I’m Losing You (38 page)

“A few days ago. He hasn't returned my call.”

“He's very busy.”

“You trust him though, huh, Edie?”

“Obie
loves
him.”

“Listen, Edie, there's something I need to get your feedback on—artistically. An idea I want to run past you. I need a
hook
for this—to tie the stories together, see? That's what these kids talk about, it's all about the ‘hook.' This Cryptmaster thing…you remember Alistair Cooke? English Alistair Cooke? Remember that—what was that show?—
Masterpiece Theater
. He came out in the openings and tied things together, you know, unified. See, that's what we're gonna do, that's what they want: to take my three little movies and tie them together. Unify and condense. That's the way they do it. Everything in a package. And what I need to find—this is my challenge—is a
device
—to
interlink
, something to grab people by the balls so they keep their rear end in the seats. And what I was thinking,” he said gently, “and bear with me now, because the idea is still…fetal. What I was thinking is that Obie might play that role beautifully.”

Edie smiled. “My Obie? I don't understand.”

“Hear me out. First of all, I think it would be invaluable for her to be in front of a camera again—mind you, we're not talking tomorrow, either. But my feeling is that it would be more therapy than a hundred of these so-called gurus and healers we got trooping through there now. For Oberon Mall to feel the lights, the
tumult
of a crew again—it might awaken something. She's a performer, Edie. And she's still a
star:
for us to forget that does a terrible disservice. I think she
craves
that,
misses
that more than we could ever know.”

Edie stared in disbelief. “What did you want her—what could she—”

“Now, I'm just starting to think about this. I'd set it up as ‘Oberon Mall Presents.' It's three parts, right? Here's my thought. Those three parts are the dreams—or
nightmares
—of Oberon Mall. She'd be like a female Hitchcock:
very
classy, with Obie, it could never be anything but. We'd have an actress do her voice, you know, looped. A top impressionist. I'd hire the greatest cinematographer, someone from one of her movies. People would
beg
to work on this show, Edie, they would be
honored
. The
best
lighting people; the
best
makeup; the best
everything
. Academy Award people. You can trust me with your life, Edie—and so can Obie—to make her look more beautiful then ever. Because it will be a
totally controlled
situation.”

Edie hurled her glass, striking him hard in the shoulder.

He stood and she fell upon him, pounding his stomach. The producer feebly raised a hand to ward off the blows.

“Have you seen her?” she bellowed. “
Have you seen my baby?
She's having seizures!” She struck him across the face, slicing open the skin with her ring. “She's in diapers! My baby is in
diapers
!”

She was sobbing now and Bernie lurched to his feet, toward the door. He couldn't see because of the blood in his eyes. Edie tackled him and they rolled on the floor. He broke free again and managed to shove her into the sofa, buying enough time to dash to the hall. From the stairwell, she roared like Godzilla.

It was only a few blocks to Cedars, yet by the time he made it to the lobby, the producer changed his mind about going on foot. He was having trouble breathing; it felt like a rib was broken. He rode the elevator to the garage and maneuvered himself behind the wheel. As the motorized gate dragged itself open, Edie appeared, pounding on the window with terrible force. He floored it and she tumbled harmlessly back.

The old man got a stabbing pain in front of Orso's and ran the car into a curb. A valet rushed over and Bernie said he'd only be a minute. The sullen Mexican saw the blood and retreated. Bernie looked in the mirror at the gouge on his cheek. He got a handkerchief from the glove compartment and held it there to stanch the flow. What would he tell them at the emergency room? Better to say he was mugged by a nigger than bitch-slapped by a shack-job. That's right—some shvug in a hairnet, just outside the bakery where he got his regular almond alligator and coffee. Let me tell you, this is one crazy old Jew who put up a helluva fight. Shvuggie's out there sucking on a crack pipe with a split lip, fatter than the one he was born with. You better believe it. And that's Bernie Ribkin talking, cockeyed cowboy of the wild Westside.

“Bernie?” A familiar face peered through the passenger window. “It's Fred—Fred Toschen.”

“Hiya.” Bernie managed a smile but it was awkward keeping handkerchief to cheek at that angle.

