The Chrysanthemum Palace

by Bruce Wagner

“A very special lady,” said Mikkel.

  “Did she actually have a stroke?” asked Miriam.

  “It was . . . a bleeding in the brain,” said Mikkel.

  “Everybody should have a stroke and look so good,” said Clea.

  “She tells the story—one day you’ll hear. They were wheeling her for the surgery and the doctor was holding a paper in his hand. ‘Look! We just got a fax from People magazine!’ Can you imagine? He was happy. She fired him, right from the table. She is like a general, a warrior! Sharon wants to make a one-woman show. Would be amazing, no? Everyone would see it. Now she doesn’t give a fuck about people and how they perceive of her. Since it has happened, she is only filled with terrific joy and happiness for all the people. Not cynical Hollywood bullshit. And ten times more amazing looking than before surgery, no? You can see! The skin glows, like an angel. Something I think really spiritual happened. Maybe you can help her write a play,” he said to Thad.

  “She’s incredibly beautiful,” he answered, affectlessly.

  Her sudden exit had left him strangely deflated.

  To be social, Mikkel asked how I made my living. (I guess he’d zoned during Miriam’s presentation of my curriculum vitae.) I told him I was an actor. This time, it was Clea who felt compelled to add that my father was the creator of Starwatch. The DP’s eyes lit up—as if by the stitch of a master tailor I had been transformed from klutz to fashionista.

  “I can’t wait to begin the script,” said Thad, trying to jump-start himself.

  “Mordecai is hoping to make a deal very fast,” said Mikkel.

  “Mordy’s a character, isn’t he?” said Thad.

  “Did you know Christopher Nolan is to exec produce?”

  “No,” said Thad, with the open smile of a naïf. “He is—”

  “Memento.”

  “And Insomnia,” added Clea, authoritatively enthused.

  “Wow,” said Thad. “Do you live here?”

  “I am in New York, mostly. But when I come, I stay at Silver Lake.”

  “Are you in Denmark much?” asked Miriam.

  “Two times a year, but not really for film. Lately, because my mother has been ill.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” said Thad.

  “Ironically, I am there quite soon to shoot the Spielberg, which locates in Copenhagen for eight weeks’ time. So it seems I cannot get away.”

  “But you’ll be able to see your mom,” said Miriam.

  “Yes. A big side benefit,” he said, with an empty smile meant to charm.

  “We didn’t meet your friend,” said Thad, gesturing at the tall, silent one.

  “This is Henrik,” said Mikkel, in that smug way people have when introducing strangers to a legendary vintage from their private reserve.

  The rangy eccentric dutifully echoed his own name, inducing Clea to remark to Miriam, sotto, “He’s like something out of Hans Christian Anderson!”

  Thad focused on the DP. “I haven’t written a script in a while—how do you like to work?” Then, without waiting for a reply: “I’ll probably bang something out then come see you for an ‘intensive.’ ”

  “Well, it is something we would have to discuss,” said Mikkel, stiffening. “I am usually making an adaptation myself. This I try and do first.” He caught Thad’s look and awkwardly amended. “But who knows? Maybe we do both ways. We both together on parallel track: then compare notes!”

  The nascent director’s hedge had failed. Clea and I squirmed.

  “You can make a very much lot of money,” said Henrik, precipitately.

  “This giant fellow is a money man!” said Mikkel, patting his friend’s shoulder.

  “We furnish you with money,” said Henrik, oddly emphasizing the word.

  Gauging Thad’s mood, Mikkel said, “Oh please, not now!”

  “You are his agent?” asked Henrik of Miriam, somewhat aggressively.

  “His book agent, yes.”

  “You are not theatrical?”

  “No,” said Miriam. “But any option of material would go through me.”

  She wasn’t sure why he was asking, and felt silly having replied with such formality.

  “Ah! Do you drive a hard bargain?” Henrik lit up. The fairy-tale wraith had found his métier.

  “She’s been known to,” said Clea, in biker chickese.

