Dead Stars (33 page)

She knew where they were, some were hidden, some always kept (somewhat) in the open, because Hooker liked to see them, hold them, for comfort, she loved them more than she ever loved her children, especially her daughter, who she saw fit to fuck over by taking kidporn & robbing without qualm.

Reeyonna felt nothing, why should she, eye for an eye, they were reparations, & their spoils could not even come
close
to making whole ReeRee's loss.
Mutherfuck that old stinkyass whore.
She found a soccer duffel bag from her closet & hooliganized Jacquie's makeup into it, writing
ThiefWHORE
in lipstick on the mirror like in a horror movie. Then she went to the special place they were hidden, a total of about 6 cameras & long lenses & battery packs, & she took them all.

CLEAN

[Bud]

The Mother Load

Naturally,

Bud followed ICM's lead & contacted the office of Rod Fulbright, David Simon's rep. In a two-week period, meetings were set, bumped, reset, and bumped again. Because both cancellations had been last minute, Fulbright's asst phoned
and
emailed.

The meeting was set for 8AM at Soho House. The phone rang at nine on the night before; when caller ID announced “C A A,” the burgeoning novelist jumped out of his skin, fearing the worst. In Bud's experience, a 3rd strike signaled the end of a meeting's life cycle. The good news was, the agency was confirming.

There was always the chance it could abort in the morning. Bud told himself that wasn't likely because of the earliness of the set hour—a bullshit rationale that still managed to provide feeble comfort.

. . .

His golf ball-size, precancerous prostate nearly had him under house arrest; it ruled over him like a despot, forcing him to piss every 20 minutes. He envied his mother because at least she was diapered & didn't have to get up 17 times in the middle of the night. No wonder he was chronically fatigued.

The urologist never suggested medication that might help (even Dolly was on Renessa), and for some reason Bud always forgot to ask. Seemingly, the only arrow in Dr. Deconcini's quiver was a technique called “the double void.” The maneuver entailed remaining at the urinal when you were done, &
willing
yourself to pee all over again. The first and only time he tried it was in a public restroom. As Bud stood idle, ruminating over his novel, his mother's money and his bladder, he eventually noticed a guy washing his hands a little too long, trying to catch Bud's eye in the mirror, like he was maybe looking for action.

He almost blew off Soho House, out of sheer exhaustion. Dolly's caregiver had a family emergency, and it was too late to find a replacement. Bud slept—or rather, didn't—on the fold-out couch in the living room. The baby monitor was stuck at an insanely loud pitch; putting cushions and pillows over it didn't much help. (He couldn't bring himself, morally, to shut it off.) Under the nonstop drone of Fox talking heads, he could hear Dolly farting and belching and muttering to herself. “They want me
dead
”—“Dirtycunt lying
bitch
”—“Then why don't you
go and fuck yourself
?” As he drifted off, she began to call out, at first shy & plaintive then insistent, imperious: “Bud? Bud . . . Bud?
Bud.
BUD!” When he asked with a shout what she wanted, Dolly's answer was always the same. In a pitiable Baby Jane voice, she cried, “I don't want to fall! I'm afraid, I'm afraid! They're all falling! Nancy Reagan! Betty White! Zsa Zsa! Hips are breaking, right and left, left and right!” He bellowed reassurances but she kept at it until he was forced to climb from the couch and go to her room. He'd tell her that she wasn't going to fall, that neither he nor her caregivers would
allow
it. Her mood instantly brightened, her wrinkleless face transforming to a sweet little girl's. Then she'd pass on a nugget or two from the tabloids he brought her each week.

“Who's the one on
Dancing With the Stars
? Not this year—the whore. The whore that was married to Hefner.”

“Ma, I don't know.”

“They threw her off . . . whenever it was. Why can't I remember her fucking
name
? Anyway, they say she
stinks
. In the magazine you brought. Her publicist said she has
bad b.o.
”

“Her publicist?”

“Not her publicist, her
stylist
. You know what I mean.”

“I don't watch that show.”

“Well you
should
. Kendra Wilkinson! I
knew
I'd remember. The whore with the cute little body. Letting herself be pawed at by that
old
, old man. Can you imagine? Well
I
can! I would have done the
exact same thing
. But first I would have had to get in line. I hope she got money out of it, she better have gotten
millions
. She's smart, I
admire
her—there's nothing wrong with being a whore, Bud! . . . and that little girl, who's that little girl? They said she doesn't like to wash—why can't I think of her name. Shit. What is it——
Reese Witherspoon
.”

