Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

You dyke , thought Trinnie. You’re not going to make it. You’re going to die .

She dreamed of Marcus Weiner and spent her days in the vast archives of the Withdrawing Room. Her father thought she was researching the wandering garden, but it wasn’t so; she was busy unearthing blueprints and photos of the Bel-Air Colonne Détruite. Soon after her husband disappeared, Trinnie ordered that an inventory be taken of the marital house — all objects and their placement in each room painstakingly measured and documented. Everything — furnishings, clothes, books, utensils — was subsequently placed in storage.

Now, like a necromancer, she pores over the fastidious records, looking for signs of life.

†Of his sudden, compelling memory of that ruined column (both, incomplete), Will’m could make no sense or give good context. We offer that sidebar as sheer human interest — for it is a rare, poignant, shivery thing to glimpse the metaphor of one’s coming disarray, in a storybook garden to boot. That house cracked his head, then made him take up fractured residence.

†Simply because Mr. Mott’s agonies are of lesser general interest than our principal players’ does not rob them of meaning, for pain is pain. Consolation comes more to the earnest reader who may have been briefly hoodwinked, in a simple truism: when invariably one is misled — in book or in life — better it be for a price not too high or investment too dear. We are early enough in our history for the latter to hold true.

“Thanks for looking at the script,” said Ralph. “But I’m on to something else now.”

Tull was actually disappointed. He had found the copy of How to Marry a Billionaire , A Screenplay by Ralph Mirdling, Third Draft, Second Polish, A Method to His Sadness Productions, Registered at Writers Guild West — all 154 pages of it — gathering dust in the nook of his room, where the boy had abandoned it some months before.

ANGELA

(SELF-RIGHTEOUS)

YOU’RE AN UNTREATED SEXAHOLIC!

SEBASTIAN

(HEATED, WILD-EYED)

AND YOU’RE A NEW AGE PREDATOR!

It wasn’t too bad a read after all. A breezy comedy involving a Beverly Hills limo driver and runaway socialite, it aspired to Lubitsch but had more the Mirdling touch.

Ralph was in the kitchen, noshing as usual. His hair shorn militarystyle, he looked stylishly commanding — part of a new regimen. As if taking a cue from Trinnie, he had cleaned up his act. In his shabbily chic navy-blue Costume National he looked like a survivor of Appomattox who with steady rest and diet might soon be attending the officers’ ball. Today, Tull found him reassuringly unneurotic.

Pullman snored, insensate, blocking Ralph’s access to the Sub-Zero. He was sleeping more than usual; his master had been meaning to take him to the vet.

“You know what they say about Danes, don’t you?” asked Ralph rhetorically, gently pressing the spotted rump with the soft point of a demi-boot.

“Go ahead, Ralph. Tell me. Get it off your chest.”

“Two years a young dog, two years a good dog and two years an old dog. The rest is a gift.”

Pullman raised his head and derogatorily chuffed before pressing his muzzle to the humming grille of the restaurant-size freezer.

“Whatever,” said Tull.

“It’s plain unfair,” he went on. “If you’re a man, you’re going to die in your seventies. Maybe . And if you’re fucking koi, you can push the envelope at two hundred — two fucking centuries , Tull, swimming about in a scummy little pond! And they love it!”

“I thought your script was really funny.”

“You’re a dear boy, but it’s awful.”

“It isn’t, Rafe,” he said, giving the name its rightful pronunciation. “I wouldn’t shit you. I even have notes.”

“Oh, by the way, it’s Ralph — with an l.”

“Ralph?”

“That’s what I call myself now. Ralph: simple and American as they come.”

“You’re kidding. When did that happen?”

“What difference does it make?”

“But what about … Mirdling’s Name Theorem?”

“It went the way of all flesh — don’t let’s dwell on it.”

Tull hoisted himself onto the stainless-steel counter. “I did think the script was funny.”

“It’s worthless — I’ll seal it in an envelope and pull it out in ten years. Have a good laugh. Actually, though, it did serve its purpose.”

“What do you mean?”

“Guess I had to get something like that out of my system. Took long enough! Hey, you know who I showed it to?”

“Who?”

“Ron Bass.”

“Whoa!”

“Nope. He actually read it — gave it a nice read, too. We’ve become pretty good friends. He’s all right. I’m still not crazy about his work, but … you know, Ron’s the one who turned me around. Gave me a whole new ‘P.O.V.’ Your mom and I had dinner with him, at 5 Dudley: great French onion soup. We met him at that sick-animal thing, you know. Very charming, tons of energy. And he does care about ‘the work.’ That’s saying a lot.”

“You showed Ron Bass your script?” he said, still disbelieving.

Ralph nodded eagerly, tucking into a king-size wedge of four-day-old mud cake. “He said I had no business writing that sort of thing, it was more like something he would write, but he would have written it better . I’m telling you, Tull, he’s a very funny guy! ‘Mirdling,’ he said — that’s what he calls me—‘Mirdling, if you’re going to do something third-rate, then for Chrissake at least do something true to yourself.’ ”

“I’m amazed. Next thing you know, you’ll be buddying up to Robert Towne.”

With that, he showed a flash of the old Rafe . “Oh Christ! I read yet another Mr. Chinatowne piece today. The Master was going on about his movie again — it’s an absolute mania , the man can’t stop! A ‘classy’ little essay in Architectural Digest … on and on he went about his ‘nocturnal ramblings’ on Western and Vermont, with the Santa Anas and the water company and all the intense bullshit — Raymond Chandler channeling … ugh! And how he took himself to a little bungalow in Catalina to hammer out that legendary first draft — oh Christ, I just want to vomit down his throat! And what about William Goldman? That vain, pontificating ass! He’s worse than ol’ Chinatowne! Oh please get cancer, Mr G., oh won’t you please? With his ‘nobody knows anything’ … well, I know something: someone should run them both over —”

“So you’re just going to … throw the script away?”

“I might do a number on it — put up some scaffolding and give it a po-mo makeover. Something closer to Charlie Kaufman. Spike and Charlie are the New Wave Wilder and Diamond. Let’s hope Spike isn’t as nasty as Billie, though — what a fucking monster he was. But smart . Managed to get his furry old dick pretty far up Cameron Crowe’s ass, huh. I do think someone should teach him how to dress, though. I mean, Spike. You’d think Sofia would — or maybe your mother! By the way, how are you two getting along?”

“Okay.”

Tull was about to do a little cathecting, but Ralph spoke first.

“I think I’ve entered a very fecund moment,” he said. “I’m walking around with a thousand ideas. I’m telling you, man, I can’t stop the flow! I’m gonna direct something on DV any minute now, I can feel it. How do you like this: there’s a guy from Iran who’s been trapped at the airport in France for ten years because of some bureaucratic snafu. True story. A fantastic subject, very Herzog, as in Werner — or maybe it’s very Tati. Or maybe Lynch, but the Straight Story Lynch. Make a fantastic film. Then I was reading in The Enquirer about a travel agent who helps people disappear . Tells you how to fake your death, open a Swiss account — all totally legal! That could be very Japanese.”