I’m Losing You

by Bruce Wagner

  When the director returned, most of the audience had dispersed to kitchen and patio. Only three or four diehard cinéastes remained in quiet attendance of the acrobatic enlisted men—Quinn among them, thigh welded to a married attorney’s. The acne-pitted Dr. Trott stood in a corner shoveling down canapés, regaling Zev Turtletaub with radioactive gossip, indifferent eyes only occasionally drifting to television screen. As Moe resurfaced sans ami, the houseman answered the door and a great whoop rose up: there was Richard Dreyfuss. Betsey Blankenberg brought up the rear with a party-hopper’s fatuous grin. The bantam latecomer embraced Moe and Leslie and Zev, then sat up close to watch final maneuvers with boyish impunity. “You know, I’ve never seen one of these,” he said, squeamish fascination turning to horrified glee.

  Betsey shook her head indulgently.

  “Oh my God!” he gasped. “Is that physically possible?”

  “I thought you knew,” said Moe, deadpan. “This is a CAA training tape.”

  Richard laughed like hell and the room started filling up again.

  Troy assessed his options from the kitchen. He could make an end run for the Kienholz, but wasn’t sure of an easy alley exit; probably worth investigating. He cursed himself for not having parked on the street. He was certain to be boxed in, probably by Dreyfuss.

  The door opened and a server came through, followed by his old chum Betsey. There was nothing for Troy to do but take her by surprise—a pain-free moment suspended in time, like after you catch a finger in a door. She stood back, trying to work the equation of why he was there, unable to factor “gay” as an answer. He leapt in and told the truth, more or less, a blue movie done long ago for money, Moe’s boyfriend, yadda yadda, and was halfway into the Skin Trade rap when Dreyfuss came in, searching for nosh. Betsey reintroduced them, but the actor nodded as if meeting him for the first time.

  “Great flick,” said Dreyfuss, incognizant of the director’s presence. The server merrily prepared a Fiestaware bowl of Spanish olives. “Needs a new title, though: how ‘bout Full Metal Jack-off?” He cackled as someone shouted his name, and then he was gone.

  The air was stale from the innocent snubbing, and Betsey’s awkward failure to make an assertion. It would have been so easy to reference the alma mater—her loser-detector must have gone off. Troy asked what brought them to the party. Betsey said they were filming the La Jolla Medea, with Zev’s company producing. People noisily poured in and Troy excused himself, telling her she should have a look at the art in the backyard. It would blow her mind.

  He went out front to the circular driveway—blocked in, as he suspected. Just then, Moe appeared and offered a cigar. Troy declined.

  “Don’t know why I still smoke—some kinda throwback. I don’t even enjoy it. Freud got cancer of the palate, didn’t he? That’s all I need. ‘Moe, the lower jaw has to go.’ Jesus! Cigars are ‘hot’ again. I know four guys want me to join their ‘smoking clubs,’ I’m supposed to pay twenty-five hundred a year for the privilege. Know what I read in some fashion magazine last week? I think it was Vogue. It said: ‘Black—the new white!’ Black is the new white, isn’t that brilliant? You know what? Pretty soon, it will be. Black-white, in-out, hot-cold, who dictates? W? The gangs? Bill Gates? And I’m the one who’s supposed to know! I’ll tell you something: I don’t have a fucking clue…”

  “It certainly is mysterious.” He felt dull and vocational, like one of the caterers.

  “Troy, I have a question for you. Would you make a movie for me? I know you’re busy with other projects—”

  “A movie?”

  “I’d like you to direct a little film, for Zev’s thirty-fifth. Do you think you could do that for under thirty? With, of course, something for yourself.”

  “Thirty thousand?”

  “No, thirty million. Of course thirty thousand! I’m not that rich,” he said, laughing. “Who you been talking to?”

  “What kind of film?”

  “It should be totally hilarious.” Troy asked if that meant X, and the personal manager nodded. “This could be a classic. What I want to do is find actors that look like the people in his life—and someone who looks like Zev! That’ll be the hard one—but maybe not. Maybe we can use masks or something. You know a lot of these people, don’t you? Are they any good, these actors? I mean, when you give ’em lines? And we need a dog, a dog that looks like Mimsy! I don’t want anything illegal—but I want it crazy. Think you can do it, Troy?”

