I’m Losing You (8 page)

It was easy getting onto the Sony lot. At the Thalberg Building gate, security was focused on cars, not pedestrians. There was only one guard on duty. Just to be safe, the Dead Animal Guy waited for him to become embroiled in the usual drive-on snafu, then strode right in. Wasn't this the same studio someone drove a flaming truck into a few years back? Simon remembered that in the news; happened around the same time those guards were shot over at Universal. Bad week for showbiz. But maybe trespassing
wasn't
so easy—maybe his furry netherworld shenanigans, veteran wayfarer that he was, had imbued him with a debonair invisibility. He imagined himself in a tux, the Dead Pet Society's mystic Double-Oh Seven.

Simon thought of looking up his sister, Rachel. According to Calliope, big sissy now worked for Perry Needham Howe, the guy raking millions off that syndicated cop show. Howe had offices somewhere on the lot—probably even knew the
Blue Matrix
boys. At a certain level of moneymaking, everyone knew everyone.

He decided to head for safe ground: the company store. He bought a
Blue Matrix
sweatshirt and the cashier told him which stage to go to—asking a guard could have invited trouble. The sparkling backlot had a ritzy Deco theme. He passed a whole block of buildings with wharf-related façades, imaginary fish importers and the like. Rolls-Royces, Hum-Vees and Range Rovers threaded the posh alley-like streets. People drove around in golf carts, as in studio days of yore.

A red ambulance light flashing at the Stage Six door meant they were shooting inside. Simon waited with a small group. When the light went off, they entered the cavernous darkness through gunmetal doors. A girl with a walkie intercepted him.

“May I help you?”

“I'm here to see Hassan.”

The girl was listening to voices in her headphones. She said a few words to the walkie that referred to some humdrum crisis.

“You are—”

“Simon Krohn. Hassan's a family friend.”

She held the walkie to her mouth, waiting for an audio runway to clear. Finally, she abandoned her efforts and waved him in.

The bridge of the U.S.S.
Demeter
rose before him like the flagship of an exterminating angel. The legendary players were frozen in grandeur between takes, a tableau vivant for Simon's delectation. There was Captain Trent Wildwood, with his shock of blond hair and vermilion tunic; the tapir-like Commander Stroth, clacking fingertips poised at ellipsoid console; Lt. Livingston T. Cloud, witty diplomat in residence, a hundred-year-old being encased within the body of a pre-adolescent boy. Someone yelled
Take five!
and the crew scurried while the actors exhaled, awakening somnambulists.

Simon rounded the set. Before him stretched an aboriginal landscape of lava rock and sand that he recognized as the Fellcrum Outback, sacred burial- and battleground of Vorbalidian gladiators. Grips raised giant blue screens on its periphery. The budding teleplaywright was about to ask directions to Hassan's dressing room when he saw the imposing figure of the Chief Navigator heading toward him. His face wore the characteristic calcium plating of the Vorbalid race, a dignified mosaic of features that made him resemble a cubist prelate. Mr. DeVore smoked a long thin cigarette and seemed oblivious; he had the judicious, wistful mien of an actor making serious money, at last.

“Hassan?” The shaled head swiveled. “It's Simon—Krohn.”

The Vorbalid brooded and blinked, cracking a smile. “Well, hello!”

“I hope you don't mind my dropping by.”

“Well—I'm not sure!”

The smile became a froggy grimace. The actor began to loudly hum, as if preparing for song.

“Scott Sagabond is a friend.”

“Who?”

“Scott Sagabond, one of the producers.”

“He's not with the show. Left last year.”

“Okay, no estoy es problemo. He was a friend—of my mother's too. I had an idea for a script, a long time ago, and when I met you the other day, things fell quickly into place.”

“Yes, they did, didn't they! I can see that.”

“Since my story mostly revolves around you, I wanted to get your input.”

“Revolves around me?”

The girl with the walkie came and stood a few feet away, listening to her headphones. She was waiting for a cue to usher in Mr. DeVore; head slightly atilt, her eyes had the dull, frank look of someone making potty.

“Perhaps,” said the thespian navigator, “we can talk about this some other time.”

