Still Holding

Her Drewness

AS A GIRL, Becca hadn’t resembled Drew Barrymore at all. But now, at twenty-five, especially after gaining a few pounds, she had grown used to comments from bartenders and store clerks, and the half-startled looks from passersby.

That was funny because her mom had always gotten the Sissy Spacek tag, even if Becca thought that was mostly because of a bad nose job. Still, Sissy and Drew were worlds apart, physically. It was a subjective thing; sometimes people could see the Sissy, sometimes they couldn’t. But no one ever seemed to have trouble with Becca’s “Drewness.” Her boyfriend Sadge, who on a good day looked like a piss-poor Jack Black, got his kicks from playing it up — like the time he booked a table at Crustacean under Drew’s name. He made sure to get there first and had Becca come forty minutes later in huge sunglasses, head swathed in a knockoff Hermès scarf. They were high, and the maître d’ wasn’t thrilled. (He must have been on to them from the beginning because Sadge had been ushered to the “civilian” zone.) A few diners turned their heads when Becca arrived, but she didn’t have as much fun as she might have because Jordana Brewster was in the house, just on the other side of the glass partition, with a trim bald man Becca assumed to be her manager. Whenever Sadge laughed raucously or cued Becca to ham it up, the aspiring actress felt foolish, as she was certain Drew and Jordana knew each other. Jordana didn’t look over once, and the whole thing kind of threw water on it for her. Suddenly Becca felt cheap, like a character in her friend Annie’s favorite movie, Star 80.

That was the week she saw Drew on a Jay Leno repeat. Her divorce from Tom Green had just been announced, but there she sat, surrealistically giddy about the marriage. She gushed that her husband had sent a dozen roses and a note saying good luck on the show, and the audience sighed. Jay volunteered that it was actually a statistic that comedians stayed married longer. Drew said how great was that. It was so horrible and depressing that Becca actually got nauseated then angry that someone in programming would have been so careless as to rerun that particular show. She thought it might have been deliberately perpetrated, like when those malicious video store clerks splice porn into animated classics. Jay Leno struck her as a good and decent man, and she told Sadge — who’d laughed throughout the segment until Becca hit him — it was the kind of thing that if it was brought to NBC’s attention by Drew’s management (she hoped), the talk-show host would definitely apologize to her personally. Becca actually considered being the “whistle-blower,” but then her own career concerns overtook her.

• • •

“THAT WAS GREAT,” said Sharon. “I think you’ve got the potential to be quite a comedienne.”

She gave the word a Frenchified emphasis, and Becca was lost. Did she mean stand-up? She was too intimidated to ask for clarification. Maybe she meant Becca should be doing gigs at the Laugh Factory instead of wasting time trying to get movie and TV roles.

She decided she didn’t care what the woman meant. She would simply persevere, perseverance being the one quality all successful actors had in common. She’d just gotten her SAG card and had finally found a commercial agent but didn’t yet have the all-important “theatrical.” Still, she thought of herself as a winner because only a month or so after a general meeting with Sharon Belzmerz, one of the big casting directors on the Warners lot, she had been invited back to do a taped audition for a WB pilot. Sharon’s friend, Becca’s acting coach, made the initial contact. What you always heard was true — it was all about personal connections.

“That was really fun!” said Becca. “Thank you so much for seeing me.” She glanced at the video camera on the tripod opposite her. “Can I get a copy?”

Sharon smiled at her naïveté.

“Well, the director has to see it first — then we usually recycle.”

“Oh! That’s OK,” said Becca, hiding her embarrassment.

“You’re really very good. Don’t worry, you’ll have tape or film soon. You’ll have a whole reel.”

On the Boardwalk

WHEN HER FATHER had a stroke, Lisanne took the day off.

She worked for Reggie Marck in the penthouse offices of Marck, Fitch, Saginow, Rippert, Childers, and Beiard, at Sunset near Doheny. She was thirty-seven and had been Reggie’s crackerjack executive secretary for thirteen years, beginning with his stint at Kohlhorn, Kohan, Rattner, Hawkins, and Risk. When he heard the bad news, he encouraged her to get on a plane and go home. That wasn’t so easy. Lisanne had a profound fear of flying (a condition long predating 9/11). After a round of phone calls to her aunt, she went to the Venice Boardwalk to clear her head.

