Wag the Dog (42 page)

“If you had a son, is that the way you would raise him?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, would you beat him until he was big enough to beat you back?”

I have to stop and think about that. Funny, you would think that I would've thought about it before, lots of times. But I never put it to myself and nobody else did, that simple and
straightforward. I didn't grow up thinking, the way kids do, If I ever grow up, I won't treat my children that way, I'll always let them stay up late and eat candy or whatever it is that kids think that parents do wrong. Oh yeah, and I'll always be fair and never punish them unjustly. Stuff like that. “I always said I would never be a drunk like my old man. And I never have been. I guess, I guess I sort of intended to have a woman around. A mother. A man alone, raising a kid, it's hard. Especially with no other women, no grandmothers or aunts or nothing, around. It was the luck of the draw, bad luck of the draw, that my mother didn't leave anybody around to take her place, raising me. So, no, I guess not. Not with a woman around. It wouldn't have to be that way. There are other ways a boy can turn into a man besides getting beat up all the time. Maybe not as effective,” I say, as a joke, “but there are other ways. Of course there are other ways.”

“You were going to tell me, about the last time, how you made him stop.”

“I was about fifteen. Almost fifteen, anyway. He comes home, drunk again. Which means no money. We start to arguing. I should know better, but I don't. 'Cause even stumblin' drunk, he's a damn sight bigger and stronger than me. A damn sight. He starts up to beat on me. I tell him, ‘No more. Not this time.' He swings at me. I duck. That makes him madder. Then he comes at me for real, big right hand, in a fist. I don't run. I don't hide. I step in and take it right here,” I point to my forehead. “He busts his hand. Drunk as he is, he feels it. He just sits right down and stares at it. At his hand. He holds it and cradles it and he hurts too much to hit me anymore.

“I didn't beat him, but I beat him. I walked out. I never went back.”

The waitress is behind the counter, having a smoke. She sees Maggie finish her coffee and comes over with a pot, gives us refills.

“Pardon me, do you have an extra cigarette?” Maggie asks her.

“Sure, hon,” she says. She gives Maggie one. Hands me a pack of matches. There's a silhouette of a girl with a pony tail on
the cover. Underneath, it says, “Can you draw this?” I light Maggie's cigarette. I give the matches back to the waitress and she walks away. Maggie looks at me through the smoke. She's playing some kind of scene, I guess. That's OK. A woman thing or an actress thing.

“Do you love me, Joe?”

“Yes, I guess I do,” I say.

“Then you better take me home,” she says, “and make love to me, Joe.”

I
WAS RIGHT
about one thing: once it starts, there is no stopping.

Mrs. Mulligan arrives at seven, just a few hours after we get home. We still haven't been to sleep. She goes about her business. I cancel myself out of the office. Maggie and I come downstairs, hungry and thirsty, I don't know, eleven, twelve o'clock. Mrs. Mulligan makes us orange juice and tea and scones. Can she tell the difference in us? Yeah. Who couldn't. I didn't know it could be like this. We manage to drink the juice, but we can't finish the tea and scones. We need each other. Again.

We're ready to go back upstairs. Or on the couch. Or the deck. We really should be alone.

“Mary,” Maggie says.

“Yes, Ms. Lazlo, what can I be doing for you?”

“Why don't you take a couple of days off.”

“You two,” she says. “Like kids. American kids, not Irish kids. No Irish person, even a teenager, would behave like this. There's something in the Irish water that maintains the human glands at sensible levels. It's altogether missing in California. Maybe it gets washed away with the shipping of your water all the way from the North. In Ireland we get our water direct from the sky, whole, as God intended.”

“With pay,” Maggie says.

“Of course with pay. Should I make you a bit of dinner before I go? A salad you can pull out of the fridge, or something to pop into the oven?”

“That's OK.”

“You know,” Mrs. Mulligan says, “he's not such a young one. He's going to need some good solid food, keep his strength up.”

“I love him, Mary.”

“Oh, Oh, yes. I see. I'll be going then.”

“Don't gossip about us too much, alright?”

“Oh, no, miss. I wouldn't ever gossip about you. Well, yes. I better get my things and be gone.” She goes and gathers her handbag and her coat, which she doesn't wear since it's too warm, but always has with her. She goes to the front door. Then she turns and comes back. “Ms. Lazlo, there's something I've got to be telling you. They've come after me. They say they're Immigration, but I don't know if that's true. I'm thinking it's not. I'm not legal, you see. I don't know if you know that—I'm not legal. They said they would turn me in and ship me out. Now how much money do you think I'd be earning scrubbing floors in County Cork? To hell with the Irish water, all rain and damp it is, hell on rheumatism. Not enough to keep body and soul together and under a dry roof. They want me to tell them things about you. You and him in there. If you were truly involved with each other or if you were up to something. I'm frightened o' them. Immigration, they treat you with total contempt and you've got no place to turn, now have you? But I'm not an informer. None of my people have ever been informers. Never will be.”

“If they come again, tell me,” Maggie says. “If you need a lawyer, I'll get you one. Meantime, tell them . . . what you see.”