“Oh sure! I can come to the house. I saw it in
In Style
, by the way—your place in Encino? I
love
the grotto your wife designed. She's a very talented lady!”

The girl stepped forward. “Hassan, they're ready for you.”

“Karen, this is Simon Krohn.
Actually
, he's my psychiatrist's son.” The actor sneezed violently but Simon realized it wasn't a sneeze at all, but a strangled guffaw. Karen grinned, absorbed in finding a free channel.

“Why don't you send the précis to my agent?”

“But I have a copy with me.”

“Better to send it—Donny Ribkin at ICM.” The Vorbalid was ditching him before Simon could lock on to his coordinates. “But thank you much. Kind of you to drop by.”

“My mother thought it would be a good idea to cut through the normal channels—you know, eliminate the middleman.”

DeVore stopped in his tracks. “Calliope said you should come here?”

Neither of them looked as if they believed it.

“Well, actually, she suggested I drop it off at the guest house for when you come on Wednesday—at five o'clock. Five's your time, isn't it?”

“I see. Then let me have it.”

“I can still send it to your agent.”

“Hand it over and I'll look at it tonight.”

Hassan made his exit, “Heart of Arknes” in hand. Simon crouched at the edge of the Fellcrum Outback, collecting thoughts
and breath, amazed at the adrenaline the afternoon had required. On the other side, they readied for camera. The Dead Animal Guy sat cross-legged amidst the rocky purplish wilderness, contented, a solitary celestial soldier. Only the presence of a lone grip, Styrofoam cup in hand, surveying a table of pastries, fruit and trailmix, invaded his fantasy, rooting it in the workaday.

Gliding down Sunset Boulevard. Something in the road. Harpy upon him, hurls him to the ground, scattering teeth to curb like a bloody herd of mah-jongg chips. The dreaming physician ran eastward with the piggybacked cargo, necrotic hands clapped around his neck—trying not to glance down at the wormy holes in the cuticles—apocryphal howling wind chilling him to the bone. Rounding the recurring corner and standing at recurring gate…

On the way to Malibu, Dr. Trott turned over last night's images; they still had punch. Same dream, of varying degree, for weeks. Tranquilizers didn't help. He wondered if soon he would be in the grip of agrypnia, the insomniac's insomnia: total inability to sleep.
This disorder
, said the literature,
fatal if it lasts much longer than a week, is also seen in diseases and intoxications—especially
encephalitis lethargica
and ergot-poisoning
. He felt foolish and anachronistic, the “recurring nightmare” concept itself a throwback to the fifties, to the time of shelters and tailfins and Miltown.
The Three Faces of Les
.

It was a big blue Sunday and Obie invited him to the beach house for a screening of
Teorema
. The old friends had had a few whispery, dishy early morning phone chats (Obie saying everyone was full of shit and no one would be able to prosecute, Les trying to believe, scared, needy, unconvincingly cavalier, hanging on Big Star skirts through the incessant hiccups of her call-waiting; just when the paranoia started to recede, Obie would click back on and ask if he had any Percocets. Les would panic, wondering if the feds had tapped the line, and ask, stilted and absurd, if she was kidding. “You know, you should really try to stop being such a fag,” she'd say—so cutting and unnecessary—then take another call and leave him dangling, marooned and punished) but this would be the first they'd seen of each other since the “controversy.”

Moe Trusskopf, Obie's personal manager, lay sunning on the deck with a new boyfriend, a sweet-faced gay mafia moll who'd been on
the circuit awhile and was looking to settle down. Les remembered him from the office. About a year ago, he came in with a boil on his ass; he lanced it, then jacked him off. (Moe knew the story, and introduced the boy as Lancelot.) He'd met Cat Basquiat before too, but not in the comfort of his professional offices. At twenty-three—ten years younger than the hostess—his fee was in the mid-sevens and rising. His mother had recently died, rendering the tiny
MOM
tattoo on his hairless chest mildly poignant. He had a manta ray–shaped birthmark on the upper left quad and pierced nipple as lagniappe. Les scanned greedily. The whole package gave the potential indictee a stony hard-on.

