by Bruce Wagner
The congregants adjourned to the anteroom for blessings over bread and wine. Rachel drank the little cup down, then quickly had two more. The mood was festive as the guests filed in and tore chunks from the challah. Rachel stood listening to the klezmer band, entranced. The girl from the mortuary stared through the glass—the sun white as the shroud shyly held to her breast. The room whirled and the floor broke Rachel’s black fall.
Ursula Sedgwick
She was in Century City running errands while Holly and Sara were at yoga. Army Archerd said in Variety that Holly had been set for Sight Unseen, a made-for-cable-movie “limning the political and spiritual journey of an abused wife who gives birth to a blind child” (timed to coincide with the publication of the book). Ursula thought that was brave—Holly could do any kind of international role she wanted, but here she was on Lifetime. That was the sign of a great actress: someone interested in the work and the part, not the glamour and the money.
Ursula got a hamburger at Johnny Rocket’s and sat in the sun, jostling Samson’s carriage with her foot. People passed and smiled and she remembered those times, rocking Tiffany in a public place. Nursing her. Packs of oblivious girls rushed by on their way to the cineplex—little foxes. They had long blond legs, and she thought of Tiffany.
Ursula chewed her burger and unfolded the map. She never knew odd-numbered routes went north-south and even ones (Route 66), east-west. Well, that was a handy thing. Minnesota was the “gopher state,” fourteenth largest in the Union—had only been a state a hundred and fourteen years. Chanhassen, site of the Temple of ECK, was just southwest of Minneapolis; she marked it in red ink. Sara said the Temple was pyramid-shaped and suffused with the Maha Nada, the great music of the ECK life current. Ursula couldn’t wait. She wasn’t going to tell anyone about the road trip, though folks would probably be relieved if they knew. If you fell in the lake, you were supposed to grab on tight to the rope that was thrown while they hauled you ashore—dry yourself off, shake a few hands and move on. But Ursula was still thrashing and no one liked to see that. People wanted results. That was only human.
She decided to send the ladies postcards, keep an album of the whole trip. That would be fun. She’d been pasting together a very special photo montage: Ursula and Tiff and Sara and Phyll and Rodney the dachshund on boardwalk, pier and Promenade; Planet Hollywood and Dive!; lolling around United States Island’s dry canals in their dungarees; carousing on the train to Sea World for an Eckankar family outing. She was going to have Kinko’s laminate it to a beautiful piece of wood—Ursula did that with a “Calvin and Hobbes” cartoon, the one where Calvin stares out the window and says, “You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don’t help.” She was going to give that to the Mahanta when they met in Minnesota.
Her first concern was fixing the Bonneville because, in its current shape, Ursula didn’t think it would make it to Chanhassen. The alignment was bad. She should hurry, though—an ECKist friend had been to a gathering in upstate New York and the Mahanta appeared ill; as a vessel for so much energy, his physical body was often under siege. The friend didn’t know where the Mahanta lived but was sure it couldn’t be far from the Temple.
“Mama, look! Its eyes!” A boy stood over Samson, who was now awake. “What’s wrong with its eyes?”
The mother grabbed him roughly by the wrist. She smiled at Ursula. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“He’s darling,” said the mother, peering into the carriage.
“But why are his eyes like that?”
“That is rude!” the mother exclaimed, mildly appalled. Ursula reassured the woman, then told the boy the baby was blind.
“But how did he get blind?”
“Well,” said Ursula patiently, “it’s just the way he was born.”
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Samson.”
“He is a doll. He’ll have no trouble finding his Delilah.”
“He already has,” Ursula said with a twinkle. “Me.”
The little boy asked his mother who Delilah was over and over until they were out of sight.
She was pushing Samson toward the Imaginarium when the two women collided. Ursula gasped, though wasn’t sure why. “Do I know you?”
Rachel’s eyes bugged, jaw trembling. “We—we met at—at the mortuary…”
Ursula fought for air. She sneezed three times, then burst into tears.
“Please, please don’t!” groaned Rachel, weeping herself.
“My Tiffany! My baby!”—dumbly backing the carriage away.