The shoreline was windswept and absurdly pristine. Since the bike path’s renovation and the rebuilding of a few burned-out boardwalk apartment houses — not to mention the arrival of Shutters and Casa del Mar — the beach had lost some of its funky grandeur. There wasn’t much to be nostalgic about anymore. The shops, vendors, and performers were forced to clean up their acts, and the city hadn’t sanctioned Fourth of July fireworks on the pier in years because of the gangs.

Lisanne bit the bullet and took possession of her wistful stroll; she had some serious mulling to do. There was the dilemma of her father’s grave condition, plus imminent jet travel…. Still, it was diverting to take in the scene. Because it was a weekday, there weren’t many people out. Interspersed with the homeless was an upscale cadre of citizens busily exercising their right to play hooky at watery world’s end. They spun or sprinted past doing “cardio” or simply sat and stared at the passive ruthlessness of the sea whence one day they would return, if they were so lucky. Heads tilted, faux-contemplative, to regard the occasional chandelier of gulls.

Lisanne waited for a woman in her late forties to jog by before crossing the path. A tribe of drunks sat on the grass. One of them yelled, “You go, girl! You c’n do it! You c’n do it, girlie!” The runner pretended to ignore him, but Lisanne could tell the bum had found her prideful nerve. Later, she saw a different drunk approach a gorgeous twentysomething couple. The boy’s pants slung stylishly low, and the drunk said, “Hey, your fuckin pants are fallin down your ass!” The boy, smiling and trying to be cool, decided to say, “I know,” to defuse the harassment. His girlfriend was being cool too, but the drunk wouldn’t have it. “Then pull ‘em up! Pull ‘em up!” It was like the commedias dell’arte that Lisanne had studied in school. The bums and winos were there to keep it real, to deflate the ego and remind that all was vanity.

Lisanne slunk away to avoid being heckled. She was forty pounds overweight — a perfect target.

She tried to imagine herself climbing onto a plane. As a girl, she didn’t mind flying so much, though she remembered only a few trips. The 747s were so big and she was so small that somehow it was OK. But now it was different: Reggie would have to hook her up with his doctor for the big gun sleeping pills, and if she timed it right, she’d wake up as they touched down at Newark. That was the best of scenarios. Aside from the obvious fantasies of wind-shear-induced nosedives, messy hijackings, human-debris-scattered cornfield fireballs, and charismatic pilots greeting her with gin-laced coffee breath as she boarded, Lisanne considered some of her lesser concerns to be laugh-out-loud comical. What if the pills put her out so deep that her snoring became shamefully stertorous or she drooled on the passenger beside her? What if her throat closed up or she had a reaction to the pills and vomited in her sleep? No — try as she may, Lisanne couldn’t see herself getting into some fucked-up cylinder and hurtling through space. She wasn’t ready to play that kind of Russian roulette. In heaven or hell, the biggest bunch of losers had to be the ones who crashed while flying to be at the side of a stroked-out parent.

She would take the train.

Does a Dog Have Buddha Nature?

KIT LIGHTFOOT WAS in his trailer, meditating.

He was thirty-four and had meditated at least an hour a day for nearly a dozen years without fail. Out of carefully enforced humility, he had never shared that statistic with anyone, though the urge to do so frequently came upon him. Whenever he felt the pride of a Zen valedictorian, he smiled and soldiered on, letting the feeling wash over him. Years of zazen had taught him that all manner of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations would arise and clamor for his attention before falling away.

His career as an actor had barely been launched when a friend turned him on to Buddhism. He took up meditating and, a short while after, visited a monastery on Mount Baldy. It was freezing cold, but there was wordless beauty and a stunning quietude that pierced him to the core. That was the week, he used to say, where he got a taste of stillness. Monks and dedicated laypersons came and went like solemn, dignified cadets amidst the ritualized cadence of drums, chanting, and silence — his unthinkable siren and dangerous new friend, for silence too had a cadence. (The hard poetry of silence, his teacher once said.) He watched a man being ordained and later found out he had once been a powerful Hollywood agent. Kit grooved to that kind of convert. He loved having blundered into this magisterially abstract Shangri-la of the spirit, a flawless diamond-pointed world that might liberate him from the bonds of narcissism, the bonds of self.

He got deeper into his practice. Between theater and film gigs he traveled to far-flung countries attending monthlong sesshins, awakening at four in the morning to sit on a cushion eleven hours a day when not immersed in the meditation of food preparation, tea ceremonies, groundskeeping. He was glad to be young and strong while learning the art of sitting in stillness. Older initiates had a hard time with zazen’s physical demands.

