I’m Losing You

by Bruce Wagner

  “I was married. He was a lawyer. We weren’t rich, but he did okay. You know, the Tom Hayden type, public-interest. We tried having kids, for six years—nothing. That turned out to be a good thing, though, I guess. It ended. He has two now, boy and a girl. Then I met this guy through my brother. I wasn’t really looking. My brother works in film, does rather well. Anyway, this guy was an editor and I wound up apprenticing. It felt good. I never really had a vocation—God, that sounds dumb! ‘Vocation.’ White-trashy. But I liked editing. That sounds dumb too, I know. I guess what I really liked was the idea of cutting something together, having to make sense of something, be in that kind of control. Some kind of control. I decided I was going to ‘edit’ my life. Hey, why not? Naturally, I fell in love with the man who was teaching me. Women are like that.” She laughed. “Jake—the editor, that was his name—he was a sweet man and I was needy, to put it mildly. Sexually, I was starved. Not to mention emotionally. I mean, at this point if it wasn’t for the fertility stuff—having a kid became an obsession—I don’t think my husband (the lawyer) would have ever touched me. And most of the ways we tried, he didn’t have to! I mean, it was bad. I got pretty out there for a while. Anyway, we divorced. I got pregnant right away with Jake—of course, right? He was ecstatic—I mean, Jake was. Am I confusing you? I look back and…Jake used to sweat at night, I mean sweat a lot. I thought it was just the sex—he was so attracted to me. There was never a question about that…and I just wasn’t thinking in any other terms. This was a good, gentle man. Never used drugs. Zephyr was negative—that’s our son—so something went right. Jake got sick a few months after Zeph was born. Six months later, he died. Wanna see something?”

  Aubrey searched her pocketbook while the wind gusted the trees outside the designer aerie. She stuck a snapshot in his hand.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “I saw him at the party.”

  “That’s my Zephyr.”

  “Beautiful boy.”

  “My American Zephyr—we named him after a train, you know.”

  When Chet got home, there was a message from Horvitz. He turned off the machine; he would listen in the morning. Then he’d call and quit—death takes a holiday. He fell fast asleep and dreamed Aubrey was a guest on the old talk show. The theme was “People Who Have Recovered from AIDS.”

  Troy Capra

  Troy got a curious phone call from Quinn, the gaffer.

  They’d worked together on scores of X-rated productions and Troy planned to use him for lighting on Skin Trade. An occasional performer, Quinn saw most of his action off-camera—as a bisexual pretending to be straight, he was a crossover hit.

  Quinn was eager to talk about a recent “scene” with Moe Trusskopf, the well-known celebrity manager. They had been joined by Trusskopf’s beau, a studly stud and nicely knight with the moniker of Lancelot who happened, in actuality, to be none other than the famous Rod Whalen. Ring a bell? Troy blinked, trying to place the name. Quinn reminded him of the young dancer in Guys and Dolls who gave him his big directing break.

  “Jesus, how do you even remember that kid?”

  “You told me about him. I became a fan of his work. You forget I’m an aficionado.”

  “I thought he’d be long dead.”

  “Just long.”

  “How did my name come up?”

  “I made the connection. You know, I never forget a pretty face—especially one I’ve sat on.”

  “Don’t start talking like a queen. Please, Quinn, not you.”

  “Listen, I got this idea, right? You have a copy of that, don’t you?”

  “A copy of what.”

  “Your first film! Come on, Troy, I know you.”

  “I may have it somewhere.”

  “You have it, Troy. What was it called?”

  “Up in Adam.”

  “Up in Adam! Right! Okay, here’s what’s happening: Trusskopf really wants to see it—he’s like, been looking for it, right? He’s burning, he would kill for a copy. And the kid is, like, game. I said I’d talk to you and arrange a little screening.”

  “At the Directors Guild. Have it catered.”

  “You should do it, Troy. They’re having a party Sunday. We should go over with the tape.”

  “You go over.”

  “This could be good for you, Troy.”

  “Yeah. I can have a scene with Moe and Curly.”

  “Moe Trusskopf’s a heavy, okay? And he’s smart, Troy, he’d like you. You’ll like him. The movie’s just an entrée.”

