Tell Me How This Ends Well

by David Samuel Levinson

“You want us to call you what?” their dad had snorted. “Sure thing, Thistle.”

  Their mom had tried to rectify the moment by changing the subject, as was her wont, everyone but Edith seeing the comparison between them as laughable and ludicrous, everyone including Jacob, who, at ten years old, had already taken considerable stock of his surroundings and deemed them toxic, sensing that he had a dad who was a monster and a big sister who was already exhibiting signs of a shockingly unhealthy sense of self, which was only going to lead her to further rejection and a life of abject misery, full of all kinds of sexual dysfunctions and intimacy issues—American Thistle resembled nothing of her supposed doppelgänger, except, of course, for the red hair, which she had inherited from their dad, who’d been a ginger himself up until he hit puberty when his hair went dark and straight. Poor Edith hadn’t gotten the same break, however, her hair still just as fiery red and still reacting just as badly to any trace of humidity, puffing up like a dandelion gone to seed. It wasn’t unusual for their father to tease her that Bozo the Clown had called, wanting his wig back.

  After initiating a collect call to Mo, Jacob imagined the three of them—Mo, Edith, and himself—huddled together around a different pay phone somewhere in the sprawling San Fernando Valley, and deciding, probably through a hurried game of rochambeau, which of them would speak. He had a sneaking, awful suspicion, though, that because he was the youngest and thus usually dared and bullied into mischief by his older brother and sister, it would fall on him to interview the hit men, whomever Mo had found to do it, probably former, disbanded Mossad operatives—the USA was rife with them now. “You aren’t still a pussy, are you, Gay-Jay?” they would chide, treating him like a baby, even though they were more or less of the same age, all with receding hairlines, graying hair, skin tags, and gravity-compromised asses, all suffering from the same bad backs, shoddy knees, and chronic acid reflux. The life of a Jacobson in middle age. Mo didn’t pick up, which foretold either good news or bad, Jacob thought, hanging up, only to initiate another collect call, this time to an old college friend and former lover at Eternal Hollywood, which had once been the Hollywood Gardens Cemetery until it fell into disrepair and financial ruin and was finally rescued from oblivion by the scion of the Kansas City Chalmers’ fortune and the leading innovator in the death industry—Clarence Lee Chalmers, who had inherited the money and business from his family. Surprisingly, Clarence accepted the call, though he did not seem overly thrilled to hear from Jacob or remember exactly who he was. Was he being coy or playing another one of his passive-aggressive games with him, a holdover from their college days? Jacob wondered. Or was it that Clarence truly didn’t remember him? In any event, the whole thing rankled Jacob, but then there was so much about Clarence that rankled him.

  “You say I gave you my direct line?” Clarence asked, his slightly wispy baritone rolling out of him like a thick exhalation of smoke.

  “Years ago,” Jacob explained, reluctantly playing along. “We went to UCLA. We dated, did lots of drugs. You introduced me to ketamine and crystal meth and Thad Schneider, who killed himself. Any bells?”

  “Thad Schneider,” Clarence said. “Now, there’s a name. But seriously, I did do an awful lot of drugs in college, so you can’t take it personally if…” His baritone faltered, then trailed off and didn’t return for a few beats during which Jacob swore he heard him meowing. Then he was back, continuing: “I do have a vague recollection of sleeping with a chubby Jewish boy who came from somewhere in Texas. Did you used to have a brown felt cowboy hat?”

  Jacob wanted to lie—oh, how he wanted to lie—and tell him that he had never owned such a hat. He also wanted to hang up the receiver and forget the call had ever happened. But he needed Clarence, if any of this were going to work.

  “You made me put it on a couple of times while we had sex, yes,” Jacob said, humiliated. I’ve never forgotten, nor have I ever forgiven you for it, either, he thought.

  “Big, fat circumcised cock?” Clarence asked.

  “Yes, Clarence, you had quite a good time with my dick,” he said, shaking his head in thorough shame, relieved that Diet was either unconscious or resting peacefully and not privy to any of this. Though he had to hand it to Clarence for remembering that part of him, at least, which shouldn’t have been flattering, Jacob understood, but somehow managed to be. He took the compliment and squirreled it away.

  “If this is a booty call, you’re about fourteen years too late and thousands of miles too far east, aren’t you?” Clarence asked. “Last I heard, you’re still living in New York City? Is that where you’re calling? The number is blocked.”