  Zev Turtletaub

  Taj sat by the pool with the writer profiling Zev for the “Calendar” cover. The frothy ethnography—part Day of the Locust, part That’s Entertainment!—was a sexy Sunday staple, its recipe tried-and-true: a breezy, somewhat cynical day-in-the-life of a mogul of the moment (one who played by his own rules, of course) that included brutal and/or sybaritic anecdotes, unhappy childhood bits with foreshadowings of the “inveterate dreamer” (quotes from grade school teachers preferred, along with fuzzy photo of the bucktoothed, incipient Barnum surrounded by classmates/future losers); a little false-starts/years of failure/turning-point shtick, with obsequious and/or borderline libelous quotes from even more famous friends and traumatized unnamed sources re: the Subject’s lavish generosity/pathological niggardliness and longtime generally-rumored-to-be-lithium-treated bipolar moodiness; not to forget his onetime political aspirations and current Major Contributor status; slight pause for some What Makes Sammy Run? pop psychologizing, with REVENGE/FUN/ART/SPIRITUALISM/FOR THE HELL OF IT alternately speculated upon as the Grand Motivation; rounding off with the seems-to-have-slayed-his-demons number, a tip of the hat to Hedonism (“One cannot deny that in this singularly serious world, he is having, well, yes, dare we say it? Fun”) and a quick dip into the Subject’s perennial bachelorhood and sexual ambiguity…topping the whole concoction with a creaky allusion to “Rosebud.” In between, the columns garnished by newfangled City Walk/City of Angels/City of Quartz observations; quotes from Adorno; nonsensical Internet forays.

  The assistant-cum-associate-producer, who had toyed with reportage himself, couldn’t believe he once envied the kind of sweaty, Polo-shirted schmuck who sat across from him with a ThinkPad and a glass of Steven Seagal cabernet. He was temporarily at his mercy; the guy was probably livid at Taj’s good fortune and could easily portray him as a kiss-ass wimp. He’d be careful not to mention Harvard—why add fuel to the fire? While they waited for Zev to arrive, the stringer busied himself with deceptively ingenuous interrogations, his stab-in-the-back smile dominating like a rogue fart.

  Two years from now, Taj thought, my name will be on seventeen hundred screens and you will be trudging to the Royalton whenever Joe Marginal Icon blows into town. He maliciously finished the “Calendar” piece in his head:

  The producer wanted to know why the fax in the Bentley was on the fritz. “Doesn’t anything in this fucking car work?” His driver smiled, accustomed to the employer’s colorful imprecations. On the tarmac, the Gulfstream waited to loft him to azure skies, to the London premiere of All Mimsy. He would dine at the palace with the Queen Mother. As he mounted the steps, Mr. Turtletaub turned, his face breaking into the trademark, toothy grin. “Who would have ever thought that the Mother of all Queens was not to be found on Fire Island?” Minutes later, he was where he belonged, where as a boy he dreamed he might be, far from the dirt and disorder of the world—where he could lay claim to his rightful title in a palace of his own that hung in the sky: Emperor of the Air.

  They talked about the Turtletaub Company slate and the writer asked about the Salinger adaptation. Taj was coy. He knew Zev wanted to give the appearance to the press that the reclusive author was involved.

  “I read you’re going be associate producer on Dead Souls.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “That’s an interesting project. Will it be period?”

  “Contemporary.”

  “It’s been a while since I read the book, but I can’t imagine—the man buys peasants, doesn’t he?”


  “The core of the book—the conceit—will be the same.” Taj instantly regretted using that word; the writer would use it against him. “Everything else is quite different.”

  “The same but different.” The journalist smiled, savoring the Wonderland doublespeak. “Is there a screenwriter attached?”

  “We’re talking to one or two people.”

  “And the ‘conceit’ is—?”

  “It’s actually Zev’s—Love in the Time of AIDS. It takes place in the viatical settlement industry. Those are the people who—”

  “I did a piece on that,” he said eagerly.

  “The protagonist is a salesman—they call them ‘sellers’ advocates.’ He’s kind of a down-and-out. He becomes this—merchant of death. And suffers the consequences. It’s also a love story.”

  “Wow. That is very compelling. Very cool!”

