Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

The transcripts were returned and Severin pored over them, ruminating, sonic editor on high, scaling heights of cellular Babel, ducking into rooms of verbiage, corroded, dank, dead end — then a sudden treasure, odd heirloom, dialogue hung like chandeliers, illuminated. He held the sheaves to his ear and heard the dull, perilous world of Voices — the workday ended, seat-belted warriors homeward bound. All was well. Whereabouts were noted, ETAs demanded and logged, coordinates eroticized; half the world wanted to know just exactly when the other half thought it might be coming home. On the one-ten — kids there yet? — called you before — love you so much! — trying to reach — taking the Canyon — couldn’t get through — losing you …

Severin thought he recognized Dee Bruchner amid the welter. You tell that nigger , said the Voice, he closes at the agreed four million or I will spray shit in his burrhead baby’s mouth .

Had they always talked that way? He couldn’t imagine Mr. Bluhdorn coming on like Mark Fuhrman. Not to worry — he’d use it all to stitch one hell of an American Quilt. These were the Voices of a dying world, no doubt. They needed a script to haunt, and Dead Souls was just the place.

“You look awful,” she said, treading the doorway in a flowery perspiration-stained muumuu. Lavinia’s skin was oily white, an occasional pimple pitched like a nomad’s pink tent. She was turning fifty-three and wore a knee brace; the year had already added thirty pounds.

“Do you have my pages?”

“Do you have my pages! Do you have my pages! Don’t you say hello anymore?”

“Hullo, hullo!” He stood and did a jig. “Hul-lo, hul-lo — a- nuh -ther opening of a- nuh -ther show!”

She scowled, lumbering to the kitchen to fix a sandwich. Thank God Diantha wasn’t around for this. His wife had been so fastidious in her person, so immaculate — proprietary of her daughter’s fading beauty.

“Have you heard from Molly?” He risked a diatribe but couldn’t help himself. It was a year since he’d seen his granddaughter. Her birthday was coming up.

“Molly died , Father, remember? Molly died and Jabba took her place. That’s what she calls herself now — Jabba the Whore!”

He took the transcript from the counter and sat back down with an old man’s sigh. “Such a tragedy.”

“Since when is it a tragedy to be a whore?”

“Don’t, Lavinia. Don’t talk like—!”

“A whore and a doper. A jailbird, Father! She should die in prison, with AIDS!”

“Lavinia, she’s a sick girl.”

“ I’m a sick girl! I’m a sick girl!” She pointed to a purplish knee.

“I’m in pain , Father, twenty-four hours a day . I didn’t choose that! Jabba the Whore lives in a world of her own choosing.”

“So do we all.”

“So do we all! So do we all!”

“That knee of yours is in bad shape because of the weight.”

“Oh, that is a lie and if you want to talk to my chiropractor, Father, he will tell you. So do we all, so do we all! Would you like me to call him?” Severin wearily shook his head. “You can talk to my acupuncturist too. And if you really want to know, which I’m sure you don’t, the weight on my knee is a cushion—”

“All right, Lavinia. It’s a cushion.”

“And the moral is! If you don ’t know what the hell you’re talking about, don ’t offer opinions! The great So Do We All has so many important opinions! God, do I hate that.”

They moved to Los Angeles in ‘forty-three and Severin bused tables at Chasen’s, working up to waiter. A quick, funny, ingratiating kid. He made his connections and eventually scored with the regulars, free-lancing bits for Red Buttons and Sammy Kaye. Then he met Hope and sold a few gags to the weekly radio show. They signed him full-time — but he’d always have Chasen’s. Took Lavinia there on her tenth birthday, still had the snapshot: slender girl in a party dress wedged between him and Diantha, George the maître d’ in his monkey suit on one side, Maude and Dave sidling in on the other, smiling from the blood-red booth like royalty. One of his old customers wheeled in the cake on a copper table — Irwin Shaw. He respected Shaw, a real writer, a book writer, that’s what Severin wanted to be in his heart of hearts. He tried and failed a dozen times before deciding to do the next best thing; adapt a classic for the screen. A novelist by proxy.

“And don’t you forget: Jabba the Whore was made from his seed.”

“Who?” he asked, riffling pages, not really listening. Severin tensed; too late — fell for it again. He was a player in a grim sitcom, a straight man in Lavinia’s little shop of horrors.

“Who! Chet Stoddard, that’s who!”

“Oh Christ—”

“Don’t you oh Christ , don’t you dare! For what that man put me through? Did you know that my jaw will never mend? Never mend: do you even know what that means ?”

“It’s a long time ago.”

“Tell it to my jaw ! Tell my jaw how long it’s been! I go to Vegas to rescue him and that piece of shit punches me out ! At Sahara’s, right in the casino, hundreds of people!”

“All right, Lavinia—”

“Don’t all right me and don’t Oh Christ ! The bone could have gone to my brain . Do you know what kind of headaches it has caused me? The migraines , Father? Do you understand how demeaning ?” She began to weep. “With the pain and the police …the humiliation in that desert town. And not even jail , they dried him out in a luxury hospital, flew him back first class! If it wasn’t for me, his show would have gone off months before it did! I schmoozed for that man! With Saul Frake pawing me, his tongue in my mouth, I could vomit . Father? Would you please give me the courtesy of an answer?”

Severin poured himself a drink at the wet bar. He felt like an actor doing a bit of business.

“I’m a good person! Why has this happened to me? What has happened to my life ? Why me , Father? Why! Why! Why!” She went to the bathroom and blew her nose while Severin sat down again to surf the bands. Lavinia re-emerged, waddling toward him with a fat rusty tube in her hand. “I took this from the drawer,” she said meekly. “Okay?” Some forgotten Coppertone cream. She seized the typed pages from his hand, brandishing them. He turned up the volume of the scanner. “What are you going to do with this? Your eyes are so bad you can’t even read . What are you going to do ?”

“What do you care? You get paid.”

“People pay me to type for a reason , they have scripts , they have jobs , they’re writing books . I don’t understand your reasons —you’re just eavesdropping on people’s lives! People have a right to their privacy—”

“What are you, ACLU? You get paid to type. Period.”

“I’d love to hear what Chet Stoddard , the Larry King of his time , has to say — maybe you could listen to him . But he probably can’t afford a car phone. I hope he can’t afford a car or if he can, he’s living in it.” Her face lit up like a battered jack-o’-lantern as she threw down the pages and backed toward the door, Baggied sandwich in hand. “If anyone ever finds out you’re doing this— illegally eavesdropping —I want you to say you typed it your self . Not that anyone would believe it. Just tell them you found someone else , not me , okay? All right, Father? Because I do not want to be drawn in.”