by Rick Moody
“The thing about reading the Marquis,” he said, “the thing is that the Marquis really changes the way you think. I mean, you could just be going about your business and then you open up, uh, what’s that one called? You open up Philosophy in the Bedroom, and you hear what’s his name, the philosopher character, you hear him say, ‘Thrice Fuck of God, I discharge’ or whatever, and you know you are really being taken to a place where you don’t ordinarily go, a place in your body, a place in your emotional life. All the women with the strap-ons, the innocent girls. You’re in a lower part of nature, you know? You’re in one of those videotapes that record lions out on the Serengeti taking down the gazelles and ripping into them. You’re there, and now you know about bloodlust and power and the inner lives of men.”
Low lighting and bar noise. He was trying hard.
“So tell me why you want to work with this material, anyhow? I mean, why not write a screenplay about a blond girl who wants to give etiquette lessons to disadvantaged classmates and who in the process becomes president of the United States?”
The waitress, who had passed through a sullen period, was now happy and attentive. She had just realized she was serving a movie star. She hovered near the table.
“The Marquise’s life was like the lives of black women.”
“How do you figure? Ten words or less.”
“Her life was about intellectual and sexual slavery.”
“Why not write about slavery, then?”
“I might.”
Thaddeus polished off the last of a second scotch, attacked a third. A cop show, sound off, performed its rote dance on the monitor above the bar. He stared at it, absently, while formulating his comeback.
“Thing is, while I was reading the script, I did have that sensation that I could start eating steak tartare out of a dog bowl and it would be liberating somehow. I had to think. I mean, I couldn’t help myself from thinking one thing the entire time. I was thinking, This woman is really articulate, this woman has had a great education, this woman knows things other people just do not know. But I was also thinking this other thing —”
“Let me guess,” she said.
Thaddeus manufactured a facsimile of surprise. “Okay, go ahead. Guess.”
“You were thinking you’d never fucked a black girl before.”
“I can’t believe you talk like that, Annabel,” he said with mock horror. “It’s making me perspire. Wait. Let me collect my thoughts. Actually, believe it or not, I have had relations with a black woman before, because I wasn’t born yesterday. And I did have that black secretary character working with me in Oath of Citizens. On the novelty scale, the skin color thing just isn’t that high up. The novelty scale, in fact, is not that big a deal. Although it is true that I’ve never fucked a black girl in the ass before.”
Which indicated that it was now time for Annabel to leave. With a pig there was always a time to leave. A decisive moment. Many had walked out of the Cedar Tavern. Over the century of its existence as a local tavern, many had walked out on provocateurs, drunkards, decadents, on hidden drug problems, on voluminous anxieties, on unquenchable insecurities, unnamed wives. What did these men offer? They offered to take you to your room and then they offered to leave you in a bad, abrupt way. They were there, they were not there, hard to tell which was which, and then they came crawling back.
“Wait, I’m trying to talk about the script, I swear.”
“You’re twelve years older than I am. I’ve met your wife. She gave us those . . . those maple thingies at Christmas last year.”
“Annabel! Sit!”
So he settled down. He told her that the Marquise needed to show her devotion and her desire to leave by page sixteen, that the church needed to be hunting down de Sade, with intent to kill, by the beginning of act two, that the Marquise needed to be helplessly in love with a priest, that Annabel needed to see that film with Glenda Jackson about Marat, and that Annabel needed to get rid of the voice-over sections because development people don’t understand large blocks of voice-over. He had two more drinks while he was doing this, and next thing she knew they were in Tompkins Square Park, and Thaddeus Griffin, action film hero, dyed-blond hair swept back perfectly as though it had been spray-painted on, was sitting on a bench sobbing, saying his work was worthless and he was a joke, he was a fucking joke. He said it was the worst thing imaginable, being a joke, and then he was saying, “Take me home with you. Just take me home with you; I’m too drunk to do anything, and anyway, that’s the stupidest thing in the world to do about loneliness, a drunken fuck. Just take me home with you, let me see your hair-care products, let me know if your bathrobe is tartan, or white, or one of those Japanese kimonos. I can’t think about our stories going off in separate directions, like if I go back to my house, it’s just going to be a split-screen thing, and I can’t take that.”
She asked about his wife. His wife was in San Diego shooting a commercial, as she always was. She was always shooting a commercial. She had some kind of repeating character. Her residuals were excellent. The product had to do with feminine itch or bloating or medicated pads. “Did I say that my wife has an artificial eye, Annabel? My wife has an artificial eye. When you look into her eyes, you can see that the left one is artificial, because the light is reflected from it in some weird way. Did I say that my wife only buys clothes online or clothes given to her by designers, because she has a phobia about being seen shopping? Did I say that my wife and I had a photographer take a series of pictures of us strolling that we periodically release to the tabloids, just to make sure we control our public image? Take me home with you, Duffy. Recite to me the cantos of your life.”
She did. And he passed out immediately.
