Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories (19 page)

“Not in these it doesn’t.” Tina lifted her skirt to give him a better look at her slender calves and violet open-toed pumps. “Wish I’d worn boots.”

“Perfect footwear for a soirée,” Gil said. “You look lovely tonight.”

“Had I known months ago you only flirt when drunk on overpriced bubbly I might have insisted on Petrossian instead of Papaya King,” Tina said. “Not that those weren’t top New York kosher dogs. When the Mogul makes us rich, we can celebrate. We’ll dress our wieners in beluga and get drunk as skunks.”

“I’ll admit to being a little buzzed maybe, but not drunk,” Gil said.

“Too bad. I am, might as well be,” Tina said. “What’s stopping you? Tonight’s a celebration of sorts, no? You’ll never have to teach again. You can retire to a hut in Malibu and write that bloodsucker trilogy you’ve always known you had in you.”

A bellman refilled the ice buckets, dimmed the lighting, and asked if he should also clear the food.

“Leave it,” the Mogul said, “people are still nibbling.” The Mogul had been drinking quietly as if brooding, or maybe his own party bored him. He sat beside an ice bucket as one might sit with a teddy bear, alone on a couch behind a coffee table barricaded with take-out cartons. Take-out cartons occupied almost every surface in the room—the tabletops, the desk, the windowsills. Cartons were balanced on top of other cartons still to be opened. The Mogul rose and began to open some of them, jabbing his chopsticks in for a sample and then resealing them.

“Just dipping your beak?” Tina Powell asked.

“Don Fanucci in
The Godfather
,” the Mogul answered. “Best line in the movie.”

The Mogul explained that when he’d asked for the best Thai delivery in the city, three different restaurants were recommended. They couldn’t all be the best, so to settle the question he’d ordered from all three. But now, with the cartons mixed up, it was impossible to tell what had come from where. He had instructed the front desk to send up the delivery boys because he felt the best part of takeout was the ring at the door followed by the smell of steaming food. You knew the food was never as good as it smelled, but it didn’t matter. The smell, he said, reminded him of the cheap Asian food he’d survived on when, with no prospects, he hitched his way to L.A., city of dreams, where—young, broke, scuffling, literally picking cigarette butts out of the gutter—he’d determined to make his mark or fucking die trying. In those days when he was always hungry, the food had tasted as good as it smelled.

The Mogul sat back down beside the ice bucket and refilled his glass.

Champagne was being popped all over the room. Debates broke out over what were the best carryout places in the city, Queens against Manhattan, until Liam announced that as far as he was concerned the question wasn’t what restaurant was best, but rather, which was most authentic.

“You can say the same thing about theater,” Liam said.

TK took that as a cue to tell them all about the time he’d shot a film in Bangkok, and how the food there bore little resemblance to Thai food in New York. He’d especially loved the street food, and never once got sick, at least not from eating. Drink and drugs were another matter. He was partying hard back then. They’d start shooting at six a.m. and he’d clear his head by eating an incendiary curry for breakfast. Lunch was fruit delivered from the great fruit market on Phahonyothin Road: mangoes, young coconuts called
ma praw on
, and fruits TK had never tasted fresh before—mangosteen, jackfruit, lichee. There were fruits he knew only by their Thai names—
lam-yai
,
longkong
—and, speaking of the difference between smell and taste, sometimes a durian, a fruit so putrid-smelling that the hotels posted signs warning it was illegal to bring one inside, yet durians taste like silky custard, like nothing you ever had before. They’d blend them into icy smoothies, and then TK would get a massage from a skinny woman who spoke no English but could cure a hangover by walking her fingers down his spine. He didn’t think you could get authentic Thai in New York, though maybe a durian could be found in the wilds of the Bronx.

“Just don’t try bringing one into the Carlyle,” Tina said.

“Are those places that say ‘Thai massage’ authentic?” Renee Wilde asked.

“I have
no
idea,” TK said.

“So, man, how do you ask for happy ending in Thai?” Nestor asked.

“Try,
I want happy ending,
” TK said, “not that I am speaking from personal experience.”

