I’m Losing You

by Bruce Wagner

  “That was a terrible, terrible time—you’ll never know, darling, you don’t want to. You and Simon were away, remember? I was glad of that. I used to literally thank God for Camp Hillel.”

  She stroked her daughter’s head and kissed it. And then she cried and Rachel couldn’t remember seeing that, ever. Her hair was thick and gray; at sixty-seven, she was still a beautiful woman. They strolled to the front door, arm in arm.

  “Who was it that told you about your father?”

  “A woman I met at a seder.”

  “You went to a seder?” She smiled, genuinely surprised.

  “At my boss’s.” Rachel wasn’t sure why she lied. “I had to, for business.”

  “And who was this woman?” Calliope asked, a paranoid glint in her eye. “Is she talking to people about Sy?”

  “Not at all—Mother, it’s nothing like that. It was an isolated event, a weird thing. She didn’t even know who I was.”

  “She didn’t know who you were yet ends up telling you your father killed himself. Very mysterious.” Calliope smiled indulgently. There would be no more interrogations, at least not today. “Well,” she said, kissing her daughter again, “you go home and soak—take a bubble bath. I’ll call and we’ll make a time.”

  Severin Welch

  ESCUELA Rochester is singing “Oh My Papa”—sounds like a buzz saw dying—Benny walks in from rehearsal. Benny keeps saying, “It’s going to be a great show tonight! I think it’s gonna be a great show!” In comes Don Wilson, asks if Hope’s still mad that he makes a late entrance. Benny says Hope’s a little hot under the collar but he’ll get over it. Wilson leaves and Rochester gives Benny a shave. He’s shaving and then he jumps back. “Uh oh, I think I cut you!” Benny says, “What do you mean, you think, can’t you tell?” Rochester says, “It would help if you’d bleed a little!” Benny hears the orchestra play his theme, but he can’t find his pants. Hope walks onstage—he’s holding Benny’s pants! Looks at the pants and says he’s about to introduce a great entertainer: Gypsy Rose Benny. Says how strange it is working over at CBS—“that stands for Crosby & Benny’s Strong-box”—feels out of place as Zsa Zsa at a PTA meeting. But CBS is right next to the Farmer’s Market, so “you can lay ’em here and sell ’em there.” Holds up the pants again. “Look at that material, ain’t it wonderful? They call it ‘unfinished payments.’” Unfinished payments—that was Severin’s. The whole premise about swiping the pants so Jack couldn’t go on was Severin’s. And the “Road to Nairobi” sketch, with Benny and Hope in a cauldron surrounded by Zulus. There’s a tiger hanging upside-down on a spit. When Hope swivels it around, there’s leopard spots on the other side. Benny says, “The cat must have seen a vet—in Denmark.” Hope says, “I wondered why it had its hand on its hip when I shot it.” All Severin. Hope laughing so hard Severin didn’t think he’d be able to finish. Martin and Lewis lit the cauldron bonfire at the end of the show. Must have been on ten seconds, tops. i’m gonna fuck you up! take you to the

  cloisters, CUNT MOTHERFUCKER!

  jerome, you didn’t let me explain

  explain! you cn explain.

  xplain it to th mother fkng emergency room

  how there’s a bullet through your mothrfucked

  Perry Needham Howe

  Rachel found a dealer for the grande complication at the Regency Beverly Wilshire. The fine watch emporium was managed by a suave, self-effacing Frenchman. As things had it, Henri Clotard was a huge fan of Streets. He was very sorry to say there were no Destrieros in the country at this time; he would have to make a few inquiries. Monsieur called the next morning to say he had arranged for a minute repeater to be sent by courier from the East Coast. Since Mr. Howe had never seen one, he thought it would be of interest. Perry went over as soon as the timepiece arrived.

  He waited to be buzzed in.

  Henri extended a hand, smiling graciously. “What a pleasure it is to meet you! Your kind assistant said you were a prompt man, and on this day I am most grateful, for I have been called away on a minor medical emergency.”

  “I’ll come back another time.”