It became well-known within the show business community, and outside it too, that Kit was a serious practitioner. He rarely discussed his thoughts or beliefs with interviewers unless the venue was a magazine like Tricycle or Shambhala Sun. He didn’t want to trivialize something so personal or, worse, get puffed up in the process. There were enough celebrities talking about yoga and Buddhism anyway. He gave generously to the Tibetan cause and funded clinics and ashrams through an anonymous trust. That satisfied him more than any public discourse ever could.

In those twelve years of practice, Kit Lightfoot, the celebrity, was often the People’s Choice. He’d finally been snagged by James Lipton (Hoffman and Nicholson were among the remaining holdouts) and photographed in Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue with the simple caption “The Man.” He even won Best Supporting for a remarkable, artfully thrown away performance in a fluky, borderline indie lark filmed just before the death of his Buddhist teacher, Gil Weiskopf Roshi. After the fact, it seemed so perfect. It was Gil who had said: Throw it all away.

• • •

IT WAS THANKSGIVING time, and a whore was at his Benedict Canyon home. That used to be his thing, but he hadn’t been with a whore since the early nineties. And he’d never cheated on Viv.

They were coked up in the living room, and he laughed as she held the dog’s head between her legs. It kept trying to break free, and that made the whore laugh too. “Jus’ like his master,” she said. “Real picky.” She laughed again and released him, then stood to pee. When the whore came back, she knelt by the Buddha at the fireplace and lit a cigarette. There were flowers and incense and tiny photos of enlightened men. She asked about the altar, and Kit said reflectively that it was a gift from Stevie Nicks. Then he gave her a little flash-card intro — Zen 101. Stillness. Sitting. The Power of Now.

“You meditate every day?” she said.

“Every day. For fifteen years.”

A Star Is Born

BECCA WAS PART of Metropolis, a modest theater company that leased space on Delongpre. The roof was undergoing repair, having been damaged in the rains, so the class was temporarily on Hillhurst at the home of one of its founders. Becca thought Cyrus was a wonderful teacher and a good director too. He was for sure an amazing promoter. Aside from agent and exec heavies, he always managed to get people like Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins to show up at openings.

For two weeks, she’d been working with Annie on a scene from a Strindberg play. She had never even heard of Strindberg until she met Cyrus but had to admit she loved Tennessee Williams more. She loved Tennessee’s letters and poems and short stories — everything he wrote was so sad and beautiful yet filled with such tenderness. His women were at once tough and unbearably fragile, just as Becca imagined herself. She’d seen all the films made from his plays and liked This Property Is Condemned best. In real life, Natalie Wood was sad and beautiful too and just as tragic as anything. August Strindberg was brilliant and ruthlessly true to human nature, but sometimes he scared her, leaving her cold. She preferred Ibsen and Chekhov.

After rehearsal, they went to a coffee shop on Vermont.

“Did I suck?”

“No!” said Annie. “You were great. Why? Did you think you sucked?”

“I always think I suck.”

“You so don’t. You’re always amazing. Cyrus loves what you do.”

“You think?”

“Totally. He so totally does.”

“You mean he loves the one line per play he sees fit for me to declaim.”

“You’ll get there,” said Annie. “Anyway, do you see me majorly treading the boards? Do you, Miss Declaimerhead?”

Becca laughed. “I’m just so freaked out — about everything. Ohmygod, did I tell you Sadge might be going to Tasmania for this reality show?”

“No! What is it?”

“I don’t even know.”

“Where’s Tasmania? Is that, like, near Transylvania?”

“Maybe Czechoslovakia?”

“I so want to go to Prague. You should go, Becca! You should go with him and use his hotel as a base. You could do absinthe. Like Marilyn Manson! It would be so rad.”

“I don’t think so, Annie.”

“But won’t it be good, though? I mean, weren’t you saying you needed space?”

“Yeah. But it’ll be weird suddenly being alone.”

“Can’t you not have a boyfriend for one minute?”

“It’s pilot season, and I haven’t gone up for anything.”

“That’s why you’re freaked out,” Annie said knowingly.

“I guess.”

“But you saw that casting woman.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What did she say?”

“That I could be a ‘comedienne.’ ”

Annie scrunched her nose the way Becca loved. “What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“You should do open-mike night at the Improv,” said Annie. “You could be the next Margaret Cho.”

