by Bruce Wagner
“I don’t have a sense of humor about possible nerve damage to my spine. Should I be laughing, Maurie? Does that sound, like, Comedy Central?”
“You’re kidding, aren’t you? Is that what the doctor said?”
“They don’t know yet.”
“I can’t believe this! Who’ve you been seeing? Mengele? These people are friends of mine.”
“These ‘people’? At Friday Night Frights?”
“They’ll give you work, man—I already spoke to them. You could work full-time, get your union hours. You could buy a new car. Total medical coverage. Why are you being such a dick?”
“You know what, Maurie? Maybe you should split. I got a headache.”
“Yeah. I’ll split. I don’t like to be around old women.”
“Right! I’m an old woman. Now go buy flowers for all your close personal friends at FNF. Flowers and K-Y.”
“You gonna sue these people, Chess? Cause that is about the most fucked-up thing you can do. Karmically.”
“Oh, are we Hindu now, Maurie? Did you convert?”
“I’ve been there, that’s all. I’ve sued and been sued and it’s a motherfucker. Turns you upside down and sucks your life force. But hey: what do I know? Go for it. Get Tom Mesereau on the phone. I’m the guy who sued Home Depot after I tripped over a rubber hose in the gardening department. Took 3 years and you know what I got? 22K—60% of which went to lawyers and taxes. By the time it was over, I was popping benzos like Altoids and my self-esteem was in the shitter. But go for it.” He scuttled toward the door then turned, theatrically. “Know what I think, Chess?”
“Tell me, Maurice.”
“I think you should do some yoga and call it a day.” He paused. “I can seriously get you on staff at Frights. I told you, I talked to them. It’s done.”
“They throwing me a bone, Maurie? Are you the bag man? What is this, a pity fuck? Or are they running scared?”
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes.
“I think they’re running scared.”
“Man, this thing has really twisted you! I don’t know who’s whispering in your ear, my friend, but this is not going to end with you sipping daiquiris on your own tropical island. I’ll tell you how this is going to end: with your body healing way before your head does. Cause it’s a self-perpetuating thing—the more paranoid you get, the more ‘pain’ you’re gonna be in. It’s all about pride, Chester. Ego. Is your ego so fucking fragile that you couldn’t take a little practical joke? Couldn’t laugh at yourself and have a good time? Be on television, with a steady fucking job and a new car? Healthcare? And maybe a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend? What does that mean?”
“I think you need to get laid.”
“Get the fuck out, Maurie.”
“You need a little kundalini, bud. Channel your energy elsewhere. You need a chick to fuck, not a lawyer. News Flash: the lawyers are gonna be fucking you. Or didn’t you know that.”
“Sayonara,” said Chess, now standing.
“If you think you’re gonna win the lawsuit lottery and hump Kellie Pickler, cool. Knock yourself out. Be the Payback Poster Boy. But remember: chicks dig guys with jobs. Chicks dig guys with jobs and new cars who don’t sit around their apartment smoking weed and popping pills like Lenny Bruce, building their case against the world.”
“Fuck you!”
“I get it,” said Maurie, backing down. He was halfway out the door now. “That’s cool. Namaste, Chester,” he said snidely. “Namaste. Gassho. Call me when the swelling goes down—of your ego. In the meantime, try not to leave any severed fingers in the chili at Wendy’s. Though there’s big money in that too, if you don’t get caught.”
THAT night, Chess watched a tsunami doc on MTV. Surfers and real MDs went over to help. Their T-shirts said MALARIA SUCKS. Rock songs played during amputations, to hold the attention of the demographic.
