Memorial

LV.Chester

THEY took their Cabazon road trip — to the Morongo resort.

Chess packed his full pharmacopoeia: a grab bag of painkillers, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants, antivertigos, anti-inflammatories, stool softeners, sleep inducers, and the like. And some fall-on-the-floor weed. They were only staying overnight but he didn’t want to be caught unprepared.

Anyway, he wasn’t the designated driver. He sat in the capacious backseat of Maurie’s Mercedes 500, wondering where his erstwhile friend had baked the short-bread. You could smell the leather even with the fucking windows down. Maurie said he got it at one of those police auctions. “The car was a steal.” He laughed and ran some bullshit about how the ride probably belonged to a dealer, “if these seats could talk,” yadda yadda, but Chess was suspect. Police auction, my ass. Maybe Maurie was about to direct a feature or something, produced by that Haggis guy who was supposed to be his big bud. Perfect. 2 fuckin hacks. 2 fuckin Haggasses. Maybe Maurie Levin was a “silent creator” of Friday Night Frights, had been from day one.

Chess scoped the blond hairs of Laxmi’s legs; her bare foot was resting on the dash. Jesus. He could see where the razorwork ended.

Her iPod sat in a dock, playing tunes Chess didn’t recognize. It made him feel fuckin old. He watched Maurie pretend to be hiply familiar, hands rhythmically beating the steering wheel like he’d heard it all before. Bullshit artist. Fuckin scammer. Whatever. It was a beautiful day and Chess was buzzed. The vertigo had receded but that was the maddening thing about inner-ear stuff: it was always in the back of your head (or the sides of it) that suddenly you could be tossing your tostadas.

So far, so good.

Maurie prattled on about Morongo and how rich the Indians were, goddamn thieves and sociopathic drunks, worse than Gypsies, and how the 3 of them should come up with a way to hustle the BIA. Fuckin Injuns — nothing but black-braided bitch-parasites and ultraviolent alkies. Maurie said they should legally declare themselves Native Americans, like that leftie professor who got fired for saying everyone who worked at the World Trade Center was a mini-Eichmann. “Didn’t that asshole say he was fucking Cherokee? Yeah, right. Jeep Cherokee.” Maurie had that blustery Jew thing going, he could make you laugh in spite of yourself, that’s probably what drew Laxmi to him in the first place — opposites attract — Chess prayed they weren’t still fucking, though they kinda sorta acted like they were, but not as much as they used to, not so demonstrative, not around him anyway. Maurie liked to grope her but didn’t do that shit anymore; now and then he body-spammed or reached out to touch and even though there wasn’t anything too pervy about it, she swatted his hand anyway — Chess hoped she did that for his benefit. The definitive conversation about the Maurie issue was long overdue. They’d danced around it but Chester always wimped out.

What was he afraid of? He was afraid of hearing Laxmi say that it was nuts, and she was sorry, but she just couldn’t shake the kikey SOB; that Levin had some kind of psychosexual strangle-hold on her. He was afraid of the pathology — too much of a daddy thing going on. Maybe Maurie and her old man even looked the same, smelled the same….

Chess pushed the bad thoughts from his head and watched the desertscape zoom by. His backpack was filled with dope, and books too — Laxmi had picked up some “spiritual volumes” for him at the Bodhi Tree a few weeks back. A nice surprise. Chess was pretty sure at this point the relationship between them was still secret, and that made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Fuck that prick. He enjoyed having the books along, he’d stowed them away like a taboo treasure trove, thinking of them as love letters. He was “holding,” and it gave him a little goose — suddenly, he remembered the Viagra. Not that anything was going to happen. Not on this trip, anyway. You never knew.

THE casino was a slick dumb orange building looming out of nowhere like a humungous stereo cabinet from Circuit City. They dropped a few dollars at the tables before checking in. The Indians were stealing their money already.

Laxmi dragged them to the spa and the Jew reserved 3 late-afternoon massages (evidently, they weren’t so busy). He said to charge them to his room. Big man. Chess couldn’t even believe she was staying with Maurie — he was more stunned than pissed — and when Laxmi took him aside to whisper something about “twin beds,” like that was supposed to make it all better, he just shrugged. The FNF conspiracy theories swept back over him…but why should he care? It was none of his business and he didn’t want to feel foolish. He didn’t want to feel foolish about anything anymore. He was gonna sue the motherfuckers, and if Laxmi wanted to drop by the pad and smoke his dope and let him look at the hair on her legs, fuck it.

