Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

“About five years ago, I was in a store in Manhattan. One of these side-street movie-memorabilia shops. They had it in a glass case — a beautiful copy of the time machine, an authentic one, an actual model from the movie. Beautiful upholstery, tuck-’n’-roll, soft, tufted, brushed velvet, tiny gold widgets… and that fantastic, whirring engine wheel! Whoever made this thing was a genius in miniatures. Incredible draftsman. I asked the nerd behind the counter if I could buy it and he said it wasn’t for sale but he would give me the number of the guy who built it. Great! Fantastic! So I called and found myself talking to the creator. Went out to Coney Island, that’s where he had his workshop. Bertram, I am telling you it was unbelievable. Here’s this man-child, this sweet, lonely wizard surrounded by spare parts of all the fantasy machines he’d constructed for films — like that toymaker from Blade Runner. There was a half-built time machine on one of the drafting tables (there was a ton of debris, very ‘Santa’s workshop’) and I was suddenly just so touched that my brother and I weren’t the only aficionados. Apparently, there was this whole secret society … a worldwide fraternal order! And I really had to bend his arm — he said he was busy with so many things — the guy was very convincing! — but he finally agreed to build me one. I said, Take all the time you need. And I meant it. See, I knew he was kind of squirrelly and I wanted to make it easy on him because I understood his temperament. He wasn’t of this world! He was an artist. I mean, if that’s how you spend the bulk of your time, you’re not fully on the planet, right? And what he was creating for me was this ephemeral — this magical mystery memory thing — how do the CIA say it? ‘Eyes only.’ My eyes only. A Caligari cabinet. Fabergé egg. I’m telling you, I was the ideal client — or ‘patient’! That’s probably the better word. And man, it was really expensive — I can’t remember exactly how much, maybe seven or eight grand. But totally worth it. At the end of the day, I was going to have this amazing sculpture, this talismanic fetish. I thought it was a fucking bargain.

“So the months go by and finally I heard from him. ‘Progress is being made,’ he said. Funny-looking little guy — I wish you could see his face. But he needs more money. OK. No problem. I’d already given him an advance, right? A few thousand. So I send fifteen hundred. Then I wait and I wait — I must have waited another year because that was the deal, I said from the get-go I wasn’t gonna hassle him, and I meant it. One day I call to see how he’s doing and he says more or less the same thing: He’s waiting for a part, he got sidelined by a big studio project… now I start to feel like I’m being had. I give him an ultimatum — still friendly, mind you — but I tell him I really need to have the little chair in two months’ time. That’s the deadline. Nonnegotiable. He says OK — but never delivers! I’m getting pissed off. He doesn’t answer my calls. I’m starting to think lawsuit. So — and I can’t remember the time sequence — I actually wind up going to Small Claims! To file. Can you imagine me, at Small Claims? You can’t, right? It’s insanity. I have no idea what drove me to that — I mean, I was frustrated, but still — anyway, after however many weeks I get a letter from the court telling me the person I sued was requesting a delay due to the fact that he was traveling on business. Right . A light goes off: something clicks and I realize that my fragile little model maker, my exquisitely tender artiste, is extremely well-versed in Small Claims! Knows the System, through and through! Been through this sort of action before — broken lots of hearts. Whatever. I don’t give a shit. I become obsessed with justice being served. I want my time machine! The motherfucker’s welshing on my time machine. And I’m, like, totally enraged! I’m serious, Bertie! Part of me is genuinely galled. Because there I was, trying to reclaim some part of my fractured boyhood — and there he was, defrauding my innocence!

“It went back and forth: another date would be requested, and the tinkerer-con would delay — then I’d be unavailable and would have to go in and see the clerk to set another time on the calendar. And so on and so forth. And you couldn’t do this shit by mail, you had to go in, right? This was pre-‘online.’ It became this bureaucratic ritual. Finally, the day comes we’re both due in court but the asshole doesn’t show. My moment of triumph! I thought that’d be the end of it — I’d win by default — but the tinkerer-stinkerer knew better. The judge rules in my favor but says his ruling could, most probably would, be appealed. He was actually tipping me to the guy’s M.O., right? The judge was saying in so many words that I was involved with a pro. OK. So now we’re talking maybe thirty-five hundred dollars that I’ve laid out in terms of advances, plus time spent filing, driving, parking — I actually kept a little leather satchel with receipts! You couldn’t put a dollar amount on the raging and bullshitting that was going on in my head. Right? OK? Are you loving it, Bertie? I haven’t even thought about this in fifteen years or whatever.

“So another eight or nine months pass — eight or nine months! — and the thing’s fucking with me, mentally. I wasn’t working so I’ve got way too much time on my hands, all right? He’s got me turning into Lenny Bruce! I’m actually starting to get paranoid. I was on all this medication — lithium and shit — these were the pioneer days of bipolar! — but I’d stopped taking it for the reasons you always do and I started to drug a bit. That’s the cycle. OK? And I’m getting more and more fixated on this fucker. We’re getting closer to the legal endgame — is this not fantastic? — where the court’s gonna have to rule against the tinkerer’s appeal. Meanwhile, I’ve been doing all this reading — about stalkers and assassins. I’m not even sure how I got into that. But one of the books says sometimes the snapping point for these freaks is when they’re humiliated by the court system. Like if a wife gets a restraining order against her husband and he kills her when he probably wouldn’t have if she hadn’t taken that final step, hadn’t publicly confronted. I start to think (I’m also doing crystal meth, which isn’t exactly helping my thought processes): what if this guy guns me down? Right at the courthouse? I mean, I’m a semipublic figure — I wasn’t as known then as I am now… probably not too hard to find, though, right? You could spit Off-Broadway and find me in some equity waiver. What if this guy does a Stephen King — what was that movie with Jimmy Caan and Kathy Bates? — what if he kidnaps me and performs a little genital surgery? Or buries me alive in some sub-basement? This is what’s going through my head, Bertie! So I go nuts a few weeks, looking over my shoulder, checking phone messages — then I start to think, enough already. We had a court date scheduled. Now, I wasn’t sure if he was going to show, which at this point would have been worse for me, psychologically. He was probably out of options. Couldn’t maneuver anymore. I do some serious thinking, and here’s what I come up with: I’m gonna call the guy. That’s right. I’m gonna call the bogeyman on the phone. Preempt him. I must have done a shitload of coke and scotch and I don’t even want to think what. And I finally call him up at like midnight — remember, by now, in my head, he’s Arthur Bremer! — and I leave this message on his machine. He doesn’t pick up. I’m relieved — sort of. Though part of me actually wouldn’t have minded talking. So I say, See you in court. But nonconfrontational. I tell him I want to work something out — I’m talking to the machine —because I’m tired. I want to resolve it, peaceably. Totally whacked but trying to make sure my voice is friendly even though in the back of my head I’m worried he’ll pick up in the middle and say, ‘I’m gonna cut your dick off, stuff it in your mouth, and set you on fire! Put that in your time machine!’ This is how psychotic I’ve become.