Fiona Maazel - Woke Up Lonely

Her eyes were gray and swimmy, as if filmed in a clear lubricant that gave them the appearance of water. “Cookie?” she said, and she broke one in half.

He shook his head. He was getting tired. He flexed his toes, sipped his tea. Noted an aroma float into the room and waft around his face like a turban.

“Pie,” she said. “Mixed berry. Fresh cream, too. I made the crust myself”—and here she smiled. “Pie makes pretty much everyone feel better. And if you’re here, chances are it’s ’cause you want to feel better.”

Olgo looked past her. He said, “Is this it? Is this all of you?” He’d lost all hope that his wife was elsewhere, but then where was she if not here?

“There’s more in the back. One’s making tandoori chicken. Her specialty, apparently. Oh, no,” she said, seeing his face, “how rude of me. I mean, there’s vegetarian options, too.”

“It’s not that,” Olgo said, and he upturned his nose, trying to detect something of his wife’s favorite dish in the smell of mixed-berry pie. But it was no use — the pie overwhelmed. There’s no fighting pie; there never was.

“You want to talk about it?” she said. “I’m all ears. When I came in, my husband had just died, and even though my friends and kids came by and took me out, it just wasn’t any good. But I get what I need here. You will, too.”

The irony was not lost on Olgo, who’d been trying to talk to pretty much anyone for three weeks, and here was this woman offering him the gold standard. Well, what harm in talking? Retain your pretense, betray no facts, but still: get it off your chest. But when he opened his mouth, he wasn’t so sure or in control.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard.”

“That’s okay,” and she squeezed his arm. “There’s no other world besides this one. No TV or radio, no clue what horrible things are happening out there. So just talk if you want. Otherwise we can sit and drink our tea, and that’s not so bad, either.”

“It’s just—” But then he felt the hurt rush his mouth as though to secure a home there and never move out.

“For me,” she said, “I didn’t even know what I felt or why, just that I felt awful. And scared. Like maybe things were just never going to be right again. But look at me now.” And Olgo looked; she looked calm and together and happy to be alive, which was the exact opposite of how he looked, he knew it.

The room was filling up with people from the outside, but still no Kay. Jonathan made the rounds, extended his largesse without caveat, greeted everyone with the same smile and warmth and appeared to mean it equally. The discrepancy between the pledges and the members was overt and telling of the same story fifty times over. The pledges gathered in a circle: Jin, who oversaw cleanup at a Korean spa in D.C.; Mark, in town for his youngest daughter’s wedding; Ruby, with newborn strapped to her chest, the child knocked out — but just wait.

Olgo, when asked to speak of his life, took a pass and blushed and felt a hand take his — it was Myla — and another take his right, Mark with the daughter-bride. Once around the circle, then twice. The more you told, the more the group applauded your candor, Jin winning kudos for confessing to a hand job or two at the spa — she needed the extra cash but also the gratitude; no one ever looked on her with that kind of gratitude at home — and Ruby for sharing the isolation of motherhood, the late nights and death-row thinking.

There were canapés on the table — goat cheese, wasabi crackers — more tea, and when the circle broke for dinner and Kay still had not appeared, with or without Jerry, Olgo returned to the couch and stared at the wall.

The pledges who’d spoken were thronged, he was alone, and it seemed like the Chinese lanterns had recast their glow from where he sat to where the confessants were. A member walked by; Olgo caught her sleeve and said, “So how does this work?”

She smiled. Sat opposite him on a canvas ottoman. Leaned forward with her hands clasped between her legs. “You share and belong and find what you need.”

He winced and quivered at the lip. “But does it help?” he said.

“You tell me.”

He took a deep breath, so deep that maybe it solicited his wife from the dark, because all of a sudden, there she was. Across the room. Seeing him but making no move in his direction.

“We are all kinds,” the woman said. And Olgo smiled, but grimly. We. One of his favorite words. Who knew that it could turn on him, that something as steadfast as we —even the letters were bonded tight — could cede its joys to context.

Kay’s hair was in a ponytail. Her sweater was pastel green. Behind her stood Jerry, who just shook his head and held the side of his face like he’d been slapped.

“I feel broken,” Olgo said. “Totally confused. Like I don’t understand anything.”

And he took the long view. As a professional, he’d been reared in the ways of empathy and the seminal texts that gave it name. He knew all about having to activate something in yourself so that you could apprehend the thing or person before you. But he also knew about the urge to apprehend nothing, at least nothing coherent, and to be redeemed from the anguish of trying. What did he really know of other people? How had he spent his life divining intent and motive and need without having the vaguest idea of what went on in anyone’s life but his own? And not even his own, for which failing he now had ample evidence? He took the long view and floated right up and out of his body. This woman had offered him help. His wife was on her way.

Bruce Bollinger, the director must not force the audience to cry because the hero cries.

A documentarian will follow his subject into hell and not come back. Not if the action is award winning. Bruce could hardly believe his luck. Kidnapping was bad, but six whores and a cult leader? This cult leader’s double-crossing dad? The most engaging threat to the Union in more than a century grown from the rigmarole of people convened in mansions across America? How many filmmakers would kill for inside access to a story like that? This was God doing for Bruce what he could not do for himself.

Problem was, with every hour he was trotted around the Helix House, presumably to star in the ransom video, the place seemed to empty. People were vanishing. His options were vanishing! It was like scrambling for the last few seats in musical chairs. At first he’d wanted the dad, Wainscott, because, my God, the man had raised a cult leader, lived with this cult leader, and then betrayed him, though raising and living with the cult leader would have been story enough. Thurlow Dan was no Hitler, but didn’t you wonder about Hitler’s parents? Stalin’s? Charles Manson’s mom tried to sell him for a pitcher of beer, but there was only so much you could get on record. So, Wayne was the plan. The Early Years.

Problem was, Wayne had a seizure. What the hell. A phony seizure to get him out of the compound but also out of Bruce’s reach. A second choice was the hooker, because those spikes pronged from her cheeks were just balls-out weird. And since he’d seen their simulacra on a girl at Crystal’s place, he figured here was a trend worth noting. So, free of his hood and left in the charge of guards not remotely interested in guarding him, Bruce was able to wander off and hunt his story down. Hunt and fail and return to the cell, if you could call it a cell, only to find the bars had straggled and everyone was gone.

No small wonder. He too heard the helicopters. The sirens and bullhorn. He was aware HRT intended to storm the place, and he’d seen enough on Waco to know what this meant for him if he did not get out. But he also knew he would not get another chance this good. Who’d want to buy video footage of his wife’s hinky bladder? Decisions, decisions. To stay in the house was suicide, and so, what, the documentarian is suicidal? That was what he was saying? He was rapacious and hypersensitive and bearing out the artist’s paradigm whenever he screwed someone over in the pursuit of his work, but suicidal? Bruce decided to make one more tour of the house, and if he came up short, he’d march right out the front door. Look, he’d settle for a guard. View from the bottom rung up. He’d settle for that! Please bring me a guard.