They had 4 hours to chill before getting rubbed. Maybe he’d check out the pool or the gym or go take a nap. Chess wondered if the masseuses gave hand jobs. He figured there was a pretty good chance because the place was new, and it might be part of a secret corporate policy to keep guests coming back. He reminded himself they were there to location scout for a commercial, but it felt kind of bogus, and he couldn’t shake the idea that Levin was out to grease him so he’d drop his lawsuit (which he already might have blown) and join the FNF payroll. He didn’t trust the Jew for shit.

MAURIE said they could wake up early and scout on Sunday morning before brunch. He told Laxmi she could sleep in. Then, around noon, they’d drive to “Las Viagras.” That wasn’t part of the plan and Laxmi hated the idea. One casino was enough. Maurie said cool, they could hang at Morongo or get stoned in Joshua Tree or have “supper” at the Viceroy, in the Springs. Laxmi wasn’t into it. She said they should go back to LA after breakfast, but then she got to thinking about Joshua Tree and how that might be trippy. Chess couldn’t see himself spazzing around in the high desert but kept his mouth shut. He’d just stay in his room — he was in pain most of the time anyway, still fine-tuning the medley of meds that mellowed him out. That’s how fucked up it was: he’d become some housebound geezer, cozily experimenting with milligram’d combo-plates.

At a certain point, they wound up alone in the elevator. He told Laxmi he’d brought the Karma Sutra she gave him (the other Bodhi Tree books were weirder, and he hadn’t yet delved into them) and she smiled, without enthusiasm or innuendo. When he made a move to kiss her — he was just stoned enough — she backed away, saying, “We shouldn’t.” He tensed up. His neck and shoulders stung and throbbed. OK — cool. That’s cool. I can live with that. Probably not such a great idea. Fuck it, we’ll always have Griffith Park. If he had to stretch the truth a bit, he actually liked that she was being prudent, or prudish, or whatever. Besides, if they did the deed, the Viagra might interact with other drugs he was taking and give him vertigo again. Just what he needed: Laxmi goes consensual then he pukes on her during the Tantric Tortoise, the Pair of Tongs, the Splitting Bamboo.

The Jew and the Lotus retired to their suite to “rinse off” and lie down. Did that mean they were going to fuck? What else could it mean? He was the lowest of the low — a cuckold without a wife. His rage at Maurie boomeranged. He decided to hit the casino. Walk it off. He checked out the losers at the slots then went to the spa and had a few words with the proprietress. Then he rode the elevator to 1508, replaying the other ride, with Laxmi, in his head, his failed minimove rocket-to-nowhere. It had embarrassed him. On top of it (and he knew this was sick) was the part that felt guilty about his behavior — that he’d betrayed his friend, the man who had caused him grievous injury! At least, he thought, I’m lucid enough to know that it’s only the irrational thoughts of a depressive mindspace.

Chess sat on the bed, lit a joint, and flipped through the trove. The pages actually smelled like her — that patchouli vibe. The ludicrous thing was, the Karma Sutra had a whole section with the rubric, “Other Men’s Wives,” detailing how a man had the universal right to fuck a married woman! There were entire lists of what made hapless brides “eligible” for adultery: like if a gal was neglected or scorned, or had married someone beneath her caste, or even if her husband happened to have “many brothers.” (Laxmi was a strong candidate — Maurie had neglected and scorned her, and was definitely beneath her caste. Plus, the Jew used to refer to Chess as his “brother.”) He laughed aloud at the following passage: “Just as medical science explains that for certain diseases one should eat dog meat, similarly, in special circumstances, an individual may find himself in need of sleeping with other men’s wives, and he should put it into practice only after a serious study of the Karma Sutra.” Well, right on! Let the serious studies begin! He flipped through another book, the strangest in the litter, and this one offered conflicting views: if the spouse cheated, why, then she should “sleep in a trough of cow dung for a year,” and be paraded through town on a black donkey. Hey, whatever gets your Ganges wet. This particularly sizable volume was way harsh, declaring that if a man poured the pork to his brother’s wife, it was thereby proclaimed he should rip out his own cock and balls (a neat trick! whoa!), cup em in his hands, and walk in a “southerly direction.” Right on. But my personal opinion is the dude ain’t gonna feel up to no stroll.

Chess returned to the enlightened pages of the Karma, to the addendum called “Justification for Seducing Other Men’s Wives.” Thus it was written: if a guy had insomnia “for thinking of the object of desire,” or if he is obsessing, well, then, that was enough of a reason. Shit. Jesus. This is crazy. The book was really growing on him…then came the coup de grâce: “weakness leading to vertigo” was in there too! If you were feeling vertiginous, you could get jiggy with your neighbor’s Mrs! Vertigo! It said that! The ultimate Epley Maneuver! Now, that was freakish. He realized how stoned he was, and wound up masturbating to the book’s X-rated illustrations, suffused with Laxmi’s smell.

