Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

  “That’s right,” said the wife, eyes sealed. The cigarette was about to burn the tip of her finger. “That’s right.” He knew that she knew where he was going. “I’ll give you that.”

  “Yeah well, you gonna give me more than that, Mamasita. While my guitar gently fuckin weeps. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russell Crowe Junior laid the whole motherfuckin crime out in that scriptuh his. OK?”

  “OK,” said Cassandra. When you’re right, you’re right. “OK, Columbo?”

  “I ain’t shittin, Sherlock. And I mean everything that fucking happened, all right? OK? All right? QuestraWorld gonna own that shit—the whole fuckin deal. All right?”

  “I see what you’re saying,” she said.

  “I knew that you would. Took me to think of it, though, didn’t it?”

  “You just might get that raise, babylove.”

  “Better believe I’m gonna get that raise, Mommy!” he said, then whooped. “You gonna suckle my grody anus too. Taste like tutti-frutti. Gon’ give in to all my hostage demands! Fifty thousand in change, for a night at Hustler’s! In beautiful downtown Gardena!”

  “We ain’t closed no deal with Rusty yet.”

  “When we close. That’s fair. That’s fair—I’m a fair man. Though I do think you should give me ten up front, for a finder’s fee. For puttin the fuckin pieces together. But I’m fair and I got a mind like a motherfucking iron trap and don’t you or anybody forget it! That’s why I got all my millions. Trick is, to get the screenplay off him before it becomes evidentiary.”

  “Fore somebody else buys it.”

  “That’s right. That’s right. Now you got it. I don’t think he gonna be in a hurry to tell the police about it. But when HBO find out, HBO gonna want it.”

  “Naw,” said Cassandra, shaking her head. Her lids were heavy, like a groggy seer’s. “We wan’ somebody else. HBO is for the TV show. Don’t want to dip in that well too many times. We want this for a DreamWorks.”

  “That’s why you’re QuestraWorld CEO,” said Grady respectfully.

  “Could be for a Soderbergh,” said Cassandra.

  “Maybe. Hell, George Clooney love to get his hands on this!”

  “Too old to play Rusty.”

  “Then he could just direct or exec produce. They gonna be linin up for this motherfucker! So get your checkbook ready, girl! Get your yayas out!” He clapped his hands, rubbing them together as if to make a fire. “Whoo-eee! We got ourselves a major project acquisition.” He did a war dance, then turned to Becca. “You gonna help, ain’t you? Help persuade him? Make you an E.P. for that. Wanna exec? We can swing that, cain’t we, Mama Cass? Cain’t we swing exec prod for our girl here?”

  “Associate,” said Cassandra.

  “She gonna be an invaluable part of the package—she was the girlfriend and she’s hot and she’s a look-alike! Look-alikes ‘bout to be hot as motherfuckers! And shit—bitch works for Viv Wembley! I didn’t even think of that shit! It all ties in!” He coughed a dewy fogbank of smoke. “Our little girl works for the wicked witch former fiancée! The bi-atch who dumped Lightfoot—in sickness and in health my left nut. Bi-atch left his twappy rear end standing at the altar!”

  “Waitin around for that slut with a buncha bald old Buddhists with hard-ons,” said Cassandra, stirring from a nod.

  “It’s a Shakespearean fucking tragedy, man! I love it! I love it!”

  “Associate producer,” said Cassandra, from the viraginous depths.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You said exec.”

  “Well associate’s what I meant.”

  Negotiations

  LISANNE CALLED TO SAY that she was from the sangha and had a gift for the house. Burke said that, since the arrest, things had been kind of crazy and he wasn’t having anyone over until next week. She didn’t want to intrude and suggested they meet somewhere nearby. Burke was half-intrigued and wanted to check her out. Maybe she was fuckable.

  The voice on the phone had been familiar but he couldn’t quite place it. When he saw her, he laughed: the chubby one with the angel’s face who loved cleaning toities. That was all right. He liked ’em with a little extra padding.