“Please! I’ve been dreaming about her…”
“You!—” Then Ursula remembered this was the woman who had washed her girl; the last to see her translate from this earth. “Was she—was she beautiful?”
“Please!—”
“Tell me! Was she beautiful?”
“Oh yes! So beautiful! The most beautiful thing I have ever seen—”
“And you…took care of her?”
“Yes! We took perfect care of her.” Ursula slowly deflated. “Are you…are you well? Can I—”
“Thank you!” shouted Ursula, abruptly heading for the long ramp beside Gelson’s.
The part-time washer of the dead gave chase and shoved something into her hand. “Take it! It’s yours!” Now it was Rachel’s turn to flee.
She stormed off, stymied and haunted—like a witch whose potions had all failed.
Perry Needham Howe
Jeremy Stein made good on his promise to take Perry to lunch at Ginza Sushiko. He brought with him the free-lance dealer he’d mentioned on the train. Berto was a sound editor at one of the big post-production houses in the Valley. His family had been in the watch trade and from early on, he was attracted to the aesthetics of the old pieces they repaired.
They were the only ones there. Apparently, the restaurant was so expensive it didn’t bother opening unless someone made a reservation; a hundred-dollar penalty was charged in event of cancellation. Perry said he wanted to try the fugu (you only live once, he thought) and was disappointed to hear its season came in November. It seemed fugu wasn’t poisonous in itself but enjoyed eating something that was. At any rate, the chef said he served it “young,” before too many toxins accumulated in the liver. The liver, of course, was the real delicacy—like most toxic things.
“You’d love it,” Jeremy said. “It’s rather like foie gras.”
The chef scowled, his English not up to a riposte. “Better than foie gras.”
“There’s usually a residual toxin in fugu: first time I had it, my tongue started tingling from the inside. I almost shat myself! Finally got it together to inform the chef and he put me right.”
Perry couldn’t help but wonder if stage-four adenocarcinoma was a tasty treat out there in the star-speckled vomitus of the Big Bang. Somewhere, a galactic cook was serving it up “young” (before chemo).
The men were delivered soups that made the counter smell of forest. Then came bowls of hot water filled with leaves; they dipped shredded sashimi within and each grabful swelled like a white rose in time-lapse bloom. Perry felt as if he’d ingested a mild psychotropic.
Berto knew the creator of Streets was interested in a minute repeater. He admitted he’d never sold one but said they could be gotten, at a price. A Vacheron Constantin retailing around a hundred and sixty thousand might be had for about half.
“You know, there’s a guy in Pennsylvania who will get the Swiss parts and make you a repeater, do anything you want. We’re talking a substantial reduction. See, a lot of these super-complicated watches aren’t manufactured by the companies that sell them. Look.” He jimmied the back of his wristwatch, revealing the works. “(I know just where to press.) See: Patek bought the ébauche—the raw movement—from Le Coultre. The big names aren’t necessarily the manufacturers. They do stuff to the watch, it’s not like they do nothing. Take VCRs: there’s ten thousand different kinds but only a handful o
f places that make the components. Okay?”
Jeremy picked his teeth with one of the hand-carved rare-wood toothpicks that sat in tiny reliquaries before each man. Perry popped an urchin in his mouth that elicited a primitive sense-memory of ocean. He’d suffered a lot of epicurean bores in his day, with their gustatory boasts and simpleminded metaphors; now he was one of them.
“There’s a European auction house called Habsburg you should know about, if you really want to go crazy.”
“Oh, he’s that already!” said Jeremy, eyes closed in ecstasy of octopus aftermath. “He’s totally gone.”
Berto pulled a Sotheby’s catalogue from his valise and flipped to a dog-eared page at the back. Lana Turner stood next to a thuggish-looking man on her wedding day, nineteen forty-eight. “That’s this guy Topping. There were two brothers, right? They inherited about a hundred and forty million.” On the center of the next page was a plain-looking wristwatch with a black band. “One of the earliest perpetuals—Topping was the first real owner, bought it from Schulz—and it’s a minute repeater and a one-button chronograph—that’s in the crown—and it’s got a moon phase. We’re talking nineteen thirty!”
