Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

Now and then a woman named Cela came. Lisanne liked her rosy smile. She and Kit had supposedly been schoolmates. Lisanne was reorganizing a closet when Cela and Kit’s dad blundered into the room and kissed before noticing her. They giggled and rushed out. A sanghanista said that Cela and Kit used to be together, “back in the day.” Lisanne thought: Hearsay is the worst kind of poison, and the self-inflicted karmic wounds unwittingly suffered by gossipmongers are more deleterious than any sort of wound those who were gossiped about might sustain, no matter what their misdeeds. Sometimes Lisanne detected Mr. Lightfoot watching her in a curious, vaguely predatory way, but she always deflected his gaze with a beneficent, neutered smile — her Mona Lisa vipassana. There was a line to tread, because she wanted to please him, to ensure he allowed her back.

In a few visits, she had caught Kit’s eye only once. He grinned, betraying no recognition of Tiff Loewenstein’s honored messenger, the bringer of the Sotheby’s Buddha. Better yet, she thought. Better a tabula rasa. Then she had a wonderful idea — she would restore him the idol. How fitting that it come full circle! She recalled Tiff objecting to her impulse to bring the sacred object to the hospital, but now things were different. Now, it would be her privilege and her duty. She was absolutely convinced, devotionally convinced, that it was paramount Kit have the bejeweled, copper Buddha and its vibrations at hand. The statue was probably at the Benedict house. She resolved to find the right moment to ask Mr. Lightfoot for his help in tracking it down.

A Special Visit

BURKE WAS SITTING on the can reading the tabloids when the doorbell rang. He looked up, distracted. “Oh shit,” he muttered, remembering.

“Just a minute!”

He sucked it in and made a dash to the linen closet.

Kit sat in the pool, wave machine off, smoking one of those herbal cigarettes Tula rolled for him. (Burke let Tula mix in grass when Kit was in spasm.) He held a silver reflector at his neck, a vintage model that Cela had picked up at the Roadium.

Burke rushed into the yard with a stack of towels and a terry-cloth robe, like some freaked-out bellhop.

“Come on! There’s some people I want you to meet.”

“I’m tanning!” barked Kit, good-naturedly.

He spoke with the long-drawl accent of neurological damage, easily recognized yet easily understood. The manner in which he doggedly scooped words from the ether was cozily endearing and made Kit all the more watchable — the trademark grin shone through, crowned by glinting, CinemaScope eyes.

“Too bad,” said Burke. “Come on!” He helped his laughing son step from the pool, buck naked. The homemade haircut was looking worse by the day, and Burke got a whiff of his breath. “Jesus! Try and use a toothbrush once in a while, will you, please?”

Kit cracked The Smile.

“Folks came a long way to see you,” said Burke, toweling him down. “Came all the way from fucking Hiroshima.”

“Fuck ‘em,” said Kit, bantering.

“Yeah right, I know. But we already did. We dropped the A-bomb.”

“Fuck fuck fuck!”

“I know, I know. Your favorite.”

They melodically fuck-fuck-fucked their way to the house, a gleeful trade-off for getting Kit to cooperate. The herky-jerky gait had vastly improved since Valle Verde days.

“And none of that in front of the Takahashis, OK? They didn’t fly 12,000 miles on Air Nip to hear you dirty-talk.”

The industrialist and his family were gathered in the breakfast room. They began their incessant bows and polite susurrations the moment Kit and his dad came in. The teenage daughters tittered, eyes rolling in their heads like crazed little fillies. The paterfamilias squinted in frozen delight, a tiny DV camera poised in readiness.

“Can’t let you use it, Mr. Takahashi,” said Burke, cordial but stern. “Sorry. So solly. Not part of the agreement.”

He acceded without protest, tucking the camera into its case.

“Pretty girls!” shouted Kit. “Made in Japan!”

The dismayed, kowtowing sisters looked as if they might spontaneously combust. Their bold, still furtive glances at the superstar crescendoed to stroboscopic, inhuman speed.

“I have a tan!” Kit shouted amiably. The sisters retreated then all at once advanced, hands over mouths. “You’re too pale! Too pale! ‘Made in Japan’ is too pale!”