  “A booty call knows neither time nor space,” Jacob said, continuing the ruse. But why was Clarence ending everything he said with a question mark? It was maddening. Pure, unadulterated madness, like Clarence himself, like making this call to him. Again, the urge to hang up almost overcame Jacob, but he resisted, for his mom’s sake. “Look, the reason I’m calling is to say hello—so, hello!—but also because I’m actually in L.A., just flew in this morning from Berlin, and I thought it’d be great to catch up while I’m here.”

  “I’m free for lunch today,” Clarence said.

  “Today, as in today? No, I can’t. I’m on my way to the Valley,” Jacob said, glancing at the car and at Diet, who, from where he was, looked as if his head had come unscrewed from the rest of him and was about to roll off. Jacob nearly dropped the phone and flew to the car, but then Diet jerked awake, gazing out at the world with disoriented eyes. He cupped a hand to his mouth and breathed out, testing his breath, just as he did most mornings. “Dead bird! Dead bird!” he liked to warn Jacob, who didn’t care and never failed to go in for a kiss anyway, but not before Diet leaped from bed and rushed into the bathroom, forestalling the moment and forcing Jacob to preserve his erection. He’d shut his eyes until Diet returned, bird-free, to lay a chalky, cinnamon-flavored kiss on him and wish his big, fat circumcised cock a guten Morgen.

  “Hmmm. I suppose I could reschedule Pilates with Patty and meet for a Jameson on the rocks with Jacob instead,” Clarence said. “Call me on my cell in a couple of hours to confirm exact time and place,” and he rattled off an L.A. number, which Jacob easily memorized, as he’d memorized Clarence’s direct line all those years ago when they’d bumped into each other at a men’s gym in Chelsea, which Jacob did not mention now, because, for one thing, he’d spurned Clarence’s advances, and for another, he had been headed to the locker room to change back into his clothes, as he found the place far too depressing and the men far too desperate and aggressive. “If you’re ever in L.A…,” Clarence had said and written his number down on a card, which Jacob, the second he popped out into sunlight, ripped up and tossed away. But it’d only taken one glance at the card to etch Clarence’s digits into his memory. In another life, Jacob might have been a world-renowned mathematician, as he’d always been good with numbers. In college, he’d declared a major in mathematics for a while, before switching to creative writing, upsetting his dad, who nearly disowned him. Looking back on it all, Jacob understood that that’s what should have happened instead of what did; ever the mediator and people-pleaser, his mom had smoothed things out between them, although Jacob had done nothing wrong. Nothing but upset the old man’s choke hold on him and the imagined future he’d had for his youngest progeny.

  In the convenience store attached to the gas station, Jacob bought a map of greater L.A., a Diet Coke for himself, and a Coke for Diet. He also purchased a tube of K-Y jelly, a bag of assorted gourmet jelly beans, an L.A. Lakers cap, a large Igloo cooler, one of the fancy bags of ice, and two Nestlé Drumsticks. Getting it right this time, he put it all on his Visa, then left the store and grabbed the ice, happy in the knowledge that he was supporting all ice makers the world over or, if not the world over, then certainly in L.A., where water was at a premium and rarely, if ever, fell from the sky.

  Despite his having thought that, it was still pouring down rain when Jacob retu
rned to the car and slid into the backseat. “I’m back, Diet,” he said, dumping the ice into the Styrofoam cooler, then nestling the Drumsticks and cans of soda inside and securing the lid. Through all of this, Diet remained asleep, which alarmed Jacob, who roused him, checking his pulse gently and pressing the back of his hand to his cheek. Diet’s heartbeat was steady and normal, his skin room temperature, even warm to the touch. He’d heard about people knocking themselves out—knocking themselves off, he thought gravely—and staying knocked out for several hours.

  Diet’s eyes fluttered open. “Are we there yet?” he asked.

  “Schatz, you’ve got to stay awake,” Jacob said, climbing into the driver’s seat, where he inspected the welt, which still looked angry and purple-red but hadn’t expanded any and was still just the size of a quarter, which made it look as if Jacob had beaned him in the head with a baseball, which in turn made Jacob think about his dad, the last thing he wanted to think about at that moment.

  “Jacob, please stop fussing on me,” Diet said. “It’s just a bump. I am not going to succumb.”

