I Met Someone

by Bruce Wagner

  Dusty said, “Go,” and they hugged again. “I am so thrilled we’re working together.”

  “Oh my God, seriously, I’m the one who’s thrilled! I cannot tell you what I think of you as an actress. And a woman. How much you have totally influenced me.”

  “Aw! You’re so sweet.”

  Bonita kissed her cheek and went off.

  The camera crew hadn’t broken for lunch—the D.P. was on the bedroom set, lighting a shot—and as Dusty walked past the director’s monitor, an image caught her eye. Her double, around the same age, bore a striking resemblance, not just in skin tone and hair color but in the gaze itself. It wasn’t unusual for the expressions of stand-ins to evince a de rigueur Zen-like blankness; the meditative patience and willful suppression of personal identity required for the job often bubbled up in a Mona Lisa smile lending itself to all manner of interpretation. Their countenances became looking glasses. To Dusty, doubles brought with them an inadvertent whiff of the sacred that both charmed and mesmerized. Like denuded dream statuary, they came to represent Woman, bountiful and bottomless and eternal. Staring at the loop of herself-as-the-other-as-herself, the actress zoned out and sunk deep, in full fathom of the immanent familiar: that inscrutable, almost sardonically knowing face that represented her own.

  It was empty and serene, riveting as an ancient bulletin or the light from dead stars.

  —

  “That’s amazing! What kind of feedback did you get?”

  They were having dinner at Mr. Chow.

  “We read scenes in class and the response has been really good,” said Allegra. “The teacher said it was the best script he’s read all year.”

  “Oh my God, Leggy! Isn’t that so amazing?”

  “I didn’t know if he meant the best script in class or . . .”

  “Oh fuck it, it’s awesome. Aren’t you so happy?”

  “I guess,” she said, reticently. “It’s just hard to—sometimes—I mean, of course everyone keeps asking me if you’re going to be in it. Like, when’s it going to be a movie. The teacher doesn’t say that, but—you know, everyone’s all, ‘Have you shown it to Dusty? Is Dusty going to do it?’”

  “When are you going to show it to me? I’m dying to read it.”

  “After the next draft.”

  “You are such a tease.”

  “There’s still a few problems.”

  “There’s always problems,” she said, touching her wife’s hand. “I’m sure it’s really good, Allegra. You are such a good writer.”

  “I don’t know,” she said wistfully.

  “Can you for once not minimize your talent?”

  “I don’t even know if I’m excited about it anymore.”

  “Here we go,” said Dusty, rolling her eyes.

  “Maybe I should just become a producer. Or an agent—”

  “If you become an agent, I will fucking kill you.”

  “But maybe I’m not a writer, Bunny Bear. Not a real one, anyway.”

  “You know, baby, we’re not real anythings until one day, we just . . . are. Plus, your hormones are totally going crazy. You’re pregnant, Allegra! In case you forgot.”

  “I know—and I’m so fucking grateful. I really am, Bunnikin. For everything.” She flipped again. “But if I’m not a writer or a whatever, is that what I’m going to be now? A mom? Is that what the Universe is saying? You know, that—that’s the only thing I can be?”

  “Oy,” said Dusty.

  “I’m going to be thirty-seven—”

  “And I’m staring down sixty!”

  “You are not staring down sixty, you’re fifty-three. I don’t know . . . I’m just starting to think maybe I took a wrong turn. I used to be such a good photographer—maybe I should have pursued that? And I have all these amazing ideas for design. For jewelry. I think I’m really gifted at that—”

  “Then go make jewelry!”

  “—and hats. I was reading this insane profile of Isabella Blow online—oh my God, Dusty, you have to read it, I am totally obsessed. There were all these pictures of her in these amazing Philip Treacy hats and I couldn’t believe how similar my shit was! I mean, I was drawing these outrageous hats when I was, like, twelve years old. And gloves! Oh my God, I was totally consumed with drawing hats and gloves! Do you think—do you think I should go back to that, Bunny? Do you think I should try to create a line of gloves and hats?”

  “If that’s your passion, babe.” She was kind of over it.

  “Or start taking pictures again? I get so crazy!”