  “But I wished to speak about something else,” said Henrik. “May I? Candidly?” Mikkel put a hand on Henrik’s arm, as if to demonstrate that his friend was an unruly, amusing child who it was best to indulge without taking seriously. “I am a designer from Oslo. Your father’s books are very big in Norway! I design furnishings, for the home. We would like to do a Jack Michelet line, like the Ernest Hemingway Collection—Thomasville. You heard of the company Thomasville, no? They do Hemingway, Bogart—I think soon they do Fitzgerald. All our research has adjudicated a Jack Michelet line would performance very well. I have seen photographic archives of the Vineyard compound and the homes your daddy, Black Jack—what fantastic nickname, no?—lived in through the many years. You lived there too, yes? No? You can be wonderful to consult! But this thing I am saying is that you would be perfect to announce it on television.”

  “What?” said Thad, beyond flustered.

  “The line,” said Henrik.

  “Your movies have done well in Norway too, yes? No?” said Mikkel.

  I thought it ill timed that the semifamous DP, close to optioning one of Thad’s books for his directorial debut, would allow the lobbying of his friend’s outrageous endorsement gambit. On second thought, maybe it was part of an overall deal the peculiar twosome had struck, and that in exchange for funding Sea Horse, Mikkel was beholden to “access Hollywood” for Henrik’s ludicrous hustles.

  “Everyone in Denmark loves The Jetsons and Don Quixote,” said Mikkel. “You are—what is the phrase?—instantly recognizable.”

  “We would fly you first class—maybe business,” said Henrik, elbowing Miriam as he chuckled. “No, I am kidding. It is private plane, the same we rode Jim Carrey. The taping of our fantastic commercial would take only two days, max, for a very nice amount of cash—or gold bullion!” He winked at Clea. “I kid again.”

  He began a travel agent’s monologue about the splendors of Copenhagen and how everyone (we were all invited) would be shown its wonders.

  Mikkel presciently changed tack. “Does Mordecai make the deal for underlying material?” he asked Miriam. “To effect the option?”

  “I’ll give him a call,” she said, coolly.

  “Mordy said it could be five thousand—which, frankly, Miriam, is too much!” She flinched at the DP’s familiarity. “It is an independent production, yes? No? And no one has shown interest! The book is out of print many years, yes? No? So I am asking for a little break. The room to wiggle. You can help affect that, yes? OK? It will be a showcase for the novel, of course, but I am thinking to do not so much an Adaptation like Charlie Kaufman but as a screenwriter to of course take certain liberties. I will keep the twins, yes, the drowned boy he is amazing, and Black Jack who is like Jack Palance in Contempt, no?—another Jack!—but also I wish to make myself a bit of a character in the movie. (This, the one thing I like very much about Adaptation. The rest, I was not so thrilled as everyone. But still it is a good movie, very good. I like Sofia better.) I wish to make a bit of experiment, for myself to act. I have spoken with Christopher Nolan and he excites. We potentially shoot in Denmark, for the light. You cannot find that light here, yes? The light here is amazing. I talk with Wim about this just last night. The light there is from my soul! I wish to make a ‘film blanc,’ not film noir!—this is what they called Insomnia too, did you see it? You saw it, no? We may ask Al to do a little something for Sea Horse. If his life and schedule allow. Pacino has busy, busy life! But he is amazing. He would do this for Christopher. I wish to explore what it means the tradition of a DP directing a first film. A Danish DP—like me, yes? No?—who makes film in the middle of divorce.”

&nb
sp; “Like yourself!” said Henrik, gleefully.

  “Yes, myself!”

  “A Sea Horse marriage—also ‘out of print’!” said Henrik, wickedly. “A marriage that is now unfurnished.”

  Mikkel laughed, ruefully. “So I was thinking more in the ‘ballpark’ of a few thousand for the option, the rest deferred. Back end. We all defer on this project.”

  “We have back ends like Jennifer Lopez!”

  “It is a project of love, OK? No? Just so when you talk to Mordecai.”

  Miriam nodded in exasperation. We wondered how much longer the onslaught would last. Clea had literally wedged herself into Thad, to brace him.

