I’m Losing You

by Bruce Wagner

  All this against the ceaseless crashing of waves. Bernie thought that was probably calming to the Big Star, in the amniotic sense. It was to him, anyway—he never slept this well in town. The air, the mood, the everything was better. He even cut back on Halcion. Edie invited him to stay in a guest room for long weekends. Edie was in love: so be it.

  CK FOR EXHAUST NOISES. REPLACE STUDS FOR BOTH EXHAUST SECURING CLAMPS W/DAMAGED THREDS, REPLACE MUFFLER CENTER MOUNT

  CUSTOMER REQUESTS THE “ROYAL CROWN” SERVIC. PERFORM SERVICE AS REQUESTED

  THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING US TO SERVICE YOUR VEHICLE

  The producer anchored the Rover printout with a gin glass, squinted over the water and stood. He set out with his huaraches and Dunhill, a crusty pioneer.

  Gulls hung in the wind like mobiles. The old man walked barefoot to the water, sand warm as memory. A sweet, unclassifiable scent cudgeled his being. The scent became a feeling, the feeling an image: a Baltimore yard, nineteen thirty-two. White-hot and wickedly bright. He was seven years old, younger than his rich first cousins, whose house looked like a bank—the property took up a full city block. Aunt Janine built them a two-story playhouse that rivaled the apartment Bernie and his mother lived in downtown. June hated her sister for that. The boy had only visited a handful of times; this would be his last, during a short period when the feuding sisters attempted rapprochement. (Their animosities sprang from money, of course. Janine wouldn’t give them any.) The aunt, in black taffeta and pink parasol, served cookies and cider and he remembered with a shudder June’s embarrassment when she called from the sidewalk for him to come, Bernie clinging catastrophically to Janine’s traumatic skirts, miserable and blind, cousins laughing at first, then queerly gawking as a servant pinched the boy’s neck to get him off, like a crazed, distraught pet. Poverty didn’t become him, even then.

  What would he do with Edith-Esther Gershon? he pondered, luxuriously rhetorical, even jaunty, amused and heartened by the strange and generally positive turn of events, for it wasn’t a bad thing that she loved him, no love could ever be, even if—He sidestepped a frothy, impetuous little wave that rushed at him with the pep of a Pekingese. As Bernie bent to scoop a sodden card, a cantering Labrador spattered the cuffs of his shorts.

  Just then, three shirtless, wiseass men were upon him.

  “Hey! Aren’t you Donny Ribkin’s father?”

  Bernie blinked. “I certainly am.”

  “Pierre Rubidoux. We met at the bar in the Peninsula.” The tall blond extended a hand. “Showtime.”

  “My watering hole,” said the old man. “I hope I was civil.”

  Pierre introduced the others, whose names the producer didn’t catch. The bald one had a massive shoulder tattoo; the other was around six-five, with a half-dozen studs in each ear. He was smoking a joint. Bernie tucked the bottleless Artists Rights message into a pocket.

  “Your son’s a helluv’n agent,” said Pierre. The bald one belched, then laughed indiscriminately.

  “Taught him everything I don’t know. Say, you and Donny didn’t go to school together, did you?”

  “No, we didn’t.”

  “He grew up with a Rubidoux—Jesus, I think it might have been a Pierre!”

  “I know two other Pierre Rubidouxes. We get each other’s mail.”

  “The mother was Clara,” he said, irresolute. “You’re not related?”

  “Not that I know of. Were they from Toronto?”

  Bernie shrugged and turned to the others. “Are you fellas also with Showtime?”

  “We were, but now we’re homeless,” said the bald one.

  “Now,” said the giant one, “we’re PWAs.”

  “Forgive my slightly fucked up friends,” said Pierre.

  The bald one began to sing. “We had fun, fun, fun till my daddy took our T cells away!”

  The giant exploded with laughter, then lit out after a Frisbee. The bald one overtook him but the Lab got there first.

  “Do you live out here, Bernie?”

  “No, I’m visiting with a friend,” he said, resisting the urge to name-drop. “But I’d like to—certainly on a day like today.” The others rejoined them, tailed by the foaming Frisbee-mouthed dog.

  “Bernie produced all those Undead flix,” Pierre called out. “The Waking Dead, The Walking Dead—”

  “The Mister Ed…” said the giant.

  “I loved those movies,” said the bald one, circling back as the giant waded into the tiny swells.