“Reese Witherspoon was on
Dancing With the Stars
?”

“No! I was
reading
. In your magazine. Apparently she has an allergy to
soap,
if you know what I mean. That's me being nice. And Uma, Uma
Thurman
, remember her? It said she stinks
even more
. Than the others. But you know who they say is the stinkiest of them all? Guess.”

“I don't know. Who.”

“
Sarah Jessica Parker
. They said she's
foul
& I
believe
it.”

Dolly assiduously used a person's entire name, as a testimony to her mental acuity. She often recited out loud a random catechism of phone numbers, names/dates of holidays, & obscure family tree birthdays/wedding anniversaries—she wanted Bud (and the world, however small it'd become) to see that she was still
with
it.

“Bud, do you know who has fungus? On her fingernails?
Jennifer Aniston.
They're splitting right and left. I used to wait on women like that, I saw
everything
, in the dressing room at Neiman's. They were filthy under the arms and
everywhere else
. Anyone who has fungus on the fingers has it on the toes. O yes. You better believe if you have
finger
fungus, your hygiene
leaves something to be desired
. Because fungus doesn't come from out of the blue. And if you've got it on the
fingers
, you've got it on the
cunt
. These girls spend a fortune on waxing their holes, but they can't afford to buy a bar of soap? And her friend from
Friends—
what's-her-name who was married to the
kook—
she's got hairy feet.
Courteney Cox
. It says she's got hair on her toes, just like a man.”

Instead of counting sheep, Bud counted the money he'd acquire upon her death. In his fantasy, he was merciful—instead of breaking a hip in a fall and succumbing to pneumonia, Dolly died peacefully in her sleep.

She had doled out some of her fortune over the last few years, a thousand here, a thousand there, always on unpredictable occasions. He felt like a waiter getting a tip but knew better than to ask for more. Dolly withheld her dowry, still intent on marrying him off “to money.”

Dolly tried
marrying money
herself & failed
.
She regretted wasting her best years on Bud's father, a preening, narcissistic spendthrift. After the divorce, she confessed to Bud that she'd run a bit wild. She spent time in bars, and once brought Lloyd Bridges back to the apt for what she called a “c-hunt.” She had a thing for rich, black-out drunks. Hook-ups frequently took her to Vegas where the scenario included Dolly being given a few thousand in hundred-dollar chips to play with while her paramours shatpisspuked themselves in the honeymoon suite. At night, crawling into the alcoholic bed, she told them she lost everything at the tables; the chips were safe at the bottom of her purse. (If stray chips dribbled from their pockets while they were out cold and she scooped them up, well that was OK too.)
Go where the money is
was her most important slice of parental wisdom.
You should have married the Duchess of Alba.
85 years-old!
That's Hefner's age! If Kendra could do it, so can
YOU
. Do you want to know how old the groom was?
EXACTLY YOUR AGE.
She has palaces! She's so rich she doesn't have to kneel for the pope! She's allowed to ride a horse into the cathedral in Seville! You should have met her, Bud, why couldn't you have found a way to meet her? Because her husband's
HANDSOME
but he's faggy, he can't
HOLD A CANDLE,
he isn't
BUILT
like you. You should have met her & given her a good
FUCK,
you should have fucked her to death! Early death! Cause that's what
he's
planning, you better believe it!

He rocked himself to sleep, fantasizing what he was going to do with Dolly's money. He knew he wanted to spend a few days walking around with a big wad, just to see how it felt to have 20 or thirty-thousand in his pocket. His father used to walk around with a wad & Dolly
hated
it. Now Bud understood the man's motivation. He empathized . . . . . .

———————
BLASTED
awake by his mother at 2AM, her voice triple-amplified by the monitor, singing in her sleep

 

THE TEACHER TOLD HIS MOTHER

SHE'D TAKE HIM RIGHT IN HAND,

TEACH HIM A THING OR TWO!

LIKE HIS OLDER BROTHER

HE BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND,

LEARNING EVERYTHING

HE THOUGHT SHE KNEW . . . . . . . .

 

At a quarter to 4, awakened again––––––––

“Bud? Bud?
Bud?
Bud.
Bud?
Bud! BUD! Bud, I
need
you!”

