I’m Losing You (51 page)

“I just signed Arnold,” said Tovah, suggestively. Again, the cocky devil-woman grin.

“Yes, I know. He's the best. We went to college together.” He turned to Perry. “If you're interested, I can put you in touch with a guy who gets unbeatable prices—forty percent off at minimum, and I've seen him go high as sixty. Crichton's a customer; buys himself one whenever he finishes a project, as a little reward.”

“I've been looking at grande complications,” Perry said. “Did you ever have one?”

He shook his head matter-of-factly. “Never. I know Geena just got one for Renny. I should tell you, if you wear the things, they're gonna wind up in the shop. They're like Ferraris that way. Renny's had his in
four times
—he's a very active guy! It's important to know a watchmaker, that's why Berto's so great. He's the guy I was telling you about. I made the mistake of sending one of my Pateks to Geneva for a repair.
Here it comes
, eleven months later! Berto usually has a three-week turnaround.”

Arnold's boy came down the aisle, engrossed in a hand-held digital game. Jeremy gathered him up.

“He's sweet,” Tovah said. “Taking him to the zoo?”

“Absolutely. You know, San Diego has a taipan, if you're interested—probably the most aggressive snake in the world. Northern Australia. Last time I was there, a kid put his hand to the window and the taipan struck three times. They didn't realize until the end of the day that the damn thing had broken its nose!”

Tovah sought her client out below while the new friends bonded over the addictive nature of collectibles. Perry mentioned the eighteenth-century “Pendule Sympathique,” a kind of carriage clock crowned with a half-moon berth to accommodate certain pocket watches; when the latter were placed within, they would automatically be reset and rewound by the “mothership.”

“That's Breguet—did Napoleon have one of those? That kinda thing comes up for auction every now and then. They're millions upon millions, it just doesn't end. You can go to Frank Muller—Muller makes one-of-a-kinds—for two hundred grand, they'll design whatever kind of watch you want.”

“I'd love to get together,” Perry said as they pulled into the San Diego station. “I've heard great things about your show.”

“And I'm a
big
fan of yours. I'll bring Berto—know where we'll go? Ginza Sushiko, heard of it? On the Via Rodeo. Probably the most expensive sushi place in the country. You can get fugu there. Friend of mine in Japan took me for absolutely
exquisite
tempura—you know, one of these places where you eat out of eight-hundred-year-old bowls. Anyway, he said they had something
extremely
rare that I
had
to try. I said, ‘Well now, what would that be?' And my friend Ryuichi says, ‘Cow penis.' He began to laugh. ‘I think you mean
bull
, Ryuichi—though cow penis
would
be rare!'”

They only had a few hours and decided to skip the zoo.

Tijuana was close but not close enough; Tovah said it wouldn't be such a good thing if they missed the return jog. They cabbed it to Hotel del Coronado for lunch. On the way, Perry had a grim laugh, imagining himself at the border like Steve McQueen en route to a miracle clinic. What ever happened to laetrile, anyway?

Tovah took a while in the restroom. When she entered the lobby, Perry raised a finger from the front desk, holding her off. She smiled and sat down, not really thinking he was up to anything. When he
came over, she said, “I'm starved,” but Perry said he felt like eating in privacy so he'd gotten a room and hoped that was all right.

“When do children learn to tell time?” She was trying to get him to open up about Montgomery.

He could see part of her through the door, naked, sitting on the bowl having her pee. He thought of Jersey, being scrubbed with seaweed. God knew how long it had been since he'd watched a woman in a bathroom, other than his wife.

“That depends,” he said, listening to the tinkle. He wondered if she'd done this sort of thing before with other clients—the afternoon delight. Probably not with a dying one, anyway.

She came out in a white hotel robe. They should be getting back, she whispered, kissing him. “Why, yes'm,” he said. He could smell her sex on his face and dreaded washing it off.

Floating past Capistrano, sitting on a depopulated divan, Perry remembered he had brought Tovah's gift. There was an impulsive purity behind its purchase, but now, after the act, such a gesture would seem old-fashioned and demeaning: reward for a job well done in the sack, a gold watch for fifty minutes of service. It wasn't expensive enough to give his wife and he wouldn't want Jersey finding it tucked away in a drawer, either. He'd bury the thing or bring it back to Henri, for credit.

Arnold's son passed, and then another reconnoitering boy, who stared at him a moment, causing a pang. He looked just like Montgomery—without the seizures, of course, or the medulloblastoma the size of Children's Hospital. Only six hundred cases a year and Montgomery one of them; he died at the beginning of March, making him number one-oh-eight, or thereabouts. The last few weeks he got chemo through a tube in his chest. When he curled into the fetal position, a doctor had the gall to say kids responded to trauma by “reverting to infancy.” Perry wanted to scream “He
is
a fucking infant!” but something stopped him short—he was nothing if not civil. He stabbed at himself for months after, always holding his tongue, his whole life he'd been that way, even when it counted most, keeping a neat little room in the back of his skull to house the
cheap inventory of unvoiced comebacks and polished, useless retorts, obsolete and carefully shelved. Jersey was the one who got rowdy, while Perry held the world together. He regretted never having had a big Shirley MacLaine
Terms of Endearment
moment. Instead, he'd capitulated straight down the line. Why had he let them torture his kid like that?