  She had that blissed-out look, scarier in a nascent fattie—bit of a red flag but so what? He’d seen crazier. Anyhow, what could she do, suffocate him with her tits? She was a Buddhist, and they didn’t act out. He got right to it and asked about the gift. She said she was good friends with the studio executive Tiff Loewenstein (Burke, of course, knew who he was, even though the connection to his son didn’t at first compute; maybe Loewenstein was a sanghanista) and how Tiff had entrusted her to bring an ancient Buddha statue to Kit’s trailer during his last shoot. As a present. Out of curiosity, she asked Burke if he’d had a chance to see that Buddha and he said no, everything in the Benedict house of any value had been inventoried, packed, and stored by the insurance folks. That’s when Lisanne told him she had an “energetic replacement.” She called it by its unwieldy name and Burke couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He was starting to think she was a certified wack job, but what the fuck, she cleaned a mean toilet. He was in an expansive mood. Lisanne remained unperturbed. She said she’d been given the Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha as a gift herself—not from Tiff—and that it was now her desire to pass it on as a sacred offering to the Lightfoot household. When she told him it was extraordinarily expensive, that got his attention. The piece, she said, celebrated Paramasukha-Chakrasamvara, a tantric deity that Kit seemed destined to possess. Lisanne recounted how she saw his son at UCLA on the night the monks ululated over that very god in the midst of their solemn public ritual. “Tantric” got his attention too, and he asked Lisanne if she knew anything about tantric sex. Burke said he read somewhere that Sting was into it and that it was all about holding back orgasm. Lisanne said she didn’t know much about that but was sure that all things tantric could only be taught by an authentic guru. Burke said he had a special guru when it came to sexual matters and she asked who and he said Master Bates. He said his friends called him Stormin’ Norman and he ran the Master Bates Motel. She smiled but didn’t get it—any of it. His blood was up and he got horny for her. Burke asked if she knew anything about kundalini. Lisanne said that it was “serpent energy” and began talking about chakras from the little she’d learned in books. Burke started calling it cuntalini—what the hell, she’d either leave the table or not, she was a wack fattie and he wanted to ball her, he didn’t give a shit what her reaction was—and said Master Bates told him that after cuntalini it was always important to smoke a cigarette and eat Rice-A-Roni. He couldn’t get a rise out of her and that made him hornier. He asked when she wanted to bring over the Super Tampon Piss-Wheel Segregation Buddha and without batting an eye Lisanne said the best time would be when no one from the sangha was there because she didn’t want others to think she was currying favor. He thought: Well well well. Maybe this fat cuntalini’s a dirty bastard. Maybe ol’ loosey-goosey’s in what we call a righteous orangutan heat. Lisanne said the Buddhist community was a bit incestuous and even enlightened people gossiped and misinterpreted. Incestuous—you got that right, fatso. Daddy’s going to do some major rectal probe enlightening. Show you nirvana six ways from Sunday. She said the Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha would do wonders for the house and was even partially responsible for the arrest of the person who did his son—and all beings—such a terrible wrong. Get on that Piss-Wheel of Fortune. Integrate that Buddha-bootie. Super-ream that lard-ass bumper butt. She said the Buddha would help Kit to heal his crown chakra. Burke said his crown needed healing too. Said he had a purple crown with a big ol’ hole that needed healing, big-time. Master Bates called the geyser-hole Old Unfaithful.

  Lisanne smiled vacantly, unhearing. She looked through him but saw only Kit, who was her breath and her benefactor, her friend and neutral person, her enemy, and the being she didn’t even know. She looked through him and saw all things human and animal, seen and unseen, waiting t
o be born and waiting to die.

  They made a plan when she should bring it.

  After the Fall

  THE DETAILS OF the arrest of Kit Lightfoot’s assailant, himself a Lightfoot manqué, predictably became a nightly news staple, as did a legion of seamy Hollywood Babylon-redux celebrity crime scandal minidocs in general—and the shadowy fringe world of look-alikes in particular. (Becca and Annie noticed how they always used clips of Kim Basinger from L.A. Confidential.) The creep turned out to be one of Elaine Jordache’s third-string loser-hires; when he wasn’t working low-end convention sideshows or Mar Vista bachelorette parties at the Look-Alike Shoppe’s behest, he made his living as a housepainter and petty grifter. When they pinched him, the Kit got nervous, and hastened to cop a plea. Herke Goodson immediately came to mind.

