I Met Someone

by Bruce Wagner

  Dusty thought, Everyone’s insane, and had to laugh. They’re all just having a splash and a wallow before leading me to slaughter. Just doing their jobs, being professional—grabbing the bullshit by the horns, trying to be aggressively cool and proactive in the macabre funhouse of my looming insanity and death. Before they ditch me . . . Her head took little time-outs but at the end of each benumbed smoke break she’d get crushed again by the nuclear reality of her predicament, berating herself anew for the futile, addictive impulse to keep wishing it was all a dream.

  “Ginevra,” she said softly. “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do with this?”

  After a solemn beat, the shrink said, “You have to tell her.”

  The blows kept coming.

  “But how?”

  “We can talk about that. And I’ll be there—right by your side. If you need that, if you want me to be. You can’t do this alone, Dusty. Allegra’s going to need some help as well—”

  “‘Some’!”

  “—because she can’t do it alone either.”

  “Oh God! Oh god oh god oh god, it’s a nightmare . . . what did I do, Ginevra? What did I do! Why has this happened, why has this happened to me? Is it karma?”

  “You have to tell her the truth,” she said, staying focused. “Because anything else would be cruel. You’ve seen what secrets do—let this be the last. It’s not one you would have wanted or imagined but it’s one you cannot keep.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “How so?”

  “Ginevra, you’re being naïve!”

  “Tell me how.”

  “Have you even thought about it, Ginevra? I have! Do you understand what will happen when this becomes public knowledge? What the Internet’s going to do with it? I’m not even talking about the fucking tabloids and the talk-show jokes—have you thought about what the world is going to say? The ridicule and the hatred? The death threats? I will get death threats! I still do! I went through that once and I’m not going to go through it again . . . she will get death threats, Ginevra, she will be a target—for some lunatic to just . . . take a gun and pick her off. This country is so fucking sick. Her life—our lives will be over! Destroyed! Destroyed! Destroyed! Destroyed!”

  “Then you’re worried about a leak?”

  “Am I worried?” she said, her features contorted in contempt.

  “Putting the question of talking to Allegra aside—are you concerned that Livia might share the information?”

  “No! Not Livia . . . but I don’t know who Captain What-the-Fuck—I don’t know who Snoop Raskin’s already told, shit, I don’t know who he has working for him . . . probably a whole fucking army—”

  “Then that’s a conversation you need to have. And soon.”

  “—he said he did it alone, all that old-school confidential ‘trust no one’ bullshit, but how is that even possible? I don’t believe in one-man bands, no one does it by themself, Ginevra, no one can. And everything gets found out anyway! Every text, every email, every everything. We so fucking know that! Ask Laura Poitras! It’s all just sitting there on the shelf in some . . . Amazon warehouse, waiting to be found! I can’t even fart in a restaurant without someone recording it on their little fucking Apple watch—the haters . . . so either everyone already knows—I mean, right now while we’re sitting here talking about it!—or they’re about to in a nanosecond . . .”

  The rant stopped, supplanted by the home invasion of a new fear.

  “Ginevra, am I going to be arrested? Could I be arrested?”

  “But how? You had no knowledge—”

  She stared into the distance like an impotent philosopher. “Is this really happening?” Her laugh was pathetic and unconvincing.

  “We’ll get through this, Dusty.”

  “You’ll get through it. I won’t.”

  “Yes you will.”

  “No I won’t,” she said hauntedly, thinking aloud.

  “You don’t have to decide. About telling her. Not now, not today. But you need to ask yourself, what is the alternative? Not telling her . . . could you live with that, Dusty? Could you take that away from her? Could you take that away from Allegra?” The actress struggled to understand. How could she take anything away from Allegra, when she’d already stolen all the girl had? “Could you take that away from you both?” She let Dusty breathe before going on. “What has happened . . . is impossible to comprehend. But there is—something extraordinary . . . there is—a beauty in it—”

  Dusty spat out “Beauty!” in a seizure of rage.

  “Yes, there is something, you just have to see it. You will come to see it. And you may choose not to. You may choose not to. But it’s there, believe me it’s there. Now I’ve told you what I think. And no one’s going to force you to do anything, no one can. I’m with you—either way. And I want you to know that. If you think you can live with it, don’t tell her, Dusty. Just let it be. Have a ‘breakup,’ just break it off and divorce, tell her it’s just not working and that you haven’t been happy. Whatever. Let it be. If you think you can live with losing her again.”

  —

  She flew private, back to L.A.

  In rattle and thrum of cabin she willed the plane to go down, but thought, I’ll never have that luck.

  Then:

  This must be hell! Yes.

  I am in hell.

  She’d been disparaging Snoop Raskin in her head for no reason other than shoot-the-messenger. Truth be told, she was touched that he’d flown out to deliver the news in person—an act of great kindness. It was the right thing, and rare, because people no longer cared about the right thing, if they could even locate it. Livia had been wonderful too, sleeping over on that baneful night (though neither slept much) to minister to her despair and mutilated maternity.

