by Bruce Wagner
When the producer was called from the room, Troy and Kiv had the actor to themselves. Richard talked shop and generally effused in his high-voltage way while Troy’s heart pounded, waiting for the best moment to insert the business of their alumnihood. He finally ventured how they’d almost been classmates and the two men bandied old teachers’ names, resurrecting a few campus scandals. Kiv asked what he was working on, “currently.” Richard said he was preparing for Medea, in La Jolla—“Des” was coming back to mount the six-week run, which they might do as a film, with “Des” directing. When Richard asked what he did, Troy said he directed too. The star nodded respectfully, without further inquiry—no need. Backstage, all were brethren.
At Planet Hollywood, Troy was solemn. Kiv talked about Close Encounters being her favorite film and how blown away she was to have met him. How funny he was. She fantasized Richard would become their new best friend, that he was the sort of person who’d be eager to help their careers—help Troy direct a movie, anyway—especially since they went to school together. How he was someone who was naturally simpatico because he’d had so many highs and lows himself. Troy let her talk while David Caruso posed for pictures with the tourists. What a hellhole.
On the drive back to Studio City, her hands were all over him but Troy felt far away. When they got home, Kiv pulled him to the bedroom but he was like a stone. He watched her with the dildo, then wandered out the sliding glass door to the redwood balcony. It was drizzling and the Valley glistened and blinked like a rhinestone cape, from the black MCA building to the Sepulveda Dam. In five years, he would be fifty. He had sixteen thousand in savings and was around forty in debt. No filmography to speak of, no fans, critics, flack, manager, agent or life. There was only one option and it came to him like a pop epiphany: he would write and star in a one-man show. The piece would be called Adventures in the Skin Trade (he was sure Dylan Thomas wouldn’t mind) and Troy would lay it bare—the obscenity of his failed ambitions, the dead end that had become his life—filming the whole carefully scripted catharsis onstage. Then he’d arrange a meeting with Richard to tell him the truth, what kind of director he really was, a bona fide pornographer, before handing the startled movie star the fresh, revelatory cassette. Who knew what might happen? Troy had the feeling this was just the kind of dark thing the actor sparked to. Maybe Richard’s production company would climb aboard for distribution. Troy could remember Swimming to Cambodia, so threadbare, so nothing, made on less than a shoestring. Ditto Bogosian.
A sense of fate and purpose invigorated him. The smell of wood burning in the crisp air shook him down deep: an old, arcane melancholia. He thought to himself, I will get out alive.
Troy wandered back to the bedroom and stood in the door, watching Kiv’s frenetic hands ride the humming thing that snaked inside her—for an instant, she seemed like a crazed Great Mother assiduously following the devil’s pronouncement: for each thousand thrusts, a child will be saved. He slid the door shut behind him.
Bernie Ribkin
Bernie sat in his weensy Hollywood office, staring idly at the latest Range Rover repair printout.
The bungalows were filled with kids (music-video production companies) but the rent was cheap. The girls had tattoos and rings through their tummies—through their friggin eyebrows—and Jabba said you-know-where else. Maybe he should get one, Bernie thought, right through the nose, like a fuhcocktuh bull. Why not? At seventy, he felt like a gangbanger. He still wanted to mix it up, leave his mark, make people notice. Do not go gentile into that good night.
But Jesus H, if you weren’t in the Club, you could forget about it. The studios were spending eighty, ninety, a hundred million a picture like nothing, and that was before P & A. He remembered a story in People: “The shoot was agonizing. Though he was earning fourteen million dollars and living in an eighteen-hundred-a-night oceanside bungalow, Costner looked, says one extra, ‘like he needed a hug.’” Somebody give me a friggin hug like that. But these men weren’t dumb. They had their formulas. They had their New World Order MBAs with their scorched-earth policies—a show that did fifty million in the States could do another hundred and fifty in Europe. He saw the full-page ads in the trades, trumpeting unimaginable grosses for movies he’d never even heard of. Europe! Europe! Europe! Were they talking about the same Europe? Because his Europe, the Ribkin Europe, was dry as a zombie’s ass. All he wanted was three—three million lousy dollars—but how the hell could he step up to the plate? He’d have better luck pinning a murder on O.J. If only he knew somebody…with his son a honcho at ICM, no less! A Senior Veepee who hated his guts! That made him crazy. But that’s life, like Sinatra said.
