by Bruce Wagner
She continued her clockwise march.
There: a couple, tangled in erotic embrace.
Whenever she saw them, they rekindled emotions of that historic day in Riverside. If only she knew then what she now knew to be so simple—that by copulating, the star-crossed pair hadn’t merged but instead created a duality, a space between them, as Joshu Sasaki Roshi presciently foretold in his story of Monk, Novice, and Dog. Unwittingly, monk and student had carved a divide in which something could arise then fall away, be it thought, mood, or sentient being. (Lisanne felt she must instinctively have known that. For the pug, though pure, was an obstacle to their merging.)
She came to a man with an arrow in his eye. She thought it the most haunting of her encounters, because he offered both eternal chastisement and eternal hope. Neither sadistic nor morbid, the message was so clear—she was saddened the whole world couldn’t instantaneously understand—ALL SENSATION IN SAMSARA IS PAIN BECAUSE ALL SENSATION REINFORCES THE DELUDED SELF. If only we could awaken, we would see: even cancerlike pain could be turned to bliss!
She dreaded the adjacent image-form: a woman drinking wine. This was Craving. Remorsefully, Lisanne hovered o’er. She knew she had thirsted too much—for Kit’s love and his child, his approval and energy, his amazing, oversized world. Standing next to the wino was a slut reaching out to a tree that burgeoned with fruit—she was the one they called Grasping—then came a third termagant, flat-footed and smoky-haired, heavy with child. (The bodhisattvas had given her the name of Existence.) The trio taunted, and Lisanne’s womb panged for the Panchen boy she no longer knew.
Resurfacing in the hospital’s rec room, the last few thangkas came in a blur. Exhausted by her centrifugal self-reflection, she tearfully blotted out Siddhama’s face, closing ears to his cries, nose to his smells, letting herself be jostled by the watery turbulence of Birth, Aging, and Death. In the last scene-spoke, a man was carrying a corpse on his back: the corpse was that of Lisanne. The carrier was Lisanne too, trudging to sky burial grounds, where her white, cotton-clad load would be unraveled by itinerant monks, its flesh-and-bone cargo feasted upon by turkey buzzards. Perforce, Lisanne would move on—was this not the legacy of all sentient beings? As a unit nurse called out her name, she felt her vision clouding over; the tip of the blind man’s cane hardened in her hand. Reborn on the Wheel, she feebly made her way forward, blind, crippled. Soon she would come to the pottery shed of the bearded thrower of Karma . . .
I must escape the Wheel or I’ll be crushed. On the ward, the only thing she could do was accelerated phowa practice, not 21 but 2,100 times a day, for Lisanne knew that was the only way to overtake karma accrued from past lives. She prayed to outrun the Wheel held by Yama in his tall white teeth. Yama, Lord of Death.
“For I have no choice and cannot endure the pain any longer.”
• • •
HE WOULD GO and sit with her. Mattie never did. Reggie and Tiff came, during that first month at Thalians. Roslynn too. Mrs. Loewenstein usually visited once or twice for each admission, as long as the hospital was in California. But Philip sat three times during the week and every Sunday, no matter where.
They did not learn the circumstances of their mother’s birth until after her suicide. (The death of their father by heart disease had come a year later.) Their mother’s mother had been abducted by a middle-class, overweight white girl who was unable to bear her black boyfriend a child. Later in court she said she was afraid the boyfriend would leave her. The white girl went to trade school to study vocational nursing. This was in Chicago. She was especially rapt by the class in which cesarean technique was discussed. She feigned pregnancy (with the same enthusiasm as Lisanne concealing her own), disappearing in her alleged fifth month owing to the alleged infant’s premature entry into the world. She lay in wait. She struck Philip’s grandmother on the head, shoving her into the open trunk in a dark suburban parking lot. (She’d been following her for a week.) She drove to her parents’, who were in Milwaukee, and with whom she had been living since things got rocky between her and the boyfriend, whom they had actually met and urged her not to see. In the basement—her father was a woodworker—she cut the baby from his grandmother’s womb with a car key and her father’s cooper’s adze. It was nearly to term. By some miracle—the lord smiles at drunk, dogs, and eviscerated fetuses—Phil and Mattie’s mom survived. The coroner said (it came out at trial) that their grandmother was most likely alive during the procedure and may even have lived to see the girl holding the baby in her arms, trying to make it suckle.