  “Nonsense, sir—I would not think of it. You are here and it would be bizarre to send you packing.” He possessed the heightened, anachronistic politesse of a diplomat in a drawing-room farce. “I was fortunate enough to locate a complication here in the United States. Would you care to see it?”

  The watch was similar to the Destriero, except its movement was concealed by a solid platinum case (the Destriero’s was see-through). Perry strapped it on, feeling the full weight of its six hundred-some parts—perhaps one got used to the heaviness. The face was elegant, without bejeweled ostentation. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to indicate its worth; that was part of the allure.

  “There are complications far plainer than this, sir. Two days ago, I had here an Audemars: one hundred forty thousand dollars. You would really not look twice. And yet, if you buy yourself a ticket to New York next week for the auction at Sotheby’s (you don’t have to fly first class!), you can put your bid on a very simple-looking Patek Philippe, a minute repeater from the year nineteen and thirty. But make sure,” he added, with a showman’s grin, “to have half a millions in your wallet.”

  They walked through a catalogue. There were peculiar-looking “jumping hour” models; Reverso Tourbillons; Chronograph Rattrappantes; a Breguet (the premier genius of watchmakers and Marie Antoinette’s favorite) that measured the length of each day as would be shown by a sundial; and the wristwatches of Ulysse Nardin, portable astrolabes reflecting the time and position of the stars all at once, in addition to the month, lengths of day, night and twilight, moon phases, astronomical coordinates and signs of the zodiac. The dials were made of meteorite.

  “The ‘Astrolabium Galileo Galilei’ is so correct,” said the Monseiur, “that there would merely be a deviation of one day from the position of the stars after a period of approximately one hundred and forty-four thousand years.”

  “Where does one buy something like this?”

  “Oh, you can get them. Mostly, at auction—Genève. I was, last month—une grande farce. Dealers should just stay away. You see, the auctions are now open to the public, they are in the hands of consumers who know nothing. I saw a watch that retails for thirty-five thousand go at thirty-eight. It retails at thirty-five, new, sir! There was an Italian on one side of me, a German on the other and they just did not stop. They were competing with one another—in a frenzy for the absolutely insignificant. For things of no consequence. I said to the auctioneer, ‘Why are you doing this?’ He said, ‘Je ne fais rien.’ But the auction houses…alors. Have you seen this?” He pushed at him a photo of what looked to be an oversized pocket watch. “Patek Philippe: the ‘Calibre 89.’ I have a video I can show you. They sold one at auction to a group of Japanese investors for some three millions. Patek was livid—they thought it should have gone for seven. You see, the house set the reserve too low. They started at six hundred thousand when it should have been one and three-quarters millions. Only three ‘Calibres’ exist, sir!”

  Perry undid the band, balancing the watch in his palm. “And how much is this one?”

  Henri consulted another book. “One hundred and seventy-five thousand.” He turned it over to reveal the engraving: “You see? One of fifty produced in nineteen ninety-five. It is also available—I would have to make a phone call, maybe two—with a platinum band. For that, seventy-five thousand is added. But if it is not in the country…” He winced a small, punishing smile; the dollar was weak. “You see, these kind of watches are made for a very elite group. And we are pushing ourselves into a corner, dealers and manufacturers alike. One day, I predict it will be very bad. They are making these in China now—in fact, I am going to Peking next month. They will make them at a fraction of the cost and sell low! They will say, ‘This is authentic! Look, we are the oldest culture! We invented gunpowder! We! We! We!’”

  The moment Perry had been waiting for was at
hand: time to depress the repetition slide, the lever that triggered the chime. Henri set the hour at 11:57 and, without fanfare, keyed the mechanism with his thumb. The eleven meditative strokes of the hour were plangent and softly surprising, like a bell tower ringing in a distant town square. Perry thought of the shrunken city Superman kept under a glass in the Fortress of Solitude; he imagined the atom-sized inhabitants of a village—Schaffhausen?—going placidly about their business as the sealed world sang with the chronometric music of time. After the hours marked, there immediately followed the ringing of the quarters: three mellisonant double-chimes like delicate flares of wheat. To the sightless (and privileged), the clock had thus far “read” the hour as 11:45. Then, higher tones still, came an aborted minuet of minutes that remained. When this was done, Henri discreetly stepped away, allowing Perry the honors of initiating such a feast of minutiae and movable parts himself.