Perry took a closer look. “It says ‘tonneau’—”
“Shape of the case. Like a barrel, see? It was made by this guy Schulz, who worked for Cartier.”
“Schulz made the ébauche?” Perry asked.
Jeremy winked. “I told you he was gone.”
“You’re learning! No,” he said, pointing to the text. “See? It says the movement wasn’t signed. Probably Piguet; they did a lot of the early complicated Pateks. This one sold for five hundred fifty thousand—and remember, we’re talking nineteen eighty-nine. But that’s an unusual piece.”
Dessert was a drift of shaved green ice adorned by a Fuji-esque snowcap of crushed kiwi. The bill came to twelve hundred and thirty-seven dollars and fifty-six cents, without tip. The two men offered credit cards, but Jeremy refused.
“That’s okay,” said the benefactor. “My treat. Next time, buy me a watch. Hey, Berto,” he joked. “Can you get a used Breguet for what we paid for lunch?”
“You could pay the tax on a Breguet—maybe.”
Perry got the elbow as Jeremy nodded toward the dealer. “Would you buy a used Breguet from this man? Oh!” His face lit up. “Know what I heard? I heard there was a black American Express card.”
“Yeah, Farrakhan has one,” said Berto.
“I’m serious. Perry, have you heard of that? It’s supposed to be for people like Bronfman and Gates. You can, like, buy buildings with the damn thing.”
“Or minute repeaters,” said Perry.
When they left, Jeremy gave the chef his card and made him promise to call at first fugu.
That night at the Century Plaza, Perry clutched his side and collapsed during the silent auction at a Luminaires fund-raiser for the Doheny Eye Institute. Jersey wanted to call an ambulance, but he stubbornly said the limo would do. The doctors were concerned the bowel had been perforated; they needed to go in and take a look.
“They might have at least let you keep on your tux,” Jersey said as they wheeled her husband to surgery.
“Listen,” Perry said groggily from the gurney. “I want my liver donated to the right restaurant—five-star.”
“What?” She smiled, wiping tears away with the back of a hand. “What is it, darling?”
“I want—”
“Tell me what you want…”
“—none of this Mickey Mouse Mickey Mantle rejection shit. And make sure it’s in season—says so on my driver’s license. Promise?”
“You’re a crazy man, but I promise. And I love you.”
She kissed him twice and he rolled away.
Severin Welch
Out of the ICU, thank God. Two days in that sonsabitchin place. They fished a catheter through his groin and cleared a blockage in a valve, that’s how they did it now. Instead of a triple bypass they snaked in like plumbers through a pipe. Lavinia was there in all her weepy, slobby, hard-bitten splendor, like some kind of Kathy Bates. Frankenbates. She kept asking what was he doing in the middle of the street. Where was he going, what had possessed him? The old man thought it best not to answer. She’d have to move to Beachwood, she said—told anyone who’d listen—because her father couldn’t be left alone. But she would need help, who could help? She’d call her ex, that fuck, he wouldn’t lift a finger for anyone. Who, then? All his neighbors were so fucking old. Total care! Get real—that’s what they were talking about—and who paid? Medicare? Medicaid? I’ll tell you who: nobody! Nobody paid for total care, total care was for the rich! For English and Canadians, and the Swiss! But maybe the Motion Picture Hospital—Daddy, what were you doing, you could have been hit by a hundred cars! She railed against her rotten ex and Jabba the whore and the whole fucked up shitty planet.
“I’d like to have my radio, Lavinia.” She knew what he meant. “I’d like you to get it from the house.”
“They won’t let you have that here,” she said.
“Everyone has a radio.”
“Not that kind. You’ll be home soon anyway.”
“I see. You’re preparing my schedule? You’re a doctor now?”
“That’s right—so you better listen.” She reached into a gold Godiva tin for a marron glacé. “This is such a beautiful hospital. The paintings! On every floor. It’s like a museum.”
“Why don’t you move in, if you love it so much? You could give tours.”