“Jesus, what happened to you?”

“Had some surgery—coupla stitches. Started to bleed again. On my way to the doctor's…”

“Are you okay? Can you drive?”

“I'm fine.” Who was this man?

“Look, I wanted to say how sorry I am about the other day. If it was me, I probably would have punched Pierre out—and that little a-hole Denny. But you were
great
. Anyhow, I just wanted you to know I was
not
involved in their practical joke. I was in that room as a
fan
, pure and simple.” Bernie beamed like a gargoyle, stifling a cough, afraid of the pain and spewing of blood. “I don't know what it's all about, but Pierre
seriously
has it in for your son, that's the
agenda
. It's like a pathological…
grudge
. Something that happened when they were kids—”

The producer was sweating, the pain in his chest unendurable. He started the engine.

The valet pulled up in the lawyer's car and Fred smiled obliviously as he took his leave. “I know how you can get your revenge. Go in there and say you can do it—tell 'em you can shoot the thing in an
hour
! A sixty-minute shoot! Go in with a budget and everything! I'll walk into the son of a bitch's office
with
you!”

The Range Rover jerked into the street. There was a jam at the crosswalk—wheelchairs heading for the clinic—so he hung a right to Robertson via Burton Way. Right again at Chaya Brasserie. A lung collapsed as the emergency room hove into view, and Bernie blacked out. The car jumped curb, hurtling toward the foot of the Thalians Mental Health Center steps.

A crowd of women watched curiously as the black bumper struck them down.

Troy Copra

It rained the night of the show. A goodly group of friends and invitees attended, but they lost around half during the performance. That was because technical problems caused the taping to take twice as long as had been announced.

There were cheerleaders and cronies from the Adult world and stage actor friends from the old days—now voice-over mavens grown round from the weight of the years. Kiv brought her roommate, Jabba, and wangled an agent, a casting person and a hotshot exec from New Line. She even charmed a guy from the
Reporter
into coming, on condition he wouldn't review if he didn't like what he saw. Missing in action were Sir Lancelot and big-ass Guinevere (they
never RSVP'd). Troy hadn't heard boo about Zev Turtletaub's birthday reel and assumed it went the way of all flesh.

After the show he took Quinn, Kiv and Jabba to Tana's. Kiv wasn't drinking. When Jabba, teased her, she came right out and said she was pregnant. Troy didn't mind. Everything was changing—no place left to run. He would ask Kiv to move in, officially. Soon he'd be editing
Skin Trade
, splicing together a new life. He might even land a festival: all Troy needed was an “audience favorite” award and distribution would be guaranteed. It didn't matter what happened now. Directing was the equalizer and he had his reel—he'd come into his own, leveling the playing field forever. Troy felt a keen sense of victory and knew it wasn't the Cristal or the coke Quinn slipped him in the grungy head.

Dabney Coleman sat in a booth across the way, Ellen DeGeneres in another. Troy belonged—a gladiator just like them. Kiv kept bringing it back to the show, giddily recounting each roller-coaster moment. From the winner's circle, Troy kissed her sober mouth, Kiv so happy, grasping his hand, moving it over swollen belly as across a Ouija board. They bussed some more, unnoticed by Dabney and Ellen, who, now bent in communion, shared secrets—gladiator lore—leaning together at the hinge of adjacent booths, opposing cameos charismatically shutting out the room.

Zev Turtletaub

Certain pointless vignettes crowded his Dilaudid-steeped consciousness. One was particularly cunning.

A few years ago, he dropped seventy-four thousand dollars at Maxfield's on clothes and jewelry, gliding from room to room, attended like a famous assassin (or murderous cardinal). At transaction's end, the owner's hauteur unexpectedly crumbled. “You're my hero,” he said, ringing down the curtain on Zev's exotic fantasia. What galled the producer was that, for a moment, his native misanthropism flagged and he actually believed him. The ridiculous phrase—
you're my hero
—had recurred like a punishment ever since, compulsive and deracinated, cropping up for hours, even days on end. He sometimes playfully countered such importunacy by silently singing back,
We don't need another hero!
which echoed itself as well, so that Zev was doubly irked. He endured these petit mal sieges with
a vague smile on thin lips that usually concealed flat, pearly canker sores, sweet to probing tongue.

