by Bruce Wagner
He asked where Mom was now (Chesapeake Herlihy: Location Scout! Man of Action! The Decider!), and Joan said she’d been transferred to St John’s but was on her way to a “premier” care center called Golden Grove. Marj’s insurance had “really stepped up to the plate” and he needn’t worry—not that he would—Joan and Barbet (she threw her partner in just to make her brother feel his own useless appendagehood) had already checked out the “assisted living village,” which was far beyond anyone’s expectations, more like the Four Seasons than a rest home. She knew he would respond to that kind of shit; assisted living at the Four Seasons was Chester’s ultimate retirement fantasy.
He said he might not get a chance to see Mom before leaving. He was about to go “on a Vancouver scout.” He wasn’t actually finding the locations himself, but “overseeing the process, as producer.” God, you creep me out. She resisted the impulse to make a crack about his bogus lawsuit and trumped-up pain. His bogus life. Her good deed for the day.
It would be better if he didn’t see Marj anyway. Probably just make her nervous. Besides, she knew
LXXXVI.
Chester
he wasn’t anxious to visit Mom after what had happened. Especially when he found out where they were putting her. He couldn’t believe it. Golden Grove: of all fucking places. That old devil karma, working against him.
Everything was conspiring to make Chess want to leave the country in a hurry. Some psychogroid had beat and violated his mother in a 76 station shitter. What the fuck. That’s what America was about: a horrorfilm rapeathon pileup. Listen to CNN: Wolf Blitzer talking about a commuter plane that went down and even though it was obvious he knew full well it was too early to get answers, the Wolfman was all necro’d out, breathy and methy and cockstiff for Death, husky-throated fratboy Peeper, a misery pimp hemming and hawing as he circle-jerked his pack of Nielsen jackals while they metaphorically peered through the submerged windows of a broken aircraft; he engaged on-retainer Talking Headless ghouls in redundant inane pointless dialogue, timekiller sexperts at dragging nonevents out for hours like Chess used to do when he snorted speed and flipped through porn rags. Jim Lehrer would probably have given it a minute’s worth but the Wolfman dragged Death and Time like a nigga tied to a bumper, police pursuit and arousal (speed-bumps relished for more pain), especially when it came to body recovery. They always got way hard whenever the moment came to say (coal miners/earthquakes/terrorist acts), The search and rescue has now become a recovery operation.
This morning, the headline shouted: LARGEST STUDY OF PRAYER TO DATE FINDS IT HAS NO POWER TO HEAL.
The Pentagon was blaming an antiquated computer system for the fact that it had hired collection agencies to go after stumpy, braindamaged, paralyzed soldiers for reimbursement of damaged “equipment” left on Iraqi battlefields.
Marj was probably going to get a bill for her reaming; he was afraid the search and rescue had now segued to recovery.
Wolf would be happy to hear it.
Fast food slow death nation.
LAXMI read about a zoo in Illinois that had a wake for the chief gorilla. All the apes filed by, sniffing and stroking the carcass, paying general respects. More dignity and nonbullshit nobility present than any human funeral he’d ever heard of.
THE more majorly free-floating pissed off he became, the more Laxmi tried to soothe. “It’s all about nonattachment!”—if you’re so nonattached, why still such fucked up emo re Suicide Mom and Molesting Dad? What am I doing. Why jump on Laxmi. Pull back, dude, pull back. You’ve been through too much. That stuff with your mom’s some sick, heavy shit. Pull back. The craziness with Marj, and Maurie…be glad your sis is handling it. Be very glad.
He did manage to find mystic comfort in letting the memory, if you could even call it that, of cubensis wash over him—compassionate teachings of the sacred shroom and Her imperial army. Tainted by more words from Laxmi and her avatars: one mustn’t get attached to anything, not taste, feel, touch. That’s gonna be tough. In India, the heat grew so strong that elephants sometimes drowned in the very ponds they jumped in to cool off. The great beasts, usually so careful about assessing water’s depth, got reckless because of their attachment to coolness and comfort, which proved fatal. So said Avatar of Unpronounceable Name.
