by Bruce Wagner
He looked back at the TV, finally unmuting it.
He was drunk.
Joan was drunk.
“You dumb cunt,” he said, staring at the model. “Oh! And people are calling in to ask her shit. I’m telling you, Joan, I have this fucking show memorized!”
“I can see that,” she said, with a smile.
“It’s on my hit parade! I had someone at Guerdon burn DVDs, I’m serious, I’m givin em out for Christmas. (Don’t tell Axel!) She keeps talking about the garbage, crushing her pelvis! Look, look,” he said, raising then lowering the volume. “One of the callers—a guy, of course—is asking Shtupermodel if she’ll need ‘further surgery’ on her hips! On her hips! Loose lips sink shtuperhips! He was just like Larry, a horny motherfucker, you could tell all he really wanted to know was When can you get back to spreading for cock. A woman calls and says, ‘Think you’ll ever fall in love again?’ and Shtuperwhore says something like, ‘Ya, ya, it’s too soon,’ blah. ‘Ya, it’s too soon, but I am looking for the future, whatever it brings.’ Bringing up baby! Coming soon to a theater near you! Coming soon on her shattered pelvis! Another guy has trouble spittin out a question but finally says he was a survivor—that’s why Larry’s people probably patched him through—says he was just up the beach from where Slippery Nip Shtupmod was stuck in the tree, but oh! Larry’s a hardass! Toughass Jew. Man, he was rough on this call-in motherfucker! Ol cardio-fartin Larry keeps cuttin the slob off, saying, ‘What’s your question, what’s your question?’ just like he was at Nate ’n’ Al’s with the gang—then he hangs up on the guy! See, Larry doesn’t want any fellow victims bonding with her, she’s his, he wants that wet, fractured pussy all to himself! The answer my friend is blowin in his wind! See, Larry doesn’t dig the idea of some guy who was on the same beach when the wave hit—he don’t dig it at all. So Larry’s passin gas under the desk, sounds like fucked-up muffler, soiling his jock, marking his turf! Surf and turf! I’m tellin you, look at him, he’s got new suspenders—look!—new suspenders, a fresh haircut, and horny as hell! I look at that bitch and all I can think of is my sister-in-law, impaled on that sundari. I guess God smiles on the beautiful. Esther was no prize. And let’s face it, Shtupermodel Fiancée is beautiful. Up in the tree for 9 hours, it held her in its arms, that’s what she said—Esther’s whorefuck tree wasn’t so benevolent. At least they found the boyfriend’s body. Poor Superfiancé. Samuel wasn’t that lucky. Maybe if he had a manicured bush, the bureaucrats wouldn’t have ‘misplaced’ him. Stupid fucks.”
Joan brought up a Faulkner story she’d read in college about a Mississippi River flood. A pregnant woman, stranded in a tree. (Indirect reference to Katrina, which she always tried to avoid around him, but she was inebriated and couldn’t help it.) A convict rescues her.
Then Joan blurted out that she was pregnant, she, not Faulkner’s lady, not Esther, not Superwhoever, but she, Joan Herlihy, and Lew was quizzically, quietly uncomprehending before soberly nodding his unsober head. She hadn’t expected such speedy, almost elegantly impersonal acquiescence, but that was why he’d made billions, he could reframe and conform his energies to the wildly brand-new. His expression became that of someone listening to a confession of illness, humbly attending the details of what could or couldn’t be done to effect a healing.
She didn’t stay much longer. He asked her not to leave, but suddenly Joan got nauseous and emotional and didn’t want to be that way around him, not now, not tonight, and didn’t want to hear the inevitable question: whether she was certain, but more, whether she was certain it was his, didn’t want to hear that now, not tonight. Joan knew she would have to take a paternity test, both parties would demand it—she would reserve the right of dignity to beat him to the punch and suggest (she would need to move soon: tomorrow morning) what she knew his attorneys would require anyway—she was going to keep this child, Joan knew it was his and she wanted to raise it, but not tonight, she did not want to discuss any of it tonight, did not want to feel anything more, no strength or will or heart or bowels to engage in dialogue, spoken or unspoken—not tonight.