“That you're in love with that lug of a man?”

“Right.”

“I'll do that. With your permission, ma'm.”

“Yes, Mary. Do that.”

She goes and it doesn't matter that Mel Taylor and U. Sec. are still checking up on us. It doesn't fucking matter. We're in a different world now. We make love. We talk. We go out on the beach a couple of times, but we need to touch each other in ways that we don't want to do in public. We stay home—not taking calls—not going out—for about three days. We talk about maybe making movies together. For real. I say that my bullshit is bullshit. Maggie says everybody's is. The book I found is good, she says, we
have to see if a good script can be developed from it. When and if I get out of bed and into the office, I'll track down the agent and option it. The Catherine thing is more difficult. It's bigger and against the common wisdom. So it needs a name writer. Who will be, therefore, expensive. And therefore should be paid for with Other People's Money, through the development deal that we do not yet have. I tell her a little more. About how when I left home, on my own, almost fifteen, Pasquale, father of Joey, took me in. Gave me a home, for a year, year and a half, until me and his son joined the Marines. Joey was older than me. Maggie, of course, keeps asking me about Annette—did I make it with Joey's sister? Well, we fooled around a lot. Those days, she is still supposed to be a virgin when she marries. This is before the pill practically. Everybody who does it it seems like, gets knocked up. Every wedding, it seems like, the bride is glowing and on the plump side, the groom embarrassed, wishing he was somewheres else. And she's Joey's sister, so I fuck her, Joey's got to get angry at me, we have to have a fight. I don't want to do that. I love Joey like a brother. And Pasquale like a father. Because he is more father to me than the asshole who broke his hand on my head. “So what
did
you do?” Maggie wants to know. I get embarrassed, because of course she is right. I just say, “We fooled around.” She insists that I get specific. By hand? Yes. Her mouth? Well, once. How was it? Why only once? “It didn't work that well, that's why.” What about me? Did I use my mouth on her? “I was fifteen, I never heard of that,” I tell Maggie. She thinks that's really funny. She holds me and kisses me and says, “I love you, Joe Broz.” It puts me in another dimension to hear that. But Maggie's back at it again. “Come on, didn't you get it into her once? Didn't you even try?” “Nah, nah, I told you, she was Joey's sister, she was afraid of getting pregnant, Pasquale would've thrown me out and where the hell was I going to go?” “I don't believe you,” she says. “She was a good Catholic girl and wanted to be a virgin,” I tell her. “Oh-oh,” Maggie says, “you put it in the back way.” She giggles. “No,” I say. “Don't lie to me, Joe Broz, I love you, you can't lie to me.” “OK, yeah, I admit it.” Why am I embarrassed. Because I never told that to anyone in my life?

I love her.

Maybe there is a future here. Maybe the masquerade has
become the reality. The illusion, an actuality. Maybe Magdalena Lazlo's next role is Catherine the Great and mine is Potëmkin.
⁹⁰
When I finally arise from her bed, I let my empress dress me as her producer. Are we going to forget John Lincoln Beagle and our quest for his secret? I think we don't know. I think we're too involved in each other and in our possibilities to know.

I will tell you one thing about our lovemaking. When we get to bed the first time, I reach into the drawer beside the bed where I know there are condoms. I've been all over this house. I know everything in this house. She puts her hand over mine, to stop me. Neither of us has mentioned HIV or AIDS or blood tests. Also, I'm virtually certain that she doesn't use any other form of birth control, at least not pills or a diaphragm. So without the condoms, if we have sex, maybe there's a birth, maybe someone dies.

“Do you love me, Joe?” she says.

I say, “Yes.”

“Maybe there's a birth,” she says, “maybe someone dies.”

That's what I'll tell you about making love with Maggie.

When I finally go to the office, there's a load of messages and mail is stacked up and I'm going to need people to help me for real. I haven't even picked the mail off the floor, the phone rings. This kid, not a kid, he's twenty-five, twenty-seven, he says, “Hi. My name is Teddy Brody. I heard from a friend of mine that you're looking for someone. From the description, someone just like me. I've been to Yale Drama School and UCLA Film School. And I currently do development and research for John Lincoln Beagle.”

“Yeah, Teddy,” I say, “I'd love to see you.”

 

 

 

⁹⁰
Potëmkin, Grigori Aleksandrovich (1739–91), a Russian statesman who became the lover and favorite of Catherine II in 1771 and remained until his death the most powerful man in Russia. He was the governor general of “New Russia” (Ukraine). The famous story about him is that he claimed to have established entire cities and villages that in fact had not been built. Catherine insisted on sailing down the Volga to view them. Potemkin had crews set up false fronts—like the facades of a town in a Western movie. As soon as the empress's barge passed, they would race ahead to the next location to set up new ones there. Then the next and the next. The expression “Potëmkin villages,” which means to have the appearance of a thing but to really be empty, comes from this.

Potëmkin engineered the colonization of the Ukrainian steppes and the conquest of the Crimea. He became a field marshal in 1784 and was commander in chief during the second Turkish War (1787–91).