Dead Stars (47 page)

Bud's gut tightened as the boy flew up to hover over the building—all the shitty AC units, litter and sandwich wrappers left by slobby workmen—then
up
they went, hundreds of miles above the earth, back to the caves of Vietnam.

“Can you find your way out?”

Bud was so engrossed in his tech-triggered reveries that for a moment, he thought the boy was saying something about the cave or the script or the process.

“Yes! Right. Sure.” Biggie was already cursor-deep in his spelunking dance. “I guess I'll call you after I read it.”

“Or come by. Just email that you want to come by.”

Bud shook his hand again; this time there was even less of the boy behind it than before. Then he left the room.

Biggie called out:

“You're not listed on Wikipedia. Why don't you have an entry?”

CLEAN

[Bud]

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Mr.

Wiggins drove home from Yogurtland, tweaking the satellite radio. He had the
60s on 6
channel on, without sound. It said
THE TURTLES,
Happy Together
(1965)
. Almost fifty years ago—the music of his youth. The aged screenwriter remembered being 13. At 13,
fifty years ago
meant Charlie Chaplin and the vague beginnings of forever-vague World War 1, the general mist of what may as well have been pre-history. Now, fifty years ago meant Manson and “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy).” So it fucking goes.

He sorted through the mail as he walked from the lobby down the hallway to Apt #4—the usual
Bed, Bath & Beyond
coupons, junk flyers and come-ons printed on shit paper, take-out menus for a local Chinese, a local pizza, a not so local Thai.

He fished a stately little card from the pile:

 

Dear Dolly,

For a variety of reasons, more and more people are choosing cremation over traditional funeral arrangements. As they plan their final wishes and needs, almost 50% of Californians have selected cremation as their preference! The numbers are increasing every year!

 

Bud already did the legwork. A downtown mortuary called Armstrong would pick the body up, haul it to Orange County for burning then tote the ashes back for a loved one to pick up, all for just a bit over 600 bucks. Urns started at $200, hardly worth it since Dolly had always expressed an interest in being buried at sea. If you weren't a big
urner
, they'd throw in a plastic box, gratis. His research extended to hospices as well. Veritas had a lot of good online feedback. The minute Dolly's doctor called to say the old gal didn't have more than six months, RNs would descend upon the apartment to make sure she was pain-free and comfortable as possible. Bud liked hospices' general approach—doping patients to make them comfortable, which invariably hastened death. No one likes a long, drawn-out demise.

Her bank statement (Wells Fargo) was hidden between the coupons and throwaways. Bud waited until he was in the foyer to open the envelope. His mother's balance was $1,384,411.08, even more than he recalled. Boy, that interest really mounts up. He wondered what it would be like to have interest work for you and not against you. What a concept.

Bud wanted to go to bed early. He climbed the stairs to say goodnight. He couldn't wait to tell her that she could suspend his allowance because he just got a job, a real job, a
writing
job, but now wasn't the time. She'd probably say something withering anyway. Still, nothing could change the fact that a hot production company commissioned him to write a feature. His world had been stood on end; he could even tell people he was with CAA and not be lying.

Marta was at her “station” in the dining room, studying a bible. She was a robust, cheerful Salvadoran mother of five and grandmother of 12 who praised god and suffered no fools. She was an ardent churchgoer and as far as Bud was concerned, a living saint. Marta actually slept in bed with her employer during the week—Bud guessed that was a cultural mother-veneration thing, but it still blew his mind—worrying that if
Big Baby
needed her in the middle of the night, the monitor might not be loud enough to wake her. Marta took off weekends to spend time with her family, which was tough because Dolly hated the other caregivers. If she gave the fill-ins too hard a time, Bud would have to call Marta, who'd drop what she was doing and rush over to admonish, soothe and sweet-talk. By the time she left, Big Baby was so docile that she practically
goo-goo
'd.

