Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

  The zendo was long and woodsy. When she arrived, male and female monks already sat in meditative posture upon cushions lining the walls. A wide bench bisected the room, and people sat on that too. Everyone took the lotus position, spines ramrod straight, but Lisanne knew she couldn’t hold that too long (she hadn’t really lost much weight since the birth), so she tucked a leg underneath instead and let the other one dangle. The roshi appeared and slowly made his way to a tall oaken throne on a raised platform. He was tiny and broad, and Lisanne thought he looked just like Yoda as he shuffled past in elaborate, impeccably arranged robes. An interpreter sat on the floor in readiness.

  There was once a teacher and his student, he began. Teacher and student were in deep meditation when suddenly, a dog appeared between them. The student asked, “Does the dog have the Buddha nature?” To which the teacher replied, “Mu.” The roshi explained that both teacher and student represented Oneness. He said that, in an eternal act of cosmic beneficence, Oneness divides itself to make room for sentient beings—bird, dog, self. It then becomes the duty of sentient beings to return to that Oneness, to rejoin the great Source whence they came. The roshi said Buddhists sometimes call such Oneness “the singular reality” or True Love. The act of division itself was an act of True Love.

  She struggled to understand, but her mind kept drifting. Slowly, as she grew more aware of her surroundings, Lisanne became cognizant that she was sitting beside the singer Leonard Cohen. How strange. Her back hurt, and she stirred, to avoid spasm. No one else moved—all were yogic veterans of self-abnegation, insightfulness, and zen combat. Why was she even there? She was a coward, a poseur, a grotesque. A dilettante. Unworthy. She thought of Kit, in the Painful and Unnatural Bardo of Neurological Netherworlds. She could shift a leg if her pose grew unpleasant, but what was he experiencing? What could he shift? How could she dare even presume? One of the books she got at the Bodhi Tree said that, through the vehicle of dream yoga (whatever that was), a person might be able to realize that dreaming life and waking life were the same—mere projections. Last night Lisanne woke up with a jolt because she dreamed she was riding bareback on a gigantic horse, galloping with such primal velocity that it frightened her. She was born in the Year of the Horse; maybe the dream meant this would be the year her life ran away with her. In her own analysis, the horse didn’t seem to represent so much her personal life as the wild, rushing force of life itself. (Most of the time, Lisanne felt as if she were in the midst of a dream that she couldn’t control, inescapable even by death.) What kinds of dreams was Kit having? Were they mundane or surreal? Or was there even a distinction? When he awakened, when he floated back from dreaming into the waking life of his disconnected body, each time that he consciously inhabited his newly ruined world afresh, the circumscribed, humiliating, crater-pocked landscape far from arc lights and movie sets, from gilded Buddha and sylphlike fiancée and the simple pleasures of food and drink, where exactly did he find himself? How did he perceive? Did he wear a chain-mail shroud made from the vortex of unfamiliar words and faces, where thought and syntax continuously stuck and unstuck like worn gears, veiling the possibility ever to make his most basic or nuanced needs known? Abject and disoriented, unmoored . . . And if, while in such a state, he could actually glimpse with any lucidity the cataclysm that had befallen him, such a revelation alone might be enough to drive him mad. Another scary Buddhist text spoke of the “kundalini crisis” sometimes elicited by drugs or trauma, in which subjective and objective states, waking and symbolic, merged together and broke apart in an endless loop until “consensus reality” died as surely as did the proprioception of those suffering vertigo. (A blow to the head could evoke both such crises, she thought.) A person subject to this energetic chain reaction was said to literally disintegrate but not in a good way. Oh, who needs consensus reality anyhow. Lisanne comforted herself by thinking, Just because it’s something I wouldn’t be able to deal with, doesn’t mean it’s something Kit can’t. Yet what if, on top of everything, his literal practice hadn’t been “right”? What if he’d made gross missteps (on the Path) that hadn’t been corrected along the way, particularly since his root guru, Gil Weiskopf Roshi, was long since dead—making Kit the equivalent, now, of a pilot in a small plane flying by instruments in a thunderstorm on a moonless night. There was no one to guide him but his derelict father and a bunch of lame RNs.