  “And your dick’s the aperitif.”

  “You want to do Skin Trade, don’t you? I mean, you want to exploit it, right? To be in that position once it’s done? Just get into a conversation with him, Troy, and tell him what your plans are, right? Or whatever. You don’t know where this shit leads, he could fucking sign you. Tell him all your theatrical bullshit, he’s from that world. And he knows all those guys, he knows everybody, right? I’m telling you, man, you should do it.”

  On Sunday afternoon, Troy and Kiv looked at houses. That was her idea, because with the expense of the coming show, there’d barely be money for rent let alone four-point-four million for a shanty in the Bel Air hills. It was only practice, Kiv said—she wanted to know what it felt like to be a “lady of the Pantheon.” Besides, convincing the realtor she was “a nouveau” was a good acting exercise. Driving through the West Gate in his near-jalopy of a Mercedes, Troy felt uneasy. He already had a pretend life.

  She was starting to nest (that’s what the house-hunting game was all about) and Troy wasn’t happy. Kiv slept in his bed most every night now. She sipped morning cappuccinos and went on about sofas and ottomans, trying to impress with her thrifty, no-nonsense ways. She called him honey a lot and stroked his head as she stared into space, theorizing about drapes—muslin or parachute?—then off she’d go to a hard-core shoot. It was everything Chet tried to avoid, to shun, to cast off: the pornographic Middle Class. Soon they’d be on Sally Jessy Raphaël with the other porn couples, expounding on the Lifestyle, sugary and witless.

  His muffler echoed through the streets like the canned laughter of an old Beverly Hillbillies. He made the mistake of idly recounting his conversation with Quinn, and Kiv was all over it. Quinn was right, he’d be stupid not to “play along for the connections”—she wanted to go to the party too. By the time the realtor hove into view, grinning like a moron beside her billion-dollar BMW, they had almost come to blows.

  Champagne wishes and caviar dreams! The woman smelled a fish but kept a stiff upper lip throughout the tour. The house, former residence of John Huston, George Harrison, George Hamilton and Roger Moore, recently rented to Tom Arnold for thirty-five thousand a month. Their guide proffered a lavish binder stuffed with magazine profiles. Not a room had been spared the photographer’s lens—the master bath itself lovingly showcased in Diane von Furstenberg’s big book of celebrity loos. A guest house sprang from the villa’s cunningly designed gardens like a hallucination, stupendous enough to briefly lift Troy’s grim, vindictive spirits. It looked like a gargantuan Roman column snapped off at the center. The thing even had windows. The realtor called it a “folly,” the replica of a house that stood in a forest outside Paris; the owner made the commission after seeing a photo in Architectural Digest. As Troy approached the surreal structure, Kiv’s hickish oohs and ahhs broke the quixotic spell. With great annoyance, he walked to the car and waited.

  “Feel better now?” he asked, venomously. They were back in the car, rattling down the hill. “Feel rich?”

  “Fuck you!” Kiv started to weep. A minute later, coasting round a turn, she told him she was pregnant.

  “Oh shit,” he said, pulling over to a fiftyish woman selling maps to stars’ homes. The vendor made a move, then held her ground.

  “I’m having this baby, Troy!” she sobbed. “I’ve had too many abortions, I can’t do that anymore. Troy, I love you—”

  As they reached Sunset, he thought of jumping ship�
�making a mad dash, but where would he run? Back to the folly, to be swallowed by the rabbit hole. There had to be a rabbit hole—

  “We can be so happy, Troy! So happy…”

  He laughed and Kiv shot from the car, storming across the Boulevard in a haze of tears, beating him to it. It was just like a movie, except there wasn’t a pile-up in her wake. And—the movies again—Troy gave chase.

  Bernie Ribkin

  Edie was a big creature who bellowed when they made love.

