Bruce Wagner - Memorial

“Not yet.”

“Use the same numbers. You don’t have to go to Riki’s if it’s out of the way, but—”

“Of course it’s not out of the way, silly!”

Joan laughed and cried at once.

“But if you can, that’s my lucky spot. And the same numbers, Joanie! The lucky numbers.”

“OK, Ma. I’ll go — I’ll go right now. I love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

She kissed Marj twice then left in a storm.

THEY moved to the hotel.

Tests proved that Lew was the father. Joan cried in relief (she was crying a lot lately) even though she never had reason to doubt. Not long after, she met with attorneys in a nondescript building on 3rd Street — one hers, one a mediator (pointedly having no cross-connection whatsoever with the Northern California behemoth, but rather, a man whose trade was child custody cases and others closer to that ilk), 3 from Guerdon — to sign the papers. She did as she was told, dutifully reporting to the somewhat surprised Barbet and Pradeep that test results, now forever sealed, had shown the dad to be someone other than Mr Mem. Lew thought of everything, providing a respectable “entity” as he said he would, giving Joan a plausible one-night-stand backstory; nevermind it not helping her already sluttish image. But she was among friends. The donor of choice was in fact a real guy, early 30s, one of those aging code-writing kidz (they showed her his picture. Cute). They were careful to find someone who had never worked for Guerdon LLC, and whose background check revealed him to be reliably bricks-and-mortar, also being compensated and sworn to secrecy, and who would, if gossip should surface, affably go on record to having spilled his seed — again, only if and when Joan were ever pressured, for the sake of veracity, to point the finger. Which remained a hypothetical, and that would be where his involvement ended. If, say, an enterprising tabloid PI or dirtblog were to dig deeper, a tactical paper trail of endorsed monthly support checks (about $3,000 each, reflecting his more modest means) waited to be uncovered, a trail that would roughly begin a few months prior to the moment she left the legal offices where the contract was hammered out.

SHE needed to “handle” Chester. She didn’t want him hanging around the hotel agitating their mom. (Her brother could agitate the Dalai Lama.) He kept talking about “getting” the people who set fire to the house, that the cops were wrong, it probably had been set by the gang who took her money, and wanted to “finish her off” in case anything came to trial. Not helpful. When he persisted in asking who was paying for the bungalows and all — she still hadn’t brought up the pregnancy — Joan said, Marjorie’s insurance. Chess didn’t believe it. She went off on him. “I’m paying for it, then, OK? I’m paying for the nurses and the bungalows and the whatever. Now, did you want to help contribute, Chester? Cause if you don’t then leave it alone.” That shut him up, for now. If Mom said anything about the benefactor and potential husband-to-be “up north,” she’d just tell her brother Marj was delusional, or that ARK was taking care of it out of a special account. She hated to even be worrying about this kind of shit. Her nest egg hadn’t even fucking hatched.

Joan wasn’t sure if that bullshitty story about getting injured on a reality show was even true. It was so lame. She did suss the girlfriend, Laxmi, loitering in the lobby outside the Polo Lounge. Her brother said she gave great massages, and it would be “a healing” for Marj to be on the receiving end of those helping hippie hands, “gratis,” but Joan said she didn’t think that was such a good idea, Mom was too spooked to “meet new people” (“She knows Laxmi!” shouted Chess), and besides, the nurses were taking care of her physical needs. If anyone was going be giving Mother a massage, it won’t be your New Age consort. At least he wasn’t too combative about it. There seemed to be a cloud hanging over him; when he pushed too hard and Joan pushed back, Chess instantly relented, his face contorting in despair. Something was definitely going on, beyond drugs or sexual obsession. It was discomfiting but Joan got it to work in her favor.

SHE was going to rent a house at the beach but didn’t have the energy. The hotel was so easy, everything was there, everything done for you, the food brought, rooms cleaned, clothes laundered, the pool and spa, Town Cars when you didn’t feel like driving. The sweet, starched nurses in revolving shifts were thrilled to be working in such a luxe environment — one of them, a Jamaican, thought Marjorie Herlihy was a famous old movie star. Another popular rumor was that Joan was a department store heiress. The bottom line was that everything at the hotel was intensely manageable.

She needed things to be manageable.

WHEN Chess said he and Laxmi were going to Joshua Tree “to chill,” Joan took the opportunity to see their father again.

She phoned beforehand. Ray said that his partner, Ghulpa, was home from the hospital and if Joan didn’t mind, he didn’t want to introduce her as his daughter just yet. No offense offered; none taken. Ray said “my gal is still a little shaky” and hoped she would understand if he called Joan his niece instead. There was something awkwardly poignant about it. “Oh, I understand very well!” she said, with levity, hinting at the slinky complications of her own life, and Ray was relieved. There was plenty she didn’t want to share with her dad yet either, like the details of what had recently befallen his former wife. Joan thought he would be OK with anything she had to say about Chess — wasn’t much going on there — but sensed the old man would be hurt if apprised of what happened to Marjorie in the last 6 months. Shit. It was hard enough for a complete stranger to hear.

She concocted a story on the way down (she was getting good at that). She would tell him Mom was traveling — that Marj had finally returned to India, and Joan was planning to join her. The machinatrix interrupted her machinations; she felt stupid using the Woman but had completely blanked on how she’d gotten to her father’s house that 1st time. Keep left, on the 6-0-5. She eyeballed the mesmeric navigation screen embedded in the dash and shook her head in amusement, recapitulating the “cover story”—her life a tangled techno-tango’d web — at last (at least), mother and daughter would fulfill the lifelong dream to visit the whipped cream shrine of the virtual Taj Mahal.

When the Woman announced, Your route guidance is now complete, Joan did as before, U-turning to the liquorstore to the lighthouse for Diet Coke, Marlboro Lights and fluffy Lay’s, then drove to the apartment complex and had herself a smoke. She was actually looking forward to seeing him because this time her nerves had settled. Relatively. He was so unaffected, so unmythic, and didn’t seem to want anything from her. (She wondered what she wanted from him.) Joan thought that today he might ask her simple questions. She was ready. It wasn’t about being interrogated, from either end. She was prepared.

She stood at the door, which this time was open

and smiled from the other side, old man/twinkle-eyed smile, remarking on her Diet Coke. I don’t know what they put in those things but it can’t be good. She brushed by and he smelled the cigarettes — why did she think she could pull one over? why had she even tried? she was still his little girl and didn’t want him to know that she smoked. She thought it so dear: he’d bought Diet Cokes at the store in anticipation of her visit, and had “a cold one” waiting for her.