, his captors agreed to his release and he was returned to the bosom of his family, where he made a full recovery from his illness. Although he remembered little of his feverish nightmares, he felt haunted by his experience in the mire of the enemy prison.
His father told him that it was time for him to take the reins of the family business and fortune, and Francis tried to please the old man but he could find no enthusiasm or fire for the task. Money and business and figures bored him. He felt that they were somehow beneath him, that he had a higher calling.
It is to be remembered that he was a child of wealth and privilege and he wanted to better himself from that background. His mother paraded a string of marriage candidates before him, beautiful local girls, girls from noble families in other towns. His mother was desperate for him to marry but still the old ennui would not desert him and he felt that he could not.
In a desperate search to shake off the black cloud of despair that he felt followed him everywhere, he began visiting holy sites. He was a Christian by faith and sought the graves of great Christians who came before him.
He went to the site of a dead saint’s grave and was appalled by its unkempt and neglected appearance. Surely one of the fathers of the Church deserved to be remembered with greater glory than this dirty boulder of a headstone. There should be a shrine. In protest, he took out his purse and emptied all his money on the grave so that the other pilgrims could see; he for one intended to help build a decent monument to a great one.
As his money fell from his hands to the grave, he felt lighter and lighter. It seemed like the coins fell through the air slowly, and for a moment he felt he was back in the prison cell and was in the throes of a vision.
The money clanged against the cold stone and shook him into awakening. He felt hi
s heart pump and a joy surged through his body.
It was the money.
The money and the privilege.
This was the source of his discomfort.
He turned to a ragged beggar who stood next to him at the shrine. The beggar, who had already noted with a thrill the fall of the money, was delighted when Francis suggested that they swap clothes.
Francis wanted to be dressed in rags. It made him feel holy. The beggar stole the money and ran off in his new suit before the mad aristocrat changed his mind.
Francis stood by the grave all day so that everyone could see how pious he had become. He was recognized by some natives of his home-town, who informed his family what he was up to. His father, exasperated by his son’s foolishness, had some of the men in his employ go to the tomb and grab the boy. He told them to try to beat some sense into the fool.
They did their best but Francis rejoiced at his suffering and in the end his father locked him up in an attic in the house. It was seen as shameful to have insanity in the family and it was the custom at the time to lock the mad away from sight lest the family fall into disrepute.
When his father was away on business, his mother allowed him to escape and he ran to the church for sanctuary.
When his father returned, he demanded his son come home but Francis told him he no longer was his son. He had a different father, one “who art in heaven,” and he would answer only to Him.
Francis worked among the poor, dressing wounds, tending the sick, distributing alms from the charitable, and offering solace to the miserable and the dying by preaching the good news of the life that awaited them in heaven.
He was seen as a madman by his former friends, and when they encountered him in his rags in the street, they beat him and insulted him as they would have any other traitor to their kind. Francis wanted to help others, it was the only thing that made him feel good, but in his enthusiasm for doing good he sometimes got carried away, and in his desire to emulate the good carpenter of Nazareth, he occasionally fell into a mistaken zeal, which resulted in the sin of infallibility.
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