The Chrysanthemum Palace

by Bruce Wagner

  It wasn’t until halfway through the speech that some of us realized he’d gone “off book.” The actor suddenly appeared woozy and I rushed to his support; otherwise, I think he’d have fallen. After a moment’s recovery, he seemed embarrassed by his lyrical, improvised outburst. As the director helped us lower the fallen prince to a chair and the medic was called, Thad appeared to be in a fugue state. In time, the clamminess evaporated and color returned to his skin. He drew us in to explain that such spontaneous poeticizing (this stanza from a favorite, the venerable Giacomo Leopardi) sometimes foretold a migraine was imminent. He would try “the new medicine,” he said, already prescribed for this very event—Clea confirmed the Zomig was in her purse. All he needed, said Thad, was to lie down. The medic arrived but he politely turned the man away. A fifteen-minute break was called.

  Clea walked him to his trailer. I followed at a few paces.

  She turned and whispered, “He wants apple pie and ice cream. Can you get some, Bertie?”

  Arriving with the goods, I tapped lightly on the door. No response. Cautiously, I stepped in. I heard soft voices and warily proceeded. Clea was framed in the bedroom door with her back to me, partially blocking the view. Thad lay north to south and she ministered like a nurse, motioning me to bring the dessert.

  I caught glimpse of his face, ruddy and alert.

  “An ambassadorship!” he muttered, with charm. “You’ve done well for yourself, Trothex.”

  “Yes, darling,” said Clea, sponging his forehead with a damp cloth.

  “He took the pill?” I whispered needlessly.

  She nodded.

  “What kind of name is that, anyway?” he asked. “Trothex.”

  “Dumb,” I said, affably. “A dumb name.”

  “Sounds like bleach,” he said. His brow furrowed and he turned to Clea as if they were alone. “When I first saw you on the bridge”—I realized he had leapfrogged to the lines of tomorrow’s scene—“looking out from the starscreen . . . all the years rushed back.” She tenderly put a hand on his. “And I thought: How terrible that I never even said good-bye.”

  * * *

  1 Throughout the day, I heard more than a few comments in that regard, in respectful sotto from the crew.

  THE MIGRAINE DIDN’T COME BUT Clea worried nonetheless.

  She confided to me something I already suspected: that our friend took a daily barrage of “meds” to control various manias, compulsions, and depression and that it was paramount he neither add nor subtract from the carefully calibrated chemical concoction as it might effect a harsh imbalance of mood. Clea had seen the consequences and it wasn’t pretty. She was worried—aside from the Leopardian lapse, there were recent blips, dots, and beeps on her radar that she couldn’t yet translate—so the two of us kept close watch. Gently, she asked Thad if he was currently taking this pill or that, careful not to antagonize, in the effort to determine whether to begin the begging campaign he not abandon the pills that mattered, at least not till the end of the shoot, a tantalizingly close yet shockingly distant ten days away.

  Clea and I were old hands at caretaking—Mom had been a semi-invalid since my early twenties—and made a pretty good tag team. We made sure he was well fed and lightheartedly entertained but confined to his room by shooting day’s end. While prudently maintaining a general policy against overstimulation, Clea considered the sexual act to be palliative and good for his soul, a natural antibody and witches’ brew against the virus of soft-focus schizophrenia. (She took her custodianship with touching seriousness.) Every few days, Miriam called at a late hour in a sultry voice, as if catching mossy, musky whiff of Clea’s carnal healing; though it was more likely she was trying to atone for the celibacy of her last brief visit. If she did bring up Thad, it was by way of signaling phone sex was over—the topic of his cracked psyche definitely broke the mood. She’d usually mumble something about “coming out there if things get too rickety” before slipping back into sexy sign-off mode.

