Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

The camera panned to the couch, where Molly, hand inside panties, busied herself with the garish chores of simulated masturbation. She still managed to catch the punchline and laugh a beat late, a bad actress rehearsing for bedlam.

It was cold in the house. Chet found two dusty Placidyls zipped into a weathered shaving kit. He swallowed them and got into bed.

His thoughts turned to Aubrey’s boy. He wished they were on the road together — why not? He always wanted a son. Where would they go? Taos, maybe, or Santa Fe. Some big beautiful place with chaparral. Orphans from the plague, they’d be, riders on the storm. He’d find work on a big spread belonging to Hollywood-types who remembered him from the glory days. Saul Frake probably had a ranch somewhere in Wyoming…Moab or Ketchum or Sedona — herds of bison à la Ted Turner. Or Chad Everett: an absentee landlord situation. Live in the caretaker’s house. He’d take Zephyr everywhere, tutor him at home. There were laws about that. A boy didn’t have to go to school if a parent taught him right — part of the Homestead Act. Together, they’d learn the way of the Hopi and celebrate winter solstice, whittling tithu for prayer and protection from rough things. They would honor his mother—

As the pills did their work, Chet grew warm. Tears lowered him like a soft rope into sleep. Holding fast as he fell, he begged his daughter’s forgiveness. His sorrow had no bottom and, mercifully, upon his awakening, could not be recalled to extinguish the hopes of this savage new morning.

Zev Turtletaub

The “Calendar” article spotlighted Zev Turtletaub’s ambitious adaptation of the Russian novel Dead Souls . The updated classic would limn the viatical-settlement industry, its grand scope being “love in the time of AIDS.” The producer was furious and Taj was fired. Perhaps the recent hospital stay and surrounding events caused him to overreact, but the assistant should have known better. With certain projects, Zev’s penchant for secrecy was legend.

More than a hundred people came to Aubrey’s funeral — actors and activists, virus freaks, coffeehouse poets, people she had touched. All the men had yarmulkes bobby-clipped to their hair. You could tell which ones were sick; they stared into the open pit with sly know-how. Those who asked about Zephyr were told he was ill; assuming the worst, they fell silent. Zev read a Russian poem he picked from a sheaf his staff provided.

Of course, Zev wasn’t in love with the editor when he played matchmaker, not for a long time (if ever). The end had been sealed when Jake began making demands — more work, more this, more that — simple enough, but therein the beggarly middle-class contract Zev so despised. Gimme mine! It made his stomach turn. That was when he hatched the plan. His sister fell under “more this, more that” and Jake was enraptured when Aubrey agreed to give him her hand. Admittedly, the announcement of betrothal heated the producer’s blood; once or twice a week throughout marriage, Jake watered Zev’s mouth, loving the whiteheads that ringed the jaundicey skin of his wealthy brother-in-law’s languid eyes — again, in hospital bathroom, awaiting Zephyr to be born. The producer never worried about getting sick, because he didn’t really have sex anymore, not real sex, not for years. A month before marrying Aubrey off, Zev began to suspect his protégé: a six-week siege of diarrhea (and thrush!) that Jake attributed to a taco stand downtown. Food poisoning doesn’t last six weeks, Zev said. He told him to get tested but Jake got so upset, Zev never brought it up again. Some people were like that — even at the end, the film editor’s denial was so great he told people he had the Jim Henson Killer Flu. He was still convinced Zev would give him money for a post-production house in Santa Monica, a state-of-the-art facility by the sea. That was his Big Baywatch Idea; everybody had to have one. It was easy for Zev to string him along till the end, right through dementia.

The producer remembered how they’d first met, at a club on Highland. He went to the toilet and there stood Jake, pants around ankles, facing the wall. That was an anomaly, he later said. Jake forever downplayed “running with the queers” and maybe he was telling the truth, because marriage sure brought out the hetero in him. How much did Aubrey know? She was such a savvy, cynical girl; she’d have to have known, why else would she attack him like that? But so late in the game…and if she did know, when— when did she know? That’s what Zev idly wondered as they lowered her down.

In two weeks he turned thirty-five. Moe Trusskopf was throwing a big party, and Zev was actually excited about it. His production company was busier than ever; it was an expansive time. Now, he’d redouble his efforts on Dead Souls . They were closing on a writer and Alec would soon follow. Alec was perfect. Zev would dedicate the movie to his sister and start a foundation in her name — or a hospice in Ojai. He would buy her soul, fair and square. It was worth more dead then alive.

As they drove from the cemetery to his Santa Barbara home, the bulimic producer imagined himself as Chichikov, pulled along in a carriage by Selifan the coachman. There was a magnificent passage that closed Part One. Chichikov is skipping town and begs Selifan to speed up. As the horses go full gallop, their very movement elicits a rhapsody:

Russia, are you not speeding along like a fiery and matchless troika? Beneath you the road is smoke, the bridges thunder, and everything is left far behind. At your passage the onlooker stops amazed as by a divine miracle. “Was that not a flash of lightning?” he asks. What is this surge so full of terror? And what is this force unknown impelling these horses never seen before? Ah, you horses, horses — what horses!

The traffic was light and he told the chauffeur to accelerate. Zev rolled down the windows and let the wind blast in. The driver was excited at what he took to be his powerful client’s spontaneous, cathartic post-burial passion; it would be a memorable ride, something to tell his wife after work. He smelled a big tip.

“Almost a hundred!” shouted the driver, with glee.

“A hundred, a hundred! A hundred and ten!” screamed the producer. He was on fire. “A hundred and twenty! Troika, troika, troika!”

Russia, where are you flying? Answer me! There is no answer. The bells are tinkling and filling the air with their wonderful pealing; the air is torn and thundering as it turns to wind; everything on earth comes flying past and, looking askance at her, other peoples and states move aside and make way.

Rachel Krohn

“It has nothing to do with thinking , it has to do with knowing . You should know .”

They were lunching at the Barney Greengrass aerie, on the terrace that overlooked the windswept postcard of Beverly Hills — one of those crisp, automatic days that trigger nostalgic dominoes of déjà vu.

“He’s happily married,” Rachel replied.

The agent threw back a creamy neck and snorted. A Jewish star lay on her olive skin like a delicate inlay. “They’re all happily married, that’s part of it. They love going back to Mommy .”

Rachel liked staring at her face; it was out of kilter, like a Modigliani. “He’s not that way, Tovah. They just bought a big house.”

“There’s no way he’s going to go from where he was to where he is now with the kind of money he has made in the time he has made it without some instant gratification, Rachel. Of the genital variety.”