  “I know a collector who has eleven minute repeaters,” said the Monsieur as he returned. “Each a different maker. His joy is to set them off in unison. He lines them up in front of a microphone and broadcasts the cacophony over speakers—and these are not the normal speakers, I assure you, they are quite monolithic. I don’t know what the neighbors think; it sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before. It isn’t necessarily pleasing to the ear—not to mine, but to his, yes. He is eccentric. You’ll note I don’t say crazy, I say eccentric. We all have a fever. My friend has his and you have yours, I can tell. I’m not sure what it is, but you have it.”

  Perry snapped to: “I’ve kept you far too long.” The television producer longed to engage in the florid, mannerly volleys of noblesse oblige.

  “It is perfectly okay,” said Henri. “It has been my utmost pleasure, and of that, I am sincere.”

  “You’ve been exceedingly gracious” was the most the novice could muster. Then: “I hope whatever calls you away isn’t serious.”

  “It is very kind of you to offer a comment and I thank you for that. My mother is ill, for some many years. She recently had the misfortune of taking a tumble and it seems she has taken another. Not to worry: fortunately—if one can say such a thing—this last unpleasantness occurred one hour ago while at hospital for the purpose of assessing hip transplant surgery. She is in good hands and I am assured all is status quo. I am headed there now.”

  Perry didn’t buy the complication but felt he probably should have, if only for selfishly detaining his adviser. He bought a Tiffany watch instead, and told Henri it was for his wife. He would give it to Tovah as an emblem of their new project—knowing full well that was artifice. He would give it to her because it felt good and because he wanted to see her face when he put the box in her hand. It was as uncomplicated as that.

  Ursula Sedgwick

  Ursula kept calling ICM, leaving Donny messages that she needed to see him. When she told one of his assistants it was “urgent,” the agent finally agreed, out of sheer paranoia. He was half an hour late for their lunch at Cicada.

  “Phylliss Wolfe tells me you’re big buddies.”

  “Phyll’s great—and she’s great with Tiffany. She really wants to have a kid.”

  “Yeah, well, she’d better hurry. Her hormones are almost in turnaround.”

  “She’s very spiritual, too.”

  “So Phylliss is the one who got you involved with this shit! She tried to drag me to one of those fucking meetings.”

  “She didn’t drag me anywhere, Donny.”

  “With the guy—Mahatma Hoot-muh—what do they call him?”

  “His name is Sri Harold Klemp. He’s called the Mahanta—”

  “Right! Klemp! The guy from Wisconsin. Wisconsin, the dairy and guru state.”

  “You can sit and make fun all you want, but it’s real. And so is reincarnation of Soul.”

  “You have to admit it’s kind of hilarious, Ursula. I know I said ‘Get a life,’ but I didn’t mean a past one.” People stopped by to say hello. Donny didn’t bother to introduce her. “Why don’t we have the food to go and get a room somewhere? Someplace sleazy.”

  “I don’t want to do that, Donny.”

  “Because of the boyfriend? I want to hear all about the boyfriend.”

  “He isn’t a boyfriend.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  “I don’t need to do that anymore.”

  “Oh, I get it.” He scowled. “Past Life Therapy…is that what this is?”

  When she started to talk, he waved at a table. The luncheoners beckoned him over. Ursula used the wineglass to make imprints on the cloth, drawing faces in the circles with a fork. Donny sat back down and the same thing happened again, different players. He was gone ten minutes, returning as the salads were served.

  “It was early in the fourth century—”

  “Joan of Arc?” he asked cursorily, digging into the romaine.

  “I was a wealthy girl—”

  “Why is it that in past lives, poor people are always rich?”

  She stared down at the scarified linen, collecting herself. “It was in Rome. I was born in Palermo, of a noble family. A powerful senator wanted to sleep with me, but I refused.”

  “Maybe that was Newt—Newt had to have a past life. Or Ross Perot! Al Gore?”

