The Chrysanthemum Palace

by Bruce Wagner

  When he proclaimed that the estrangement, now official and irrevocable, was probably for the best, I half believed him. He had the natural-born talent to make one embrace hard endings, and fresh starts as well. Thad was positively giddy about the prospect of entering the Times bestseller list, thus foiling a grim practical joke orchestrated from the underworld. Besides, he still felt he could deliver something keenly poetic tucked within a Trojan horse. He said that “quality lit” and sci-fi had tango’d before: Margaret Atwood had done it—or was it Margaret Drabble? Doris Lessing too . . . He did have one small fear: that, of legal necessity, he’d be forced to share story credit with Starwatch staffers, i.e., while the novelization itself would have sole “written by” credit (Thad Michelet), it would include a “based on a teleplay by” credit (the geeks who wrote “Prodigal Son [Episode 21-417A]”) as well. He wasn’t sure if this was something that might potentially interfere with the parameters of the codicil; Miriam’s lawyer was looking into it. Thad strategized he’d tell the writers what he was up to—in the worst case (in exchange for an agreement to remove “the teleplay possessory”), he’d cut deals paying out a small share of the $10 million, far more than the “schmucks with PowerBooks” were due for their standard share of novelization rights. Miriam said she wasn’t sure how the guild would feel about it; bit of a gray area. (I could see Thad’s paranoid Time Machine/Small Claims wheel whirring.) All, he added, would naturally be moot if the book didn’t sell.

  We reached the top of the hill and parked beside the ragged cyclone fence that surrounded ongoing construction. We wandered awhile, navigating an obstacle course of building debris and rubbish left behind by tourists, until we came into a depopulated zone with a grand view of the sky. It was jet black and remarkably clear. I watched Thad crane his neck to look at the stars, feeling a rush of sympathy and affection for the man. He had shown me a tender, stunt-free side of his soul; I was surprised and grateful, apart from feeling insecure that I had nothing comparable to give in return. I actually felt bad for having planned to corner him about Clea. I was suddenly certain of his innocence, and grateful the two had found each other.

  “You know, when I first heard that human bodies were made from stardust, I thought it was a shuck. A Hallmark greeting card thing. But it’s true—we’re all dead stars.” He had that wonderful, gnomish smile on his face. Black Jack was his Goliath; he’d slain him and lived to tell the tale. I felt proud. He took off his jacket, laid it on the ground, then sat. “They say that when our sun dies, it won’t be anything spectacular. It’s a middling star. That’s the word astronomists use, ‘middling’—tough crowd, those astronomists! And when an ordinary star dies—they call them ordinary! That’s the official designation! I’m telling you, they’re tough sons of bitches—well, they say ordinary stars end up as inconspicuous white dwarves. But the killers, the real shock-and-awe five-alarm cocksuckers, when they die, they leave black holes . . . take everything with ’em, even the light. Even the light.” He paused, marveling at the unfathomable implication of his own words. “Jesus. I’m in high Observatory mode, huh. I should work here—someone give me a job!”

  As if softly unspooling more secrets, he began to quote his beloved Leopardi, but the words seemed such his own, so exclusive to the timeless moment on that slope beneath celestial seas, syllables engrained as stardust into his bones, that he became the prodigal son, exiled Vorbalidian prince come home to roost in phantom pain and stellar tomb, middling and majestic, murderous and mundane, in blinding darkness and vacuumed, vanished light—boyish, transgressive and humble, so that I felt the vibratory strands of existence cocoon around us, in the great transparent cathedral of our shabbily awesome, gloriously stillborn life.

  “I have always loved this lonesome hill,” he said. “And this hedge that hides the entire horizon, almost, from sight. But sitting here in a daydream, I picture the boundless spaces away out there, silences deeper than human silence, an unfathomable hush in which my heart is hardly a beat from fear. And hearing the wind rush rustling through these bushes, I pit its speech against infinite silence—and a notion of eternity floats to mind, and the dead seasons—e le morte stagioni—and the season beating here and now, and the sound of it. So, in this immensity my thoughts all drown. And it’s soothing to be wrecked in seas like these.”