  The down-and-out look-alikes hooked up around a year ago on the rent-a-star circuit. They became friendly but hadn’t spoken in a while—the Kit still being miffed at a beating Goodson gave him outside a club in Playa del Rey. For months before, “Rusty” had been showing off pages of a script he’d written, a murder mystery entitled “The Trainer.” Because of certain coy remarks and a plethora of plot minutiae that struck him as a little too authentic, the Kit always had a hunch the story was based on something real. After he shared his potential Get Out of Jail Free card with the LAPD, Virginia detectives were quick to ID Herke Lamar Goodson as the subject of numerous outstanding warrants for home-invasion burglary and aggravated assault, and as the suspect in a high-profile local homicide.

  • • •

  BECCA MOVED IN with the Dunsmores on the same day she was interviewed by the police. Investigators went through every square inch of the Venice love nest. The idea of pervy old detectives handling her underthings made her skin crawl. Rusty’s arrest hadn’t yet been announced, and Becca was glad—she wasn’t in the proper frame of mind to be stalked by the tabloids. Annie said she’d probably be in the national papers too. Becca dreaded that. When the time was right, she would have to call her mom to preempt any freakouts.

  The cops were like cordial pit bulls. They brought her in every day, for a week. They talked to the Dunsmores, and Grady started getting paranoid. He was afraid that even though he never had a clue about Rusty’s bad boy status, they’d bust him for “consorting.” Cassandra reminded him that one of the outcomes of the Rampart suit was that his record had been expunged—he was no longer classified as a parolee. Grady said it didn’t matter: they were gonna nail anybody who won a settlement. “Payback’s a motherfucker.” He threw out their dope. They cleaned up their act for a while.

  Living at the Dunsmores’ was handy. Becca signed a contract making her coassociate producer with profit participation on any project or projects that QuestraWorld produced re: the compelling saga of Herke Lamar Goodson, a.k.a. “Rusty” Crowe. (Annie and Larry told Becca that she could be “like Rosanna Arquette in The Executioner’s Song.”) The contract also stipulated that Becca’s rights as a real-life personage in said project(s) would be waived, that a writer or writers could deem to make her life or her person “more interesting” (Cassandra’s words) without fear of legal reprisal and that Becca would make herself available for attendant press and publicity chores, lending name and/or image to the promotion of said QuestraWorld product(s), electronic press kits, print ads, et cetera. The contract came with a five-thousand-dollar check and Cassandra’s word that there would be more—which really helped because Viv had fired her and she was completely broke.

  • • •

  ON THE WAY TO Elaine’s, Becca pondered Rusty’s innocence—the one thing no one seemed to have considered. Her attempts to visit him in jail had been rebuffed. A sign of guilt? Not necessarily. Becca knew her man; he was prideful. He probably just didn’t want her to see him that way, encaged like an animal.

  The door to the Look-Alike Shoppe was ajar. Everything was in boxes. Only some banged-up furniture remained.

  “This has been the day from hell,” said Elaine, as if she and Becca were in midconversation. “The LA Weekly’s doing an ‘investigatory’ piece—I don’t even want to be in the fucking country when that comes out. I heard they might put me on the cover. Can you believe it? Why! Why! I called them up and said no—but they don’t need my fucking permission. I am not Heidi Fleiss. Read all about it! Elaine Jordache, the Low-Life Look-Alike Queen!”

  “But isn’t that good? I mean, for business?”

  “You must be kidding.”

  She went back to her packing.

  “What about that guy?” asked Becca. “The Kit look-alike?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you hired him for stuff. Do you know what happened?”

  “What’s there to know? Kit Lightfoot dissed him in front of his girlfriend so he went off. When they split up, she turned him in for the award—end of story.” She spoke with the noir affect of a court stenographer, indifferently reading back notes. “Haven’t you talked to the police?”

  “All week long,” said Becca.

  “Didn’t they tell you what Rusty’s accused of?”

  “That he killed some rich lady’s husband?”

  “In Albemarle County,” she said, again with hard-boiled nonchalance. “Didn’t they tell you who he killed? Daddy. That’s right: his fucking father. And guess who the rich lady was—they didn’t say, huh. Well, I’ll give you a clue. Little Rusty slid out of her pussy. Need more than three guesses?”