  There was so much Dusty had to actively repress, taboos within taboos: the home movies of their mouths from only a dozen days ago, infernal circus of fingers, tongues, cunts, and anuses—no! Whenever the sights, sounds, and smells rocketed up they were instantly neutralized by the Iron Dome defense of self-preservation, and instincts of motherliness as well. But how long could she keep that up? How long before all her cities were laid to waste? Gentler impressions rose to the surface . . . for example, the press had always commented on the physical traits they shared (complexion, timbre of voice, willowiness, the way they laughed)—the world seemed charmed by such proof of soulmatedness. And that time they were antiquing in Vermont when an older shop owner mistook them for mother and daughter. That used to happen in the early years of their romance, before they became known as a couple.

  She thought of the names—the names! Aurora/Allegra . . . the babysitter’s alteration was just enough to echo and obliterate, to memorialize the dead twin.

  She kept circling back to the outlandish notion (though in context, “outlandish” had lost all meaning) of Allegra having targeted her own mother for seduction. Talk about revenge porn . . . The sophistic theory didn’t really hold water, though, as the girl just didn’t seem to have the right stuff to carry out such a diabolical scheme; Allegra had always worn her unconniving heart on her sleeve. And yet, in the very breath that followed such a repudiation, Dusty would think it was possible, that Allegra would be capable of anything, of course she would, especially that which appeared bizarre, violent, or implausible—because in the end, wasn’t she Reina Whitmore’s granddaughter? As long as one had membership in that accursed, calamitous bloodline, one would never be exempt from all manner of devilry. There was no escape.

  She tried to recall everything Allegra had ever shared of her vagabond childhood. There wasn’t much. Not a single toddler or family photo—only the thin, dinner-party-ready repertoire of exotic, darkly sardonic anecdotes hinting at cartoonish scrapes with death and the law in far-flung, Wild Wild Eastern corners of the world. It perplexed Du
sty that she had never been more curious—or curious at all, really. She’d never really questioned Allegra’s upbringing. When she said that her parents were dead, Dusty just accepted it, no problem, she swallowed everything whole, closing that door. Was that even normal? To be so weirdly uninquisitive about the one whom one loved, whom one chose to make a life with? It seemed a little extreme, even for a narcissist. What could she have been thinking, to have apparently so not given a shit? With devastating logic, the lacuna became one more example of crimes against motherhood, of the high treason she’d committed against all children. Snoop had dredged up Children of God, a cult she was familiar with through her work with Hyacinth. One of the shittier, more sinister groups when it came to child sex abuse . . . of course, Allegra had written that script where she’d changed the name to “Ellipsis.” She couldn’t remember ever asking where she got the idea to write about C.O.G. in the first place; she was so skittishly sensitive about her writing abilities that Dusty thought best to leave it alone. But now it all made sense—even more sense why Allegra had been so hesitant to show her the pages. She was certain that “Ellipsis” was completely autobiographical and wondered what terrible secret things were revealed . . . she probably didn’t want her to read it because it was the True Story (names changed to protect the guilty) of an angelic little girl abandoned by her bitch movie-star mother—

  A pocket of turbulence dislodged her thoughts, making room for a strobe-stink of incestuous images that gutted rather than aroused. She fought them off with recollections of how they’d first met.

  Allegra was studying at Lee Strasberg, waitressing part-time at the Hotel Bel-Air. She was a server at the patio party Dusty was having for Lauren Bacall. When they saw each other, it was, like, Oh. There. There she is. Dusty was with her Gen Y galfriend, a New York fashionista. She whispered her number to Allegra, saying, “Memorize it.” Throughout the lunch, Dusty whispered it four times; a sly, erotic joke. Allegra told her girlfriend at the time that she’d just met Dusty Wilding (but not that she memorized her number). The girlfriend was a superfan but Allegra had only seen maybe two of her films. She waited a week before getting the nerve to call. When she drove to Point Dume, they communed like old souls. Old friends and old souls and old

  OH

  There.

  There she is—

  And now.

  The horror . . .

  The hallucinatory karmic godlessness of it!

  More turbulence. The plane shook shook shook. She threw up then dosed herself with another round of Ativan and Percocet. Closed her eyes and floated back to Mimosa Lane circa 1978 to nurse her baby but Reina was there, skulking in shadow, like an avenging Bunraku puppet-ghost . . . so Dusty recalled a different sanctuary, before there was even a child to be taken—her prenatal idyll with the cabal of witchy midwives and phabulous phreaks in Wickenburg, AZ. The smell of Sonoran campfires and the woof of javelinas suffused, and a watery, topsy-turvy diorama too, for the legendary Hassayampa—“upside-down river”—flowed through there, disappearing underground.

  Its sandy legend sang

  Those who drink its waters bright,

  red man, white man, boor or knight,

  girls or women, boys or men,

  Never tell the truth again.

  They woke her twenty minutes before landing in Van Nuys.

  Texts awaited, from Allegra and Ronny Swerdlow.

