Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

“I–I-I–I can’t.”

“Come on…”—Taj manages a trembly grin—“ there it is. And there it is again!” A bigger one this time, Elvis twitch receding, face splotched pink. “You’re cute when you smile, like the Northern Exposure kid. God, those eyebrows. Who has eyebrows like that?”

“My m-mother.”

“Scary.” Taj starts to laugh, too hard. Zev is charmed. “Why are you laughing?”

“It’s just so… absurd .”

“Yes, it is. Absurd you were going to throw away the only fucking mentor you will ever have in this town. You were going to throw out your life —and trust me, you will have one, a major one, if you watch and listen — you were going to throw all that away because someone called you a cunt. That is absurd.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” says another nervous helper, popping head through door, “but Alfred is here.”

“That would be the nigger steward. Hmmmmm — fly the friendly guys of United. Mimsy helped me score.”

“You met him on the plane?” Shyly conversational.

“You know, you’re a real dumbo. I said steward , didn’t I? United , as in Airlines ? God, you’re dumb.” Taj downcast again, Zev cheery. “He’s got a great ass. I call it the black box. Get it, Dumbo? It’s the only thing that survives his affairs.”

Chet Stoddard

The dentist’s wife was an exception. Not too many people recognized him anymore and that was a blessing.

He used to look like his letterman homeboy from Wayne State, Chad Everett. Chet ‘n’ Chad, gridiron buds. People thought they were brothers. They came to Hollywood and got jobs parking cars at the Luau on Rodeo Drive. Those were prehistoric days, when the street had a leafy small-town charm — nineteen sixty-two. A twenty-four-hour coffee shop at the corner of the Beverly Wilshire was always good for star-gazing: Broderick “Ten-Four” Crawford and Phil Silvers, Nick Adams and Frank Sutton (Sarge from Gomer Pyle ). One night after work Chet smoked some reefer, walked to the hotel and plunked himself down in a big booth where Tony Curtis was holding court. No one seemed to care. He chatted up a redhead, the roommate of Curtis’s girl. Her name was Lavinia Welch and she was a secretary at the Morris Agency around the corner. Her father, a writer for Bob Hope, was a client there. She was nineteen years old.

They started dating and Lavinia pushed him to go on auditions. He won bit parts in The Sons of Katie Elder and Follow Me, Boys! and a recurring role on Rawhide . Lavinia wanted to marry, but Chet was still sowing wild oats. When she caught him in bed with her roommate, they split up. He spent days and nights drinking and playing pool at Barney’s Beanery, back when the place still had a FAGGOTS STAY OUT sign nailed above the door. The barflies, especially showbiz fringers, knew Chet from his television work and accorded him real-actor status. He moved nearby so he wouldn’t have to drive — he’d been busted twice for DUI. That was okay too, because all the sluts and fine ladies liked driving him home.

He found his way back to Lavinia. His career foundered — cut from The Wild Bunch , Chet never worked as a film actor again. After they married, the father-in-law helped buy them a house in a new development called Mount Olympus. That was fitting because Lavinia — new husband and new digs, high above the glittering city — really did feel like a God in Heaven.

Severin Welch was eccentric and charming and rolling in TV money. His wife, Diantha, a frustrated ballerina, had hard, elegant bones. (Chet never saw her eat anything but little red potatoes.) Having in-laws was easy because his parents were dead, and he missed that presence. Severin lived in the old Beachwood Canyon house to this day, a prisoner self-imposed — gone off his nut long ago. Maybe Chet would call and visit. He could get the number from Lavinia, if he dared; she was nuttier than her father. Talking to his ex had a way of throwing a person into toxic shock. While Chet was at it, he’d get their daughter’s number too — Jabba, she called herself now — another call he’d never make.

He remembered a time long ago, the first day of summer. Diantha threw Severin a surprise party on his birthday. Chet felt free and easy; out from under. Things hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected — they never did, not for anyone. From the backyard, the HOLLYWOOD sign looked impossibly, hilariously near. Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones were there and the TV producer Saul Frake. At dusk, Chet and Jack smoked a roach by the pool and everyone played charades. The new son-in-law was a hit. When the game was over, he launched into a Tonight Show improv, sitting on the diving board introducing Jack as his first guest. The actor had just finished shooting Bunny O’Hare and Chet asked if there was any truth to his “reputed long-term affair with Ernie Borgnine.” Saul Frake laughed so hard he broke a blood vessel in his eye.

Two weeks later, Frake called. He wanted to know if Chet would be interested in hosting a talk show. Chet thought it was one of Cassidy’s pranks, but Saul paid for a test and Jack was gracious enough to replay their expurgated poolside shenanigans for the camera. Saul convinced the network boys they had something special and they bit: four months later, The Chet Stoddard Show debuted. In the first week, guests included Bobby Rydell and Judy Carne, the cast of Don’t Bother Me I Can’t Cope , Dionne Warwick and Karen Valentine, the ubiquitous Joey Bishop, dancer Larry Kert, a Lloyd’s of London man who insured anything, the Ace Trucking Company comedy troupe and Eartha Kitt. Medical Center’s Chad Everett dropped by and they cut up old times with clubby, rollicking pregonzo repartee, a Rat Pack of two. Chet was quick and telegenic, but after eighteen months the show fizzled. By then, he’d already bought a Cobra for the hooker who supplied him with coke. At the final taping, he announced Molly’s birth, then flew to Vegas and lost sixty thousand dollars in forty minutes. When Lavinia came to get him, he fractured her skull with a chair during a blackout.

They divorced. He stayed in town to be close to his daughter. Somewhere around nineteen seventy-nine, he free-based himself into a heart attack. When Chet recovered, he returned to Michigan — those were the go-go years of detox, and he found his niche, becoming a paid counselor and proselytizer for the cause.

Now he had returned to the city that once held so much promise — and, somehow, still did — to pre-sell the bones of the dead.

Troy Capra

He took Kiv to a production of Ghosts on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a while since he’d been to a play and Troy was flooded by memories of his own “life in the theater.”

The drama teacher at Beverly Hills High was an occasional character actor in films, and when Troy enrolled as a freshman, some of the students already had agents — everyone felt more or less poised for stardom. It seemed like a birthright. Alumnus Richard Dreyfuss was a beacon. Troy was still in elementary school when word spread through the district like a flash fire that one of their own would soon appear on Bonanza . Like a distant cousin, he rooted him on through the years: The Graduate, The Young Runaways, Two for the Money , then American Graffiti and Duddy Kravitz, Jaws and Close Encounters and The Big Fix , an Oscar for The Goodbye Girl …and, of course, the quirky Inserts , where Richard portrayed a faded director, reduced to shooting porn. There was irony for you.