AT home, she dreamed of the Lost Coast. It was carpeted by a macadamized boulevard that morphed into Eisenman’s Mem to the Murdered Jews of Europe, pillar after pillar, slab after slab, until the touristy petrified forest resembled a jail for villains in a Marvel comic. But the vast necropolis had a teeming underground life—in her netherworld, things went topsy-turvy, the dead lived aboveground and the living, below—as in some bad Czech sci-fi novel, dark figures clambered amid the labyrinth, scavenging among darkly crosshatched monoliths, fudgey tooth-some mugwumps, extraterrestrial carpetbaggers and the like, deaf and dumb silhouettes floating in mimed and weirdly gesticulative dreamworded rotomontade, the whole memorial metastasized in stop-motion, slowly unfurling red-carpet black-tie Gehry gala, a granite, boulder-holed, dwarf-oaked Ajanta unfurling, dripping slate-gray basins and ornamental asphalt bodhisattvas that crushed the populace and drove them to grottoes, besotted dilatory shadowclumps futilely attempting to outrun the cubist tsunami lava that slowly and surely advanced over all the acreage of this gob- and Godsmacked earth until every living-now-dead-
thing was sheathed in stone, hardcloth’d dandified forest curated by Lagerfeld, incapable of nourishment yet paying blackened homage to that which once had nourished and been nourished in return: now everything in static, ecstatic haute couture, a dynamically moribund gorgeously abstract iron maidenhead machine. Somewhere in the nightmare came Rem and Zorro with their shticks and dirty tricks, and somewhere came this baby, their baby, Baby Jane Doe (née Herlihy-Freiberg), and the Faulkner tree-house woman’s—and Larry King, and her mother Marj, and the Taj Mahal and Domino’s elephants, and the city of Madras AKA Chennai where Esther Freiberg was gutted and pilloried by a spirit tree whose roots, having giddily performed their sacred dilatation & curettage, now covered the entire universe itself (Joan would scribble it down best she could upon awakening), the 18-inch-deep inverted sarcophagus of Napa too with its inconceivably expensive, minutely calibrated pumps and drains overseen by mean old Calvinist Thom Mayne, his no-foam latte dispensed from her Impressa at Pritzker High in Diamond Ranch; woven into the somatic tapestry like cheap golden thread were all of Joan’s failures and all of her lusts and all of her loss of desire.
All there:
The Perfect Memorial.
LIV.
Ray
THEY took Friar Tuck to a rehab center in Covina.
BG said the place looked like a resort. The woman at check-in was expecting them. Ghulpa confirmed they wouldn’t be “outlaying any monies” and their greeter said yes, she was correct, the City of Industry was taking care of everything. The couple were treated like VIPs.
The Friar snarled at Rahul, the assigned trainer, then spat out a beaded necklace of coughs, in nervous spasm. The unruffled therapist in swim trunks, flip-flops, and medical smock bent down and stroked his new patient, telling him how brave he was. Without taking his eyes off Friar Tuck, he told the owners this wasn’t the 1st dog he’d worked with who had been shot. The old man was surprised yet glad the helper was experienced. Rahul gently drew his hand over the injured hip to assess pain and mobility.
He asked “Mr and Mrs Rausch” if their dog was a “water guy” and Ray said yes, “Nip” liked chasing after waves in the ocean and had been known to jump in a pool now and then. (That’s when he told Rahul the alias—Nip/Tuck—and the therapist had a laugh.) Today’s session would be short. He liked to start his clients out slowly, to acclimate them to their new surroundings.
They watched him lower Nip—now the preferred appellation—into the water, steadying the wounded warrior onto a special, brightly painted treadmill that Rahul called “the yellow submarine.” After a few minutes, he suggested they have a walk around the facility; “overprotective parents” sometimes impeded progress. He said there was a waiting area where they could have snacks and coffee.
A staff member escorted them to a pati
o café called Starbarks. She got Ghulpa a tea and Ray a soft drink, and the Rausches settled into a gingham-covered picnic table with bowls of carrots, cauliflower, and ranch-dressing dip. Against the old man’s mild protestations, the staffer made him a cappuccino, sprinkling it with cocoa. In the future, she told them a shuttle could pick the Friar up at home, saving them the trip; but of course they were more than welcome to “tag along” whenever they liked. There was a treatment package that included acupuncture and massage. “The meridians are exactly the same as with humans,” she said, when Ghulpa asked about the needles. “We always recommend it whenever there’s been surgery or bone injury. I’m pretty sure the city will pick that up.” She winked, as if it was already a done deal. The Center even had a Saturday yoga class called Upward Dog that was “a hoot.”