He switched the channel: another Big Wave Anni show, with the same recycled shots of killer tides engulfing the infamous hotel pool. (Some guy really must have got rich off that footage.) There was a segment on these nerdy bureaucrats in Hawaii who kept saying they wanted to warn people but didn’t know how. One of them said they probably could have if they’d been able to find phone numbers of the embassies. Chess thought that was sort of funny and disarming. The pinhead suddenly gets a “miraculous” call in the middle of the night, “a real lifesaver,” from the State Department—and then he thinks to ask, Can you give me the numbers of the embassies? By the time he starts his round of wake-ups, it’s too late. Not that it wouldn’t have been anyway. The documentary was pretty engaging but they eventually ran out of stuff to say and it got crazy. People began theorizing about 50-story waves being generated by simple landslides or how a volcano blowing its top in the Canary Islands could basically wipe out Manhattan. The nerdwatchers said the chances were “slim” but such events were “imminent.” Basically, the whole Pacific coast, from Vancouver to San Diego, could be wiped out as well. Each time, the size of potential waves grew: from 100 to 200 to even 300 feet. Why didn’t they just say the waves would be a mile fucking high? You’d have to be in a goddam 747 to be safe. They kept cutting back to this butched-up pseudoseismoscientist dyke saying, “It could happen anytime. It could happen…today.”
Right. About the same odds as you going down on Anne Hathaway. You fucking whitehaired diesel. Weasel diesel crock.
Chess swigged down Percocet and Soma with a diet Dr Pepper. He flipped to a series on AMC called Film Fakers. The premise was a bunch of unknown actors cast in lead roles in genre films (there’d been a similar thing a few seasons back starring people who got famous on reality shows), the reveal being that everything was bogus, from script to director to crew. An extended, low-rent version of Punk’d, except with unfamous people. Kinda funny.
He lit a joint. Maurie’s words stung and Chess wondered if he was being a poor sport. Maybe the pain was in his head. But how could that be? In grade school, he was “a whiner.” Even his kid sister called him that. No, this was different. It wasn’t an ego thing—he’d been injured for real. Take these Film Fakers kids: they were all young, desperate, aspiring actors, and however pathetic it turned out, happy to have the exposure. Whereas Chess was a grown man, just like Remar said, fighting the good fight against getting older, struggling to pay bills and join the union. No, fuck that—fuck Maurie Levin and his manipulative bullshit. Fuck your bosom buddy madres at Friday Night Frights. I’ll sue the shit out of em and slap a suit on your kinky-haired ass if I have to, Superjew! Fraud and misrepresentation. Emotional fuckin distress. You blew it sky-high today, Rabbi! Comin over here runnin your namaste mouth. Try to buy me off with your chicks-like-
guys-with-jobs-and-new-car-smell fucking horseshit. Chicks like chicks with dicks! he thought, laughing out loud. I’ll fuck your pimped-out hippie girlfriend too.
SHE dropped by again, and gave him a New Age bookstore pamphlet about Ganesh, her father’s patron.
Laxmi said that years ago her dad broke his back and finally had something called spinal fusion, where they screw a metal rod in your spine. The surgery was done in New Delhi. Chess thought she was sharing the anecdote to make him feel better—as if whatever was wrong with him would never be that bad. Her heart was in the right place. Her pussy too. But I wouldn’t know.
After she left, he went online. He was stoned and curious. Fusion stuff was all over the place. The technology had recently been in the news because the doctor who invented it won a patent suit against some manufacturing company for infringement. He was going to get a settlement of one-point-
3,000,000,000. In a peace-and-love prescripted press release, he said there were no hard feelings—he really liked the company that tried to steal from him, and even announced he’d be doing business with them in the future. Well who the fuck wouldn’t. A lot of experts said that half the 250,000 spinal fusions done in the States each year were totally unnecessary; statistics said that instead of fusion, you could have the far
less invasive laminectomy or even no surgery at all and do just fine. A little Pilates or even a walk around the block went a long way. But Medicare had bought into the game big-time and everyone was brainwashed into thinking that the more money a procedure cost, the more effective it was. The American way: $$$ = Best. Docs got kickbacks, free trips to Hawaii, and 6-figure consulting fees from whoever made the hardware, and hospitals quadrupled their fees, leaving the crippled, infected, and dead in their wake. Money kept talking even if it didn’t end up walking.
Chess went into some of the blogs and chat rooms. People were beginning to wake up and smell the litigation. But you had be careful: a lot of class action suits had fraudulent underpinnings: big drug companies were being extorted, and they were starting to fight back. Reading about this shit was like staring at one of those Bosch paintings. Gave him the willies. He would never let someone cut into him, that’s for damn sure. He’d be on a beach somewhere counting his money before that would happen.
Slurping daiquiris.
Watch me, Maurie. Watch it happen. Fuckin Jew.
XXXII.
