I’m Losing You (25 page)

Gina Tolk

In these moments, I think ruefully of my sister, Wanda, and how she suffered at the hands of the man who was (and had never shirked from claiming to be) our Father. Wanda and I played out our roles: the casually heartbreaking children of Charles Laughton's masterful
Night of the Hunter
—spectral yet corporal. But that is another movie
entire
and another magical saga too, riven with tears and with blood. For in ***
The THIEF of ENERGY
Book Two it will be revealed that Wanda was I and I was Wanda; and that I drowned her to save myself. This is the story I had cogently wished to unfurl within the confines of a professional, i.e., Dr Calliope K-M, plaintiff. But I will tell it alone, without help—this is as it should be. Perhaps there is time now. It may stand as a eulogy for a little girl lost at a tender age, too tender to be sanctioned. For you see, Wanda is a part of me I could not revive under any sort of gentle ministrations—the part that succumbed to the bountiful travesties committed upon her by the putative Father who is long dead. Mariel has told me I will meet him soon on another plane in Time and Wanda will thus be vanquished. Mariel has discussed the ‘kidnapping' in evenhanded tones, applauding me for my sanity-saving ruse, her knowing Voice joined by others whom I have rubbed; their energetic Mass has let it be known. The Voices are deafening and fruition is near.

I left some personal things with Jabba for fear they would be confiscated—the paperweight long since buried. I could not let them have it. I predict thirty days of hospitalization maximal before imprisonment on theft charges, ect. As I am giving my best ‘nutcase' show this will be an indomitable time (and has already been) to recoup energies squandered in the meaningless dance with Society's snitching celebrity
goons
. To think Laura and Dana had to do with my demise is a cruel, mesmeric twist worthy of a future literary gambit—I will try to begin its saga, as I have kept my fat Pilot ‘Explorer' pen and delicate leather notebook, a talisman purchased at Barneys New York the day of the Assault.

I called Jeremy and asked for a loan and he went off on me. It was well worth it—I received energy over phone, such was his outburst. ‘You took my wife's jewels, you krazy cunt,' ect. This, all he could muster, he is a TV hack, lest we forget. He yelped about pressing charges (a slight slur from the stroke but he is no Chris Reeve: he is
completely
capacitated). We both know there is no way he ever will—I have too much to tell. I am wiling away the time working on my set piece, a sitcom earmarked for CBS,
Sybil's Place
, based on the life of society matron Sybil Brand, whose name graces the women's jail. I hope it will not be confused with
Cybill
and, too, hope to get clearance from Mrs Brand herself once I am transferred to the jail-house. She seems to be a generous lady and I am counting on her benevolence in this matter; she clearly enjoys giving those incarcerated a leg up.
Sybil's Place
will be exempt of the high camp, rough-hewn edges of your usual female prison soaps and, too, will bridge the world of high society within which Mrs Brand has always traveled so effortlessly. (I read in the
Beverly Hills Courier
that she is ninety-something and hope she doesn't succumb before giving her legal/energetic blessings.) The show as conceived is a winner and I am prepared for the usual uphill battle and ultimate vindication on all fronts. It is a show for Dream Works or perhaps Brillstein-Grey, the Jews behind the
Larry Sanders
success.

This is truly the time of the ‘event horizon,' part and parcel of the Black Hole concept—the ‘event horizon' being the rim of such like a waterfall drop—the exact point where life and matter,
all
energy, is sucked in and Time, with a capital T, ceases.
That
is where my energy is now. Willing and joining with the cessation of all Time.

Energy on the ward is good. I am rubbing some girls here (non-sexual) to acquire vestigial strength for court and psychiatric appearances; too, for sleepfulness, waking vigilance, ect. There are a few pregnant ones and I seek them out for their double energy—getting to them before they become too big and muster out to Sick Bay (I am the starship healer). I must draw energy for the next Great Battle—that against Carsey/Werner and/or the perpetrators of
The X-Files
. Mr Chris Carter and family will sonn be in my web

Sara Radisson

Hell and bejesus, it took a while but we are finally Minnesota-bound. We have a first-class sleeper car with a jiggly bed and our
very own shower and toitie. I cannot tell you what it's like to be rocked asleep by the clickety-cluck-clacking, with you, the Quiet Storm, in my arms (you, the I of my storm.) We awaken at the witching hour and stare out the looking-glass window at the silvery world. Then it's dawn and because I give Max the porterman twenty dollars a day, he is
very
good to us and brings hot tea and helps with baby's things. Max serves lunch and dinner in our room, unless we choose to take it in the white linen'd dining car, with its perfectly polite passengers and their ambient, holy Middle American mur-mur-talk, the glass dome like some kind of church—isn't that right, Samovar? That's what we call you when you have on the furry hat Grandma sent. Boy, is she gonna be glad to see
you
!

