by Owen Thomas
“Zack!”
“Sorry. I couldn’t pick up.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I tried to call.”
“I was in a meeting with Blair. What … is … going …”
“Calm down. I don’t…”
“Calm down?! I keep talking to people telling me that I’m about to spread my legs on the eleven o’clock news! Don’t tell me to calm down. Is this true?”
“Yes. I think it is. I mean, I think it’s a real video.”
“How the hell…”
“I don’t know. Take a chill pill, Till.”
I heard laughter in the background.
“Clever, Zack. Who’s there?”
“Sloan. And Davis.”
“And how stoned are you?”
“Not enough.”
“Terrific. Where was the camera?”
“The beach house. The bedroom.”
“What bedroom?”
“The master.”
“And you filmed us?”
“No. I didn’t know anything about it.”
“Then who, Zack? How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you seen it?”
“Yeah. Danny got me a copy.”
“What’s the angle?”
“What do you mean?”
“The camera. Where was it?”
“I told you.”
“Where in the bedroom, Zack!”
“Like, I don’t know. From the top shelf of the étagère, I think.”
“And you’re telling me that you had no knowledge of any camera.”
“No. Tilly. Look, I’m really sorry. Okay? I don’t know how this happened.”
I could hear the lie in his voice. In my mind, I saw his face on the ride back from the birthday party up in Laurel Canyon. I was stupidly laughing in wonder at the reporter pretending to clip the hedges outside my aerobics class asking about Zack’s supposed tryst with Maria Beckwith. How ridiculous that notion was to me! Maria Beckwith! And Zack laughing with me as he casually pulled the wheel this way and that way, serpentining our way along Mulholland Drive above Hollywood proper. I remember how hard I had had to work to pull the truth out of him; how doggedly he had evaded me, trying everything he could think of to lead me astray until only the truth was left. Then and only then, when there was no place left to go, did he finally come clean. And now he was lying again. Stoned off his ass and lying to me. Whatever his reasons, he had set up a video camera to capture the action and now that video had fallen into the wrong hands. And Zack was running for cover. I was so angry I could scream.
“How many more are there?” I spat.
“What? More what?”
“Videos!”
“None. I mean, I don’t know. Tilly …”
“You don’t know? How did this one get out? Did you pass it around to the fucking Zack Pack? To Sloan and Davis and Tiki and all the others?”
“No…Tilly.” I could hear the hurt in his voice, softer now, as if he did not want whoever was with him to hear. “Tilly? I swear. I’m so sor….”
I mowed over his words.
“Is this how you guys unwind these days, Zack? Open a six-pack and watch your old girlfriend do whatever it takes to get you off? Do you know what this does to me Zack? Do you get that this shit makes you a stud and me a whore?”
“Tilly…”
Traffic slowed to a stop. The rental minivan behind me slammed into me, shoving my car forward. I slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting the car in front of me, which brought my chest violently up against the steering wheel. The cracked ribs that had marked the beginning of my relationship with Zack reintroduced themselves in a flash of pain. It was a six mile-per-hour collision, but enough to honk my horn and catapult my phone from my hand onto the dash.
I cursed and grabbed the phone, put the car in park and got out to inspect the damage. The minivan had had its way with the left back end of my Miata. It looked like it was made of blue tin foil. The man behind the wheel appeared terrified. Zack was in mid-sentence, still trying to explain himself, oblivious to the situation on my end of the phone.
“Zack… Zack. Listen! Zack! Stop talking! Shut up! Just shut up! I’m hanging up now. I can’t even talk to you. Find a way to get this video off the street. If it hasn’t already gone viral. This is a new low, Zel. I’m really disappointed in you. I really thought we were friends. I think I’m sorry I ever met you.”
I hung up and tore into the petrified tourist driving the minivan. My ribs, though tender, were fine. The Miata would definitely need shop work, but it was nothing that could not be fixed. He had simply rear-ended the wrong person on the wrong day at precisely the wrong time for all the wrong reasons. His wife and children cowered in their seats, too scared to point their tiny personal cameras at me. I saw myself in their stupefied, stricken, star-struck gaze. The other cars navigated around us slowly, motorists looking to see if someone famous was involved.