  Lisanne shook off her agitation, retucking first one leg, then the other. She took long, discreetly deep breaths to steady herself. She could smell her perspiration and was glad she wasn’t menstruating. Leonard Cohen stared ahead with downcast eyes, oblivious.

  A gong sounded, and the old man said he was out of time. “What is time?” he casually inquired. “Time is an activity of the Buddha. That is not a definition you are taught in schools!” He ended by saying that it was a shame the student interpreted his master’s response to the question, Does the dog have the Buddha nature? as “No” when in fact he had said “Mu.” Mu meant something entirely different. Mu meant nothing, non-existence, non-being. “Yet just because he misunderstood does not mean the student was unworthy.”

  Chanting immediately began, accompanied by drums, as the translator helped the roshi from the throne. After he disappeared, Mr. Cohen was the first to stand. Lisanne noticed that, as he left, the poet kept one arm tucked to his side while the other jutted forward, parallel to the ground, the hand ritualistically cleaving sacred space like the ice cutter at the prow of a trawler.

  The morning air stung her cheeks. She smiled at the world and made mental prostrations to the roshi, the gravel, and the trees—to Oneness itself. Everything was clear now. Just as the old monk had benevolently created a space for her liberating insight, Lisanne knew the destruction of the sand mandala had created a space for her child, for she remembered that as the very moment in which she had decided to keep him. The ejection of Viv Wembley’s doomed fetus’s consciousness into the great Source (a kind of innocent, unschooled phowa after all) had created the space for Siddhama Kitchener McCadden’s hastened birth. All were part of the Wheel—just as Lisanne herself had been instantly, fatefully bound to Kit Lightfoot through the cauterizing gift of the auction house Buddha. Tiff Loewenstein had obliviously played spiritual midwife. For this, he was and always would be a very important man in her life.

  Again Lisanne felt a great peace, the same that had flooded over her on the day of Siddhama’s birth—the singular reality of True Love.

  • • •

  ON THE WAY BACK from West Adams, she stopped at Bristol Farms in Beverly Hills. She laughed to herself as the housewives stepped from their Range Rovers and Lexus SUVs—she was practically one of them. Her life had taken a peculiar turn.

  “Hey!” said a big woman with frizzy hair. She planted herself in front of Lisanne like some rank frontier hippie. “I remember you.” Lisanne stared, blinking. “From the lawyer’s office. You were at the meeting.” She extended a hand. “Cassandra—Cassie Dunsmore.”

  “Oh! Hi! How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better!” She rocked her newborn in the crook of her arm. “That’s my Jake. Ain’t he dreamy?”

  Lisanne said, “Oh, he’s beautiful.”

  “Honey, what’s your name again?”

  “Lisanne—McCadden.”

  “You should come up to the house, Lisanne! You and your boss— Reggie. Oh, hey! We incorporated. QuestraWorld Productions. It feels good. Man, Grady and I can’t even believe it! Actually, it’s QuestraWorld Film and Television Productions. That’s the long and the short of it. We were gonna call it QuestraWorks but—Hey, know what we want to do? I mean, we wanna make movies and all but, man, I wanna do TV real fuckin bad. We’re gonna do The Osbournes—but hard-core. I mean hard fucking core. Cause that other shit is so tired. Don’t get me wrong, the Osbournes opened the door. But we wanna seriously show fucking. The final frontier! America’s been headin straight for it, right? Gonna take the Dunsmores to keep it real, cause it seems everybody�
�s been busy keepin it un-real. I am tellin you, folks want to see other folks gettin it on. Honey, we are the next wave! And you know what we got in our corner? The pathos of Baby Questra. Not as exploitation but as righteous inspiration. Where’s the pathos in Sharon Osbourne’s gut cancer? The girl had chemo and looks better than she ever did in her life, right? And now she’s gonna be out there hostin a talk show—where’s the tragedy? I mean, what’s the lesson? Get cancer and get glamorous? Lose weight now, ask me how? Get cancer and get rich? Or richer? OK, that’s bullshit. Let me tell you somethin. Big C ain’t nothin compared to watchin your baby die. OK? Right? Eric Clapton like to kill hisself when that little boy flew out the window. People at home want to see that shit—not babies dying!—they want to see survivors who still fuckin hurt, that you can survive, cause the people at home know some terrible shit like that could happen to them. An’ they need to be able to commiserate. Grady and I are gonna do it for HBO. Class it up. We ain’t had the meeting yet but they be fools to pass-ola. Gon’ be QuestraWorld’s first production, that’s right. We are virgin! We! Are! Fam-i-lee! I got all my sisters and me—Next week, I’m talkin to the Six Feet Under people, to partner up.”