  The producer repositioned his extinct corona. “We had lots of fun.”

  “You know,” said the bald one to Pierre, “you guys should remake those.”

  “Love to do it for ya,” Bernie said.

  Pierre scrunched his face. “They did that already—with those rock ‘n’ roll zombie pictures.”

  “That was, like, fifteen years ago,” said the bald one. Bernie was starting to like this guy.

  “What do you care, Mr. Showtime?” said the giant. “Those were bullshit.”

  “Maybe,” said Pierre.

  “It’d be fucking fantastic,” spat the bald one, all marijuana breath and missionary zeal. The giant tore Frisbee from muzzle and threw it to sea. “Man, we fucking loved that shit. We used to go to midnight shows in Westwood—”

  “At the Plaza,” said Pierre, warming to the concept.

  “The days of Lew Alcindor.”

  “Lew! Lew! Lew!”

  “Who owns them now?” asked Pierre, donning his business affairs hat.

  Bernie got a pang of heartburn. “Me, myself and I,” he said, rotating the cigar on the marbly mucous membrane of his mouth.

  “No shit,” said the giant, indifferently.

  “Didja make a bundle, Bernie?”

  “I did fair-thee well, fair-thee well.”

  “I’ll bet. Donny Ribkin wasn’t the son of no slouch.”

  “How do you know Donny again?” asked the proud father.

  “I was at ICM five years.”

  “Well,” said Bernie, “it was nice meeting you boys.” Better not to pal around too long.

  “Call me, at Showtime.” They shook hands while the others peeled off without saying goodbye. “I can rent those, right? The Undead—”

  “Sure can. Blockbuster has ’em. You can get ’em anyplace.”

  “Vaya con Dios,” said Pierre, flashing a peace sign.

  “Don’t you mean Viacom?” he bantered. The executive laughed, then ran ahead.

  Bernie dreamed this and the dream had been delivered, lapping at his feet like so much mother-of-pearl. That was the omen. To hell with the Studio Shuffle, he would sell The Undead cycle to Showtime without lifting a finger: the world was still magical, vivid, ultramarine. The world still held treasures for the likes of Bernard Samuel Ribkin—now hopping wood steps, scrubbing sand from ungainly feet, the fragile, knobby creepers of a courtly old player who’d seen a few things. He was hungry and wondered about dinner. Then a shiver of the abstract washed over him, and for an instant the mysterious seaboard of his destiny was illumined; but Edie’s second-story shout reeled him back to mundane shores and he lost what had been seen as quickly as the thread of a reverie.

  “Old Man and the Sea!” she cried, leaning from the window of her room, smiling like there was no tomorrow. “Old Man and the Sea, do you love me?”

  Zev Turtletaub

  Taj sat in the bath and visualized the article from that day’s Reporter, a front-page piece about the Turtletaub Company’s “hefty slate”: a musical remake of a Spencer Tracy movie called Dante’s Inferno, planned for Broadway; two films already in the can and soon to be released—a Robert Redford and a Martha Coolidge; All Mimsy, a sequel to Mimsy, a spin-off of the hugely successful Jabberwocky chronicles; an unnamed Holocaust project with Richard Dreyfuss, plus the potential filming of a yet-to-be-announced Dreyfuss stage vehicle; an upcoming feature to be written and directed by David Mamet, with songs by Mamet and Sondheim; Middlemarch, to be adapted by A. S. Byatt and directed
by Stephen Frears; three bestsellers—a romance, a policier (for Dustin Hoffman) and a dysfunctional-family drama—in active development; an animated film of a tale from the Brothers Grimm by the director of A Nightmare Before Christmas; a remake of The Four Hundred Blows, directed by David Koepp, the Jurassic Park scribe; Charlotte’s Web, by the Jabberwocky writers; an unnamed story by Poe to be helmed by actor Anthony Hopkins; a remake of Pasolini’s Teorema (with producer Phylliss Wolfe attached, Turtletaub serving as exec producer); and a teaser about Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut that vaguely implied J. D. Salinger might possibly have agreed to expand and adapt his original story. This, of course, was untrue. To his utter dismay and delight, the name Taj Wiedlin had been invoked as “associate producer” in the very last paragraph of page seven in connection with a “fast track” adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, for which no writer or star had been set. Mr. Turtletaub called it “a priority project, a labor of love.”

