Hidden Bodies (45 page)

“I think we all need a moment of silence,” I say.

It’s the right move and I bow my head and everyone does what I do. I have never understood why an Armani suit should cost so much money until now, as I stand here anticipating, trying not
to stare at Reese Witherspoon, and readying my pages. I take the mic. “Good afternoon,” I begin. “My name is Joe Goldberg and I am so blessed to know the Quinns, my surrogate
family.”

I eulogize the
fuck
out of Forty Athol Quinn and it’s lucky that I got a head start when I thought he had drowned in the desert. It had to be altered because of his freak end, but
the rewrite is good. Great even and I should have a job writing eulogies. The best ones celebrate the person’s potential; they emphasize that person’s unique contribution to society. I
talk about Forty calling me Old Sport the very first time we met.

My audience is loving this and I seize this opportunity to educate them. I tell them about one of my favorite books and I’m sure most of them haven’t read it because most of these
people focus their energies on reading fictional narratives. But there’s important nonfiction out there that’s useful at a time like this, particularly for Forty Quinn.

“The book is called
Life’s Dominion
,” I begin. “And it poses a philosophical question. Anyone could stand up here and speak to Forty’s charming wit, his
burgeoning brilliance, his generosity, his swagger, his madras shorts and madcap sense of adventure, his extensive knowledge of film and his idealist sense of commitment. We’ve seen his
smile, his joy,” I say, pointing at the wall where his life just played out. “But what you can’t see in those pictures is Forty’s philosophy about life itself, and this is
where I think I can best pay tribute to him by telling you about
Life’s Dominion.
” I take a deliberate, staged breath. “The book poses a question we face every day, all
day. What is the right choice? A bus is packed with adults, all of whom have lived, all of whom have mortgages and children, attachments. And there is a stroller crossing the street. The bus can
brake and go off the cliff and everyone dies. Or the bus can run over the stroller and the child goes.”

Amy Adams tilts her head. Joaq is rapt. “Ronald Dworkin argued that there is no universal right or wrong because it’s valid to say that life is valued based upon what one has already
done. But it’s also possible to say that life can’t be qualified, that the baby might have gone on to cure cancer, to win an Oscar.” I know my crowd. I see people whispering,
wondering who I am. “Forty Quinn was a unique man. He was the baby in the stroller, the one with everything ahead of him, the
potential
we all know about, these scripts he sold,
after working
so
hard for
so many years
to forge connections and get better. He earned his success and it would be remiss to say that anything was handed to him because he grew up
running around here,” I say. Amy Adams nods.

“Quinns give. And Forty gave us his stories, the ones he tried so hard to tell, year after year.” I shake my head. Megan Fox uncrosses her legs. She wants me. “I mention
Life’s Dominion
and Ronald Dworkin because something you might not have known about Forty Quinn was how much he read, how much he wrote, how passionate he was about learning.”
That’s the thing about the charade of love; nobody gets mad when you don’t back up your lofty statements about someone’s triumphant life with tangible facts. I look at Love and
she smiles. She likes this story I’m telling because the truth would be terrible. “He told me how much he learned from
Life’s Dominion
shortly before . . .” I trail
off.

Reese wipes her eyes and Love’s tears are soaking her dad’s jacket.

“Let me say what we all know. Forty was a giant. He was a force. He was one of the people on the bus, one of us, a person with deep ties in the community, a person who spread his joy
everywhere he went. Mrs. Quinn, if you’ll cover your ears, I can tell you how much they loved him at Taco Bell.” I get laughs through tears and I wait for my silence. “Very few
people are able to straddle those quadrants of life. Forty is the only person I’ve ever known who could do that. He could play with toys, he could make you feel like the best was yet to come,
and he could make you feel like what you’d done was worth everything.”

I tear up and then I am closing. “Forty Quinn called me The Professor, but Forty Quinn was my professor.” Joaq smiles. We are going to be friends.

