Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

“I think they’re just about ready to leave,” said Rusty. “Want to go over to the Four Seasons? Or do you want to go home?”

  “What’s at the Four Seasons?”

  “I think they’re going to get a room. We can hang awhile then split.”

  Next Day Delivery

  VIV WORKED LATE. They judiciously kept separate homes, but she stayed over most of the time. She didn’t always tell Kit when she was coming, and this time the house was dark. He might be out. She was on her way to draw a bath when Viv saw his shadow in the living room.

  “Oh my God, you scared me! Bumpkin, are you OK?”

  She turned on a lamp. He was on the floor beside the couch, drunk. He looked as if he’d been crying.

  “Bumpkin?” She kneeled beside him, like a nun to a homeless person. Softly, she said, “Honey, what’s going on?”

  “This,” he said, proffering a script. “This is what’s going on.”

  Viv opened it—there was no title page.

  “Special Needs. That’s what it’s called. Though Darren said that may change.”

  “Darren?”

  “Aronofsky.”

  “He wrote it?”

  “I don’t know, Cherry Girl. I think so.”

  “And you love it?” she said, with a broadening smile.

  “God wrote it,” he said. “Bin Laden wrote it. Jeffrey Katzenberg wrote it. Cherry Girl wrote it. My dead mother wrote it . . .”

  “Kitchener—do you think you’re going to do it?”

  She knew how unhappy he’d been, how much he wanted to work on something amazing. She had never seen him like this before. Shattered and ecstatic.

  “If I don’t do it, it’s gonna do me.” He reached for the shot glass, downing its contents with melodramatic finesse. “A script comes from nowhere—and it’s like whoa, ‘beginner’s mind.’ You don’t bring anything to it, it just is. You can see it—the way you used to see shit. Before the shoe dropped or the whatever and you became a product. A corporation. Brand-new again. Beginner’s mind.”

  Viv grabbed him and gave his neck a hundred little kisses while he squirmed and smiled, pouring and swallowing another shot.

  “Bumpkin, do you know how lucky we are? How fucking lucky we are? That you can just stand there—for however long—and whisper in the wind: I want something crazy and brilliant, something I can finally be passionate about. And when you’re ready—when you’re ready to receive—God just returns that, returns all that energy, he fuckin FedExes it to you cause you’re so pure and you’ve worked so fuckin hard, Kit—not just on yourself but you have helped so many people—God just sends it right back to you on the whirlwind!”

  “Hey, Cherry Girl, you know what? I think I wanna marry you.”

  At Sarbonne Road

  LISANNE WENT to her favorite Level 1 at Yoga Circle. There were only five people in attendance—a guy fatter than she was; a sixty-something socialite type with a wrist splint and a ton of face work; an even older, hollow-cheeked Nefertiti type in a turban, with weirdly elongated muscles; a grumpy, inflexible fellow in his fifties who looked as if he’d been forced by a probation officer to attend; and Marisa Tomei.

  Afterward, she overheard the actress talking to the hippie girl at the front desk about a meditation class that night. Lisanne boldly asked if anyone could come. Marisa was sweet as could be and actually wrote down the address for her.

  • • •

  THE CLASS TOOK place at a private home in the Bel-Air hills.

  The Yoga House sat on the edge of a vast property belonging to the producer Peter Guber and his wife, Tara. After Marisa left, the hippie said that Tara used to be Lynda, before taking a spiritual name. She said that Tara was one of the Buddhas who took female form, specifically to help women. Tara was born of tears shed over the suffering of sentient beings. Lisanne thought that if you had to give yourself a new name, that was a pretty good choice.

  The night was windy and spectacular. The zendo sat on Sarbonne Road, high on a hill. Lisanne was surprised at how quiet it was, the kind of sepulchral stillness that, in the midst of an enormous city, only the very rich could afford. She parked on the slope and descended the driveway on foot.

  A small group (Marisa was nowhere in sight) milled about or sat on cushions in preparation for what a flyer on the desk called satsang. Lisanne slipped off her shoes and signed the guestbook. She wrote out a check for the suggested “dana”: $15. She retrieved a Mexican blanket from the corner of the studio and on her way back to the sitting area studied the black-and-white wall photos. Some were of a woman doing yoga while pregnant; others of the same woman, older now, in symmetrical yogic poses with a man. Lisanne assumed the woman was Tara Guber.