“You should see our ‘kids.’ They can hold all the major poses. It’s really a wonderful holistic workout—and great for the owners too. All species are invited!”
“Well, hel-lo,” said a lady, trundling over with a King Charles in her arms. She beamed at Ray and Ghulpa but they didn’t recognize her. “How are you?”
She reintroduced herself as Cora, who they’d met at the hospital on Sepulveda.
“And this, I’m sure you remember, is the famous Mr Pahrump!”
They were happily reunited, marveling not only to find each other again, but in this wonderful place as well. Comrades-in-arms, in the war of recovery.
“It’s our 1st time,” said Ray.
“Isn’t it marvelous?”
“The Friar’s having himself a little ‘submarine’ therapy.”
“He’s on the treadmill?” She put down Pahrump—who was sniffing at BG’s Vans and pant cuffs—and clapped her hands with glee. “Now, isn’t that fabulous? I’m going to get one for the house. My son Stein bought me an ‘ellipis’—I have arthritis—but I never use it. Of course, you can’t just dunk it in the pool! You need a special kind.”
Ray gave Pahrump a caress. You could still see the tumor. The dog had a tremor and Cora said it was from the effects of chemo and the various pills he was taking, all of which were making him stronger each day.
“He’s got something for his heart and for ‘cognitive dysfunction’ as well. Whatever that is! Since his surgery, my Rumper’s been having a little trouble recognizing Stein and the grandkids. They say that’s perfectly normal. There’s a period of readjustment, and it’s longer or shorter, depending on the animal.” Her eyes welled with tears, but just for a moment. “I cannot imagine how he’s suffered…he is a hero. Aren’t you, baby? Aren’t you my hero? They have him on Percorten-V for Addison’s disease, and Eto-Gesic for his osteo. I’m telling you, after all this is over, I’m going to be ready to hang my veterinary shingle!” She boastfully rattled off the inventory of curatives. “There’s a glorious antidepressant, Clomicalm—a miracle drug! He’s practically back to his old sleeping patterns. Which is more than I can say for myself.”
The ordeal had taken its toll. A few days ago a well-meaning staffer suggested that if things got too difficult, there was always a 30 acre avocado ranch up north, “the only retirement home for the white-whiskered set in the entire western U.S.” She cried at the thought of banishing King Charles from his kingdom. (“I might decide to go live there myself!”) Still, the thought of Pahrump living amongst sycamores and rosebushes with a cadre of caregivers and retired show dogs did provide comfort, and warmed her heart during dark nights of the soul. The staffer told her that the upscale “spread” even had its own newspaper, The Muttmatchers Messenger. “Isn’t that darling?”
Cora had begun to like the whole idea.
“The most amazing place I heard of—now shoot, who told me about it?—the most amazing place is a home that takes in your pet, should you ‘predecease.’ I’m having Steinie look into it. My son is most definitely not a dog person. He’s a businessman, doesn’t have near the patience. And I love my grandchildren but they make Pahrump skittish. Always have, don’t know why.” She stroked beneath his chin. “Maybe they’re not dog people either, huh. My baby is very special—aren’t you, bubblehead?—and very sensitive. And now with this cancer…poor thing, it’s laid him so low.” Tears flooded her eyes. “But this extraordinary place takes our children in—should something happen to us before, or we become incapacitated…I think it’s $25,000—maybe 50 for a horse or a llama. They have llamas, isn’t that lovely? They do, they do, they do. My, I think they even said they would take an elephant! That way you have peace of mind knowing that if you were gone, God forbid, your little one would be cared for till the end of his days.”
BG nodded sympathetically. As she spoke, Cora took in the fact that Ray’s companion was in a different age bracket than her elders but the young Indian woman was reserved and polite and attentive. Besides, she was busy speechifying now, her main theme being that the world wasn’t the awful place the news depicted it to be—the world was filled with caring people who loved all manner of 4-legged angels who couldn’t fend for themselves. We were all God’s children, wasn’t that right? Talk turned briefly to Saturday yoga, and Cora spoke of a class at the Center held on Sundays (“by a psychologist”) that was meant to foster a closer relationship with one’s pet, especially during the healing process. “They call it Unleashing Your Inner Canine,” she said, with a titter. “Isn’t that darling?”
