Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

. .

It took a few days for Bud to connect with his agent. He had called right after listening to the message at the end of the Steve Martin event — it was already 9:30. Sometimes the assistants were still working late, but not that late; he left word. It felt good to say, “Bud Wiggins, returning.”

Bud had made a study of his rise and fall in the Business, by virtue of the way the assistants addressed him. When he was at his hottest as a Hollywood screenwriter, he’d call and get, “O hi, Bud! He’s just finishing a call but I know he really wants to talk to you. Can you hold? Oh — wait, he’s just wrapping up!” (Which meant the agent was physically gesturing to the assistant not to lose Bud .) “Okay! I’m putting you through. .” It wasn’t unusual — back then — for the excited agent to hop on before the assistant even finished talking. But as the workless months dropped from the calendar like dead leaves falling, the assistants stopped using his name. It became “Hi” or “Oh hi,” the personal touch gone. The agent would invariably be on a conference call (the quaint, pre-wired era when conference calls denoted power and status) and they’d put Bud on hold for long fucking minutes. Then, “It looks like it’s going to be a while, can I have him return?” In the years that followed, they’d put Bud on hold and wouldn’t come back to check with him at all. . after a few minutes of holding the Void to his ear, they’d pierce the silence with an angry, clinical slap: He’ll have to call you back. The days of unquiet desperation had begun. Somewhere near the fin de siècle, a new idiom was born — Bud found himself awash in a sea of “I don’t have hims.” Depending on one’s status or the assistant’s disposition, he or she might choose to customize and embellish, such as, “You know right now I actually don’t have him. . can he return?” (If you had some heat, they had a wink in their voice one could translate as seductive.) As time went on & Bud got colder (if a frozen corpse possibly could), the “actually” became a curt I don’t have him until one day, all that was left was the lightspeed He’s not available— no flirty apologies, only barely suppressed, deadened annoyance: end of the line.

Agents were usually in early, and when Bud hadn’t heard back by 10 A.M., he decided to call in. Who knew, maybe the voicemail wasn’t working or whatever.

“Bud Wiggins, returning.”

The assistant was cheerful enough. The new hires gave you the least amount of shit. They didn’t know who the losers were.

“Bud, I’m putting you through to Chris.”

His gut flipped.

“Hey, Bud! How are you?”

“I’m good, Chris. How are they treating you?”

“Well. Very well. Life is good. I’m gonna have to jump, but here’s why I’m calling. I got a call from Rod Fulbright, at CAA. David Simon’s doing a new series about Hollywood and wants to meet with you.”

“Who’s David Simon?”

“ The Wire. And Treme . He’s a very talented guy, but not our client. So call him — call Rod — tell him that we spoke, and he’ll give you the information.”

“Why does David Simon want to talk to me?”

“It’s probably about the Hollywood show. Maybe he wants you to work on it. I really have to jump.”

“Chris, it doesn’t make sense — I mean, it’s great , but—”

“Oh — do you know Michael Tolkin?”

“Sure I know Michael.”

“That’s it then, I forgot, sorry about that. David got your name through Michael. Michael’s executive producing.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Call Rod.”

. .

He knew Tolkin from gradeschool.

Thirty years ago, when Bud self-published his book of short stories about wash-ups in the Business, for a brief moment he was the toast of the town. He remembered Tolkin coming up to him at a party and saying, “I really think you’re onto something there.” Over the months that followed, there was a lot of interest in Bud writing the screenplay: Oliver Stone, Barry Levinson, Bob Altman. Altman had supposedly considered adapting the book himself but decided to make The Player instead.

Bud called Rod, but only spoke to his assistant. Xochilt said the meeting with David Simon was set for next week, a Thursday, at one o’clock, at the Polo Lounge.

“Rod asked me to pass this along,” she said. “When David talks about The Wire , he refers to it as a novel. ”

“You mean it’s based on a novel?”

“I’m actually not sure. I can get back to you on that. But apparently when David discusses it, he prefers to call it a novel instead of a series. You should do the same. OK?”

“Perfect.”

He thought he should probably call Tolkin. They’d been out of touch; he could get his number through the agency. He watched the pilot of The Wire on his computer then lay down to ponder the plot of his own work-in-progress. Though maybe I should call my novel a cable series, he thought, almost cracking himself up.

Thursday, 1PM, the Polo Lounge… back in the game.

He treated himself to 6 Norcos and 6 klonopins, in celebration. He was in his bedroom, but heard his mother singing a childhood song. Her voice carried over the baby monitors her caregivers had placed in the living room and kitchen.

Bud pictured himself in one of the storied booths of the fabled pink palace, & said a recently youtubed Gleason line outloud:

Howwwwwwwww sweet it is!

Seared

She

got lucky with the Sears job because it wasn’t a slamdunk, not even close, especially not at her age. But there she was, amidst the dolorous big box retail funk — the perfect storm of 3 (count em) just-fired employees + a gay manager who was way into her from the presentation/gate… during the interview she charmed by reminiscing about those adolescent darkroom days plus very carefully alluding to perhaps being a bit overqualified, not of course summoning googleable glory days but rather pulling a few savvy foto technique remarks out of the hat, simple but effective enough (she hoped) to seal the deal. She was mindful to keep her comments modest and leave her ego out of it, which was hard, is hard, & kept reminding herself she was on a down-low mission from the muses. To offset any potential Brahmin vibe/takeaway, Jacquie humbly stressed that she was super-trainable (knowing that training was always management’s bane), even tho probably just an hour’s tutelage on the machines would do — i.e. the girl was camera-ready. And she flirted a little the way fag hags do: those superheated moments in the early stages of any wild, drama-strewn romance between a gay man and hetero woman. All’s fair in art and war, & the art of war too.

She just wanted to get hired.

. .

Moms brought their babies — lots of baby portraits. (Everything was called portraits and portraiture. ) Family pets even. On Saturdays, families came in for their formal sittings. On Sundays, they came after church, & Jacquie got that feeling of real Americana. She thought, in 100 years, her work would be featured at flea markets & yard sales, anon family portraits, circa early 21st-century. Young couples sauntered in, cholos & cholitas, fewer though than Jacquie would have thought. They were almost always at the store shopping for something else. They’d pass the photo studio & the girl would get the idea and not let it go until her boyfriend caved.

The manager was one of those dream homos — shockingly ascerbic, hilariously brilliant, borderline heartbreaking homely. Shaved head, big butt, tender heart. (“I cry at the drop of a pillbox hat,” he told her. “Make that an Isabella Blow hat.”) They began to lunch together in the mall, telling stories from their lives, stock shards & bravura fragments typically kept on reserve for a crush, or a simpatico new acquaintance; the broken pieces soon conflating into the unwashed picture windows & stained glass one risks sharing with a veritable new friend. Such as: before coming to Sears, Albie worked for an online company that turned photo submissions of pets/family into large, hangable prints in the style of Warhol & Lichtenstein. Such as, he spoke reasonably fluent Japanese, courtesy of an older man who took Albie as a lover when he was just 14. (They were together 10 years.) He was 38 now, & a widower. His husband Francesco recently died of AIDS, & Francesco’s grandmother was a famous black panther, which Albie thought ironic, in that Francesco was an albino. (Albie honed and exploited the albino-Black Panther routine through the years to great comic effect.) Albie was HIV-positive himself, coming up on 23 years…