Bruce Wagner - Memorial

Chess sat on the bed, lit a joint, and flipped through the trove. The pages actually smelled like her — that patchouli vibe. The ludicrous thing was, the Karma Sutra had a whole section with the rubric, “Other Men’s Wives,” detailing how a man had the universal right to fuck a married woman! There were entire lists of what made hapless brides “eligible” for adultery: like if a gal was neglected or scorned, or had married someone beneath her caste, or even if her husband happened to have “many brothers.” (Laxmi was a strong candidate — Maurie had neglected and scorned her, and was definitely beneath her caste. Plus, the Jew used to refer to Chess as his “brother.”) He laughed aloud at the following passage: “Just as medical science explains that for certain diseases one should eat dog meat, similarly, in special circumstances, an individual may find himself in need of sleeping with other men’s wives, and he should put it into practice only after a serious study of the Karma Sutra.” Well, right on! Let the serious studies begin! He flipped through another book, the strangest in the litter, and this one offered conflicting views: if the spouse cheated, why, then she should “sleep in a trough of cow dung for a year,” and be paraded through town on a black donkey. Hey, whatever gets your Ganges wet. This particularly sizable volume was way harsh, declaring that if a man poured the pork to his brother’s wife, it was thereby proclaimed he should rip out his own cock and balls (a neat trick! whoa!), cup em in his hands, and walk in a “southerly direction.” Right on. But my personal opinion is the dude ain’t gonna feel up to no stroll.

Chess returned to the enlightened pages of the Karma, to the addendum called “Justification for Seducing Other Men’s Wives.” Thus it was written: if a guy had insomnia “for thinking of the object of desire,” or if he is obsessing, well, then, that was enough of a reason. Shit. Jesus. This is crazy. The book was really growing on him…then came the coup de grâce: “weakness leading to vertigo” was in there too! If you were feeling vertiginous, you could get jiggy with your neighbor’s Mrs! Vertigo! It said that! The ultimate Epley Maneuver! Now, that was freakish. He realized how stoned he was, and wound up masturbating to the book’s X-rated illustrations, suffused with Laxmi’s smell.

ABOUT an hour before the massages, everyone met for drinks in a lounge off the casino. Tanqueray and Vicodin had Chess seriously toasted. Maurie was on another roll about the “shitfaced brownskins” and Laxmi shushed him. Chess began to riff about a white-collar con he’d read about that made the Sioux look like pikers.

“Ever heard of whistleblowers? You know, those guys in big corporations who snitch to the government?”

“Like The Insider,” said Maurie.

“I love Al Pacino,” said Laxmi.

“Right.” He felt in the groove, and flashed on the chapter of the Karma Sutra that said married women liked to be seduced by good storytellers. “There’s this whole confidence game where people whistleblow, but the shit they’re exposing isn’t true. The government has whistleblowing laws — some of em guarantee 30 % of whatever money is recovered. So there’s this guy who whistle-blew—”

“Whistle blow-me!” said Maurie, and Laxmi giggled.

The remark was indecorous, not the usual thing she laughed at, which made Chess fleetingly paranoid. Maybe that was what Hippie Slut dug, that was the hook. Maybe her dad was like that — a captivating Jew with a dirty mouth. Lord Ganesha, guardian of the anus.

“The feds wound up giving him a hundred and 26,000,000!”

“Jesus.”

“He goes on Oprah like some kinda hero then retires to a gated community. A few years later, they find out everything he told em was just some kind of half-truth. But it’s too late. They dig a little further. The so-called kickbacks and price hikes he ratted about never fucking happened. So a federal jury convenes and declares the defendants—”

“Whistle blow-me!”

“— not guilty. The employees all get off. But the whistleblower doesn’t have to return the fed’s thank-you money!”

“You mean the fed’s fuck-you money,” said Maurie, with a leer. “Everybody should get off.”

“The moral of the story is, the government can be hustled. I mean, it’s like those sex harassment suits where companies used to have to pay people just to go away.”

“Don’t go away horny…just go away. That’s what Laxmi’s been saying.”

“It’s the modern-day version. And it doesn’t even have to be a bigass company. Let’s say some poor shrink—”

“You mean there is such a thing?” interjected Maurie, looking quizzically toward Laxmi, who giggled and choked, the drink fizzing through her nose.

“—overcharges someone a hundred bucks. For a hundred-dollar overcharge, the feds can ask for a fine of like 60,000,000. Restitution under the False Claims Act.”

“You’ve got way too much time on your hands, Desperado.” Maurie shook his head and threw Laxmi a what-the-fuck’s-he-talking-about look. Then: “You’re like a fuckin expert. You’re like Lewis Black, without the humor. ” He belched, chirped, and cooed (while Laxmi laughed, convulsively), then theatrically scrunched his face to look at Chester sideways — like some tweaky owl out of Harry Potter. “You sound like a…what do they call those people? Magpies? No — agitators? Agent provocateurs! Nah, that ain’t it either. Gadflies! That’s what you are! You’re a fuckin gadfly!” He screwed up an eye, and whispered conspiratorially. “Now: you don’t suddenly know so much cause you’ve been busy researching Herlihy v Friday Night Frights —is that why you know so much? Look out, world! Mr False Claims Restitution is about to wreak havoc! Godzilla? Meet Fraudzilla!” (Her laughter diminished.) “Bionic ethics! You want to be on Oprah too, don’t you! That’s what this is about. You want to be in a million little pieces! You want to make a million little dollars! Or maybe have your own show like Dr Phil! Dr Chester! Dr Chester the Restituted Molester!”

Laxmi put a hand on Chess’ leg, though not in any overtly sexual way — closer to the knee. She probably just felt bad she’d laughed so hard, at his expense. Her way of letting him know it was nothing personal and that mostly she was just stoned. Maurie grunted, stood, and went to the head. Chess paid the bar tab.

When he returned, they strolled past the noise of the slots to the Sage.

A sullen silence overtook the 2 men. Laxmi walked between them as a buffer. She stared straight ahead, pretending all was well, now and then glancing at one or the other peripherally. Maurie’s appointment was half an hour before the others’. He was getting Deep Tissue and Chess was having Sacred Stone. Laxmi had signed up for the Desert Volcanic Fango Body Mask/Sage Body Polish.

He hung back while his friends went to shower, and confirmed the arrangement made earlier. Because Maurie requested a woman, Chess had been stuck with a male therapist, a sweet-faced black masseur he bumped into that 2nd time at the spa — while the happy couple were upstairs doing their rinse-off. That’s when he got his brainstorm. He slipped the girl a hundie to ensure a “mix-up,” telling her it was his friend’s 40th and they’d been playing practical jokes on each other all week long. Luckily, she was game.