Most of the Dining Car People don't even know where we stay: they must think we fall asleep somewhere in the cruddy, high-backed seats with the riff-raff—if they knew how pampered we were, they'd be
so
jealous (sad thing is, most of the bedroom suites are empty because they're so expensive)…. After we're fat and sassy from our grub, we stroll below and find the door to our floating room. We lock it behind us, then nestle in for the night and Maxwell brings hot chocolate if we want. Aren't we the luckiest people in the whole World Wide Web? Don't you ever let anyone tell you anything else. You are my sunshine and my dreams, my heavy-lidded night-blooming orchid, all I ever wanted, all I ever need, and I made you long ago: you're positively antediluvian, and younger than springtime too.

I ordered you with those damn infinity coupons, I did I did—sight unseen.

 

Zev Turtletaub

The black steward kneeled and stroked the drowsy superstar. “She's the
best
. Aren't you, Mimsy? Aren't you the
best
.”

Mimsy lay on her seat without a yap while Zev Turtletaub got sixty pages of the Reavey translation of
Dead Souls
under his cinched Kieselstein-Cord belt. The trim, hairless producer loved this character Chichikov: a con man, replete with idiosyncratic servant and driver, traveling from town to town buying up serfs—“souls”—expired ones, that is, from well-off farmers and gentry still forced to pay census on their dead. But why? Because if Chichikov acquired enough names (so went his reasoning), he could approximate a wealthy landowner, a “man of a thousand or more souls.” Or something like that. If his motives weren't quite clear, neither were Don Quixote's. Zev was convinced there was a movie in it, an AIDS opera that would make
Philadelphia
look like the HBO cartoon it was.

Even in first class, pets were prohibited from lolligagging outside their pissy plastic enclosures. Yet this was the famous star of
Jabber
and
Jabberwocky
, the just-opened
Mimsy
and upcoming fast-track sequel,
All Mimsy
—the cabin being only a quarter full, an exception had been made.

“You're
so tired
, aren't you, Mimsy-girl?” The steward massaged the skin of the languid superstar's neck, bunching it up then letting go. “Mimsy-girl looks
so so tired
.”

The phlegmatic pooch had indeed overexerted himself at
Mimsy
's New York premiere. As if to mitigate a stressful itinerary, he'd shacked with Zev in the producer's capacious hotel apartment. Mimsy loved the Carlyle. Life being what it was, there came a hitch: the studio jet was down and they had to fly back commercial. Bit of a bore.

On the way to the airport, Zev got the bug to hit the legendary Gotham Book Mart. He was greeted by a tidy tree farm of authors he'd never heard of, and that was surprising, because if Zev wasn't a great reader (didn't have the time), he definitely considered himself au courant. He scanned the major
Reviews
from cover to cover, and the lit rags too—he loved the ones with poisonous intramural letter exchanges the most. There were droves of people at the Turtletaub Company whose only job was to ferret out writers before they were hot, textual soldiers who did nothing but read galleys and talk to book agents all day long. Still, there was nothing like going through the stacks and sniffing out quarry oneself. Example: a short while after whizzing past the pale cashier, Zev purchased the thirteen-volume Ecco Press edition of Chekhov's short stories, arranging for them to be FedExed to L.A.—within five days, each tale would be “covered,” i.e., broken down re: plot, characters, updatability. Like a high-brow predator, Zev stood at the register, flipping through titles—Roberto Calasso, Cormac McCarthy reissue, Penguin Henry Green—then grabbed a volume his sister had always pushed on him…Nikolai Gogol's
Dead Souls
.

“Anything I can get you, Mr. Turtletaub?”

Your mouth around my dick
came to mind but the producer asked for cookies instead; he loved the warm doughy meltiness of a front cabin chocolate chip. The steward had a rock-hard bubble ass—no Princess Tiny Meat was he, of that much Zev was certain.

A month ago, the important passenger chanced across an article in a magazine that had seized his imagination, worrying it ever since. It was about a service that arranged for persons with AIDS to get cash advances on their life insurance. It seems that within the HIV community, brokering this kind of deal had become somewhat of a cottage industry, a vulturine shadowland of the quick and the dead
that Zev Turtletaub instantly saw as the stuff of potentially great drama. A towering character already floated at the edge of his mind, a dead zone Music Man, a millennium Willy Loman, and the more he dipped his beak in Gogol's fountain, the harder it came into focus: that character was Chichikov. Who could do such an epic theme justice? A LaGravenese or a Zaillian—he'd go after talent first. Zev would talk to Alec Baldwin. Tell him this was Academy Award time,
Elmer Gantry
meets
Inferno
. It was big, it was very big, Zev could
feel
it. The man who threw a Jack Russell terrier into a troika of projected half-a-billion-dollar-grossing comedies would soon be known for something else, entering his middle period with a classy, unexpected
Schindler's List
–like crossover coup. The beautiful part being the template was there in his hands, pages lightly smeared with fuscous-fingered bile—
Dead Souls
. The stage was being set for the perfect zeitgeist melodrama, a work of high, elegiac art that wouldn't be afraid to make money, the frisson being that Gogol was public domain. The rights wouldn't cost dime one.