Philip sat with Lisanne’s pale, troubled form. They sat outdoors, and at partially-roofed-over picnic tables and in sundry rec rooms. She didn’t say much. Sometimes they held hands. His mother, after many bramblescratched wanderings, had killed herself with barbiturates and a plastic bag, just the way the “Final Exit” book said you should. The old newspaper articles Philip’s father had left in the bank box with his will told the story of how the overweight white girl hanged herself with a bedsheet during the trial and how it took her ten days to die. Now here he was with Lisanne, and sometimes it felt like sitting with the Chicago girl, the sick marooned white whale who delivered his mom, sitting beside her mournful ICU deadweight, and an indomitable pity overtook him, for all God’s lacerated children. Here he was with Lisanne, who he thought had (comparatively) been shown great mercy, and who he tenderly prayed would one day see that and come back to the world, not for his sake but for her own and for that of their beautiful Siddhama.
An Actor Prepares II
HE MET WITH Jorgia three days a week, hours at a time. She imposed diction, rhythm, and presence, forcing him to project until hoarse and lung-numb. All the nonsense sounds, guttural, chirpy, and ludicrous, the Sid Caesared ornithological speaking tongues, brought him back to Viola Spolin and Del Close and the exhilaration of his improv glory days. She forced characters, broken accents, unbroken focus. They sang false soprano, belched and drummed, hiccuped and fizzed, coughed, vaudeville-sneezed, then howled at the rafters—Jorgia was one wily coyote. Cackled, wheezed, farted, and masticated, rolled on the floor like bellowing spastics, ejaculating hot breath, arses upright on sore kneecaps, shitting vowels into space. Set about to righteously erase the Self. He plunged and soared, banking on thin hot air—wailed, hooted and yippeeed, dowsed for water and delved—into all realms of senses: common-, horse-, -memory.
Did sits together too. (Jorgia, the old yogini.)
• • •
AFTER A FEW months, he had the notion to put up a Sam Shepard play. The timing would have to be right. So much had been wrong; he was changing all that.
• • •
THEY MOVED to a house on Stone Canyon Road.
The private cops were gladdened—hotels were harder to secure than houses, and the Bel-Air was a bitch.
A restraining order against the dad, but so far, no problems. Hadn’t proved inflammatory, as sometimes happens.
• • •
“I DON’T WANT you driving my car,” said Kit.
“What?”
“My G-wagen. I—don’t want anyone driving it.”
“This a joke?”
“This is no joke!”
Cela, conciliatory: “Then we won’t drive it, Kit.”
Burke biliously mocked. “Then we won’t drive it, Kit.” Mad-dogged her. “Who the fuck died and made you CEO?” To Kit: “I know what this is about. This is about your little meeting with the attorneys last week, ain’ it?”
Kit vociferously shook his head.
“I knew you were having that meeting. You didn’t think I knew you were having that meeting? News flash! That meeting would not have happened if I didn’t approve it. Cause I approve your shit.”
“I don’t want anyone drive my car,” Kit said, nervously holding his ground. Self-corrected: “To drive my car.”
“Oh, you don’t?” said Burke, smugly. “Really?” Lolling the tongue in his mouth like a big ol’ bored lion. “Well how bo
ut if those Century City attorneys drive it? Would you make an exception, Kitchener? For your precious G-wagen? I mean, you’re the head of the fleet —you can make an exception. You’re the man. I know I sure as shit would—cause they’re such good people! Oh, the attorneys (each time he said attorneys he had a gigglefit) really have your best interests at heart! The attorneys wake up each morning and say, ‘Now what the fuck can I do to help Kit Lightfoot today!’ So howze about you make a little exception, Kitchener, and let the fucking compassionate altruistical attorneys who love you so much drive your fucking car—”
“Burke, stop,” said Cela.
“You! Shut the fuck up!” Swiveled back to Kit. “In fact, the attorneys can fucking move right in! The attorneys can fucking change the sheets on your bed in the morning after you’ve soaked ‘em with your superstar piss, just like I do. Oh, they would love that so much. The wonderful attorneys can watch you stand in the kitchen and choke the chakra whenever Pam Anderson or Viv Wembley or whomever comes on TV—”
“I don’t do that!” shouted Kit.
