Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

“She is really beautiful,” said Annie.

“And when this other person she had working for her quit? Honey-chile, I moved right in. That girl was so fucked up. Chartrain.”

“Chartrain?” said Larry.

“Chartrain, Soul Train, whatever. Viv helped get me a car, and she was cool. But then I, like, saw this whole other side to her.”

“How’s she dealing with what happened?” asked Becca, in hushed tones. “Weren’t they engaged?”

“That’s actually really sad,” said Gingher. “Because Kit is very cool. Very sweet and down-to-earth. We always got along. I’ve, like, almost gone to see him at the hospital a bunch of times. But I heard the security was so intense.”

“Does she visit him?” asked Annie.

Gingher nodded. “She did at first, but now it’s like a lot less. A lot less. She never asked me to go with. But he’s really doing better from what I understand. I mean, they don’t know what’s going to happen — with his mind — but he’s supposedly doing a lot better.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to baste,” intoned Larry.

The girls ignored him. “I don’t know why they hooked up,” said Gingher. “Well, I guess I know why she hooked up with him. She’s got that TV-inferiority thing. Kit gave her street cred.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to taste, said Hannibal Lecter.”

“He wouldn’t even say that! Would you shut up? God, you are so annoying!” She turned back to Becca and Annie. “I guess it’s just a stone sex trip. Or was. I know they’re kind of out there.”

“Our Lady of the Perpetual Potty certainly is.”

“But he’s like — intellectually and just as a person — Kit’s like, her total opposite. ”

“Really?” said Larry. “When I met him he acted like a total prick.”

“You bring it out!” said Gingher.

“You met him through Gingher?” asked Annie.

“I told you,” said Becca, reminding her. “They met while Larry was working at the Coffee Bean.”

“I was going to do that movie,” he said, filling Annie in. He loved telling the story. “The Aronofsky thing— Special Needs. But I got fucked by Mr. Brain Dead.”

“That’s not nice,” said Becca.

“Sorry, Virginia.”

“You don’t know that you didn’t get the part because of Kit,” said Gingher. “He’s not vindictive like that. Maybe Aronofsky thought you couldn’t act.”

“Well fuck Mr. Requiem for an Avant-Garde Blow Job too, honey-child, cause my audition was kick-ass. I was on my second callback when Mr. Lightfoot and I had our little run-in, and I got axed the next day.”

“I will always love you for working at the Coffee Bean as a retard!” said Gingher.

“He went off on me, and I just looked at him and said, ‘I’m sorry. I mean, you’re only like making twenty-five million a picture, or what ever, and I’m out there doing what I have to do so I can pay my fucking phone bill —”

“You didn’t say that,” said Gingher, agog.

“Under my breath.”

Gingher guffawed.

“And how do you guys know each other?” asked Annie.

“We met at the Grove,” said Larry.

“We were by ourselves,” said Gingher. “We’d just broken up with our boyfriends.”

“We were crying. ”

“It was so pathetic! We were sitting an aisle away from each other at E.T. ”

“The rerelease.”

“ E.T. is the perfect movie, ” said Annie.

“Gertie!” exulted Gingher. “How cute is Gertie?” She addressed the last to Becca, whom she deemed to be ambassador to the land of Drew.

“What was that, like four years ago?” said Larry. “I’d never even seen it.”

“Can you believe that?” said Annie to the others, outraged.

“I saw Close Encounters, ” he said, “but I never saw E.T. ”

“You know how the Grove — I love the Grove! — has those armrests you can lift up?”

“Lovebird seats,” said Annie.

“So Larry and I see each other crying. And we like started whispering to each other, really loud. Then Larry changes seats—”

“I thought you were Julia Sweeney.”

“—and we sobbed through the whole movie!”

“People were telling us to shut up.”

“Larry told this one person that he was really sorry he was crying but he just found out he had tuberculosis and AIDS. After the movie, we went to the Farmers Market and ran our stories.”

“About the mutual breakups.”

“Who were you going out with?” asked Becca.

“Some pimply-faced Puerto Rican trash,” said Larry. “I think he was, like, twelve.”

“Research for yet another amazing movie role,” said Gingher, with a wink. “And speaking of E.T., ohmygod, you do look so much like Drew!”

“Thank you,” said Becca, as if in rehearsal for when she would finally come into her own.

“Larry said you might be doing that Spike Jonze movie.”

“I hope so,” said Becca. “Because the look-alike stuff doesn’t pay the rent. Not this month anyway.”

Larry was saying how he read somewhere that look-alikes were always being flown to Japan for private parties, when Gingher gaped at a pregnant woman passing by their table. She took one look and blurted out, “ Ohmygod, I can’t even believe I, like, forgot — Viv miscarried. ” She clapped an embarrassed hand over her mouth, in exaggerated fear that the woman had overheard.

“No!” said Annie.

“When?” asked Larry, eyes agleam.

“You guys so totally have to swear you won’t tell anyone.”

“I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” said Becca.

“ No one did,” said Gingher. “I mean, probably not even Kit. ”

“Wouldn’t it have been weird,” said Larry, “if they had a kid and it turned out to be retarded?”

“That’s so sad, ” said Becca. “I mean, she probably lost the baby because of what happened. The stress.”

“Ohmygod, that is so sad, ” echoed Annie.

“But you guys have to swear you won’t talk about it until, like, after it’s in the tabloids. I signed a confidentiality agreement and could really get in trouble. Will you so totally swear?”

Transmigration of Souls

LISANNE’S WATER BROKE in the Century Plaza ballroom, at Tiff’s Heart Giver Courage tribute.

When she stood from her seat, she felt a pang and told Phil she was having a “bladder problem.” By the time they got to the dance floor, everything was soaked. She collapsed in a chair at a table of old people who went on picking at their veal. She was shaking and crying. When the Loewensteins rushed over, Lisanne said she was pregnant and that her water must have broken. Tiff kind of took over. There were five top OB-GYN guys in the house, and all of them kept wanting her to agree that maybe she’d only peed her pants. Just when Lisanne thought it had ebbed, she got flooded anew. They plunked her in a wheelchair and laid her out in the stretch limo. Phil was white as a sheet. One of the OB-GYNs went ahead to Saint John’s.

The nurse told her she was having contractions every five minutes, but she couldn’t feel them. They gave her something to stop the labor, though the discharge was continuous. Phil was so shell-shocked that Tiff, who had already received his crystal figurine and was exhausted as well, announced he would escort the scion home. Roslynn stayed on. She was a great comfort, kind and discreet. She left around midnight without ever broaching the issue of paternity.