Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

“Donny, what happened —”

Was he drunk? The agent held out some smallish books, strung together by a schoolboy’s cord, and laid the leathery bouquet at his father’s door, smug as a toastmaster. “Returned from whenth they came,” he said, lisping. Or some such nonsense. Then Donny drew forward and Bernie met the hair-raising eye. His progeny stank — the interregnum smell of a soul dethroned and demonized. Bernie shook, though staring at this boy, his own, he felt nothing; as in a morbid children’s story, he was man become a tree, bosky fingers avulsed and outspread, evicted legs a quivering snarl of loamy, snaky roots. As Donny swept past, the old man felt the waft of kingly cape, the regicidal blow.

The agent entered the lift and Bernie waited for the doors to close. (If only they could be sealed forever, the box thrown into space like a tomb.) He picked up the strap, reindeer of books attached, and went to his room. There he remained for a number of days, oblivious to even his gigantine lover, who fussed over his general health and prayed for his restoration to the world.

Zev Turtletaub

Zev and Phylliss Wolfe went to see Donny at the Westwood Hospital. That’s where she’d been for her breakdown. Phylliss hugged the nurses and the inevitable “old home week” comment was made. Zev joked that it was more a “busman’s holiday” for him.

Donny was drugged and uncommunicative. Phylliss’s Joan Rivers routine and Zev’s dealmaker gossip fell flat. When the agent became accustomed to their presence, he made a few shy, touching efforts at normalcy. They talked about buying art, then Donny resurrected an old piece of business about All Mimsy —something handled weeks before. Phylliss prattled about the beloved canine getting the power table at Mortons and the agent loosened up. It was smooth sailing until Donny said he possessed the name of the man who was the architect of the race war that would bring down ICM, leaving the city in shambles. “Dresden will look like a brushfire.” He took a crumpled get-well card from his pocket and unfolded it. On the cover was a “Far Side” style drawing of a priest, saying, “I am here to administer your ‘last rights.’” Inside was a list: the right to remain in bed, the right to moan and complain, the right to get well. “So get well, all right?” A small window shade of paper was pasted on the blank side, opposite. Underneath was a handwritten inscription: “You so crazy!” Zev lifted the flap, uncovering a photo of Donny’s mother clipped from a society magazine. There was a crudely drawn devil, its red-pencil cock invading Serena’s mouth. The card was unsigned.

“What was that all about?” asked Phylliss as they drove to the studio.

“I’m not sure.”

“Did you see that? Oh my God, who would have sent it?”

“Probably Rubidoux. Though it’s hard to believe he’d be that vindictive.”

“Ruby who?”

“Pierre Rubidoux. He used to work at ICM, above Donny. I think he represented Oberon for a while.”

“Where is he now?”

“Showtime. Does very well.”

“What happened?”

“Donny’s Mozart and Rubidoux is Salieri. They grew up together, went to school at El Rodeo. Donny was the popular one. The girls were always after him, loved by all the teachers — you know Donny. Pierre was a rich kid, a techie. A fine mind, but people weren’t drawn to him. They had this life-long entanglement. You know, Donny came to ICM later . Of course, Rubidoux had to leave when his old nemesis became the superstar — El Rodeo all over again. Donny isn’t blameless; it takes two to tango. He told me the whole story once and the details, the dovetailing , are exceedingly weird. It’s an SM folie à deux, a bad Night Gallery .”

“Were there good Night Gallerys ?”

“Oh, and you’ll love this : Rubidoux’s been married three times—”

“And they were all with Donny.”

“ Before . All three.”

“Sounds like a homo thing.”

“But this is the best —this is the part I want to make a movie of. Rubidoux’s mother was a sleepwalker. I think she was an epileptic. The husband would wake up in the middle of the night and have to go find her — by the pool, in the kitchen, whatever. One night, Bernie — Donny’s father — is driving home. He turns a corner and there’s this gorgeous woman walking down the center of the street, in a nightgown! He’s got this funny little go-cart English car, a Mini-Cooper, and he slams on the brakes, but not in time. And he hits her—”

“Oh my God! She doesn’t die —”

“Yes! Donny Ribkin’s father killed Rubidoux’s mother!”

“No!”

“I think that they were sleeping together. That was the implication — Donny’s. Bernie was supposedly drunk. But they don’t convict because— newsflash! — she was walking down the middle of the street at two in the morning and it was dark.”

They pulled onto the Sony lot and rolled toward Joan Crawford’s old bungalow. Phylliss was smiling in disbelief.

“Donny’s father goes to see a shrink ‘cause he can’t get the image of this statuesque woman staring at him as he rolls over her out of his head. So here’s how he ‘cures’ himself: he raises money and makes this cheap horror film called The Undead —”

“Donny’s father produced that?”

“Yes!”

“ The Walking Dead? —”

“Yes!”

“Zev, stop it! I do not believe this!”

“He makes millions off these movies filled with dead women walking in the middle of the road in their nightgowns! And in the first one — there’s, like, three or four — the guy kills them by running over their heads with his little English car! Isn’t it fantastic?”

Bernie Ribkin

The old man was nervous about the meeting. No reason to be, he told himself. Either Showtime wanted to make a deal or they didn’t. He swallowed a few Halcions, just to take the edge off. Bernie wondered if he should have at least consulted an attorney. He didn’t know any attorneys. There’d be time for that, after the offer. Think positive.

He sat in his den, watching the Range Rover off-road instruction cassette. The car had been trouble-free for a few weeks and Bernie figured it might be a good time to learn how to four-wheel. The guy on the tape looked like George Plimpton. When he came to a creek, he stepped from the car, measuring its depth with a branch. Then he forded — Rover’d — the stream, neat and civilized. The narrator mentioned a driving academy in Aspen where one could master off-road techniques “the rather exceptional way” before caravaning across the Continental Divide. That’s what Bernie would do, when Showtime closed the deal. Spend a few weeks in Aspen, learning the art of rough-terrain navigation. Maybe work in a little romance — the rather exceptional way.

As he drove to the Burbank offices, Bernie distracted himself with the diaries. Had Donny found them under a mattress, or had they actually been willed? Serena would have her revenge. The pages chronicled his extramarital dalliances — and her touchingly improbable devotion to the Cantor Krohn, a love that grew unforeseen from platonic to unbridled and undone. The congregant’s idyll was cut short when the hangdog producer announced his syphilis. Serena had by then passed the scourge to her lover and Krohn to his wife, who fled in turn to her parents in Queens. The Baritone of Beth-El followed, as did Serena in confused desperation — characters in a Preston Sturges nightmare. And that is where, delirious with guilt, the singer of psalms shot himself through the mouth (temple left intact). His colleagues had much success with a face-saving tale of subway homicide. Those were happier days, when a secret was still a secret.