Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

“We know you’re a crabby cunt. But you still have to go.”

“I didn’t even hear about this thing.”

“I told you last week.”

“My womb is tired and bleeding.”

“So that ’s it.”

Ursula was stumped.

“phyll thought she was pregnant.”

“By who?”

“Some Abbot Kinney bimbo.”

“Is it serious?”

“Of course, it’s serious. He’s a selected donor.”

“She means, selected at Hal’s — from the bar.”

“Is that safe, Phyll? I mean, has he been tested?”

“Yes, Mother. And I’m telling you,” she said, hands to crotch, “this model has got to go. If Larry Hagman gets a new liver, Phylliss Wolfe sure as shit wants a new womb.”

“ Annie, Get Your Womb .”

“You need a transplant.”

“The girl from Baywatch .”

“No! From Friends —”

“Amateur hour, baby. I need me a professional womb, a Meryl Streep — Mare Winningham model, industrial-strength. I want me a litter .”

“How many does Meryl have?”

“Four, at last count. Mare has, like, twelve.”

“Meryl has four? I thought it was three.”

“Don’t quibble.”

“Come on, Phyll, please come.” Ursula rubbed her neck. “It’ll be fun . It’ll get you out of your mood. Pretty please?”

“You guys go. I just want to sit in bed and watch Bewitched . I have an inclination to see Dick York, pre — dementia.”

“Oh all right,” said Sara. “I guess someone has to baby-sit that big bratty uterus of yours.”

“Damn straight. And that’s ‘cervix’ to you.”

Ursula gathered up her things. “Tiff, do you want to come with us or do you want to stay with crabby Phylliss?”

“Go with you!”

“See?” said Phylliss. “Kids instinctively know to shun a barren woman.”

Sara asked if it was okay to leave her baby, and Phylliss insisted. “It’s high time,” she said, “that Samson bonded with Dick York. You know, a little imprinting couldn’t hurt.”

On the way to the ECK Center potluck, Sara talked about Sight Unseen . She was becoming another person, she said, and the book was part of that transformation. She talked about the divorce and what it was like to live with her mom again — the bond between mothers and daughters. Ursula reached back and grabbed Tiffany’s bare foot, almost the size of her own.

“Are you writing the movie too?”

“No way! We’re trying for Beth Henley — she wrote Crimes of the Heart . There is no way I could write a script. I could barely do the book!”

“Phyll’s writing one too, huh.”

Sara nodded. “We have the same editor. But Phylliss is going to have a best-seller — she’s a real writer. Mine’s just a compilation of letters.”

“It must be so exciting! Is Eckankar going to be in it?”

“I’d like it to be but…Phyll and I are kind of at loggerheads about that. I just want it to be universal. I don’t want critics saying there was anything— cultish , or whatever. I’m already thinking about critics!” She laughed, remembering how Phylliss said she wanted their “movie of the weak” to be special.

The Center was filled with kids and tons of Tupperware food. Sara pointed out seven H.I.s — Higher Initiates — those who’d been around ECK some twenty years and more. They were plain folk, down-home and grounded. Ursula talked to a writer who got turned on to ECK by his shrink, and a horse trainer from Rancho Cucamonga who married a non-ECKist. (He was into reincarnation, she said, so they got along just fine.) There was a shy young man with a bright smile — a boy, really — who looked a little ragged. Two of the H.I.s asked how he’d heard of the Center. Once they realized he was possibly homeless, they made sure his plate was full. Ursula was touched.

After a while, everyone sat in chairs and the cabaret began. The horsewoman read a poem about the Mahanta, then a trio sang songs about Light and Sound and Soul. The boy took a seat beside Ursula. A sticker on his shirt said HELLO, MY NAME IS TAJ. His knee touched hers and she moved it away, then moved it back. He smiled a bright, disenfranchised smile.

An H.I. who cheekily called herself “the Living ECK Master of Ceremonies” introduced a sketch called “Motorcycle Man.” A girl around Tiffany’s age slipped into a makeshift bed onstage. As narration began, a bearded, friendly-looking biker roused her. The girl brushed sleep from her eyes and climbed on his back while he revved the high handle of an imaginary Harley. “Now this girl was visited every night by the Motorcycle Man,” said the H.I., “and they cruised the city streets, then up to the sky. He told her many, many things. But every morning her parents wanted to convince her it was just a dream.” The upshot being that when the child grew up, she realized the Motorcycle Man was none other than a Living ECK Master. After the applause and laughter ebbed — the girl was a natural-born ham — the H.I. thanked “the father-daughter comedy duo of Calvin and Hobbes.” Everyone knew that “Calvin and Hobbes” was the Mahanta’s favorite cartoon. The sketch was taken directly from Sri Harold’s parables, she added.

The afternoon ended with everyone chanting Hu. “Gather your attention in the third eye,” whispered Ursula to the ragged boy. “Hold on to your contemplation seed.”

That night, Tiffany stayed with Phylliss. Ursula turned around and picked Taj up at the place she said she would, over by the Center. He was waiting there like a kid, after school.

They went to Bob Burns and listened to jazz. Taj ate some more. He’d pretty much been homeless the last few months, he said, begging for change outside Starbucks and the twenty-four-hour Ralph’s. She brought him back to United States Island and plunked him in a bubble bath. Then she lit the candle of her earthquake preparedness kit, slipped into a robe and put on Gladys Knight. Taj came to bed sopping wet, and she ran to get a towel to dry him off. He seemed perplexed, a dreamy colt, sweet and wobbly. He let her roll on a condom. She got on top, and when they were done, Ursula started to cry; she was thinking of Donny and everything, wanting out of her own skin. Taj got flustered. He said she was crying because of the transmitters in his mouth that made people sad when they kissed him. That scared her, but he laughed his bright laugh and she punched him. They wrestled awhile, then chanted Hu.

They lay side by side, listening to the carp of a cricket, close by. Suddenly, she was looking down, watching his tongue dig at her as she squirmed, arching back, hands trembling on the pommel of his head. The cricket was an omen that confirmed the fatefulness of this moment: just that day she heard Sri Harold talk on tape about the Music of God manifesting itself as flutes, chimes, buzzing bees — and crickets. Ursula was certain she’d met this boy in a past life. Sara and Phyll had a whole Victorian thing going, but Ursula sensed she and Taj went back much further. It would take some hard work on the Inner to find out just how far, but at least now the path was marked.

She shivered, lifting the boy onto her.

Severin Welch

Severin never strayed far from the Radio Shack scanner and its Voices. He picked his way through mines of static, listening to the agents and execs en route to power lunches; after midnight, pimps and drug dealers ruled. The choicer bits were duly recorded, then transcribed by his daughter, who still lived in the Mount Olympus wedding house on Hermes Drive. Lavinia made a meager living typing screenplays, and Severin was happy to throw some dollars her way.