  A handsome, fortyish guy came in—the one in the photographs with Tara—and quietly bantered with a few of the sitters before stepping onto the platform. He assumed the lotus position, facing out. He was lithe and unpretentious, smiling at the group.

  “We’re going to begin in silence,” he said. “The Upanishads said the only thing of real value is silence. That’s where the answers are. Tonight, we’ll begin with silence—and end with silence.”

  He said he wasn’t going to guide them and they should just close their eyes. He told everyone to slowly find their breath (an instruction that puzzled Lisanne). After ten minutes or so, he said, “Open your eyes.” They were now free to ask questions.

  Lisanne couldn’t quite grasp the evening’s format—because of what Marisa Tomei had said, she thought she would be attending a meditation class. But her back was already hurting so she was glad to have respite. The man beside her kept doing the kind of desultory leg stretches that dancers do, even though tonight clearly wasn’t about movement. Another woman took her watch off, positioning it so she could constantly read the time. Lisanne related to that. She had always, to her chagrin, been a clock-watcher.

  Someone asked about “chakras.” How does energy move up to the head then out the crown? The teacher gave a thoughtful, seemingly roundabout answer, in which he invoked a tantric prayer called “The Power of Regret.” He said that during certain meditations, one visualized the Buddha dropping light and nectar down like a purifying stream through the crown of the head so that it filled one’s totality with bliss. Another woman asked if it was all right to meditate between one and four in the morning. The teacher said his teacher told him that a yogi should be asleep during the day and awake at night. By that he meant “awake while sleeping. As with Christ: ‘I am in the world, not of it.’ ” As a rule, he cautioned them against baroque, late-night gestures. He said that if you were awake at that hour, it probably meant that you were “over-amped.” There was, he added, a tantric practice where one meditated in the middle of the night, in water up to one’s belly, during a full moon. Meditated on the moon in the water. Even though the teacher seemed learned, Lisanne found herself judgy and cynical. He just seemed too handsome to be taken seriously. Too California, too Malibu surfer. Too something-something.

  After the Q & A, he led the class in breathing: stomach-tucked rapid breaths, and “bumblebees”—in through one nostril and out the other. (It suddenly occurred to her that it was probably time to have a doctor check the fetus.) This part was hard, but she liked it when, at the end, he had everyone breathe “into your hearts,” then out to infinity.

  He asked them to settle into lotuses for closing meditation. Lisanne kept adjusting her legs, occasionally opening her eyes in slits to observe the serene, sandy-haired Aryan guru erectus. He made no perceptible movement; she couldn’t even see his respirations. Her stomach growled and gurgled as she listened to the electronic rush of hedges just outside the window, buffeted by the Santa Anas. The hypnotic sound of the leaves and her own breath led her back to that magical visit to Kit Lightfoot’s trailer and how he had patiently explained, like a kind, scholarly Adonis, the recondite attributes of the golden Buddha. At last, her mind alighted on the soot that was the residuum of her father.

  A few minutes before the h
our, the teacher chanted a mantra that began and ended with AUM, and they all joined in. Lisanne liked that part even though the man next to her—the irritating stretcher, who, instead of even attempting a lotus was the only person to have deployed one of those portable back-support chairs that were stacked along the wall (Lisanne had thought of using one when she first came in but couldn’t figure out exactly how they worked)—began to consciously harmonize, annoying her to no end.

  Riding in Cars with Boys

  THE BAR AT the Four Seasons was mobbed. Big-bellied Cassandra sat on her stool and got dirty looks for nursing a snifter of Petron. Becca wasn’t sure when she had begun drinking again.

  Mrs. Dunsmore grunted because there weren’t any celebrities. “I guess Thursday’s bridge and tunnel night.” Becca never understood that phrase.

  Grady waved his arms from the lounge—their suite was ready. Rusty helped Cassandra up, and Becca followed. A familiar-looking woman touched her arm.

  “Becca? It’s Sharon—Belzmerz. You came in to read for me.”

  “Oh, hi!” she said, gushing. “How are you!”

  “The director really liked your tape,” said Sharon.

  Becca was so flummoxed to be “recognized” by a professional that she didn’t know what the lady was talking about.

  “He finally looked at it—he’s a little slow.”