  “As punishment for my stubbornness, I was forced into a house of prostitution…”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere. You know, I believe in past lives, I really do. I knew a guy who sold used cars. Always called them ‘chariots.’ Sweet guy, name of Benjamin—Benjamin Hur. But all his friends called him—”

  “Donny, just listen!” The agent grew sullen and fidgety. “The only person who would help me was a boy who ran errands for the madam—”

  “Right! The new boyfriend—your hero. I’m happy for you, Ursula. Maybe you can rule the trailer park together. But let me ask you something: does Mahatma Junior share the same little recovered memory? I mean, does he at least get the chance to rebut? You know: ‘Hey, I don’t remember that! That’s not one of my past lives! I was King of the Zulus!’”

  “Sometimes it takes a while to bring those memories from the Inner to the Outer. And Taj is very new—as am I.”

  “Taj?”

  “He needs to come by it himself, and he will. If he lets the Mahanta guide him.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it Wiedlin? What’s he look like?”

  “I don’t see why that’s important.”

  “You’re right,” he said, nodding at the waiter for the check. “Nothing’s important. Including the fact you are out of your fucking mind.”

  Why did she even bother? She was grateful for all he’d done, especially for Tiffany. She wanted to release him, because Ursula knew her love had been overbearing. But to release him meant sharing the found vision of her passion play: smell of wet stones and burning wood, sting of incense, bordello voices (they seemed like Latin or maybe Italian, though she spoke neither).

  She hadn’t yet mentioned to Sara or Phylliss what girlhood memories and a trip to the downtown library had confirmed. When she was Tiffany’s age, an aunt bought her a Dictionary of Saints. There was a painting of an ecstatic girl, implements of torture scattered at her feet. A man in a shirt with puffed sleeves held a sword to her neck. The story said she’d been forced into prostitution for refusing a rich politician; this hapless blonde, found on the Inner—who was Ursula, sad whorehouse girl exhumed from a dream—was none but St. Agatha herself. Now that her life made sense, she wanted to tell Donny everything, but how could he listen? Agatha had rejected the senator as Ursula had her father and his rough friends. Agatha consecrated her virginity to Jesus Christ; Ursula would make her vows to the Mahanta Sri Harold Klemp, the Living ECK Master. She must have known all this even as a tiny girl (it made her think of the Motorcycle Man at the potluck). Ursula was mildly embarrassed at the “bride of Mahanta” aspect, because she knew that wasn’t at all something ECKists encouraged. Maybe it was inappro
priate. She’d talk to Phyll about it. Phyll would set her straight.

  Tiffany was coloring her book with a child’s fierce attention. Occasionally, she glanced up at Fraggle Rock.

  A woman came looking for Ursula. Taj saw her through the curtain; he knew Phylliss from ICM days and didn’t feel like an encounter. He slunk to the bedroom.

  For a few weeks, he’d been crashing there, unbothered, leaving in the early morning hours—but it seemed that the truth about Taj Wiedlin would soon out. Maybe it was time to call his sister for airfare home. He hadn’t spoken to the family since Zev let him go. His mom was probably worried near to death.

  When the coast was clear, he returned to the living room with a milkless bowl of Cheerios.

  “Why did you hide?” asked Tiffany.

  “I didn’t hide.”

  “You’re weird,” she said, going back to her routine.

  Taj couldn’t believe he was offended by the little girl’s dismissal. She shook her head, curling her lip in disgust as she drew. Taj began an “I’m weird” dance to break the tension, but her rejection congealed.

  “When’s Mama coming home?”

  “I don’t know, Crabby,” Taj said, doing his goofy jig. “Come on and smile.”

  “I am not crabby and stop it.”

  “Crabby Tabby.”

  “You’re bothering me,” whined Tiffany. “You don’t even live here.”

  “Ground control to Major Crab! Have a Cheerio and do the ‘weird’ dance. You’ll feel better.”

  “I hate you.” She didn’t really, but now she’d said so.

  “A little over the top, don’t you think? And rude.”

  “You’re rude.” Less emphatic now.

  “Why do you hate me?”

  “Because you’re weird.”

  “You mean I’m weird because I fuck your mother between the legs?”

  Tiffany stood, agitated. “Be quiet!”