Bruce Wagner - Memorial

“Do you know what? She’s — Ghulpa’s singing it right now! Now isn’t that funny. And you know I just can’t get her to

tell anyone where they were going, not that their itinerary was firm. That was the last thing he needed; to be tracked by Interpol should Maurie of a sudden awaken and recall the bedside confession that Chester to this day was unsure of having made, though as the event of his friend’s catastrophe grew dimmer (which it did, surprisingly, gratefully, mercifully), so too did the murkiness of his own memory, swaddled in the Chronic leafiness of what both Remar and his smalltime dealer called “the trees,” camouflaged by the extra-pyramidal exuberantly potentiated depressive fog of pain/insomnia war: Neurontin, Ambien CR, Vicodin, Well-butrin, Lyrica, Motrin, Sonata, Haldol, Seroquel, fentanyl, et alia.

He picked up the check during law office lunch hour, happy not to run into the chrome-domed, congenial killer fag who left word with his secretary that Chess should hang until he got back, so they could at least say hellos and goodbyes. But Chester Herlihy was a man in a hurry, all up in the trees, and waited for no one. Naw — Remar was OK. Good people. Just doin his job; in this case, the client had made it hard. Fact was, if not for the “complications,” Counselor DeConcini mighta got 15 times the settled amount. Probably thought Chess was a pussy. And dumb on top of it.

But karma and expedience had dictated otherwise.

There were factors beyond factors…

He grudgingly put the money in the bank, having attempted to make a futile arrangement to circumvent the notorious 10 day hold. It was the Era of the 10 Day Hold: 10 Days That Would Not Shake Your World. You couldn’t move your bowels without someone holding onto your shit for 10 business days before flushing. It was a Friday — he’d have to wait 2 full Fridays for the check to clear. (Chess sensed that Remar knew he was skipping town. The lawyer probably thought he was going to Vegas; no doubt he had witnessed everything that anyone in throwing distance of white trash could possibly do with a windfall, and it wasn’t pretty.) The motherfuckering banks were all robbers, he still felt Wells must have had something to do with the draining of his mom’s account. Also — he had to visit Marj before he split and that wasn’t going to be fun. Kind of an official unofficial goodbye. He would need a story to tell Joan too. No biggie. He’d say he was gonna go see Laxmi’s family in Vancouver or whatever. She looked like someone with family in Vancouver.

EVERY time he thought of Marj he entered that mushroomy space again — he was entering that space a lot lately, tripping on elephants and India and the Great Mother that was Time and Space. He thought of the mushroom’s tears and how She had warned him that a single drop could break his back. The experience was so heavy and unexpected and indecipherable that Chess felt somehow transformed, like a soldier who made it through his 1st firefight, but it was beautiful too, warfare could be beautiful (from what he had read), awesome and terrible and beautiful, and he realized that as long as he paid proper obeisance, as long as he never became arrogant toward She, the 5-and-infinity-starred general who had informed and saturated his presence on ecstatic battlegrounds, as long as he remained steady and humble, then he would be forever welcome in Her army, a rider on the storm, grateful conscript to the anagogic anagalactic weddingtrained outskirts of the legion of tusky gods who helped protect that which needed no protecting.

CHESS had to get rid of the stuff in his apartment. Donate to Goodwill or just throw it away. Buncha crap anyhow. Still, he needed to be fairly meticulous, not lazy about it, so as not to raise any flags. He would just rent a pickup — he’d done it a thousand times before.

He went to see Don Knotts’s daughter. He said his mom was sick and he was going to move in and help out till she got better. Karen was so sweetly empathetic, such a wonderful woman, she could have used the moment to talk about her father’s death, her own experience, the way people do, but graciously let Chess have his time. He felt like a cad, or whatever. She told him she would return his last month’s rent and security deposit (another 24-hundred or so. In India, that would take a year to spend). She even asked after Laxmi. Chess said they were still “going out” but Laxmi was back in school at Northridge and might have to go see her father back east. And oh, he’d be scouting in Colorado for a few weeks. As he heard himself talk, Chess thought he should have had a better story, maybe keep the Vancouver thing congruent so he wouldn’t get caught in a lie but it didn’t matter, it wasn’t like anything sounded suspicious or like his soon never-to-be-seen-again landlord was going to sit around trying to put the non-pieces of a nonpuzzle together. He saw his paranoid days fading, and the need to make up stories as well.

He only had a few lies left in him.

HE went online to check out one-way tickets to Bombay. The cheapest way seemed to be through Frankfurt.

While Chess was doing his thing, the mailman shoved a rubberbanded sheaf through the slot — a couple of local Thai restaurant flyers. Another student-loan dunning notice. Oh, fuck you. A brochure about 2 old guys “coming soon to Anaheim & San Bernardino!!!!!” One of the dynamic duo wrote a book, The Millionaire Next Door, and his buddy penned a “bestseller” called $elf-Made Millionaire$. Call NOW and you get in free — the events were guaranteed to sell out. Yeah right. Sold out but they’ll let you in free cause it’s like U2 picking you out of a fuckin mob.

The phone rang. No one on the line. Chess’s heart jumped; he flashed that it was Maurie. Stop being crazy.

It rang again.

“Hello?”

“Mr Herlihy? Hello? This is World Pharm calling about a refill on your recent order for — um, Oxycodone?”

He was going to hang up but decided to place a final script and have it FedEx’d. One for my baby and one more for the road. His plan was to detox once they got to India but it never hurt to have a transatlantic stash. Might come in handy during that skinhead rally in Frankfurt.

The idea was to hit Bombay and visit this old guru Laxmi was into. Some of his philosophical writings were in the Bodhi Tree stash she’d given him — the screed about having your head in the tiger’s mouth — and Chess struggled through a few random chapters without hooking onto anything. (He was way more into the Karma Sutra. ) “Ramesh” was almost 90 years old, a rich guy with his own apartment building, a former bank president who gave talks from his living room each morning. Laxmi called it satsang or some such sanskrity shit. Then they’d take the A-train to Nashik and Trimbakeshwar, swing on over to Aurangabad, shuffle down to Ratnagiri and Goa (which from all accounts was this fucking amazing half-Portuguese beachtown where you could live on the cheap, raving on hasheesh and Ecstasy at night and getting your liver drycleaned by day. The Goans were renowned for their healing colonics, which would be great for his detox.) Thus far Chess had resisted doing any Lonely Planet — type research; that stuff put him to sleep. Much groovier to just get on a plane, no preconceptions, and learn as you went. You didn’t really have a choice, any way you cut it. It was sink or swim.

HE rode over to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Parked on a sidestreet and knocked on both bungalows’ doors. No answer. Joan never gave him a key and for some reason that suddenly pissed him off. Now don’t get all rattled. Just chill. He took 5 vikes and 3 Klonopin. Thought of approaching the front desk and announcing who he was, asking for entry, but didn’t feel like undergoing the embarrassment of getting shot down.