  “Really?” said Dusty, affectionately ironic.

  “But maybe that’s what I should be: just a mom.”

  “Stop!”

  “Maybe I’ll find out that’s what I’m genius at. Being an amazing mom—”

  “I’ve always seen that in you, Leggy.”

  “—and that I won’t care about being anything else. Why shouldn’t that be enough?”

  “Nothing’s ever enough, babe: welcome to The Human Condition 101. Aw, sweetheart, I love you, but can we please find the frickin’ ‘off’ switch for your head? You are such a nut. You’re all over the place tonight.”

  “I know!” she said, as if snapping out of a trance. “And I didn’t even ask about your movie day! Bun-Bun,” she said, baby-talking, “I am so, so sorry. I’m such a spoiled girl! How was your day how was your day how was your day?”

  Dusty finished her glass of wine and Cheshire-smiled.

  “It was awesome. Love me this crazy movie. Bennett is so inspiring.”

  She effused about The Tonight Show set and dished about Liam. The server brought more wine. They this’d and that, and for the first time, let themselves talk about baby names. Then Dusty said, “Oh! This ginormous Swiss conglomerate wants me to create a fragrance!”

  “No!”

  “They’ve been after me for, like, frickin’ years. And Elise thinks it’s a really good time to pull the trigger. She literally said that—isn’t that such an Elise thing to say?”

  “Oh, pull it! Love that! Love me a celebrity fragrance.”

  “El said they’re kind of in the shitter—you know, for a while they were giving them to everyone. You could, like, be an extra on The Big Bang Theory and Walmart would give you your own scent.”

  “Amy Schumer should have one!”

  “Amy has enough for a while, thank you very much. Ellie said there was this backlash and it all kinda crashed. But she said that doesn’t affect me, ’cause the Swiss seem to think I’m bulletproof.”

  “Love her! Love Elise. Love me a bulletproof bunny. Oh, pull it! Pull the trigger.”

  “You could totally be involved in that.”

  “Ya think?”

  “Think? Sista, I know.” They were a little drunk, on top of having split a square of a cannabis chocolate bar before they left the house. “You are so creative—I totally wouldn’t do it without you. I think it could be amazing.”

  “I love you so much.”

  They kissed, then Dusty went for a pee.

  As she emerged from the toilet, a gal at the sink recognized her.

  “I just wanted to tell you how amazing you are,” she said, trembling. “I am such a huge fan.”

  “Thank you!” said Dusty.

  The star’s genuine warmth set the woman at ease. Another one came in while Dusty washed up. On her way to the stall, she said, “My sister’s son was a gaffer on Lone Wolf.”

  —

  Allegra’s day was full.

  Before lunch with Jeremy, she needed to drop by Samy’s Camera to pick up a Petzval lens, a Sony Cyber-shot RX100 II, and the beautiful Rolleiflex—a belated birthday gift from Dusty that she planned to use for a book about celebrities and their newborns. She wanted to cruise Maxfield, to check out the millinery. It was like a museum there, you n
ever knew what you’d find in those freakish vitrines. Everything was, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars . . . Then, if there was time, on to Barneys to suss out perfume bottles; she needed to be au fait with what Hermès, Margiela, Tom Ford, and the rest of whomever were up to. Tom was an old friend of Dusty’s and was at their wedding. Maybe email him? The idea was to start making sketches for the Swiss—“prototypes.” Kind of exciting! She had a five o’clock appointment with the midwife. Allegra wanted a home water birth and Dusty wasn’t thrilled.

  Jeremy was touched that she asked him along. Lately, for no real reason, he’d been feeling his outsiderness. Originally Dusty’s bestie, he gravitated to Allegra in the last few years—they clicked. He was puckish and hysterical, with a bent, formidable intellect that provoked and inspired. And tender too: a soft, squooshy center. All heart. What she respected most was how he’d somehow managed to stay soulful and sane through the carnage of his life. He was a rock star and a survivor, all good for the baby’s DNA. She aspired to be both.