  Contact

  THE ARREST AND pending extradition of Herke Lamar Goodson a.k.a. “Rusty” Crowe took media center stage, ratcheting up the hullabaloo over all things look-alike. The frenzy escalated, if that were possible, upon the revelation that the defendant had a “starring role” in the celebrated director Spike Jonze’s latest offering. The auteur’s reps smartly underplayed their hand. A press release stated that Mr. Goodson had indeed participated in the film, “along with a dozen other look-alike actors,” but his screen time had been substantially reduced, for reasons which—so they claimed—had nothing to do with current controversies.

  • • •

  WHEREAS KIT RESPONDED to the capture of his double with a cryptic half smile, Burke Lightfoot, who at least publicly, had limned the part of selfless caregiver to such perfection, vehemently demanded assurance from the lawyers that all measures would be taken to guarantee that his son be spared a circus-like courtroom confrontation with the man who had so grievously injured him. He even said as much on Fox News—after cannily alerting Barbara Walters beforehand so as not to subvert the chance of father and son making a future appearance on one of her specials.

  The Buddhists were allowed back in. Burke hadn’t heard from what’s-her-name and found himself ruminating on her fat ass. Ought to hang a sign on it: WIDE LOAD. He smiled to himself—he sure did like ‘em crazy. Maybe he’d put her off with the cuntalini shtick. Who knew? Still, all that talk about how no one should be there when she brought over the Super Tampon Tit-Wheel . . . hmmm. Made ya wonder. Might just make a late-night bootie call yet. Buddha call. Whatever. Ask me if I care.

  • • •

  RAM DASS WANTED Burke’s permission to bring someone special to the house, a holy man that Kit had met shortly before his injury. He said that H.H. Penor Rinpoche was a reincarnated lama; it was from him that Kit’s root guru, Gil Weiskopf Roshi, had received “the transmissions and secret sealed protector empowerments.” Burke didn’t know what the hell Ram Dass was talking about. He thought Mr. Dass was just fine so long as the conversation didn’t get too out there—aside from the Moses beard and the electric Kool-Aid bug eyes, he was kind of a regular guy. But the idea of a quasi-royal visit from a Tibetan big enchilada tickled Burke’s fancy.

  A few days later, Ram Dass, a fellow called Robert Thurman, and the yellow-robed guest of honor arrived with an entourage of orange-swathed monks and khenpos, the sight of which impressed even the neighbors, who by now were more or less inured to the unusual if not the outlandish. Thurman was a bearish
, convivial man around Burke’s age, the first Westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk by none other than the Dalai Lama himself. He was a professor at Columbia and a prolific author who had translated scores of sacred texts. More important for Burke, he was Uma Thurman’s dad (father-in-law of Ethan Hawke), making them comrades-in-arms of the rarefied Movie Star Parents Club.

  While his son communed in the backyard with the holy man, Bob—the others called him Tenzin—put Burke at ease. He said that he could relate to what had happened to Kit because he had sustained a life-altering injury when still in college. Bob had lost his left eye in an accident; forced to confront his mortality “head-on,” he dropped out of school and embarked on a journey whose road inexorably led to Tibet.

  “That was more than forty years ago.”

  “That’s a good thing,” said Burke, humbly nodding. “A heroic thing. Wish something like that had happened to me—minus the pain, of course,” he said, winking. He was genuinely impressed and thought the doctors had done a helluva job with that glass eye. “Though it’ll probably’ll take dick cancer to get Burke Lightfoot to straighten up and fly spiritually right.”

  Bob laughed. He was unpretentious that way—a heavyweight who wasn’t about to proselytize. A mensch, and Burke appreciated that.

  “Who exactly is His Holiness?” he asked.

  “Extraordinary man. Left Tibet in ‘fifty-six, a huge group. Only thirty or so made it. Built a monastery, practically with his own hands—Namdroling, in Mysore. I’m pretty sure your son was there, maybe ten, twelve years ago.”

  “Did you know Kit?”

  “We did meet but unfortunately never got the chance to spend much time together. I think we were introduced at a benefit in New York, at Tibet House. He was very sober, very centered. Not at all interested in the ‘movie star thing.’”

  “Guess he and Uma must have hung out.”

  “You know, I spoke with her and said I was coming out to see you. They never worked on a film but she said they spent some social time.”