  The amazing Michelet had a new preoccupation—at least, new to us. He’d been contemplating a one-man show, which he’d already spoken to Mike Nichols about directing. Or so he said. Mr. Nichols was seemingly enthused. It would be the story of his life: his revenant twin, Zeus-like dad and ice queen mom—the whole shebang. Apparently it had been on his mind a long while but everything had coalesced during the trip to San Rafael. Just after our late-night parlor car confab, he’d had a powerful vision in the form of a disturbing image, nearly religious yet intensely theatrical: himself alone onstage, sitting at a table applying makeup “like a Gielgud or a Richardson” (“not Spalding Gray!” he added pithily) while intimately addressing his audience. The makeup, he added, was none other than a Vorbalid’s, the epiphany being that a monologue encompassing his life would unfold as the cosmo-cosmetic layers were inexorably applied (or removed; he wasn’t quite sure yet), until at performance’s end he stood to face the assembly in the naked, poignant, transworldly mask of human comedy—agglutinized agony of all the lost and ruined years. He’d forever been attracted, he said, to metaphorical monsters and the tortured poetry of their lives—Chaney’s Phantom, Laughton’s Hunchback, Karloff’s Frankenstein—and nonmetaphorical monsters too: the homely, sickly, myopic Giacomo Leopardi, whom Thad described as a lonesome boy who sequestered himself in his father’s library, promising not to come out until he was “as great a poet as Dante.” The operatic stageplay would be a unique chance to formally add his own unforgettably tender gargoyle to the canon.

  While delighted to see him thus diverted and enthused, Clea and I were taken aback by the scope of his ambition. That he seemed intent on characterizing himself as a kind of Creature of the Black Lagoon caused a bit of shuddering on our part, alongside the realization that we needed to continue to voice support and encouragement, which was deeply genuine. There was no question the concept was brilliant in its macabre simplicity—a perfect vehicle to make use of a wide breadth of talents while at the same time proving wildly therapeutic. The raw honesty of the thing was, after all, what set it apart. I cringed and got gooseflesh at once, which made me think his proposal had the potential to be one of those breakthrough projects an artist is always remembered by. As we listened to him map it out, I grew more excited, playing off Clea’s enraptured startles, pregnant hesitations, and bridefully unbridled enthusiasms. (Don’t forget, I was her legal codependent.) Before long I had completely lost my head, giving my word to be first in the coming tsunami of financial backers.

  “Do you remember The Day the Earth Stood Still? My brother and I loved Michael Rennie. How gay was Michael Rennie? We had total kiddie-porn hard-ons for Klaatu. We used to put on these little plays—I have all this written down!” He seized a disorderly sheaf of papers, some typed, some longhand, riffling through them with great devotedness as he spoke. “I was originally going to do a memoir but then I thought (and Miriam completely agrees): Don’t do the perimenopausal Susan Cheever thing. I want Grand Guignol-in-the-round, the roar of the greasepaint, the stink of the crowd!”

  “It’s so great,” said Clea, really meaning it.

  Then I thought it—and said it—and meant so too. And do, to this day.

  Thad said Clea and I should coproduce; there was much to learn from his old friend Nichols. (Years back, delays on the Quixote shoot had forced him to bow from the director’s Lincoln Center revival of Waiting for Godot.) He began to pace, voicing concern that because of its autobiographical nature he might have to dip into The Soft Sea Horse for material. He was afraid of legal repercussions, should Mordecai Klotcher wind up optioning the book. Clea told him not to get ahead of himself.

  Returning from the kitchen with a sack of chips, Thad assumed the posture of a suave extraterrestrial with an absurd French accent. “I am Klaatu, from Alpha Centauri. That’s how my brother used to say it—très Brigitte Bardot. We’d do our little mise-en-scène in the garden. I’d be ‘sleeping’ and he’d enter stage left making the Theremin sound.” He imitated the in
strument’s campily evocative pitch. “I’d open my eyes and he’d be standing there, beamed down from nothingness. Very Starwatch. What can I say? We were ahead of our time. I’d pretend to be shocked, then start to stammer and be a good Earthling host. Uh, have you been traveling long? Jeremy would say—intone—‘About five months. Five of your Earth months.’ You must have come a long way. ‘About two hundred fifty million of your Earth miles.’ He’d look around the yard—he was actually very good at the cosmic snob thing—he must have picked that up from his little Gstaad pals!—and Jeremy would say, ‘What do you call this sector?’ I’d tell him we were in a place called . . . Martha’s Vineyard. One day we were doing our thing (I have it in my notes) and Jeremy said the big reason he’d journeyed all those millions of miles was—and this is fucking genius—‘I’m most curious to board what I believe you Earthlings call a “yacht.” It is my desire to explore the exotic Isle of Capri.’ The exotic Isle of Capri! Priceless! Oh, he was good! Oh! He was very good. ‘I wish to meet the fascinating specimens you call movie stars.’ Jeremy could be a devil—he was a smart little fucker. He stands there saying he could tell by my aura I had ‘what you Earthlings call asthma’ and that he could easily cure me of this ‘petty ailment’—but not until he returned from visiting the Isle of Capri where he planned to learn ‘the ways of Hollywood moviemaking.’ See, evidently, that was the main thing aliens wanted to know! How to make Hollywood movies!”

