Bruce Wagner - I Met Someone

Suddenly, he wondered how much Tristen had told his mother about their affair. He imagined that oedipal relation to be miscreant on the level of Vera Farmiga and Freddie Highmore in Bates Motel —why wouldn’t they share all, routinely enlisting one another in the gory details of their mutual degeneracy? Jeremy did trust the boy yet in the moment let his thoughts run wild, shuddering as he fantasized about mother and son’s salacious comparing of notes (he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Larissa told Tristen that she’d become “friendly” with the movie star and her wife), two Sherpas celebrating the amazing karma that had helicoptered them to Mt. Annapurna base camp for a grand expedition into the larcenous unknown.

But what manner of larceny?—

He heard Allegra flush the toilet.

An arson of sinister thoughts lit up his brain and threatened his hair; as much as he wanted to put out the fire, he wanted to watch it burn…

If his insurgent speculations were true — that Tristen and Larissa were thick as thieves — then what was the meaning, the strategy of the boy having delayed sharing that his mommy was Dusty’s camera double? Because he would have known from Day One. And when he did finally mention it, Tristen was careful not to acknowledge Jeremy’s relationship to the star, the movie, or anything else. The kid could have said, “Isn’t that bizarre, Nobodaddy? And I know you don’t like to talk about it but you’re one of the producers on that film, right? Aren’t you and Dusty Wilding, like, really close ?” But, no — he just let it ride… and Jeremy definitely didn’t get the feeling he’d done that out of respect or discretion. So the question remained: why withhold what he knew all along? And on a more sinister note, wouldn’t it stand to reason that Larissa would have told Allegra (who, after all, was her lover )? You know, “Your friend Jeremy’s boyfriend happens to be my son ”? And if she had told Allegra, why hadn’t Allegra shared that savory morsel with him ? “Oh my God, Jeremy, you’ll never believe this!” He could understand her not wanting to get into that with him earlier because she wouldn’t have wanted to admit she was seeing Larissa — but now that she’d confessed , why wouldn’t she have mentioned it right then, on the Night of the Living Buddhist breakdown? Might the omission have something to do with what Allegra said about Dusty while they sat on the bed? “There are things I can’t even tell you”?

First things first. Assuming Ma Barker and protégé were in absolute control — that Jeremy and Allegra were their puppets, being made to dance on strings — what was it, then, that they were up to? Something criminal? Twisterella’s Web-hacking motherfuckery already pegged him as a spectrum sociopath, albeit a harmless one — at least harmless when it came to Jeremy . (Or so the old mark thought, or used to think, anyway.) Clearly, moral turpitude, embezzlement, and flimflammery were the building blocks of the Dunnick family DNA… all that kiting and trolling and five-finger discounting. And yet what, now , were the duo conspiring toward ? And if they were conspiring, why would Tristen have even tipped his hand by laying out his mother’s rap sheet for Jeremy’s gratification and delight? He had the sudden, minatory thought that the boy’s throwaway bulletin about her job promotion (to Dusty’s double) had been a ruse — a game, a sort of test organized by Larissa, and that her son’s mission was to report back Jeremy’s reaction, with further actions to be determined . He wondered now if it had been a mistake not to have headed Tristen off at the pass with the immediate retort of, “Oh! Isn’t that funny? I’m old friends with Dusty and I’m producing Sylvia & Marilyn !”

Allegra’s film-noir words came back to haunt him: “It was a setup.”

But if it was a monstrous strategem — to what end?

One last ominous question stuck in his craw. If Allegra did know that Larissa’s son was his lover — which she had to have! — why the fuck wouldn’t she have mentioned the meta-connection to Jeremy right away? And if for some unbelievable but still feasible reason she hadn’t yet gotten around to divulging it, what would have prevented her from just spitting it out as she cried in his arms at the Geshe’s soirée, when she was utterly raw and defenseless? What was there to gain by protecting such intel? Unless she was a… co-conspirator , involved in something truly iniquitous —no! How could she be? Leggy was too much a naïf, too dumb , really ( ah, there: he said it ) to be so clandestine, so Machiavellian. Wasn’t she? He wondered if he was reading too much into it. Maybe the explanation was simple. Maybe Allegra not disclosing that their lovers were mother and son was merely a result of her spectacular narcissism — a princessy self-involvement that trumped the possibility of any revelations that were off-point ( herself being the only point), no matter how striking or singular.

Allegra emerged from the powder room and Jeremy walked her down.

Rejoining the group, she faked it pretty well, falling back on all that familiar, funky flower-child Eros, hanging mostly with the half Rodarte and the one-third Haim (too intimidated by the whole Tartt) whilst muttering spotty apologies in regard to her absenteeism and general agita, courtesy of an alleged stomach bug — though she really did have the runs. Dear Jeremy stood close by for support.

Dusty came into her room around two a.m., naked and stoned. Allegra had planned to confess everything but said nothing, sublimating rage, confusion, panic and fear into bodylove. Dusty knew something was wrong, even very wrong, but was energized by the demolition of language and analysis. Their love was potentiated, and for a moment, the niceties of psychotherapeutic dynamics among couples were forgotten.

They lay in a field of golden land mines that went off one after the other, leaving them eyeless, limbless, heartless — dead and alive all at once.

She hadn’t left her favorite suite at the Gansevoort in three days.

She came to New York alone, a sort of getaway, half for the birthday party Meryl and Bill Irwin were throwing for Edward Albee’s eighty-eighth, half to see Todd Haynes about a film project.

She had planned on staying a week but things changed.

When Ginevra heard from her — a disjointed rush of torn, hyperventilated syntax — she asked her to come to the office straightaway. Dusty balked and the therapist went over to the hotel instead. She answered the door in big movie-star sunglasses but the disguise nobly failed. Like a victim in a cerebral European horror flick, the skinscape and very bones of her face had already begun to metamorphose into something unknown and misbegotten. She returned to the couch where she’d been living.

“There’s tea,” she said, nodding at a pillaged room-service table.

“Have you spoken to her?”

“No.”

“Is your friend still here?”

“No.” A long pause, then: “They both left.”

Two days before, on a bright, freezing Sunday, Livia had called. (As it happened, she was in Brooklyn visiting a just-born grandchild; she’d learned through Allegra that Dusty was in New York.) She needed to see the actress — a “personal matter,” which seemed to rule out any news about the search — and would rather it didn’t wait until they were back in L.A. An hour later, her old ally arrived at the hotel with Snoop Raskin. The news came quick, like a rogue wave.