  The guest-house tub was empty. Taj wore a mask and gag, his wrists and ankles tied with leather. He could hear the voices of the party outside. The associate producer laughed through the gag as he imagined his mother stumbling in to find the toilet. She’d been visiting from Chicago and had only just left to see his sister, in Walnut Creek. He took her to City Walk and Rodeo Drive and the Ivy; Cybill Shepherd and Sarah Jessica Parker were there, but not together. His mother didn’t like the way Taj was looking. He was too thin, she said, too “drawn.” They bought a ton of groceries at Gooch’s and she packed them away while he sat at the kitchen table and smiled. When she asked if he was having “girl trouble,” his mind kinked up like a hose—for two seconds he thought she was hip to his errant faggotry. When Taj realized her earnestness he laughed so hard that if he screamed, he was certain the frequency would shatter her heart. Yes, he vamped, he had fallen in love but the girl wouldn’t love him back. Then it wasn’t meant to be. Do I not know my son?

  He was cold. He went over the details of the Reporter article again. There it was on the mindscreen—Whole Document, Cursor here, Cursor there, Pg Up, Pg Dn—and it warmed him. What he really needed was a tape of Dante’s Inferno; as yet, Taj had only read a précis in TimeOut’s movie guide. Spencer Tracy played a “ruthless manipulator” who opened a carnival featuring the eponymous ride. The nineteen thirty-five film was supposed to have a spectacular “vision of hell” sequence that was technically ahead of its time. It was all so drolly ironic—in college, The Divine Comedy happened to be Taj’s favorite book; he even learned Italian to apprehend its beauty.

  More voices outside as the party grew. Taj shivered. He thought about the Harvard years and hummed a little doggerel. Then it came back, inexorably. On the outskirts of Hell, the poets heard lamentations. Virgil tells him,

  …Questo misero modo

  tegnon l’anime triste di coloro

  che visser sanza ’nfamia e sanza lodo.

  “Such is the miserable condition of the sorry souls of those who lived without infamy and without praise.” In that snowy collegiate world—the dormitory of his own soul—Taj already heard his voice rise up unaccomplished to take its place in the infernal suburbs, a sad tenor among the meritless Dead, their complement unworthy of Hades proper.

  A door opened. Voices. Men laughing. Splash of a Hockneyesque dive. Taj prepared to bolt—he hadn’t agreed to this. If Zev was accompanied, the associate producer would thrash and bloody himself, make a ruckus…The door closed, separating them from the sounds of the world. Zev was alone. He made a few calls, but Taj couldn’t hear. He hung up, rummaging in a drawer before coming to the bath. He smoked a cigar. His breathing was heavy, labored. The producer sat on the toilet and defecated. The air grew musty and fetid. Zev puttered in the other room, casually talking on the phone again. He came and stood over him, breathing calmer. Taj felt the mouth at his groin like a fish feeding on aquarium bottom. Then, mouth skirted nipple: hovered over belly while a stertorous groan scared Taj half to death: and gilded him with throw-up. The producer regurgitated a warm rhythmical hail of egesta that put the rookie in mind of Jeff Goldblum in The Fly. Zev finally off his knees, washing at the sink. Cigar relit. Dreamy party voices through the door as he leaves, locking it.

  Taj shifted in the puky tub; he would endure. Tomorrow, the rewards would come—Prada jacket from Maxfield’s, vintage Rolex from Second Time Around, thousand-dollar gift certificate from Burke Williams—he was generous like that. Maybe Zev would bring him along next weekend when he sailed to Catalina with Dustin and the kids. Such a gift was precious and intangible, an investment in the great career unknown.

  Taj Wiedlin, Associate Producer.

  This was his time. He would live it with infamy and with praise.

  Chet Stoddard

  The dentist and his wife finally took the viatical plunge. When Horvitz brought the cashier’s check to Philip, the dying costume designer, Chet went along.

  The bungalow on Cynthia Street had a Grecian façade. An Abyssinian slept through its sunny sentinel. Ryan, Philip’s roommate, showed them in. The house was clean and bare, low-budget minimalist: in the living room were a few Noguchi lamps, a tulip in a tall vase and the requisite Mapplethorpe photo book. It sat on a low boomerang table like a stage prop.

