Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

Swathed in blankets, sitting on a cushion of terry cloth, Lisanne made a game of the speed in which she told the shit to leave her body. She nudged the feces back and forth before expelling it with slow, determined gallantry, envisioning the putrescence first as dark clouds of turbulence, then as disease and fear, finally transforming to rainbow light. In the relative silence that ensued (born not of the rough ride, but of the stymied group’s concern for Lisanne), she recalled the noble practice of cleaning Kit’s toilets and the peace it had bestowed and made the entreaty and promise that she would take formal refuge in the vows if only the Source and Oneness would now spare her, if only the Source and Oneness would let her return to Riverside for her sacred chores again, if only the Source and Oneness would allow her to live long enough to give her man the conciliatory gift of the Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Replacement Buddha.

Special Needs

BURKE WORE A chef’s hat and apron. Tula stood at the grill, in uniform: gargantuan three-piece C & R Clothiers relic and equally outsize grin. With fierce concentration, Kit Lightfoot, human pendulum, stood barefoot on the leather swing and propulsed a hair-raising arc. He was the biggest swing daredevil that Ulysses S. Grant or any other school had ever seen. No butterflies; no fear. Cela remembered watching when she was a girl, afraid he would fly off into space and shatter himself on the blacktop. Her heart used to pound, and there was something sexy about the pounding, even though at the time, she wasn’t sure what those kinds of feelings meant.

• • •

BURKE WAS LOADED. He went off on Cela about some shit or other while she did the dishes. Cela said she didn’t even know why she was doing the dishes because they mostly used plastic plates. She was loaded too and shouted back. Tula went to the car and read Robert Ludlum, which seemed to be the only thing he ever did read, same thick paperback, week in, week out. (When he finished, he’d just start over again.) Burke went out to the yard and stripped and sat naked in the pool with a bottle of Jack. Kit curled up on the grungy sofa and watched himself on an E! bio.

• • •

TULA STRETCHED HIS legs and smoked. Squatted down to sponge-soak the bumper sticker that someone had inexplicably gonzoed him with: MY KIDS THINK I’M AN ATM.

Razored it off.

• • •

KIT SAT IN PJ’S at the end of the bed.

Walked to the window and stared at the moon; heard a moan.

Padded through the dark hall toward his father’s room. Stood there at the open door. Burke’s bedside lamp was on. He was fucking Cela. She was on her stomach. He sensed Kit’s presence, swiveling his neck to stare at his son. They looked at each other awhile before Burke went back to his business. Kit fished out his cock and started to rub. He rubbed until he came, then ran to the living room and turned on the TV, ashamed. Cried and rocked and ate an entire bag of chips before getting engrossed in an old CSI.

The Standard Wrap

RUSTY AND BECCA waited in the vaulted living room. There was a shindig going on, and Rusty thought they’d forgotten about the wrap party. Then Grady popped his head in and said a limo was coming and that Rusty and Becca should just smoke a doobie and chill.

There was always some kind of happening on Mulholland. Cassandra usually had one or two QuestraWorld interns wandering around with a DV cam recording the nefarious goings-on for a work-in-progress prototype of “Been There, Dunsmore.” You had to watch your behavior.

“Hope they don’t do anything too weird,” said Becca, once they were more or less alone again. “Especially in front of Spike.”

“Like what?” said Rusty.

“Like embarrassing. Sometimes Grady and Cass can just be… really weird. Haven’t you noticed?”

Rusty laughed, coughing out weedsmoke.

They wandered outside, where Dr. Thom Janowicz held court by the pool. He’d met the Dunsmores through Grady’s lawyer, Ludmilla Vesper-Weintraub. Ludmilla sent a lot of clients Thom’s way, including those who had reaped windfalls from the city by settling wrongful arrest or racial profiling suits. It was Ms. Vesper-Weintraub’s feeling that having a ton of money dumped on you could be a hardship in itself; the golden downtrodden needed all the help they could get. Thom was an old college friend and someone she prized for easily relating to people of all colors and income strata. Aside from his workshops on SWS (sudden wealth syndrome), Dr. J was a novice screenwriter, and Ludmilla thought that he and the Dunsmores would make a nice fit. She was right. With his flair for storytelling and winning disposition, the amiable raconteur in horn-rims and tweed was already a regular in various “Been There, Dunsmore” episodes that Cassandra cobbled together on Final Cut Pro. Dr. J was also engaged to write a movie for QuestraWorld, for which, not being a member of the WGA, he’d been generously paid guild minimum.

Rusty wasn’t thrilled to hear that a wanna-be like Dr. J was already on the Dunsmore payroll. He was nearly finished with his own screenplay — they knew as much — and no one had offered him a goddamn thing. Grady countered that was because Rusty’s script predated the incorporation of QuestraWorld; he admitted having worked on it, at least in his head anyway, for years. Grady said that he still thought of Rusty’s “spec” as a QuestraWorld project, regardless. Well that’s good, said Rusty, peevishly. Keep thinkin. Think away. Have big ol’ happy thoughts. Because Rusty said that maybe he’d just take his script elsewhere. Fine, said Grady. Rock on. Prob’ly plenty of folks out there who love unfinished scripts. Shit, said Grady, you don’t even have a title. The fuck I don’t, said Rusty. Then I’d like to hear it, said Grady. Rusty got a far-off, suavely proprietary look in his eye and said, Gonna call it “To Kill a Unicorn.” Grady sat there nodding his head, quiet. I like it, said Grady. I like that. Shit, I really like that. Out from nowhere, in the kitchen somewhere, Cassandra shouted, Somebody already used that title. She said she saw a biography about Dorothy Stratten on the E! channel and that somebody already used that title in a book. About Dorothy and her murder. Grady said, So the fuck what, I like it. Hell, it’s good enough to use again. You can’t do that, said Cassandra. Bullshit, said Grady. You can’t copyright a title. Ask our lawyer. Anybody knows that. Oh yeah? said Cassandra. Then let’s you and me write a script and call it Star Wars, she said. That’s what we’ll call Rusty’s script, she said, laughing. Rusty said sagely, That book about Dorothy Stratten was called The Killing of the Unicorn. Mine’s called “To Kill a Unicorn.” See? said Grady. Know-it-all. See? Man knows his shit. Man done researched. Man knows all the titles out there. Knowledge is fucking power ! Cassandra said, Whatever. But I still think it sounds like To Kill a Mockingbird. Yeah, snapped Grady, only it’s “To Kill a Fucking Unicorn,” which is not a fucking mockingbird, unless a mockingbird has a fucking horn in its head, which it doesn’t, last time I looked. You ain’t never even looked at a mockingbird, said Cassandra. Ain’t never even seen one. Yeah, well you’re gonna see one in a minute goin tweet tweet tweet with my fucking fist like a horn in your head if you don’t shut the fuck up. Fuckin hag. He turned to Rusty and said, I like it, man, I do. It rocks. You got the gift, man. You got it. Always knew you did. Then Grady said that Questra-World should have “first option,” and Rusty parried that people usually had to pay for first option. Just like you’re paying Dr. Phil. Oops, I mean Dr. J. Dr. J’s the man, said Grady. Gonna win hisself an Academy Award. They went on like that, having a friendly go at each other, jousting their unicorn horns.