“I could waitress at the Cheesecake Factory and after work do open-mike at the Laugh Factory.”

Annie laughed then said, “I think that rocks.”

• • •

ONE OF THE Metropolis ensemble players who guested on Six Feet Under got sick with the flu and gave Annie his tickets to the show’s season premiere at the El Capitan. Becca splurged on a dress from Agnès B.

They lingered in the lobby, getting free drinks and popcorn before going in. Stars like Ed Begley Jr. and Brooke Shields were milling around. The air was electric with showbiz bonhomie.

When they entered the theater, the girls were led to a special roped-off area to sit among the luminaries. They were just an arm’s length from Jeff Goldblum, Kathy Bates, and Pee-Wee Herman. The head of the network got up and said they had all made history and that the cast was the greatest ever assembled. He said the creator of the show was a dark, special kind of genius who had written a drama that was ostensibly about death but actually turned out to be profoundly about life. Then the creator, the ubiquitous Alan, a handsomely nerdy, sweet-faced man, took the stage to a tumult of applause. He comically prostrated himself, saying “Thank God for HBO!” and this time there was a thunder of laughter along with the applause. Becca had never been to the premiere of a television show and was confused when he began to speechify like it was the Academy Awards. He acknowledged this person and that, occasionally interjecting “Thank God for HBO!” and everyone laughed, hooted, and clapped their hands. The audience seemed so happy, healthy, and rich, and ebullient men were kissing each other on the cheeks and mouth. She felt like part of them, like part of the HBO family — she was among the roped off after all, and the same men smiled back at her whenever Becca caught their eyes, as if it were a given that she was one of their own. They were kind and open and not cliquish even though they had every right to be.

The “after-party” was across the street in the building where they held the Oscars. It was fun walking the short distance because there were lots of photographers and police, and pedestrians straining their eyes to watch the privileged make their crosswalk pilgrimage. They passed the Chinese Theater, and for little micromoments Becca pretended she was famous. It gave her goose bumps.

While Annie was in the rest room, a woman approached and asked if she was an actress. She was casting for a show and gave Becca her card.

When Annie came back, Becca giddily marched her friend to a corner before uncrumpling it from her sweaty hand to examine:

THE LOOK-ALIKE SHOPPE PRODUCTIONS

ELAINE JORDACHE, FOUNDER/CREATOR

HOLLYWOOD, CA

The Great Plains

LISANNE TREATED HERSELF to a deluxe bedroom on the Amtrak. It was such an intense relief not to be getting on a plane that she found herself almost sensuously relaxed as they left Union Station. She would keep in touch with her father’s caretakers by cell phone and with the office as well, fielding any questions the temp might have. Getting to Chicago took two days. Lisanne would change trains there, arriving in Albany within twenty-four hours.

She kept to her room, hunkering down with a paperback filled with transcribed tapes from the recovered black boxes of crashed airplanes. She laughed a little at her own morbidity — it was so Addams Family-bedtime-story of her — yet each time she dipped into the book, her decision to take the rails was sustained anew. Oh God, thought Lisanne. My fears are completely justified.

One of the transcripts was particularly harrowing. An Alaska Airlines jet on its way from Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco had plunged into the Pacific. It was clear from the dialogue that the captain knew they weren’t going to make it. But what haunted Lisanne was his intercom announcement to the passengers. He said Los Angeles was off to the right and that he didn’t anticipate any problems once he got “a couple of subsystems on the line”—this, after the plane had shakily recovered from a nosedive. Anticipated arrival to LAX, he said, was under half an hour. Lisanne presumed that, by the time of his speech, the doomed passengers, many no doubt injured from the free fall, would have been in a state of shock. For months, she read the account over and over, thinking of Flight 261 as a kind of ghost ship, its wayward souls’ eighty-eight sets of eyes (the book’s favored term, each airborne drama typically ending with “all souls aboard were lost”) forever fixated on Los Angeles, condemned to circle a destination at which they’d never arrive. The moment the captain directed their attention toward L.A. — “off to the right there”—Lisanne imagined the last thoughts and wishes of the passengers focused upon the sprawling city with an incomprehensible, laserlike force, a desperate longing that may ultimately have outlived their physical bodies. (Maybe that was just her father talking. It was the kind of impassioned, fanciful theory he would have advanced over the dinner table, spookily transcendent, darkly romantic; the sort of argument that intimidated her mother and made her feel small.) Our intention, said the pilot to the control tower, is to land at Los Angeles.