“Once I asked Forty what it was like to grow up with so much privilege. He told me that it was hard. He told me that when you have parents who embody the best of human love, parents who
love each other more as time passes, who live to love, that it was hard to be constantly misunderstood by people who assumed that his wealth was purely financial. ‘The thing about my
parents,’ he said, ‘is they could have been working in the Pantry, behind the register, in the deli, and they would have provided Love and me with just as much love.’” I
pause. Love is sobbing now. Reese Witherspoon is leaning forward and her agent husband has an arm around her. I fucking
win
. “Forty Quinn knew that love is all there is; everything
else is transient, impermanent. If he had made it across that street, I can guarantee you that he would have gotten out of the jaywalking ticket. You could not say no to Forty Quinn. He was the
other kind of yes man, the kind who makes us all want to say
yes.
Rest in peace, brother.”

When I return to Love, she transfers her trembling body from her father’s embrace to mine. This is
The Godfather
and we spill out into a ballroom with bottles of
Veuve
everywhere and gigantic pictures of Forty that are projected onto the walls, changing. He is young, he is old but either way, he is dead.
Yes!

Everyone I’ve ever wanted to meet is here and they want to meet
me
and Reese Witherspoon wants to hug me—yeah, she does—and her husband wants to talk to me and
Joaq
wants to get a drink and Love is proud of her book-selling boyfriend, crushed and destroyed, but proud.

Barry Stein takes me aside. “Do you like cigars?” he asks.

“Absolutely,” I say, and he will be useful in my negotiations with Megan Ellison. I will get Stein to offer to buy my shit and then turn around and make deals with
ME.
For
now, it starts with friendship. Forty is right; I won’t burn bridges. And first, I have to build them. I have to walk out onto the lawn and watch Barry Stein wrestle with his bowtie and
search for a polite way to segue into business talk, as if there is a polite way to segue into business talk.

He chews his cigar. He spits. “You know,” he says. “Forty and I, we kicked some ideas around lately. You and I, I think we should talk.”

I nod. “Absolutely.”

“I think his work should not die with him.”

“Absolutely.”

I smoke a cigar and
Barry
wants me to call his office and set up a meeting. Inside, the food is incredible. Kate Hudson is hugging me. There are crab cakes and antipasto and drinks that
never stop, gimlets and steak tips that melt and cold chunks of lobster. Forty’s favorite songs play, most of them about the fucking drugs that almost killed him but didn’t kill him and
George Clooney shakes my hand—
Good speech, kid
—and the greatest part of all of this is the beautiful truth of it.

I killed it with my speech and I did not kill Forty Quinn.

It’s silly to play games, to wonder how he might have lived. What was Julie Santos even doing in Beverly Hills? What if she had continued to go straight on Santa Monica, all the way to the
Pacific? It’s like in
Match Point
with the tennis ball and then later with the ring. All of life is slightly dependent on magic. So is death. If his body had been found in the
spring, if his skin had started to disintegrate, his shit staining the hot water, his body stuffed with cocaine, well, the funeral would be different. I mean, I would have killed it and found a way
to bring the light, but it would have been a darker day. Thank God, if there is one, for Julie Santos and her left-hand turn.

“Joe,” she says, and she is Susan Sarandon. She hugs me. She pulls away. “I just needed to do that.”

I hope Reese saw and I hope Amy saw but what really matters the most is that Love saw. She wraps her arm around me. “You did so good,” Love says. “Do you even know?”

It’s not the time for me to brag so I am humble, supportive, stroking her arm and kissing the top of her head and she steps away, family obligations.

People like Forty Quinn are their own worst enemies, increasing the odds of an untimely death by chugging codeine, and with his death, I am liberated. I can go anywhere I want and I wander into
the lobby, the pink and green of it all, freedom. I sit on a circular sofa and Love finds me. She plants herself on my lap. She strokes my hair. “Let’s stay at the Aisles
tonight,” she says. “I don’t want to stay here. I want my own bed.”

When a girl wants her own bed and she wants you in it, this is how you know it’s real. “Whatever you want,” I say, and I will give it four weeks until I tell her that I’m
inspired by Forty’s work, that I think I’d like to try writing something on my own.

I put my hand on her stomach. Forty can’t take this moment away, the quiet love in this ballroom and the inaudible sound of a new heart beating.

