The Bones (24 page)

"Are you available to go to New York?" Harvey asks in a tone intended to be chaffing but that actually says, if you're not
available, don't bother coming to the office on Monday since I'll have had the locks on your office door changed.

"I'll be there," Lloyd says in the same voice he uses when his dentist's assistant calls to remind him of an appointment.
Lloyd hangs up the phone with a resigned air. He looks at Stacy, whose face is hovering somewhere in agitated, nervous anticipation
slung like a hammock between the twin poles of sorrow and joy.

"So?"

"They picked up the show."

A look of fevered rapture shimmers over Stacy's features, the kind of shining-eyed expression common in portraits of medieval
saints in the throes of religious ecstasy. The last thirty seconds spent watching her apathetic husband's dilatory telephone
conversation has been a tortured eternity, and her constrained emotions find release in a shriek of such volume her son begins
to cry. She runs to the boy, lifting him from his chair and covering him with kisses, saying, "Mommy loves you, Mommy loves
you, Mommy loves you," all the while looking gratefully at Lloyd. Having calmed the frightened child, Stacy turns toward her
husband, who has risen inestimably in her eyes. "Lloyd," she says in a voice that implies if he wants to step into the bedroom
and lock the door, she will be happy to spend the next several hours fellating him,

"Congratulations!"

"Thanks."

Stacy is entirely too concerned with her own internal drama to bother reading the tea leaves of Lloyd's glum expression, so
she hugs him and immediately calls Daryl to share the good news. Daryl, for her part, is thrilled since she knows Stacy can
be counted on to tithe a significant part of Lloyd's income to SOAP.

Swept away on the warm wave of approval, Lloyd retreats to the sanctuary of his backyard bell tower to ponder his options.
How could this disaster possibly have occurred? The second Bart Pimento was cast, he'd known the show was doomed. When they'd
shot the thing, the dandy Andy Stanley had managed to raise the level to mediocre, but still, it was not good. How was it
possible that Harvey Gornish and his minions at Lynx did not have anything better to put on their schedule? Didn't they have
another piece of cloying crap featuring a desperate movie star whose career was in free fall? Why couldn't they just leave
him alone?

Lloyd puts his head back and looks up at the distressed beams, meant to evoke a Vermont barn, running across his celling.
He supposes he can always hang himself, but the thought of dangling neck-snapped from a piece of wood slowly choking to death
doesn't have much appeal. That leaves the less radical options of either doing the show and maintaining the status quo, or
not doing it and so ending his career, since he would surely be found in breach of contract. The checks would stop arriving
and his days as a lottery winner would come to a fast and unceremonious close, resulting in a humiliation that would only
be exceeded in scale by the ensuing garage sale. Lloyd simply needs to picture an apoplectic Stacy standing on the Brentwood
lawn surrounded by price-tagged Persian rugs and damask sofas to arrive at the third option: to become a secret agent, a traitor,
a fifth column in the
Happy Endings
comedy nation, working surreptitiously toward its defeat. Should he tread this path, he would retain his perks, memberships,
and general equilibrium. The choice was obvious.

"It didn't test well?"

In a kitchen across town Frank slumps against the green Formica counter in a near swoon, the blood rushing from his head with
the alacrity of passengers on a sinking ocean liner heading for the lifeboats. He is talking to Robert, who has called to
tell him the network was less enamored of an Eskimo on their prime-time schedule than they had initially indicated.

"There's nothing we can do, believe me, I tried."

"They don't even want it as a midseason replacement?"

"It's dead, Frank. Say kaddish."

"Bobby, I don't even know what to think." A monumental admission for Frank, who is never at a loss for subjects on which to
masticate.

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks."

"It was a nice payday," Robert tries.

"Don't patronize me, babe," Frank says, knowing Robert's income will be roughly fifty times his own this year.

"I don't mean to. If it's any consolation, and I know it's not, I feel terrible, too. Harvey Gornish basically told me they
were picking it up, so we both got gut shot here." Robert waits for Frank to respond to this attempt at empathy. When there
is only a burning silence, he continues, "But they liked what you did, so I'm going to work on Harvey to get you written into
one of the series they already have on. He mentioned they're firing an actor in Lloyd Melnick's show, so let me get going
on that."

