by Bruce Wagner
Four in the morning. Bernie sat in the chair watching Creepshow on the cable. Leslie Nielsen was burying his wife and her lover alive in the sand of a private beach. Sets up monitors so the two can watch each other drown. Then Nielsen goes back to the house and settles in front of the TV with a drink to watch. Stephen King sure has a mind. Days later, the moldy couple has their revenge: swaddled in seaweed and very undead, they snatch him from bed and haul him to a watery grave. Jesus H, Nielsen was funny. The old man could split a gut just looking at him.
He tossed and turned for an hour, then got up and dressed. He figured he could make the Colony in half a day, by foot. What was the rush? The sun was just coming up.
As he passed the Beverly Hilton and ascended the luxurious ramp of Wilshire that divided the country club, the producer felt a surge of youth. His gait was steady and sure—the Bernard S. Ribkin Walk-a-thon was in full swing. He could go on forever. Like Creep-show’s Ted Danson, he saw his body buried in the sand outside Edie’s house and laughed aloud. She’d laugh too, she’d have to—and forgive. Laughter was three-quarters of the way. That’s what he would do then: outrageous showmanship would save the day. He’d have to dig after dark, so as not to be discovered…chortling again at the image of those algae-blistered, stringy-haired zombies, an homage to his Undead if ever there was one. He’d send King a fan letter, thanking him for the tip of the hat.
At Beverly Glen, he was barely winded. Bernie thought about stopping in the Village for a cappuccino. No—he’d keep going until he reached the terrace of greensward that overhung Pacific Coast Highway. Watch the tourists before setting out to the Colony. There was a camera obscura over by the pier. Maybe he’d have a look.
And if Edie wouldn’t have him, he’d walk straight to Santa Barbara, on to Pismo Beach and Morro Bay…Hearst Castle. He’d never been. Scale the cliffs of Big Sur to Henry Miller’s cabin—Carmel, Salinas, Cannery Row. He felt the pull of Baghdad by the Bay: he would treat himself to a gourmet box lunch smack in the middle of the Golden Gate. By then his legs would be like salty pistons, unstoppable. He’d about-face in Marin and march all the way back down, to Baja or wherever the hell his fabulous old feet would take him.
He’d walk and he’d walk and nothing could stop him—nothing—because he was Bernard S. Ribkin and he was undead.
Troy Copra
Moe Trusskopf said he wanted the thing as “out there” as possible. Even Dreyfuss threw his two cents in: what Moe should do was a “triple-X Medea.” The manager loved that.
Troy boned up on Euripides and wrote a quickie variation. It was kind of fun—one more anecdote for the next installment of Skin Trade. For our heroine, Quinn engaged a five-foot, two-hundred-pound chick who’d do anything, even fuck the Mimsy double (christened “Rimsy”), a furry-dicked compulsive copulator. A real pro, that one. As a bonus, the fat lady—“Zanzibar”—had just dropped a kid, so she could really squirt. Troy made Moe pay through the nose for that. For old times’ sake, Sir Lancelot had a walk-on in the role of Johnny Depth, but wouldn’t participate in any sex acts. Moe practically had to blackmail him to show some basket.
In Troy’s rendition, Medea is married to the blond-haired Jason, a dentist-surfer with a hirsute crack known far and wide as the Golden Fleece (his scant bikini, the Golden Floss). He moves Medea/Zanzibar, Rimsy and their skinhead kids—the ever-resourceful Quinn “discovered” a set of nineteen-year-old twins at Plummer Park—to Hollywood to seek his fortune drilling celebrity molars. As fate has it, Jason falls in love with the first patient in for a cleaning, the famous producer Zevvy Girdleshtup. The boy who played Zev was a find, a buff albino whom they dressed in one of the producer’s wiggier signature Gaultier leathers. Jason and Zevvy were joined in marriage and, as a “traditional Greek welcome to the bride,” Rimsy, after having his way with the love-starved Medea, attempted sodomy upon His Girdleshtup with failed albeit jackhammer gusto. Meanwhile, Medea plotted her revenge, giving suck to the twins as she schemed, one on each teat, whilst the boys shook each other’s martinis (real-life-brothers, to boot). Even Quinn was amazed.