  Born Maurie Wojnarowicz, he shot experimental shorts in college under the “nom de Fruit of the Loom” Jeremy Prokosch, Jack Palance’s character in Contempt (which he insisted on calling Le Mépris). In the nineties, he made an acclaimed documentary about Hemingway’s transgender son, Gigi. Right after it won the Audience Award at Sundance, his mom and twin sister got T-boned by a drunk. It took them a week to die, which they managed to do just hours apart. Jeremy cut his avant-bohemian Red Hook life loose and moved to L.A., officially abandoning Art. At thirty, he became the most powerful casting agent in the business; none of his friends could figure out exactly how that happened. Then he dropped out again, “decompensating” in David LaChapelle’s Maui guesthouse before reinventing himself as “Princess Liaison,” a bridge between financiers and art house auteurs. There was an old connection to Megan Ellison, which was how he got Annapurna involved with Sylvia & Marilyn. He put the deal together quickly and became one of eight executive producers.

  When he got the adoption bug a few years back, Dusty introduced him to Livia Lindström, the director of Hyacinth House. He knew the procedural hassles inherent in becoming a single gay parent but found the system—no fault of Hyacinth—to be sadistic “on the level of ISIS” and lost his stomach for the battle. When Allegra had the lightbulb idea of him being their sperm donor, Dusty felt dumb she hadn’t thought of it. In an earlier attempt that ended in miscarriage, the seed had been random and anonymous, and now she was superstitious; there was something so right and so healing about inviting Jeremy to join their mythology. They asked him to dinner at the house in Point Dume and were mildly stoned when they playfully sprung the offer. He looked stunned and began to yowl—literally fell to the floor and started to crawl as the caterwauling became a bellow that imploded into deviant, cough-wracked sobs that were so outlandishly exaggerated that they took them for cruel, campy hijinks. When they realized it was ugly-beautiful-real, they joined in, a marathon sob sisterfest toggling with tears like an out-of-control scene from some hoary chick flick.

  They became a family right then and there.

  Jeremy was on time for lunch at Soho House. He wore a tie, something she’d never seen before, and pulled a few wrapped gifts from his Bookmarc bag: Birth Without Violence, Water Birth: A Midwife’s Perspective, and one for coloring called Our Water Baby.

  Such sweetness! And so nervous he was, about meeting the midwife.

  “You’re killing me,” she said.

  “Has Bunny met her yet?”

  He was the only one who could get away with calling her that.

  “I haven’t met her yet,” said Allegra. “Why would Dusty have?”

  “I don’t know, the celeb thing? Like, ‘Hey! Where’s the celebrity!’”

  “Midwives aren’t like that.”

  “Everyone’s like that, honey.”

  “Not Khalsa. She’s super-spiritual.”

  “The more spiritual, the more starfucky.” He reached over and palmed her tummy. “Come on . . . kick for me! Kick! Kick! Who’s your daddy!”

  “She’s sleeping. She gets her kicks at night. Like her mother.”

  “Wait. Hey! I think she’s moving. Madonna’s moving!”

  “Do not call her that. Don’t’ even joke.”

  “Oh come on, wouldn’t that be so hilarious? ‘This is our daughter, Madonna.’ Or ‘Cher’!”

  “Or Liza-with-a-Z. What fucking generation are you?”

  “She can be Taylor Swift! Taylorswift—not Taylor but Taylorswift. One word! Even if it’s a boy.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Or ‘Spotify.’ Here, Spot! Here, Tidal! Or Andy-Cohen, one word! Cersei! Khaleesi! No! You know what we should do? Give it initials for a name.”

  “She is not an ‘it.’”

  “Like . . . ‘LGBT.’ I love it! ‘Meet our daughter, LGBTQ!’ LGBTQIA!”

  “Jeremy, stop!” she said, laughing.

  Allegra ordered the octopus appetizer and burrata. He asked for the flat-iron steak, rare, and a Cobb.

  “So. You gonna read my script?”

  “Of course I’m going to read it. But you know what has to happen first, Lego? I know it sounds crazy . . . but for me to read it, you actually have to give it to me. It needs to be physically or electronically in my possession.”

  “Oh fuck you.”

  “What’s it about again?”

  “Oh my God, you know what it’s about, Jeremy. The Children of God.”

