Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

“We show up in court. And there he is, King Nerd — a white, worried, harmless guy. We both sign some document saying we’re going to work it out. He writes me a check for two hundred fifty dollars. And I don’t give a shit. Fuck the money. And he’s apologetic. Had this battered briefcase. Like me! A schlemiel. I actually felt sorry for him. Then I get this brilliant idea. I’ll ask if he can sell me the time machine I saw on his shelf the day I first walked in. I don’t even care if it’s finished! I’ll buy it, as is —for the thirty-five hundred I already gave him. But first, I need to ask if he still has it. I do and he says, Yeah. So fuck it, I’ll get the sample. It won’t all have been in vain. It’ll even be funny, a kind of symbol of the folly of my great quest. So I say, Can I have that? For the two-fifty? It’s actually thirty-five hundred but I say two-fifty. Then ‘we’ll be even.’ And he says, No! Now, it wasn’t so much that he didn’t want to sell it that riled me — I mean, it was that too! — but I’m remembering the way he said it, like I was some rube who walked into Cartier to bargain them down over a necklace in the window. He was actually being smug! So I get this little smile on my face — at this point, I don’t even want to ask why he won’t sell it because the whole thing is like so piled sky-high with psychotic bullshit. Then send me a Polaroid. That’s what I tell him — but still friendly, like, OK, you win. Right? I mean, it’s so tragically risible that I thought a Polaroid would be a fitting souvenir. I asked if he’d take a snapshot — and all he had to say was yes, even if he never planned to — you know, my way of giving him a way out — and he says, No. Again! He actually said that he couldn’t. In the same smug way: like I’m a tourist being reprimanded by a guard for touching the Rodin.

“On the way home from court, I wondered if the time machine I’d seen two years earlier had been a quickie mock-up, a cardboard plant, to lure me in. I mean, more and more the guy was like someone Ricky Jay would play in a Mamet flick. But to what end? What was the big score here? Thirty-five hundred dollars and a Small Claims hassle?

“A week or so later, I was recounting the story to Clea — this is a long time ago, we’d just started seeing each other — and I have this ecstatic revelation. Almost like a religious experience. I realize this man, this tinkerer, wasn’t human. The motherfucker wasn’t real. This wasn’t my medication — or lack of it — talking. I came to the conclusion it was some kind of entity that was trying to tell me something. What it was trying to say was, you can’t go backward —and you can’t go forward, either. This… this schleppy thing was illuminating the arrogance of my aspirations, and the pain and suffering it had caused. I became absolutely convinced that if I tried calling the man’s number again, there’d be a recording. That I misdialed — or it didn’t exist. Not ‘disconnected’ but nonexistent . And if I visited where he lived, the little workshop would be shuttered or razed. You know, where you see the postman and he says, ‘That place has been vacant for thirty years.’ And I knew there’d be no record of our time in court — no paper trail. I didn’t even want to look into it. I knew it all — and oh shit! That was another thing: I lost the check. For two-fifty. Never found the check. It fucking vanished. And to this day, Bertram, I’m a thousand percent certain my theory is sound. It’s a Twilight Zone episode, OK? With a Zen twist. You believe in this kind of shit, don’t you? How can you not? And it turns out — the moral of it — is one of the most beautiful things life ever taught me.” He paused, then said, “Do you understand, Bertie?”

I nodded.

He looked out the cold, dirty window into the dark.

“The week after we built our time machine, Jeremy went off to Capri to join my father. And that was where he drowned.”

1OK, it was hard to stay mad at him. So I’m an enabler, I’ll admit. Feel better?

WHEN THAD SUGGESTEDwe find a way to occupy ourselves in quaint San Rafael during Clea’s gig, she wouldn’t hear of it.

She insisted on our presence in the auditorium during the tried-and-true cabaret-style tragicomic monologue that she performed prior to autographing photos, posters, and miscellanea, both Roos-and Clea-related, offered up by rabid fans. There must have been over 2,000 folks converging from God knows where (three of Roos Chandler’s most famous films plus two obscure ones plus a rare home-movie clip were being screened) and I marveled at the organized industry of it. Clea’s share of the take was a flat $35,000. The promoters couldn’t have been happier with the bonus burger of her unexpected companion, Thad Michelet. In short time, the faithful flock miraculously handed over effluvia for signing — stills from The Jetsons and Quixote , that sort of thing. He was remarkably good-humored about it, I suppose still redeeming himself for his bad behavior of the night before.

We were back in L.A. around 10:00 P.M. The car dropped me off before ferrying them back to the Chateau.

AFTER HEARING ABOUT THAD’S BROTHERup close and personal, it seemed a morbid coincidence that Ensign Rattweil had been assigned a perversely devoted twin who’d remained behind with the Vorbalidian parents. The monstrous Prince Morloch was jockeying for the throne; for reasons of arcane galactic law which only the writers understood, Rattweil had been forcibly summoned from self-exile to bear witness to the royal succession. I should add that I made it a point to quiz the staff — had they been aware of the biographical detail of twinhood before crafting the teleplay? They swore they had not.

So it was with an air of bizarre anticipation that on Monday morning I found myself, along with Thad, Captain Laughton, X-Ray, and the android Cabott 7, loitering amid a barren landscape strewn with formidable-sized boulders — Soundstage 11’s all-purpose blue screen wilderness. Cabott was compelled, in typically droll fashion, to inform us that instead of landing within the coordinates guaranteeing our arrival at the official Vorbalidian seat, we had instead corporealized in a wasteland, an error he attributed to the “most peculiar” qualities of radiation emitted by the Great Dome. We’d overshot the government enclave which, owing to its configuration when scanned from the ship, had the shape of a large white flower. As the Demeter ’s resident wag and Earth world history buff, I–Commander Karp, rather — dubbed the buildings the Chrysanthemum Palace.

“Cabott,” said the captain. “By your reckoning, how far are we from city center?”

The android glanced at a handheld device. “Around twenty thousand miles, sir.”

“Pity,” said Dr. Chaldorer. “I didn’t pack my hiking boots.”

Thad clocked the landscape with a dull shock of recognition. “I know this place — it’s the Fellcrum Outback.” When the captain asked him to explain, he informed it was ancient fighting ground. “Vorbalidian nobles often used blood sport to settle disputes.”

“Curious,” said Cabott, wrinkling his nose. “One of the most advanced of all known civilizations, engaged in gladiatorial combat.”

He requested permission to reconnoiter soil samples. Laughton told me to accompany the major but remain within shouting distance. We exited camera right. The good doctor lazily positioned himself against a papier-mâché rock, of which there was a great profusion. I watched from the wings.