The RN came to change his dressing. Zev refused to look at the wound. Flexor muscle and tendon had been torn away and would require a graft. It was too early to test positive for HIV; the concern, for now, was controlling the staph. Anything else was simply not a possibility…he would reject her AIDS as he had rejected everything about her, always: every doomed, sickly thing about all of them, from Mother's metastatic CA to Father's catatonic depression and cirrhosis-induced ascites, stomach fanning out big and hard as the Liberty Bell. The lurid pediatrician joked about Zev's floppy breasts (he was fourteen):
Your sister should be so stacked
. Aubrey heard their dad use that on him and Zev put her in her place to shut her up; that would be a hole in the ground. Everyone would have their hole. Eye for an eye, hole for a hole, every dog his doggie-do. Zev Turtletaub would puke the world—their world—then bury it.

His only thoughts were to keep the incident from the press; that possessed him, more than the pain. Leslie Trott came up with the spider-bite strategem, flukily believable—the culprit being a brown recluse at his rock-molded Moab canyonland cabin (were there brown recluses in Utah? He'd have an assistant confirm)—something that caused wildfire tissue necrosis.

In a week, his sister would be dead. He bit down on a towel while the nurse lavaged the macerated crater of bicep. What had Aubrey done with her son? He would find him, there was no doubt—he already had people looking. Zephyr was his charge. Raising him would be his duty and his joy.

Was not the boy named for him, after all?

Chet Stoddard

He phoned the hospital in Sherman Oaks, but Aubrey wasn't there. He drove by the Oakhurst house for almost a week, at different hours of day and night. There were no lights and nothing stirred. Chet revisited some NA/HIV meetings and was able to track Ziggy down.

The garden apartment was just south of Sunset, by the Virgin Megastore. The “infected faggot” cordially asked him in—that's what Ziggy liked to call himself. A burly volunteer from one of the
AIDS organizations was just leaving. When he was gone, the shut-in held forth from the center of the living room, in trademark stand-up despot mode.

“Why do they send me this straight guy who can't clean? I'm sorry, but the straight guys do
not
know how to clean a kitchen floor. He comes and he sits, with his Ziploc'd tuna sandwich and his little apple.
A polished little apple!
My ultimate horror is that when I'm bedridden, this motherfucker's gonna sit there and read aloud from Marianne Williamson! I mean, what is he
doing
here?”

“I've been trying to get hold of Aubrey.”

“She's in a world of shit.”

“What's happening?”

“She's toxo: toxoplasmosis. Attack of the Brain Parasites.”

“Oh Jesus.”

“
Totally
crazy and half paralyzed and that ain't all. Her brother got rid of her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She took a fucking
bite
out of him! Isn't that the most
fabulous
thing you ever heard? Very Anne Rice—and lemme tell you, he is the
meanest
cunt on the planet. Zev Turtletaub, the Vomit King, ever heard? Zee very grandest of Grand Wazoos. Well, Aubrey Anne gave him a lovely going-away shove—and now he's on the funicular to Dementia Street and Diarrhea Way. As we speak!” Chet reached for a Marlboro and lit up, his first in eighteen months. “I know, ‘cause I was
there
, right after it happened—before the parasites turned her into Sybil.” Ziggy started to cackle. “She said she was going for his
neck
, but he backed up and fell or something and hit his head. So she
jumps
on him and takes a
huge
chunk from his arm—those
expensive
Yon Koster–sculpted arms—and then she
barfs
into his mouth! Oh God! Don't you just love it?”

The phone rang and Ziggy networked awhile. Whoever it was needed advice on whether to sue a hospital, healthcare worker, insurance company or possibly the government over some incident Chet couldn't fathom. As far as Ziggy was concerned, the details—petty, real or imagined—didn't seem to matter. It was
attitude
that counted. Attitude was agitprop; attitude was sacred; attitude was all. And today, “attitude” decreed that
someone
needed to be sued.