Bruce Wagner - Memorial

“Friday Night Frights.”

“Whoa,” said Chess, wincing a smile. He still couldn’t put it together but the name sounded familiar: Friday Night Frights. It was a joke, though — he knew that much. He turned to Maurie. “You piece of shit.”

All laughed heartily.

Everything was being filmed.

“Your friend set you up!” said the clipboard man.

“C’mere,” said Maurie. “Gimme a hug.”

The 2 friends embraced and a relieved Laxmi joined them as the crew laughed and hooted and patted Chess on the back like he was way cool for having aced a reality show rite of passage.

PAHRUMP had his diagnosis: leukemia.

The awful thing was that Marj had just read in the paper about a pet hospice in San Francisco. A woman there specialized in putting the animals down. She let them lick peanut butter or cream cheese from one hand, if that was the kind of food they liked, while giving them a fatal injection with the other.

She sat with her neighbor as she cried. Cora said she was going to spend whatever it took to get “my baby” healthy again. Pahrump didn’t seem so bad; Marj asked if she was going to get a 2nd opinion. Cora said she had the best doctors “on the West Coast” so why would she?

“The worst thing is, Mr P just got accepted to day care. Heads ’n’ Tails, on LaCienega, by San Vicente — it’s very hard to get into. That’s where Reese Witherspoon keeps her dogs. The poor thing went through the most rigorous peer review. Marj, it’s worse than preschool! And he sailed through. Everyone loved him! Reese’s dogs loved him. They said he was ‘gifted’—didn’t they, Mr P? But now…”

The neighbor quickly composed herself then buzzed around the kitchen making dinner “for my Rump.”

She showed Marj the bottle of custom canine water that she poured in the doggie bowl. Pahrump was finicky about his H 2O and always a little dehydrated, but now Cora gave him a special kind that came all the way from a river at the bottom of a glacier in Washington.

“Mount Rainier — Jerry and I were there once, in a custom RV. Can you imagine me camping? Have you ever drunk mountain water, Marj?” She looked down at a somewhat forlorn Mr P, who eagerly awaited his supper nonetheless. “No chlorine or fluoride, which are tough on the kidneys.” She said Pahrump’s rank breath seemed to have “improved.” He’d been putting on weight — this was months before the diagnosis — so she had him on a strict diet. Now she regretted it. Well, that was going to end today. From now on, she’d have Stein FedEx “grub” from New York. A place called the Barkery. “And a shop called Pawsitively Gourmet, isn’t that adorable?” Cora said the food was actually made for human consumption, so she and Pahrump could have dinner together. There were desserts like truffles and “pupcakes” (from the “pawtisserie”), almond butter waffle cones topped with carob, and oatmeal biscuits in the shape of fire hydrants. She couldn’t resist pulling her neighbor into the bathroom and showing off Mr P’s array of beauty products: tea tree oil shampoo, nail polish from Paul Mitchell, Earthbath Mediterranean Magic, and a misty spritz for his coat that was “kind of like eyeshadow.” Some of the products were very important because they stopped P from itching; Lord Rump had been known to scratch himself raw. Once a week, Stein sent over a mobile pet spa that gave her baby a hot oil treatment with Bulgarian lavender and African sage soil. As she spoke, she occasionally broke into quickly suppressed tears. Why had this befallen her little prince? Why? Marj touched her neighbor’s arm and said there were some questions that could never be answered. But she had a feeling that Pahrump would be “just fine.”

THE old woman went home and sat in front of the TV. She was in the middle of reading a slim book about Jesus’ visit to India as a young man. A lot of people questioned if he ever really made that historical trip to Orissa but Marj didn’t doubt it in her heart. Jesus reputedly gave sermons and traveled as the Buddha did amongst people of various castes, and learned the art of healing in the holy city of Benares. She had seen pictures of Benares and it reminded her of Venice. It was supposed to be a city of death but seemed so alive.

Marjorie thought more and more about her own journey. She would have to start planning soon. At night she sat in bed and steeped herself in delicious memories of the Taj Mahal Palace, her conjurings enhanced by a trove of clipped and yellowing pages from Look magazine. The colonial wedding cake of a hostelry, filled with marble halls, dark incense-laden recesses, and a seemingly limitless army of servants clad in shiny boots, turbans, and maroon or blinding white linen, was in a most enviable section of that dense, aromatic, splendiferously beleaguered city: just behind the legendary Gate of India, a tiny Arc de Triomphe perched like a launching pad for genies on the Sea of Oman. (Both hotel and Gate were at the very beginning of David Lean’s glorious film as well, just before Judy Davis and Dame Peggy board the Deccan Queen.) There was an island her father took her to by motorized dinghy — the Elephanta Caves — you could actually see the water-bound site from their hotel room, and, remembering, Marjorie’s eyes teared up at the exoticism of it.

She would soon be there!

The most phenomenally eccentric thing about the Taj was the chestnut she insisted her father recite (after a draught of Kipling) each night before bed. It seems the English architect who designed the palace went home during its construction; upon returning from London his eyes told him the workmen had built the hotel the wrong way round — its facade faced the water and its back, the city! Mortified by the error, he drowned himself in the bay. Whenever Dad told that story she trilled with glee and he tickled her and said that his Marjorie Morningstar was a bonafide scoundrel and a scamp too. How she adored him! She could smell him still.

She would use the same agency that handled the holiday trips she took with Ham to Italy and Alaska; her husband had never favored a “passage to India.” Trudy always got the best deals. Marj didn’t know if India was a specialty but the Travel Gals were generally pretty well versed, and where there’s a will (Ham’s), there’s a way, No pun intended. She laughed aloud at her little joke then lazily drew a finger over the page of the atlas from Bombay to Bangalore to Madras to Calcutta to Benares to Agra to Delhi to Jodhpur and back to her precious Bombay, the trail always like a gloriously twisted wedding ring of 22 karat gold.

EVERY few days, she visited her Wells Fargo home branch and the teller wrote down Marj’s balance. She’d never had that kind of money in her life. She thought of calling Joan and talking to her about the trip though she didn’t like to bother her busy daughter. Still, she knew that her youngest shared a love for the subcontinent as well. It was “genetic.” Straight through her teens, she adored the Indian saris and statues Marj brought home from shops and flea markets; she read to her little girl about Ganesha, remover of obstacles; they made pilgrimages to the zoo to marvel over the elephants. (She was entranced when told of the Elephanta Caves, where Mama had visited with Joan’s grandfather.) The pale, pretty child drew pictures of the Taj Mahal — not the hotel but the real Taj Mahal — and even then showed an extraordinary talent for detail and perspective. Marj was so proud: proportions always so beautifully done, with fastidious decorations, crosshatchings, and subtle hints of pastel evoked with a stubby pencil and crude crayons. Even as she grew older, Joan asked if they could one day visit the memorial in Agra, and while Marj didn’t say it, she knew Hamilton wouldn’t look kindly on mother and daughter traveling alone, and that he’d never consent to join them. Maybe now Joan might want to come, for at least part of the trip. The old woman decided not to make any proposals. She would mention her plans to visit Bombay, and leave the rest to Joanie. She wasn’t going to bend anyone’s arm — that wasn’t any fun.