The Chrysanthemum Palace

by Bruce Wagner

  We scattered Clea’s ashes at sea. There was to be no headstone or grave marking, by her request. TV tabloids and magazines made much of the lurid deaths, mostly on account of the illustrious parents. In the end, the light (“Even the light”)—the white dwarves that were their children—could not escape the gravity of those legendary black holes.

  My own mother took great care of me in the days that followed.

  She got some of her old energy back and threw a lovely memorial. It was as if Gita knew that with this death—Clea’s—I had finally graduated, and we now shared consecrated alma maters. (Heartbroken wolves cloaked in sheepskin.) The celebration took place on the beach, where I once fantasized they would exchange vows. Everyone linked hands and cried—friends from AA, the gang from Starwatch. Dad walked me to the wet sand and said that my eulogy was “the finest thing” he’d ever heard. With tears in his eyes, he begged forgiveness for all fatherly transgressions. He was a little drunk but his sentiments were in earnest. I did forgive him, from the bottommost bottom of my heart. I forgave just about everyone for everything, including myself.

  Gita was right. School was out—forever.

  I DECIDED TO GO TO Vegas to retrace their steps. (Later, I wondered if my motivation was born less from a sense of “closure” than the subconscious decision to tell this story.) No matter, I still needed to say good-bye; it felt just too miserable to let the memory of her last, plaintive phone message stand. Like some action hero, I craved pursuit—to chase the dispersed stardust of my first love.

  To my surprise, when I told Miriam of the plan she actually wanted to come along. We’d always joked about going to see Celine Dion. Now, she said, was our chance.

  I rented an obnoxious silver Porsche, and we headed out on the highway, looking for adventure (and whatever came our way). It wasn’t quite summer—the weather was tolerably warm. We used the Mirage as our headquarters; while Meerkat lay by the pool I got in touch with a detective who’d worked the case, and was naturally a mega-Starwatch buff. He provided me with a rough itinerary of Thad and Clea’s meanderings in the days before their deaths.

  We didn’t get around to seeing Celine, though I did wind up at sundry downtown casinos offering $3.89 all-you-can-eat breakfast buffets. The detective said that once Mr. Michelet arrived, he managed to get his hands on a shitload of cash, wired from a bank in Fort Lauderdale. He blew through two hundred grand at blackjack (the irony of the name of the game wasn’t lost on me) at the Palms. According to phone records, Thad and Clea were in constant touch before she left L.A. When she joined him, they pissed away another $75,000 (most of her savings, no doubt) at a divey gaming parlor off the Strip and by then were in for an additional fifty “large.” I met with the owner, who was a fairly decent guy. His kids were huge fans of The Jetsons and when the hotelier saw the tough straits Thad was in, he offered to help. His son was being bar mitzvahed that weekend and the guy was ready to knock off $20,000 from the debt if the actor made an appearance at the party to sign autographs. They shook hands over it—but “Bonnie and Clyde,” he smirked, were no-shows.

  Miriam and I hit the Wheel of Fortune slots and took in a raggedy-ass rock-’n’-roll lounge revue. In the spirit of “What Happens Here, Stays Here,” I sampled the Viagra I’d been carrying around in my wallet the last few months; it seemed the appropriate thing to do. The pill worked OK but I didn’t get much sleep, and not for the reason you might think. When I finally passed out, I had recurrent dreams of snorting coke. In the morning, Meerkat and I had a stupid argument—it was definitely time to decamp.

  Death Valley would be the next and last stop. Miriam didn’t think she had it in her to go. I wasn’t sure I did either.

  I dropped her at the airport around 2:00 P.M. She tenderly kissed me, not envying the ordeal ahead. I hate to be noir about it, but somewhere inside that good-bye was the thought we might be done with each other for good. We embraced long and hard, the subtext being that we’d shared forbidden fruits. We knew our friendship would survive regardless of what the future held. It was kind of a cinematic moment, part Casablanca, part Planet of the Apes (just before Heston rounds the corner to howl at Lady Liberty)—because neither of us could shake the feeling that some awesome, half-buried truth was waiting for me in the desert.

