Bruce Wagner - Memorial

“Oh, I don’t remember that. I just remember how beautiful it was.”

“Well, I know Stein does lots of business with them. The Indians. They outsource. Very good at that. But it is not the United States! He’s been there a few times and, Marjorie, you cannot imagine what he describes. The filth. The homeless. The smells. Did you know the hospitals charge the mothers to see their babies?”

“What do you mean?”

“The mothers have their babies, then the nurses or whatever they are, snatch them away — and the new moms have to pay rupees to have them brought back. You have to bribe someone to hold your newborn!”

“I cannot believe…”

“Oh, I assure you, I read it in the Times ! In Bangalore. It’s extortion! $12 for a boy, 7 for a girl! One of the mothers-in-law had to pawn her earrings! And they throw acid on the Untouchables. If you’re not of a certain caste, you either have to clean waste from the toilets without gloves —the toilets, if you can call them that — and if the elite think you’re not doing your job correctly, they throw acid on you! I saw pictures of a horribly disfigured man in the National Geographic when I went for my epidural. And the elephants! The elephants come out of the jungle and snatch the peasants, and tear them to pieces! Oh no no no, Marjorie, I do not think India would be a suitable place for Pahrump. You don’t want to be snatched by some big ol elephant, do you, Rumpelstilskin?”

Marj felt slightly uncomfortable having shared her dream only to be called a fool. She knew she was being oversensitive, and Cora didn’t mean anything by it. The 2 women spoke of their husbands awhile, then agreed to see a movie later in the week at the Westside Pavilion. Cora walked her out and Pahrump limped after but paused inside the doorway as if before an invisible gate. (Usually he bounded into the frontyard.)

The car Stein bought his mother gleamed in the driveway. He’d traded in the Mercedes when his father died and leased a new Audi through his company. Cora put an eye on Marjorie’s Imperial and said, “When you gonna get rid of that old thing?”

Marj shrugged.

“Sweetheart, get an Audi. I know you’ve got a pile of money sitting there — Ham would have wanted you to be safe. You need side airbags. The Audi drives like a dream. It warns you if anything gets near the rear bumper. Parallel parking is a dream. And there’s a camera —I don’t know how to use it yet! — so you can actually see a small child behind you. Do you know how many people back over small children each year? Stein calls it ‘auto versus small child.’ ”

Pahrump barked.

“All right, baby,” she said, turning toward him. “Mama’s coming. I guess you want another cappuccino, huh?”

Cora went back in without saying goodbye.

MARJ reclined on the La-Z-Boy. She thought about what she’d do if she won the Super Lotto Plus. She would provide for her children of course and maybe buy a place on some land — no 2nd floor so she wouldn’t have to climb stairs. She’d had it with stairs. She started to think she would pay off the house before realizing she had paid it off, with term life, that in fact she had a nice savings, and no worries. She’d already won the lottery, so to speak, and was grateful. She’d had a good life, and a good husband, and her children were healthy and seemed happy, as far as she knew. She was footloose and debt-free and in reasonably good physical shape herself. A bit lonely but who knew? Might be something to that cruise idea afterall. (The thought made her blush.) Then she pushed all that nonsense from her head, supplanting it with her dream of India. There was a train she’d read about called the Deccan Odyssey that was supposed to rival the Orient Express. You could go on it for a week — its starting point was Bombay. There was an onboard spa and hot showers and dining cars and manservants and all day long you could visit temples or wade in the Arabian Sea. The other night she had been watching A Passage to India on television, when there it was, a sign in the train station: THE DECCAN QUEEN. It nearly made her neck hairs stand on end.

She smiled at the sculpture of the Indian elephant goddess that graced the mantelpiece along with a picture of Ham, photos of Joan and Chester as young children, and a silver Jesus. There was bounty in her life — and new beginnings.

SHE lay in bed watching Larry King. That was a guilty pleasure. Why should she watch Larry King?

It was probably something her mother enjoyed. What would Zaha think? She doubted if El Zorro ever watched TV. ZH assuredly watched outlandishly cutting-edge films only available in PAL. Her best friends no doubt were the moviemakers Haneke and Kusturica, or Barney & Björk, and Joan imagined she’d cultivated Hedi Slimane to make dandruff-proof caftans for the whole psychotically pretentious claque. Or maybe she was a buddy of that hack Indian director, the Maya Angelou/Penny Marshall of Orissa who was married to the scholar everyone ludicrously compared to Edward Said. Edward S’Hadid. To be sure, ZH would soon be directing something à la The Cremaster Cycle. The Clitoris Cycle. The Cycling Clitoris. The Recycled Arclitect. Arclitoridectomy.

But maybe I’m wrong…

Could be that ZH was just a homie, an early aficionado of The Office, a Spamalot freak, mobbed up with Eddie Izzard, Billie Connelly, Sacha Cohen, and Eric Idle. A Spinal Tapp er.

Fattie.

Fat fatiscent Fatimite.

Hogwart.

Digitally rendered museum-addition ski-jumped Iraqi cunt.

Larry King was a salacious, cartoony comfort — all Beavis and Butt-Head sharp bones, wisecracks, and chicken soup. Joan knew why she had a soft spot for him: she’d projected onto him the dad she never knew. Occasionally, she caught herself thinking: Wouldn’t it be bizarre if Larry King turned out to be my father?

Lately though he was getting a mite ghoulish; maybe it was age. She had saved a bunch of his shows on TiVo and was finally scrolling through them. The 1st she lit on was about a pretty blonde whose face got mauled by a cougar. Joan deleted it after about 20 seconds. The next one featured Dr Phil’s sister-in-law. She’d been driving along when someone threw a can of sulfuric acid from an overpass; it broke the windshield and dripped on her. They showed pictures from the hospital, her face all burnt. Dr Phil’s wife’s sister! Totally surreal! The 3rd Larry was about a black woman down in Texas whose boyfriend killed her mom then turned around and shot her face off. The ex was swathed in bandages — all you could see was one eye. Joan almost laughed out loud: Larry really had a Phantom of the Opera thing goin on! But the 4th show really creeped her out. Some white chick got murdered in the Village and Larry was hosting the boyfriend and the victim’s mother. He whipped through the interview by rote, bored and antsy, you could almost see his wheels turning (Why the fuck are they on? I should’ve booked Tammi Menendez again), holding back like a borscht bowl vampire — his guests nothing but long necks awaiting the fang — before rushing in, a white cell plasma TV Weegee in suspenders. Joan thought it so weird that people agreed to go on talkers just because someone they loved had been murdered or brutally taken from them. Even Susan Saint James! Monologuing about her little boy (angel with de-iced wings), and how she couldn’t bear to touch his clothes! Pornographic sharefests were the New Dignity.