Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

I was glad the migraine, or whatever the hell it was, forced us to get those ludicrous set pieces out of the way. Thad and Clea’s scene was slated for late afternoon, a good thing because the medication had left him subdued; he turned in an adroitly skilled and elegiac performance, and Nick Sultan was a happy man. Directors can be nervous individuals; Nick must have spent the better part of lunch strategizing with his agent, various producers, and casting gals over worst-case scenarios. Of course, everyone knew the “situation” wasn’t Nick’s fault — but you know what they say about crimes being committed under one’s watch.

The thrones of king and queen were empty. Thad and Clea loitered in the palace hall, alone save for dog-headed sentinels in rigid attention. There came a moment of awkward intimacy when Trothex uncomfortably confessed that she and Morloch had been — were — a couple. As testimony to his skill as an actor, Thad’s very skin seemed to color with the crude complexities of what she had shared. Just then, Morloch (a double whom Thad would later replace, digitally) entered with wolfish royal retinue.

“It is done!” the stand-in exclaimed triumphantly, referring to whatever internecine machinations. “The people demand it!”

With the rotten taste of a romance betrayed still in his mouth, the ensign selflessly switched gears. “I insist you release the others — at once!”

“All issues will be settled in the Outback.”

“I do not understand….”

“Then I shall make it clear, brother dearest! We will fight with our hands 3—in twenty-four of your precious Earth hours. Forewarned is forearmed!”

The stand-in for the demon prince froze as the camera pushed in on Mr. Rattweil. After what seemed an eternity, the director “cut”—evidently, Thad forgot his final line but Nick was thrilled nonetheless. They would do a pickup.

Camera reset.

The First ordered everyone to settle.

“And… action!”

Again, the lens pushed in on Thad as he peered off, his gaze lost in the tarry, starry depths of the Outback.

“I am home,” he said.

We wrapped the day.

1An obsessive, repressed, dysfunctional threesome is more work than it seems. Trust me.

2I should note our ensemble was giddy from stepping outside the box of their usual shtick, and that “Nickie” Sultan had no great desire, or ability, to rein them in. There was no shortage of Hamlet or ham.

3In one of the writing staff’s aggravating Shakespearean asides, Thad interjected, “Forever a duo, we shall have a ‘duel’ death.”

MIRIAM SURPRISED US BY FLYINGout early. She phoned on Friday evening to ask if I wanted to have a drink at the hotel; she was staying at Shutters for the weekend, “as a treat.” She would check into the Chateau on Monday.

I was at the club when she called. I finished my workout, showered, and drove to the beach. When Miriam opened the door to her suite, she was in a thongy Victoria’s Secret number. Drinks were postponed. I’d never seen her this passionate — not even the first time we fucked. It was more than exciting because the funny thing was, if I really thought about it, I couldn’t recall a woman in the past five years who seriously came. I somehow remembered the girls of summer being more vocal, spontaneous, lubricated, what have you. Lately, I connected an overall waning of erotic impulse not just to growing older but to my unthrilled partners themselves. (A friend had palmed off a couple of blue, baseball-diamond shaped Viagras which I’d yet to try; a watershed moment I was willing to postpone.) Anyhow, my unhappy assessment of the current state of affairs — at least my own — was that sex seemed to be in a sort of cross-culturally, dumbed-down, or should I say numbed-down, state. As if the whole world had forgotten how to climax, and was content merely to grope its way toward the funky, muddled, middle-aged light at the end of whatever tunnel it found itself stumbling down.

A few hours with the new, improved Miriam shot my depressing little theory to hell, and it wasn’t just a reinvigorated sense of my own powers: something elemental had been aroused that was instinctively attached to making babies. It’s incredible how simply we’re wired. In the days that followed, Miriam became my A1 breeding candidate, alpha bitch and repository of all manner of marital fantasies. I imagined us betrothed in elaborately catered affairs in Angkor Watt or New Zealand, lovingly captured in the New York Times Weddings/Celebrations section. Dad would happily pay through the nose; the bliss of it might even heal Gita of her tremors, allowing her to walk again. (Sorry, folks, but it’s true — at the root of everything is the need to please one’s parents.) Miriam would be a few months pregnant during the ceremonies, a saucy zitz and added delight to the gathered tribes. Oh, did I mention those tribes would be flown in by chartered jet? Knowing Perry, elaborate trust funds would already be in place, ensuring cushy futures for hordes of children, as Miriam would undoubtedly prove herself to be in possession of a shockingly fertile womb. HBO would pick up Holmby Hills and I’d settle into “the life,” that of a proper man and mogulian force to be reckoned with. I’d give great amounts to expunging this and that disease, enshrined and honored at black-tie galas, just like Dad. How would Clea react? Sure, she’d be hurt — at first. There’d be some fireworks… where’s the fun without fireworks? Besides, Miriam totally got it, understood from the beginning that Clea and I were contentious, harmlessly amorous siblings. To soften the blow, god-motherhood would thus be conferred. Clea would prove herself a natural, spurred on to drop a few kids of her own (by anonymous donor). If it was too late, I’d spring for a Mongolian, hiring a pro to arrange trips to orphanages and facilitate paperwork.

That’s how I walked around — wearing the scent of Miriam’s ovulations like a dreamy cologne, in full acceptance that the tidal tug emanated from the dictates of social order, not soul mate. But sometimes they seemed damn hard to tell apart.

WHEN THAD’S LUNCH WITH MORDECAIand the Danish DP wannabe director was canceled, Clea got it into her head we should all go down to Disneyland. It’d been a rough week and she thought it might be “fun” to get him out of the Chateau and “into open air.” I hadn’t been to the Magic Kingdom in years; the escapade jibed perfectly with my second adolescence (courtesy of Miriam). Still, I was surprised at the level of Thad’s excitement when she floated the idea.

When we arrived in Anaheim, he suddenly got excited about California Adventure — so instead of going to Main Street, we hung a right. Friendly guards cursorily searched the girls’ handbags then pointed us toward the truncated Golden Gate Bridge that served as the corollary theme park’s entrance.

A sense of horror quickly descended.

There was nothing but wide-open spaces filled with porcine, handicapped families tooling around in rented, motorized tricycles. In place of attractions, an onslaught of shops — vast franchised plains of promotional material that looped back on the World of Dizleenan like a nauseating Möbius strip. Wall-to-wall music of the overamped John Williams variety piped relentlessly through invisible speakers, inflated and gaudily anticipatory, a sound track typically heard over opening (or closing) credits of a Spielberg extravaganza; everywhere you turned the orchestra strained toward something massive yet all one encountered were sprawling boutiques, screaming toddlers, and crippled fatties in PC motorcarts. Clea wanted to go roller-coastering and finally, miles away, we spotted “Mulholland Madness.” Weirdly, the point of the ride was to simulate what it would be like to speed around Mulholland Drive. There was a long line but a “cast member” (translation: wage slave) signaled us through, having cheerfully recognized Thad as a VIP. It was lame enough to see a replica of the Manhattan skyline in Vegas, or the Eiffel Tower in Orlando, but something else entirely to take a forty-five-minute sojourn from the Chateau in order to be whipped around a simulacrum of my native Mulholland. Soon, no doubt, there’d be a new wonderland — a mini-Disneyland within the park itself, a glorified, edited version of the Happiest Place On Earth™, with tinier boutiques filled with bitsy souvenirs. Secondhand reality was hot! I thought about my faux- Dynasty project, Holmby Hills, and got even more dejected.