* * *
I watched the evening news standing up from across the room, remote control in my hand, as though it barely warranted my attention. As though I was trying to find the button that would turn it off. The truth was that my body was filling with cold dread, like a basement letting in the flood.
The anchors teased the segment through three commercial breaks and I was forced to stand behind my couch pretending – through the sports and the weather – not to care about what was coming. I tried to console myself that at least they had decided not to make my pornographic debut the lead story, knowing that it really made very little difference. It did not matter how they reported the story, how seriously they presented it, or how prominently they positioned it in the line up. Once the story was out, it would take on a life of its own, feeding on itself; metastasizing and gaining strength.
Presumably owing to the legal pressure exerted by squadrons of studio lawyers throughout the day, Fox 11 reported the story in a humorous, eye-rolling, decide-for-yourself-if-you-really-have-nothing-better-to-do tone, working it into the mindless banter between the entertainment desk and the news desk.
“Well, Kathy, John, make of this what you will, but it seems that Hollywood’s latest megastar, Zack West, just may be looking to work on both sides of the camera. Rumors have surfaced that West and his on-again-off-again girlfriend and co-star, Tilly Johns, have made a sexually… explicit… home video. I want to be quick to add here that representatives for the stars have insisted that while they have heard the rumors and that there is a video circulating, the video is just a clever fake made by pranksters looking to stir up attention. Daniel Blum is an agent for Mr. West:”
“It’s a shame, really, that this sort of thing has become such a standard part of show business. Zack is a professional and he knows that frauds like this come with the territory, and he can only hope that his fans will think twice before they believe everything they hear or see. The digital age has been a boon for those looking to profit from fakery and fraud. Needless to say, we are not happy about the situation and we will be pursuing a criminal investigation.”
“Now, Kathy and John, Fox 11 has tried to obtain comment from the stars themselves, but those requests were denied. Zack West and Tilly Johns are co-staring in the Darnell Lewis, Cecil Abrams blockbuster Pryce Point, due out sometime next year. Followers of West and Johns will recall that they became a romantic item early in the production and then broke it off – dashing rumors of a possible marriage – after allegations surfaced that one or both of them had been unfaithful. While it would seem that the Pryce Point production has continued unaffected by the romantic sideshow of its co-stars, these latest allegations of a graphic sex video might just overshadow the release of the film itself. Representatives of the Pryce Point production team were contacted, but declined to comment for this story. My guess is that this is one time the masters of make-believe are hoping that seeing… is not believing. Kathy. John.”
“Okay, well, thanks for that Mark. I guess we’
ll stay tuned. And finally tonight…”
I turned off the television and stared at the blank screen. My cell phone trilled from my purse in the hall like a trapped bird wanting to be free. I let it ring.
I knew the broadcast could have been much worse. The station’s own lawyers had clearly advised against any mention that Fox 11 had possession of the video, that they had examined it, and that they had formed an opinion as to its authenticity or the identity of the “actors.” They had also clearly decided against posting any still photos from the actual video, relying instead on the same professional headshots of me and of Zack to tell this story that they had used to tell every other story relating to our on-again-off-again romantic sideshow. Rumor regurgitation was gutless but it was safe.
The bird in the leather cage started up again. Blair, I suspected. Or Zack. Or any number of my friends who had tuned into the news with no idea of what was coming. Electronic birds all over the city were chirping excitedly with the news. Somewhere, a computer histogram showed sudden sharp spikes in cell phone traffic, the digital-age measurement of spontaneous social cohesion, displacing the Super Bowl halftime toilet flush.
Fox 11’s omission of serious tone and confirmatory detail did not have the salutary impact on my emotions or my churning stomach that it might have. Like a tongue feeling for the missing tooth, my thoughts searched out Angus Mann, pushing him away and finding him again, projecting his image on the dark screen across the room. I imagined him sitting in his hotel, watching Mark and Kathy and John of the Fox 11 news team bubble on about Colonel Elena Ivanova’s new raunchy sex video. Ivanova: for that was how Angus would hear it.