You know what? The fuckin gurus ought to give elephants a goddam break. The gurus ought to check their own attachments. Tell me what my hoary, gerontic mother was attached to, to get herself raped in the Conoco head. Oh, right: she was attached to taking a shit then the rape-o attached some homeless lesioned pud to her fossilized mouth/cunt/anus. Jesus, who would want to fuck that? She looks like Mark Felt! And don’t tell me it was karma—there is no karma. Karma’s just some Catholic trip, Eastern-style. What’s karma got to do got to do with it what’s karma but a secondhand
devotion.
CHESS got the stones to visit “the Grove.” New carpets and lighting fixtures in the atrium. Lithographs he hadn’t seen during prior visits. Everpresent whiff of turds and urine and Lysol—you could throw money and pile on the designer touches but certain things you just couldn’t polish. As they say.
He was going to drop in on both of them: kill 2 birds, stoned.
Maurie was the same: some kinda tetraplegic, with only incidental blink of crusted eyes belying cognizance. Chess thought it a miracle his friend could breathe on his own, which he did, smooth and unlabored, without apparatus. That’s what felt eerie, dreamlike. It didn’t seem like he should be in such a state—waxy taut shinyskin, Schiavosmile, dandruffscalp, longish-nailed fingers beginning atrophied inward curl. Funny thing being that as Maurie “settled in,” so did Chess in his fashion; the tissue of guilt, warm diaphanous tube between he and bedridden friend, organic living bloodsausage umbilicus, began to dissolve. Maybe it was all part of a natural process, Time shifting and Space softening tired old concepts of accountability that maybe weren’t so solid (the gurus would say) to begin with. Shit happens never rang so true. In the words of the elegant old tribesman in that tsunami documentary: We remembered what our ancestors said, that land and sea always fight over boundaries. Things keep changing. Nothing is safe and intact. The earth rests on a gigantic tree that can be shaken by spirits blah blah but the dude had a point. Right? Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout. Strawberry fields forever.
Chess began to let things go. An audiotape Laxmi got him had some “tulku” (reincarnated being) saying that it was best to forgive, and if you couldn’t forgive then it was best to forget, forgetting was the next best thing. “Too much thinking about past or future created suffering.” Now, that was right on. He leaned over Maurie to beg forgiveness then ask him to forget. Forgive and forget, live and let love. Chess said he was going away for awhile. He told Maurie his mom died and he was moving to Hawaii or maybe Vancouver but would be back to visit in a few months, reflexively covering his bet against the astronomical odds that Maurie should wake up and start running his mouth. (If Levin was listening, and was in the know, he would definitely be confused that the Perp was announcing his plans to return to the scene of the crime.) He thought about the recent case of a fireman who was in a coma for like 20 years then suddenly talked a bluestreak for 16 hours before dropping dead a few months later. Anything could happen.
Soon they’d be leaving for Mumbai. He wasn’t sure what to call it—Moom-bye sounded weird. Peking/Beijing, whatever. Certainly was a strange turn of events. If you’d laid it out a year ago, the Jew and the Location Scout would have had a laugh (about everything but the coma part). Life was too fuckin strange and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet only confirmed it; you’d never begin to be able to comprehend. That’s what Maurie was teaching him. That was our downfall—we thought we could understand. His own personal guru was staring right at him, or kind of, from the hospital bed, probably taking a crap at the very moment Chess was saying goodbye.
How beautiful and fucked up was that?
He changed his mind about seeing Mom.r />
He didn’t want to have that image in his head when he got on the plane.
CHESS was mostly looking forward to Varanasi—Benares?—the holy city where Indians went to die. That’s where Siddhartha hung; the Bodhi Tree was just a few hundred miles away. There were these places called the Deer Park and the Forest of Bliss that he wanted to check out. Laxmi said that after Shakyamuni Buddha became enlightened, he met up with some ol compadres, just like Jesus did with his dissipes. The Deer Park is where the Buddha did his satsang and told everyone to chill, and not be so extreme. Laxmi said the Brits built an opium factory nearby, back in the 1800s. It was supposedly still in operation. Fuck it. He’d do without.
