I'll Let You Go (17 page)

“It was just a funny concept. I mean, come on, Trinnie, don't you think it's funny? Isn't that your style of black comedy? Having the school you attended as a child named after you? Marcie said—” He swiveled to include Bluey. “Mother, do you remember Marcie Millard?”

“A little red thing? Like our Lucille? Oh yes. A go-getter! Father an
ophthalmologist
, no?”

“Mother! I'm shocked you remember,” said Trinnie.

Louis nodded enthusiastically while chewing the veal. Such demonstrations of his wife's mental alacrity comforted—he hoarded them as evidence to present at some future sanity trial.

“Wasn't he a councilman?” asked Dodd.

“The
mayor
,” said Trinnie. Then, in an aside to Ralph: “Beverly Hills used to be very Andy of Mayberry. The family eye doctor was actually the mayor.”

“He died,” said Bluey, her brow crinkling in concern. “Didn't he? Didn't the Millard man pass away?”

Louis chuffed, thinking it a tad early in the evening for obits.

“Yes,” said Dodd. “While jogging. One of the very first to be claimed by the craze.”

Ralph spoke up. “Aren't the Beverly Hills schools completely Iranian now?”

“Well,” said Dodd, “Marcie showed me a PTA flyer that was printed in Farsi, Korean, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish. She said the children of the district came from fifty-seven countries and speak forty-six languages.”

“You don't see that on
Dawson's Creek
, do you?” said Ralph. “Or is that show not even on anymore?” The flâneur was emboldened by his first dinner
en famille—
and loaded for bearish faux pas. “You don't see it in the teen masturbation flicks: no Muslims or Bahai's shagging apple pie, no
sir
. They're all rich and they're all white!”

“Perhaps it's not in their interest,” chuffed the patriarch, cryptically.

“When Dodd and I went to BV—
and
Beverly—there were pretty much only Jews,” Trinnie said.

“There was one black,” her brother solemnly corrected. “His name was Elijah—do you remember Elijah, Mother?”

“
I
do,” Trinnie exclaimed, her memory jogged. “Ralph, it was
so
weird
. He was this skinny little kid, like, made-to-order: sweet and small and talented … 
completely
inoffensive—I know this sounds
terrible
, but he was very … 
minstrel show
—like a little Sammy Davis.”

“That's horrible!”

“I am
not
being racist. It was the high school that was racist. It was like they—like the District literally cast a part.”

“I would have thought you'd have gone to private school,” said Ralph.

“Papa thought public schools were good enough.”

“Indeed they were!” piped Lou.

“Papa bought us a house in the flats.”

“I've always thought it amazing Mr. Trotter did that,” said Joyce. She had called him Mister ever since the halcyon days at Trotter Waste.

“Well, the kids at school didn't think so,” said Trinnie.

“No, they didn't! Oh God, Doddy! Mercy,” said Bluey.

“Everyone thought it was freaky. Like: why would someone with so much money not send their kids to school in Switzerland? Or wherever. And at the same time, they were—I don't know, jealous.”

For a moment, the group ate in silence.

“Did you know,” said Dodd, again turning to Ralph, “that the Velvet Underground played at lunch, for a special assembly? The principal pulled the plug when Lou Reed sang ‘Heroin.' ”

“Incredible,” said Ralph. “And now they get
Curtis Hanson
or
Michael Bay
to drop in—Tull told me Four Winds even had Robert Towne giving a lecture! What do kids want to be hearing from Mr. Chinatowne for? What are they going to learn from that
high-brow Ron Shelton
? At least Ron Shelton isn't
pretentious
—well, not as pretentious as
Chinatowne
, anyway … and let's not forget Callie Khouri!—oh, all you aspiring riot-grrrl-screenwriters have
so
much to learn from Callie Khouri!” Trinnie smiled at this arcana; the rest of the Trotters remained impassive. “By the way, what exactly does Callie Khouri
do
—aside from having her picture taken every month for the WGA Newsletter, and jacking off with her Oscar? I'll
tell
you what Callie Khouri does! She's on the
guru
circuit with
Thelma and Louise
! Asshole-buddies with the Council of Elders! Callie Khouri—Bride of Chinatowne!”

“You're gonna hate this,” said Trinnie, eyes twinkling. “But next week they're having Ron Bass.”

“Who is?”

“Four Winds.”

“No!”

“Because he's an attorney. He can talk about writing
and
entertainment law.”

“Well … Ron's OK. At least the man knows what he is.”

“You mean he's OK now that the two of you are having cozy little Buffalo Club lunches.” She put the needle in a little further. “Hey, Ralph, did you know that Four Winds also has a mentor program going? Something called Young Storytellers—”

“Oh God, that makes me ill,” he said, ashening.

Having achieved the desired effect, she turned to her brother. “That school's getting
so
crazy. And don't you
dare
put those kids up at the Hassler—he's flying Tull's
entire class
to Rome,” she explained to those not in the know, “to which I am
highly
opposed.”

“It's not the whole class,” said Dodd impishly. “It's Third-Tier Honors. And it isn't Rome anymore. It's … the
world
. All the places with roads that
lead
to Rome.”

“Whatever it is, it's much too much.”

“I think it's wonderful,” offered Joyce.

“It's
bullshit
already. Those kids are
so
twisted—there's no sense of reality
whatsoever
. Last week, I was waiting at the curb to pick up my son.”

“You picked up Tull?” said Dodd incorrigibly. “Epitacio must have been on his deathbed!”

“I sat there, forced to endure listening to
Boulder Langon
and her fucked-up friends—”

“What do they give her per movie now?” Dodd asked earnestly.

“Two, maybe three,” said Trinnie.