  THIS TIME, THE APPROACH WAS from the east—though all roads led to the Bun Boy Motel. Around the time I passed Pahrump, that first trip flashed back in all its carefree glory. It was like a teen memory: I heard the girls’ voices and lusty giggles—I could practically smell them. Inseparable from Clea’s image was Thad’s, a grizzled, fine-witted contradiction, bellowing and gracious, born to be wild.

  It grew hotter as I drove. Soon I was dipped in that serenely alien palette, the grotesque, infernal outcroppings and magnificent desolation of apocalyptic pastel. Déjà vu: that uncomfortable feeling the Furnace Creek Inn didn’t exist, and somehow I’d taken a wrong turn, never again to reclaim my superheated Shangri-La. Then suddenly there it was, in all its Spanish Colonial glory, the parking lot oddly filled to capacity—just as before.

  Upon arrival, the clerk did some registering too (of my face)—the same garrulous oddball who’d given us the lowdown on the dicey denizens of that aridly majestic park. (My detective said he’d been a helpful source.) He smiled broadly until his memory linked me to the man whom everyone, postmortem, unfailingly called Mr. Michelet. His amiable expression begged I explain my return. I told him I was a friend of both Michelet and his companion—recent acquaintance of the former, childhood friend of the latter. He expressed discreet condolences. By now, other guests had gathered, either to check in or have the registrar dispense a map to Scotty’s Castle along with a quickie historic spiel. I said I was going to freshen up and asked how long he’d be at the desk. He got off at 5:00 P.M., he said—little more than an hour away. I told him I’d be pleased if he would allow me to spring for a couple of date shakes. I even dropped the name of the detective, respectfully adding that the gumshoe told me to look him up.

  We met on the terrace.

  “He’s a wonderful actor. Was. Always a favorite. They got here—Mr. Michelet and your friend . . .”

  “Clea Fremantle.”

  “I remembered them from when you came.”

  “They’re hard to forget.”

  “Exactly!” he exclaimed. “But this time, I have to say they didn’t look so well.” He lowered his voice, hesitant to desecrate the dead. “A little ‘worse for wear.’ It wasn’t so much intoxication, per se. They just looked . . . exhausted. Like they’d ‘been through it.’ We get people like that in the valley but not so much here at the inn. I see ‘newcomers’ once or twice before they usually get—what’s the word?—assimilated. If you see ’em again, they’ve usually cleaned up their act. Course most you don’t see again. People on the run. Come to the valley same way they go to Mexico these days only it’s a little tougher here. To get by. You don’t have the sand and sea, the surfers and beach life to lose yourself in. Harder to be invisible I guess. If that’s what you’re after. You really kind of have to find a rock. To crawl under. Anyhow, they ate in the restaurant on Saturday night—I told Detective Raintree all this.”

  “I know that. And I appreciate you sharing it with me.”

  “Mr. Michelet didn’t have a coat so I gave him one that we keep behind the desk for people who don’t know about the code. It’s unusual when a guest doesn’t have a sport jacket but if it happens we’re prepared. They looked a little better—I think they must have taken baths!”—again, the clerk seemed embarrassed—“and were pretty well behaved during dinner. I don’t think anyone bothered him. No one asked for his autograph. But the girl—Ms. Fremantle—she’s an actor too, isn’t she?” He’d cordially slipped into present tense.

  “Yes.

  “Her mother was Roosevelt Chandler.”

  “That’s right.”

  “After dinner, they went swimming. We have towels out there. We leave our guests alone. The caretaker sa
id they sat by the fire quite a while. He left at 11:00 P.M. and they were still there. Not making a ruckus or anything but they may have had a bottle with them. That wouldn’t be unusual. It’s nice to have a little vino under the stars.

  “I was working double shifts—I don’t actually live here, I swear!” he added, cracking himself up. “Though sometimes it seems like I do. No one saw them in the morning, far as I recall. They breakfasted in their room; we have a record of that. They didn’t have a suite like when you came before. A single, adjacent to the terrace. We call it the smokers’ terrace. People can go out and get their nicotine fix. It overlooks the valley—I think I saw you and your other friend up there. What was her name?”

  “Miriam.”

  The guy didn’t miss a thing. He was beginning to remind me of Norman Bates.