He would wear a Muslim skullcap and coat his body in powdered vermilion like the guy from Entourage. He hoped there would be temple bombings. None of it concerned him. He’d recite verses from Kabir and the Koran, and bow down in the Kashi Viswanath, the Gyanvapi. He would offer Vicodin (750 mg) to the armed guards. Something inside began to shift and he envisioned himself outside the perverse damaged country of his birth, country of warmongers no longer his own, country of the armies of the night that raped dementia’d old ladies in oilhiked steelcage lavatories. Just being there—Mother India—would be to matriculate with cubenses. So vast! Sure there’d be troubles, he wasn’t so naive to think otherwise, he’d probably get hep or typhus but trouble in Paradise was different than trouble in Hell. India would be the matrix of his new birth, his rebirth and death. Being there would be like going with Her, ruler of plants and imperial troops, his betrothed. He would ride on Her wedding train and soon they
LXXXVII.
Joan
visited every day at Golden Grove Assisted Living (a bit of a misnomer because it was sprawling and there was a wing, a separate building actually, for those who needed far more than that—Night of the Assisted Living Dead. Some were in vegetative states, but the 2 communities did not intersect), the place where Marj had been transferred after a 3 day stint at St John’s.
GG had a warm swimming pool and Wellness Community Village where clients practiced yoga and handicrafts. Doctors and nurses 24/7. Bright commissary (“Rick’s Café”) with waiters and tablecloth coverings and often a pianist. You could be served in your room if you weren’t feeling up to it but that was discouraged. The staff felt it important you socialize. Socialization was the amulet to ward off depression.
Joan didn’t want her mother to be there. She’d gone house-hunting in Santa Monica (a Craftsman on Marguerite) and high in the Malibu Hills—and even thought of buying a lot off Sawtelle that ARK could build upon from her own design—old-money folks did that, Ann Janss had lived over there for years—because everything was so costly and she didn’t want to shoot her wad. (There were a thousand places for $12,000,000.) Anyway, she couldn’t make her move until the baby was born and the money came; they would have to find a rental. She just didn’t want her in Golden Grove; Mom deserved so much more. She would not leave her there in this time of life, in this time of Joan’s life.
Occasionally Marj asked to see her son but she asked to see Ham and Ray and Lucas and Bonita and Jeffrey Chandler as well.
THEN something happened that was beyond comprehension.
Barbet had her mom’s Jil Sander coat, he brought it to the dry cleaners, emptying the pockets beforehand, and that was when he found the LOVE IS AROUND THE CORNER fortune with 03 15 25 36 38 18, and the lottery ticket Marj got at Riki’s on the day of her assault, the ticket with those very numbers. She must have bought it right before she took the bus to Long Beach, and Barbet checked, for the hell of it—she’d won. No one had come forward in 3 weeks and for the hell of it he checked and they were the numbers that won. He told Joan and she thought he was kidding. They drove down to Riki’s and doublechecked, and it was true, no one could believe it, there was the widow and son, they checked the numbers in the machine while Joan reminded them who she was (of course they remembered)—Marjorie Herlihy was her mom. They knew that something bad had happened to the wonderful old lady, they knew about the beating and the fire but not the recent calamity, and Joan just said Mom had been ill, and staying with her, and would be so happy about this, the widow and son were happy too, they were waiting for the person to come with the ticket and now here it was—their friend, their neighbor—now here was the daughter of the woman who had treated them so well. They loved her mother, and were going to get lots of money for having sold the winning ticket, a 173,000,000 dollar Super Lotto with an immediate cash payout, if you so chose, of about half, something in that area, all too much to take in.
