Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

The Omen

ON HIS WAY to the production office, Kit zipped into the Coffee Bean, on Sunset. By now they were used to seeing him. Even though most of the customers and employees were actors, they kept their cool. They were careful not to get too ruffled.

“Next guest in line, please!”

The server was mildly retarded. He spoke loudly, with a perceptible slur — straight out of I Am Sam.

“A large latte please,” said Kit. “With no foam.”

The server called to the nose-ringed barrista at the machine. “One no-foam latte large for guest, please!” he exclaimed, turning back to Kit. “We are living large !” He used a gloved hand to point. “Your drink will be there, sir, in ohnee one minute!”

The barrista seized the quirky moment to exchange warm, sidewise looks with the superstar. Kit could see her tongue stud.

• • •

HE DROVE TO the Valley and hung with Darren. They were shooting in ten weeks, but the kind of barely suppressed anarchy that typically characterizes preproduction hadn’t yet kicked in. Today, everything seemed under control.

A P.A. came in to say that Marisa had arrived.

Kit had met the actress before socially, with Viv. They small-talked before reading through the scene. Then Darren made a few suggestions and they started over, with a different approach. The director liked the way they worked off each other.

At the end of the afternoon, on the way to his car, Kit saw a man scurry toward him with a cockeyed, swivel-hipped gait. It was the retarded server from the Coffee Bean.

“Hi!”

He was nonplussed. Was the kid delivering cappuccinos on the lot?

“Hey,” said Kit tentatively.

“Sorry to bother you but — I just wanted to say that I think the project with Aronofsky is killer. ” The tilt and slur had miraculously evaporated.

“Who are you?” asked Kit.

“Larry Levine!” said the man, sunnily. “I’m an actor. Goin up as one of your rehab buds. Kit Lightfoot and Darren Aronofsky —I am so stoked. It was a total omen running into you this morning! I’ve only been there a week but it took me months to get that job. They don’t even know I’m doin my ‘research’ thing. It’s a whole different world out there when people think you’re ‘challenged’—”

“Hey, fuck off. ”

Larry Levine stood there, perplexed and bleary-eyed.

“Don’t draw me into your bullshit process, man. You want to perpetrate that nonsense on people, fine—”

“But Darren said—”

“I don’t give a shit. Why would I want to fucking hear about it?”

“I’m sorry, man,” said the dismayed actor. “I’m really sor—”

“Just stay away from me, OK?”

“I totally respect you. I—”

Kit got in his G-wagen and gunned it.

• • •

THAT NIGHT KIT and Alf were at the Standard, drunk on scorpions and laughing their asses off.

“You didn’t get spammed, you got Sam ed! He fucking Sam ed you!” cried Alf, showering spittle onto his friend. “He I Am Sam ed you!”

“One large no-foam latte for guest!” said Kit, in spot-on imitation.

“That is so fuckin genius. Tell you one thing, man. You better make sure they don’t hire this guy — it’s Eve Harrington time!”

“We are living large !”

“Café latte?” said Alf, in his best Sean Penn improv. “Excellent choice, excellent choice!”

“Mr. Tourette’s” stumbled over to join the dysfunctional fray.

“Shit motherfucker!” ticced Lucas, dusting off the clinical signs of what Alf called Golden Globe syndrome. “Shitpissfuckcunt. Tampaxdick down Grannie’s throat! Fuck Mommy’s hairynaziniggerass!”

Kit convulsed.

“I love my li’l guhl!” whimpered Alf, in emotional paroxysm. “Why you no think I c’n love her? You cannot take my li’l guhl! She the only-est thing I have!”

“Fuckpissnigger! West Nile smallpox shitstained babycunt JonBenet Elizabeth Smart sucksbeanerdick! Arf! Arf! Arf! AIDS! SARS! Sickle Cell! Arf! Arf!”

“Stop!” cried Kit, clutching his gut. “You have to stop!”

“Excellent choice! Excellent choice!”

“No more! No more! No more!”

Beginner’s Mind

SHE WENT TO the Bodhi Tree on Melrose. A child was forming within her, already the size of a toenail. She was lost.

There was too much to learn. She stared awhile at the statues of saints and bodhisattvas inside the glass case. Of course, none compared with Kit’s. There were crystals, beaded necklaces, and all manner of fetishes with centipedal arms. She wandered past meditation pillows, through aisles of Vedic texts and theosophy, to the only section that made any real sense: fiction. She scanned the volumes, her fingers settling upon Siddhartha. She dimly remembered reading it in high school. The pretty black-and-white cover hadn’t changed.

Poetry followed, and she saw the fat book from her father’s library— The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa.

Loitering in Eastern Religions, she quick-study gleaned a Buddhist 101 introductory: the Three Jewels ( the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha ) and the Four Noble Truths — (1) suffering ( duhkha ), (2) origin of suffering ( trishna ), (3) cessation of suffering ( nirvana ), and (4) the Eightfold Path ( marga ). She flipped through the primer’s pages but couldn’t focus. Instead, she selected a book called Spiritual Tourist. That was what she felt like.

She grabbed the Upanishads, recognizing the title from the blond Bel-Air guru’s mention. She picked up some incense, a poster of the Wheel of Becoming, and a few yoga magazines before returning to the shelf for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Buddhism. (Just thinking about which Eightfold Path to take first seemed exhausting.) She was going to buy a statue — a Tara or a Kali — but they were sort of pricey so she got some beautiful laminated cards instead. One was of the “Shakyamuni Buddha.”

Tad Yatha Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Shakyamuni Ye Soha

Seated on a lion throne, Shakyamuni Buddha holds his right hand in the earth-touching mudra. With this gesture he called upon the earth to witness his lifetimes dedicated to attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all beings and triumphed over Mara, Lord of Illusion.

Lisanne stood at the cash register while they ran her credit card. She was somehow ashamed — ashamed of her life — and was looking over her shoulder with random paranoia when Phil Muskingham materialized.

“Well, hello!”

“What are you doing here?”

She looked stricken, as if caught shoplifting.

“My therapist told me to pick up a lingam stone.” He held the egg-shaped thing in an open hand for her to see.

“What is it?”

“It’s supposed to balance energy — or something like that. What, are you a complete idiot?”

Lisanne was taken aback until she noticed him nodding toward the Day-Glo orange tome as the clerk bagged it.

“Yup, that’s me,” she said. “A total spiritual moron.”

“I was going to call you,” he said. “Are you free? I mean, do you have some time?”

“Sure.”

“I mean now. Because you know what I was going to do? I was thinking of going over to the Self-Realization Center. Ever been?”

“I haven’t. But you’re so funny!”

“Why?” he said, with a smile that charmed her.

“I have trouble seeing you as the mystical type.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” he said, nodding again at the hidden Idiot’s Guide. Finally, she laughed.