  Philip lay in a hospital bed, neck craned back, eyes closed, mustachy open mouth. A male nurse smiled at the visitors, lowering the volume of “The Flying Dutchman.” The closest he’ll get to Greece, Chet thought, is inside a fucking urn. The lids fluttered and Philip coughed. Totally blind? Ryan handed him a glass, guiding the straw to his mouth.

  “I knew you were awake,” said the roommate. “He always pretends to sleep.”

  “The Great Pretender,” Philip muttered, clearing his throat while lifting himself up on sharp elbows.

  “Stu and Chet are here,” Ryan said, pitched a little louder. “Looks like you won the lotto.”

  Philip smiled broadly. Horvitz asked how he was doing. The lucky policy-seller coughed while Ryan answered for him.

  “Not so good.”

  “Not so good,” Philip echoed rheumily.

  “Yesterday was better.”

  He closed his eyes as the roiling clouds of a coughing jag loomed, then passed, chased by merciful winds. “Yesterday was definitely better.” Cued by Ryan, the others laughed. “As David Bailey said”—eyes opening again—“there is nothing uglier than the sight of four men in a car. Well. Maybe four men with Kaposi in a car.”

  “Forgive him,” said Ryan, with mocking affection. “He slips in and out of dementia.”

  “Why, pastor! You must try Dementia, the new altar boy—I’ve been slipping in and out all day! It’s heaven.”

  “Now listen, my son—”

  They went on like that until more cough clouds overtook their cabaret. “He might have pneumonia,” said Ryan, sotto voce. The elder viatical rep took this opportunity to remove an envelope from his attaché case. Upon Philip’s convulsive recovery, the roommate placed it in hand.

  “Mr. Horvitz brought us a little check.”

  “Checks and balances,” said Philip, with that mustache smile; it made Chet forlorn. He fingered the paper. “Well, this is glorious. We must call the limousine company, at once.”

  “When do you leave on your voyage?” asked Horvitz.

  “Friday,” said the roommate, somewhat skeptically.

  “Will you manage?” Chet thought his boss’s grave, stagy modulation had belied the euphemism.

  “Better believe we’ll manage,” said the plucky invalid.

  “Big boys don’t die,” Ryan said.

  “And white men don’t jump—but boy, do they Gump.”

  “So wish Jason and his Argonaut well.”

  Just before dessert, Aubrey Turtletaub took a fistful of pills from a Kleenex. She pressed each to her lips as if to divine a code word before letting it pass—admitting them one by one, with slow, steady intimacy while Chet confessed. Well, half confessed, because there was no way he was going to discuss his shor
t-lived career as a rising viatical settlement advocate.

  He said that a Narcotics Anonymous buddy told him about her party—Chet knew it was for positives only, but hadn’t been deterred. Aubrey smiled mordantly and called him a “singles night bottom-feeder.” Shamefaced, he apologized for misleading her on his HIV status. It’s just that he got so flustered when she asked, How long have you known?

  “How many years did you say you’ve been sober?”

  “Four. Going on five.” That was the truth.

  “People tend to get squirrely around that fifth chip,” she said. “I know I did.”

  “I still feel like a jerk.”

  “You just didn’t want to disappoint.”

  “Maybe. It gets a little twisted. You did dazzle me, though—I guess that was part of it.”

  Aubrey smiled; she liked that. “Sure you’re not one of those?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, there was a chick who hung around forever—we finally had to tell her to fuck off. She was desperate to test positive, had no life. A huge chick—five-two, two-fifty. She was a wall. Her old man taught jumping. Parachuting. He was pretty strange himself. She started taking his AZT when he died. I mean before, before he died! She was always asking people for their Zovirax, so we finally said, Here, bitch! Everyone has shitloads of Zovirax. And she’s still testing negative—although I heard she was pregnant by some hemophiliac, so maybe she’ll get her wish. I know I sound terrible, but there’s for sure some fucked up people in the world.”

  Chet eyed the last of the pills. “They do look sort of appetizing. Mind if I—”

  “Go right ahead,” she said, without missing a beat. “This one’ll put hair on your liver.”

  On the way back to Oakhurst, they drove to Roxbury Park. He’d been to AA clubhouse meetings there. Aubrey pointed to an apartment building with a Frank Gehry penthouse floating above the trees like a tiled post-modern elysium. Chet never noticed it. They walked in the darkness and sat on a bench in front of the lawn where retirees did their Sunday-bowling.