On the way back to the hotel, they were giddy yet still somehow doubtful so Joan called the PI who by now had become a kind of friend-on-retainer, and he said Jesus, he would do some checking, then phoned right back, Jesus, oh Jesus yes! it was true, absolutely, and they called Joan’s lawyer and everyone examined the development like wide-eyed kids finding buried backyard treasure, it was true, a lump 93,000,000 after taxes or something like 10,000,000 a year for 20 years if they so chose (they didn’t) and still no one could really believe it. No one. They soon gathered in Century City and got the lottery folks on speakerphone, told them the situation because the attorneys were mindful of what had happened and didn’t want Joan to dissemble, no reason, it could definitively be proven, regardless of Mrs Herlihy’s current mental state, that she was the daughter and rightful heir. Plus, she had POA. The widow and son confirmed that Marj had been a fixture there (lately supplanted by emissaries, added Joan), choosing numbers from a ragged fortune cookie paper strip (the one she got at the end of her dinner with AKA Lucas Weyerhauser, though not quite the same since she had altered the very last digit, a detail that no one would ever trace as a commemorative of the year Marj went to Bombay with her father; otherwise many would have won, having selected that particular computer-generated sequence, which had been dispersed to Chinese restaurants state-and nationwide, that explained the solo win, the changing of the last digit, because the lottery people said otherwise they would have seen a pattern, there had been mass fortune cookie–selected winners before) and the lawyers wanted to confirm there would be no problems linked to Mrs Herlihy’s current physical or mental health, and the State said, with what seemed to Joan, some whimsy or State Fair abandon, that Marj was “a winner,” but they might want or need a photograph of the “lucky girl” for publicity purposes—of course respecting her current delicate situation—Joan’s lawyers didn’t assent to anything right away, though their client said it might be fun to bring in “hair and makeup” to Golden Grove and make a big to-do, her mom might like that, the lawyers didn’t immediately assent, trained not to do or say anything with undue speed, yet also trained not to be heavyhanded, especially when clients expressed warm or playfully harmless desires, all very friendly, in the outrageous spirit of what had happened the lawyers wanted everything kept amenable, which it was, and would remain, courtesy of AKA Lucas Weyerhauser, whereabouts unknown—Det Whitsell especially got a kick out of the development—AKA Lucas Weyerhauser, whose trail was being eagerly followed by all manner of high- and low-priced dicks. Nobody was ever to learn that the numbers from the cookie he gave her that very special night (she hadn’t been out to dinner with a man in God knew how long) were the very same Marj had fixated on; everyone thought the sweet treat came from local delivery. Marj was known to order in. No one would ever uncover the source of her insanely macabre windfall: a final, maddening, karmic reversal of fortune.
(Chester was already gone and would never know any of it.)
SHE went with the lawyer to Golden Grove.
Marj was in high spirits.
She’d just been given a shower—Joan was paying for private nurses, night and day—and Cora came to visit too. The former neighbor brought over a special pillow her “Steinie” was marketing called the Hug, shaped like a cushioned torso.
She left behind a brochure. The Hug was covered in velour, embedded with thermal fibers and tiny motors. It could be
programmed like a cellphone so if you happened to be out of town, you could “dial” the pillow and it would hug whoever was on the other end. It even generated heat. The pillow could store “hug messages” that could be picked up later if the recipient missed a call.
Joan tried it out—the Hug trembled against her, and she said, “Sign me up!”
I have to tell Barbet about this. If Amma the Hugging Saint ever goes on disability…
Her mother was more together than Joan had seen her be in a while, which was heartening. Marj said that Cora got a new dog, another King Charles, she couldn’t remember what she had named it but Cora promised to bring him next time. (Golden Grove was pet-friendly.) Joan said, Hopefully we’ll be in a house by then. She was really starting to show and drew Marj’s hand over her belly. Mom slowly began to accept the pregnancy. She shared that for the longest time, she thought Joan was making it up and they had a laugh. It gratified her that such a good thing, a lovely thing, a positive and a plus, was finally sinking in, something that might give her mother fresh hopes and dreams—and joy.
They didn’t speak of the trip to India anymore.
Marjorie had her portrait taken by the “Super Lotto,” after being primped and fussed over by a squad of Hollywood stylists. Joan supervised the session and had a ball. But the winner didn’t seem fully aware of what it meant. Joan knew there was brutal irony in even telling her mother that she was suddenly worth nearly a hundred million dollars—those professional criminals had said nearly the same thing. She began to wonder if it was a mistake to have told her. Every time Joan brought it up—hoping Mom would grow used to it, as she had the advancing pregnancy—Marj smiled a rictus of puzzled agonized frivolity, fascia taut, clamping Cora’s Hug machine to her bony breast and asked Joan what was she planning to wear to