Hollywood didn’t make movies anymore so much as big-screen novelties and reruns of the Baby Boomer TV hit parade. Kibitzing at the Peninsula Bar with a Showtime exec, the decrepit producer concluded his only hope was to auction off the three films comprising his Undead opus—it was Bernie’s job to connive some Young Turk into having a go at the campy, mothballed omnibus. Miraculously, he still owned the series; he could thank Serena for that. What a head for business, marvelous. Bernie would give himself six months to raise studio money. Donny might be badgered into making some connections just to get the old man off his back. If the majors didn’t bite, Bernie would go cable. The Showtime fella was talking about the splash they had made with those American International re-dos a few years back—Sam Arkoff was no dunce. Cable felt like a slam dunk, but Bernie had to explore his feature options first. Cable was a fallback.
He was almost drunk. He parked in the underground garage and listened to the idling engine—something was in there, different from the piston sound. Kind of a ping. Or maybe a pong. He stepped from the car and pushed the lock-and-load button on the key ring: nothing happened. Again—nothing. It kicked in on the fourth try, securing all doors. As he walked to the elevator, he saw a dark figure weeping by the Dumpster. He stopped and stared. He thought it was a homeless person, then recognized her and softly said Hello? The woman braced herself against the bin and heaved with cartoonish agony.
“Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”
She was a neighbor. It was the first time he’d said a word to her in ten months of living there.
“My baby—”
“You’re upset. Can I talk to you? Can we talk a moment?” She nodded, childlike. “I’m Bernie—Bernie Ribkin, from two-oh-seven.”
“I don’t want to live. I do not want to live!”
“Of course you do, darling. Let’s go inside now. Do you have your key? Darling, do you have your key? Is it in your purse there? Let’s find your key and I’ll take you upstairs. Let Bernie take you upstairs. You’re upset. Stop your crying. Is there someone I can call, darling?” She turned and faced him head-on, helpless. She was formidable, mega-uterine, her head a stone-carved monument to some corybantic race long dead. He surprised himself by putting his arms around her. “What is it? Darling, it can’t be that bad.”
She blurted out the tale of a paralyzed daughter, and when she told him her name—Edith-Esther, same as the building itself—Bernie put it all together: this was the bereft mother of Oberon Mall. The condolent producer invited her to his apartment, where she poured her heart out over Frito-Lays, non-pareils and Snappled Absolut. She could really drink. He called her Double E, and that made her laugh.
She reminded him of Gala, an old lover who kept horses in Chats-worth—both women smelled of stables, leaf and menses. Bernie felt sorry for this dappled gray mess of a woman, this rueful roan oak. Edie (he settled on that) said the terrible thing was that in brainstem injuries like her baby’s, the extent of damage was impossible to assess—doctors were reduced to using the patient’s tears as a crude gauge of awareness and mental competency. The somewhat jaded old man found that detail haunting.
Bernie walked her up to four-ten and they exchanged numbers. She told him he was a courtly man. She wanted to show him her computer “when the place was clean.” He had already turned to go w
hen Edie asked if he would come see her baby: today, now, or at least in half an hour or so. She held his arm and begged him to walk over—they were that close to Cedars. All we have to do, she said, is pick up the cake before we go, around the corner at Michel Richard. Edie asked him again because she didn’t have it in her to go alone. If they could just pick up the cake; she already had the candles. Today was Obie’s birthday.
Late Friday afternoon, he went to see Jabba. She was dancing at Little Kink’s, a club in East Hollywood.
