Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

I failed

Now what?

HOMELESS

Can you help?

—

He was still in the ER when they arrived.

They sat for a moment before a volunteer came to escort them back. Larissa demurred and told Rafaela to go by herself. Mom said try to be calm but it was no use.

Larissa scanned the waiting room for the g.f.

Just as she returned to her seat, a slender gal emerged from the ladies’ room — emo wallflower with a twee trunk of retro tattoos covering her arms, petering out at her jawline. They smiled at each other and knew. Well, that’s sorta interesting, she thought. Definitely not his type — though maybe she is … good on ya, Derek! What do you call that, a frickin’ millennial? At least she didn’t look like what Larissa feared: a 2.0 version of her younger, voluptuous self.

Her anger dissipated as the girl timidly approached.

Larissa smiled and extended a hand — a grownup’s power move. “So, what happened ?” she said, trying to colonize her with a WTF , big sister vibe.

Beth smiled wanly. She was disarmed — she’d prepared herself to be ambushed by a flurry of hostile innuendo. It had been such a very long day.

“He had — he’s had this fever for, like, three days. I told him not to go into work but we had this really important deadline. He was breathing funny. I tried to get him to go to the ER but he wouldn’t.”

“Sounds like Derek!” she said, with a smile that overplayed. The collision of her vanity with the lover’s callow youth (she felt so old!) made everything go large. She couldn’t help herself.

“What freaked me out was that he coughed up blood .”

“Oh shit.”

“When we got him here — we’ve actually been here since six —I wanted to — I thought I should call someone, I thought I should call you, but he wouldn’t let me. But they said his lungs had fluid in them and his heart was, like, really racing . I think his pulse was, like, two hundred —”

“Whoa.”

“—and I kind of started to get scared maybe something was going to happen? I think they think it’s like a really bad upper respiratory infection? Someone even said asthma? But they’re checking his heart. One of the nurses said there wasn’t enough oxygen in his blood.”

Once Beth finished relaying the essentials, it got awkward. Things went quiet until a flurry of Tessatexts came to the rescue. She was at Pump and fully drunk, urging Larissa to GET YE BISEXUAL GINGER ASS OVER HERE RAITCH NOW because an Eddie Redmayne lookalike was there with a hottie WHOS PUSSIE YOU WOULD DEF LIKE TO LICKK. Larissa laughed out loud and texted back guess where i am? While she waited for a response, she considered sexting Allegra, but thought, Nope. Too soon.

As another tessellated bulletin came in, Rafaela stormed toward her, in tears.

“How’s he doin’, babe?”

“Not good!” she said, falling into her mother’s arms.

Beth hung back, which was smart.

“Tell me what’s goin’ on,” said Larissa, cool and steady and interested . For her daughter’s sake.

“They’re saying they need to test him for a stroke!”

“Fuck.”

“Mommy, is he going to die?”

“I don’t think so, sweetie.”

“I don’t want him to die!”

“He’s going to be fine , okay? Daddy’s tough , he’ll pull through . And he’s totally in the best place if something goes wrong, okay?”

“Something already has gone wrong!”

“There’s no better place for him to be. They’re going to figure out what’s wrong and they’re going to fix it . Okay?” She drew a hand over Rafaela’s hair. “Let me go see what I can find out. Want me to, babe? Want me to go talk to someone?”

“Yes! Yes! Please, Mommy! Please!”

The poor thing was in a state.

As Larissa stood, her daughter said, “He really wants to see you, I know he does. And he said for you not to tell Tristen . He said he didn’t want to deal with Tristen .”

—

Richie “Snoop” Raskin was a virile, dapper, imposing figure — what they used to call a “gent.” Pop culture had bestowed upon detectives a colorful rep as snappy dressers, men’s men who weren’t afraid of a little bling, but Dusty never saw anything quite like this : the cologne that reeked of fathers and forest gods, the wedding ring that was the broadest gold band on the thickest finger she’d ever seen, the old-school Brioni suit (courtesy, so he informed, of the ancient haberdasher Sy Devore), the vintage “Los Angeles Railway” cuff links fastening crisp, blindingly white sleeves… The old, swinging dick veritably hydroplaned into the room on buttery John Lobbs, a soigné king of forensic flatfoots and Hollywood fixers gone by. That he was host emeritus of an Emmy-winning cold-case series called The Spirit Room only further burnished his legend and general legerdemain. He’d been a confidant of Sinatra (of course he had), having met the Chairman in Vegas when he was just nineteen; it was Frank who’d christened him “Snoop.” (Of course he did.) Their relationship forged his career and forever changed his life.

“I acquired the name long before Mr. Calvin Broadus Jr. was born,” he said, referring to his more famous namesake, Snoop Doggy Dogg. “Though Mr. Dogg does defer, when we’re together sociably — I call him Snoopy and he calls me Snoop. He’s actually a client of mine. Good people. Hardworking, honest, very savvy. Smokes a bit too much of the funny stuff but to each his own. I’ve helped him out of a few jams,” he winked.

Marking time, she reminisced about her own run-ins with Sinatra and a few other folks they shared in common. Dusty was glad she’d asked her wife to sit in, not just for support but because she didn’t want the rift between them to widen, not if she could help it.

He could tell she was anxious — through Livia, he already knew the actress was convinced that her baby had been the victim of foul play. As if sensing her dread at wading in, the detective gently informed that, for now, he had all the facts he needed. Instead of homing in on “the case,” he spoke with discerning intelligence about her filmography, with a hobbyist’s emphasis on the obscure. Apparently, he used to frequent weekend screenings at Liz Taylor’s (another client). “Liz told me, ‘Keep your eye on that girl. She’s the one to watch.’”

Dusty was moved by that.

Livia’s instincts were spot-on: he was the man for the job. Dusty felt a rush of hope, like an end-stage cancer victim being told that surgery and chemo wouldn’t be necessary to effect a complete cure — just a change in diet.

“Do you know Joni?” he asked. “Joni Mitchell?”

“Yes! Not super well — I haven’t seen her in… a long time.”

“She’s had some hard times lately but she’s still with us. A tough old bird. Brilliant.”

“I know . I feel so awful for her. It was an… aneurysm?” He nodded. “ Love her, love Joni. I could listen to her for hours . Not sing — I mean, that too! — but talk . She’s an amazing talker . So brilliant! Knows everything about everything .”

“I think she knows a little too much,” he said mischievously. “And she likes to let you know that she does. And that you know too little .”

“We had a period where we kind of hung out, before she got that weird disease.”