Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

Tull, Lucy and Boulder were escorted to Edward’s MSV by the second assistant director.

The Mauck Special Vehicle was built in Ohio with the cousin’s needs in mind, at a cost of $275,000. Its gull-wing front doors rose up with frank, freakish efficiency. Within, calfskin recliners sat upon a walnut Hokanson carpet, telephones graced Corian countertops and a huge flat-screen panel downloaded DirecTV from a rooftop dish. Concealed abaft was a state-of-the-art hydraulic docking berth for Edward’s golf cart — he could drive right in.

Lunch awaited the guests as they clambered aboard the orchid-filled cabin. Edward was already enthroned in his custom Donghia captain’s chair watching soundless CNN, a vast linen nappie tucked between chin and brace. He wore his gloves and “Mauck mask,” a lounge-around hood made of festive yellow silk lightly embroidered by his own hand. The cousin sipped leek-and-potato soup with sautéed langoustines and black truffles, FedExed frozen from Lespinasse’s 55th Street kitchen, while trays brought by craft-services sprites stood on individual teak stands in readiness; under straining cellophane, industrial-strength paper plates were heaped with standard Friday film-set fare — barbecued chicken, biscuits and beans, blackened swordfish and black-eyed peas, yams and limp salads smeared with yogurty dressing, happy fruit and less happy cottage cheese. Still another tray was filled solely with desserts: Joyce’s precious lemon tarts from Ladurée (Edward had swiped them from the Stradella freezer), Häagen-Dazs’d brownies, American apple pie and Everyman’s peach cobbler. All in all, not too bad a spread. In his wisdom, the ever cordial host had adorned placemats with tiny brown La Maison du Chocolat hatboxes from Neiman’s, each one tied with their distinctive satiny, dark-brown ribbons.

“Oh my God!” said Boulder as she bounded in, wide-eyed at the cornucopia. “Edward, you are amazing!”

“I was going to bring food from home but for some reason it didn’t happen.”

“It happened for you ,” said Tull, raising a gentle eyebrow at the cousin’s non-communal meal — minimalist though it was.

“It’s just soup.” He brought a spoonful to his tiny mouth then wiped a trickle from the titanium, patting down the protuberant chin with the bib. Tull thought the veil made him look like a deranged harem girl.

“And who’s that for?” asked Lucy. She referred to a tray that sat by itself, with food maturely arranged.

“Mr. Hookstratten.”

“ He’s coming?” called Boulder with a full mouth, cross-legged on the Hokanson. “Doesn’t he teach today?”

“He’s tutoring Dad,” said Edward.

At the mention of Uncle Dodd, Tull’s heart fluttered — this was the Forbes coverboy who not only knew unthinkable secrets about his father but had dared blurt them out to his gossipy girl-child. Of all the people he could have told! If Lucy knew, it was likely everyone did. The thought jolted him. She smugly watched him squirm; he could tell their tacit agreement not to discuss the recent revelation was near unraveling and that gave him another hideous frisson. Tull switched to conversational autopilot.

“What do you mean, tutoring?” he said blandly.

“The fact is,” said Lucy (and it seemed to Tull she was at this moment savoring life to the fullest), “that Father maintains a bit of an inferiority complex about his abysmal high school GPA. So Mr. Hookstratten comes over and they read the classics. I think it’s sweet.”

Boulder dabbed at some barbecue sauce that had found its way to the woolen weave.

“Like which classics?” offered Tull. The tension surrounding Lucy and the potential public airing of his uncle’s disclosure had the effect of both zombifying and nauseating him, at once.

“I’m sure they’ll be taking a look at one of Lucy’s faves,” laughed Edward. “ When a Grandparent Dies !”

“Very funny,” she said.

Tull winced, remembering how he had upbraided Lucy for her journalistic methods. It was now his prime objective to keep her displeasure at a minimum; he didn’t want her provoked by anyone , and present company was a volatile mix — Boulder liked to jump on Lucy with as much relish as did Edward. Tull’s morbid fear was that if the redhead was teased too much, she might suddenly spill the beans about his father, merely to deflect negative attention — not that Tull could be sure it still was a secret. Lucy had always had a crush on him, and that was the only bit of leverage he had in terms of her doing the right and decent thing: keeping her trap shut.

“Seriously, Edward,” said Tull, rushing to Lucy’s aid with delusional chivalry. “Who are they studying?”

“Oh, you know — Tolstoy, Chaucer … Steve Martin’s Shopgirl … all the heavy texts. Daddy pores over it, then Professor Hookstratten deconstructs. Hookstratten gets busy !”

Boulder asked if the teacher was going to Europe.

“Europe? For what?” wondered Tull, overeager.

Edward squinted at his friend, annoyed. “You’re awfully inquisitive today.”

He would have to watch himself; the cousin was onto him. He could smell Tull’s fear. “Dad’s taking Third-Tier Honors on holiday,” sneered Lucy. “Well his plane is, anyway — the Boeing.” She gave Tull a contemptuous once-over. “Don’t you know anything ?”

Boulder flipped through a teen girl’s fanzine called All About You! — ironically, she was on the cover. “I really want to go to that beach in Belgium,” she said, bored with the “Star Poll Picks.” Boulder said there was a beach in Belgium where if a person wanted to face the sun, they had to turn their back to the ocean; apparently, it was the only beach like that in the world. Lucy said that was weird and Pullman farted. Everyone burst out laughing. At the end of the jag, something caught Tull’s eye through the Mauck window.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s the girl.”

“What girl?”

“From the set.”

Lucy joined to watch. At odds with herself, the urchin moved inexorably toward the specialty vehicle as if pulled by a great magnet. The reflective glass made it impossible to see her audience.

“Look! She can’t help herself,” said Lucy. “We’re the monolith from 2001 .”

“You’re about as flat,” said Edward.

“What’s a monolith?” asked Boulder, blasé.

“She’s sweet ,” said Lucy, earnest and patronizing.

Boulder glanced through the window, then flopped onto a $10,00 °Costa del Sol Alcazar nightspread. “I hate it when crew bring their fucking kids to the set.”

“I don’t think she — she looks kind of homeless.”

“Maybe she has AIDS.”

“Boulder,” said Lucy. “That is so mean!” She tended to be exclamatory around her famous friend.

“Or hep C— everyone’s got hep C. Or scabies! Oh God, do you remember , Lucy?”

“I so hated having scabies.”

“Well,” said Tull, “I’m going to ask her in for lunch.”

“ Please don’t!”

“Boulder, we have to. I’ll use it for my essay.”

“What essay?”

Lucy put on her girl-detective/bestselling-author face. “It’s research. I’m getting credit for writing about visiting you.”

Boulder sighed. “I so hate the homeless.”

“Oh my God, Boulder, that is so vile!”

The movie star laughed devilishly and tickled Lucy until she begged for mercy.

“Edward,” said Tull. “ You decide. It’s your Mauck.”

“ It’s my Mauck ,” sang Boulder, “ and I’ll cry if I want to! ” She did a spastic dance and laughed another starry, bigger-than-life laugh.