I’m Losing You (40 page)

Kiv dropped by during the shoot, looking beautiful. She was starting to show. She spent her days buying clothes for Jodie—that was the baby's name, after Jodie Foster, Pantheon queen.

She watched him direct the last scene, where Medea learns of her betrayal. There was no sex in it at all—Troy's last laugh on his employers. Kiv studied her love while he advised the actors, denuding their campy gestures and intonations, honing and paring, excising innuendo. This was the man who would soon direct marvelous movies, movies belonging to the world. Could no one else see? Inside the bubble of this drafty gray soundstage, focused and unbroken, burning bright, Troy made the best of the demonic hand he'd been dealt and for a moment, like a ghost schooner, this ship of fools lifted to the black starry realm.

Zanzibar, obese, lactating, borderline psychotic that she was, gave vent to a brassy, eerily moving rage that Troy sculpted with painstaking love. The crew fell silent—Kiv knew they had transcended this travesty, this gutter—human drama unfolding without cumbrance. There were no borders. This searing mystery wrought from language and emotion, unexpected majesty wrenched from horror, was Troy's doing, Troy's gift, the gift of her fiancé, father of her child. Kiv was so proud—pulling swatches of Kleenex from the box at craft service, holding them to her eyes like warm compresses. The tears rolled down her cheeks, stinging her lips. She wanted to go someplace far away for their honeymoon, maybe Cannes. She loved reading about the festival in
Variety
. She would sit on the terrace of the Hotel du Cap and answer their questions.
I am here with my husband
, she would tell them…
the director Troy Copra
.

She heard “Action” and quietly slipped to the stage to join him.

Chet Stoddard

Chet went to Circuit City and bought himself one of those little satellite dishes—a gift to himself. He surfed until he got to T3. The screen read:

When the show came on, a number of things were happening. A hostess was interviewing a comedian called the Jokeman. At the same time, half-nude girls struck lascivious poses on ratty motel-yellow couches; folks at home could dial a nine hundred number to access live on-camera “one-on-ones” with favorites. The robonymphos pouted, preened and gyrated on the electronic auction block, tweaking nipples with red-lacquered pincers, working tongues like the village idiot in a Monty Python sketch. It was amazing to Chet that this could be someone's idea of a hard-on. The medley format was surreal: in a Frankenstein-stitched decathlon of carnival burlesque, the Jokeman ran his crude shtick while hopped-up, underworld yeomanettes, in varied states of bullshit arousal, feigned “mirth.”

The camera discovered the girl at the end of the couch, and Chet got a start: it was his daughter,
JABBA
flashed on-screen in orange neon letters, like a game show's secret clue. She winked at the camera, crowing, “Jabba Dabba do!”

The last time he saw Molly was Thanksgiving Day, a few years back. She was on bail for possession and soliciting. He took her to the Sepulveda Velvet Turtle for turkey and all the trimmings. After, they saw Lavinia at the Mount Olympus place—what a mistake. She was sixty pounds overweight, housebound with a stress fracture. Molly nodded out in her old room while Chet endured the ex's
diatribes and sophistic recriminations. It was two hours before they got out of there. He dropped Molly at a motel somewhere on La Brea.

The sweaty Jokeman stood before the camera like a boxer in a cheap interactive game. “A wife goes to her husband and says, ‘I don't have any tits. I want you to buy me some tits.' The husband says, ‘We can't afford it.' Wife starts crying. ‘
I want you to buy me tits!
' Husband says, ‘Tell you what. Here's what you do. Get some toilet paper and rub it between your chest, okay?' Wife says, ‘What'll
that
do?' And the husband says, ‘Well, it sure worked on your
ass
!'”

The camera panned to the couch, where Molly, hand inside panties, busied herself with the garish chores of simulated masturbation. She still managed to catch the punchline and laugh a beat late, a bad actress rehearsing for bedlam.

It was cold in the house. Chet found two dusty Placidyls zipped into a weathered shaving kit. He swallowed them and got into bed.