  Jacob didn’t think he could feel even more terrible than he did, yet at the sound of this, he let himself imagine what might have happened—the two cars colliding and the accordion of metal and steel, the blood-soaked shards of glass as Diet was thrown through the windshield, another tragedy on the 405, this one of Jacob’s own making, simply because he hadn’t been paying more attention to the man beside him. To this end, he reached around Diet and grabbed the seat belt, buckling it in place.

  “Let me sleep now,” Diet said, his voice stern, nearly punishing.

  Although Diet didn’t blame him, Jacob understood that it didn’t matter, for he’d continue to blame himself for the both of them. “Fine, but be prepared to be fussed over and monitored,” Jacob said, kissing him.

  With his copilot resting beside him, Jacob turned his attention to the map of L.A., the printed page of directions still lost somewhere under the passenger seat, though if he’d looked he would have found it easily enough, along with traces of the rental car’s former occupants—a cinnamon-flavored toothpick, a peach pit, a rhinestone earring missing its back, a stale kernel of nacho-cheese-flavored popcorn, and a mother-of-pearl button.

  Pulling out of the gas station and heading for the access road, Jacob cursed himself for not upgrading to a premium car with a built-in navigation system. He bumbled with the blinkers, indicating right when he meant left, and was finally allowed to merge his way back onto the ungodly congested, thoroughly frustrating 405, wondering as he did why anyone, much less his historically impatient, vengeful-to-a-fault-against-any-driver-who-got-in-his-way, road hog of a brother chose to live in such a carnivorously sickening city of cuckoo car culture.

  Though Jacob had only been driving for thirty minutes, he was already more than ready to give the car back and hoof it. Perhaps he would have felt differently if he knew he wasn’t going to be spending the next four days basically doing nothing but chauffeuring Diet around and shuttling back and forth to Calabasas, which he honestly didn’t mind as much as having to deal with the car itself, the getting into and out of it, the short distances made long and excruciating because every single person in L.A. had the same exact desire at the same exact moment—whether it was to head to the grocery store or the beach, it didn’t matter. Maybe cars, like people, were lonely pack animals, too, he thought, realizing that at the pace they were going they wouldn’t make it to Mo’s before nightfall.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t put on your belt. What in the fuck were you thinking?” Jacob sulked softly, unable to let it go. He turned to Diet, whose thin lips were slightly ajar, and held a palm up to make sure he was still breathing. He was. It amazed him again how Diet could sleep anywhere and through anything, how he’d slept off and on during the arduous plane ride, while Jacob had just stared out the window, willing the plane not to crash. “You’re lucky you’re still breathing, you know that. What if I’d been doing seventy and bashed into the end of that stupid SUV?” The thought of it terrified him so much that he immediately refused it purchase and switched on the radio to distract himself.

  The car filled with Willow Smith, whom he secretly liked, especially the iMHere she made about wrapping Christmas presents and delivering them via hologram to fans with so much less than she had. If he had that much money, he wondered what he would do with it all. “What do you think, Diet? Do you believe I’d be the kind of millionaire to give it away or to hoard it?” he whispered.

  Jacob liked to think of himself as the kind of person who would give a lot of it away, though having lived in penury for so much of his adult life, he wasn’t sure he would. This made him sad, both that he’d been living as he had—like a grad student, his dad liked to joke, though the joke often felt more like a dig, which it probably was—and that he couldn’t even imagine having any kind of money at all, certainly none that he’d earned from writing his sad little plays.

  “But all of that could change today,” he said softly to Diet, who remained asleep, “because I’m taking a meeting with Clarence Lee Chalmers. Okay, not really taking a meeting, but I am going to meet him for drinks later, Schatz, if that’s all right with you. Maybe you can tag along if you’re a good boy.” He rested a hand on his lover’s denim thigh, palpating it. “Have I not mentioned Clarence before? Well, let’s see—first off, I am not having an affair with him, not like you and this Lucius person.”