  Ronny’s said, The girls miss you & so does Sam. (me too) Come for dinner + troutfishing in America soon

  Leggy’s said, oh where oh where has my little bun gone oh where oh were can she be?

  —

  She didn’t go home. How could she?

  The car took her to the Presidential Suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage. She needed the proximity of people, the infrastructure of service and care. Elise had been trying to reach her, leaving worried messages. Dusty finally emailed that she was on a secret spa holiday and would be offline. Jeremy was texting and emailing too and she wrote him the same. Livia offered to come to the desert (she was the only one other than Ginevra who knew where she was) but Dusty declined, though they did talk for hours on the phone. Livia was an advocate and a good sounding board. When Dusty told her about the shrink advising her to tell Allegra everything, Livia respectfully disagreed. She said, “You should just end it,” that Allegra would survive a breakup “beautifully, you’ll see.” That it would be the ultimate kindness to spare her the truth—“a mother’s sacrifice, if you will.” Dusty’s first impulse had been the same, and because she trusted her old friend’s instincts, the argument gained authority. Livia judiciously granted that she could see the merit in either telling or not telling but leaned toward nondisclosure, which “favored healing, on both sides.” A large part of Dusty agreed, though she had trouble determining if her bias was inspired by stone-cold pragmatism or stone-cold fear. There was a quality of priggishness inherent in her colleague and confessor; playing devil’s advocate, she asked herself if Livia’s convictions were informed more by old-fashioned rectitude than common sense. (Probably a goulash of the above.) Whatever. As deeply crazy as the current situation was, it just felt good to be talking. If hell, among other things, was a vacuum, Dusty was grateful to at least be having the debate.

  She emailed with her daughter only once—a text would have felt too intimate, a phone call anathema. Dusty said she’d been working through “some unexpected issues” in the wake of Reina’s death and that Ginevra, whom she saw in New York, was guiding her in the painful process. She was taking some “quiet time” in Big Sur. Dusty balked when Allegra ventured to ask, Are you at Esalen or Post Ranch? “At a house,” she answered.

  She only left her rooms at night, when she took long drives, parking in quiet, affluent neighborhoods before going on a ramble. Just after sunset, the desert was cool and divinely aloof. The choppy, analeptic winds spoke to her, and brought strange succor. She felt disembodied, as if watching herself with a drone’s hovering eye, a demigod looking down upon that soft, sad ambulatory machine called Dusty Wilding—martyr, warrior, abomination. Slouching toward Trousdale with no plan in sight, she prayed some sort of liberation was at hand. She wanted to blame Jupiter, who, according to Chakrapani, was exalted; she wanted to blame Venus, the planet of love. She was tired of blaming herself . . . Maybe the stars and planets had aligned to rape her into selflessness and resurrection. She needed an illusion of purpose because anything was an improvement over the brimstone damnation she now suffered, the exquisite nonstop hurt whose insult she had begun to believe she might grow accustomed to, and even endure.

  As she walked, she told the winds she’d break it off. I’ll end it and she’ll kick and scream but then she’ll understand. I’ll sell the house on Carla Ridge and give her Point Dume, and anything else she needs or asks for—it’s hers anyway, all hers. Yes, that’s what I’ll do . . . I’ll go see her and we’ll talk and talk and it will be all right, everything will be all right, and we’ll find new loves. Eventually. Both of us. We’ll find ourselves and be set free. And in time, we’ll come together again: friends and old souls, just like we’ve always been. I’ll be there for her like a mother (like always), and it won’t even matter if I’m the only one who knows—

  But the winds shouted her down.

  “Tell her,” they said.

  —

  She was in a state.

  On the day that Dusty left for New York, Allegra went back to tracing a whorehouse of parfum miniatures in her sketchbook, in an attempt to conjure the winning silhouette of the vessel entrusted to spray the pheromones of her bitch lying wife onto thousands of women’s bodies.

  She felt like a pimp; she felt like a cuckold.

  At night, she dreamed of owls killing barnyard mice.

  She took solace in a book of Sufi parables—one of them drove her to tears. It was the story of a wealthy merchant who kidnapped a songbird and kept her i
n an emerald-encrusted cage. The songbird grew to love its captor. One day, he was leaving on business to the very place she was stolen from. He told her that if she wished, he would search for her family and pass on a message. “Tell them I am with one who loves me,” she said. “And my heart is full and I want for nothing. The one who adores me sees to my every need.” The merchant went to that faraway place, and when his work was done found her brother on the high branches of a tree. He shouted up the captive sister’s message. After listening, the bird fell dead from its perch. When the merchant got home, he went straight to the cage of his beloved with the unhappy news. “I told your brother you wished him to know that your heart was full. And that you wanted for nothing because the one who loves you saw to your every need. He listened, then fell from the tree and was dead.” At that very moment she tumbled lifelessly off her golden perch. Horrified, he opened the door to revive her but she flew from the cage and straight out the window.

  The peerless songbird circled back for a parting word.

  “My brother showed me what it would take to be free.”