On trains, one ate communally, but Lisanne didn’t have the energy for small talk or passing personal histories so she took meals in her cabin. Once in a while, to break the monotony, she had coffee in the observation car. The tracks were dicey, and the cars shimmied and shook. Her body shook too, but Lisanne didn’t feel self-conscious because so many people on the train were fat — L.A. wasn’t the way Americans looked, this was how Americans looked. Cushy and invisible, safe from wind shear, she clicked into cozy “observer” mode…. A family threaded its way through the shifting aisle. The studious-looking little girl said to the others, “Now, if you hold on as you go, you’ll be just fine.” Such a darling, so distinctly American: the budding caretaker. She reminded Lisanne of herself. A young man with a shaved head passed by, wearing a T-shirt that read PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY. She saw a hermit-looking fellow staring out the window, with a heavy slab resting in his lap. She thought it was a food tray before getting a closer look — he’d been whittling a finely detailed memorial to the police and firemen of September 11. “How beautiful,” she said. She really did think it an extraordinary example of folk art. The hermit thanked her indifferently, never averting his eyes from the mysterious panorama of the Kansan plains. So American too, this eccentric! Americans all.

One thing Lisanne thought strange: They had traveled hundreds of miles through small and midsize towns, but she rarely saw a human being. The locomotive whooshed, clattered, or lumbered past clapboard houses, some abandoned, others half built, many clearly lived in, yet Lisanne never saw anyone in the yards or driveways — no scavengers or children, idlers or train watchers, no one working in the yard, or even seen through windows, baking, yelling, reading or restive, writing or resigned. She searched her mind, but there was no way to account for it. She thought of Alaska Airlines again — of ghost ships and ghost trains, ghost moms and dads on a ghostly plain. What was that movie she saw on pay-per-view and liked so much? Ghost World. That just about said it all.

The porter, a slow black girl, brought dinner. Lisanne fastidiously arranged the food on the metal tray that dropped down from the cold window of her private compartment. It was pleasurable to eat in solitude with the sun dipping and the scenic world moving by. Had she flown, she would have arrived long since.

Just before sleep, Lisanne thought of the family she’d read about in The New York Times who had perished in France, in a fire aboard a high-speed train. Only those in the deluxe sleeper car had died. The same thing happened in the States some years ago, but she couldn’t get it up to care. Phobias were like that — either you had one or you didn’t. Bed down, tucked beneath the requisition threadbare pink blankets, Lisanne felt safe and secure, certain she’d survive any old little fire or derailment that came her way.

• • •

JUST BEFORE ARRIVING in Chicago, Lisanne showered in the closet-size bathroom. The water was nice and warm, and she smiled at the comic absurdity of hosing herself down in the upright plastic coffin of a train toilet. Looking at the big white folds of skin, she felt like an animal at the county fair. She laughed when imagining herself stuck in the stall, the dull-witted porter having to pry her out.

She had four hours to kill and went to Marshall Field’s for lunch. The grandiose dining room was shopworn and depressing, so she ate lunch in an ill-lit, pretentious chain-boutique hotel with giant, ludicrously stylized chairs and lamps. After the meal, she strolled to the Sears Tower. It was windy, and her mind imbecilically repeated: The Windy City, the Windy City, the Windy City. She tried calling her aunt but couldn’t get through.

It was good to get back on the train. She saw herself traveling like this forever, city to city, station to station, coast to coast, working for Amtrak incognito as a secret inspector in quality control, a plus-size spinster who kept to herself and legendarily took meals in sequestration. She thought seriously about changing her return ticket so that instead of coming through Chicago again she could take the southern route to Jacksonville then over to New Orleans.

By the time she got to Albany, her father was dead.

The Benefit

HE FLIPPED THROUGH the paper. Viv was still getting ready. The driver waited outside to take them to the benefit.

Kit was always looking through articles in the Times for movie ideas. Maybe there would be something to develop that he could direct. Shit, his friend Clooney had done it. Nic Cage and Sean, Denzel and Kevin — name the film and the chances were that some actor had “helmed.” There was an item about a woman accused of feeding her young daughter sleeping pills and shaving her head in an effort to convince the community she had leukemia and was worthy of multiple fund-raisers. She even put the kid in counseling, to prepare her for death. Another told of two Wichita brothers who broke into a town house and forced a bunch of twentysomething friends to have sex with each other before staging executions on a snowy soccer field. At the bottom of the page was the story of a pole vaulter who had freakishly crashed to the ground and died during his run. The last thing he said before jogging to his death was, “This is my day, Dad.”