  “Movies about cults are a tough sell, Lego. Cult movies don’t even become cult movies. It’s autobiographical?”

  “Parts.”

  “You do not want to be the new Brit Marling.”

  “I love Brit Marling, so fuck off.”

  “Wasn’t River Phoenix in Children of God?”

  “Yup.”

  “Didn’t River get molested by those people when he was, like, four?”

  “So he said.”

  “Wish I could hot-tub-time-machine back and interview him. I’d molest the fuck out of him.”

  “He might not be up for it.”

  “So, Lego—did you get laid in that cult? As a child? I mean, did you have hot child cult sex? Were you a love child of God?”

  “Not till I was six.”

  “I’m serious, though. Wasn’t it, like, policy with those people? Wasn’t, like, kid-fucking written into their bylaws?”

  “There was a lot of weird shit going down.”

  “And what about Joaquin?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is that how he got his scar? From getting slapped in the mouth by cult dicks?”

  “Jesus,” she said, both exasperated and annoyed.

  “Allegra! I just don’t think you fully appreciate that the Phoenixes were the Barrymores of child-love sex cults!”

  “The script is really good, Jeremy. And Dusty did say she would get it to Joaquin.”

  “Honey, I can get it to Joaquin. But it’s kind of been there, done that for him, no? I mean, he kind of covered that in The Master.”

  “That movie is so different from what I’m . . . I just didn’t—I didn’t ‘get’ The Master. I mean, Joaquin was amazing, always. I admired it but I just didn’t get it.”

  “Does Dusty want to be in it?”

  “She hasn’t read it yet. I’ve kind of been holding off.”

  “Clever strategy!” he said, sarcastically.

  “Did you know Rose McGowan was in it too?”

  “Children of God?”

  “Uh huh. She’s kind of talked about it publicly. Her dad was one of the heads of it? In Italy? They were really close. And I think she still kind of lives in Rome? We had a long conversation a few months ago, at a thing at the Hammer. I think she’d be into it.”

  “Rose is kind of amazing.”

 
“Love her, love Rose. Love her Instagram. She’s fuckin’ fearless.”

  “I really don’t think you need to cast actors based on their having actually been raised in the cult, Lego.”

  “I know,” she said. “It would be interesting, though. Kind of meta.”

  “Can you please not use that word? I hate that fucking word. No one uses it anymore and the people who do are pigs who should die. But you want to know what’s interesting? I’ll tell you what’s ‘interesting’—”

  He looked toward one of the couches at a man with a taut pink smiley face, frozen in a perpetual startle.

  “Emilio Estevez’s facework. Now, that’s interesting.”

  He left the booth to go say hello.

  —

  A man on his knees, with his head inside an oven—

  —the camera double for the Ted, as in Hughes.

  Standing beside him is Larissa, Dusty’s stand-in.

  Dead quiet as the D.P. lights the set. The enforced, always eerie pre-shot stillness lends the tableau vivant a slapstick formality: I Love Lucy meets Buñuel. The pants belonging to the man with the hidden torso are down, bunched up above the knees.

  The ass, in boxers.

  When Dusty arrives on the stage she goes straight to video village, where Bennett is watching his monitor. She clocks the kitchen burlesque and giggles. The director smiles in his soft-spoken way but stays focused on the TV. “Let’s try it with the pants up,” he says into the headset. Then, “Grieg, can you go close on Sylvia? Can I see what that looks like?”

  Larissa’s face fills the screen, eyes turned downward in repose of humility—saucy, mournful, implacable—the tempered genuflection of a lesser god, in obeisance to her off-camera elders: Kali, Durga, Shiva. Dusty is again entranced. That hooded, impossibly ineffable gaze stirs in her a mystically erotic, unbearable melancholy worthy of ten thousand lamentations. The effortless smile, the acquiescent miracle of a stop-motion rose rising up from the cracked soil of their industry, blooms in an anthropomorphic prayer that drives its beholder to despondent little ecstasies.

  The A.D. shouts, “First Team!”

  On Dusty’s way in, they cross paths. Larissa dares to say, “Nothin’ says lovin’ like hubby in the oven.”