"Great," Frank says blankly.

"I'll see you at the benefit tonight, right?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry about the timing. Oh, Frank, one more thing, is Honey there?"

"She's getting her legs waxed."

"Have her call me."

A sense of desolation that seems to have brought with it a different weather pattern pervades the West Hollywood bungalow
when Frank hangs up the phone. He looks out the kitchen window and sees clouds scudding in from the north, collecting over
the hills above Sunset Boulevard and forming into threatening shapes. Walking into the living room, Frank collapses on the
couch. Ten minutes go by during which he meditates on what he perceives to be the exquisite futility of his life. Here he
is punching fifty in the mouth looking at a failed pilot and a bunch of road dates in cities you can't even fly to without
making a connection in some place like Minneapolis or Atlanta. Having reached the painful decision to sell out, he is astounded
that no one is buying. And what did Bobby want to talk to Honey about?

The one thing that illuminates Frank's dark moment, that shines soft light in the gloomy shadows, is the realization that
tonight he will get the chance to face an audience of industry players in a ballroom at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and tell
them exactly what is on his mind. Imagining the expressions on their pampered faces as he uncorks twenty-five years of pent-up
aggravation is almost enough to make him smile.

Two dresses are being held up for Lloyd's inspection, and he looks from one to the other marveling that what appears to be
less than three yards of material could have resulted in such a vast sum on his Visa card.

"The Anna Sui or the Balenciaga?" Stacy asks, standing in their bedroom clad in a lavender silk thong-and-bra combination
she wears when she wants to send Lloyd the message that if he behaves himself, the night's menu will be spicy.

Not knowing one from the other, Lloyd says, "The one in your left hand."

"The Anna Sui," Stacy replies indulgently, smiling at Lloyd as he struggles into the tuxedo he wore to the Emmys every year
as a staff writer on
The Fleishman Show.
"Did I tell you Daryl asked us to visit them on Ibiza this summer?"

This was not good news. "No. You didn't mention it."

"We won't be able to go for more than a weekend since you'll be in town doing the show, but she said she'd send their jet
for us."

"They have a jet?"

"I've never been in a private jet."

Lloyd looks over from the mirror where he's been thrashing around with his bow tie and says, "Doesn't it seem weird to you
that Madame Save Our Aching Planet flies around in a private jet? Tell me, what's the point of having that fleet of electric
cars if she uses more jet fuel during one trip to the East Coast than ten SUVs would use in a year? I mean, isn't she actually
making the planet ache
more?"

"Lloyd, for godsakes! Don't be so judgmental. She's serving a higher good."

The gray light of the late afternoon filters through the French windows and falls on the golden cellophane wrapped around
the huge gift basket Lloyd received from Lynx earlier in the day. Overflowing with cheeses, gourmet salami, Cristal Champagne
and two flutes, biscuits, pates, sweetmeats, utensils, and a cutting board, it is a sign of corporate gratitude indicative
of the high hopes they have for
Happy Endings.
Recognizing this, Stacy has chosen to place it on the circular metallic coffee table in the middle of the living room, where
she intends it to serve as a trophy of sorts, much as she would have mounted the head of an elk Lloyd had bagged were he the
hunter/gatherer type.

Lloyd sits in his scratchy tuxedo on the chair upholstered with Thai silk and stares at the gift basket miserably. How could
his nefarious sabotage have backfired so completely? he wonders, as his eyes bore into the cellophane. Images begin to take
shape on its crinkly surface, ghostly human faces emerging from within its overstuffed depths, Pam Penner laughing, supercilious
Jason Fendi, the silent Jessica Puck, sanguine Andy Stanley, their features separating and then merging into a single icon
of want and need and desire and . . .

"Lloyd?"

Lloyd turns around to see Stacy standing at the threshold of the room ready to go out. The cocktail dress she has chosen to
wear shows off her gym-toned body, and her makeup has been perfectly applied. In the gloomy half-light she looks beautiful,
Lloyd's news having had a restorative effect a year at a spa could not accomplish. For a moment Lloyd sees the face she had
before the climb began. She's holding a wrapped gift.

"You look nice," he tells her.