“What’s this thing we’re going to?” Kit asked as Viv strode in, cocky and perfect-looking. He could smell the hair on her arms.

“A benefit for Char Riordan,” she said. “She’s a casting agent—so great. I love her.”

“Television?”

She nodded.

Viv Wembley was as famous as her boyfriend but in a different way. She was one of the stars of Together, the long-running, high-rated sitcom.

“She cast me in my first play and my first TV movie. I was bridesmaid at her wedding on the Vineyard.”

“So what’s wrong with her?”

“Scleroderma.”

“Gesundheit.”

“Very funny.”

“Sclerowhat?”

“Scleroderma.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t even know! It’s in the tissues or something. She looks kind of like a monster — like she’s rotting away.”

“Always attractive.”

“If I ever get anything like that, promise to shoot me.”

“After I fuck you. Or maybe during.”

She swatted at him as they got into the Town Car. When it pulled up to the hotel, the photographers shouted their names in a frenzy. Alf Lanier, a younger movie star in his own right and a friend of both, nudged his way over, doing jester shtick as the trio posed in a seizure of strobes.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” asked Kit, playfully sotto.

“Isn’t this the Michael J. Fox thing?” said Alf.

“You are such an asshole,” said Viv, with a scampish smile.

“You stupid cunt,” said Kit to Alf, whispering in his ear to be heard above the vulturazzi. “Didn’t you know this was the Lymphoma Costume Ball?”

“You guys better shut up!” said Viv, enjoying their banter.

Alf looked outraged and shot back to Kit: “This is the cystic fibrosis-autism thing, you insensitive prick.”

“Oh shit,” said the superstar, contritely. “I fucked up. But are you sure this isn’t the bipolar Lou Gehrig tit cancer monkeypox telethon?”

They went on like that as Viv dragged them into the ballroom.

Fisticuffs

THE OFFICE OF the Look-Alike Shoppe Productions was on Willoughby, not far from where Metropolis had its theater. It was Saturday when Becca came in. Before taking the stairs, she noticed the dented Lexus with the customized plate:

Elaine Jordache, a hard fifty with jet-black, dandruffy hair, had predatory eyes that somehow still welcomed. She sucked from a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf cup festooned with lipstick. Glossies of actors covered every available wall space; Xeroxes and boilerplate contracts littered floor and desk in a parody of industry. She rid a chair of papers and bade Becca sit amid the shitstorm. If the phone rang, Elaine said she would have to take it — her assistant was out sick, and she was expecting an important call from Denmark. As it happened, she said, the Look-Alike Shoppe did a ton of business with Denmark.

“What did you think of the show?” she asked.

Becca was flustered until she realized Elaine was talking about the Six Feet Under premiere.

“It was amazing. Ohmygod, did you cast it?”

“A close friend of mine,” she said, shaking her head. “A protégée. She handles the extras. She’ll be doing principals soon, wait and see — they all just won Emmys. The girls who cast the show. They do a great job too. But you burn out doing a series. It’s an assembly line. That’s a fuck-load of faces, each and every week. They’ll be wanting to move on.” She took a long cigarette from an antiquey silver case, then shuffled beneath the contracts, hunting for matches. “Fun when you’re younger, though. They really work you. Everyone wants a lot of bang for their buck. I’ve been with all the biggies — Altman, Ashby, Nic Roeg. Do you even know who Nic Roeg is?” Becca shook her head. “Well, why should you? My God, I worked with Nic when I was a baby—your age. Married to Theresa Russell. Were they the couple: hot, hot, hot! I’ve got a fabulous Theresa Russell, but I can’t use her. Saw her on the street — not even she knows she looks like Theresa. Who’s heard of Theresa Russell anymore?”

Elaine found a matchbook and lit up. She dipped into a steel file drawer and passed an eight-by-ten Becca’s way — a pretty girl with wavy blond hair dangling from beneath a fedora, like a starlet from long ago. “There she is,” said Elaine. Becca noticed some acne on the chin that should have been airbrushed. “That’s my Theresa, for all the good it’ll do me. I don’t even know where she is. Phone disconnected. She was working at either Target or Hooters, can’t remember which. Maybe Costco. I get all my kids confused.”