  “Oh! That’s . . . great!” stuttered Becca, feeling like a fool.

  “Are you still at the same numbers?”

  Sharon was tipsy. It was loud and she pushed in so close that Becca could see down her throat.

  “Yes! And you have my cell—”

  She made a move to her purse for a pen, but the casting agent stayed her hand. “I’m sure we have it. Anyway, I can always reach you through Cyrus.” She asked if Becca still studied with him. Then she changed her mind, and they exchanged phone numbers and e-mails. Becca couldn’t believe Sharon Belzmerz was actually giving out her home phone.

  “That is so great,” said Becca, referring back to the director. “I thought they had totally decided to go with somebody else.”

  It was Sharon’s turn to be puzzled. A light went on: “Oh! That director did! He did go with someone else. I’m sorry.” She tapped her glass. “Too much wine. Another director saw your tape, and he’s very interested. Spike Jonze.”

  She dropped the name with the brio of a homespun pimp.

  “Spike Jonze?”

  “He really likes you. But now I have to get back to my friends. Call you Monday!”

  “Nice running into you!”

  As Becca moved through the crowded bar, her skin was flush with the excitement of the encounter. She felt that all was preordained and that she’d just been moved by an invisible hand (in the form of Sharon Belzmerz) upon the great magnetized Ouija board of show business destiny.

  For the first time since she came to L.A., she felt like a celebrity.

  • • •

  THE SUITE WAS HUGE. Grady lit a joint, and Cassandra said, “Hey, didn’t they tell you this was a nonsmoking wing?” Room service brought pizza, caviar, ice cream, and booze, and everyone broke apart, then came back together again, disappearing into the bedroom for lines of coke. When Rusty told her the cognac cost eight hundred dollars, Becca said, “Sorry, but I cannot compute.” Cassandra said she was drinking only tequila now. She said it was the purest and actually benefited the baby homeopathically.

  At one in the morning, she began to cry over her drowned daughter. “I’m sorry, sweetheart!” she shouted, through pugnacious tears. Whenever Grady went to her side, she shoved him away like a diva. “Baby-girl Questra, I am so sorry I didn’t protect you! Forgive me! Forgive your mama!”

  Repelled at the sight of the stoned, egregiously mawkish woman, Becca became sickened by her own response—who was she to judge? She, who didn’t know the first thing about the blood, sweat, and tears of birthing a child, the agony and the ecstasy, the responsibility, and maybe never would. . . . What gave her the right to sit on high? How could she dare resent someone who’d been through what Cassandra had? Becca shuddered with the realization: It was their money she resented them for. Disgusting! As if they didn’t deserve every dollar! The police had cold-bloodedly shot Grady down, then planted the dope—and if that wasn’t enough, they’d watched their little baby girl die through the negligence of a city maintenance crew. Becca Mondrain, you ought to be ashamed.

  Rusty took her to the bedroom. They did more coke, and he kissed her on the bed awhile. When he got overly sexual she became uncomfortable (he hadn’t shut the door), but he kept on. She could hear Cassandra petitioning her unborn son as she roved the living room like a wounded animal.

  “I’ll protect you,” she blubbered. “God help me, I will. I won’t let them take you away from me!”

  “Come on, Cassie girl,” said Grady, helpless to assuage. “Ain’t nobody gonna take our baby away.”

  “They will, they will, they will!”

  “Why’d they want to do that, Cass?” His gently logical tone was that of a hostage negotiator.

  “The motherfuckers—”

  “Why’d they wanna try and take our baby away? Huh, Cass? Why—”

  “And if they do,” she said, inconsolably, “someone’s going to righteously pay, understand me, Grady? Someone’s going to fucking pay! Because no one takes my babies! No one takes Cassandra Dunsmore’s babies, I showed ‘em that already. I made them pay.” Chin lowered, she addressed the womb. “And they’re not going to touch you, OK? Mama Bear ain’t going to let them fucking touch you!”

  Becca was dizzy and drunk. Rusty was eating her out when the couple came in, Grady holding his wife’s hand like she was a child just retrieved from Lost and Found. Becca tried to get up, but Rusty was too heavy on her. Grady went to the bed while the half-dressed Cassandra wailed through her soliloquy, incognizant of anything but faceless oppression and grief. Her gut protruded like a cruddy seedpod. Grady stripped off his clothes. He showed Becca his cock—HARD TIMES was inked on it—then let it dangle down. He fastened his mouth to Becca’s freckled tit.