Tovah brought him a drink.

“Did you ever sleep with Jeremy Stein?”

“Oh please.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, the guy is, like, totally into whores. From what I hear. And he had a
stroke
—it probably doesn't even work anymore.”

“So those are the top two reasons you wouldn't.”

“That's
not
what I meant! He's
not
my type. He's got a
kid
. Who he, like,
abandoned
.”

“But you want to sign him.”

“He's got a hit show. The one thing in his favor.”

He eyed her quizzically. “Why is it,” he asked, “that agents always say, ‘You got it'?”

“I know. I
hate
that.”

“And now all the
assistants
say it. Every time you ask for something, they say, ‘You got it.' No: ‘You gahhhhht it.' You don't say that, do you?”

“I don't know who started that.”

“Probably your dad.”

“That's a horrible thought.”

They watched bodysuited surfers catch a wave. The agent was pensive. Perry tried finding her smell on his upper lip, but the booze had killed it.

“You know,” she said, “I'm not so sure that was such a good thing. What we did.”

“Sure felt like one.” He regretted asking if she'd slept with Jeremy Stein. Vulgar and flip.

“That's
not
what I meant.” She smiled, blinking sultrily. “Are you okay with it?”

Perry was at a loss. He fell back on sheer age, which conferred a certain ready cool. He began to sing. “‘Strangers on a train, exchanging glances'—”

“Are we?” she asked, preparing to be hurt—now, or later. “Are we strangers?”

All women are mysterious, he thought. Without the twin antidotal axiom, there would be no game:
All women are insecure
. “Here's an idea for a film: Two strangers meet on a train and agree to kill each other's agents.”

“How about lawyers?” Tovah asked, relieved to be steered from her mushy course. “I'd feel more comfortable with that.”

“You gahhhhht it.”

Ursula Sedgwick

Donny couldn't believe that Taj Wiedlin, his “shadow” at ICM for over two years, was the child's killer. He felt like Walter Pidgeon in
Forbidden Planet
—the scientist whose unleashed id runs murderously amok. After the funeral, the agent dropped from sight. Ursula reasoned her old lover finally understood what she'd tried to tell him that day at Cicada: life is a wheel that turns round and round, like a carousel.

She was going downhill living in the house where her daughter was bludgeoned. She slept a few nights at Phyll's, but the bungalow was small; the producer was pregnant and sick and it was hard on them both. Sara asked her to stay in a guest room of the Brentwood hacienda. The garden and clean, cool walls were welcome. Ursula liked that the streets had no sidewalks. During the day, she puttered around the old Venice house, straightening up, watching TV, sometimes napping on Tiffany's bed. Taj called from jail a few times and left messages on the machine—she refused to change the number because it still felt like a link to her daughter. Sara and Phyll couldn't argue with that.

She was wonderful with Samson. Sara's actress friends were always visiting, spinning bawdy, cynical Hollywood tales—so funny and compassionate and full of life—Marcia Strassman and Arleen Sorkin (she'd just had a little boy), Mary Crosby and Marilu Henner. And, of course, Holly and Beth Henley (Beth just had a baby too). Holly was so giving. She kept offering money and work. “Hey!” she shouted. “Be mah damn purrsonal ‘sistant!” Ursula wasn't ready, but it was neat to get the offer. She knew Holly was sincere.

She found the infamous
Dictionary of Saints
at a used-book store
on the Promenade and brought it to the children's section of the library to read. Ursula felt safe surrounded by all the big, colorful books and lilliputian tables and chairs. The women who worked there assumed she was a nanny—or young mother, which she was and would always be. She re-examined the barbarous painting, as if remembering a childhood fever. Saint Agatha was often pictorialized carrying loaves of bread on a tray. The text said those loaves were actually breasts, sliced off by tormentors—that's why she was simultaneously known as “the patron saint of breast disease and of bakers.” It was silly enough that she laughed. In other illustrations, the breasts were shown to be bells; so too was Agatha “the patron saint of bell ringers and firemen.” Something for everyone.

She didn't dream anymore about the Roman brothel but knew that wasn't a repudiation of her vision. She wasn't sure how she had been so wrong about Taj's role, but ascribed it to her lack of sophistication on the Inner. Ursula chose not to think about it for now. In her heart, she was certain Tiffany had been taken for a reason; in her heart, she knew the Mahanta was with her daughter at the exact moment she translated (the beautiful ECKist word for “passed on”). She had no doubts Tiffany was on the Soul Plane now. On one of his tapes, Sri Harold spoke about people translating because they had so much love for life that they needed more room to express it—that's why they went to a “higher channel.” Ursula wondered if murder changed any of that; there was nothing in the Eckankar literature that pertained. Maybe Tiffany was ready to go but didn't want to leave her mother so she drew this person Taj to aid in her translation. Something like that may have been true for Saint Agatha as well.