Kiv dropped by during the shoot, looking beautiful. She was starting to show. She spent her days buying clothes for Jodie—that was the baby’s name, after Jodie Foster, Pantheon queen.
She watched him direct the last scene, where Medea learns of her betrayal. There was no sex in it at all—Troy’s last laugh on his employers. Kiv studied her love while he advised the actors, denuding their campy gestures and intonations, honing and paring, excising innuendo. This was the man who would soon direct marvelous movies, movies belonging to the world. Could no one else see? Inside the bubble of this drafty gray soundstage, focused and unbroken, burning bright, Troy made the best of the demonic hand he’d been dealt and for a moment, like a ghost schooner, this ship of fools lifted to the black starry realm.
Zanzibar, obese, lactating, borderline psychotic that she was, gave vent to a brassy, eerily moving rage that Troy sculpted with painstaking love. The crew fell silent—Kiv knew they had transcended this travesty, this gutter—human drama unfolding without cumbrance. There were no borders. This searing mystery wrought from language and emotion, unexpected majesty wrenched from horror, was Troy’s doing, Troy’s gift, the gift of her fiancé, father of her child. Kiv was so proud—pulling swatches of Kleenex from the box at craft service, holding them to her eyes like warm compresses. The tears rolled down her cheeks, stinging her lips. She wanted to go someplace far away for their honeymoon, maybe Cannes. She loved reading about the festival in Variety. She would sit on the terrace of the Hotel du Cap and answer their questions. I am here with my husband, she would tell them…the director Troy Copra.
She heard “Action” and quietly slipped to the stage to join him.
Chet Stoddard
Chet went to Circuit City and bought himself one of those little satellite dishes—a gift to himself. He surfed until he got to T3. The screen read:
THE FOXXXY CHANNEL—ADULT MOVIES ALL DAY—THEATER 10
Rating: NR
Cost: $ 6.99
(plus applicable taxes)
Started at: 4:30 AM
Time Left: 3:15:26
(Press ENTER to purchase program)
(Otherwise change channel)
When the show came on, a number of things were happening. A hostess was interviewing a comedian called the Jokeman. At the same time, half-nude girls struck lascivious poses on ratty motel-yellow couches; folks at home could dial a nine hundred number to access live on-camera “one-on-ones” with favorites. The robonymphos pouted, preened and gyrated on the electronic auction block, tweaking nipples with red-lacquered pincers, working tongues like the village idiot in a Monty Python sketch. It was amazing to Chet that this could be someone’s idea of a hard-on. The medley format was surreal: in a Frankenstein-stitched decathlon of carnival burlesque, the Jokeman ran his crude shtick while hopped-up, underworld yeomanettes, in varied states of bullshit arousal, feigned “mirth.”
The camera discovered the girl at the end of the couch, and Chet got a start: it was his daughter, JABBA flashed on-screen in orange neon letters, like a game show’s secret clue. She winked at the camera, crowing, “Jabba Dabba do!”
The last time he saw Molly was Thanksgiving Day, a few years back. She was on bail for possession and soliciting. He took her to the Sepulveda Velvet Turtle for turkey and all the trimmings. After, they saw Lavinia at the Mount Olympus place—what a mistake. She was sixty pounds overweight, housebound with a stress fracture. Molly nodded out in her old room while Chet endured the ex’s diatribes and sophistic recriminations. It was two hours before they got out of there. He dropped Molly at a motel somewhere on La Brea.
The sweaty Jokeman stood before the camera like a boxer in a cheap interactive game. “A wife goes to her husband and says, ‘I don’t have any tits. I want you to buy me some tits.’ The husband says, ‘We can’t afford it.’ Wife starts crying. ‘I want you to buy me tits!’ Husband says, ‘Tell you what.
Here’s what you do. Get some toilet paper and rub it between your chest, okay?’ Wife says, ‘What’ll that do?’ And the husband says, ‘Well, it sure worked on your ass!’”
The camera panned to the couch, where Molly, hand inside panties, busied herself with the garish chores of simulated masturbation. She still managed to catch the punchline and laugh a beat late, a bad actress rehearsing for bedlam.
It was cold in the house. Chet found two dusty Placidyls zipped into a weathered shaving kit. He swallowed them and got into bed.