He poked his head in. Dolly was asleep in a chair in front of the TV. Her mouth was open and Bud softened; the face looked like a death mask. Poor Dolly—solitary, snobbish, sadistic, rancorous Dolly. Bud still marveled at how she hadn't cultivated a single friend in half-a-century.
A true misanthrope.
Her parents never showed affection of any kind so it was no wonder she was clueless. As one therapist after another had inculcated Bud,
she'd done the best that she could
. She'd worked like a dog in retail for more than half a century, squeezing out every dollar she could, accruing bonus upon bonus, bending, twisting and torturing the percentages in her favor, scrimping and saving and going without just as her own mother had during the Depression. One of her most striking memories as a little girl was getting scarlet fever; the health department taped the doors and windows, quarantining her family inside. She never forgot the shame of being forced to accept charity—baskets of food left on the doorstep by neighbors in the early morning.
And oh how they hated the Jews in Urbana-Champaign. How they hated us!

He was touched that the Universe saw fit to provide Dolly with her first real mother—Marta Morales—at the tail end of her life. She called her Big Baby, and Dolly called her Mama, for real. They had a secret language and laughed at a thousand private things. Better late than never. Bud would be lucky to find his own Marta toward the end.

He was about to back out of the room when she stirred, as if sensing his presence.

“Bud?”

“Hi Mom.”

“Hi! What time is it?”

“Only seven. I'm going to sleep early.”

“That sounds like a wonderful idea.” Her head remained fixed but her eyes lasciviously raked him over. “You're handsome, and you
know
it. That
beautiful jaw
—those
lips
. You really kind of turn me on.”

He was determined not to tell her about the gig until they cut him a check.

“Last night I woke up with tears in my eyes. I teared up over your father. Can you imagine? I didn't think I had it in me. I think it was because I was watching
America's Most Talented
, & the ventriloquist was singing with the frog. They were singing that song, ‘Crying Over You.' Do you know it?”

Dolly was focused on the television. Michael Douglas was being interviewed about
The Treasure of Sierra Leone
.

“Bud . . .” He recognized it as her
dark conspiracy
voice. “Do you think he's not telling the
truth?
”

“Who?”

“Michael
Douglas
.”

That familiar inflection of groundless contempt.

“About what?”

“I just think he's . . .
got
it. I think it
came back
.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Who
knows
. And that
nut
he's married to—he can sure
pick em.
I think she
wants
him to have it—the
cancer
.
Because then she'll get
all the money.
She's no dummy. He's an old man, Bud! She's still
young
. You can't fault her for that. Do you know what old men smell like? In bed? The
farts
and the
breath
? Well
I
can
tell
you. Because that was my
thing
after I divorced your father. The old men were my
thing
. I was looking for
money
.”

“Mom, I think I'm gonna go to bed.”

“
Terrible
taste in women. His father fooled around
puhlenty
. What was her name—
Diandra
. He went from
bitch
to
nut
. She was smart, the first one,
$45 million
she got. And she was
right
to sue again. She should sue a
third
time. Serve him with papers
right when he's taking his last breath
.”

“Night, Mom.”

“We need to find you a Diandra—or a Jamie McCourt. A
divorcée
. The divorcées are good because most are
dying
for a good
fuck
. I don't care
who
they are as long as they're
monied
. Go for an
old one
. A
dowager
. Do you know what a dowager is? I'll pull out my Neiman's customer book and we'll go
shopping for
dowagers
. How about the fag's mother?
Cooper.
His mother's,
you
know, a
Vanderbilt
. Gloria. How does it go, what they say about people on top? They fuck their way to the bottom! That's where
you
are, let her
fuck her way to the bottom
,
that's
when you
grab
her. She had a son, you know that, don't you? He jumped out a
window
just to get away from her. Why don't you go out there, Bud? Fly out there and give her a run for her money. Cause she's got to be as old as
I
am. In the meantime,
go find Jamie McCourt
.”

He said goodnight to Marta and went straight to his bathroom for a bowel movement. He'd been constipated ever since Brando Brainard said he got the job. His body was in shock.

Bud sat there with the iPad. He unfroze the Franzen, which was the last thing he'd been looking at—Franzen on YouTube had become a weirdly addictive pastime. In this particular screed, the bloated, bestselling litterateur smirkily held forth on “overrated writers,” casually shitting on Forster and Graham Greene. Bud noted JF's three-day grizzle gave him a smug, Craig's List coker's mien, reminding the over-the-hill aging scripter of those contestants who were certain they'd win The Dating Game—or maybe more like a death-row interviewee, one of those high-IQ serial killers talking on an A&E doc about the 11 undergrad guys and dolls he decapitated then raped back in the Santa Cruz glory days. He said Graham Greene's so-called important books like
The End of the Affair
were basically shit but maybe that was a function of being Brit vs. American, and how there was a lot of American writing that Brits didn't get either—writers like, oh, George Saunders, and, uhm, his pal Dave Wallace . . . again, he shit on his good friend! Not only deftly tucking him into a minor peer's camp but insinuating that DFW didn't have the universality—even in death, especially in death—of Jonathan Franzen! “They consider George and Dave to be, I don't know, puerile, or bratty, or too broad, or annoying . . .”