They met when he first came to town. Bernie picked her up on El Centro and she gave him a blow job but it didn’t work so well. He gave her a hundy to have lunch with him at Musso’s. She was impressed with the old man and his Range Rover. He was coy about what he did for a living, and Jabba thought for sure he was a Player—they had their little game. Nice for Bernie’s ego. He saw her every couple of weeks like that, usually for lunch or a movie. They never did anything, but he always slipped her a hundy.
This time they went to Locanda Veneta, a chic Italian place on Third. Jabba’s skin was broken out. Bernie pointed to a man sitting with his back to the kitchen.
“See that guy? Billy Friedkin. He directed The Exorcist.”
“He looks like a dentist.”
“And The French Connection, ever see that? What are you doing to yourself, you look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you eating right?”
“I’m fucking depressed.”
“You don’t have the right to be depressed. You’re too goddam young.”
Jabba glared, deciding whether to spit in his eye. She looked over to see what Friedkin was up to, then took a fork and farted with her food. “I need money.”
“Join the club.”
“Fuck you.”
“Work for a living.” Bernie was afraid she was going to walk. Her head caromed between Friedkin and the front door.
“Why don’t you put me in one of your pictures?”
“I was going to.”
“Bullshitter.”
“My movie fell apart.”
“Such a bullshitter! I can’t believe this—you, like everybody else!”
“How am I a bullshitter, Jabba?”
“You’re not a producer, you’re not an anything—”
“Tell me how I’m a bullshitter, you little punk!”
“All right—I’m leaving.” She rose but he stopped her.
“Give me the decency of a response. I had a picture—and that’s no bullshit. There was a nice part—”
“Oh, fuck you,” she said wearily, sitting back down.
“Would you lower your voice?”
“You’re sad, you know it? Mama!” she shouted, as two or three heads turned. “Mama, he’s gonna put me in pictures!”
The veins in his temples swelled like candelabra. “You want me to prove it?”
“Is that Burt Reynolds?” she asked of no one in particular as a nondescript man swept through the door. “That’s not Burt Reynolds. Everybody’s a bullshitter—”
“Do you think I lie, Jabba?”
“No. You just bullshit.”
“I go out on a limb for you.”
“Oh right. Put your life right on the line.”
“I’ll show you. Then you’ll think twice about the kind of crap that comes from your mouth.”
He paid the check and Jabba said she just wanted to go home. Bernie took her arm and steered her across the street to Cedars. He told her Obie Mall was the star of his picture and he’d been struggling to find a replacement. Jabba only started to believe him when they reached the room. His heart was pounding, and he searched his pockets for stray tranquilizers—nothing. He made her wait in the hall while he ducked in to make sure Edith-Esther wasn’t there. The private nurse smiled and said he’d just missed her. The nurse toweled the Big Star’s chin and said, “Well, who’s the popular girl? Mr. Bernie’s back to see you, but he didn’t bring a cake.” She left the three of them alone.
“Oh my God,” said Jabba. “It is, it’s her.”
Bernie sat in the nurse’s chair and held Obie’s hand. “It’s okay,” he said as the agitated Big Star’s eyes bugged and darted about. “It’s all right, your mama will be back.”
Jabba took in the catheter bag and said, “It’s piss.” She’d never seen a hospital room this big—crammed with flowers, a humidifier, a “wave” machine, VCR, giant New Age crystals and all kinds of expensive-looking knick-knacky things. There was a whole table filled with nothing but framed photos from better days: Obie and Clinton, Obie and Courtney, Obie and Travolta. R.E.M. played softly on a CD boombox.
“Can she hear me?”
“Of course she can.”
Oberon made clicking noises from her throat as Jabba moved closer. She’d lost weight since the stroke; an elegant satin “healing” cord—gift from Meg Ryan—fell loosely around a tiny, protuberant wrist.
“You’re a great actress,” Jabba said, chapped lips brushing the ear of the spasmodic icon. Bernie stood and smiled nervously at the nurse as she re-entered. “I think maybe we’ll go,” he said. “She seems tired.”