After that, even though she was dating a couple other guys, an assistant at the Michael Cohen Agency and a dean from the experimental college in western Mass., Thaddeus would turn up without notice, because things had to be flexible, and he would call from his car, coming down the West Side, and he would ask if now was a good time, never asking if someone was there but asking nonetheless, because he never expected that they were involved in anything but some amusing film-world dalliance. As it wore on, and wore was a good word for what it did, it became all about Thaddeus’s cock, which, despite her education and intellectual training, she somehow came to love. Why could women be smart, decisive, and brilliant and then somehow irresolute at the sight of a cock? It was one of the depressing secrets of adult life. She loved his cock because she was the Marquise, because she became the Marquise, because that was how it had to go, because by being the Marquise she overcame her, knew her, could write about her, because the Marquise had the skin of an Algerian, the Marquise was a Moor, and she was the Marquise, and she put the cock of film star Thaddeus Griffin in her mouth, and she put the cock of film star Thaddeus Griffin in her vagina, and she let the cock of Thaddeus Griffin erupt onto her dark skin because he was film star Thaddeus Griffin and he wanted to do it that way. And he bought her a nose ring, and he paid for the tattoo on her lower back, just above her behind, and he had the best guy in the East Village do it, and he attended this assignation, and he begged her to pierce her nipples, and when he said, “I want more,” she felt stronger, and so in turn she gave more. She was the assistant who gave more, because she was the black assistant, and she felt stronger when she shouldered burdens ever more impossible. They wanted her to give more just to stay in the game, and she laid up dreams in the attic of her consciousness, hoping, like a remedial hoper, for the moment of tenderness. But she never did that one thing he wanted, she never let him be the guy who fucked a black girl in the ass, because he had to be desperate for something.
One day, Rosa, the mother of Minivan, called the office line, and in the middle of it, she started babbling incoherently about her grandfather or great-grandfather who possessed the fraudulently magic skill of dowsing. This was mixed in with her obsession with a certain talk show host. She couldn’t stop talking about this talk show h
ost. Somehow, in the recounting, Annabel and Thaddeus appropriated the word, and it became the code for all things romantic: dowsing. Thaddeus let it trip off his tongue, “Is there dowsing in the forecast?” This is how it happens, see. This is how the whole lie gets started and begins to get up its head of steam. Annabel Duffy, the black intellectual, is locked in an affair she doesn’t really want to be having with a white action film star, who is riffling papers on her desk while an Indian guy in a turban is staring at her, smiling, and her boss is yelling at her from the next room about the call sheets and she’s asking about the treatment.
“I asked if you read the —”
Thaddeus Griffin has slyly stolen up on the action. He too notices that there is a Sikh in the office, and imagines, probably, that the Sikh is delivering something.
The Sikh says, “Mr. Griffin. You are a great and underutilized actor. My honor to meet you.”
“Why, thank you,” says Thaddeus. “You’re a new employee?”
“Yes, sir, I am the new employee in matters of television.”
And the Minivan shouts out again. “There’s buzz. There’s a volume of background noise about this treatment. I have heard things. And I want to know what it’s about and I want to know if it’s any good. Jeanine, where are the call sheets? And Annabel, I want to move the office out of this neighborhood. I don’t want to be in this neighborhood anymore. I don’t want to see another fucking Christmas tree out the window. I don’t want to have to listen to that music that the skaters skate to. I want to move downtown. And I want to know what that treatment is about.”
Which treatment? Annabel shuffles the papers around. She can’t find anything, can’t find coverage, can’t find any treatment. She looks up at Thaddeus. Lying is about to become the only way to survive, yet again. The Sikh smiles. Not even knowing what treatment it is now, what script, what book, what play, what was it that she was supposed to have seen last night, which younger playwright? How can she get the jump on Madison, to whose domain all of this material also belongs? Madison, who is hovering at the edge of the action, peeking out of her cubicle. The Sikh is smiling and Thaddeus is doing his agitated dance, his restless legs syndrome, and Madison is scowling, and Lois DiNunzio is calling to the Sikh that he should come over to her desk to sign some tax forms —
“I think I might have sent it back, the, uh, I think the script you’re asking about might have been sent back.”
“Are you kidding me?”
A torrent of abuse ensues. Minivan, like, well, a minivan plowing up onto a sidewalk and taking out a few pedestrians, begins a tirade. It’s so predictable that it’s as if she’s reading it off a cue card. Your stupidity cannot mean the end of my business, et cetera. Like it’s a monologue. There’s a moment of suspense at the end, though, because sometimes someone gets fired over these kinds of things. So will Annabel get fired? And does the treatment in question even exist? Or is this another test of stamina for the black assistant?
Until Thaddeus, smirking, says, “Vanessa, give it a rest. Don’t be a jerk. It’s on my desk. I read it. It’s hilarious. It’s the one about dowsing.”
5
Michael David Griffin, also known as Thaddeus, during his first Ashtanga series. At the Ashram of the False Guru. In this the seventh round of sun salutations, resistance in Michael David Griffin begins to fade blissfully away. He is perched in a corner of the ceiling, in some evolved yogi incarnation of himself, and he can see himself below. Thaddeus Griffin, in a silence of exertion, Thaddeus Griffin and the tidal movement of the breath.