“Is happy ending what I think it is?” Garth wanted to know. He had inherited the Captain’s role now that Sven was toast.

“Man, everybody knows ‘happy ending,’” Nestor said, his speech noticeably slurred.

“I don’t,” Renee said. “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“All of the above,” Nestor said. “Imagine, instead of an actor, Garth’s something real: a teamster driving a sixteen-wheeler down I-80 through the night in Nebraska, listening to Jesus radio, popping NoDoz, his back killing him, and suddenly there’s a pink neon sign—not
THAI MASSAGE.
Just
RUB DOWN.
Five minutes later he’s naked, blissed, as this pretty Asian woman slathers on oil and walks her magic fingers down his spine. And just as he’s thinking it’s over too soon, she asks,
Want happy ending?
That’s not the moment to blurt:
Miss, is happy ending what I think it is? Is it authentic happy ending?
You say,
Oh, yeah!
And she says,
Happy ending, fifty dollar extra
. And man, there in the darkness of Nebraska you’ve learned the authentic price of happiness.”

“I was going to suggest changing
EverAfter
to
Happy Ending
,” Renee Wilde said, “but now I’m afraid that would raise the wrong expectations in the audience.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if life were that simple?” the Mogul asked. “If expectations were always fair and easily met? If all it took to find happiness was to know the right words for asking, and who to ask, and the going rate? Doesn’t everyone want to know the magic words, and there’s no shortage of religions, philosophies, gurus, psychologists, politicians all claiming to be able to tell us. Take Nixon and JFK in Tina’s play: Nixon’s telling America,
Here’s my idea of happy ending
, and Kennedy is saying,
Well, here’s mine
. Of course Tricky Dicky with his grizzled face was one morose-looking dude, and Jack Kennedy you knew was getting happy ending eight nights a week, so, bring on Camelot.

“Look at the talent in this one hotel room, the plays, films, music, books you people have produced. Isn’t
authentic
Art—capital
A
—supposed to show us how to live happily ever after? I once went to a famous therapist, I won’t drop his name or sticker-shock you with how much he thought his time was worth, and I told him: I’ve got everything a man could want—power, fame, fortune—I could go through ten reincarnations and not spend what I’ve made in this one lifetime. I’ve got a mansion in Santa Monica, a chateau in Provence, my own Pacific island, the best food and liquor, women JFK would have singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ for him every day of the year. I can feel the envy when I enter a room, yet I’m not happy. First thing the shrink advises me to do is read this novel he thought would help me. I say, Doc, I know the author, I brought him to Hollywood and like most Artists, capital
A
, he was one of the most miserable fucks on the planet. I’m supposed to learn something about happiness from him? So the shrink immediately retreats to plan B, his Socratic fucking question: How do you define happiness? Like I’m going to pay in time and money to play semantic games, just so he doesn’t have to admit he doesn’t have a clue. And here I am, tonight, surrounded by artists, intellectuals, the New York literati—can any of you come up with a better answer?”

In the quiet, it was possible for the first time in the evening to hear the classical guitar music that had been playing in the background.

“Liam,” the Mogul said, “you put this whole show together. Do you have an answer? Renee, you’re a glamorous, award-winning actress, how about you? TK, you’ve traveled the world. Tina, you’re witty enough to do stand-up comedy on TV. Gil, we haven’t had a chance to talk about passion yet, but you’re a hell of a writer. Anybody?”

The guests had formed a semicircle around the couch where the Mogul sat alone with his ice bucket. They looked down into their wine flutes, avoiding eye contact, sipping meditatively as if mulling over his question, drinking as if that disguised the embarrassing lack of response.

“I might,” Gil said.

“And here I thought you of all people would shy away from the subject,” the Mogul said. “Because, you know, happiness like passion can be a little
clichéd
. Let’s hear it. An answer could be worth the proverbial king’s ransom.”

“I can’t tell you why you’re unhappy,” Gil said, “because you aren’t.”

“Oh, I guarantee you that I am. I could produce some very famous people willing to serve as witnesses.”

“It’s not a matter of what others say, is it?”