He roused himself, practically stumbling into her room.

“Mom, what's wrong!”

“I need to
shit
,” she whispered. “That's what's wrong.”

It took 10 minutes to maneuver her onto the seat of the walker that was kept beside the bed for this very contingency. He told her to raise her feet up so he could wheel her to the powder room. When they reached the doorway, Dolly said she needed to stand & move herself to the toilet, on her own power. It didn't make much sense to Bud—it would have been easier just to push the walker past the tub to the bowl, but she wouldn't be swayed. “This is the way we do it! This is the way
Marta
said
to do it.”

When she reached her destination, he understood; much better that she was already standing. Dolly militantly barked orders—time was of the essence.

“Get rid of the walker!”

While she held tight to a diagonal safety bar on the wall, Bud removed the obstruction. She sighed, winced, & took a few pained breaths. He thought something might be wrong.

“Why are you wincing?”

“Because . . . because . . .
because I haven't had a shit in three days
, does that answer your question? Because if it doesn't,
I'll tell you again
.”

She gave him a hard stare, as if to poison his eyes. His stomach contracted then he let it go. She slo-mo pirouetted until she stood in front of the toilet facing him, barely covered by her stained, debris-splattered robe.

Bud averted his eyes in modesty & disgust.

“Now I hold the other bar, and you—
don't move! Why are you moving around?—listen!
What I want you to do is
pull the diaper down around my ankles
. Then I'll grab your shoulders & you'll
lower me down
. That's how Marta does it.”

Bud tried to lower it but there was some sort of tape on one side, and he had to fuss with it. He got it unstuck and began to push the diaper down with both hands as Dolly snapped, “Come on, come on! Don't be shy!”

Suddenly, she screamed. From his crouch, he looked up at her face, a mask of agony—he froze.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!”

On the fourth
Ow
, brown & yellow stool erupted from her anus, accompanied by a marching band of flatus. She began to lean backward; Bud reached around to brace her fall.

She hit the bowl with a muted
clunk
.

“Are you OK?”

She had the biggest smile on her face, & sang out:

“
Plop
plop,
fizz
fizz, O what a
relief
it is! Marta
said
I was due. She said, ‘You're
expecting
. You're going to have a
baby
.' I said, ‘Make it a little girl, will you? I already have a little boy—'”

He was winded & nauseous.

“Cry, Marta, & let slip the dogs of war!”

Another fusillade as she emptied her bowels again, & Bud stood, woozy. He felt the sharp sting of a pulled lower back. With ecstatic voice, Dolly picked the song up where it left off.

“All the kids to the teacher carried—candy & ice cream cones!—but who do ya think the teacher married?—
Wood'n
head
Puddin head
Jones!”

CLEAN

[Bud]

The Art of Fiction, Part Two

“As

you know, David wrote the novels
The Wire
and
Treme
.”

“They're novels? I mean, they were novels?” said Bud, flummoxed.

Michael Douglas was four tables away, having breakfast alone
.
The smell of his mother's shit was still in his nostrils.

“They weren't
book
novels, but David calls them—we
all
call them
novels
because of their dense narratives. And because of the
feeling
you have after you've watched them. It's indistinguishable from the feelings you have after reading a
novel
.”

Bud kicked himself for spacing on Xochilt's caveat. He wondered if David Simon was late, or if he was coming at all.

“They're pretty much regarded by critics as
literature
. Did you know David won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for
The Wire?
They basically created a new category—
The Novel as Filmed Drama
.” Bud didn't think Pulitzers were actually
won
, but why quibble? “David even did an ‘Art of Fiction' interview for the
Paris Review
. You know Richard Price, don't you? His work? He's an
amazing
writer. He won a National Book Award. Or maybe it was a Pulitzer. Richard called
The Wire
a ‘Russian novel'
*
—we
love
Richard, he wrote some of our best shows.
The London Review of Books
and
The New York Review of Books
have practically devoted
whole issues
to
The Wire.
I think if you sit down & watch all seven seasons
,
there is
no way
you would say at the end, ‘That was great
television
' or even ‘That was great
cable
television,' because
The Wire
is no more a TV show than it is a drama about police or about drug dealers or about Baltimore. David always says it's not about
any
of those things! People make
a serious mistake
when they try to
summarize
what
The Wire
is about. You know, put it in a pigeonhole. If a gang of professors at Harvard, Cambridge & Oxford are still trying to figure it out—did you know they teach
The Wire
in universities all over the world?—then I really don't think that a television critic, or even our viewers”—she speedily corrected herself—“our
readers
, are going to be able to nail.”