"Thanks," she says, giggling a little. They look into each other's eyes from across the room and nearly share a human moment.
"The babysitter's here. Are you ready?" Nodding, he rises. "Oh, and I got you something. To celebrate." Lloyd takes the oblong
object, looks at it phlegmatically. He doesn't recognize the wrapping paper. What could this be? An item of clothing? A watch?
Surely something he didn't need and would want to return. "Open it," she tells him, smiling. Lloyd tears at the wrapping paper.
Pulling it off, he sees a white box, which he opens, revealing a hardback copy of
The Long Goodbye
in mint condition. "It's a first edition. I bought it this afternoon because I thought you deserved a congratulations gift.
You like Raymond Chandler, don't you?" Lloyd is stunned. He kisses her on the mouth.

"Yeah, I do. Thanks."

"I read about him on the Internet. You know he didn't publish his first novel until he was fifty?"

"I know." What amazes him is that Stacy knows.

For Lloyd the conundrum regarding his marriage was this: just when he thought he was living on his own planet, she would beam
in and join him. It hadn't happened much lately, but when it did, it was something that touched him somewhere he had forgotten
existed.

"You can still write a book, if you want. Just don't give up your day job," Stacy says, smiling, a few flecks of iron in her
voice, just enough to let him know that if he is thinking of pursuing an actual career as an author, he'd better think again.

A light rain beats against the windshield of Stacy's Sunsation as Lloyd drives the two of them toward the Beverly Wilshire
Hotel. Surrounded by much larger vehicles, he frets about the slipperiness of the Los Angeles roads, which upon becoming rain-slicked
often cause cars to hydroplane in unforeseen directions, and Lloyd has a vision of a head-on collision with a West Side mother
driving her kids home from a rain-shortened baseball practice in a sturdy Volvo. He had wanted to take his Saab to the benefit—compared
to the Sunsation it was like driving a semi—but Stacy wouldn't hear of it, the Sunsation a reverse status symbol in her new
world.

The choice of transportation is the only area in which she has not deferred to Lloyd since he received the phone call from
Harvey Gornish that morning. From that fateful moment, Stacy has been treating her husband like a returning war hero who has
arrived at the door of his beloved with a chest full of medals and an officer's commission. She places her hand on his tuxedoed
knee and rubs it.

Lloyd waits. He prays something unbearably trite is not about to come out of her mouth.

"I'm so happy!" Stacy says, flashing her beautiful caps.

His hopes are dashed.

Before Frank went out that day, he left a note for Honey in which he told her if he wasn't back in time to accompany her to
the event, she should meet him there. He also informed her in the same note, which had thoughtfully been Scotch-taped to the
refrigerator, that Bobby wanted her to call him. Frank didn't mention the show hadn't been picked up, wishing to tell her
in person. Honey wanted to hold off calling Frank's manager back at least for a while so she could tell herself her eagerness
and anxiety were under control. Now she needs to kill a few minutes.

Honey stands at the refrigerator leafing through the mail. She wears a miniskirt, tight T-shirt, and fuck-me pumps; her newly
waxed legs shiny in the kitchen light. The mail today is the usual assortment of bills, catalogs, and solicitations. As she
prepares to dump the entire pile into the trash, the return address on a thick envelope catches her eye: People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals. She drops the other envelopes into the bin, placing the one from PETA on the counter, where it awaits
her perusal. Picking up the phone, she calls Robert, consumed with curiosity. Robert had never asked her to call him before.
He'd barely noticed Honey, preferring to parcel out his limited attention to Frank when they were together. And then there
was Daryl, whom she found insufferable. Every time the four of them had dinner, Robert's wife would pretend Honey wasn't there,
only condescending to speak to her about items on the menu or how much traffic there had been on the way to the restaurant.
What could this possibly be about?

"Is Robert Hyler there, please?"

"I'm sorry," Tessa says in her dulcet tones, "he's out. May I take a message?"

Honey leaves word and then calls Frank on his cell phone to determine if he knows anything, but he doesn't pick up. Blissfully
unaware that her future has been hijacked by the network research department (which had handed Harvey Gornish all the ammunition
he needed to disembowel the entire
Kirkuk
world), Honey takes the PETA envelope and heads into the living room, where she sits in a chair and inspects its contents.
And what are its contents? Along with the mailing is a note reading: