Bruce Wagner - Memorial

THEY took their Cabazon road trip — to the Morongo resort.

Chess packed his full pharmacopoeia: a grab bag of painkillers, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, antivertigos, anti-inflammatories, stool softeners, sleep inducers, and the like. And some fall-on-the-floor weed. They were only staying overnight but he didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

Anyway, he wasn’t the designated driver. He sat in the capacious backseat of Maurie’s Mercedes 500, wondering where his erstwhile friend had baked the short -bread. You could smell the leather even with the fucking windows down. Maurie said he got it at one of those police auctions. “The car was a steal.” He laughed and ran some bullshit about how the ride probably belonged to a dealer, “if these seats could talk,” yadda yadda, but Chess was suspect. Police auction, my ass. Maybe Maurie was about to direct a feature or something, produced by that Haggis guy who was supposed to be his big bud. Perfect. 2 fuckin hacks. 2 fuckin Haggasses. Maybe Maurie Levin was a “silent creator” of Friday Night Frights, had been from day one.

Chess scoped the blond hairs of Laxmi’s legs; her bare foot was resting on the dash. Jesus. He could see where the razorwork ended.

Her iPod sat in a dock, playing tunes Chess didn’t recognize. It made him feel fuckin old. He watched Maurie pretend to be hiply familiar, hands rhythmically beating the steering wheel like he’d heard it all before. Bullshit artist. Fuckin scammer. Whatever. It was a beautiful day and Chess was buzzed. The vertigo had receded but that was the maddening thing about inner-ear stuff: it was always in the back of your head (or the sides of it) that suddenly you could be tossing your tostadas.

So far, so good.

Maurie prattled on about Morongo and how rich the Indians were, goddamn thieves and sociopathic drunks, worse than Gypsies, and how the 3 of them should come up with a way to hustle the BIA. Fuckin Injuns — nothing but black-braided bitch-parasites and ultraviolent alkies. Maurie said they should legally declare themselves Native Americans, like that leftie professor who got fired for saying everyone who worked at the World Trade Center was a mini-Eichmann. “Didn’t that asshole say he was fucking Cherokee? Yeah, right. Jeep Cherokee.” Maurie had that blustery Jew thing going, he could make you laugh in spite of yourself, that’s probably what drew Laxmi to him in the first place — opposites attract — Chess prayed they weren’t still fucking, though they kinda sorta acted like they were, but not as much as they used to, not so demonstrative, not around him anyway. Maurie liked to grope her but didn’t do that shit anymore; now and then he body-spammed or reached out to touch and even though there wasn’t anything too pervy about it, she swatted his hand anyway — Chess hoped she did that for his benefit. The definitive conversation about the Maurie issue was long overdue. They’d danced around it but Chester always wimped out.

What was he afraid of? He was afraid of hearing Laxmi say that it was nuts, and she was sorry, but she just couldn’t shake the kikey SOB; that Levin had some kind of psychosexual strangle-hold on her. He was afraid of the pathology — too much of a daddy thing going on. Maybe Maurie and her old man even looked the same, smelled the same….

Chess pushed the bad thoughts from his head and watched the desertscape zoom by. His backpack was filled with dope, and books too — Laxmi had picked up some “spiritual volumes” for him at the Bodhi Tree a few weeks back. A nice surprise. Chess was pretty sure at this point the relationship between them was still secret, and that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Fuck that prick. He enjoyed having the books along, he’d stowed them away like a taboo treasure trove, thinking of them as love letters. He was “holding,” and it gave him a little goose — suddenly, he remembered the Viagra. Not that anything was going to happen. Not on this trip, anyway. You never knew.

THE casino was a slick dumb orange building looming out of nowhere like a humungous stereo cabinet from Circuit City. They dropped a few dollars at the tables before checking in. The Indians were stealing their money already.

Laxmi dragged them to the spa and the Jew reserved 3 late-afternoon massages (evidently, they weren’t so busy). He said to charge them to his room. Big man. Chess couldn’t even believe she was staying with Maurie — he was more stunned than pissed — and when Laxmi took him aside to whisper something about “twin beds,” like that was supposed to make it all better, he just shrugged. The FNF conspiracy theories swept back over him…but why should he care? It was none of his business and he didn’t want to feel foolish. He didn’t want to feel foolish about anything anymore. He was gonna sue the motherfuckers, and if Laxmi wanted to drop by the pad and smoke his dope and let him look at the hair on her legs, fuck it.

They had 4 hours to chill before getting rubbed. Maybe he’d check out the pool or the gym or go take a nap. Chess wondered if the masseuses gave hand jobs. He figured there was a pretty good chance because the place was new, and it might be part of a secret corporate policy to keep guests coming back. He reminded himself they were there to location scout for a commercial, but it felt kind of bogus, and he couldn’t shake the idea that Levin was out to grease him so he’d drop his lawsuit (which he already might have blown) and join the FNF payroll. He didn’t trust the Jew for shit.

MAURIE said they could wake up early and scout on Sunday morning before brunch. He told Laxmi she could sleep in. Then, around noon, they’d drive to “Las Viagras.” That wasn’t part of the plan and Laxmi hated the idea. One casino was enough. Maurie said cool, they could hang at Morongo or get stoned in Joshua Tree or have “supper” at the Viceroy, in the Springs. Laxmi wasn’t into it. She said they should go back to LA after breakfast, but then she got to thinking about Joshua Tree and how that might be trippy. Chess couldn’t see himself spazzing around in the high desert but kept his mouth shut. He’d just stay in his room — he was in pain most of the time anyway, still fine-tuning the medley of meds that mellowed him out. That’s how fucked up it was: he’d become some housebound geezer, cozily experimenting with milligram’d combo-plates.

At a certain point, they wound up alone in the elevator. He told Laxmi he’d brought the Karma Sutra she gave him (the other Bodhi Tree books were weirder, and he hadn’t yet delved into them) and she smiled, without enthusiasm or innuendo. When he made a move to kiss her — he was just stoned enough — she backed away, saying, “We shouldn’t.” He tensed up. His neck and shoulders stung and throbbed. OK — cool. That’s cool. I can live with that. Probably not such a great idea. Fuck it, we’ll always have Griffith Park. If he had to stretch the truth a bit, he actually liked that she was being prudent, or prudish, or whatever. Besides, if they did the deed, the Viagra might interact with other drugs he was taking and give him vertigo again. Just what he needed: Laxmi goes consensual then he pukes on her during the Tantric Tortoise, the Pair of Tongs, the Splitting Bamboo.

The Jew and the Lotus retired to their suite to “rinse off” and lie down. Did that mean they were going to fuck? What else could it mean? He was the lowest of the low — a cuckold without a wife. His rage at Maurie boomeranged. He decided to hit the casino. Walk it off. He checked out the losers at the slots then went to the spa and had a few words with the proprietress. Then he rode the elevator to 1508, replaying the other ride, with Laxmi, in his head, his failed minimove rocket-to-nowhere. It had embarrassed him. On top of it (and he knew this was sick) was the part that felt guilty about his behavior — that he’d betrayed his friend, the man who had caused him grievous injury! At least, he thought, I’m lucid enough to know that it’s only the irrational thoughts of a depressive mindspace.