Stuart Dybek - Ecstatic Cahoots - Fifty Short Stories

“The fantasy motif isn’t working for you?” Gil asked.

“I’m not Disney, for fuck’s sake. You’ve seen the movies I make. There’s got to be something that goes for the throat.”

“Passion,” Gil said.

“Passion?” the Mogul repeated. “Go on.”

“The couple has lost their passion,” Gil said.

“Gil, that’s brilliant,” the Mogul said. “Fucking love it.”

“You do? Thanks. I mean it’s a little clichéd but—”

The Mogul cut him off. “You know, Gil, a secret to success in this business is to understand there’s a fine line between a cliché and a classic, so fine that — not to sound cynical — it’s virtually invisible to most people in the audience. You’re a classy writer, but you don’t let it get in the way of life. Think about a rewrite. Passion. We’ll talk more tonight. I’m giving a little soirée.”

* * *

By the time a second case of champagne arrived, the park trees, ablaze for autumn, were flocked white. Flights of leaves weighted with wet snow gusted through the swirl of flakes as if the park might be stripped bare overnight.

“The wind sounds like whale songs from up here,” Tina Powell said. She and Gil stood together at a window, looking out and passing a bottle of champagne between them. “When it comes to beautiful illusions, this city still has a few tricks up its sleeves,” Tina said. “Or is that just the booze talking?”

“Makes you want to be out there walking,” Gil said.

“Not in these it doesn’t.” Tina lifted her skirt to give him a better look at her slender calves and violet open-toed pumps. “Wish I’d worn boots.”

“Perfect footwear for a soirée,” Gil said. “You look lovely tonight.”

“Had I known months ago you only flirt when drunk on overpriced bubbly I might have insisted on Petrossian instead of Papaya King,” Tina said. “Not that those weren’t top New York kosher dogs. When the Mogul makes us rich, we can celebrate. We’ll dress our wieners in beluga and get drunk as skunks.”

“I’ll admit to being a little buzzed maybe, but not drunk,” Gil said.

“Too bad. I am, might as well be,” Tina said. “What’s stopping you? Tonight’s a celebration of sorts, no? You’ll never have to teach again. You can retire to a hut in Malibu and write that bloodsucker trilogy you’ve always known you had in you.”

A bellman refilled the ice buckets, dimmed the lighting, and asked if he should also clear the food.

“Leave it,” the Mogul said, “people are still nibbling.” The Mogul had been drinking quietly as if brooding, or maybe his own party bored him. He sat beside an ice bucket as one might sit with a teddy bear, alone on a couch behind a coffee table barricaded with take-out cartons. Take-out cartons occupied almost every surface in the room — the tabletops, the desk, the windowsills. Cartons were balanced on top of other cartons still to be opened. The Mogul rose and began to open some of them, jabbing his chopsticks in for a sample and then resealing them.

“Just dipping your beak?” Tina Powell asked.

“Don Fanucci in The Godfather ,” the Mogul answered. “Best line in the movie.”

The Mogul explained that when he’d asked for the best Thai delivery in the city, three different restaurants were recommended. They couldn’t all be the best, so to settle the question he’d ordered from all three. But now, with the cartons mixed up, it was impossible to tell what had come from where. He had instructed the front desk to send up the delivery boys because he felt the best part of takeout was the ring at the door followed by the smell of steaming food. You knew the food was never as good as it smelled, but it didn’t matter. The smell, he said, reminded him of the cheap Asian food he’d survived on when, with no prospects, he hitched his way to L.A., city of dreams, where — young, broke, scuffling, literally picking cigarette butts out of the gutter — he’d determined to make his mark or fucking die trying. In those days when he was always hungry, the food had tasted as good as it smelled.

The Mogul sat back down beside the ice bucket and refilled his glass.

Champagne was being popped all over the room. Debates broke out over what were the best carryout places in the city, Queens against Manhattan, until Liam announced that as far as he was concerned the question wasn’t what restaurant was best, but rather, which was most authentic.

“You can say the same thing about theater,” Liam said.

TK took that as a cue to tell them all about the time he’d shot a film in Bangkok, and how the food there bore little resemblance to Thai food in New York. He’d especially loved the street food, and never once got sick, at least not from eating. Drink and drugs were another matter. He was partying hard back then. They’d start shooting at six a.m. and he’d clear his head by eating an incendiary curry for breakfast. Lunch was fruit delivered from the great fruit market on Phahonyothin Road: mangoes, young coconuts called ma praw on , and fruits TK had never tasted fresh before — mangosteen, jackfruit, lichee. There were fruits he knew only by their Thai names— lam-yai, longkong —and, speaking of the difference between smell and taste, sometimes a durian, a fruit so putrid-smelling that the hotels posted signs warning it was illegal to bring one inside, yet durians taste like silky custard, like nothing you ever had before. They’d blend them into icy smoothies, and then TK would get a massage from a skinny woman who spoke no English but could cure a hangover by walking her fingers down his spine. He didn’t think you could get authentic Thai in New York, though maybe a durian could be found in the wilds of the Bronx.

“Just don’t try bringing one into the Carlyle,” Tina said.

“Are those places that say ‘Thai massage’ authentic?” Renee Wilde asked.

“I have no idea,” TK said.

“So, man, how do you ask for happy ending in Thai?” Nestor asked.

“Try, I want happy ending, ” TK said, “not that I am speaking from personal experience.”

“Is happy ending what I think it is?” Garth wanted to know. He had inherited the Captain’s role now that Sven was toast.

“Man, everybody knows ‘happy ending,’” Nestor said, his speech noticeably slurred.

“I don’t,” Renee said. “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“All of the above,” Nestor said. “Imagine, instead of an actor, Garth’s something real: a teamster driving a sixteen-wheeler down I-80 through the night in Nebraska, listening to Jesus radio, popping NoDoz, his back killing him, and suddenly there’s a pink neon sign — not THAI MASSAGE. Just RUB DOWN. Five minutes later he’s naked, blissed, as this pretty Asian woman slathers on oil and walks her magic fingers down his spine. And just as he’s thinking it’s over too soon, she asks, Want happy ending? That’s not the moment to blurt: Miss, is happy ending what I think it is? Is it authentic happy ending? You say, Oh, yeah! And she says, Happy ending, fifty dollar extra . And man, there in the darkness of Nebraska you’ve learned the authentic price of happiness.”

“I was going to suggest changing EverAfter to Happy Ending ,” Renee Wilde said, “but now I’m afraid that would raise the wrong expectations in the audience.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if life were that simple?” the Mogul asked. “If expectations were always fair and easily met? If all it took to find happiness was to know the right words for asking, and who to ask, and the going rate? Doesn’t everyone want to know the magic words, and there’s no shortage of religions, philosophies, gurus, psychologists, politicians all claiming to be able to tell us. Take Nixon and JFK in Tina’s play: Nixon’s telling America, Here’s my idea of happy ending , and Kennedy is saying, Well, here’s mine . Of course Tricky Dicky with his grizzled face was one morose-looking dude, and Jack Kennedy you knew was getting happy ending eight nights a week, so, bring on Camelot.