Between the Bridge and the River (2 page)

He didn’t wonder why he had attacked Willie, he sort of knew. He had sensed that Fraser and he himself were in danger, that if Willie had gotten away with taking off Fraser’s clothes, that somehow things would have gotten worse and that he would be implicated too.

He had reacted instinctively in the presence of a predator.

Willie was later convicted of the rape of an eleven-year-old girl. He was sentenced to six years in a young offenders’ institution, where eventually he hung himself in his cell.

The girl, Susan Bell, grew up to be the well-respected art critic on the
Glasgow Herald
. She had, predictably, trouble in her relationships with men and suffered periodically from deep depressions. At thirty-eight years old she finally entered psychotherapy and began to get some relief.

After two hours Fraser awoke feeling utterly miserable and sick. George told him what had happened and the boys were quiet on the long walk home.

George had been forced into a situation he didn’t want by Fraser’s stupidity and he resented that. Fraser was embarrassed and blamed George for his discomfort.

And it came to pass that the innocents were cast out of paradise.

Although they were always polite and they palled around for a few years to come, their friendship pretty much ended on that day.

IN THE BEGINNING
, Saul took the worst of it, and in the end, Saul also took the worst of it. Leon was lucky, one lucky son of a bitch. An absolutely crazy bitch.

Leon always thought that his spectacular singing voice and incredible vocal timing were gifts from God. Sometimes, in an orthodox groove, maybe even from G-d. Praise God, Praise Jesus, Amen, Hallelujah, my friends, please send your donations to the number on the screen.

Saul, his younger brother, was less prone to preaching. He was the mystic, the brains, and plain grateful to be alive. He just ate, sat in his chair, and had hookers masturbate in front of him. He couldn’t touch them anymore. Couldn’t even jerk himself off anymore, no point anyway. Fuckin dead from the neck down, had to have staff just to wipe his ass.

He could count money, though, he still got a little solace out of that.

They weren’t Jewish (Mom’s family were Italian, originally from Rome) but she was a great admirer of the late Sammy Davis Jr. If Sammy had converted to Judaism, then surely there must be something in it. She gave the boys their names because she figured they would be helpful if the boys ever ended up in show business like their fathers.

Sophie, Saul and Leon’s mother, had been a showgirl at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas toward the end of an era when the Rat Pack were fatter and drunker and already halfway dead. Frankie banged her in the penthouse suite and even gave her a bracelet. “To Sophie, love Frank.” She hocked it immediately.

Ring a ding ding.

Sophie thought about Frank’s cock sometimes, how famous it was. Not as famous as his voice, sure, but famous in cock terms. Most cocks were seen by only a handful of people: Mom, Dad, creepy uncle, priest, bunkmates, and lovers. Frank’s cock had been seen by thousands of showgirls. It was a well-known cock; more than well known, it was a star. Jesus, Frank’s cock probably had anecdotes.

Sophie thought how ordinary Frank’s cock looked, thought about the famous women it had been inside. (She fleetingly compared her pussy to Ava’s but quickly came to the conclusion that that was a way to make her feel even more inferior. Ava’s would be warmer, sexier.)

Like many of her sex, Sophie was fiercely competitive with other women, working on the crackpot theory that if she could be better in some way, men would like her more, respect her. Make her happy. She never cottoned on that the men she was attracted to, the men who found her attractive, didn’t like women.

They liked variety. And fucking.

She never thought about Ava’s dotage and death. She never thought how booze-sodden and miserable Ava had been at the end, hacking and shaking with DTs as she sat on the precious, much-envied cooze, now as dry and unused as an old hymnbook.

Sophie was too busy thinking about herself. Which was a major contributory factor in Leon’s narcissism and Saul’s staggering obesity.

By the time he was thirty, Leon had been variously diagnosed by a wide array of sources as talented, misogynistic, gay, straight, bi, a genius, a moron, sexy, shut-down, crazy, and cute. He was charismatic.

By the time Saul was thirty, he had been described as schizophrenic, manic depressive, bipolar, alcoholic, addictive, ADD, ADHD, sociopathic, deviant, sinful, and disgusting. He also weighed over three hundred pounds. He had a big appetite, it damn near killed him.