“The fuck you don’t. You’re a horny fuck, just like your old man.” The sly smile again. “You liked porking Buddha-puss, didn’t you? Buddha-puss was a bleeder, huh. You like porking bleeders.”
“Burke, stop it! Leave him alone!”
He brutally backhanded her. She flew onto the couch. Kit grabbed at his father.
“Don’t—you—touch—her!”
Burke pranced and sang, “Macho macho man! I wanna be a ma-cho man!” Shoved his son, bam blam bam: “Don’t you think I’m tired of your shit? Now I got to hear you telling me not to drive your faggoty G-wagen? Fuck you! Where’d you think you’d be without me, Dr. Demento? Think all those people with your best interests at heart would be taking care of you?” He pretended to pound hard on a door. “ ‘Hey! Open up! Let us in, we want to take care of Kit! For nothing! We’re the compassionate attorneys, open up!’ They don’t give a flying shit about you, got it? OK? If anyone really gave a shit—except for yours truly—you’d be living with your fuckin agent. Or your fuckin fiancée, who as we all know loves you so fucking—”
“You sonofabitch!” shouted Cela.
“—so fucking much she can’t tear her ass away from you! Loves you so fucking much she hasn’t been to visit, not-a-wunst. Loves you so much she’s gobblin your homey’s dick like it was Jimmy Dean pure pork saus—”
Cela climbed onto his back as Burke pinned his son to the unvacuumed shag. Held him there while turning to Cela with full force. “That’s right, go where the money is, babe, you’re good at that. That’s where Cela goes—whoever’s got the fuckin money. Open wide for Chunky! Stuff that money in the junkie cunt—” (Back in his son’s face while the weeping Cela ineffectively clawed.) “Well, let me tell you something. I’m your father. And I should be fucking compensated. What are you gonna do with fifty million dollars, buy yourself a new brain? ‘When a man’s an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle in company or’—I’m the one doing the heavy lifting! Me, OK? Not your mama, may she rest in peace—not your precious beloved attorneys —not anyone! Capiche?”
Kit wrestled free and ran to the yard.
Burke chased him out.
Cela raced after, shrieking.
Burke tackled him. Pinned him. Kit squirmed, struggling to breathe.
“We’re in this together, or I’ll put you out on the street! I potty-trained you when you were a baby! When you were at Valle Verde, I fuckin potty-trained you again—that’s the kind of commitment I made! Because that’s the kind of father I am!”
Kit frothed and spat. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
“Oh yeah?” Burke creepily reprised:
Oh I could tell you why
the ocean’s near the shore
I could tink-uh tings
I never tunk before
Then drubbed and walloped, breaking two ribs and Cela’s jaw too before Tula rushed to put him down.
• • •
THAT WAS THEN. This is now.
Trials and Tribulations
RUSTY’S TRIAL HAD begun on Court TV, engendering a fresh wave of press about the bottom-feeding world of look-alikes. Someone was full-on blabbing to the Post about Becca’s relationship with Herke Lamar Goodson and her deposed gig as Viv Wembley’s chore whore. She suspected it was Gingher, though it may have been Larry Levine, because the two of them, Becca and Larry, had stopped talking after he got drunk at a party and made some insinuations that she didn’t care for about the nature of her even then defunct relationship with the Dunsmores. Annie said Larry was really hurt when he found out that Becca thought it was him. Annie was certain it was Gingher.
The idea of being forced to testify terrified her. She’d already told the detectives everything she knew, none of which seemed particularly special. Months ago, a Dunsmore attorney had assured her of the unlikelihood of a subpoena, but now Becca felt more vulnerable than ever. Her career was just taking off, and she was convinced that kind of exposure would finish her. She had trouble sleeping. The only thing that calmed her was when Dixie brushed her hair, which she did at all hours, at least when she was in town. Her mom was a rock.