His thoughts turned to Aubrey’s boy. He wished they were on the road together—why not? He always wanted a son. Where would they go? Taos, maybe, or Santa Fe. Some big beautiful place with chaparral. Orphans from the plague, they’d be, riders on the storm. He’d find work on a big spread belonging to Hollywood-types who remembered him from the glory days. Saul Frake probably had a ranch somewhere in Wyoming…Moab or Ketchum or Sedona—herds of bison à la Ted Turner. Or Chad Everett: an absentee landlord situation. Live in the caretaker’s house. He’d take Zephyr everywhere, tutor him at home. There were laws about that. A boy didn’t have to go to school if a parent taught him right—part of the Homestead Act. Together, they’d learn the way of the Hopi and celebrate winter solstice, whittling tithu for prayer and protection from rough things. They would honor his mother—
As the pills did their work, Chet grew warm. Tears lowered him like a soft rope into sleep. Holding fast as he fell, he begged his daughter’s forgiveness. His sorrow had no bottom and, mercifully, upon his awakening, could not be recalled to extinguish the hopes of this savage new morning.
Zev Turtletaub
The “Calendar” article spotlighted Zev Turtletaub’s ambitious adaptation of the Russian novel Dead Souls. The updated classic would limn the viatical-settlement industry, its grand scope being “love in the time of AIDS.” The producer was furious and Taj was fired. Perhaps the recent hospital stay and surrounding events caused him to overreact, but the assistant should have known better. With certain projects, Zev’s penchant for secrecy was legend.
More than a hundred people came to Aubrey’s funeral—actors and activists, virus freaks, coffeehouse poets, people she had touched. All the men had yarmulkes bobby-clipped to their hair. You could tell which ones were sick; they stared into the open pit with sly know-how. Those who asked about Zephyr were told he was ill; assuming the worst, they fell silent. Zev read a Russian poem he picked from a sheaf his staff provided.
Of course, Zev wasn’t in love with the editor when he played matchmaker, not for a long time (if ever). The end had been sealed when Jake began making demands—more work, more this, more that—simple enough, but therein the beggarly middle-class contract Zev so despised. Gimme mine! It made his stomach turn. That was when he hatched the plan. His sister fell under “more this, more that” and Jake was enraptured when Aubrey agreed to give him her hand. Admittedly, the announcement of betrothal heated the producer’s blood; once or twice a week throughout marriage, Jake watered Zev’s mouth, loving the whiteheads that ringed the jaundicey skin of his wealthy brother-in-law’s languid eyes—again, in hospital bathroom, awaiting Zephyr to be born. The producer never worried about getting sick, because he didn’t really have sex anymore, not real sex, not for years. A month before marrying Aubrey off, Zev began to suspect his protégé: a six-week siege of diarrhea (and thrush!) that Jake attributed to a taco stand downtown. Food poisoning doesn’t last six weeks, Zev said. He told him to get tested but Jake got so upset, Zev never brought it up again. Some people were like that—even at the end, the film editor’s denial was so great he told people he had the Jim Henson Killer Flu. He was still convinced Zev would give him money for a post-production house in Santa Monica, a state-of-the-art facility by the sea. That was his Big Baywatch Idea; everybody had to have one. It was easy for Zev to string him along till the end, right through dementia.
The producer remembered how they’d first met, at a club on Highland. He went to the toilet and there stood Jake, pants around ankles, facing the wall. That was an anomaly, he later said. Jake forever downplayed “running with the queers” and maybe he was telling the truth, because marriage sure brought out the hetero in him. How much did Aubrey know? She was such a savvy, cynical girl; she’d have to have known, why else would she attack him like that? But so late in the game…and if she did know, when—when did she know? That’s what Zev idly wondered as they lowered her down.
In two weeks he turned thirty-five. Moe Trusskopf was throwing a big party, and Zev was actually excited about it. His production company was busier than ever; it was an expansive time. Now, he’d redouble his efforts on Dead Souls. They were closing on a writer and Alec would soon follow. Alec was perfect. Zev would dedicate the movie to his sister and start a foundation in her name—or a hospice in Ojai. He would buy her soul, fair and square. It was worth more dead then alive.
