Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

“True,” said Perry. He faced our friend. “What do you think of Chrysanthemum? As one of your father’s books.” A good, simple question which I’m sure gave Dad the fleeting sense he’d regained control. When Thad didn’t reply, he added, somewhat awkwardly, “What’s your opinion?”

“I’ve always had a special relationship to that novel,” said Thad, without elaborating.

This seemed to please my father.

“Nick said it might be something you’d like to adapt.”

“I didn’t quite say that.”

He was standoffish though still friendly — not so much hard-to-get, but insinuating the complexities of blood he knew Perry would appreciate.

“I thought it’d be a hell of an interesting experiment. Son adapting father.” Dad was in murky waters but I didn’t intervene. “I like the idea of it.”

Thad walked closer to a framed watercolor.

“Recognize it?” my father asked. “One of Jack’s.”

“Yes,” said Thad. “I do.”

It was a woman with her legs spread, hands cupping a resplendent purple vulva.

“A recurring theme,” he said, not without humor. “You know, Perry… what really interests me — at the moment —and I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to take a stab at Chrysanthemum because that intrigues as well, it really does.”

“OK.” He exhaled, giving Thad his full attention — like a merchant ready to barter.

“What I’ve really been thinking about is your book series.”

Dad wrinkled his brow as if downshifting to a lower mental gear. He politely nodded. “Miriam mentioned something about that. Now I’m intrigued. Tell me more!”

“Well, I guess I’m a little perverse! Since my father’s death, there seems to be a lot of interest in Michelet properties in general. Someone even wants to do my first book, The Soft Sea Horse. ”

Miriam appeared in the door. “Mikkel Skarsgaard,” she said.

“The marvelous DP,” said Dad authoritatively. He had a staff of people paid exclusively to keep him abreast of rising (and falling) hipsters in the art and film worlds.

“I’m really interested in doing a Starwatch book…”

“ ‘Prodigal Son,’ ” said Miriam, offering what my father already knew.

“It’s transgressive, ” said Thad.

“He wants to do something… subversive,” said Miriam. “Counterintuitive.”

They were wisely appealing to the “collector” side of dad, the Perry Krohn who’d been known to chicly underwrite tedious performance pieces. He laughed amiably.

“It does seem a bit of a waste of your talents.”

“I–I can’t explain!” said Thad, grinning ear to ear.

“It’s his Matthew Barney moment,” said Miriam.

“I love Matthew Barney,” said Perry.

He seemed to brighten and grow vacant all at once because though the analogy made no sense whatsoever my father was afraid that it did and he’d missed something. He indulged them because he didn’t remotely want to be the butt of a joke, no matter how obscure.

“It’d be great, ” said Miriam, jauntily bringing things back down to Earth. “I mean, Thad’s such a wonderful prose writer as is.”

“We’re talking about you novelizing ‘Prodigal Son’?” said Dad, to clarify.

“ Yes. I’d actually love to do it as two books,” said Thad, overenthused (and with Black Jack’s will in mind; two books would increase the odds). Perry all but scratched his head — at least he was still smiling. “I’m serious!”

“All right, then let’s make it happen!” said Perry, leading us from the library.

Thad gushed his thanks (as if that were all that was legally required to seal the deal), while Miriam obsequiously trumpeted the Dadaist brilliance of it all. My guess was that Father thought it more socially expedient to acquiesce than debate the point. It was some kind of silliness.

I decided to talk with him about the whole business later on and promised as much to Miriam. I was a little concerned Thad hadn’t given enough lip service to Chrysanthemum, which after all was my father’s baby, or should I say, orphan. I could illuminate the testamentary backstory, without which Thad’s zeal must have seemed bizarre — here was an opportunity to score a classy screenwriting credit for a significant chunk of change yet for some reason young Michelet was hell-bent on churning out one of the cookie-cutter volumes of an obscenely banal book series instead, a series already vaguely embarrassing to his employer, a man who prided himself on being a bibliophile (and author) yet whose only aggressive contribution to world literature thus far was this commercial offal, this worthless waste of tree and ink, this dumb and dumber encyclopedia of embroidered teleplays. On the other hand, Perry had always shown a sense of humor when one least expected, a levity about his life and the grotesquely lucrative permutations it had taken: that was his saving grace. Emphatically, the only way any of this might go down would be if yours truly laid out the cold, hard facts of the situation, IRS and all. Best not to be underhanded with Dad — it would only backfire. I’d clear it with Meerkat first, but knew she’d be game.

As we rejoined the others, I overheard Miriam “spinning” my father while they walked, arm-in-arm. “It’s gonna be great, ” she said. “And I know he’ll want to do Chrysanthemum too. The novelization will be a warm up.”

Now Dad was having his fun. “If he agrees to costar in the next Starwatch feature, I’ll think about it. And I mean for scale!”

We settled onto the patio to watch the beachscape.

“The sea is high today, with a thrilling flush of wind,” Thad declaimed. The first line, he said, of The Alexandria Quartet.

Nick moved his chair closer as if for a tête-à-tête, which didn’t make the budding Morloch happy (as the sun dipped, his warm-demeanored ensignhood began to chill). Clea smartly created a diversion, tearing off to frolic with a golden retriever. Miriam followed in Frisbee’d pursuit and the captain’s partner joined them, demonstrating an exemplary wrist-flicking technique. Gita, who’d vanished upstairs awhile, reappeared at the outside elevator. Seeing her, Thad affectionately made the starship whoosh as Carmen pushed Mom toward our remaining little group.

“The technology of the palace is quite impressive, Captain, don’t you agree?”

Laughton looked over with a vacant smile; he may not have heard through the crashing of waves.

“I mean,” said Thad, “you must be aware there are no oceans — not as you know them — in the Vorbalidian sector. I hasten to add what you’re now seeing isn’t a holograph: it’s an aggregation of supercells, a benignly metastatic reconstruction, not a replica, of the immense body of water known as the Pacific that is native to your planet. Scratch the surface and you’ll even find fish and flora. Some genetic differences but fish and flora nonetheless — actually quite edible!”

“Aye-aye, Ensign Rattweil, or shall I call you Prince?” said Laughton, getting into the spirit.

“You may call me Morloch.”

“The Artist Formerly Known as Ensign,” I said, going retro for the sake of the gagline.

Gita wheeled to the terrace on her own power.

Thad acknowledged her with a wink. “Hello, Mother. Glad you could join us.”

“That’s Queen Mother, to you,” interjected the drunken captain, announcing himself as a formerly closeted traveler, now from “outed space.”