He’s a beginner, understand, but the time has come for the Ashtanga series. The False Guru took aside Thaddeus Griffin on the way in to tell him of the excellent programs they have under way, like installing this indoor fountain and making available some synthetic yoga wear for the women who will want to sign up with Ford and Elite. Also there are harmoniums they have purchased for instructors. Wouldn’t Thaddeus like to be involved with the ashram in a more complete way? Wouldn’t Thaddeus like to be a part of the brochure of the False Guru, which elucidates the one true path to serenity and worldly abundance? His response was something bland and noncommittal regarding new program initiatives. He said, “Keep reminding me,” which he says when he is doing his best to forget everything just said. Thaddeus is unshaven, and his hair is standing on end, and he is in forearm stand, and his wife is in San Diego, most likely fucking that commercial director. Thaddeus works three months a year and then does a lot of interviews on prime-time newsmagazines. His movies give teenagers something to do.
The models around him, here at the ashram, move from their elaborate series of advanced bridge poses up onto their feet, then back over their heads into a handstand, as though they are made of pipe cleaners. He would like to fuck these models. He would like to fuck each and every one. He would like them, in bridge pose, to serve as coffee tables in his apartment. He is the minister of false consciousness. Why is it that he is always thinking about these things? Why is it that he experiences spiritual advancement only when next to the perfect ass? He is in bridge pose and he is arching toward the ceiling, and then he is down, and then he is up, and then he is down and then he is up. Just three more, the instructor says. Something in Thaddeus Griffin is shattering. Not literally, like when his friend Jorie popped her hip out of its socket during the Ashtanga series here at the Ashram of the False Guru. Sounded like a champagne cork ejecting. (She was taken out screaming.) No, it’s as if Griffin finds himself in the spin cycle of human souls. His mediocre career as a movie actor is colliding with the reality of the wife who is fucking a commercial director and this is colliding with the fact that he isn’t working and this is colliding with the fact that he isn’t producing films, either, which was his plan for escaping from the hustle of being a chump actor, which is colliding with the fact that even his young mistress will no longer put up with him. The twenty-eight-year-old mulatto genius won’t sleep with him, and now plank pose, and he can feel the extrusion of toxins from muscle tissue, dioxins, PCBs, the poisonous things in him, which are many. The instructor is quoting from the Sanskrit. The rich and the privileged come to perform the Ashtanga series so that they can learn justice, the instructor seems to be saying; this is where rich New York, which is primarily white New York, comes to learn compassion for that part which is brown, black, red, and yellow. This grotto, this ashram where the False Guru puts in his indoor fountain and names it serenity. Is the instructor saying this? Or is Thaddeus Griffin shearing apart? And is this shearing apart not a two- or three-times-a-week occurrence? Now the instructor is leading them in the chant of the guilty white liberal. The long low drones of the harmonium, with its bellows like the gritted exhalations of a chump movie actor. Michael David Griffin is beginning to sob again. It is good for actors to sob; it indicates serious craft. We would all do better / We would all do better / But we are on deadline / We are on deadline / We would all do better / We would all do better / We will do something for the poor and unfortunate when we get back / But we have compassion, we really do. The harmonium, and the Sanskrit, and another round of the full wheel, and the head of a model goes between her legs and her ankles drape over her shoulders.
His failures are so numerous, pouring from him during the Ashtanga series. Like when he seduced that development girl, Madison McDowell. He seduced her and then took her for a weekend to the track in Saratoga Springs, and he bet twenty thousand dollars on a filly and boy was that money gone fast. They had breakfast at the track, and he put Tabasco on the eggs, he ate the sprig of parsley, and he told Madison that her eyes were the bluest eyes he had ever seen, and then he bet twenty thousand dollars on a filly and lost. But her eyes were really closer to hazel. Then Madison took a call from that harpy Vanessa Meandro, and Madison cooked up an excuse to take the train back down the Hudson to the city. He’d rented the house on Union Avenue for a whole week. Then there was Jeanine Stampfel, Vanessa’s personal assistant. Few office assistants have been as miserable as Jean
ine. Jeanine the self-immolator. Somewhere in the recesses of her apartment, which was actually her parents’ apartment when they were in town from Scottsdale, she was taking a common household lighter and she was applying it to her ivory skin. Here was Jeanine, in a pinafore, in her white bobby socks. Jeanine was on a fainting couch beside a leather globe that still listed Ceylon; she was taking an antique Zippo lighter out of a desk drawer and setting fire to herself. Her sharp intake of breath was like a chump-movie-actor attempt to do a standing split. Her forearm liquefied. He saw the scars.
“Excuse me,” a voice whispers next to him. A young woman in black leotard and leg warmers. Always the ones in leg warmers. “Excuse me.” He looks up to see where the spotter is. Across the room, by the bank of windows facing the theater across the street. The spotter is attending to someone’s hunched shoulders.