I had connected with Angus that morning. In every way that mattered. Intellectually. Viscerally. Blair had seen it and I had felt it. For the first time, I felt like Angus understood that it had to be me; that she – Ivanova – was safe with me. For the first time I felt like Angus wasn’t doing me any favors, nor deferring to Blair’s questionably motivated casting choice. I was the one. The only one. I understood that Ivanova has “a certain dignity,” as Blair had put it.
But now.
The bird was screeching at me.
Angus would see now that he had been silly and naïve in the Brightleaf Studios conference room. He had allowed himself to believe what Blair and I wanted him to believe. He had been temporarily seduced by momentum and convenience into doubting what he had always been inclined to believe about me in the first place. He had forgotten that he was still in the opium den of Hollywood and he had breathed deeply.
But now. Now I would be fired. Again. I would be back on the outside looking in. Blair would try to save me, but he would fail. He had nothing left with which to bargain for my retention. Nothing, that is, save his ultimate authority to make his movie in any way he wanted, with whomever he wanted. But for all of Blair’s failings, and there were many, a lack of loyalty to the integrity of his movies was not one of them. When it came to The Lion Tree, Angus Mann’s approval of the finished product, or at least his acceptance, however grudging, was integral. I, on the other hand, was anathema. Ivanova was lost to me.
As painful and as infuriating as that realization was, as I stared at the dead black face of the television and listened to the phone behind me in its excited networked frenzy, I knew that it was not the most disconcerting feeling pumping in and out of my heart. Strangely, my greatest sadness came from the disappointment that I imagined in the heart of Angus Mann. I knew that beneath whatever anger and frustration he was surely feeling at that moment, confined to the top of some gleaming tower, high above the smoldering Hades of Los Angeles, he felt something worse. Something sharper and deeper and more enduring. He felt a loss. He felt disappointment. And the name of that loss and that disappointment was Matilda Johns; his name for the woman who might have, who could have, but who did not, live up to his expectations.
It was an odd thing for me to lament, Angus’ disapproval. Simply imagining it should have given me that old, secret thrill, as it had before. That quiet rush of confirmation in my veins that I was alive and moving under my own conscious will. That sweet, siren song of rejection.
But now. Now I simply felt sad. Marooned. I felt grief and all of its domed and barren solitude. Angus Mann’s loss was my own.
I should have liked to believe that in the greater arc of my professional and personal development, I had reached my nadir. In fact, I did think so. If my life in the wake of the Peppermint Grove premiere had been at its zenith, then my life in the wake of the Fox 11 news broadcast was surely at its lowest. It felt much worse than not having any money and living in a roach-infested, postage stamp apartment in Monterey Park. It felt worse than writing for The L.A.Q. It felt worse than slopping overpriced California Cuisine at Gomps. Worse than prostituting myself for toothpaste and mouthwash. Worse than aspiring to be a professional corpse on L.A. Knights. It felt worse than my sexual and cinematic misadventures with the late great Rufus Einemann. It felt worse than cracked ribs. Worse than Maria Beckwith. The tears I shed that night were, in one sense, inexplicable when measured against the reality of a sex video; a mere snack for the Hollywood appetite for stars behaving badly. And yet, in another sense, those tears and the grief behind them had been building a very long time and they came with a force that confused and scared me.
For the first time since leaving home, I felt that if either of my parents were to call and offer me my old room back, I would have been on the next plane to Columbus. I had a bizarre urge to call my father. Not to say anything to him, or for him to say anything to me. Not to talk at all. But just to hear him on the other end of the phone. There, breathing, listening for me. Caring. Giving a damn. Still giving a damn.