  A Day of Fun

  BECCA AND RUSTY spent the afternoon at Mulholland. She liked playing mommy with Jake.

  When Grady heard that she had moved in with Rusty, he bought them an expensive robot dog. The droid kept raising its hind leg to pee, and Rusty couldn’t figure out why. “This manual is two hundred fucking pages.”

  Grady sipped his beer, watching the miscreant dogbot like a proud parent. “Every young couple needs an animal.”

  They smoked dope while Cassandra prattled on about Questra-World ramping up production for the X-rated skein “Been There, Dunsmore” (working title) as soon as the Six Feet Under posse signed on. Their new lawyer supposedly was going to hook them up, but Cassandra argued that Becca already had a “relationship” with the show and should be able to get them “entrée.” Cassandra said the next time their little girl did “a guest shot”—“If there is a next time,” said Becca—she was going to come and watch. That way she could introduce herself to Their Highnesses, the two Alans. “Because in this town, that’s the only way things ever get done.” By extreme measure (if smuggling in during Becca’s corpse gig could be considered extreme). She cited Spielberg as an example of someone who “did what he had to do.” Broke into the Universal Studios backlot when he was first starting out—that’s how he got hired as a director. Pretended to work there and even scammed an office, just like that movie he did, Catch Me If You Can. Rusty interrupted, saying if they really wanted the “unreality show” (the catchy phrase Grady had come up with to promote it) to be a success, they should maybe think about adopting a few kids. Especially a few older kids. Because that was the secret to a show like that: teenagers. Rusty said that was the main thing the Osbournes got right. You had to have kids, for demographics, drama, and relatability. Ozzy and Sharon had ruthlessly cut the older daughter out of the series, the p.r. cover being that she had declined because she was “private.” Rusty said that was pure horseshit. It was “all about demos”—getting rid of their eldest was a smart business move, clean and simple. Cassandra loved the adoption strategy and got a brainstorm that the whole process should become part of the show. Definitely. “That is fantastic. Why can’t you come up with a million-dollar idea idea like that, Grady? I’m gonna have to make Rusty here a fucking exec producer.” Grady belched and said, “Right on. You go, girl. I don’t need me a million-dollar idea cause I already got a million. Got more than a million. So do what you have to do.” Rusty said Web sites existed where prospective parents could go shopping for kids who were currently wards of the state. Cassandra got superexcited. She said the cameras could follow them to the orphanage and they’d pick the kids out right then and there. The audience could even phone in preferences, to make it interactive. “Naw,” said Grady. “That interactive shit don’t never work. That’s a nineties thing.” “Yes, Mr. Gates,” said Cassandra. Rusty said he read in the newspaper that some of those places had special picnic days where people came to look the kids over like at a slave auction. Becca thought that Rusty knew way too much about it, as if it were all close to home, so to speak. But that was the kind of thing she would never ask him about.

  • • •

  LATER ON, RUSTY talked about a script he was working on. “You oughta pay me for it,” he said. He was stoned. He randomly murmured, “You oughta pay me for it,” over and over, a sly, wacko catechism.

  “We’re gonna pay you for it,” said Grady reassuringly.

  “First we need to see it,” said Cassandra, with a smirk.

  Everybody was stoned.

  “You’ll see it,” said Rusty.

  “Promises, promises,” said Cassandra.

  “It’s gonna be good,” said Grady, in his friend’s defense. “I know it’s gonna be good.”

  “Got QuestraWorld written all over it,” said Rusty.

  “Hope it does,” said Cassandra. “Hope we do make it.”

  “How much you wanna spend, Rusty?” asked Grady. “On the budge. On el budjo.”

  “Ten,” said Rusty. “But we could do it for seven or eight.”

  “Hell,” said Grady. “Do it for three and you can make the cocksucker immediamente. Ipso facto. We’ll get Fucko the robot wonderdog to direct.”