Marjorie
LUCAS Weyerhauser was late.
He laughingly asked if she’d spent the $1,863,279.47. She told him she had the money order, the 11½-thousand-dollar “marker.” He thanked her and said he’d be sending that to the New York State Attorney by special courier, the same folks who flew out jewels for Academy Award presenters, and “trucked” Federal Reserve gold bullion. “Your money order,” he said with a smile, “might very well be sharing a ‘pouch’ with Scarlett Johansson’s Harry Winston tiara.”
He asked how it went at the bank, wanting to make sure she hadn’t “shared” with friends or family members just yet. (She decided not to tell him about her close call with Joan.) He showed the old woman the contracts she’d signed, now notarized and stamped with official-looking seals. Marj asked when she could expect the 1st payment and he laughed again, sweetly, and said sometime in the next 6 weeks, as soon as the tax was paid on her winnings. That was standard, he said, showing off a cashier’s check—not the “marker” monies, he clarified—from the family in Ojai who “were unfortunate enough to win a bit less” than her. The amount was for $335,000, which meant, he said, they’d be able to “liquefy” within the next 10 days. Mr Weyerhauser didn’t think Marj wanted to “cash out” that quickly but if she “so desired,” arrangements could always be made. A minor hassle but he’d do anything for his Sisters. She said no—she didn’t want to be pushy—and the young man thought that prudent.
He’d be back on Friday. He urged her to stop calling him Mr Weyerhauser (she toggled back and forth between Lucas and the former) “because it makes me feel a bit beyond my years.” What a smile he had! Then he pulled a box of expensive chocolates from his briefcase and said, “Of all my Blind ones, you’re the teacher’s pet. I’m not supposed to say that but I don’t think I’ve broken any federal laws.”
After walking him to his car—the nice black chauffeur stood in readiness—she went next door to check on Cora. She was always slightly concerned that her neighbor would see Lucas through the window; the old woman hadn’t yet concocted a story to explain him.
When Cora opened the screen, she began to babble, without Marjorie having said a word.
“Oh, Pahrump’s just fine! The clinic is wonderful. It’s like the Mayo! They said he won’t be there but a few days…did you know that as little as a few years ago, the poor veterinarians used to sneak sick dogs into UCLA at night to use the radiation machines? Those men are living saints. You don’t have any idea what goes on, Marjorie—but everything’s different now. The world has completely changed when it comes to animal care. Thank God! There is an entire oncology department, and the nurses—angels from heaven!”
She invited Marj in. As they settled onto the living room couch, a toilet flush startled. Stein came in from the bathroom, still drying his hands.
“Hi, Mrs Herlihy,” he said.
“Oh, hello!”
“I oughta get you a Toto, Ma.” He turned to their visitor. “They’re from Japan—I just got 3 for the house. They’re like car-washes for your tushie.”
“Oh, Steinie!”
“How are the kids?”
“Fine!” said Marj. “They’re fine.”
Cora gave her son a look, telegraphing that “the kids” never came around, and the topic might be best left unexplored.
“I was just telling Marj about the marvelous hospital Pahrump is in.”
“The tumor’s out and they don’t think it’s spread.”
“Tumor?” said the guest.
Cora shot Stein another look.
“Let’s not talk about it! My son has already taken me to a variety of boarding schools, for when Pahrump gets out.”
“Boarding schools?” said Stein, with an indulgent smile.
“He’s not coming home?” said Marj.
“Well, no—not right away.”
“He’s going to need close looking after for a few weeks,” said Stein. “I didn’t want to put Mom through that.”
“You should see the place we went to, for my Rump!”
“Watch your language, Ma! It sounds like you’re talking about my Toto! But it was pretty amazing. It gives that convalescent home in The Sopranos a run for its money. You know—the one Paulie put his mom in? I think she turned out not to be his mom. They go so long between seasons, I get confused. Anyway it’s like a palace.”
“The dogs watch television.”
“On plasma. I kid you not. There’s even a little beauty salon, and a spa. It was written up—in Los Angeles magazine, I think.”
“And if you pay just a bit more,” said Cora (her son playfully interjected, “You mean if I pay just a bit more”), “those wonderful people sleep in the bed with them! If that’s what your dog is accustomed to…”
Marj couldn’t get a grip on what they were talking about.