As they drove from the cemetery to his Santa Barbara home, the bulimic producer imagined himself as Chichikov, pulled along in a carriage by Selifan the coachman. There was a magnificent passage that closed Part One. Chichikov is skipping town and begs Selifan to speed up. As the horses go full gallop, their very movement elicits a rhapsody:
Russia, are you not speeding along like a fiery and matchless troika? Beneath you the road is smoke, the bridges thunder, and everything is left far behind. At your passage the onlooker stops amazed as by a divine miracle. “Was that not a flash of lightning?” he asks. What is this surge so full of terror? And what is this force unknown impelling these horses never seen before? Ah, you horses, horses—what horses!
The traffic was light and he told the chauffeur to accelerate. Zev rolled down the windows and let the wind blast in. The driver was excited at what he took to be his powerful client’s spontaneous, cathartic post-burial passion; it would be a memorable ride, something to tell his wife after work. He smelled a big tip.
“Almost a hundred!” shouted the driver, with glee.
“A hundred, a hundred! A hundred and ten!” screamed the producer. He was on fire. “A hundred and twenty! Troika, troika, troika!”
Russia, where are you flying? Answer me! There is no answer. The bells are tinkling and filling the air with their wonderful pealing; the air is torn and thundering as it turns to wind; everything on earth comes flying past and, looking askance at her, other peoples and states move aside and make way.
BOOK 4
THE GRANDE COMPLICATION
Rachel Krohn
“It has nothing to do with thinking, it has to do with knowing. You should know.”
They were lunching at the Barney Greengrass aerie, on the terrace that overlooked the windswept postcard of Beverly Hills—one of those crisp, automatic days that trigger nostalgic dominoes of déjà vu.
“He’s happily married,” Rachel replied.
The agent threw back a creamy neck and snorted. A Jewish star lay on her olive skin like a delicate inlay. “They’re all happily married, that’s part of it. They love going back to Mommy.”
Rachel liked staring at her face; it was out of kilter, like a Modigliani. “He’s not that way, Tovah. They just bought a big house.”
“There’s no way he’s going to go from where he was to where he is now with the kind of money he has made in the time he has made it without some instant gratification, Rachel. Of the genital variety.”
The women laughed. The subject was Perry Needham Howe, a television producer and UTA client who’d recently hit it “large.” Rachel had worked as his assistant almost three years, not once catching the scent of adultery—not even a whiff.
“Are you PMS?”
“Why?”
“Because you always end up grilling me about Perry’s sex life when you’re PMS.”
She was a funny, contradictory girl who’d become Rachel’s best friend on the planet. Her father, Dee Bruchner, was a senior agent at William Morris; ever the rebel, Tovah defected to UTA, where she quickly corraled a group of young write
rs who cut their teeth on shows like Larry Sanders and were now creating hip, middle-of-the-road TV of their own—the Gary David Goldbergs of tomorrow. But Tovah was shrewd: she wanted a finger in all the pies, including a slice of Perry Needham Howe. She was “attracted to him physically,” but that didn’t explain her ambitions—most men were attractive that way. Her interest could be chalked up to good old-fashioned agenting, pure and simple. Tovah knew that pushing him toward the unexpected, seemingly oddball target—say, sitcoms or one-hours—was the long-haul thing that would keep him at the agency. Smart thing, too. Perry was cautious at first but already loosening up, flattered by her spirited attentions. Tovah told him she was going to push him straight through syndication, into Bochco country.
Rachel was forty-four and Tovah barely twenty-six—worlds apart, with worlds in common. The agent’s family went to Beth-El, the temple where Rachel’s father had been cantor. Tovah was still fairly observant. The mother, long divorced from Dee, became a Chabadist and met an engineer through a shiddach. Rachel, the prodigal Jew, loved hearing the details of an arranged marriage: how they weren’t allowed to touch until they wed and how during courtship the front door was always left ajar, for modesty. “Orthodox Judaism is wonderful,” the mother told her when Rachel went to Tovah’s for Shabbat, “because there are so many rules and you just have to follow them. The rules do not bend.”
“I visited the set of this miniseries,” said Tovah, tucking into a sturgeon omelette. “A writer I represent. They were using black leopards—big, beautiful cats. Oh, Rachel, you would love them. There was this woman trainer there, gorgeous, with a leopard-skin belt! Like out of Cat People. There were all these warnings on the call-sheets: ‘No children or menstruating women allowed on set.’”