  It was strange, but something about her, something chalky and carnal, took him back to those whitewashed yards of Baltimore. His cousins’ faces floated up as he rode the pale, doughy, mole-flecked country of her flesh, smelled the cooking of ancient neighborhoods in her hair, saw dreary storefronts in the bone beneath her breast. Under her arms were trolleys and hydrants; nipples conjured washtubs and linoleum; her long, flat fingernails, the dirty birds of a public park. Her face, during the act, looked stylized and anguished. She was like a powerful wrestler, scissoring the air with broad, indefeasible strokes. Her eyes were the deepest brown he’d ever seen, and when he looked within, Bernie saw himself as a boy standing tentatively in a sawdust-strewn saloon out of The Iceman Cometh, heard the chink of billiard balls until they shooed him away, running home through wind that tore open his cheeks; had only to smell the gray-white hair at Edie’s temples to summon tracts of sidewalk, his sidewalks, their spidery cracks, graffiti and Crayola’d arabesques evoked by a whiff from the tough, translucent seashell of her ear—had only to nuzzle an eyebrow to step on the burnt-yellow lawn of the downtown house where he once lived. Edie’s teeth were bad (the warped and splintered sun chairs of the falling-down porch where his mother waited) but the breath was always fresh.

  How did they banter, Bernie and his new girl, when in bed? Something like this:

  “That was lovely. Thank you.”

  “You’re a very strong girl.”

  “You’re a very strong man.”

  “Are you Polish somewhere in there?”

  “In where?”

  “In there. Somewhere.”

  “I am not. No, no, I don’t think so, no.”

  “You look a little that way. Jesus H, I schvitz with you. Lemme get a towel. I’m schvitzing like I got stuck.”

  “A big patch of hair.”

  “I’m the stuck-er and you’re the stuck-ee.”

  “Did you know you have a big patch of hair on your back?”

  “I’m the Cabbage Patch Kid.”

  “Right there, Bern. It’s very funny and sweet.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Oh? Who told you? I don’t like that, Bern.”

  “It’s from the skin graft.”

  “Mister Liar. You didn’t have any skin graft. Bullshitter. And who told you you had a sweet funny patch?”

  “‘Cause I’m part Apache. Didn’t you know I was part Apache?” “Don’t make me dislike you.”

  Out at the beach, Bernie felt the years drop off. He kept his own room (“for propriety,” Edie said) but didn’t think that would be for long. It wasn’t like they weren’t of age, for Jesus H. Soon they would shack up properly—for all he knew, next week they’d be honeymooners. The more things change, the more things change, just like they say. He’d never balled a schizophrenic before. He kept waiting for her to tell him Janet Reno was sending radio signals to her tits, but it never happened. Never even had the decency to crap in her panty hose. The only evidence of malady was a few fat bottles of pills in the medicine cabinet and the occasional puzzling affect. He’d lived with far worse.

  Edie wasn’t beautiful but it didn’t embarrass him to be with her, either. He was no Larry King, he laughed to himself, and that said a lot right there. They didn’t socialize too much, anyway, confined for the most part to the paralytic duchy of fallen Big Star daughter. Until he found Edie, the producer hadn’t realized how tired he was. He was through hunting and gathering. What had it ever gotten him? Edie had money and twisted Tinseltown tenure—if this was the end of the line, he’d rise to the challenge. They would marry and attend galas, photographed for glossy Westside society pages, at table with Roddy McDowall, Sybil Brand, the Robert Stacks, and Mr. Blackwell. May we present…Bernard and Edie Gershon-Ribkin.

  He stepped from the bright, claustrophobic elevator and stood in the hall, unable to move.

  Someone sat by his door. It was sinister because the bulb above had been unscrewed.

  “May…may I help you?”

  As Bernie edged toward him, the man gripped knees to chest and began to sing. “Papa, can you see me?”

  “Donny?”

  “Papa, can you hear me?”—High camp, from the lower depths.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  His son looked wild-eyed and spent—as if, lashed to the prow, he’d survived an epic storm only to become transcendently unhinged.

  “Donny, what happened—”

  Was he drunk? The agent held out some smallish books, strung together by a schoolboy’s cord, and laid the leathery bouquet at his father’s door, smug as a toastmaster. “Returned from whenth they came,” he said, lisping. Or some such nonsense. Then Donny drew forward and Bernie met the hair-raising eye. His progeny stank—the interregnum smell of a soul dethroned and demonized. Bernie shook, though staring at this boy, his own, he felt nothing; as in a morbid children’s story, he was man become a tree, bosky fingers avulsed and outspread, evicted legs a quivering snarl of loamy, snaky roots. As Donny swept past, the old man felt the waft of kingly cape, the regicidal blow.