“Well, if it’s simply my word against yours, who do you think the jury will believe? Frankly, I’m going to be very disappointed if you’re leading up to some semantic what-is-happiness bullshit, because I’m talking naked, Gil. Gut level.”

“Gut level, absolutely,” Gil said. “What if I can prove you are happy?”

Behind the carton-stacked coffee table, the Mogul leaned forward on the couch as if not wanting to miss a word.

“I went to college on a track scholarship,” Gil said.

“And you look like you’ve stayed in shape,” the Mogul said.

“Thanks,” Gil said. “My event was high hurdles. I put a lot of practice into making my move out of the starting blocks explosive. When you see hurdlers racing, knocking down hurdles, it can look like a free-for-all, but it’s actually a very controlled event. Every hurdler has the same number of strides between hurdles—usually three. That’s about the distance between you and me. If you weren’t expecting it, and why should you be, I could cross the room, hurdle the table, and before you could react jam these chopsticks in your eyes. And after you finished howling, and your long hospital stay was over and you were learning to feel your way with a white cane, you’d think back to tonight with the snow and the champagne and the smell of takeout that cooks sweating over spattering woks had ladled into cartons for a kid who probably can’t speak English to bring us on his bike in the driving rain, and I bet you’d realize that you
were
happy. You just can’t see it at this moment.”

Except for Nestor’s snoring, the room had gone dead silent. No one moved or spoke. The music had stopped.

“So, when do you say, ‘Hey, just kidding’?” the Mogul finally asked.

The question released the tension in the room enough for Liam to rise—a little unsteadily—and say it was a great night but it was late and there was a rehearsal tomorrow, and grab his coat from the rack set up by the door. A mass exit of guests followed him out into the hall, grabbing their coats without pausing to put them on, and packed into the elevators.

The Mogul stayed on the couch.

Gil rode down in the elevator with Tina.

“I didn’t know you ran track,” she said.

“Artistic license, capital
A
,” Gil said. “Third place in the state finals in high school was as far as I got.”

“Where’d the chopsticks come from?”

“You know, until he said ‘gut level’ I was actually going to tell a story about a Chinese poet friend of mine who studied kung fu for thirty years at a dojo called the Sanctuary of Universal Peace. When he told me the dojo’s name, I asked if he’d ever used kung fu to defend himself, and he said that wasn’t why he studied. ‘So, what are you after?’ I asked, and he thought awhile, like he’d never considered it, then said: ‘To be able to say thank you every minute.’”

“And ‘thank you every minute’ turned into chopsticks. Inspiration will do that,” Tina said.

They stood beneath the hotel’s gold-lit marquee while, over the wet hiss of traffic along Madison Avenue, the doorman whistled for cabs. When the wind gusted, snowflakes caught in Tina’s hair and melted glittering in the marquee lights. She did look lovely. From the little she’d mentioned about her personal life—a runaway daughter now living at a drug rehab center, an ongoing divorce from a man she described as “a decent guy who still adores me”—Gil knew she was going through a difficult time. He wondered how she was managing to work as well as she was. He had told her at Papaya King, months ago, that her piece, “Dick Jokes,” and Nestor’s musical score were the only really solid things about
EverAfter.

“When I get home, just before I pass out, I’m going to think about tonight and laugh myself to sleep,” Tina said. “Hopefully it will keep off the spins.”

“Don’t forget to picture Sven doing the crotch-grab while singing ‘Slow Boat to China,’” Gil said.

“That’s too ha-ha sad,” Tina said. “But then, maybe he’ll have the final revenge after he incorporates some crotch work to rave reviews the next time he plays
Lear
.”

A cab pulled up. “I won’t bother to ask if you want to share a ride,” she said.

“I’m going to walk in the park.”

She kissed him good night lightly on the cheek and he closed the door of the cab after her and stood watching her pull away. The cab started and stopped. Tina rolled down the window. “Gil, one more thing. If I were you, I wouldn’t be planning to give up my teaching job just yet.”

She gave a wave and he waved back.

The cab started and stopped again. Tina rolled down the window. “One more one more thing,” she called. “If you want to say it every minute, you have to start with one minute. Thank you.”