Their daddies weren’t around to keep an eye on them.

They knew that the only person watching them was God. They knew God was on their side.

God saved them from their mother, Hollywood, and the killer ducks. What also saved Leon was his mother’s belief that he was Frank’s kid, and that if she harmed him in any way, Frank would somehow find out and would send the boys round, but Frank didn’t even know Leon existed. It was never proven he was Frank’s anyway.

There had been no DNA testing, no paternity suits. She was terrified of Frank being angry (she told him she was on the Pill), that he’d set his friends on her. That’s why she moved back to Atlanta.

Leon had that wonderful voice and that incredible timing, so his mother steered clear of him. His mother concentrated on Saul, who was the result of a knee-trembler with Peter Lawford in the parking lot of “Love-it’s” Frozen Custard. No one was afraid of that English pansy. He had lovely hands, though.

Munchausen by Proxy, the psychiatrist called it in court. The judge, a fat, old, pompous idiot used to dealing with drunks and winos, made him explain. Munchausen by Proxy was a condition that Sophie had: It meant she harmed Saul to get attention for herself. If he had mysterious stomach upsets (a little rat poison in his Cheerios) or strange episodes at school (LSD on rye with Oscar), then she would be a martyr. Long suffering, single parent, victim.

Special.

Helped.

This was before everyone in America became a victim.

The judge was appalled. This floozy had gone from Atlanta to Las Vegas and returned with two illegitimate children. Now she was physically hurting one of them and driving both of them crazy. He ordered Sophie placed in a mental institution and placed the boys in the custody of the state.

Saul was dismayed. He had resigned himself to the life of a gastrointestinally challenged mystic (LSD and rat poison), it was his identity, and now a court-ordered shrink told him he wasn’t who he
thought he was, that his mom was a fruitcake. He couldn’t accept that, so he set out to become what he thought he was, as many do.

Leon felt guilty because Mom had gotten into trouble. Sophie died in the asylum. She was sitting on a deck chair in the grounds when she was stung by a bumblebee and had a massive allergic reaction. She had been slammed to the back teeth on Thorazine and no one even knew she was dead until it was time for round up and medicate. No one had noticed her. Most of the nurses had been in a meeting in the main building about the need for more nurses, as the hospital was hopelessly understaffed.

The boys lived in a state orphanage until their teens, then they ran away together.

The Lanky Crooner and Fat Rasputin in their own little road movie.

The Road to God.

THE PROBLEM WITH SUICIDE
is that it seems so flamboyant. It’s camp. You have to be a bit of a drama queen to ever seriously consider it. Of course, George could make it look like an accident but that was inherently dishonest and he didn’t want his last act on Earth to be a lie. He was very proud of how honest he was. He was glad that he had been a good man in life. He had been decent. A good egg.

Although maybe he hadn’t been so good after all. Maybe that’s what this was about. Maybe this was punishment. God knows he had a secret or three. Honest at work, honest in business, but not honest at home.

No, that’s crazy thinking, just being emotional—understandable but not true. You could make yourself nuts that way.

He wasn’t any worse than anyone else. Come on, he was a good man.

Although he wasn’t that way to ward off juju. He wasn’t a worker bee for Jesus. It wasn’t that he wanted to store up karma for just such an occasion, like most people. He wasn’t putting a little bit by for his miracle.

It was just his nature. Being a decent man just came naturally to him, it wasn’t a struggle.

Consequently he had never really struggled. He hadn’t had any practice, so he was in no condition for a lengthy, dramatic, painful fight that he was predestined to lose. He hadn’t built any resistance.

He had worked hard and applied himself but he had never fought any inner demons. He didn’t have any.

He did now.

A little dark inner demon sitting on his lungs.

Two times two is four, four times four is sixteen . . .

God, they grow so fast, don’t they?

You have no fucking idea.

He didn’t say that, of course.

No point in being rude just because you were dying. It’s not as if it was going to change anything.

So he kissed Sheila and Nancy and patted Bruno and went out the door at half past eight as always, but when he got to the service station he filled the tank and took a left onto the M73 south.