  The agent entered the lift and Bernie waited for the doors to close. (If only they could be sealed forever, the box thrown into space like a tomb.) He picked up the strap, reindeer of books attached, and went to his room. There he remained for a number of days, oblivious to even his gigantine lover, who fussed over his general health and prayed for his restoration to the world.

  Zev Turtletaub

  Zev and Phylliss Wolfe went to see Donny at the Westwood Hospital. That’s where she’d been for her breakdown. Phylliss hugged the nurses and the inevitable “old home week” comment was made. Zev joked that it was more a “busman’s holiday” for him.

  Donny was drugged and uncommunicative. Phylliss’s Joan Rivers routine and Zev’s dealmaker gossip fell flat. When the agent became accustomed to their presence, he made a few shy, touching efforts at normalcy. They talked about buying art, then Donny resurrected an old piece of business about All Mimsy—something handled weeks before. Phylliss prattled about the beloved canine getting the power table at Mortons and the agent loosened up. It was smooth sailing until Donny said he possessed the name of the man who was the architect of the race war that would bring down ICM, leaving the city in shambles. “Dresden will look like a brushfire.” He took a crumpled get-well card from his pocket and unfolded it. On the cover was a “Far Side” style drawing of a priest, saying, “I am here to administer your ‘last rights.’” Inside was a list: the right to remain in bed, the right to moan and complain, the right to get well. “So get well, all right?” A small window shade of paper was pasted on the blank side, opposite. Underneath was a handwritten inscription: “You so crazy!” Zev lifted the flap, uncovering a photo of Donny’s mother clipped from a society magazine. There was a crudely drawn devil, its red-pencil cock invading Serena’s mouth. The card was unsigned.

  “What was that all about?” asked Phylliss as they drove to the studio.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Did you see that? Oh my God, who would have sent it?”

  “Probably Rubidoux. Though it’s hard to believe he’d be that vindictive.”

  “Ruby who?”

  “Pierre Rubidoux. He used to work at ICM, above Donny. I think he represented Oberon for a while.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Showtime. Does very well.”

  “What happened?”

  “Donny’s Mozart and Rubidoux is Salieri. They grew up together, w
ent to school at El Rodeo. Donny was the popular one. The girls were always after him, loved by all the teachers—you know Donny. Pierre was a rich kid, a techie. A fine mind, but people weren’t drawn to him. They had this life-long entanglement. You know, Donny came to ICM later. Of course, Rubidoux had to leave when his old nemesis became the superstar—El Rodeo all over again. Donny isn’t blameless; it takes two to tango. He told me the whole story once and the details, the dovetailing, are exceedingly weird. It’s an SM folie à deux, a bad Night Gallery.”

  “Were there good Night Gallerys?”

  “Oh, and you’ll love this: Rubidoux’s been married three times—”

  “And they were all with Donny.”

  “Before. All three.”

  “Sounds like a homo thing.”

  “But this is the best—this is the part I want to make a movie of. Rubidoux’s mother was a sleepwalker. I think she was an epileptic. The husband would wake up in the middle of the night and have to go find her—by the pool, in the kitchen, whatever. One night, Bernie—Donny’s father—is driving home. He turns a corner and there’s this gorgeous woman walking down the center of the street, in a nightgown! He’s got this funny little go-cart English car, a Mini-Cooper, and he slams on the brakes, but not in time. And he hits her—”

  “Oh my God! She doesn’t die—”

  “Yes! Donny Ribkin’s father killed Rubidoux’s mother!”

  “No!”

  “I think that they were sleeping together. That was the implication—Donny’s. Bernie was supposedly drunk. But they don’t convict because—newsflash!—she was walking down the middle of the street at two in the morning and it was dark.”

  They pulled onto the Sony lot and rolled toward Joan Crawford’s old bungalow. Phylliss was smiling in disbelief.

  “Donny’s father goes to see a shrink ‘cause he can’t get the image of this statuesque woman staring at him as he rolls over her out of his head. So here’s how he ‘cures’ himself: he raises money and makes this cheap horror film called The Undead—”