  “We can pay you with a Jack Michelet sofa!” said Henrik, nudging Thad while clapping enormous, skeletal hands. “I can tell you are a couch potato so you’ll love the design! Your daddy had eyes for things inventive but solidly built—like his women! He liked the women, yes? You are like that, no? We are all like that, even the women like the women! But in his fiction he could create a mood, an ambience. Is what he did with novels, yes? You try to do that, almost. I only read your one book, the Sea Horse. But one day you succeed across the boards! One day we have the Thad Michelet sofa, father and son furnishings!” His voice lowered and he grew serious. “The architectural look of Mr. Black Jack was colonial elegance—very much closer to Papa in Cuba. Or the Bogart Romanoff party table, have you seen? I send the Thomasville catalogue, you will love their Chesterfield table. A leather sleigh bed and amazing Bogart ‘El Morocco’ bar and stool. In our collection we have the Michelet ‘Vineyard’ divan.

  “I am calling the fabric Chrysanthemum—all named after books and residences—already I am visited the best mills in China.”

  * * *

  1 Please forgive the small, broken promise of this final annotation. But in the rereading, “Thad still didn’t seem himself” now strikes me as presumptuous and a little arrogant. I don’t think any of us know who we are—let alone what defines others. Maybe that’s just the Culver City guru in me talking.

  LATE MONDAY MORNING I LEARNED Thad awakened around 2:00 A.M. with another migraine. Clea took him to Cedars. Again, production boards were juggled so that his services weren’t needed until the following day, when the duel between Morloch and the ensign was to be staged.

  At this point in ‘Prodigal’s’ scenario, the starship ensemble felt the full, bipolarizing tug of the Dome, causing that debilitating condition known as Stanislavski syndrome. Nick Sultan spread his auteur wings—he thought of himself as a kind of boob-tube Sam Mendes—but sadly, such happiness would not be sustained through production’s end. Vorbalidian prosecutors wore absurdly powdered wigs as the Demeter crew, in stylish captives’ robes and chains, stood trial for their very sanity. Emissaries of the king, high-minded twits, malevolent magistrates, and venomous palace prosecutors skedaddled like extras in Mr. Sultan’s long-forgotten RSC production of Marat/Sade. The normally laconic android grew hysterically loquacious; the captain whined, whinnied, and brooded in aforementioned junior college Hamlet mode; X-Ray was placed on suicide watch after pronouncing he was “more fit to work in a slaughterhouse than a temple of healing”; whilst I, ruggedly reliable, peripatetically priapic Karp, found myself literally and metaphorically impotent, a pilot whose pilot light had gone out, a flyboy castrati whistling in the Domed dark.

  Such was the cheap stuff Emmy dreams were made of.

  The next morning, I drove to the Margaret Herrick Library over on La Cienega.

  I’d been there before to poke around, chasing story ideas that never panned out. It was a clean, well-funded place, somehow connected to the Academy. The cool, classical hush of its interiors reminded me of the Huntington in Pasadena. I filled out the form and a few minutes later an officious clerk returned with a folder of clippings, production notes, stills, and related ephemera.

  Son of Author Michelet Drowns

  (Italy) The 12-year-old son of Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Jack Michelet drowned Monday during the shooting of a film off the coast of Capri. Jeremy Michelet was missing for several hours from his father’s yacht, The Soft Sea Horse, which was being used as a location for a movie based on one of his books. The body was found later that day by a fisherman. The production of The Death of a Translator, starring Alain Delon and Sophia Loren, has been suspended for a week. Mr. Michelet wrote the screenplay.

  There were photos from the press kit—Jack with the director, Jack with Sophia, Jack with Alain—but nothing of the boys.

  I closed my eyes and set the stage, remembering what Thad once told me: reflexively supplanting Jeremy’s face with that of Leif Farragon’s, I imagined the twins in the water . . . saw the boy sinking, and Thad saying nothing for the longest time. It must have been dreamlike, as if nothing had happened . . . yet everything had, everything and nothing all at once! Life and death, past and future, each canceling out the other—precisely how I’d felt (in far lesser degrees) upon learning Roosevelt Chandler was no longer of this world. Suddenly, lugubrious manila file in hand, I felt like a coward for being able to walk away from the scene of the crime (his monologue about the killer from Chrysanthemum came back to mind) and stay away so many years. But Thad was left to simmer and boil, forever connected by tissue and bone to his overthrown, ambivalent beloved. And the worst was yet to come: soon to be ruled against by that monstrous Neptune, and sentenced by Mom, in absentia, before eternal banishment to the suppurative Hades of Migraine . . .