“Hurry and get well,” Jabba whispered as the nurse took over. “I want to work with you someday. That would be my greatest honor in life.”
Zev Turtletaub
Zev and the boys out by the pool, talking cock. Alfred the Steward long since airborne, black box and portable flotation device intact. There’s Yon Koster, the trainer who wrested muscle from the liposuctioned abs and flabby arms of a classic endomorph: Zev, with that unwieldy, oddly over-developed, dressed-for-success praying mantis thorax, like Jeremy Irons’s in the third Die Hard. There’s Moe Trusskopf and friend, one far-out looking “Lancelot,” whose true name—Rod Whalen—suggests (sez Moe) an honest-to-God nom de porn.
“You never told us about Flyboy,” said Moe.
“Stout, dark and uncut.”
“Like a Guinness.”
“On the nose.”
“You mean the head.”
“MTV should do an ‘Uncut.’”
“First, Seal, then Tom Petty.”
“Seal’d with a kiss.”
“Flyboy had about the biggest hole I have ever seen. You could drive a Bronco through that urethra.”
“An attractive image.”
“A slow-speed chase to the bladder.”
“Who’s got the biggest straight dick?”
“Oh no!” Moe posed like Munch’s Scream. “Not this again.”
“Jimmy Woods.”
“It isn’t straight, it’s crooked.”
“How would you know?”
“Into the Woods!”
“Oh please. No one’s ever seen Jimmy Woods’s cock. It’s like the Abominable Snowman.”
“The Abominable Blow Job.”
“Lisa Marie Presley in action.”
“Paula Abdul.”
“Celine Dion.”
“They say Jim Woods is the Milton Berle of our time.”
“He sleeps standing up ‘cause it’s like a kickstand.”
“What about Brad Pitt?”
“Didst thou dare invoke Princess Tiny Meat?”
Everybody laughs as Douglas brings hamburgers.
“It can’t be huge, he’d be too perfect.”
“Tom Cruise.”
“Oh yes. And L. Ron Hubbard’s another one.”
“Birds of a feather…”
“Fock together.”
“They say Hubbard was hung like David Koresh.”
“What about Timothy McVeigh?”
“No! Alfred Mullah.”
“Who’s Alfred Mullah.”
“You know—the federal building.”
“Alfred P. Murrah!” Howling with glee.
“Isn’t that it? The building that blew up?”
“All those militia guys are way hung.”
“What about Cat Basquiat?”
“I don’t talk about my clients.”
“
Uncut?”
“Definitely unplugged.”
“We can remedy that.”
“The girl can’t help it.”
“There’s an executive at Buena Vista with a tiny penis. We’re talking nub. He scores with chicks who want to get fucked in the ass but were always afraid. It’s like a big toe going in.”
“You are so full of shit.”
“Uh, no, the toe is.”
More laughter as the boys dig into burgers. Moe asks Douglas if there’s ice cream. Moe wants a sundae, then asks for a malted. Asks about available sherbets, hankering for a peristaltic treat. Something easy to upchuck. Would he still like the sundae? Zev says forget it. Alec Baldwin calls from Amagansett and Zev takes it inside.
“As for your nubby Buena Vista friend,” sez Moe, “some say the ass is half-empty, others say it’s half-full.”
Guffaws as Zev enters the house. Taj has arrived from the office. Zev motions him into the library, then picks up.
“Hello there.”
“Hiya, Zev.”
“You are such a good boy to call me back on your holiday.”
“The career never sleeps. Desperately seeking material.”
Zev snaps fingers at his assistant, motioning him to come near. “Caught you on the Stern show.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You were fucking hilarious.”
“Howard makes it easy.”
“He becomes your straight man. I can’t believe it—Howard Stern, a fucking straight man! Helluva trick.”
“I feel like a trick. My agent said you had some brilliant project.”
Zev, sitting now, puts a hand on the helper’s ass. Taj backs away, but the producer pulls him back by his A/X belt, grimacing with anger. Zev spins him around and Taj stands still for the remainder of the call, buttocks in front of Zev’s face.