“Each program is individually customized.”
“If the pet is lonely or frightened the ‘tenders’ climb right in!”
“Yeah, they tenderize. Our insurance picks up a lot of it.”
“Insurance?” said Marj. She was getting an education.
“Oh yeah. It’s only a few hundred a year. You can get coverage on potbelly pigs and chinchillas. I’m serious. Google employees get it automatic. A lot of big companies are doing it. One of the partners at my firm has insurance on his gecko. I kid you not. He has a gecko called Gordon. By the way, Mrs Herlihy, that check you gave my mother was above and beyond.”
“Oh! Yes!” exclaimed Cora, silently clapping her hands. “You dear heart! I didn’t even thank you! But we can’t accept it.”
“You must,” said Marj.
“Mom, I already told you. We’ll give it to the Humane Society.”
“Yes,” said the old woman. “That would be marvelous.”
“But you shouldn’t have, darling.”
“Very thoughtful and very generous,” said Stein. “The donation will be made in yours and Hamilton’s name.”
“That is lovely! Whatever you feel is best.”
“Maybe we should use the money to buy Pahrump that bed,” said Stein, in jest. “Or a Toto!” He turned to Marj. “These doggie palaces have custom mattresses. They’re Posturepedic, or whatever—made from that NASA material that ‘remembers’ body shape. I mean, it’s like a miniature of what you get at the Peninsula. The last place we visited had a bed that looked like a Mies van der Rohe—you know the chaise Amber and I have in the den, Mom? I asked them and they said it cost 2 grand! I kid you not. These dogs live better than we do.”
“Pahrump loves his own little bed just fine,” said Cora, worried that Marj might think her son had been serious about how they were going to apply her donation.
“Just don’t be surprised if he comes home spoiled. Amber and the kids dragged me to that store where Paris Hilton outfits her Chihuahua. You can get a Sean John sweatie with your dog’s name sp
elled in diamonds. 25 hundred. But the best is what we’re going to do for Pahrump when he’s back home with Mama.”
“No, no, no,” said Cora.
She was spirited now, enjoying her son’s antic attentions.
“We’re gonna get him a masseuse.”
“We are not,” said Cora. “He’s teasing.”
“Mrs H, I kid you not. There’s a pain management clinic for dogs with the Big C. I’m talking certified canine massage therapists! The hospital referred them. Ma, I am tellin ya, we are gonna do it.” He turned to Marj. “Mrs H, do I look like a kidder?”
SHE heated some chicken soup.
Marj didn’t know what Stein did, but thought maybe he was some kind of attorney. There was a piece on 20/20 about a lawsuit against the sweepstakes company Ed McMahon worked for, and the old woman remembered Cora saying her son had something to do with that. Evidently, they were no longer allowed to send letters to people saying they were winners when they weren’t really winners at all.
She wondered why Joan hadn’t phoned like she said she would; she’d probably just gotten busy. After the encounter with Stein (who she thought was a ruffian) Marj considered giving her own son a call but held back. She hated crowding her kids. Though this time she had a reason to call Joan—she could say she was worried she hadn’t heard back—but decided to wait a few days before getting in touch. Instead of making her daughter feel guilty, Marj idly wrote a scenario, out of pride: she would ring up and say she “didn’t want to miss her” before leaving on a little jaunt to the desert; that Cora invited her to come spend the weekend at her son’s house in La Quinta. She’d probably just get Joan’s machine, but that’s how she decided to handle it.
She rehearsed the lines in her head before drifting off.
XXXIII.
Joan
SHE was about to call Marj when she checked her messages.
There was her mother’s voice, nervously hesitant, going on about La Quinta (where Hamilton liked to take her; they used to stay at the eponymous resort, in “Frank Capra’s former bungalow”), then something about the Taj Mahal. She knew it was a ruse, and it didn’t make her feel great; she had promised to call, then everything went out the window when she got her marching orders to go up north again. That’s what kind of whore she was. And, not to worry, Lew wound up fucking her in his brother’s house in Napa, on the Forbes 400 memorial acres, fucked and sucked her hard, left her sore as a week’s full of downward dogs, bruised and yeasty and burnt.
