Bruce Wagner - Still Holding

Cela’s swollen belly floats toward him as he walks through the door. Everything smiles at them now. He rests a hand on the ripeness; then her hand on his, warming the womb. Her once and future kings.

On Her Own

ALREADY MARCH, and the tree isn’t down. The maid carefully dusts the ornaments. She told her mom she was just going to leave it, and her manager loved that because it was great, quirky shtick for interviews, which she’d been doing a lot of since the Spike Jonze movie came out.

Becca went to Waynesboro for Thanksgiving, then Dixie brought two favorite cousins out for Christmas. She came back again for her daughter’s birthday — the Ides of March — when Becca threw herself a party at Boardner’s. The entire talent team was there plus Annie and Larry, Becca’s new acting coach, fellow dramatis personae from Metropolis, and last but not least Sharon Belzmerz, the angel in her corner from the very beginning, who not only introduced her to Spike Jonze (more or less) but got her a part on Without a Trace and hooked her up with a former associate who placed her in national Ford and Cingular spots. (Whenever they were in public and she’d had a few Flirtinis, the casting director liked to refer mischievously to Becca’s Six Feet Undergirl “moment” like it was some kind of softcore skeleton in her closet.) More important, Sharon had been instrumental in getting Becca the A & E pilot she’d just finished shooting, 1200 North, in which she played Rhiannon, wild-child Paris Hiltonesque daughter of a rich Bay Area matriarch (think Danielle Steel). After the overdose of a boyfriend, Rhiannon decides to take a nun’s vows. Testing her faith and resolve, Marlee Matlin (family friend and wise mother superior of an East L.A. Carmelite monastery) bids Rhiannon first do a year of volunteer work at the nearby USC–County trauma center. Dana Delany plays the chief surgeon. Seeing aspects of herself in the young girl, Dana takes Rhiannon under her wing.

Becca was shocked when Dana swept into the Boardner’s patio with her sometime beau David Gough, a TV star in his own right. (She hadn’t expected her to come.) Dana was so elegant, chummy, and unaffected, and a slightly tipsy Mrs. Mondrain kept saying to her face how she was “television royalty.” But when Marlee made her entrance, Becca’s mom really lost it — she’d been such a huge fan since Children of a Lesser God and even done volunteer work with deaf kids in Charlottesville. Larry Levine took some portraity digital shots of Dixie with Marlee, Dana, and David (which she downloaded to the family Web site as soon as she got back to Becca’s) before calling in the Cameron, the Jim Carrey, and the Barbra, for a campy group pose. Becca had invited them at the last minute because she’d panicked that none of her invitees would show; most look-alikes were so needy, they’d go anywhere they were asked. They were sweet and harmless, and now she felt sad for them — a million miles away.

• • •

THE DUNSMORES didn’t know about 1200 North, and Becca wanted to keep it that way for as long as she could. She had escaped the Mulholland guesthouse last year (on the anniversary of 9/11, which felt appropriate), the very day that Grady was arrested for assaulting a UTA agent during one of their out-of-control theme parties. Last summer Cassandra took a lover, a gaunt woman with hep C that she’d met through Dr. Janowicz’s sudden wealth syndrome support group. (She had recently won an eight-figure settlement on behalf of her obese husband, whose death had been attributed to a ride on the Magnum XL-200 roller coaster at Cedar Point.) It seemed that almost immediately after they’d been introduced, Cassandra had insisted her new friend become an equity holder in QuestraWorld, sharing CEO, CFO, and COO duties. This became a bone of contention with Grady, whose OxyContin intake rapidly escalated around the time the threesomes became Sapphic, behind-closed-doors twosomes, which egged him on to calamitous Hard Rock Casino sorties; Cassandra, conferring with their Encino lawyers, took a flurry of steps to limit his monthly draw, concerned that he was “blowing the legacy.” Though Mama Cass had given up on the family (such as it was) reality skein, as far as Becca knew, the “entity”—at least Grady anyway — was still actively hyping “To Kill a Unicorn,” the buried, Saran-Wrapped pages of which he had finally uncovered at a site one hundred yards from a Lands’ End outlet in Primm, Nevada. (Once retrieved, he kept right on, to the Hard Rock.) But even with the low buzz in the press about Herke Lamar Goodson’s upcoming trial, “Unicorn” was going nowhere fast. The Dunsmores tried for months to get her to call Viv Wembley to see if she would be interested in starring or maybe just producing (as a full QuestraWorld partner), and Becca thought that was a measure of how crazy the couple was because they already knew that Viv had threatened Becca with a restraining order and was terrified of her at best. Months ago, the young actress made the mistake of telling Cassandra that Viv’s business managers had fucked up and she’d never signed a confidentiality clause like Gingher and the rest. Cassandra said that if Viv didn’t help with “Unicorn,” Becca should just tell her she was going to sell a memoir “to the highest bidder.” Becca said that was blackmail and she was going to pretend she didn’t even hear it. The Dunsmores continued to be psychotically oblivious to the fact that “To Kill a Unicorn” happened to be written and conceived by the homicidal friend of the man who’d assaulted Viv’s former fiancé—hel- lo ! Apparently, they didn’t see that as an obstacle. Annie said they should definitely be committed.

Meanwhile, Grady got “Unicorn” to Eric Roberts with $300,000 attached even though Cassandra and the gaunt woman, as co-CEOs, — CFOs, and — COOs, hadn’t approved the offer. Fortunately or unfortunately, Eric passed. (Grady suspected he was lied to when told that Mr. Roberts had been given the script for perusal — else why would the actor have Pasadena’d? Becca presumed the party-pummeled talent agent was somewhere in the mix.) The gaunt woman thought they should approach Adrien Brody, ASAP. Cassandra couldn’t believe it when Grady emerged from a narcotic haze just long enough to inform them that the property was now “out” to Mickey Rourke. The gaunt woman said Mickey Rourke had his face beat in a Florida prizefight, and looked like “a ghoul in a Lara Croft.” “Mickey just might say yes,” Grady said gallingly. “Mickey likes money. He’s doin his comeback thing. Mickey wants to be a star.”

Becca’s only wish was to get these people and their bad karma off her. She knew they’d turn into heat-seeking missiles the minute they got wind of success — if 1200 North was picked up for September, Grady and Cass would be all over her. By then, she hoped to be able to hire a bodyguard, or even have a big agency like ICM or CAA looking out for her: if she was going to be making potential millions, they’d be highly motivated. But until that day came, the Dunsmores had to be considered loose cannons. She’d keep a distance but play the coddling game too.

Becca used her Cingular checks to rent a place in Silverlake. She hung Chinese lanterns around the patio that overlooked the sloping house from the hill’s high end. That’s where she finally moved the yuletide tree, as a kind of performance piece installation. But the flocking was gray, and nothing smelled like Christmas anymore.

Under the Medication Tree

AFTER LISANNE’S hospitalization, Reggie Marck spoke with a certain party in upstate New York who was dismayed to learn that her niece had given birth. Lisanne had talked freely of the old flame (the boy’s alleged father), and while she had kept the details to herself, the lawyer didn’t feel he was in violation of a confidence when revealing as much to the aunt. She immediately put him in touch with Robbie Sarsgaard.