George was never going to work again.

Fraser had a problem.

Fraser’s problem was that he wanted people who didn’t know him to like him, that’s what made him bitter and desperate. When a person he didn’t know didn’t like him, as will happen eventually to anyone, he couldn’t take it.

It made him furious.

Margaret, his agent, thought this was an example of just how arrogant and power crazy he really was.

“It’s the nature of fame,” she reassured him for the seven hundredth time. “Christ, Fraser! Some people didn’t even like Jesus. He got killed for being famous. At least nowadays they just print a photograph of you looking fat in a supermarket.”

Fraser would never discuss Jesus with Margaret.

“I won’t discuss Jesus with you, Margaret,” he told her. “It’s inappropriate. You’re an agent, which means you are in the employ of the Earl of Hell.”

Margaret didn’t really like Fraser but she thought she did. She tricked herself into believing he was complicated and artistic. That he was difficult because he was talented. She thought of herself as long-suffering and kind, which she was, as long as the money was coming in. Like most sharks, Margaret liked to think of herself as a victim of the cruel sea.

Becoming a television evangelist is not something that Fraser had even thought about before it happened to him. He had never been particularly religious, having been raised a Protestant. As a child he had gone to church with the other children at Christmastime and Easter and he had joined in as the other smelly little Scottish chubsters had mumbled their way through dreary English Victorian hymns that they had been forced to learn by Mrs. Hume, the highly caffeinated music teacher with the one vibrating eye.

Mrs. Hume’s vibrating eye was a source of wonder to all the ten-year-olds in her charge. It danced from side to side as if she were watching a high-speed game of tennis on a very small court. The eye went faster the angrier she got, and of course, teaching a class of Scottish children how to sing “In the Bleak Midwinter” would make anyone tense.

George said that Mrs. Hume’s eye vibrated because she was a witch.

Mrs. Hume spent her appendix years in a Kafkaesque prefab nursing home in Airdrie, watching TV all day and waiting for death to remember her. She became one of Fraser’s biggest fans, watched his show every day. She even sent him a letter, a drooling warble of sycophancy on Hallmark pink.

She received a form letter and a head shot of Fraser looking pious and concerned in one of his trademark jumpers. One of the nurses Blu-Tacked it to the wall next to her bed and Fraser’s face was the last thing she saw on this Earth. Her heart filled with love as the eye slowly ticked to a stop.

Neither one of them was aware of their history. She did not remember he was the tubby little fart-machine she had belted with a leather tawse in 1972 and he did not remember her at all.

Margaret dealt with his fan mail. Such as it was. The host of a five-minute religious segment late at night on Scottish Television was hardly in the Tom Jones league. His fans were gay men and old ladies. The old ladies loved his pithy wee stories that tried to put a positive spin on everything and the gays loved his jumpers, which ofttimes were sent in by the old ladies, who had knitted them themselves. After a while it became quite a craze among certain types of flamboyant Scottish homosexual men to knit jumpers and send them in to see if Fraser would wear them.

Fraser’s photograph hung in gay bars.

He didn’t know it but he was yet another unwitting icon.

Today his jumper had a creamy seagull with a red beak and a small black eye hovering fluffily over a pea-green sea. An inexplicable triangular pink mountain in the background a secret sign from the Knitter to the Queer Illuminati. The wardrobe lady, Daisy, had picked it out. Her long years of experience told her that it would have a high irritability and itchiness factor under the studio lights.

“Look at me. Who makes these things? I feel like a child’s drawing.”

Margaret sighed. “You need to do everything to keep your loyal viewers. In fact, keep it on for the meeting after the taping. It’ll remind them of your cult status.”

“What meeting?”

“With Gus, head of programming. It’s renegotiation time. We’re asking for a raise.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.”

Fraser had a fantastic capacity for forgetting. It was a skill he had developed as a teenager in order to better lie to the teachers.

“Who else was there, boy?”

“I don’t remember, sir.”

“Right, boy, hands out.”

But being physically abused by a well-equipped adult is better than being called a rat and despised by your fellow acne sufferers.