ABOUT an hour before the massages, everyone met for drinks in a lounge off the casino. Tanqueray and Vicodin had Chess seriously toasted. Maurie was on another roll about the “shitfaced brownskins” and Laxmi shushed him. Chess began to riff about a white-collar con he’d read about that made the Sioux look like pikers.

“Ever heard of whistleblowers? You know, those guys in big corporations who snitch to the government?”

“Like The Insider,” said Maurie.

“I love Al Pacino,” said Laxmi.

“Right.” He felt in the groove, and flashed on the chapter of the Karma Sutra that said married women liked to be seduced by good storytellers. “There’s this whole confidence game where people whistleblow, but the shit they’re exposing isn’t true. The government has whistleblowing laws — some of em guarantee 30 % of whatever money is recovered. So there’s this guy who whistle-blew—”

“Whistle blow-me!” said Maurie, and Laxmi giggled.

The remark was indecorous, not the usual thing she laughed at, which made Chess fleetingly paranoid. Maybe that was what Hippie Slut dug, that was the hook. Maybe her dad was like that — a captivating Jew with a dirty mouth. Lord Ganesha, guardian of the anus.

“The feds wound up giving him a hundred and 26,000,000!”

“Jesus.”

“He goes on Oprah like some kinda hero then retires to a gated community. A few years later, they find out everything he told em was just some kind of half-truth. But it’s too late. They dig a little further. The so-called kickbacks and price hikes he ratted about never fucking happened. So a federal jury convenes and declares the defendants—”

“Whistle blow-me!”

“—not guilty. The employees all get off. But the whistleblower doesn’t have to return the fed’s thank-you money!”

“You mean the fed’s fuck-you money,” said Maurie, with a leer. “Everybody should get off.”

“The moral of the story is, the government can be hustled. I mean, it’s like those sex harassment suits where companies used to have to pay people just to go away.”

“Don’t go away horny…just go away. That’s what Laxmi’s been saying.”

“It’s the modern-day version. And it doesn’t even have to be a bigass company. Let’s say some poor shrink—”

“You mean there is such a thing?” interjected Maurie, looking quizzically toward Laxmi, who giggled and choked, the drink fizzing through her nose.

“—overcharges someone a hundred bucks. For a hundred-dollar overcharge, the feds can ask for a fine of like 60,000,000. Restitution under the False Claims Act.”

“You’ve got way too much time on your hands, Desperado.” Maurie shook his head and threw Laxmi a what-the-fuck’s-he-talking-about look. Then: “You’re like a fuckin expert. You’re like Lewis Black, without the humor.” He belched, chirped, and cooed (while Laxmi laughed, convulsively), then theatrically scrunched his face to look at Chester sideways — like some tweaky owl out of Harry Potter. “You sound like a…what do they call those people? Magpies? No — agitators? Agent provocateurs! Nah, that ain’t it either. Gadflies! That’s what you are! You’re a fuckin gadfly!” He screwed up an eye, and whispered conspiratorially. “Now: you don’t suddenly know so much cause you’ve been busy researching Herlihy v Friday Night Frights—is that why you know so much? Look out, world! Mr False Claims Restitution is about to wreak havoc! Godzilla? Meet Fraudzilla!” (Her laughter diminished.) “Bionic ethics! You want to be on Oprah too, don’t you! That’s what this is about. You want to be in a million little pieces! You want to make a million little dollars! Or maybe have your own show like Dr Phil! Dr Chester! Dr Chester the Restituted Molester!”

Laxmi put a hand on Chess’ leg, though not in any overtly sexual way — closer to the knee. She probably just felt bad she’d laughed so hard, at his expense. Her way of letting him know it was nothing personal and that mostly she was just stoned. Maurie grunted, stood, and went to the head. Chess paid the bar tab.

When he returned, they strolled past the noise of the slots to the Sage.

A sullen silence overtook the 2 men. Laxmi walked between them as a buffer. She stared straight ahead, pretending all was well, now and then glancing at one or the other peripherally. Maurie’s appointment was half an hour before the others’. He was getting Deep Tissue and Chess was having Sacred Stone. Laxmi had signed up for the Desert Volcanic Fango Body Mask/Sage Body Polish.

He hung back while his friends went to shower, and confirmed the arrangement made earlier. Because Maurie requested a woman, Chess had been stuck with a male therapist, a sweet-faced black masseur he bumped into that 2nd time at the spa — while the happy couple were upstairs doing their rinse-off. That’s when he got his brainstorm. He slipped the girl a hundie to ensure a “mix-up,” telling her it was his friend’s 40th and they’d been playing practical jokes on each other all week long. Luckily, she was game.

The only thing that would ruin the prank was if Maurie had a tantrum, and walked out.

But Chess didn’t think that likely.