Bruce Wagner - I’m Losing You

“That’s a horrible thought.”

They watched bodysuited surfers catch a wave. The agent was pensive. Perry tried finding her smell on his upper lip, but the booze had killed it.

“You know,” she said, “I’m not so sure that was such a good thing. What we did.”

“Sure felt like one.” He regretted asking if she’d slept with Jeremy Stein. Vulgar and flip.

“That’s not what I meant.” She smiled, blinking sultrily. “Are you okay with it?”

Perry was at a loss. He fell back on sheer age, which conferred a certain ready cool. He began to sing. “‘Strangers on a train, exchanging glances’—”

“Are we?” she asked, preparing to be hurt — now, or later. “Are we strangers?”

All women are mysterious, he thought. Without the twin antidotal axiom, there would be no game: All women are insecure . “Here’s an idea for a film: Two strangers meet on a train and agree to kill each other’s agents.”

“How about lawyers?” Tovah asked, relieved to be steered from her mushy course. “I’d feel more comfortable with that.”

“You gahhhhht it.”

Ursula Sedgwick

Donny couldn’t believe that Taj Wiedlin, his “shadow” at ICM for over two years, was the child’s killer. He felt like Walter Pidgeon in Forbidden Planet —the scientist whose unleashed id runs murderously amok. After the funeral, the agent dropped from sight. Ursula reasoned her old lover finally understood what she’d tried to tell him that day at Cicada: life is a wheel that turns round and round, like a carousel.

She was going downhill living in the house where her daughter was bludgeoned. She slept a few nights at Phyll’s, but the bungalow was small; the producer was pregnant and sick and it was hard on them both. Sara asked her to stay in a guest room of the Brentwood hacienda. The garden and clean, cool walls were welcome. Ursula liked that the streets had no sidewalks. During the day, she puttered around the old Venice house, straightening up, watching TV, sometimes napping on Tiffany’s bed. Taj called from jail a few times and left messages on the machine — she refused to change the number because it still felt like a link to her daughter. Sara and Phyll couldn’t argue with that.

She was wonderful with Samson. Sara’s actress friends were always visiting, spinning bawdy, cynical Hollywood tales — so funny and compassionate and full of life — Marcia Strassman and Arleen Sorkin (she’d just had a little boy), Mary Crosby and Marilu Henner. And, of course, Holly and Beth Henley (Beth just had a baby too). Holly was so giving. She kept offering money and work. “Hey!” she shouted. “Be mah damn purrsonal ‘sistant!” Ursula wasn’t ready, but it was neat to get the offer. She knew Holly was sincere.

She found the infamous Dictionary of Saints at a used-book store on the Promenade and brought it to the children’s section of the library to read. Ursula felt safe surrounded by all the big, colorful books and lilliputian tables and chairs. The women who worked there assumed she was a nanny — or young mother, which she was and would always be. She re-examined the barbarous painting, as if remembering a childhood fever. Saint Agatha was often pictorialized carrying loaves of bread on a tray. The text said those loaves were actually breasts, sliced off by tormentors — that’s why she was simultaneously known as “the patron saint of breast disease and of bakers.” It was silly enough that she laughed. In other illustrations, the breasts were shown to be bells; so too was Agatha “the patron saint of bell ringers and firemen.” Something for everyone.

She didn’t dream anymore about the Roman brothel but knew that wasn’t a repudiation of her vision. She wasn’t sure how she had been so wrong about Taj’s role, but ascribed it to her lack of sophistication on the Inner. Ursula chose not to think about it for now. In her heart, she was certain Tiffany had been taken for a reason; in her heart, she knew the Mahanta was with her daughter at the exact moment she translated (the beautiful ECKist word for “passed on”). She had no doubts Tiffany was on the Soul Plane now. On one of his tapes, Sri Harold spoke about people translating because they had so much love for life that they needed more room to express it — that’s why they went to a “higher channel.” Ursula wondered if murder changed any of that; there was nothing in the Eckankar literature that pertained. Maybe Tiffany was ready to go but didn’t want to leave her mother so she drew this person Taj to aid in her translation. Something like that may have been true for Saint Agatha as well.

She poured herself into ECK volunteer and study groups. Ursula would do good works for those who had shown her kindness. She would heal herself through dreams and seek the Inner Master’s help in unwinding her karma.

Rachel Krohn

Aside from Tovah’s encouragements, Rachel didn’t know why she agreed. She couldn’t even remember giving out her number. When Mordecai called, he said they met at the seder, and a casually crass remark brought it all back: the one with the braces who owned the messenger service. (He probably got her number from Alberta, the portly yenta. Rachel called her Alberta, Canada, but never to her face.) So there they were, Mordie and Rachel at the movies, an Indian art-house flick she had wanted to see for a while. Surprisingly, he was attentive and cordial — aside from the trademark verbal gaffes, Mordecai Pressman passed for gallant.

The film was about a man whose wife dies in childbirth. Unhinged by her death, he becomes a vagrant. After five years of wandering, he guiltily returns to meet his son. Raised by in-laws, the little boy is a terror-on-wheels; they want deadbeat Dad to reclaim him. The boy, grown used to stories of a debonair father who lives in Calcutta, rejects the visitor’s paternal claims. In the end, the disconsolate widower refuses their pleas to take him by force, as would be his right. He departs alone. The child catches up on the outskirts of the village and asks if the man is going to Calcutta. “Yes,” says the widower, “if you like. Come with me.” The boy considers. “Will you take me to my father?” At this, Rachel cried — the true father before him and still the boy asks! The idea of a phantom father forever in Calcutta was so gorgeous and so sad to her, all at once. Mordecai handed her a handkerchief. “Don’t mind the spots,” he said, with a laugh. “It’s only chutney.”

They were supposed to go to dinner, but Rachel lied and said she had cramps. Mordecai dropped her off with a clumsy kiss.

She showered and slipped into bed. Will you take me to my father? The image of the cantor rose before her, crumbs of pottery on eyes and mouth, dirt on the heart. Then Tiffany Amber Sedgwick — for a week, she dreamed of washing her in a tub. As she soaped the tiny cello of her back, the little girl moaned like kids do when you try to rouse them for school, druggy and irascible. They just don’t want to wake up.

Rosetta Beth Howe’s bat mitzvah was celebrated at a temple in Bel Air, across the freeway from the Getty. Tovah tagged along.

Around two hundred sat in pews — lots of parents Rachel’s age, friends of the Howes’ who’d come with their kids, Rosetta’s classmates. Rachel was surprised all the hip-looking moms knew songs and Hebrew prayers by heart. Perry and Jersey flanked their daughter onstage. Eventually, Rosetta and the rabbi retrieved the Torah from its ornate tabernacle. The heavy scroll was placed in her arms and the girl, half hidden by its sacred blue-clothed bulk, held tight as she marched among the congregation. Rachel forgot exactly why they made you do that, but it was an impressive bit of pageantry nonetheless. The girl’s eyes deftly scanned the crowd as she dispensed sweetly modulated insider smiles to relatives and friends.