  “They left around 4:00 P.M. on Sunday. I guess they found the car Monday morning, early. I think it hit a rock—it was only a rental sedan. Helps to have a four-wheeler if you’re going up to the Racetrack. Didn’t y’all go up there?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

  “Spooky place. They found your friend—Ms. Fremantle—on the periphery. Mr. Michelet was farther off. Did Detective Raintree tell you the position of the bodies?”

  I stopped him short, done with the travelogue.

  I thanked him for his time and set off.

  “Drive safely,” he said.

  By the time I got there, it was nearly dusk. As I strolled the “periphery,” a few hikers passed by and waved. Then I was alone with the rocks and the phantoms.

  Raintree had reconstructed things thus: Thad and Clea were observed at the 49er Café, in late afternoon. They were drinking. It was noted by patrons that he wore a strange costume—one witness likened it to a toga—but all were in agreement the peculiar getup “wasn’t the cleanest looking.” The barkeep recognized Thad right away, and engaged the pair in friendly conversation. The actor said they were filming nearby. The barkeep didn’t know who Clea was and later told the detective that it seemed “the female companion” was in some kind of distress. I was certain my poor, beleaguered darling had by then become captive (years of news reports about Stockholm syndrome and the psychology of battered women sorrowfully told me so). They left just after sundown, driving about an hour before going off road, where the Taurus had indeed broken its axle.

  As I walked, I saw them in my mind’s eye—Thad, with the unerring instincts of a drunk, uncannily finding the Racetrack, almost 9:00 P.M. now—veering off asphalt in querulousness or exaggerated jest before smacking the stone that cracked the undercarriage. Explosion of expletives and laughter. He’d have been the first to leave the car—Clea, cowed—for cursory damage report. Futzing with keys, rumbling in trunk. Retrieving . . . then reconnoitering. Clea pulling herself together then wandering after him into stillness, stoned, though maybe not, maybe even already having run through her stash—tragic!—stumbling along in numb, detoxed, zombified despair. Saw them clumsily pick through sharp-stoned black-and-blue darkness toward that dry lake of ancient monoliths, Thad yodeling, guffawing, shrieking, that tritely maddening bay-at-the-moon routine he did when out here last but no longer in the realm of charming, wild or willful, of “entertainer,” or the realm of anything anymore. Clea dazed, shaken, animal-knowing this was the end as they lurched toward Paleolithic infield of petrified mud, deaf-and-dumb klatches of rubble, following her keeper’s bruising makeshift path through sleeping creosote bushes, rattlesnake weed and moonflowers, gravel ghosts and cream cups, conspirational windflowers and whispering beardtongues.

  . . . Saw him reach the lake bed and breathe, finally berthed on the cleared, smooth surface, untrammeled, almost hygienic in contrast to chaotic, uneven roadway, syrupy quiet all around again, Zabriskie Point stillness, cooler now that they’d stopped the trudge, his trudge, sweating the dope out, free at last from the nettles and brambles of their rugged, improvised trek: not broken, bullheaded Taurus rentals but twin Geminis, now he was home, a prince returned to Fellcrum serenity. He had doubles of the fastidious propmaster’s daggers stowed—dagger back-ups! Dagger stand-ins!—imagine carrying them two weeks on the lam then thoughtfully transferring from suitcase to car—and used them to bludgeon because they could not properly stab. I saw him after his exertions, that stillness again, nearly religious, Clea’s breath truncated then finally stopped, his own growing less ragged, all actions now become the same, flatness and lack of consequence, expirations and inhalations all one, the assault as if in a dream, bad script, bad dream from which he’d awake to complain of migraine, retiring to trailer or Chateau hours later or in morning to begin again but when he saw he could not waken, still the flatness of response, not remorse, more the discomfort of it and the wishing away, the whooshing, but the acceptance too, and the knowing it would all soon end. The irrefutable knowing.

  Saw it all as I walked toward larger rocks. Moon full enough to see tracks from which the Playa took its name, slid-boulders like tombstones in my father’s old E.C.s.