“Wow, no, I guess not.”

“The syllabus for the course Joyce Carol Oates teaches on
The Wire
at Princeton says that David's book has
darkly glinting Aeschylean moral textures
. Don't you think that's perfect?”

“Very, very accurate.”

“She says these
amazing
things about the show, even David doesn't understand some of the things she says! I shouldn't say that. Joyce is
beyond brilliant
, and so is David. I know that David got annoyed with her though—they're
crazygood friends
by the way
,
& he thinks she's
wonderful
—but David got a little peeved because she teaches a course on
Battlestar Galactica
, & tells her students that she thinks it's a ‘sy-fy
Aeneid
.' David thought that was just a
little
over the top.”

“Yeah. Just a little!”

“David thought the essay about
Mad Men
was crazy too. It talked about Don Draper's secret past creating
a real dramatic crisis in the Aristotelian sense
and
conflict with an elegantly Sophoclean geometry
.
*
David said, Get over yourself!”

“How many have you seen?”

“
The Wire?
All of them,” he lied. “Big fan from early on.”

“Have you seen
Treme
?”

“
Love
it.”

“
Treme
's a really good
book
but I'm
emotionally
closer to
The Wire
because they were only in their 2nd season when I started interning for David.”

“Wow. What an amazing opportunity.”

“I'll send you the pilot. Toni Morrison's become a
very serious
fan. She is amazing.”

“Of
Treme
?”

“Of
Treme
AND
The Wire
. She came to
The Wire
late—her friend Fran Lebowitz turned her on—Fran's a
huge
fan of
The Wire
. She was going to write something for us but for some reason it didn't happen. Though I guess Fran not writing something isn't so surprising!”

She arched her neck Michael Douglas's way.

“He looks
so great
. Amazing
man,
amazing
life
.” Back to Bud. “Do you know Mike Schur?”

“Uhm, I don't
think
so,” Bud said, tentatively.

“He's a showrunner—
The Office
and
Parks&Recreation
.”

“O sure! We've met.”

“Mike said he wished he'd created
The Wire
. Mike said
The Wire
was Shakespearean.”

“Wow.”

Bud wanted to make points, & wondered if now was a good time to bring up Lorrie Moore's essay on
Friday Night Lights
from
The New York Review of Books
, wherein she called
The Wire
a “visual novel.”
*

“Did you know John Updike was watching
The Wire
when he died?”

“Wow. Incredible. Uhm . . . what about
Mad Men
?”

She went cold.

“What about it?”

“I was just wondering what David calls
Mad Men
. I mean, is it, does he think of it as a book?”

“You're not joking?”

“No—I'm just trying to get a flavor of . . .”

“
Mad Men
is absolutely
not
a book—a novel.
Mad Men
is more like a
novelization—
no. Wait. I shouldn't even say
that
, because
David
is the only one who is writing novels for television.
Mad Men
is more like a . . .
cartoon,
a
manga
.
Mad Manga!
But
please
, if you meet—when you meet David, please don't talk about
Mad Men
.”

“My agent said David was developing—is developing—a new . . . a new
novel
about Hollywood.”

“Yes! That's why he wanted to talk to you. He
loved
the little book of short stories you did about Hollywood.”

“He read that?”

“
Very
much.”

“I'm flattered.”

“When did you write that?”

“Probably about 25 years ago.”

“David thought they were more a
novella
than a book of short stories.
But not a novel.
He wanted to know if there were any more you've written.”

“O yeah!” he lied. “A bunch. But I've really been focusing the last few years on, well, I guess you'd call it a
book
.”

“Taking place in Hollywood?”

It sounded like that was what she wanted to hear—that he was working on a collection of “Hollywood” stories—so Bud decided to go with the flow. They'd apparently reached the meat of the interview.

“Yes! I was
calling
it a novel, but I guess it's not, really—not the kind David writes! Which are so layered & . . . well, Sophoclean! And
wonderful
. Would you excuse me a second?”

On his way to execute the tricky
Double Void
gambit
,
Bud was intercepted by Michael Tolkin.