Three in the morning. The nurse gave him Dalmane, but he couldn’t sleep. Lavinia refused to bring the scanner but he made her retrieve the script—its dirty pages gathered by paramedics from oil-stained macadam and, along with bruised Uniden, sealed in a Hefty bag—the very original draft of Dead Souls, put through anemic paces by Dee Bruchner so long ago. Pressed like a linty yellow flower within was the clipping from The New York Times:
Charles G. Bluhdorn, who built a small Michigan auto-parts company into Gulf and Western Industries, the multibillion-dollar conglomerate, died yesterday while flying home to New York from a business trip in the Dominican Republic. He was fifty-six years old and lived in Manhattan.
Jerry Sherman, an assistant vice-president and director of public relations for G.&W., said Mr. Bluhdorn, the company’s founder, chairman and chief executive, was aboard a corporate plane when he died. Mr. Sherman said the cause of death was a heart attack.
Severin sat by the window, touching the cool security glass with a bunged-up finger. The nail still had a fissure, all the way from Brooklyn, ‘thirty-one—looked like a miniature ice floe—when his best friend, Joey Dobrowicz, smashed it with a rock (by mistake, Joey said). Did he holler. He stared out the thick pane, trying to conjure faces, but the slate was gray, the drizzle dull. It was raining the night his Diantha died, in this very wing.
He went to the chair and sat down, winded by memory. There was something terrifying about chairs in hospital rooms, especially at night. An immense longing came upon him, and Severin revisited the time they first met…the Automat—For Me and My Gal—nineteen forty-two, the year Mr. Bluhdorn immigrated to America from Vienna. Severin was a Western Union messenger by day (extreme myopia would exempt him from the service), tyro novelist by night. Sometimes they threw him a few dollars to create a radio ad, but what he really wanted was to be an Author—do an All Quiet on the Western Front, or something in the Steinbeck vein—then hire out for the movies. When Diantha got pregnant, they took a bus to Hollywood.
He worked at Chasen’s for a while—
began his career in a New York cotton brokerage house, earning fifteen dollars a week. In nineteen forty-nine, he formed an import-export concern that he operated until, at the age of thirty and already a millionaire, he bought into the Michigan parts company.
Among its hundreds of subsidiaries, the most widely known are Paramount Pictures, the Madison Square Garden Corporation and Simon & Schus
What could it have been like to l
ive with him? Diantha saw less and less of those she cared for. Corraled by his sickness, she became a mirror, herself house-bound and bizarre. It had never been easy for her to make friends. She lived for Lavinia, grown unsavory and irascible before her eyes; turned to her granddaughter, but Molly was in trouble early on, evaporating around the time of Severin’s own manic retreat—all that jail business broke Diantha’s heart. His wife would have no rewards; when she passed, Molly had been gone almost five years. Severin kept hoping their grandchild would appear at Diantha’s bedside and she did, yes she did, a day late, sores and scabs everywhere, tattoo covering her back, spidery rendering of a woman entered from behind by a skeleton with a scythe. For the last few years of her husband’s madness—five, really—well, ten—what Diantha really had then was Lavinia. Overbearing, unkempt, gloomy, abusive Lavinia.
He saw his wife hanging in the air outside the window, a blown out, blighted angel dragged to hell by the gagman’s caravan of black humors. Severin came to the Beachwood bedroom once and there she was, rocking, eyes slammed watery shut, hands over ears to evict the scannerbabble.
Mr. Bluhdorn’s favorite expression, said an associate, was, “What is the bottom line?”
Didn’t even bury her—too busy waiting, and waiting still! Why had he been so indulged? They should have done something, rancorous and violent, lacking decorum, caved in his head and smashed his machines, chased him down with wild children and devoured him on the beach.
It was pouring. A thousand gargoyles spat rain at the windows (Diantha gone now) with fatal, mischievous mouths. Severin slept.
Rachel Krohn
Oberon Mall was dead.
Mitch had a flu, and Calliope asked her to come to the service at Hillside Memorial Park. Rachel showered when they got off the phone. She was showering at least five times a day, skin chafed from overwashing. Mortuary parking lot lustrations hadn’t been enough “to remove death,” not by a long shot—in fact, the effort was risible. According to the Hebrew Bible, even a mikvah couldn’t banish the intensity of the tumah of a corpse. This is where the red heifer came in.