The viewing room had a clarinet-sized Giacometti, a Noguchi landscape table, a Kitaj pastel and a Baselitz “inversion.” The projection screen dropped down over one of those big Ed Ruscha movie paintings that spelled The End. Baccarat bowls brimmed with blue M&Ms and rock candy. The doctor liked Pasolini well enough but wasn't up for it. He let his thoughts drift back to a year ago, Lancelot face-down on the table, Les numbing and pressing and draining. Time for some dilatation and curettage…When his rubbery attention snapped back to the screen, the father was about to discover Terence Stamp in bed with his sleeping son.

“Like to have been a fly on
that
wall,” said Moe.

“How ‘bout a fly on those jeans?” said Obie, and everyone laughed.

Les wandered again, rudderless, this time to a recent meeting with the lawyer. While the attorney general's formal accusations were imminent, counsel was confident the matter would end in a letter of reprimand from the Medical Board—a slap on the wrist. If that wasn't forthcoming, an alternative might be probation and community service; at worst, a DEA administrative hearing aimed to revoke or curtail the dermatologist's prescriptive powers. Les sucked on a saccharine crystal. The baronial law office yanked inside-out like a sock, reborn as a dungeon with a Philippe Starck sink—the free-floating physician now in protective custody at the downtown jail in all its slabby
City of Quartz
splendor, co-starring with Terence Stamp in
Kiss of the Spider Woman
. Stamp sure was gorgeous. Could've used a nipple ring, though.

Cat Basquiat had his tongue in Obie's mouth. When Les reached for the M&Ms, Moe said, “What are those, Percocets? I got a headache,
Les. Gimme.” Lancelot laughed. Obie said, “Don't tease, Moe, you know how delicate he is.” Les managed a smile as he faced the screen again, then
whoosh
back to the clink for some requisite cyst-popping and rimming of trusties
whoosh
to a DEA meeting, where he stroked out in mid-testimony, crapping his Tommy Nutter trousers as he fell from the witness stand. The rest of his days would be spent in a gold-plated wheelchair, feet drooping down like an unemployed marionette.

Les shuddered, shrugging off this specialized humoresque, knocking a loafer askew and propping a foot up. He reached into the bowl and licked another sugarcane pebble, dreaming of Rock Candy Mountain mistily shrouded by this boy Basquiat's anal fumes, all vinegar and tuberoses.

How thrilling the proximity, and how improbable to share the citadel! He would have accepted the lowliest position—polishing marble there, or candlesticks. For Big Stars were different than you and me, this he knew from an early age. The boy who watched reruns (
The Rifleman, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best
), too ashamed of his looks to go to school, knew. The boy who locked himself in the bathroom, tetracycline vials around the sink like votive candles, his face an angry mask of suppurating knots, knew—fussing with them till they wept clear fluid, as if drawn from spinal waters. All he wanted was to be Kurt Russell. Won't someone make it so? Jan-Michael Vincent…any old sunbaked smooth-faced boy in hip-hugger jeans would do. He longed for fields of undamaged skin, craving Sal Mineo's buttery cheeks—when they finally came (still sitting on bathroom floor, eyes clenched shut, mirror forgotten for now), he rode to the dusty ranch and necked with Johnny Crawford while his father was at the General Store. The things they did in that barn…he would have “Lucas” next.

Les planned to become a psychiatrist—he would listen to Big Star woes, a shoulder for Big Star tears—but changed course in mid-residency. He was moonlighting at a Malibu emergency room when Streisand came in with an allergic reaction to fish. She was hyperventilating and badly mottled. He shot her up with Benadryl and right away she could breathe again. Any intern could have done it, but Streisand thought he was God. She invited him to her home for a troubled-youth charity hoedown. Les didn't know a soul yet there he was, bonding with Larry Hagman and Ray Stark, Ann-Margret and
Shirley MacLaine.
That's
when he had the vision, more like a religious exfoliation: skin as the Comer, hotter than plastic surgery. O Pioneers! Now, after all these years, they wanted to drag him from penthouse to pillory and march him down Wilshire to the hillock of Via Rodeo, for all the Big and Little Stars—and the nothings—to see.