  IT WAS FRIDAY—THE LAST day of shooting.

  Thad never arrived.

  Clea began to unravel. I stood by watching Nick Sultan put extras through fruitless, unfilmed paces: palace guardians in Greek chorus groupings on the painted plaster desert of the Outback. They were to pound their tom-toms during the twins’ battle royale which was set to unfold before a giant blue screen already in place. The old-school prop master stood in the wings holding ritual daggers in a customized teak box, ready to hand them to Morloch and the ensign if one (or the other) were ever to show. The harmless weapons were his responsibility but now that there were no warriors, he felt the chill of an unvoiced rebuke.

  Hours passed. A pall descended. Lawyers, agents, and executives assembled. Stunt and camera doubles were ladled with the heavy cubist makeup of Vorbalids; it was decided Morloch’s side of the battle would be shot first, buying time in case Thad suddenly showed. Nick got a second wind and the crew went to work with the careful haste required of a production crisis. The pressure was on but at the same time things seemed so hopeless that it was off, too—a chance for stalwart below-the-liners to pragmatically strut their stuff in perspirey triple-time and ingratiate themselves to the studio. They’d be the real heroes of the day.

  Clea sat in her canvas chair on the soundstage. The rest of us, temporarily liberated from our cages by Morloch to bear witness to his expected triumph (a few reaction shots were needed, nothing more), loitered in readiness. With the UPM’s sober, nodding submission, Nick Sultan reasserted to the studio brass there was no reason to worry because everything would soon be “in the can”—except for the ensign’s half of the blue-screened tussle. Word filtered back: the CGI gurus had determined that an ensign look-alike could be hired for a half day of second unit inserts to be shot on the following weekend. (It was unprecedented to allow anything to interfere with production stream; the next episode, well into preproduction, was scheduled to begin filming on Monday.) The footage of the Rattweil look-alike would be framed in judicious mediums rather than close-ups, digitally doctored to enhance the more than serviceable resemblance between Thad and his double, then spliced into the fight scene. The experts’ consensus was optimistic; failing success, redoubtable staff-geeks, fueled by Jerry’s Deli triple-deckers and twelve-packs of Red Bull, were already drafting radical story structure alternatives. When it was time to go home (we broke an hour early), spirits were running relatively high under the circumstances. The bullet, if not dodged, seemed to have passed through tissue without hitting any major organs.

  In an attempt to throw a net over the missing actor, the studio had sent a P.A. to the Chateau earlier that morning. With the help of the conscientious hotel manager, the room was entered to ascertain if the guest had overslept or was in distress. Needless to say, Mr. Michelet was not to be found. The P.A. lay in wait all day long, to no avail. At 5:00 P.M., Clea and I relieved him of duty.

  Throughout, I’d kept Miriam in the loop. She was awfully distressed but we agreed there was no reason as yet for her to hop on a plane. There was general apprehension about Thad’s physical and mental health, with even the occasional hint at foul play—ludicrous, but in our agitated exhaustion, we inevitably came to resemble newscasters during a disaster, vamping after losing live feed. Another sentiment, lighter in weight and leavened by anger, was the plain fact he had done enormous harm to his career, not to mention scotching any hopes of authoring a Starwatch volume, the scamminess of which now seemed abjectly pathetic. Miriam and I suddenly felt besmirched by the inanely precocious bestsellerdom strategy, mortified by our coconspiracy with this overtly unstable man.

  Thus, Clea and I began our night watc
h.

  Slowly, like the favorite Brahms intermezzo of her mom’s that she had touchingly learned by heart in the last few years, Clea began to tap at the confessional keys. She told me she’d come over to the Chateau to be with him after our trip to the Observatory, and they had argued about “stupid things.”

  Something in her tone betrayed. I pressed for more.

  “One summer, on the Vineyard—his father—” She closed her eyes and took a deep, actressy yoga breath. “We didn’t fool around . . . but something happened.”

  “With Jack?”

