Bruce Wagner - Memorial

He popped 2 Compazines. She asked if he got the email and fax she sent. Chess told her his computer crashed, and he never got a fax. (Both of which were true.) The thought occurred that he might have blown it. She said she would fax him again. He wondered if she was hot. Maybe I should ask her out. Maybe she’s the type who likes to blow stoned, crippled location scouts.

Did he mind if they did some of the column as “a phoner”? Not at all. We could do it as a boner. Where did he like to eat? Caught off guard Chess said JAR for brunch (he’d only been once, with Levin and Laxmi) and that he loved the way it looked since it was redone. (That’s what Maurie said, anyway — Chess hadn’t been there since.) The chick responded with something that implied too many people liked JAR for brunch and he kicked himself. OK. He liked L’Ermitage—“always lots of rappers”—and the new Ivy at the Shore. Even though it wasn’t as great as the old Ivy at the Shore. The little breakfast place across the street from the Viceroy. Blah. He was rambling. She asked if, being a scout and all, he’d discovered any new or far-flung places (translation: funky/interesting), still within city limits of course. Dipshit! You forgot the angle — the below-the-line location scout angle. Why the fuck else would they care about how you spent your shitty, pain-ridden weekends? Do you want to be in the Times or not? He managed to dredge up The Bucket, in Eagle Rock — a burgerstand “classic.” (Thank God it came to him.) And Clifton’s, downtown (a genuine fave). She loved all that. Just what the bitch wanted to hear. He began talking about Laughlin Park, the grand but little-known gated hood in Los Feliz where he sometimes scouted commercials. He told her that’s where David Fincher and his wife lived, in the old Lily Pons house. (He forgot exactly who Lily Pons was. Maybe he never really knew. The chick didn’t ask.) Chess wondered if she thought he was a loser and a name-dropper, but figured the Times liked that sort of anecdotal embroidery. Besides, now he was really feeling the Percocets and chattily segued into Guide to Forgotten LA mode. She seemed to warm to the new tack — Jesus, you couldn’t talk restaurants forever. He even mentioned the old train store on Sepulveda his dad used to take him to when he was kid; the place was actually still there. She thanked him and said she had to run.

He was sure he’d missed his chance but an hour or so later, the fax machine rang while he was sitting in the can. Did its whole antiquated spewing-forth number.

The weird thing was that his pain had dissipated during their chat — a kind of epiphany because at the moment “My Favorite Weekend” called, Chess was in a world of hurt. Lately, the prescribed witches’ brew hadn’t been too effective. Karen Knotts told him about a friend with some kind of arthritic deal going on in her back; the docs slapped on a time-release drug patch that was supposedly stronger than heroin. (Sounded like the same thing that poor bastard attorney from New Jersey finally got from his jailers — the so-called trafficker on 60 Minutes. ) Chester had actually begun to think along those lines, almost the way depressed people start fantasizing about suicide. As relief. The stuff that scared him most was reading about pain that couldn’t be touched by any narcotic, organic or synthetic. The cases where snipping off nerves didn’t even do it, the “phantom” shit. There was a big ol blogworld out there about victims of Ménière’s — ringing in the ears — who eventually offed themselves. The lucky ones were research freaks who stumbled on the perfect guy at whatever obscure hospital who turned out to be the Ménière’s Muffler King. But if you didn’t go that extra distance, you could wind up on the end of a rope or an exhaust pipe.

You could wind up on the bike path of the Golden Gate.

There was this girl who was driving along the freeway minding her own business when something fell off the pickup in front of her. A scumbag with his Best Buy home entertainment center lassoed to the truck bed. Piece of debris went through the windshield and took out half the chick’s face. Guy never even stopped. Her optic nerve was obliterated and now she couldn’t taste or smell and peed all the time and the MDs were fuckin helpless. A permanent throbbing in her head that all the fentanyl in the world couldn’t patch. Refuses to learn Braille because she thinks one day she’ll be able to see. Oh God. Chess thought maybe he was like that, delusional in thinking one day he’d be pain-free even though the shortlived diminution epiphany had given him a ray of hope. Still, that was the saddest part: Halfhead didn’t want to learn Braille. Her “My Favorite Weekends” were dead and gone.

Maybe it was all about being distracted. Could it really be that simple? It made him wonder if the mind-body stuff Laxmi had been hyping had some truth in it. Maybe he would hit Remar up for bread (he didn’t want to waste the money Marj had given him on anything medical). It was probably a good idea to go see some of the practitioners his fake girlfriend recommended: hypnoshrinks, biofeedbackers, Feldenkreisers, whatever. It couldn’t hurt — not any more than it did at the moment. He didn’t want to become addicted to pain or the idea of being in pain. He had to nip that in the bud before it was too late.

LAXMI came over, crying.

He put her on the sofa, lit a joint, and put the kettle on.

“Chester, I really need your advice about something!”

“Anything.”

Maybe she was finally breaking up with Maurie and wanted to talk about it. Far out.

“I got a job offer — and I really don’t want to take it, but I really need the money.”

“OK. So what’s the problem?”

He put on his neutral, “mentor” uniform as he grabbed some teacups from the cupboard.

She took a deep breath. “Here’s what’s happening: those people from Friday Night Frights called to ask if I’d be one of the actors who set people up. I mean, it didn’t even come through Maurie, as far as I know. And it’s like kind of a regular gig. And I said no… I just felt so creepy about what happened to you —but then they called back —and it pays really good! And I just needed — I just wanted to ask you — your advice —because I definitely don’t want to hide something like that if I make that decision…”

“It’s a no-brainer,” he said, coolly macho.

The kettle was whistling and she joined him in the little kitchen. She always brought her own tea.

“I think you should do it.”

“Really?”

Laxmi seemed genuinely surprised. He could tell she was relieved.

“You need the money, right?”

“I so need it. And it’s like a lot. I do not want to ask Maurie for a loan.”

He could tell she thought that was something he might like to hear. She was right.

“And I’m really — things are going really well right now with my journaling. I’m starting to paste together sections for the book and I just feel I have kind of a momentum, and—”

“That totally makes sense, Laxmi.”

“—the money would so help! And the thing is — part of what I wanted to talk about — I could probably get a job at Ürth — I filled out an application — or the Bodhi Tree — they’re hiring in the ‘used’ store — but I think my hours would be really bad at 1st — I’d make more at Ürth but nowhere near as much as on FNF. I mean, for me, it’s ‘crazy money,’ but I’m just so conflicted —”