Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

“That’s so great.”

“I’m really waiting until we get the writer on board, Alec. I just wanted to feel you out, because to me the character is phenomenal, a classic, towering. It’s cosmic Elmer Gantry. Would this sort of thing appeal to you, Alec? Because I can’t see anyone but you, you’d be brilliant. I just need to know if this kind of guy — a hustler, a parasite who slowly, painfully has his eyes opened to human suffering and comes out from the thing… transcendent —I just need an indication it’s an arena you might like to explore.” Zev slides a finger down the pallid crack and Taj jerks away. The producer contemptuously shoves the assistant toward the desk, where he nonchalantly fiddles with some papers.

“Absolutely. But the article…the article isn’t based on a book—”

“No. The article is an article. What I want to do is graft that information onto the superstructure of Dead Souls , an extraordinary nineteenth-century Russian novel—”

“Right, I know. Tolstoy?”

“Nikolai Gogol. But you win the literary consolation prize.”

“Howard Stern would have known.”

“Howard Stern would think it was Stephen King. Now, when am I gonna see you? When are you coming to L.A.?”

“Jesus, never, I hope. I’m kidding. Probably three weeks.”

“Do you want me to send the book, with coverage?”

“What’s the coverage,” he laughed. “Cliffs Notes?”

“We broke it down. But I don’t want to overwhelm you.”

“I’ve been known to dip into a tome or two. I’m halfway through the new Roth— Operation Shylock . Fucking fantastic.”

“You’ll have book and coverage tomorrow…”

“Bell, Book and Coverage.”

“…and if you have any thoughts or questions, call me, Alec, anytime, day or night. Okay?”

“You are the Monsignor.”

“And thank you for your patience.”

“Thank you for your interest. I’m always flattered, Zev.”

“You flatter me . It’s time we did something together.”

“ I flatter you, you flatter me ,” he sang, while Zev laughed. “ We both flat-ter too ea-si-ly —”

“Goodbye, you nut.”

“ Too ea-si-ly to let it show …”

“Is this a concert?”

“Later, Zev.”

“My love to Kimberly.”

Zev hung up, rubbing his crotch as he ogled his minion. “Hel- lo . Anyone home ? Ground control to Major Taj!”

“I…I haven’t done the last fifty pages — of Dead Souls .”

“Why not?”

“I had — so much other work.”

“Come here, silly wabbit.”

“Please…”

“I won’t bite. I might suck, but I won’t bite.”

He came closer. Zev grabbed the hips and reeled him in.

“Please don’t.”

“Finish the coverage,” he said, fumbling with the belt. “I really want to know how the thing ends.” Zev unbuttoned the fly, pulling the pants down with the aloofness of a tailor — or sailor. “It doesn’t seem to be heading toward a resolution. There’s an essay in the back by the guy who wrote Lolita . Maybe you could cover that too.”

Taj felt like a child — he wanted to urinate as the underwear shimmied down, hammocking at knees. Bloodless lips fastened around him and the assistant lost balance. Zev’s hands clapped around his rear, steadying. Taj toughed it out, hardening in the hothouse mouth, watching the smooth skull, noting moles, veins and fissures from afar like the book of aerial shots he flipped through at Super Crown: Above Los Angeles.

Chet Stoddard

That night, he went trolling for HIVs at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Van Nuys. Horvitz told him those were good places for leads. Some were restricted to sero-positives, but they were easy to crash — no one asked questions. Chet watched and listened, attuned to money woes. Not everyone had life insurance. Finding out who did was tricky, especially if you weren’t infected yourself; one didn’t want to be tagged a policy-chaser. Sussing out candidates was dicey all around. Though he used an alias, eventually some trivial pursuiter was bound to know him as Chet Stoddard, boob-tube relic. Winding up on the “Where Are They Now?” page of a tabloid wasn’t a pleasant prospect. “ONE-TIME TALKER FULL-TIME HAWKER: ADVANCES $$ TO WALKING DEAD.”

The meeting was lower-scale than Chet would have wished. Lots of bad news bears: sour prison faces, weepy dementia heads, remorseful crack bingers and the usual quota of self-important alcoholics — smug vampires who felt less hopeless hanging with the pozzies. Whenever they stood to speak, you could feel the room’s fatal contempt. Around mid-meeting, Chet realized there was a halfway house next door and that explained it; a pissy, policy-poor crowd if he’d ever seen one, hard-core wraiths who took the RTD to get their methadone. Still, you never knew when that stuntman (Aetna) or production designer (Prudential) might stand and share. Expect the unexpected, Horvitz always said.

Luckily, he remembered the party. Someone started a group for heteros with AIDS and tonight they were having a shindig. Chet fished in the glove compartment for a flyer given him by one of his viatical co-workers: Oakhurst Drive, south three hundreds. That was Beverly Hills, over by Olympic — Persian World. No mansions but sure as hell no halfway houses, either. Sounded promising.

The modest two-story home was probably in the eight-hundred-thousand range. The canapé-eaters were nicely dressed, to be sure, and none had the Look except one — a swarthy, charismatic man with thick Yves St. Laurent glasses, a stylish cane supporting sinewy legs and a telltale girth that betrayed (to the trained eye) a set of diapers. Emblazoned across his T-shirt was: I SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM. He was holding court, in the middle of one of those comically anarchic HIV riffs featuring Mothers in Denial, Sado-Healthcare Worker Mayhem, Brides in Dementia on Their Wedding Days and other assorted gruesomely hilarious phantasmagoria. A black-haired boy ran twittering circles around him, mummifying the monologuist with imaginary streamers, like a maypole.

Chet was about to knock at the bathroom door when a woman in a crazy miniskirt emerged.

“This is the hour of lead,” she said, looking straight in his eye. “Remembered, if outlived, as freezing persons recollect the snow…” He smiled and she went on, very dramatic. “First, chill: then, stupor. Then, the letting go.”

“I like that.”

She held an arm toward the toilet, like Vanna White. “You are free to wash — I’m through vomiting.”

He found her in the backyard a few minutes later. Her name was Aubrey and this was her house. She had black hair and twinkly green eyes.

“How long have you known?” she asked, out of nowhere.

How long have you …His mind stuttered: she assumed he was HIV-positive. Chet scrambled up the slick rock of her question — the Question of all Questions, it seemed — trying not to fall into the swallowing sea. “Six months.”

“You’re a virgin.”

“You?”

“Seven years, eight come May. What do you do?”

“I work at the Holocaust Museum.” It was supposed to be a kind of joke.

“No shit, the Wiesenthal? What do you do there?”

“Acquisitions.”

“Well, that makes you the perfect host — for this party, I mean.” She nodded toward the diapered man, expostulating poolside. “Did you see Ziggy’s shirt?”

“Pretty fuckin’ funny.”

“You’re not going to sue, are you?”

She was swept away by new arrivals and Chet milled around, waiting for her to get free. He’d used his real name and was glad about that. After a while he decided to leave, thinking the time they had in the yard was as good as it would get — tonight. On the way out, she slipped a card into his pocket. He didn’t look until he was in the car.