They were high school chums who hadn't seen each other in years. Tolkin wrote movie scripts for seven figures (& dabbled in cable), and was an acclaimed novelist to boot. He had the sort of career Bud wanted—the respect and acclaim of the Industry
and
the book critics as well. Bud had long felt a rivalry there, which of course his old friend would have known nothing about.

Michael was also the ostensible instigator behind the still vague David Simon affair.

Bud embraced him, but Michael was in a hurry; a handshake probably would have been better.

“I'm right in the middle of the David Simon meeting! Hey, thank you for that—I was going to get your number from CAA, so I could take you to dinner.”

“I'm late, Bud, so I don't have time to talk, we can talk later. But here's what's happening: David's doing a show about Hollywood, I may or may not be involved. It's scripted improv. He wants it to feel like
The Wire
, whatever
that
means, I
hate
it when people start talking about what shit should
feel
like, you know? I remembered those great short stories you wrote, and I was telling him about them, how funny and moving they were, & he just
jumped
on it. David wants there to be a protagonist like—like the one you wrote about in your book. A down & out screenwriter, maybe addicted to narcotics or porn. I don't know what David's thinking—
nobody
does!—we didn't talk all that much. My deal isn't even in place. I'm only telling
you
this because, & I
love
the guy, but David's a
writer
, what more can I say, that's what writers
do
, we steal from the best. And I
do
think he's genuinely interested in
listening
, you know, hearing
stories
about the bottomfeeders in the business. I only brought your name up as an example of someone who really
captured
, who
knew
those kind—that kind of character down to his
soul
. But I'm not so sure, I don't think he'd ever, I shouldn't say
ever
, I just don't think he's looking for you to write something for him for his
show
, to be in on the
ground floor
. And I'm telling you this because I don't think you should—Bud, you do what you
want
, you're a big boy—I just don't think you should be giving your
stories
away.”

“That's fine, Michael. It's fine. It's all good.”

“Well,
I'm
not so happy about it. Is he in there?”

“No. His development gal.”

“
Do not tell her any stories about Hollywood.
You know, I said to him, either talk to Bud as a peer & potential writer on the show or don't talk to him at all. Jesus, David! ‘The art of storytelling is reaching its end because truth and wisdom are dying'—Walter Benjamin said it, I didn't! He also said that every work of art is an uncommitted crime. Maybe that was Adorno.”

“Don't even worry about it, I can handle myself.”

“Bud, I gotta go.”

“Hey, remember when you lived in that apt on Fountain? Where Carl Gottlieb & Sela Ward used to live?”

“The La Fontaine! That was 30 years ago.”

“Where are you living now?”

“Wendy and I have a house in Laughlin Park, but we spend most of our time in Carpenteria. And I never gave up my seedy little office in Malibu. We need to downsize—our girls are in college. You? Got any kids?”

“No.”

“And you're living . . .”

Bud said “Hancock Park” instead of “with my mother.”

Tolkin broke away. “I'll call the end of the week, I want to put you in touch with someone.”

“Great! Hey, who ya meetin' in there?”

What's a little
gauche
between old friends?

“Michael Douglas. I wrote the movie he's about to shoot, & he's got ‘actor questions.' Ugh. Good guy, though. See you, Bud.”

. . .

Tolkin called like he said he would. He felt bad about being inadvertently involved in Bud's “set up,” & gave him a hot tip.

He told Bud that the company producing the Michael Douglas movie was relatively new, but already had a few hits under its belt. It was run by a kid named Brando—nice kid—the son of a billionaire. Michael said that Ooh Baby Baby
*
was practically “giving away” blind script deals, “which in this climate is unusual, to say the least.” He told Bud that he'd already spoken to Brando about him.

“They should be calling you soon. I know you take jobs to make your monthly nut,” he added thoughtfully.

Tolkin was a
mensch
. He would certainly have been aware of what terrible straits Bud was in—for years now—yet was handling the situation, such as it was, with enormous sensitivity. Bud felt awful for having had a moment's resentment toward the man who'd floated back into his life in the form of a fairy godfather, spirit guide and overall ministering angel.

“Do I need to come in with a pitch?” said Bud.

That hollow feeling began taking over, just like it used to. The despair of knowing that you didn't have what it took, that a beggar could never be a nobleman.

“No! Less is definitely more. Brando listens to me, & I said you were Charlie Kaufman before
Charlie
was Charlie Kaufman. He's
excited
. Just take a general meeting. Brando will pitch to
you
.”