  “SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK about hiring Thad?”

  “For what?”

  “To write one of the books. You know—‘Prodigal Son.’ ”

  “What are you, his agent?” said Perry, sardonically. “He needs one, by the way. Miriam’s a nice person, but a little quaint. What the fuck do you care, anyway? We get drones for that—it’s practically a software program. Why is he even interested? I mean, are they serious? Is it supposed to be ‘camp’? Because I’m tellin’ you, it ain’t. Much rather see him do the movie. Anyway, we can’t pay anything to write that crap. It’s fifteen grand. Maybe. He’d get more spending a day at a Starwatch convention.”

  “Dad, can I tell you a secret?” His ears pricked up. “But this is . . . something you cannot talk about. With anyone.”

  “What is it?”

  I told him about the IRS trouble and the $10 million proviso of Jack’s will.

  “Jesus,” said Perry, taking a deep breath. “That’s astonishing! My God. All right—let me think about this.” He nodded, stroking his chin. I was really glad that he “got” it; I knew I had him. “OK. I’m inclined to do it. Jesus—that’s like something out of one of his father’s books! Boy oh boy. Nasty.” He laughed but not in a way that was cruel. “Nasty, nasty, nasty! All right, let me mull this over, Bertram. But I’m predisposed. And don’t discuss it—not yet. You know, you should get a fucking commission if he pulls this off! Which, by the way, I very much doubt is possible. Because I have to tell you: only one or two of those titles ever made the list that I know of, maybe only one.” I told him he was wrong about that. “The Times? The New York Times? And that’s the stipulation? Holy shit. Well, that must have been a while back, when the show was at its peak. We’re talking paperback list—hardcover, forget. The series isn’t so popular anymore. In fact, we might phase it out entirely.”

  Watching him, I knew he already saw himself in the index of some future Michelet biography: Krohn, Perry Needham, generosity of.

  “You know, I’m worried about your friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you’re going to be his patron, maybe you should look after him a bit.”

  “In what way?”

  “I got a call. From Sherry Evans. Clea has a nasty bruise on her jaw. Did you know about this?”

  “No.”

  “She said she fell in the bathroom.”

  The comment had big quotes around it.

  “When?”

  “She called about an hour ago.”

  �
��Who’s Sherry Evans?”

  “A makeup gal. She was concerned and didn’t know who to tell.”

  (He’d inadvertently exposed a lover.)

  “I’ll talk to Clea,” I said.

  My heart was racing.

  “Maybe you should talk to him.”

  He walked to his desk and retrieved a book.

  “Did I show you this?”

  It was a copy of The Soft Sea Horse.

  He held open the title page to display Thad’s dedication.

  a Perry Menopausal, con mucho cariño . . .

  “E le morte stagioni”

  Ever Thine,

  ♥

  Thaddeus (Leapin’) Leopardi

  “Do you know what it means?” I felt like an ass but nothing else came to mind.

  “Not a clue. But you’ll handle him—I mean, you’re gonna be his padrone, right?”

  A sense of panic and betrayal gripped me as soon as I left my father’s house.

  I frantically called the studio but Clea was in the middle of a scene. The A.D. intuited my concerns and assured she was “totally OK.” I asked about Thad and he said, “Seems completely fine.” (Like a candy striper reassuring a distraught relative.) I would have driven directly over if not for the big meeting at HBO, though it probably was better I didn’t. If Perry’s allegations were true—that Thad struck Clea, stoned or stone-cold sober—I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control my temper. I didn’t enjoy the feeling. I never liked the out-of-control thing.

  I went to Century City with some agents from CAA and my dad’s old friend, Dan Fauci. When Dan was head of Paramount Television he made something like ninety pilots. Now he had a development deal, with an office on the lot. He had graciously played “rabbi” on Holmby Hills, overseeing my work on the outline; although by now I’d written an extensive précis, Dan said it was important “not to leave anything behind” after the pitch. No written material. But it was key to have done your homework so that any questions from the network could be finessed.