Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

AJNA-VINIVARTA GANAPATI

COPPER ALLOY

TIBET CIRCA 15TH CENTURY

The exotic form of Ganapati is supported by a monkey goddess engaged in fellatio, sitting on an amrita vase flowing with jewels and menses. He is depicted with three heads: the elephant-headed Ganesha (primary) with a rat head to its right and a monkey head to its left. The role of the deity is to appease the suffering of insatiable beings.

$10,000 — $15,000

Kit laughed, then became almost somber.

“Get Loewenstein on the phone, OK, Xan?” He shook his head. “That’s a serious gift. That’s a very serious gift.”

Xanthe immediately got through. She handed him the cell.

“Mr. Loewenstein! Mr. Loewenstein! Head, from a monkey ! Yes! Yes! The gift that keeps on giving!”

Then he expressed awed appreciation and began his sober thanks, disappearing into the bedroom as he spoke.

There was nothing for Lisanne to do but go.

Hustlers

HUSTLER’S WAS ONLY forty minutes away. It was a shock to Becca that casinos existed in places other than Vegas, Reno, and Atlantic City. Rusty said that gaming was all over the place — even Palm Springs. Cassandra said the American Indians owned more casinos than Donald Trump. You could even gamble on-line.

It was their third consecutive night. (And their last, according to Cassandra. “Cause our money’s gettin royally flushed.”) Rusty’s guesstimate to Becca was that the couple had dropped at least two hundred thou. They were given the royal treatment. They had their own private blackjack table if they wanted, and everywhere they went security guards politely followed, even standing outside when the girls used the powder room. Cassandra sometimes needed help walking, and the guards were there for that too. Now in her eighth month, she claimed to have stopped drinking but still took painkillers. She said that was OK because she knew a doctor who prescribed certain pills that wouldn’t hurt the fetus. Grady was sloshed and kept wanting to hire the affable men away (he kept slipping them hundies) to be personal bodyguards. Cassandra put the kibosh on it, in a friendly way. “I don’t want no cop knowing where I live,” she said to Becca under her breath.

Each night, Larry Flynt was supposed to be tooling around the premises in his gold-plated wheelchair, but whenever they asked, a pit boss would say he wasn’t in town. Larry’s brother was there, though. Well, whoop-dee-doo. The Dunsmores weren’t too eager to meet frère Flynt. But the casino manager said the Dunsmores and their friends should come to Bel-Air and join Larry for cocktails when he got home from wherever. The funky invitation only rankled them more.

“Shit,” said Grady, “Larry can come to me. Wheel his diapered ass on up to Mulholland!”

Cassandra made a point of laughing louder than she might have.

“Got a bigger house than him any how, ” said Grady. He thought about that and said, “Well, maybe not.” The Dunsmores had a real conniption over that one. No one was feeling any pain.

Becca was returning from the rest room when she saw Rusty and the decorous blue-haired lady. She was in her seventies and clutched his arm with arthritic hands.

“Now young man, I know who you are and I respect your privacy, your right to privacy as a human being. But you, young man, belong to the world. And you are in a public place — not a very wonderful public place, I may add — so you cannot mind if I call you to task. I know that you are Russell Crowe. And I cannot remember if you are an Australian or a New Zealander, but I am of a certain age that allows me to say what’s on my mind. I am an elder, and while we do not honor elders in this country as we should and as they do in others, I know that you will not object — and I don’t care if you do! — if I tell you, young man, that you are simply marvelous. A marvelous actor. And a wonderful lit’ry man. You are authorial. I have never heard such marvelous acceptance speeches in my life! So marvelously composed and thought out, with such theatricality! I wish, young man, that you would write a book —not one of those damn tell-alls but a real book, a book of poetry, the poetry that’s within you. A memoir or a marvelous novel. Dylan Thomas is there, inside . Now I know when to shut up, I’ve lived long enough to know that, and I will leave you be, young man.” She clenched him hard and fast. “Don’t let them be your master!” she said, cautioning like a feral gypsy. “You are the artist. You have the power. ”

She winked, then hobbled away on a tripod cane.

Becca slipped her arm in Rusty’s. They ambled to the sushi bar.

“California roll, Ms. Barrymore?” he said.

“No thanks.” She was happy to see him in such good humor — and that he hadn’t taken offense at the old woman’s eccentric ambush. “Been gambling?”

“A bit.”

“Does Grady give you money?”

Wrong question. She saw his face cloud over, then reappear.

“I assure you that when he does, it won’t be for gambling. Not this kind.”

She softly tickled his knuckles as if to undo her crassness.

“I think they’re just about ready to leave,” said Rusty. “Want to go over to the Four Seasons? Or do you want to go home?”

“What’s at the Four Seasons?”

“I think they’re going to get a room. We can hang awhile then split.”

Next Day Delivery

VIV WORKED LATE. They judiciously kept separate homes, but she stayed over most of the time. She didn’t always tell Kit when she was coming, and this time the house was dark. He might be out. She was on her way to draw a bath when Viv saw his shadow in the living room.

“Oh my God, you scared me! Bumpkin, are you OK?”

She turned on a lamp. He was on the floor beside the couch, drunk. He looked as if he’d been crying.

“Bumpkin?” She kneeled beside him, like a nun to a homeless person. Softly, she said, “Honey, what’s going on?”

“This,” he said, proffering a script. “ This is what’s going on.”

Viv opened it — there was no title page.

“ Special Needs. That’s what it’s called. Though Darren said that may change.”

“Darren?”

“Aronofsky.”

“He wrote it?”

“I don’t know, Cherry Girl. I think so.”

“And you love it?” she said, with a broadening smile.

“God wrote it,” he said. “Bin Laden wrote it. Jeffrey Katzenberg wrote it. Cherry Girl wrote it. My dead mother wrote it…”

“Kitchener — do you think you’re going to do it?”

She knew how unhappy he’d been, how much he wanted to work on something amazing. She had never seen him like this before. Shattered and ecstatic.

“If I don’t do it, it’s gonna do me. ” He reached for the shot glass, downing its contents with melodramatic finesse. “A script comes from nowhere — and it’s like whoa, ‘beginner’s mind.’ You don’t bring anything to it, it just is. You can see it — the way you used to see shit. Before the shoe dropped or the whatever and you became a product. A corporation. Brand-new again. Beginner’s mind. ”

Viv grabbed him and gave his neck a hundred little kisses while he squirmed and smiled, pouring and swallowing another shot.

“Bumpkin, do you know how lucky we are? How fucking lucky we are? That you can just stand there — for however long — and whisper in the wind: I want something crazy and brilliant, something I can finally be passionate about. And when you’re ready — when you’re ready to receive —God just returns that, returns all that energy, he fuckin FedExes it to you cause you’re so pure and you’ve worked so fuckin hard, Kit — not just on yourself but you have helped so many people —God just sends it right back to you on the whirlwind!”