I
wake up early. Happy. I’m still high on the funeral, on Kate’s ass, Reese’s eyes, Amy’s intensity, my
baby
. And I
missed it here at the Aisles, the tennis court, the sand and the grass forever mixing, never melding. I’m a runner now and the beach looks different to me, useful. It’s my track. And
what a great feeling it is to revisit the puzzle of your life and say,
ah. I know what that beach is there for. It’s there for me.

My body doesn’t want to sleep. I think it has
something to do with all the change. The last time I was here, I killed Delilah. Love had no idea who I was, but she wanted to find out so she invited me to go to the film set with her. She stood
on that beach and watched me coming in on the Donzi and she did not know where I had been or why I had been out there. The miracle of life, of the girl in my bed; she loves me more now than she did
then. And now there is so much new love in my life, meetings and opportunities and purpose. I will take care of Love. I will honor Forty’s legacy and see his projects to fruition. I will be
strong for my child and I will protect myself.

I am too happy to be still and Love is like Sleeping Beauty. Her twin is dead; this will take a while. I kiss her perfect little forehead and I put on pink shorts with whales all over them and I
put on a T-shirt and I grab my sunglasses and I leave Love’s room. I hum “Thunder Road” and I walk through the house that Forty will never walk through again—it’s
real!—and I smile.

Outside I walk down the path, barefoot on the sandy grass, the grassy sand. I hear the waves and they are slow and lazy and when I reach the beach, I am startled because there is a mist as dense
as snow, a Stephen King kind of mist, thick and white. Suddenly I am a kid again and monsters could live in this mist and how surreal it is to hear the water but not be able to see it.

I remember feeling this happy once, when I was a kid. Snow covered the streets and they were perfect and white, as if the world had been coated in vanilla ice cream. My mom said school was
canceled and I could go outside. I’d seen snow before, but there was something about the snow that day. It was early, before the people would come and destroy it all, and I clomped outside
and it was up to my knees and I was the first one to walk in it and I was so fucking
happy
to be first, to see my footprints, giant and deep, to know that I had all day, that there would
be no school, no homework. There is magic in a snow day and how strange it must be to grow up in Southern California without that possibility. It will be my first question for Love when she wakes
up.

I walk into the mist toward the water and I hear a dog barking.
Boots and Puppies.
I whistle. The dog barks. He sounds afraid. “It’s okay,” I call out. “Come
here boy.”

But he only mews, sounding almost like a kitten. “Hey, little guy, it’s okay.” I pat the sand. I am reminded of the puppy in
Single White Female
that won’t run
to Jennifer Jason Leigh, and then she kills the puppy because it didn’t love her. And then I think of Forty murdering Roosevelt, Love’s version, and Love crying when their parents gave
Boots away, Forty’s version. There really is no such thing as the truth but there is such thing as happiness, and I can picture the amazed look on Love’s face if I brought her home this
dog.

Dogs like authority, so I command. “All right, get over there, pup. Right now.” But the whimpering sounds farther away. I start running, making my way through the swirling white, and
fifteen yards in I stumble and stub my toe.
Fuck.
Sand is harder than you think.

“Would you just come here already? I’m not gonna hurt you!” I keep going and the puppy is still crying out there, somewhere
.
“It’s okay! I’m
here.”

The ocean ebbs and flows beyond the fog and I hear the dog again, and I crouch. I want to be prepared to hug him, to get coated in puppy slobber, to be loved—this is why people in Franklin
Village keep dogs—and I think I see him. He is as white as the mist, with a little black mouth and black eyes and a pink tongue coming into focus. The dog is panting, running, and I wonder
what we’ll call him. He looks like a Charlie or a Cubby or a George. I whistle to him. He ignores me. Fucker.

I laugh. What is wrong with me? It’s a puppy. It’s not a fucker. But then, maybe it is. Babies can be assholes and puppies can be fuckers. But you accept the risk when you make a
baby, when you adopt a dog. I think I’ll write something about an asshole baby and a fucker puppy and it will be like one of those old-school
Peanuts
cartoons, where you can’t
hear what the adults are saying because it’s all just sonic wonking.