Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

“Thank you!” said Dusty.

The star’s genuine warmth set the woman at ease. Another one came in while Dusty washed up. On her way to the stall, she said, “My sister’s son was a gaffer on Lone Wolf .”

—

Allegra’s day was full.

Before lunch with Jeremy, she needed to drop by Samy’s Camera to pick up a Petzval lens, a Sony Cyber-shot RX100 II, and the beautiful Rolleiflex — a belated birthday gift from Dusty that she planned to use for a book about celebrities and their newborns. She wanted to cruise Maxfield, to check out the millinery. It was like a museum there, you never knew what you’d find in those freakish vitrines. Everything was, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars… Then, if there was time, on to Barneys to suss out perfume bottles; she needed to be au fait with what Hermès, Margiela, Tom Ford, and the rest of whomever were up to. Tom was an old friend of Dusty’s and was at their wedding. Maybe email him? The idea was to start making sketches for the Swiss—“prototypes.” Kind of exciting! She had a five o’clock appointment with the midwife. Allegra wanted a home water birth and Dusty wasn’t thrilled.

Jeremy was touched that she asked him along. Lately, for no real reason, he’d been feeling his outsiderness. Originally Dusty’s bestie, he gravitated to Allegra in the last few years — they clicked. He was puckish and hysterical, with a bent, formidable intellect that provoked and inspired. And tender too: a soft, squooshy center. All heart. What she respected most was how he’d somehow managed to stay soulful and sane through the carnage of his life. He was a rock star and a survivor, all good for the baby’s DNA. She aspired to be both.

Born Maurie Wojnarowicz, he shot experimental shorts in college under the “nom de Fruit of the Loom” Jeremy Prokosch, Jack Palance’s character in Contempt (which he insisted on calling Le Mépris ). In the nineties, he made an acclaimed documentary about Hemingway’s transgender son, Gigi. Right after it won the Audience Award at Sundance, his mom and twin sister got T-boned by a drunk. It took them a week to die, which they managed to do just hours apart. Jeremy cut his avant-bohemian Red Hook life loose and moved to L.A., officially abandoning Art. At thirty, he became the most powerful casting agent in the business; none of his friends could figure out exactly how that happened. Then he dropped out again, “decompensating” in David LaChapelle’s Maui guesthouse before reinventing himself as “Princess Liaison,” a bridge between financiers and art house auteurs. There was an old connection to Megan Ellison, which was how he got Annapurna involved with Sylvia & Marilyn. He put the deal together quickly and became one of eight executive producers.

When he got the adoption bug a few years back, Dusty introduced him to Livia Lindström, the director of Hyacinth House. He knew the procedural hassles inherent in becoming a single gay parent but found the system — no fault of Hyacinth — to be sadistic “on the level of ISIS” and lost his stomach for the battle. When Allegra had the lightbulb idea of him being their sperm donor, Dusty felt dumb she hadn’t thought of it. In an earlier attempt that ended in miscarriage, the seed had been random and anonymous, and now she was superstitious; there was something so right and so healing about inviting Jeremy to join their mythology. They asked him to dinner at the house in Point Dume and were mildly stoned when they playfully sprung the offer. He looked stunned and began to yowl — literally fell to the floor and started to crawl as the caterwauling became a bellow that imploded into deviant, cough-wracked sobs that were so outlandishly exaggerated that they took them for cruel, campy hijinks. When they realized it was ugly-beautiful- real , they joined in, a marathon sob sisterfest toggling with tears like an out-of-control scene from some hoary chick flick.

They became a family right then and there.

Jeremy was on time for lunch at Soho House. He wore a tie, something she’d never seen before, and pulled a few wrapped gifts from his Bookmarc bag: Birth Without Violence, Water Birth: A Midwife’s Perspective , and one for coloring called Our Water Baby .

Such sweetness! And so nervous he was, about meeting the midwife.

“You’re killing me,” she said.

“Has Bunny met her yet?”

He was the only one who could get away with calling her that.

“ I haven’t met her yet,” said Allegra. “Why would Dusty have?”

“I don’t know, the celeb thing? Like, ‘Hey! Where’s the celebrity!’”

“Midwives aren’t like that.”

“ Everyone’s like that, honey.”

“Not Khalsa. She’s super-spiritual.”

“The more spiritual, the more starfucky.” He reached over and palmed her tummy. “Come on… kick for me! Kick! Kick! Who’s your daddy!”

“She’s sleeping. She gets her kicks at night. Like her mother.”

“Wait. Hey! I think she’s moving. Madonna’s moving!”

“Do not call her that. Don’t’ even joke .”

“Oh come on, wouldn’t that be so hilarious? ‘This is our daughter, Madonna.’ Or ‘Cher’!”

“Or Liza-with-a-Z . What fucking generation are you?”

“She can be Taylor Swift! Taylorswift — not Taylor but Taylorswift . One word! Even if it’s a boy.”

“You’re insane.”

“Or ‘Spotify.’ Here, Spot! Here, Tidal! Or Andy-Cohen, one word! Cersei! Khaleesi! No! You know what we should do? Give it initials for a name.”

“She is not an ‘it.’”

“Like… ‘ LGBT.’ I love it! ‘Meet our daughter, LGBTQ!’ LGBTQIA!”

“Jeremy, stop!” she said, laughing.

Allegra ordered the octopus appetizer and burrata. He asked for the flat-iron steak, rare, and a Cobb.

“So. You gonna read my script?”

“Of course I’m going to read it. But you know what has to happen first , Lego? I know it sounds crazy … but for me to read it, you actually have to give it to me. It needs to be physically or electronically in my possession .”

“Oh fuck you.”

“What’s it about again?”

“Oh my God, you know what it’s about, Jeremy. The Children of God.”

“Movies about cults are a tough sell, Lego. Cult movies don’t even become cult movies. It’s autobiographical?”

“Parts.”

“You do not want to be the new Brit Marling.”

“I love Brit Marling, so fuck off.”

“Wasn’t River Phoenix in Children of God?”

“Yup.”

“Didn’t River get molested by those people when he was, like, four?”

“So he said.”

“Wish I could hot-tub-time-machine back and interview him. I’d molest the fuck out of him.”

“He might not be up for it.”

“So, Lego — did you get laid in that cult? As a child? I mean, did you have hot child cult sex? Were you a love child of God?”

“Not till I was six.”

“I’m serious, though. Wasn’t it, like, policy with those people? Wasn’t, like, kid-fucking written into their bylaws?”

“There was a lot of weird shit going down.”

“And what about Joaquin?”

“What about him?”

“Is that how he got his scar? From getting slapped in the mouth by cult dicks?”

“Jesus,” she said, both exasperated and annoyed.

“Allegra! I just don’t think you fully appreciate that the Phoenixes were the Barrymores of child-love sex cults!”

“The script is really good, Jeremy. And Dusty did say she would get it to Joaquin.”