Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

As if softly unspooling more secrets, he began to quote his beloved Leopardi, but the words seemed such his own, so exclusive to the timeless moment on that slope beneath celestial seas, syllables engrained as stardust into his bones, that he became the prodigal son, exiled Vorbalidian prince come home to roost in phantom pain and stellar tomb, middling and majestic, murderous and mundane, in blinding darkness and vacuumed, vanished light — boyish, transgressive and humble, so that I felt the vibratory strands of existence cocoon around us, in the great transparent cathedral of our shabbily awesome, gloriously stillborn life.

“I have always loved this lonesome hill,” he said. “And this hedge that hides the entire horizon, almost, from sight. But sitting here in a daydream, I picture the boundless spaces away out there, silences deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush in which my heart is hardly a beat from fear. And hearing the wind rush rustling through these bushes, I pit its speech against infinite silence — and a notion of eternity floats to mind, and the dead seasons— e le morte stagioni —and the season beating here and now, and the sound of it. So, in this immensity my thoughts all drown. And it’s soothing to be wrecked in seas like these.”

IT WAS FRIDAY — THE LASTday of shooting.

Thad never arrived.

Clea began to unravel. I stood by watching Nick Sultan put extras through fruitless, unfilmed paces: palace guardians in Greek chorus groupings on the painted plaster desert of the Outback. They were to pound their tom-toms during the twins’ battle royale which was set to unfold before a giant blue screen already in place. The old-school prop master stood in the wings holding ritual daggers in a customized teak box, ready to hand them to Morloch and the ensign if one (or the other) were ever to show. The harmless weapons were his responsibility but now that there were no warriors, he felt the chill of an unvoiced rebuke.

Hours passed. A pall descended. Lawyers, agents, and executives assembled. Stunt and camera doubles were ladled with the heavy cubist makeup of Vorbalids; it was decided Morloch’s side of the battle would be shot first, buying time in case Thad suddenly showed. Nick got a second wind and the crew went to work with the careful haste required of a production crisis. The pressure was on but at the same time things seemed so hopeless that it was off, too — a chance for stalwart below-the-liners to pragmatically strut their stuff in perspirey triple-time and ingratiate themselves to the studio. They’d be the real heroes of the day.

Clea sat in her canvas chair on the soundstage. The rest of us, temporarily liberated from our cages by Morloch to bear witness to his expected triumph (a few reaction shots were needed, nothing more), loitered in readiness. With the UPM’s sober, nodding submission, Nick Sultan reasserted to the studio brass there was no reason to worry because everything would soon be “in the can”—except for the ensign’s half of the blue-screened tussle. Word filtered back: the CGI gurus had determined that an ensign look-alike could be hired for a half day of second unit inserts to be shot on the following weekend. (It was unprecedented to allow anything to interfere with production stream; the next episode, well into preproduction, was scheduled to begin filming on Monday.) The footage of the Rattweil look-alike would be framed in judicious mediums rather than close-ups, digitally doctored to enhance the more than serviceable resemblance between Thad and his double, then spliced into the fight scene. The experts’ consensus was optimistic; failing success, redoubtable staff-geeks, fueled by Jerry’s Deli triple-deckers and twelve-packs of Red Bull, were already drafting radical story structure alternatives. When it was time to go home (we broke an hour early), spirits were running relatively high under the circumstances. The bullet, if not dodged, seemed to have passed through tissue without hitting any major organs.

In an attempt to throw a net over the missing actor, the studio had sent a P.A. to the Chateau earlier that morning. With the help of the conscientious hotel manager, the room was entered to ascertain if the guest had overslept or was in distress. Needless to say, Mr. Michelet was not to be found. The P.A. lay in wait all day long, to no avail. At 5:00 P.M., Clea and I relieved him of duty.