  “I’m gonna direct,” said Rusty, reminding. “And we can’t do it for three.”

  “Three ain’t chump change,” said Cassandra. “Lotta movies been made for three.”

  “What world are you living in?” said Rusty, cockily.

  “Shit, what’d they make Reservoir Dogs for?”

  “It wasn’t three,” said Rusty. “Not in 2004 dinero. No way, José.”

  “You could be right,” said Cassandra. “Maybe it was two.”

  “It’s gonna be good,” said Grady. “Hell, Cassie, if the man’s starrin in it and the man’s writin it, you know it’s gonna be good. We got in on the ground floor—the man’s the lead in a Spike Jonze! Gonna be a worse triple threat than Billy Bob. Shit, we’re lucky, Cass. Motherfuckers be givin Van Diesel or whatever the fuck his name is twenty million—I can’t even remember the name of that chrome-dome bitch and they’re givin him twenty mill. Fucker has about as much charisma as the head of my dick. Fucker looks like the head of my dick too!”

  “How’s that Spike thing goin, anyhow?” asked Cassandra.

  “Goin good. Goin real good.”

  “Gonna start shooting soon?”

  They alternated pulling with lazy industry on the pipe.

  “Bout six weeks,” said Rusty, playing it movie star cool.

  “You’re in it too, huh,” said Cassandra.

  “I’m just doing a cameo,” said Becca.

  “Bullshit,” said Rusty, feeling all generous.

  “Rusty’s starring,” said Becca, proudly.

  “She’s got a sweet little part,” said Rusty, noblesse oblige. “She sticks her tongue down Drew Barrymore’s mouth.”

  “Duelin Drews,” said Grady.

  “Bet you’re looking forward to rehearsals,” said Cassandra, lasciviously. “I’d floss my tonsils if I was you.”

  “I’m actually not!” said Becca.

  “Better not blow your lines,” said Grady to Rusty.

  “Blow this,” said Rusty, as he took a hit.

  “You might get tongue-tied,” said Grady to Becca. He laughed while grabbing the pipe from his friend. “My man Rusty can write too!” he giddily exclaimed, to no one in particular. He sucked and nearly gagged. An effete, wincing smile imploded above his chin while smoke poured from his nostrils, four-alarm. “Help,” he said, wheezing comically through whitened lips. “I’m having a fuckin heart attack.”

  “Ever seen anything Rusty wrote, honey?” asked Cassandra, ignoring her husband’s pulmonary spaz.

  “I seen how he writes his name,” said Grady with a joker’s grin, as
he messily recovered. “It look real pretty.”

  “Yeah,” said Rusty. “Your name’s gonna look pretty too, when it’s on that QuestraWorld check.”

  It went on like that for a while. Then Grady started tripping that one of the homies at Valle Verde said Kit Lightfoot was there, and was totally twapped out. The homie said the superstar had a wing all to himself, and whenever they let him walk the grounds, the madre pulled his pud and had to be hustled inside before some paparazzi in a helicopter squeezed off a shot. Cassandra said they should all pile in the G-wagen and go on down. No one was unstoned enough to drive so Avery, a live-in part-time student and all-around gofer, was enlisted as chauffeur.

  • • •

  GRADY KNEW THE gate guard, who waved them in. They were a few blocks away when de Becker’s men turned them back. As they left, Grady asked the guard about Kit.

  “Ain’t seen him,” he responded, with a wink.

  Grady was jonesing for a Krispy Kreme. Cassandra pinched his love handle and said, “Why don’t you just have one of these? Feels like about a dozen right here.” Grady told Avery to find them a Krispy Kreme, pronto. Avery called 411 and located a franchise near Knott’s Berry Farm. They went and gorged. Then Cassandra got the urge to visit Knott’s and pan for gold, something she hadn’t done since she was a kid. They spent a few hours there, and Becca had the best time. As they left, the couple argued because Grady wanted to make a “pit stop” at Hustler’s. “I just wanna place one bet.” He wouldn’t say for how much, and that pissed her off. Rusty and Becca leaned against each other in the backseat, eyes shut, wasted. Cassandra fumed while Grady went inside the casino.