  Thad smiled a weary, memory smile. Then, with casual elegance, he contemplatively tucked hands into pockets, already rehearsing mannerisms for his tour de force.

  HIS ENTHUSIASM WAS CONTAGIOUS.

  If we threw enough at the ceiling, something was bound to stick—for somebody. Besides, I could always use a creative kick in the ass.

  I forced myself to work on Holmby Hills. Clea finished a précis for her children of celebs sitcom. Thad immersed himself in the one-man show, which, seen through the lens of my own collegiate dabbling in avant-garde, already looked like some sort of outrageous classic-in-the-making.

  There were lots of irons in the fire. In addition to Miriam’s misguided efforts on Thad’s behalf to novelize “Prodigal Son” (she was actually making headway), Mordecai Klotcher was drawing up an option on The Soft Sea Horse. As if that weren’t enough, Nick Sultan was in hot pursuit of making a deal for the actor-author to adapt his father’s novel to screenplay form. I kept forgetting to ask Dad—perennial holder of the Chrysanthemum rights—if Nick was really attached or if he’d ever broached the idea of Junior’s involvement, as claimed. (I guess part of me didn’t want to know.) It was all pretty incestuous—not that it hadn’t been from the beginning.

  On a typical day, Mr. Michelet catnapped in a lawn chair in front of his trailer while Clea and I took over the bedroom, ostensibly to work on one of a thousand or so projects. The truth was, I had begun a leisurely read of the out-of-print Soft Sea Horse—ordered online just after the funeral, it had finally come—while Clea obsessed over Playboy. The current issue contained a witty photo essay by David LaChapelle featuring an old friend of hers, also the daughter of an icon of silverscreen, albeit one still living. Hefner’s people had a long-standing, lucrative offer on the table and with each new issue Clea contemplated blowing out the candles of her birthday suit afresh, before there were too many.

  We were thus engrossed when inquiring voices disturbed our peace.

  “Thad? Is that him?”

  “Of course, it’s him. They said it’s his trailer.”

  The first again, louder: “Thad!”

  We rushed forward and there they were, figures in a scary dream: Morgana Michelet and Mordie K, at the foot of the trailer’s entry, cautiously ogling the cubistic Morloch as fussy merchants might observe a transient dozing in the vestibule of their shop. Her eyes lit upon us as we appeared at the door; smiling awkwardly in our futurama getup, we felt the full sting of Morgana’s phaser, set eternally on Humiliate. Just then the sleeping Vorbalid stirred from his psychopharmacologically induced haze and, blinking rapidly, sat up with veteran professionality to exclaim—strand of spittle brocading his mouth—“Mother!”

  “Freak!” cried Klotcher’s great-nephew, in admiration of Morloch’s impressive deformities. “That is so cool.”

  Clea stepped between Thad and the boy, as buffer.

  Morgana gaped at the ambassador, not yet recognizing the girl underneath. Finally, the old woman eked out “Clea?”—like a dowager discovering that a new society friend was a sales assistant at Walgreen’s instead.

  “Hi,” I offered, lamely bright, extending a mitt in the direction of Mordy/Morgana. With no takers, the hand retracted. In its place, I tendered a pathetic reminder—“I’m Bertie Krohn. My father created the show”—that we’d met on the Vineyard, blah. The M & Ms’ mouths widened but still said nothing; I suppose they were in shock though I wasn’t quite sure why. Standing in uniform, I felt a fresh wave of foolishness, as if me and my compatriots had been caught playing dress up. Or strip poker.

  “Vorbalids!” shouted the horrid, gleeful boy.