  She nodded, eyes shut. I was surprised, but only at my refusal all this time to see the obvious. “I was still getting loaded. Thad was being horrid. I’m not excusing it, Bertie—what I did—though nothing really happened—but it was enough, I guess. Thad was having an affair, under my nose. God, we were already living together! In Brooklyn Heights . . . and he was sleeping with this woman—two women. I found out about the second one by ‘mistake.’ He told me about the first. And then this thing happened with Jack, who was always inappropriate. He was just kind of out to get Thad. That’s what he was into. And flirting—he always flirted with me, he flirted with all Thad’s girlfriends. The reverse Oedipal, whatever. Is that what it is? And I was—I wanted to be punitive because I guess I knew it was over. He had so hurt me, Bertie. Why else would he have done what he did? I needed . . . I guess I just wanted to end it, in a definitive way. And that was pretty definitive! We didn’t fuck or anything. I didn’t fuck Jack, OK? I wasn’t even going to tell him about it—that’s what’s so funny! Jack did. Jack got drunk and told Morgana and she was so freaked out that she told Thad. It was horrible. Horrible! Oh my God, that night—fucking O’Neill couldn’t have written that night. And he never forgave me. Not that I expected him to. But when we got back together this last time—which was totally unplanned, I think it took us both by surprise . . . and—it seemed he’d gotten over . . . lots of things. He was different. I thought maybe the whole IRS stuff had . . . I don’t even know what I mean by that. Sorry.” She paused, to gather herself. “He never talked about—what happened. But right after Jack died, he began alluding. Especially when he got loaded. And it seemed like—well anyway, that’s what we were fighting about. Last night. I mean, this is something he brought up on the Vineyard, at the funeral. All those insinuations—you didn’t know what he was talking about, did you. On the Vineyard? I mean, did you even hear? I don’t think you were even aware. Miriam was! She heard—Miriam knew. But she also knew how crazy everyone was back then—now, too, but especially then! It was a bad time. Bad, bad, bad, bad time. And Morgana was totally freezing me out at the funeral—and it’s still about that. All about that—for her. But nothing really happened, I was a scapegoat because Jack Michelet fucked anything that moved—tuh-duh!—and Morgana knew it. It was part of their thing. She totally joined the Jack Michelet Corporation knowing what he was. That he—” She abruptly returned to the present. “But it still doesn’t make any sense, Bertie . . . where would he go, why would he not show up? The last fucking day of the shoot! Bertie, I’m worried—I’m really, really worried. I’m worried he might actually have killed himself.” She clapped a hand to her mouth, sorry to have said such a thing aloud to beckon supernatural forces. “Where would he have gone? Maybe he checked into a hotel somewhere and overdosed . . . should we start calling, Bertie? Should we try all the hotels? Do you think he could have done that?” She began to shiver and weep again, clutching onto me. “Bertie, could he actually have done that? Do you think? Maybe we should start calling the hospitals—”

  “They’ve been doing that, Clea. Nothing’s turned up.”

  “It doesn’t make sense he would just disappear.”

  She got the unshakable idea that he’d returned to Griffith Park to dramatically do himself in. It was close to midnight and I was worn down enough to think the notion plausible. She begged me to drive us. After much stumbling in the dark, I reached the site of our previous trespass—but all we found was emptiness.

  ON SUNDAY, WE HAD PLANS for brunch.

  Hugo’s.

  She stood me up.

  I checked my voice mail. There was a message from the night before. It was Clea, saying he had called and “was fine.” She was going to see him, but didn’t say where.

  THE NEXT FEW WEEKS WERE a blur of work, and I was glad.

  HBO wanted to move forward with Holmby Hills. They had notes; Dan and I took the requisite conference calls. I did my bible thumping (and tweaking) at night, days occupied by the new Starwatch shoot. No one heard boo from our wayward couple. With an increasing sense of dread, I resorted to Al-Anon meetings, reminding myself I was powerless over Clea—powerless over her drug intake and her romantic life, if there was any difference between the two.