Just then the therapist arrived in a blue terry-cloth robe over his wet suit, with Friar Tuck on a kind of muzzle-leash. Ghulpa was pleased to note the dog had been blown dry, making him look silly, handsome, and endearing all at once; they really were very thoughtful and thorough. Cora encouraged Pahrump to do a bit of socializing but “Nip” growled, looking as if he was prepared to live up to his sobriquet (that’s why his mouth was strapped shut). Rahul tugged on the leash and told him to sit but the Friar went wild, and Cora nervously gathered up Mr P. The poor woman retreated as the dog redoubled his fearsome lunges; the therapist soon got him in hand.
Ray waved a wan goodbye but wasn’t sure if Cora saw.
“He did very well today. You know, we often see this kind of aggressive behavior when a dog has sustained the type of trauma yours has. Not everyone takes a bullet and lives to bark about it! That’s a pretty big deal.”
BG watched the Friar’s eyes lock onto his handler’s, as if in appreciation of the comment.
“I’d like to give you a number to call—someone who might help speed along the process.” Ghulpa immediately asked who would pay, and while he was reluctant to commit, Rahul said he did know something about their case and that he’d be extremely surprised if the City of Industry didn’t cover “any and all charges” that came up; the center had special social workers who “interfaced with the city” and would handle billing issues for the couple. The person he had in mind to hasten Nip’s recovery actually worked with all kinds of animals, he said, quite a few of them owned by celebrities.
LV.
Chester
THEY took their Cabazon road trip—to the Morongo resort.
Chess packed his full pharmacopoeia: a grab bag of painkillers, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, antivertigos, anti-inflammatories, stool softeners, sleep inducers, and the like. And some fall-on-the-floor weed. They were only staying overnight but he didn’t want to be caught unprepared.
Anyway, he wasn’t the designated driver. He sat in the capacious backseat of Maurie’s Mercedes 500, wondering where his erstwhile friend had baked the short-bread. You could smell the leather even with the fucking windows down. Maurie said he got it at one of those police auctions. “The car was a steal.” He laughed and ran some bullshit about how the ride probably belonged to a dealer, “if these seats could talk,” yadda yadda, but Chess was suspect. Police auction, my ass. Maybe Maurie was about to direct a feature or something, produced by that Haggis guy who was supposed to be his big bud. Perfect. 2 fuckin hacks. 2 fuckin Haggasses. Maybe Maurie Levin was a “silent creator” of Friday Night Frights, had been from day one.
Her iPod sat in a dock, playing tunes Chess didn’t recognize. It made him feel fuckin old. He watched Maurie pretend to be hiply familiar, hands rhythmically beating the steering wheel like he’d heard it all before. Bullshit artist. Fuckin scammer. Whatever. It was a beautiful day and Chess was buzzed. The vertigo had receded but that was the maddening thing about inner-ear stuff: it was always in the back of your head (or the sides of it) that suddenly you could be tossing your tostadas.
So far, so good.
Maurie prattled on about Morongo and how rich the Indians were, goddamn thieves and sociopathic drunks, worse than Gypsies, and how the 3 of them should come up with a way to hustle the BIA. Fuckin Injuns—nothing but black-braided bitch-parasites and ultraviolent alkies. Maurie said they should legally declare themselves Native Americans, like that leftie professor who got fired for saying everyone who worked at the World Trade Center was a mini-Eichmann. “Didn’t that asshole say he was fucking Cherokee? Yeah, right. Jeep Cherokee.” Maurie had that blustery Jew thing going, he could make you laugh in spite of yourself, that’s probably what drew Laxmi to him in the first place—opposites attract—Chess prayed they weren’t still fucking, though they kinda sorta acted like they were, but not as much as they used to, not so demonstrative, not around him anyway. Maurie liked to grope her but didn’t do that shit anymore; now and then he body-spammed or reached out to touch and even though there wasn’t anything too pervy about it, she swatted his hand anyway—Chess hoped she did that for his benefit. The definitive conversation about the Maurie issue was long overdue. They’d danced around it but Chester always wimped out.
