Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

“Okay, no estoy es problemo. He was a friend — of my mother’s too. I had an idea for a script, a long time ago, and when I met you the other day, things fell quickly into place.”

“Yes, they did, didn’t they! I can see that.”

“Since my story mostly revolves around you, I wanted to get your input.”

“Revolves around me?”

The girl with the walkie came and stood a few feet away, listening to her headphones. She was waiting for a cue to usher in Mr. DeVore; head slightly atilt, her eyes had the dull, frank look of someone making potty.

“Perhaps,” said the thespian navigator, “we can talk about this some other time.”

“Oh sure! I can come to the house. I saw it in In Style , by the way — your place in Encino? I love the grotto your wife designed. She’s a very talented lady!”

The girl stepped forward. “Hassan, they’re ready for you.”

“Karen, this is Simon Krohn. Actually , he’s my psychiatrist’s son.” The actor sneezed violently but Simon realized it wasn’t a sneeze at all, but a strangled guffaw. Karen grinned, absorbed in finding a free channel.

“Why don’t you send the précis to my agent?”

“But I have a copy with me.”

“Better to send it — Donny Ribkin at ICM.” The Vorbalid was ditching him before Simon could lock on to his coordinates. “But thank you much. Kind of you to drop by.”

“My mother thought it would be a good idea to cut through the normal channels — you know, eliminate the middleman.”

DeVore stopped in his tracks. “Calliope said you should come here?”

Neither of them looked as if they believed it.

“Well, actually, she suggested I drop it off at the guest house for when you come on Wednesday — at five o’clock. Five’s your time, isn’t it?”

“I see. Then let me have it.”

“I can still send it to your agent.”

“Hand it over and I’ll look at it tonight.”

Hassan made his exit, “Heart of Arknes” in hand. Simon crouched at the edge of the Fellcrum Outback, collecting thoughts and breath, amazed at the adrenaline the afternoon had required. On the other side, they readied for camera. The Dead Animal Guy sat cross-legged amidst the rocky purplish wilderness, contented, a solitary celestial soldier. Only the presence of a lone grip, Styrofoam cup in hand, surveying a table of pastries, fruit and trailmix, invaded his fantasy, rooting it in the workaday.

Gliding down Sunset Boulevard. Something in the road. Harpy upon him, hurls him to the ground, scattering teeth to curb like a bloody herd of mah-jongg chips. The dreaming physician ran eastward with the piggybacked cargo, necrotic hands clapped around his neck — trying not to glance down at the wormy holes in the cuticles — apocryphal howling wind chilling him to the bone. Rounding the recurring corner and standing at recurring gate…

On the way to Malibu, Dr. Trott turned over last night’s images; they still had punch. Same dream, of varying degree, for weeks. Tranquilizers didn’t help. He wondered if soon he would be in the grip of agrypnia, the insomniac’s insomnia: total inability to sleep. This disorder , said the literature, fatal if it lasts much longer than a week, is also seen in diseases and intoxications — especially encephalitis lethargica and ergot-poisoning . He felt foolish and anachronistic, the “recurring nightmare” concept itself a throwback to the fifties, to the time of shelters and tailfins and Miltown. The Three Faces of Les .

It was a big blue Sunday and Obie invited him to the beach house for a screening of Teorema . The old friends had had a few whispery, dishy early morning phone chats (Obie saying everyone was full of shit and no one would be able to prosecute, Les trying to believe, scared, needy, unconvincingly cavalier, hanging on Big Star skirts through the incessant hiccups of her call-waiting; just when the paranoia started to recede, Obie would click back on and ask if he had any Percocets. Les would panic, wondering if the feds had tapped the line, and ask, stilted and absurd, if she was kidding. “You know, you should really try to stop being such a fag,” she’d say — so cutting and unnecessary — then take another call and leave him dangling, marooned and punished) but this would be the first they’d seen of each other since the “controversy.”

Moe Trusskopf, Obie’s personal manager, lay sunning on the deck with a new boyfriend, a sweet-faced gay mafia moll who’d been on the circuit awhile and was looking to settle down. Les remembered him from the office. About a year ago, he came in with a boil on his ass; he lanced it, then jacked him off. (Moe knew the story, and introduced the boy as Lancelot.) He’d met Cat Basquiat before too, but not in the comfort of his professional offices. At twenty-three — ten years younger than the hostess — his fee was in the mid-sevens and rising. His mother had recently died, rendering the tiny MOM tattoo on his hairless chest mildly poignant. He had a manta ray — shaped birthmark on the upper left quad and pierced nipple as lagniappe. Les scanned greedily. The whole package gave the potential indictee a stony hard-on.

The viewing room had a clarinet-sized Giacometti, a Noguchi landscape table, a Kitaj pastel and a Baselitz “inversion.” The projection screen dropped down over one of those big Ed Ruscha movie paintings that spelled The End. Baccarat bowls brimmed with blue M&Ms and rock candy. The doctor liked Pasolini well enough but wasn’t up for it. He let his thoughts drift back to a year ago, Lancelot face-down on the table, Les numbing and pressing and draining. Time for some dilatation and curettage…When his rubbery attention snapped back to the screen, the father was about to discover Terence Stamp in bed with his sleeping son.

“Like to have been a fly on that wall,” said Moe.

“How ‘bout a fly on those jeans?” said Obie, and everyone laughed.

Les wandered again, rudderless, this time to a recent meeting with the lawyer. While the attorney general’s formal accusations were imminent, counsel was confident the matter would end in a letter of reprimand from the Medical Board — a slap on the wrist. If that wasn’t forthcoming, an alternative might be probation and community service; at worst, a DEA administrative hearing aimed to revoke or curtail the dermatologist’s prescriptive powers. Les sucked on a saccharine crystal. The baronial law office yanked inside-out like a sock, reborn as a dungeon with a Philippe Starck sink — the free-floating physician now in protective custody at the downtown jail in all its slabby City of Quartz splendor, co-starring with Terence Stamp in Kiss of the Spider Woman . Stamp sure was gorgeous. Could’ve used a nipple ring, though.

Cat Basquiat had his tongue in Obie’s mouth. When Les reached for the M&Ms, Moe said, “What are those, Percocets? I got a headache, Les. Gimme.” Lancelot laughed. Obie said, “Don’t tease, Moe, you know how delicate he is.” Les managed a smile as he faced the screen again, then whoosh back to the clink for some requisite cyst-popping and rimming of trusties whoosh to a DEA meeting, where he stroked out in mid-testimony, crapping his Tommy Nutter trousers as he fell from the witness stand. The rest of his days would be spent in a gold-plated wheelchair, feet drooping down like an unemployed marionette.

Les shuddered, shrugging off this specialized humoresque, knocking a loafer askew and propping a foot up. He reached into the bowl and licked another sugarcane pebble, dreaming of Rock Candy Mountain mistily shrouded by this boy Basquiat’s anal fumes, all vinegar and tuberoses.