The gall of the man nearly gave Bud a hard-on, but instead, he squeezed out a few pellets followed by a record-breaking, sustained trumpet of gas—a personal best.

Bud ran a bath and printed out the attachment Biggie emailed, a two-page newspaper article entitled “Between Scylla and Charybdis.”
Scylla & Charybdis . . .
the names were familiar. He'd google them later.

Instead of getting in the tub, he sat at his desk and flipped through a book called
The 90-Day Novel
. After his meeting with Biggie, Bud drove down to the beach and treated himself to an early dinner at a Thai place off the Promenade. Then he strolled to Barnes & Noble, where a placard by the escalator announced an “author's event.” He took his seat in a crowd of studious-looking wannabes. It seemed strange to him that instead of writing a self-help book for burgeoning novelists, then going on to write fiction, Alan Watt did things in reverse; he wrote an acclaimed novel (in 3 months, of course), then took the self-help guru route. The author entered to applause, his ease in front of a crowd attesting to a former career in stand-up. He thanked his publicist, who sat in the front row, then began thanking the bookstore staff by name as if there to accept an award.
The 90-Day Novel
was published by The 90-Day Novel™ Press, the sign of an entrepreneur at work. The book was in 12 weekly sections, further broken down into Day 1 through Day 90, each with its own epigram by Mailer, Maugham, Flaubert, Fitzgerald, Hesse, Jung, Pearl Bailey, & the like. It even included a “story structure analysis” of the author's own novel,
Diamond Dogs
, winner of France's 2004 Prix Printemps for Best Foreign Novel. Bud hadn't heard of
Diamond Dogs
, nor had he heard of the Prix Printemps, nor any of the authors that provided blurbs, including the writer of the cover quote, “Frank B. Wilderson III, winner, 2008 American Book Award.”

Bud put the book down and picked up
The Paris Review
.

He opened it to an interview with Jonathan Franzen, who was being asked about the influence of Don DeLillo on his work.

 

FRANZEN

I don't think my pages read like his, because I had a preference for rounder letters—
c'
s and
p
's. I think of him as being more into
l
's and
a
's and
I
's.

INTERVIEWER

C
's and
p
's?

FRANZEN

I kept seeing a plate of food with beet greens and liver and rutabaga—intense purple green, intense orange, rich rusty brown—and feeling a wish to write sentences that were juicy and sensuous.

INTERVIEWER

Do you mean the sound too?

FRANZEN

No, the way they looked, the roundness of
b
's and
g
's, the juiciness.

 

It depressed Bud that he hadn't thought of letters that way, having shapes and colors like food. He would never be able to talk about vowels and consonants with such sensual, specialized knowledge; he'd never be asked anything in
The Paris Review
, not even for his thoughts about
The Wire
or
Mad Men
. Bud felt all about
l
's and
o
's and
s
's and
e
's and
r's—
like a
loser
.

Bud understood there were certain things he would simply have to accept. He might never finish, let alone publish a novel, and if he did, the odds of collecting an award—even a
Prix Printemps
—were stacked against him. He would never be asked to discuss his life and his craft at the Aspen Ideas Festival. He would never give a TED talk or be profiled in
The New York Times Magazine
. He would never be extolled, asskissed and fussed over in the pages of
Interview
by special people like Marina Abramovi´c & Antony Hegarty; he would never hang with Patti Smith and Johnny Depp, nor would they gift him with photos of Genet's scrotum or original letters from Rimbaud's gunrunning years or uncracked ampoules once owned by Hunter Thompson. Lil Wayne would never refer to him as “my artist,” and Ellen would never give him a frivolous, on-air gift. He would never be asked to deliver a commencement speech, like Franzen's boon friend David Foster Wallace. He'd probably never hang himself either.
*