Of course, wretchedness is a state of mind lacking any reasonable perspective on the future. Stasis becomes the only blessing and the only curse. Life, say the wretched, will never get any better. Life, say the wretched, cannot possibly get any worse. And that was how I felt that night, sobbing against the back of my couch until I thought I might die, in a sea of attention, of loneliness and irrelevance. Things would not get any better for me and they could not possibly get any worse.
But, like the wretched generally, I did not know how terribly, terribly wrong I was.
The Lion Trees
PART II: AWAKENING
CHAPTER 41 – Benjamin
Tilly is in the song in the song in the song song song. Away away my Tilly is away but she is in the song and you are dancing like a mo-fo in the song for my Tilly and my David is a mo-fo in the song. Mo-fo David-O is here and Tilly-O mo-fo is away away away. And you are waiting in the song. You are waiting in the music and my Daddy-O mo-fo is here and my Daddy-O and my David-O are waiting in the mo-fo music for my Tilly who is away away away. And my Mommy-O mo-fo is dancing in the song and she is waiting in the music and she swings you round the kitchen her little baby boy her little baby boy yes you are yes you are her handsome man handsome like a mo-fo. Benny Ben Ben going long for the ball my Daddy-O throws to the zone to the man with the plan and the mo-fo crowd is on its feet going wild for Benny Benster who is in the song and you are having the pie tonight my friend and you are loading that mo-fo pie with the roni-Os and twirling the cheese on your finger like big bro David-O twirling the cheese in the song like a mo-fo and the people stare because you are beautiful inside you are beautiful in the song where you are twirling the cheese like a mo-fo on your finger and you are in a hurry to see the brooms carrying buckets in the music and the water is like a sea as the apprentice sleeps in the song and my big bro pops a corn in your mouth as you watch the brooms carrying water and you laugh like a mo-fo and the people stare because you are beautiful and you are at home in the song dancing in the music dancing in the mo-fo song and waiting for my Tilly to come home waiting in the music because you are beautiful inside we are all waiting in the music because you are beautiful inside.
CHAPTER 42 – David
Jerry Seinfeld does a bit about the ridiculousness of executive
office gifts – particularly the ubiquitous, felt-bottomed paperweight – as objects without any redeeming function or value. He wants to know where the recipients of such gifts are working that papers are just blowing right off of their desks, imagining offices screwed to the back of flatbed trucks and typing stations tucked up in the crow’s nests of clipper ships. He wants to know where all of the wind is coming from.
Twenty feet ahead of me, Eugene “Lonnie” Lumkin blows through the lobby of the Ohio Public Defenders office and directly into what can only be described as a small windowless box wrapped around a medium-sized mountain of paper. The mountain, which sits precariously on an invisible desk, is crescent-shaped. In the hollow of the crescent, a computer, a phone and a couple of pens huddle together on a small patch of bare wood. Except for Lonnie’s chair, the opposing chair for which I am destined, and the diplomas on the wall, all else in the small windowless box is some form of paper shale that is part and parcel of the mountain. I suspect somewhere near the bottom are mangled photographs of Lonnie’s family, crushed and twisted by the weight of his practice.
“Sit, sit,” Lonnie says, dropping his briefcase by the door.
He moves around the perimeter of the paper mountain like he is trying to improve his time through an obstacle course. A stack of hospital-green files calves off the corner and onto the floor as he passes. There is a flutter of paper in the air and I remember the Seinfeld bit about paperweights.
“Oh, darn it all to heck. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Lonnie pivots and squats and returns the folders to their perch. He is tall and clean-cut and has a farm-boy-with-a-dream-of-something-better air about him; Amish rum springa meets The Paper Chase. He has the only true “apple cheeks” I have ever seen. His face looks like it has been taken for a brisk walk in very cold weather. His chinos are too short and his navy blazer is too roomy in the chest. His tennis shoes are a professional black matte, sans swoosh. Not that I am any sort of sartorial standard-bearer. Far from it. But I’m rarely mistaken for someone trying too hard to impress my parents at the high school debate tournament. We’re probably about the same age, but it looks and feels like I’ve got a good ten years on him. And my suit fits.