Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

The “medics” (how Derek annoyingly referred to them) had trouble figuring out the problem. They thought it was some kind of leukemia, which bummed him to no end, but when an MRI caught a stroke caused by a clot, they shoved a camera down his throat and found staph growing on the valves like mold on a pipe.

Tristen sort of took over for Beth, cleaning house, running errands, and — miracle of miracles — just hanging with the old man. A ceasefire was declared. Derek (miracle upon miracles) seemed grateful.

They grooved on watching Snapped and Forensic Files marathons. The half hours were crazy dark. In one episode, a serial killer was arrested after his dental impressions were matched to bite marks on the chin of a dead woman. The pathologist said he’d never seen a bite mark there, usually they were on breasts and stomach — the theory being that the killer became aroused by looking into her eyes as he bit down on the chin while mutilating her genitals with a knife.

“I don’t really see a problem with that,” said Derek. “Ya gotta take it on the chinny chin chin some time.”

“ Bite me,” said Tristen.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

It was heaven to just sit around eating popcorn and Red Vines and shoot the shit over a bit of the old ultraviolence. Then out of the blue, Derek pushed pause on the remote.

“They say I need a heart transplant.”

“For real?”

“Can you fucking believe it?”

“Uhm, whoa. Not really.”

“Some kind of infection . They can’t even nuke it with antibiotics. It’s, like, done .”

“Jesus. Shit! Fuck. ”

“The medics say I’ve got an abscess in my heart. A fuckin’ pus pocket .”

“Whoa—!”

“I’m about to go on the list. Heart transplant list. Mother fuckers . And here’s the best part. Are you ready? My fuckin’ IATSE’s about to expire — next month . How ’bout that?”

“Your insurance?”

“That’s right .”

“Can you, uhm, get you, like, COBRA?”

“Can’t fuckin’ afford it. And what’s the point , paisan? How the fuck am I going to survive a heart transplant? ’Cause I’m not . It’s, like, a joke .”

“It’s no big thing anymore, Derek. I mean, they have it down , they’ve had it down for twenty years . I just read about a guy in prison who got one, some bank robber. Cost a million taxpayer dollars.”

“Great! Then that’s what I’ll do — go rob a fucking bank. That’ll probably get me bumped to the top of the list. Maybe they’ll throw in a hair transplant and a penile enlargement. Widen the girth.”

“I read that when they execute prisoners in China, they use their organs for transplants. You could get one of those .”

“Chinese take-out. No ticker , no washee.”

Tristen over-laughed… good times . Sometimes all it took was a crisis to get back to where you once belonged. Derek unpaused, and they fast-forwarded to the next Forensic .

—

“Slow down, Twist!” said Jeremy (what he occasionally called the boy; Tristen now and then called him “Nobodaddy,” after Blake).

Tonight, in the driver’s seat, coolly navigating the wavy road, the kid lived up to the sobriquet. Jeremy was starting to think they should maybe have taken the freeway instead of Sunset.

“Y’know, a lotta people have died along this boulevard of broken dreams , Twisterella. Jan Berry , Ernie Kovacs …”

“Who’s Jan Berry?”

Jeremy vaped his weed and coughed. “Jan and Dean—‘Little Old Lady from Pasadena.’ ‘Dead Man’s Curve.’ Ernie Kovacs died over by Whittier. Me thinks . Know who Ernie Kovacs is?”

“‘The Nairobi Trio.’”

“ Jesus , you fucking do know! Of course you do, you fucking brainiac . Ernie Kovacs makes Louis CK and all these so-called geniuses look like Jay Leno . All these Apatow genius cunts with their oh so amazing series and specials and Madison Square Garden bullshit .” He was in a merry mood. “ Tina’s the only genius. And Lena. Maybe Lena — no, just Tina . Maybe Lena’ll get there but she ain’t there yet . Though I do like Amy, gotta say. Parts of her. (Schumer, not Poehler.) If she can make it intact through the canonization . People even got shot watching her bullshit romcom —hotties too! How lucky is that? You’re nuthin ’ till kids and hotties are killed at your movie. That’s the big time. And who’s that friend of yours? What’s-her-name? Your friend who died right here , on this very stretch of road .”

“ What friend? What are you talking about?”

“You know — what’s-her-name, Dead Internet Girl . The one who lost her head over a handsome Porsche. Right here on Funset Boulevard.”

“Nikki Catsouras ?” He knew Jeremy was high, and being playfully absurd. “That was in Orange County, bitch.”

He was high — and happy. He’d just come from a meeting with the awesome Heather. She was in her late thirties, which worried him until he got educated on how that was a common age for surrogates. (She had four kids of her own and three more from IVFs.) It was all about the paperwork now, which was going to be hassle-free — Heather was already vetted by the agency, the same one she’d worked with when carrying his friend’s twins. The whole deal was going to cost about a hundred grand. She’d clear about twenty-five thousand, more for “multiples,” but he still couldn’t fathom why a woman would want to have a bunch of babies for strangers. When he probed, Heather said, “I just love the way I feel when I’m pregnant.”

“You seem awfully chipper tonight, Twisteramakrishna.” They curved around the Lake Shrine Temple, a few minutes from PCH. “I’m going to have to start calling you Sunshine.”

“It was a pretty good day. Hung out with my pops.”

“Oh yeah? How’s he doing?”

“He’s actually super fucked up. He’s trying to get on the transplant list.”

“Kidney?”

“Heart.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s crazy.”

“I had no idea.”

“It’s one of those rare kinda irreversible deals.”

“My nightmare. Maybe you should, like, hack him a heart.”

“Hey, if I could, I would. But I have an almost better idea.”

“Do me a favor,” he said with a smile, “and don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to be an accessory to any inseminating information .”

—

In preparation for the evening, he gave Tristen a précis of the ballad of Devi and the Sir, and was glad the boy had the savvy to appreciate the peculiar genius of the encounter. Jeremy liked showing off a little of the ol’ anarchist brio that was a lion’s share of who he was; showboating his psycho-historical DNA made him feel virile and adventurous, still relevant. And Tristen gave Nobodaddy props because he wasn’t monetizing or script-teasing the couple. He was just following his Dadaist nose.

When she opened the door, her lustrous beauty overwhelmed. She’d morphed from street hippie to bohemian-cum-socialite, and vanity begged Jeremy to wonder if Devi’s anticipation in seeing him had anything to do with primping her ride. When they kissed (that was a first) her skin smelled like cannabis and troubled sleep. They gathered in the overqualified kitchen and smoked — the Gaelic guru’s whereabouts unknown — while Devi cooked up a storm. She moved with the alacrity of a five-star chef amongst the elegant dishes she was preparing. Maybe it was just a chemical thing but the socially awkward Tristen got on with her right away. Learnedly au courant without being pedantic, the hostess riffed on Trolls as Authentic Heir to Coyote Tricksters. The blasted boy was charmed and at ease, something Jeremy had yet to see, at least not in mixed company. It gave him intense pleasure.