  I flashed on what it would be like to hit him so hard in the chest that he’d belch blood and expire at the moment of impact.

  “It is you,” smiled the producer, eyes crinkling like the Tin Man’s. “I was beginning to think we had the wrong galaxy!”

  “What are you doing here?” said Thad, now awake enough to be bemused. He addressed Morgana but Klotcher answered instead.

  “Didn’t Miriam tell you I was dropping by?”

  “That looks shitty,” said the unstarstruck child, scrutinizing hours-old peel at the neck of our latex-grafted prince.

  “I didn’t know you were in town,” said Thad to his mother.

  “I’m taking portraits,” she finally answered. “For my book.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said. (Curdled smile.)

  “I’ve only been here a few days—at the Peninsula. Mordecai rang up and said he was coming to see you. I hope you don’t mind me crashing the party! I thought we could all have dinner tonight at L’Orangerie.”

  “How long does the makeup take to put on?” asked the boy, running thin, dirty fingers over the polyester hem of Thad’s royal tunic.

  Clea swatted his hand away; he silently mouthed Fuck You.

  “You knew I was out here,” said Thad. “I thought you’d have called.”

  “I didn’t know how to reach you!” said Morgana. She talked too loud.

  “How long does the makeup take to put on,” the punk testily implored, giving the fabric a yank.

  Thad obliviously shoved him, hard enough to put an end to the entreaties. Morgana looked as if she might reprimand her son but begged off when she saw no real harm had been done.

  “What do you mean, you didn’t know how to reach me?”

  His sneer reconfigured itself into a kind of fluorescent incredulity.

  “You didn’t tell anyone where you were staying,” said Morgana.

  “I always stay at the Chateau. You know that. And Miriam knows—”

  “Well, I don’t know how to reach Miriam. How would I? And believe it or not, your lodgings are not as legendarily known as you might think. But here I am, so what difference can it possibly make?”

  “I didn’t mean to intrude while you’re working,” said Klotcher conciliatorily, mindful of the tension between the two. “I thought Miriam gave a heads-up. She must have told someone, or there wouldn’t have been a drive-on.”

  I eased my way back to the bedroom while Clea protectively remained. I had planned to leave but, after retrieving my things, hung back to listen.

  “I’ve been taking your mother around with my realtor.”

  “Oh?”

  “We looked at a fabulous horse ranch in the Malibu Hills,” said Klotcher. “Twenty-two acres.”

  “Lovely but not for me,” said Morgana.

  “I think it was once owned by Bo Derek.”

  “You’re moving here?” said Thad, further dismay
ed.

  “Not on your life,” said Morgana. “It’s a nice way to see the city, though—it is such a luxury to look at property knowing you have absolutely no intention to buy!”

  “I want to meet Cabott 7,” said the boy.

  “I’m sure the feeling’s mutual,” said Thad. “But I’m afraid the court has ruled against the android having contact with minors. Stipulation of parole.”

  “What’s parole?” asked the child, faintly flummoxed.

  Klotcher guffawed while Clea nattered about how nice supper at L’Orangerie would be. The little shit harped on What’s parole until Morgana set him straight.

  “My son has a warped sense of humor and should not, as a rule, be taken seriously.”

  “Are you going to be a regular?” asked the boy.

  “No,” said Clea, protectively. “He’s guest-starring.”

  “You should be in another Jetsons,” he said, like a pint-sized agent.

  “Aren’t you meant to do something in La Jolla?” asked Morgana. “A play?”

  “Postponed,” said Thad—prevaricating, as they say. Suddenly he grimaced, as if discerning great hooves of headache kicking up dust in the distance.

  “Can I see the ship?” asked the boy.

  “He wants to see the ship,” said Klotcher.

  “Go for it,” said Thad. “Anyone hassles you, say you’re my guest.”

  “I want to meet Cabott 7.”

  “I told you. He’s not allowed around minors.”

  “Thad!” admonished Morgana.

  “But why? Why isn’t he?” pleaded the boy.

  “I said. Major Cabott’s not allowed around minors because he’s a pedophile. In fact, that’s what we call him on the bridge—Major Pedophile!”

  “What’s a pedophile?”

  “Those are androids with very special powers. Android priests—machine-men of the cloth! Now go bother someone else.”