Throughout, I’d kept Miriam in the loop. She was awfully distressed but we agreed there was no reason as yet for her to hop on a plane. There was general apprehension about Thad’s physical and mental health, with even the occasional hint at foul play — ludicrous, but in our agitated exhaustion, we inevitably came to resemble newscasters during a disaster, vamping after losing live feed. Another sentiment, lighter in weight and leavened by anger, was the plain fact he had done enormous harm to his career, not to mention scotching any hopes of authoring a Starwatch volume, the scamminess of which now seemed abjectly pathetic. Miriam and I suddenly felt besmirched by the inanely precocious bestsellerdom strategy, mortified by our coconspiracy with this overtly unstable man.

Thus, Clea and I began our night watch.

Slowly, like the favorite Brahms intermezzo of her mom’s that she had touchingly learned by heart in the last few years, Clea began to tap at the confessional keys. She told me she’d come over to the Chateau to be with him after our trip to the Observatory, and they had argued about “stupid things.”

Something in her tone betrayed. I pressed for more.

“One summer, on the Vineyard — his father—” She closed her eyes and took a deep, actressy yoga breath. “We didn’t fool around… but something happened.”

“With Jack?”

She nodded, eyes shut. I was surprised, but only at my refusal all this time to see the obvious. “I was still getting loaded. Thad was being horrid. I’m not excusing it, Bertie — what I did — though nothing really happened —but it was enough, I guess. Thad was having an affair, under my nose. God, we were already living together! In Brooklyn Heights… and he was sleeping with this woman— two women. I found out about the second one by ‘mistake.’ He told me about the first. And then this thing happened with Jack, who was always inappropriate. He was just kind of out to get Thad. That’s what he was into. And flirting — he always flirted with me, he flirted with all Thad’s girlfriends. The reverse Oedipal, whatever. Is that what it is? And I was — I wanted to be punitive because I guess I knew it was over. He had so hurt me, Bertie. Why else would he have done what he did? I needed… I guess I just wanted to end it, in a definitive way. And that was pretty definitive! We didn’t fuck or anything. I didn’t fuck Jack, OK? I wasn’t even going to tell him about it — that’s what’s so funny! Jack did. Jack got drunk and told Morgana and she was so freaked out that she told Thad. It was horrible. Horrible! Oh my God, that night —fucking O’Neill couldn’t have written that night. And he never forgave me. Not that I expected him to. But when we got back together this last time — which was totally unplanned, I think it took us both by surprise… and — it seemed he’d gotten over… lots of things. He was different. I thought maybe the whole IRS stuff had… I don’t even know what I mean by that. Sorry.” She paused, to gather herself. “He never talked about — what happened. But right after Jack died, he began alluding. Especially when he got loaded. And it seemed like — well anyway, that’s what we were fighting about. Last night. I mean, this is something he brought up on the Vineyard, at the funeral. All those insinuations — you didn’t know what he was talking about, did you. On the Vineyard? I mean, did you even hear? I don’t think you were even aware. Miriam was! She heard — Miriam knew. But she also knew how crazy everyone was back then — now, too, but especially then! It was a bad time. Bad, bad, bad, bad time. And Morgana was totally freezing me out at the funeral — and it’s still about that. All about that — for her. But nothing really happened, I was a scapegoat because Jack Michelet fucked anything that moved —tuh-duh! — and Morgana knew it. It was part of their thing. She totally joined the Jack Michelet Corporation knowing what he was. That he—” She abruptly returned to the present. “But it still doesn’t make any sense, Bertie… where would he go, why would he not show up? The last fucking day of the shoot! Bertie, I’m worried— I’m really, really worried . I’m worried he might actually have killed himself.” She clapped a hand to her mouth, sorry to have said such a thing aloud to beckon supernatural forces. “Where would he have gone? Maybe he checked into a hotel somewhere and overdosed… should we start calling, Bertie? Should we try all the hotels? Do you think he could have done that?” She began to shiver and weep again, clutching onto me. “Bertie, could he actually have done that? Do you think? Maybe we should start calling the hospitals—”