How strange it was watching Rusty on television! He wore a tie and was clean-shaven, more Insider than Gladiator. She glued herself to the set and sometimes (especially after smoking weed) actually strained to make eye contact. It was totally surreal. Whenever the trial recessed or got bogged down in sidebars, they played Rusty’s “reel,” an anthology of forgettable ads that Elaine Jordache had procured, mostly from foreign countries—and, of course, the surviving microscene from Spike Jonze’s Look-Alike, courtesy of 20th Century-Fox. (The network was unsuccessful in getting hold of any outtakes.) The commentary provided by resident Court TV glamgirl wonks was filled with repetitious effulgence of the case “having all the elements of a Hollywood thriller,” the Greekly tragic (or Shakespearean, depending on the pundit) kicker being that the patricide’s victim, Rader Lee Goodson, was a reformed grifter and short con who had risen to be a kingpin in the world of identity theft. Identity theft: the “look-alike” son inheriting the sins of the father, then knifing him up in a fit of Oedipal rage! It was almost too “written,” too good to be true.
Still, after careful consideration of QuestraWorld’s submission, the studios deemed “To Kill a Unicorn” strikingly inept, contrived, and off-point—which under normal circumstances would have been enough to put it on a fast track to production. (The project remained a novelty item whose only generated heat emanated from the oddball producers’ curious, heavy-handed innuendo that its creator was none other than the murderer-protagonist himself.) An article in Vanity Fair wound up being optioned by a pair of former Fox executives with close ties to Tiff Loewenstein. Eventually, CBS and Showtime got into the action, but ultimately the bizarre story of the look-alike killer and his Tinsel Town sojourn slouched toward Babylon, never to be born.
• • •
“THANK YOU SO much for having me read. I loved the script so much.”
“No, it was my pleasure.”
“I so didn’t think I’d be reading for you.”
“I’m known to sit in on auditions,” he said, sardonically. “You were terrific. Sharon raved about you.”
“She is so great—she’s gotten me, like, every part I’ve ever had. And I know you’re sick of hearing it, but I loved When Harry Met Sally so much!”
“I never get sick of hearing nice things.”
They had bumped into each other in the hall, after the read, when Becca was leaving the powder room. He looked like he was angling to get away. But maybe not.
“Thanks again, Mr. Reiner!” she said, pouring it on.
As he walked off, he added, “And by the way, you were very funny in Spike’s movie.”
She thought: A “very funny” from Rob Reiner is pretty fucking great. He’d lost about fifty pounds and told Jay Leno that it was because he wanted to be around for his kids. Becca though
t that was so sweet. The audience had even applauded.
He ogled her from afar, with a kind of quizzical charm. “You know, you look much more like Drew in the movie than you do in real life. If we can call this real life.”
She laughed. “So much of the Drew thing is how I wear my hair?” she said, with an old-style Valley Girl (Southern belle) upturn. “And it’s partially attitude. I mean, I gotta be in that Drew mood—know what I’m sayin?”
She felt feisty and carefree, talented and desired.
She felt like Ashley Judd.
“Thanks for coming in,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”
She almost never read with directors—the casting person put her on tape and that was the end of it. Usually, you had to get called back maybe three times before something like that would happen. She told Annie that when she came in the room and saw Rob Reiner sitting there she almost lost it. He was so down-home and had her do the scene a bunch of different ways. It wasn’t a huge role, but there were two scenes with Ed Norton and one with Dustin Hoffman, who played Ed’s dad. Dixie was gonna die when she told her. Dustin Hoffman was her mother’s all-time hall of fame fave, and Becca thought that was funny because Dixie always seemed to go for the Jews. In the movies, anyway.
Labor Day
LISANNE AND PHILIP were in Rustic Canyon, watching the remains of the Jerry Lewis telethon.
Philip was sniffling. He said that around four in the morning he’d called the on-screen number during a five-minute pledge rush to gather funds to send kids to a special MDA camp. It cost $540 a kid, he said. Lisanne thought he’d been moved by the poignancy of it, but then he confessed. Philip said he got connected to a young volunteer and told her he wanted to buy twenty pledges. That was almost ten grand, and the girl got excited. He said he would give her his credit card. He unhurriedly doled out the numbers, while saying he was also doing a certain something to himself and she told him she didn’t know what he meant (she really didn’t) and then he said that he thought she did know what he meant and he warned her not to hang up because if she did that would mean twenty disabled children wouldn’t be going to camp. The girl whimpered but stayed on the line—she was so young that she didn’t know any better. What excited him most was that he could actually see the girl crying in the back phone-bank row as she took down the bogus info. He said that, to the home viewer, nothing appeared out of line because half of the people on the telethon were always crying anyway.