  The detective said the ranger found Thad propped up against one like he’d been pushing—again, I saw: laughing, thrusting, cut-rate costume warrior wrestling sisyphean sculptor’s stone, expiring herniated breath and life force as he butted, in breathing concert with mysterious forces that moved the rocks, Atlas strained and shrugged, and that was when the blood came through the mouth—choking on its torrent (so the coroner said), an aneurysm was what killed him and I thought: what a rare, good thing, how merciful of that which governs, knowing he wouldn’t have had the will to finish himself and certain that was his plan because it was learned he’d left a gun in the trunk, forgotten but maybe deliberate in the forgetting, I wasn’t convinced he had the strength to retrieve it, the gall, the stamina, better a gory red fountain through ruptured aqueduct of worn-out tissue than to lose one’s mind, already lost, in prison, useless hell of that, better to fatally shoulder Outback rock than suffer sick frenzy of renown accompanying incarceration and trial.

  I phoned the ranger who discovered them but he was on holiday. I wondered if he was the kind of person for whom images fade or retain their power: clump of woman in early fossilized pupfish purplish insect hummed dawn, beat and disfigured though from a distance merely at rest on outside oval track—farther in, the curious half-standing figure rooted in a brackish pool of his own black blood, barefoot in the interplanetary park, cheaply woven garment hanging like a sequined burlap bag, dull-edged dumb-bass Super Kmart dagger on hardscrabble desert floor, laughable instrument of the settling of royal disputes.

  That was not the place I wished to say good-bye.

  In the morning, I headed for Badwater.

  The narcotic silence was there, and tourists too. I walked out as far as I could till hardly anyone was in sight. Sponged up the quiet. Said a prayer for Clea. Told her I loved her and would always be there. I remembered kissing her a lifetime ago in her mother’s house and when I thought of Leif doing the same, sweet dimple-chinned Leif long dead and gone, I felt that familiar jealous twinge and laughed out loud in the sacred stillness, sobbing at the invincible riddle of it (imagining Clea laughing her tattooed ass off as well). Just then it struck me she would never age, she would always be that girl, the shy, nervous one with the outsized movie-star mom—and I, the nervous boy, forever groping and adoring in that celestial second-story room, beloved Californian winds in holy chastisement, roughing up the voyeuristic trees outside our window. The thing of it is, she was with Leif now; the kid had the upper hand but I was happy for him. I smiled with the maudlin thought they were together, “on the other side.” What comfort!

  Grateful to have this phantasmagorical inkling that my Clea could travel between worlds and boy-lovers evermore, if that was her wish.

  I left the valley.

  A WEEK AFTER RETURNING TO L.A. I was in my trailer working on Holmby Hills. We still hadn’t heard from HBO but Dan said I should just start writing, to calm my nerves.

  So there I was, tryin
g to pound out a first scene—one already delineated in the “bible”—yet hopelessly stuck.

  I lit a cigarette, drifting back to Anaheim.

  “Where would you most likely find a denouement?” asked the unctuous host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

  Idly, I typed:

  1. In the bathroom

  2. In a story

  3. Under the hood

  4. In Death Valley

  It occurred to me to write a movie about our ménage à trois but nothing coalesced—not that I’d spent much time mulling it over. It was way too soon. How to begin? (There wasn’t even a bible!) I couldn’t, in all fairness, favor Clea over Thad, though of course that was my bias. Anyway, all was moot because the biggest part of me wouldn’t dare defile her memory by commodifying it, or worse, memorializing by screenplay, then failing—I was an old hand in the Failed Script Department. I decided it was only a daydream. The time had come to refocus my energy and discipline on Holmby Hills. I set upon the opening scene with renewed fervor.

  While pondering my destiny—and developing a serious urge for Mexican takeout—Dad called. Nick Sultan was no longer involved in the Chrysanthemum project. Perry said that while he liked the final version of “Prodigal Son (Episode 21-417A),” “Mr. Sultan” had scored a studio tent pole that would keep him busy for the next two and a half years. Good for him. “Recent events” had convinced my father “to get off the dime” and develop Black Jack’s novel himself. He wanted me to begin work on the script ASAP. He’d spoken to Dan Fauci and while things looked optimistic re Holmby Hills he said it was always good to have a few irons in the fire. Dad’s production company would negotiate a fee with the lawyer of my choice. “I can tell you right now it’ll probably be something in the seventy-five-thousand-dollar range,” he said firmly, as if expecting me to bitch. He couldn’t have been more wrong. As the studio gods said, Let there be nepotism. I got that puffed-up, mini-mogul feeling again; that’s how much I needed a shot of self-esteem.