  Mimsy arrived with her trainer. The journalist amused himself with an impromptu interview: how much was a bitch like this worth? did she have a shrink? how could he be sure this was the “real” Mimsy?—surefire fodder for the Nathanael West sideshow angle. When the photographer came, the “Calendar” boy made him take a Polaroid while he mugged, shaking Mimsy’s paw. “I will treasure this,” he said, watching it develop. What a wag.

  Zev was on his way to the pool when the phone rang. It was Hobson, the AIDS specialist. The doctor had dreamed of building a luxury hospice and healing center in Ojai; when they met at a benefit, Zev expressed interest in seed-funding. Hobson was calling to say—in confidentiality—that Aubrey Anne had been admitted to a hospital in the Valley for what her doctor believed was an allergic reaction to CMV meds complicated by a flu. Zev asked if his sister was dying and Hobson said he didn’t think so. The producer thanked him and they spoke a moment about the hospice. Then Zev went to meet his hagiographer.

  The producer hadn’t been told “Calendar” wanted him photographed with Mimsy. “Oh Jesus. Another shot of me and the dog? Let’s do something more original, okay? Is the piece about me? Or the dog? Or is it about me and the dog?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

  “It’s your call!” said the writer, delighted at the auspicious first encounter—the producer as godhead orchestrator of his world. “Your call, absolutely!”

  “We’ve taken thousands of pictures already.” He bent to kiss Mimsy’s crown. “Haven’t we, girl? You won’t be upset with me, will you? No, I didn’t think so.”

  Chet Stoddard

  Aubrey wouldn’t let him come to the hospital. When he called, she gasped like someone who’d just run a marathon. “How! are you! can’t! talk! call! back! how! are! you! do! ing! can’t!—” Her diapered friend Ziggy occasionally picked up the phone and that’s how Chet got his information.

  She had a horrible rash, he said, a side effect of the drug taken intravenously for her eyes. And she was out of breath like that because she probably had bronchitis—the docs had ruled out PCP, a viral pneumonia. The minute he got her home, Ziggy was gonna do his alternative thing: ayurvedic eyedrops and hydrogen peroxide baths, ganoderma, schisandra and white atractylodes, ligustrum and licorice. Toad’s breath and baby-tooth if he had to.

  Chet felt her weight on him at night. He carried her during the day, too—like the fat lady he read about in Star who strapped on her invalid husband before morning chores. Why this mawkish preoccupation, this neediness, this profound yearning, this nostalgia for what they nearly were? Why now, why this woman—merely because she was dying? Obscene. Yet, as Chet told himself he loved her, the question cuffed his ear: how was it he hadn’t gone to visit? He hated hospitals, spent too much time there recovering from too many battles lost. Days of infamy. He remembered the blur of visiting hours with a shudder, friends and flunkies come to view the perpetrator in his habitat. Aubrey was different that way. She wasn’t cowardly, spiteful or ashamed; she wasn’t a neurotic with a death wish. Yes, there was the thoughtful moment Chet reasoned she’d want her privacy, but in a few days his delicacy showed its color of fraud. After a week, he still hadn’t gone. He went to bars and flirted instead, nursing drinks like a jilted man, telling himself lies: he and Aubrey were on the brink, they’d yet to arrive; tragic miscarriage of love, one of those curves life throws, all they’d needed was one more week for that animal bond. This time we almost made our poem rhyme…didn’t we, girl? A few times, just before last call, he drove toward the hospital—if he went to her now, Chet feared he’d be as unrecognizable to her as she to him. They’d crossed over. Turning around and heading for home, he still reserved the right to call it love. This time we almost made that long hard climb. Didn’t we almost make it…this time?

  He kept calling her room—he knew she wouldn’t answer—and Ziggy didn’t seem to mind. Ziggy didn’t judge. They would be doing a spinal tap soon because Aubrey lost some muscle coordination. The doctors wanted to check for cryptococcal meningitis, a fungal infection that swelled the brain. It was shoptalk for Ziggy, inventory and nothing more. Voices subdued, they lollygagged on the phone like teenagers with crushes on Death—guides to the Holocaust Museum.

  Zev Turtletaub

  Aubrey was sedated so she wouldn’t panic during the MRI. They were checking for brain cysts and put you in this tunnel—she didn’t like enclosed spaces. The Valium or whatever it was let her drift; a lozenge in a cylinder, she woozily returned to the scene of old crimes.