His thoughts turned to Aubrey's boy. He wished they were on the road together—why not? He always wanted a son. Where would they go? Taos, maybe, or Santa Fe. Some big beautiful place with chaparral. Orphans from the plague, they'd be, riders on the storm. He'd find work on a big spread belonging to Hollywood-types who remembered him from the glory days. Saul Frake probably had a ranch somewhere in Wyoming…Moab or Ketchum or Sedona—herds of bison à la Ted Turner. Or Chad Everett: an absentee landlord situation. Live in the caretaker's house. He'd take Zephyr everywhere, tutor him at home. There were laws about that. A boy didn't have to go to school if a parent taught him right—part of the Homestead Act. Together, they'd learn the way of the Hopi and celebrate winter solstice, whittling
tithu
for prayer and protection from rough things. They would honor his mother—

As the pills did their work, Chet grew warm. Tears lowered him like a soft rope into sleep. Holding fast as he fell, he begged his daughter's forgiveness. His sorrow had no bottom and, mercifully, upon his awakening, could not be recalled to extinguish the hopes of this savage new morning.

Zev Turtletaub

The “Calendar” article spotlighted Zev Turtletaub's ambitious adaptation of the Russian novel
Dead Souls
. The updated classic would limn the viatical-settlement industry, its grand scope being “love in the time of AIDS.” The producer was furious and Taj was fired. Perhaps the recent hospital stay and surrounding events caused him to overreact, but the assistant should have known better. With certain projects, Zev's penchant for secrecy was legend.

More than a hundred people came to Aubrey's funeral—actors and activists, virus freaks, coffeehouse poets, people she had touched. All the men had yarmulkes bobby-clipped to their hair. You could tell which ones were sick; they stared into the open pit with sly know-how. Those who asked about Zephyr were told he was ill; assuming the worst, they fell silent. Zev read a Russian poem he picked from a sheaf his staff provided.

Of course, Zev wasn't in love with the editor when he played matchmaker, not for a long time (if ever). The end had been sealed when Jake began making demands—more work, more this, more that—simple enough, but therein the beggarly middle-class contract Zev so despised.
Gimme mine!
It made his stomach turn. That was when he hatched the plan. His sister fell under “more this, more that” and Jake was enraptured when Aubrey agreed to give him her hand. Admittedly, the announcement of betrothal heated the producer's blood; once or twice a week throughout marriage, Jake watered Zev's mouth, loving the whiteheads that ringed the jaundicey skin of his wealthy brother-in-law's languid eyes—again, in hospital bathroom, awaiting Zephyr to be born. The producer never worried about getting sick, because he didn't really have sex anymore, not real sex, not for years. A month before marrying Aubrey off, Zev began to suspect his protégé: a six-week siege of diarrhea (and thrush!) that Jake attributed to a taco stand downtown. Food poisoning doesn't last six weeks, Zev said. He told him to get tested but Jake got so upset, Zev never brought it up again. Some people were like that—even at the end, the film editor's denial was so great he told people he had the Jim Henson Killer Flu. He was still convinced Zev would give him money for a post-production house in Santa Monica, a state-of-the-art facility by the sea. That was his Big
Baywatch
Idea; everybody had to have one. It was easy for Zev to string him along till the end, right through dementia.

The producer remembered how they'd first met, at a club on Highland. He went to the toilet and there stood Jake, pants around ankles, facing the wall. That was an anomaly, he later said. Jake forever downplayed “running with the queers” and maybe he was telling the truth, because marriage sure brought out the hetero in him. How much did Aubrey know? She was such a savvy, cynical girl; she'd
have
to have known, why else would she attack him like that? But so late in the game…and if she did know, when—
when
did she know? That's what Zev idly wondered as they lowered her down.

In two weeks he turned thirty-five. Moe Trusskopf was throwing a big party, and Zev was actually excited about it. His production company was busier than ever; it was an expansive time. Now, he'd redouble his efforts on
Dead Souls
. They were closing on a writer and Alec would soon follow. Alec was perfect. Zev would dedicate the movie to his sister and start a foundation in her name—or a hospice in Ojai. He would buy her soul, fair and square. It was worth more dead then alive.

As they drove from the cemetery to his Santa Barbara home, the bulimic producer imagined himself as Chichikov, pulled along in a carriage by Selifan the coachman. There was a magnificent passage that closed Part One. Chichikov is skipping town and begs Selifan to speed up. As the horses go full gallop, their very movement elicits a rhapsody:

The traffic was light and he told the chauffeur to accelerate. Zev rolled down the windows and let the wind blast in. The driver was
excited at what he took to be his powerful client's spontaneous, cathartic post-burial passion; it would be a memorable ride, something to tell his wife after work. He smelled a big tip.

“Almost a hundred!” shouted the driver, with glee.

“A hundred, a hundred! A hundred and ten!” screamed the producer. He was on fire. “A hundred and twenty! Troika, troika, troika!”