“Come on, girls,” said Burke. He literally shoved them closer while singing, “ Don’t be shy, meet a guy, pull up a chair !” At first they resisted, but when they actually collided into Kit, the ice seemed finally to have broken. Burke said, in an aside to the patriarch, “My son’s a busy man.”

Kit bussed their cheeks, which instantly reddened as if bruised. One girl was now crying while the other tenuously kept psychosis at bay. The industrialist slapped his knees with delight, caroming toward some kind of hysteria himself.

“Well, whaddaya think, Mr. Takahashi?” asked Burke, rhetorically. He began to doubt strongly if his guests could understand a word. “Was it worth it? Was it worth it?” He turned to his son. “Mr. Takahashi owns steel factories.”

“I fuck!” said Kit and Burke rolled his eyes.

“Oh, here we go. Now don’t you start …”

(The one word they might understand.)

“I fuck! I fuck! I fuck! I fuck! I fuck!”

“Come on now, boy,” he chastised.

But no one seemed to care.

Burke laughed along with the Ornamentals, which was what he called them to their faces once he confirmed to his own satisfaction that they were clueless.

• • •

THE CHIEF ORNAMENTAL left twenty-five thousand in cash wrapped carefully in rice paper. The visit had been surreptitiously arranged through a butler at the Bellagio; the industrialist was a whale. Feeling very Ocean’s Eleven, Burke called to say the deal was done. The butler said he was already taken care of, so enjoy.

They watched an Osbournes rerun while Burke discreetly did hits of coke. (He didn’t necessarily want his son to see that.) Kit laughed at something on the show, and Burke said, “What’s so funny? Ozzy talks just like you. Can’t understand a thing he says.” “You can so, ” said Cela defensively. Burke leaned over to kiss the nape of her neck but she pulled away — she didn’t like him doing stuff like that in front of Kit. Burke got up and walked toward the bedroom, turning back to give her a comical come-hither. She smiled and shook her head, then waited a few minutes before kissing Kit’s cheek good night. There were pimples there. The next time Burke wasn’t around she’d squeeze a few and cut Kit’s hair. Cela made a stagy move to the bathroom before joining Burke so as not to be obvious, but Kit was engrossed in the sitcom high jinks and didn’t pay attention to comings and goings.

“Leave the door open,” he said from the bed, with shiny, lecherous eyes. So the kid can have a peek if he wants.

She shut it.

He pulled her to him.

“All that Ornamental money gave me a hard-on.”

Vogue

BECCA WAS EXCITED when the second A.D. called about the Look-Alikes wrap party. Rusty already knew about it. He said Grady and Cassandra were coming along.

There was no reason to mention the party to Viv. When it came to her capricious employer, Annie was always reminding Becca to “curb your enthusiasm” (Annie’s favorite show). Becca knew that Annie was right. Anything having to do with her being a professional look-alike, i.e., a loser, was fine — Viv seemed to revel in it. Anything else, particularly something that pulled her closer into the fraternity of the Business, was dicey. Whenever she auditioned for something — and auditions were few and far between — or even when she got called to be a Six Feet Under corpse, she was forced to lie to escape Viv’s punishing ways. Becca secretly crossed herself that first time when she blurted out that her mother was sick with breast cancer and sometimes needed to be driven to doctor’s appointments. Each time an “appointment” arose, Viv was so kind and sympathetic, going overboard to ask if there was any way she could help. Becca wanted to crawl into a hole and die when she learned that Viv’s mom had passed away from that very thing. She wished she could take it back. She knew that if the truth was ever found out, she would be fired and publicly vilified. Blackballed. Still, Becca didn’t feel as if she had any alternative — she’d come to Hollywood to be an actress, not an actress’s personal assistant. And Viv had made her feelings clear from the beginning. Becca could always quit. But even though the money was bad, working for Viv Wembley was invaluable in terms of experience and connections. Lots of what she did on a daily basis was boring, though other parts of the job, such as interacting with people she was in awe of and had only read about or seen in movies and on television, more than made up for the downside. (It sure beat going out on jobs for Elaine Jordache.) Viv was rough, but Gingher had exaggerated her bad traits. Gingher had an attitude problem herself. No one, not even Larry Levine, had heard from her since she supposedly left for New York. Maybe Viv got her thrown in jail. Becca was still half-worried that she would return from wherever and try to get her job back.