  “They killed you!” shouted Cassandra. “But you’re not dead, Questra—you’re not dead! I know you’re not dead. You’re right here with me. Such an old, beautiful soul . . . how could you be dead? You can’t. You’re not. And we’re rich now and so are you. And when your little bro’s born? We’re gonna go to Disney World and Hawaii and Ground fucking Zero—we’re gonna do all the things families do, OK? Together. And if something happens to little bro at Disney World, if he gets fucked up on Space Mountain, we are gonna take care of business! We gon’ take on Eisner, the King Jew! Better believe it. Cause the jury is our friend, Questra Girl, the jury know how to take care of the Dunsmores. Oh, my baby! My precious baby, baby, baby! You’re gon’ have everything your mama never did, that’s right. That’s right! Cause your mama loves you so much. OK? Loves you so much. Loves you so much. Loves you so much. Loves you so much. Loves you . . .”

  Storming the Temple

  KIT MET DARREN Aronofsky in the courtyard of the Chateau. They talked around the project awhile. Matthew McConaughey came through with his dog and said hello.

  The director said he wrote Special Needs in just two weeks’ time. His friend Paul Schrader (who loved the script) thought that was a good omen—Paul said the screenplays that exploded out of you always proved to be the most enduring. The germ of the idea had occurred to him while he was watching an old Cliff Robertson movie called Charly; as it turned out, Special Needs was Charly in reverse. What would happen, he wondered, if a famous actor set out to do a film—say, a character study of a retarded man—and before shooting began, sustained injuries in an auto accident that left him “neurologically impaired”? As the story wrote itself out, Darren said that his conceit, which seemed at first a kind of knee-jerk satirical response to a genre that had become a perennial audience pleaser and vainglorious actors’ showcase staple, revealed itself to be more layered and poignant than h
e could have imagined.

  Whatever its origins, Kit thought the script was incredibly complex and controversial. The role would allow him to walk several high wires at once. It was risky (there was always the danger of falling; he recalled his conversation with “Mr. Tourette’s”), but he knew he had no choice. He would face his shame and his fear. Each morning when he awoke, Kit felt like a dud, a popinjay, a cosmic fraud—the biggest travesty of all being that he dared call himself a Buddhist. He was diseased, and further from the Essential Truths than ever. Now, in desperation, he at least owned that terrible, shiny thing his teacher had warned him of:

  Hope.

  He knew the battle was not in Bodh Gaya—it was in Hollywood, the place where he practiced his craft, the place he had seduced and been seduced by, that had brought him godhood then brought him to his knees. This was his crucible. He remembered Gil Weiskopf Roshi telling him of an enlightened master who refused to allow soldiers into his temple. With joyful indifference, the monk set the room ablaze. “To meditate, seek not the mountain stream—to a still mind, fire itself is cool and refreshing.” The conflagration would be here, not there. And it had already come.

  Darren asked what the rest of his day was like. Kit said he was free, and the director suggested a field trip.

  • • •

  THEY WERE MET in the waiting room by a thin black queen of indeterminate age. He wore hospital whites, a hairnet, and aviator glasses with smoky green lenses.

  “Mr. Aronofsky!” He shook the director’s hand, then looked at Kit and smoldered, as if wanting to take a bite. “And you must be Mr. Lightfoot. Been expecting y’all—though your girl didn’t say when. Don’t get me started, you can drop in any time you like! I know y’all’d like to get straight to business, but I have to do my official meet-and-greet thing. Won’t take but a minute. My name is Tyrone Lamott, and I am Valle Verde Liaison for Television and Motion Pictures. I am media liaison, that’s right. And Mr. Lightfoot, Tyrone is a very large fan and thought he would just get that out of the way so he don’t salivate over y’all while y’all are here. No no no, that just wouldn’t do. Now just so’s y’all don’t think we are pikers, I must inform that we’ve had ‘em all come through, the full gambit—Mr. DiCaprio for Gilbert Grape and Mr. Hoffman for Rain Man, Mr. Ford for Regarding Henry—we have seen quite a few. Because we are the best. But, Mr. Lightfoot . . . Tyrone will say for the very last time that you are the one among all the others who thrill him most!”