  She could remember visiting a brewery, when a girl—was it Schlitz? It rose up in the Valley like an Erector-set Oz. You toured the place from a tiny tram and Aubrey’d had that fantasy ever since: life as slow monorail past the blown-out landscape of memory, forgotten landmarks of the dead. From her people-mover perch, the child saw middle-class phantoms in seats ahead and behind, safety bars pulled down around laps; polite, curious, hygienic, each watching its own diorama unfold against the autumnal Muzak of remorse, chilled and tender, fragrant with burning leaves and failing light. In adolescence, fantasy honed to futuro-utopian: naked Aubrey lay within a clear, impermeable tube—emerald cities rising in the distance, floating sci-fi brewery palaces—snaking its Grand Tour past lantern-fish-filled ocean floor, then forest primeval, wind-scarred dune and glaciers that cracked apart like thunder, transecting volcano heart and hurricane eye, through pasture pure, plains and prairie; and there, Aubrey—fantasy further evolved—now icon of Woman, chosen representative of this blue planet, itinerary no longer encompassing the rooms and rude basements of suburbia (the basement where Zev did the things he’d done)—no, that was centuries ago—but the galaxies themselves. She floated like a cork inside her crystalline conveyance, trajectory set to Infinity. If only the cannon of Magnetic Resonator would shoot her through the Big Top, to the spray of stars beyond.

  Something brought her back. Cold in the tube. Why was she going through with this Easter cyst hunt? Why wasn’t she arranging for her child’s protectorship in the world, after she was gone? Because I am a whore. Nothing could stop her death, yet like all cowards she submitted to the asinine men and their pain machines. Instead of building a palladium for Zephyr, ensuring his safe passage, there she was in the bowels again, Zev’s basement again, all the useless old torments. Ziggy (what a madcap) had already told her the treatment for lesions was medieval: skull shunts, with medication poured right on the brain.

  She flinched at images of past entombment, Zev binding her first, Zev the chthonic destroyer, coat wire on skin, chest constricted, heightened neighborhood sounds around her—syncopated bark or channels turning, warbly ice cream truck melody—resurfacing at Cedars, Valium waning, trying not to panic because once you did you may as well lose your mind. Zev left a hose to breathe through, but she always worried about the mice—Aubrey thought she could blow one out to Kingdom Come if she had to, like a Pygmy warrior. But sometimes mice were so hairless-pink and tiny-toothed…if she panicked, the little girl might faint, tube fall from mouth. She invented ways to calm herself—a precocious repertoire of meditative skills—recalling techniques while the MRI did its
loud work: isometrics of prayer employed years back, stuck in the hole of the basement at six thirty-three North Rodeo—

  A technician said they were almost done; help was on the way. Aubrey took that as a crazy cue to skirt the crevasse, ice pick in hand…down she went to the cellar again, back to the pit he put her in beneath the removable concrete slab, hanger-wrapped like a cut-rate martyr, left sometimes overnight, urinating into the ground like a plant—once a week for two years and no one ever knew…not Mama dying and Father insensate from ECT…taxiing home from the private Westwood clinic, couldn’t even remember his own name. In the dark hole, house sounds gave comfort: heater coil and toilet flush, wooden creak and water-rush through pipe.

  The orderly wheeled her back to the room.

  It was only when she saw her brother waiting there, rising from his chair in a blue bat-sleeved Miyake coat, rising like a collector of dead souls, that she knew: he would have her Zephyr when she was gone.

  Bernie Ribkin

  He knew the meeting hadn’t gone altogether well, though he was foggy about the whys and wherefores. There were some problems, but what else was new. He didn’t have a deal and he didn’t not have a deal. Bernie already put in a call to an attorney Edie recommended, a macher at the firm representing her daughter. He’d let the lawyers set things straight. All in all, he was in good spirits. He felt “in play”—all was “do-able,” as Denny the Boy had said. The old man would make it work.

  Edie wanted him to move to the beach full-time, but Bernie didn’t feel ready. This Showtime business had given him back his sea legs. He felt alive and on the ornery side. She took it in stride, enjoying his crustiness—called him her “fat old bachelor.” She knew she’d win and that’s why she didn’t get riled. Edie was a handful but so were they all. They had good times together and it was nice because now it looked like Bernie might have a little something to crow about, to make her proud. He smiled to himself, alarmed at his own thoughts. Jesus H, maybe he was falling in love with the big bastard.