  I spoke to Miriam constantly. I missed her but admittedly was confused. It’d been months since I’d slept with anyone else so I longed for her, physically. Besides, the whole Thad/Clea shitstorm had left me stressed out and lonelier than hell. I guess I still wanted her to come to L.A. on my own terms. I was a walking male cliché—obsessed with getting Meerkat into bed but still ambivalent about the relationship thing. I hadn’t discussed my feelings (another male cliché) and psychotic as it might sound it just may be I was operating off the echo and reverb of my last conversation with Thad—the one where he casually implied Miriam wanted to begin some major nest building.

  My inner life was crazed. I hung around newsstands, poring over health magazine articles about male hormones, male menopause, male ticking clocks. (Not to mention cutting-edge cancer-screening tests.) When Miriam finally said she was flying out, I felt instantly better. We could have the baby-thing talk—after we fucked. Might even pop the question. When I shared as much at an AA meeting, some smart-ass said, “The question is: ‘Can we have an open marriage?’ ”

  A week and a half after Clea split, I got a second message on my machine. (If she really wanted to talk, she’d have called my cell.) She sounded stoned and vaguely distraught. They were all right but “in the middle of moving.” She’d “be in touch.” Around that time, someone on the crew said he saw them over the weekend, at the Palms in Vegas. The gaffer didn’t approach but said they looked “seriously fucked up.” When I called the hotel, no one was registered under either name.

  Miriam arrived on Friday and stayed with me in Venice. It was comforting to play house, even under somewhat surreal circumstances. The sex was good. We used it as an anchor—and painkiller. The TV news played nonstop coverage of devastation wrought by a series of tornadoes in the Midwest. Somehow that was a comfort too: happy-to-be-alive faces smeared with dirt and tears, possessions and personal histories flung to the wind. Whenever we saw the foundations of vanished houses and the shattered vertebrae of modest Main Streets, we conjured Thad and Clea as flying Dutchmen unable to dock in whatever harbor they’d been pharmaceutically listing toward. Then came the usual stories of buried house pets found miraculously alive among the rubble. We wished as much for our friends but knew the odds were against them.

  The odds were always against everything.

  MONDAY CAME. I HAD a few days off.

  Miriam went to a business lunch and I killed time at the studio visiting Dan. I’d completed the outline revisions and turned them in—HBO would probably take a week or so to give a thumbs-up. Hopefully they’d be cool with whatever work I did and would let me start writing the pilot; I was getting itchy. It was all a little easier if you tried not to have expectations. Anyway, I had other worries: Clea and Thad. Being on the lot brought me nearer to my oldest friend and the mystery of her absence. I felt like a dad waiting around during an Amber Alert—utterly helpless.

  I strolled to the editing bay to see Nick Sultan. Normally, he’d have already finished; in TV, it wasn’t typical for directors to stick around to supervise an edit. They were hired hands and they knew it. But in this case, Nick was committed and determined. Because of “complications,” the producers had gi
ven him more leeway than usual. The room was dark. The first thing I saw on the Avid was Ensign Rattweil, engaged in final combat on the Fellcrum Outback. The action kept digitally rewinding and repeating itself, images broken into millions of shardy, dust mote–sized squares. The dual was incredibly well done—you’d never know a look-alike had been employed. When I asked the editor how they’d managed, he smiled and said, “Movie magic.”

  Just then, Nick appeared in the doorway holding a container of Chinese chicken salad from the commissary.

  “Did you hear?” he said.

  “What?”

  “Oh Christ.” He steered me to the hall and whispered, “They just found the bodies.”

  HE WAS BURIED IN THE Vineyard with Jack and Jeremy, as his mother had wished.

  Sudden death expunged her rancor; at last, Thad was brought into protective arms. It came to mind this was the closest he’d been to his brother in the forty-odd years since that time beside the gently rocking Sea Horse where they parted. Miriam said the configuration of monuments in the family plot put him farthest from Jack, which gave a small measure of comfort. She said there was a wake, with far less turnout than the one I’d attended, and Morgana had behaved much the same as at her husband’s—brave and wittily stoic, boisterously bereft.