“She's
very
talented,” said Joyce. “Did you see that fabulous film she did with Susan Sarandon?”

“It was
shite
,” said Trinnie.

Dodd laughed, and Joyce wasn't pleased. The old man inclined his head, cuing his daughter to enlighten him. “Boulder Langon is Lucy's best friend. She's twelve years old, and they give her three million a movie.” His eyebrows knit dramatically as he chuffed at the figure. “So I'm parked at the curb listening to this
horrible
little girl and her clique from hell dish some punk actor. They want to know who he's dating, and Boulder says, ‘A nobody.' They keep pressing for the girl's name until
Boulder—this
twelve
-year-old—says, ‘A nobody! She's a pedestrian!' A ‘pedestrian,' can you
believe
? And the
sex
. My God, the sex! You know what they say? They say, ‘Did you run barefoot?' That's what they ask each other.
Did you run barefoot?
Know what that means? Did you sleep together without protection—
that's
what it means. And these aren't even teenagers! So what kind of message are we sending when you load them up on the BBJ and—”

“Joyce,” interrupted Bluey. “How are your dead children?”

The room fell silent. Pullman barked at something from far away as a servant entered to clear.

“You mean … the babies?” Joyce cleared her throat, taken aback. “Things are going very … 
well
.”

“How great,” said Trinnie mindlessly, trying to smooth the moment.

“Yes! People seem to be quite moved. I mean, by the program.”

Mr. Trotter gesticulated to the servant, who leaned over while the old man spoke briefly in his ear.

“We've talked about this, Bluey,” Joyce said gently. She looked to her father-in-law for help, but he simply smiled and stared benevolently at his plate, as if to wait things out. “We're looking for a larger cemetery,” she continued, feeling that at this point the broader strokes would be welcome. “I'd like to set aside a bigger space, that's not so remote—that's the goal, anyway. We'd like to do it in every state. And have them change the law so the names we give the children are permanent and legally binding.” She'd given the speech many times before, and tonight it came in handy.

“Well,” said Louis, “just don't put them in the Westwood!”

The others laughed. They hoped Bluey was through; she wasn't just yet.

“Joyce—were there obituaries for any of the children?”

“We always put a notice in the paper.”

“I haven't seen any. Are any of them well known?”

“Mother,” said Trinnie, exasperated in spite of knowing better. “These are infants!”

“Mother means famous, case by case,” said Louis, stroking his wife's arm. “Don't you, darling?”

“Yes,” she affirmed.

Louis smiled at the others, as if to say, See? Perfectly compos mentis!

Another servant brought the cake. A ragged if uneventful blowing
out of candles ensued. Dodd encouraged his guests to adjourn to the terrace for coffee and plates of mousse au caramel et aux poires.

After a brief and cordial discussion of the pronunciatory variants of
Ralph
, and after complimenting the latter on his “wild suit” (a quilted Issey Miyake), Dodd Trotter affably quizzed the fop on his latest screenwriting gig. Ralph was shy around the billionaire, whom he in fact viewed as a potential source of capital for various projects as yet unrealized. Wishing to please his sister, who actually couldn't have cared less, Dodd tried to make conversational inroads by mentioning how, with Mr. Hookstratten's help, he had been delving the poetic and practical depths of
The Art of War
—which, he said, he'd gathered had become a kind of how-to manual for Hollywood theatrical agents and such. Ralph informed him that the military classic was actually passé, the hot new book being Aristotle's
Poetics:
Richard LaGravenese, Steve Zaillian, Callie Khouri and Gary Ross all swore by it, he said—as did the whole fucking WGA. Dodd didn't quite know what to make of that except to say
The Art of War
had proved insightful to him as a businessman.

Ralph said he was now more interested in directing than writing for film. The latter, he said, was a loser's game. Digital technology made it feasible for anyone to realize his vision; desire and a middling electrocardiogram were all a director required. The seriously stroked out Michelangelo Antonioni and Christopher Reeve, valiant quad though he was, both had films in the can, not to mention everyone from third-string DPs to casting directors to special-effects wizards to earnest morons like Kathy Bates, Kiefer Sutherland and Diane Ladd. Nepotism was rampant. Ralph Fiennes had a sister, Martha, who'd turned proud “helmer”; Ridley Scott's, Larry Kasdan's and Walter Matthau's sons all directed. Ralph had read in the trades how Charlie Matthau bought the rights to a thirty-year-old screenplay by one of the late
Vertigo
scribes—
that's
what Hollywood wanted: scripts by dead persons “helmed” by the weak-minded and well-born. A brief conversation ensued regarding some of Dodd's newly acquired properties, with Ralph paying special attention to the empty prison in the Mojave. The budding auteur had the idea to shoot a DV ensemble piece à la Dogme 95.

With distracted eyes on the distant lights of Olde CityWalk, Trinnie and her father strategized about Bluey. Louis in particular had become
worried she might hurt herself during a nocturnal meandering. The two of them sighed; the evening had drawn to a close.

“Well,
here's
the man you ought to talk to,” said Bluey as husband and daughter approached. The old man's face lit up supportively while Joyce's shrank to a pale rictus.

“Talk to, Mother?” he chuffed inquisitively, patiently putting an arm on her elbow. “Yes, of course! But what about?”

“
You're
the one with the quarry, Louis … my God, Joyce, your father-in-law has a twenty-two-acre open pit, 641 feet deep. It's in Atlanta, but hell—that represents I don't know
how
many millions of cubic yards of waste.”

“What does it mean, darling?” he asked tenderly, the soul of kindness itself.

“The
babies
, Louis! We're talking about the babies! Joyce is looking for space to bury the babies and you've got space to burn.”