  Jacob honked his horn at a motorcyclist who was using the shoulder to zip ahead, disobeying the law and the natural order of things. “Look at this guy, Diet. Think I should follow him, huh? Think I should?” he asked. But he remained in his lane, crawling at a ridiculous ten miles an hour. “So you’re really not going to tell me who Lucius is? Well, maybe it’s better this way,” he said, thinking for the first time since they’d arrived in L.A. that he was not looking forward to introducing Diet to his entire family, that he was more than dreading it, in fact. Not because they would treat him badly or boo and hiss when they learned that Diet came from Augsburg, in Bavaria, the original breadbasket of anti-Semitism, but because Jacob wondered if in some odd way he wasn’t using Diet to test the limits of his family’s acceptance of and love for him. It was one thing to date a German in theory, but something quite different to sit beside said German at the Passover table and break matzo with him. He knew this, just as they knew it, yet he’d given them all, including Diet, plenty of opportunity to back out.

  Jacob didn’t want to cause a scene, not with so much at stake, not with their mom in such fragile health and their dad being what he was, which was scary on any normal day but even scarier when he was out of his element. He predicted thrashing. He predicted the gnashing of teeth and the stampede of the four horsemen of the apocalypse right through his brother’s villa on the hill. And he predicted blood—bloodshed, bloodcurdling screams, perhaps even a bloodbath or two.

  “So let me tell you a little bit about Clarence,” he said. “We met at UCLA way back in 2002. He’s the son of Shreve and Wanda Chalmers of Kansas City, Missouri, and he’s pretty much the most whacked-out, fascinating, self-destructive person I have ever met.” And he told Diet the story about meeting Clarence at a Come Out & Dance Party—a monthly dance that the Gay & Lesbian Alliance, as it was known back then—put on in the Rotunda and that attracted hordes of men and a few women from all over Los Angeles and Orange County. “Lots of too tan chicken hawks coming to score a college boy, and there I was, in my tight Wrangler jeans, Justin roper boots, and big-ass belt buckle, looking to all the world like a misplaced rodeo reject, and there was Clarence, also in boots, snakeskin, towering over me at six foot two, though he looked a lot taller because he was long and lean. Not like me.” He glared at himself in the rearview mirror and made a face. “Gay-Jay,” he hissed and sucked in his cheeks, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reproduce Clarence’s cheekbones and finally gave up, focusing again on the traffic.

  Up ahead, Jacob finally
saw what the holdup was—a two-car collision, flares lit and sparkling even in the rain, and a cop directing them all onto the shoulder. As Jacob inched along and took a quick peek at the wreckage—and it was bad, with a dozen cops stationed at the scene, two helicopters in the air above them, and three fire trucks and two ambulances and several paramedics and what looked like the Jaws of Life to cut a trapped young man out of the passenger seat of one of the unrecognizable, charred, accordion-shaped cars—he felt the presence of death all around him and suspected that this was no ordinary accident, that it was quite possibly another suicide bombing and that the guy was dead. Rubbernecking people craned their heads out of windows to gawp and stare, but Jacob turned away from the wreckage, the sight of the accident, kept his eyes steady on the road, on the paroxysm of traffic that lurched and feinted, started and stopped. He didn’t mention the accident or the dead youth to Diet when he continued. “Anyway, long story short, Clarence and I courted each other for a couple of weeks and then we fell into bed. The sex? Pretty awful. I guess if he’d been more my type…He’s hairless and awkward in his body and the worst kisser ever, kind of like—” And Jacob paused suddenly, because the next words out of his mouth were going to be “kind of like you.”

  He gazed at Diet, whose eyes seemed to be darting back and forth under his paper-thin lids, and he thought about his desire for Diet, which had nothing to do with lust or predation. It existed outside the body and outside time, and though their sex moved him more than any sex he’d ever had, it wasn’t all that good or all that fulfilling. It left him wanting. It left him missing Diet.

  “So anyway, I’m hoping that I can talk him into producing my next play, whenever I write it, which is one of two reasons I agreed to this Jacobson family reunion. And the other reason—well, that one’s a little more complicated,” he said, finding an opening in the traffic and stomping on the gas and then they were flying at breakneck speed. The road opened up as the traffic thinned out. He glanced at the map in his lap, finding exactly where they were, and relaxed his fingers on the steering wheel just a tad, because they were soaring now, he and Diet, who did not know how to drive, had never learned. “I’m only telling you this because you can’t hear me, which means you can’t be an accessory, should anything go wrong,” he said, “but the other reason is that my brother, sister, and I—we—are planning on murdering our dad.” Having said it, something inside Jacob trembled to life, just like the car, which trembled to life under his grip as he approached seventy miles per hour.