“What is it that you do here?” asked Becca ingenuously.

Elaine literally threw back her head and laughed. “ ‘Do’? I do look-alikes! Ground control to Becca! I mean, that’s what it says on the card, right? Look-alikes. I cast look-alikes.” Becca still seemed perplexed. “For trade shows and special events, OK? Meet-’n’-greets. Conventions. Comedy sketches. Ever done comedy?”

“I’ve done improv. I’m in Metropolis — the theater group.”

Elaine wasn’t impressed.

“Last week, Rusty was on the Leno show — my Russell Crowe. You know how Jay sometimes does movie takeoffs? Like Johnny used to. God, I used to book Johnny like crazy. He’s got emphysema now, poor man. But he’s richer than Croesus so I ain’t gonna feel too bad. I flew Rusty to Japan just last month, they’re crazy about Russell Crowe in Japan — and Drew too,” she said, with a wink. “They did a nine-eleven memorial thing over there. I had my Russell, my Clooney, my Bette. She did ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’ Does she have a voice on her! I’m desperate for a Nicole — lost mine to pilot season, what can you do? I’d kill. I actually do have a couple of Ewans, believe it or not. Thought they’d be harder to come by. Audiences eat the duets up. But the Nicole really has to be able to sing. Moulin Rouge has become a cash cow for us. And,” she said dramatically, “I’ve got a Cammie Diaz and a Lucy Liu… but no Drew.” She inhaled deeply. “That’s where you come in.”

• • •

THAT NIGHT, BECCA made Annie go with her to a nightclub in Playa del Rey that Elaine recommended. Some of her people would be performing.

The show was a cavalcade of look-alikes. Most of them were tacky, but a few had natural talent as impersonators. Annie was stoned and couldn’t stop laughing, but Becca was moved in a way she couldn’t explain. A bad Kit Lightfoot did his thing, then a Russell Crowe came onstage in a cheap gladiator outfit and Becca thought him awful. He was muscle-bound and inelegant, his accent was absurd, and you had to squint even to imagine a resemblance. Her opinion of Elaine Jordache’s judgment soured right there.

Toward the end, after a few peculiar acts — a lurid Celine Dion, and a ranting John McEnroe being interviewed by a long-haired Larry King — a second Russell Crowe took the stage. Becca thought this one to be nearly charismatic as the real thing. He did the hand-to-forehead tic of the character from A Beautiful Mind and spoke in “schizophrenic” tongues, a creative stream-of-consciousness monologue that Becca found funny and poetic, with pointedly scathing asides directed at his earlier, idiotic incarnation. This Russell was someone who didn’t relish sharing the stage.

Afterward, the two girls went out for a smoke. Annie got woozy from the wine and the weed and they decided to go home. On the way to the car, Becca saw the second Mr. Crowe and called out, “You were amazing!”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, head down, as if still in character.

She walked a little closer. “I’m a friend of Elaine’s,” she stammered. “Elaine Jordache. She told me you were in Japan — that you went to Japan.”

He eyed her warily. “Oh yeah? That was no thanks to her. She’s a cunt — worse — a Jewish cunt. And she’s trying to fucking rob me.”

His ears pricked like an animal’s and he bolted, sprinting down the block. Annie gasped then broke into laughter, while Becca’s mouth remained open in astonishment. They ran for the car and tussled awhile, Becca trying to wrest away the keys. Annie insisted on driving and made a screeching turnabout, stopping at the light in time to see the Russell chase down his inferior. He threw his shadow to the ground and pummeled him. Like puppet and despotic puppeteer, the weaker Russell squeaked and moaned, squirming under the rain of blows.

“Ohmygod!” muttered Annie, and floored it.

Sleepless in Albany

HE HAD BEEN dead just forty-five minutes when Lisanne arrived. The nurses stayed out of the room while the aunt and one of her father’s neighbors sat vigil. All of the medical equipment had been disconnected.

His skin was like tallow. The aunt spread baby powder on the hairless, purple-bruised arms, draping a small towel over the genitals, then gave Lisanne the powder and gestured for her to do the legs. She wasn’t sure why they were doing it, but it was somehow a comfort. His shins reminded her of slick wood handrails. The cologne of the talc commingling with death smells faintly sickened. His mouth twisted to one side, like that of a whispering conspirator in a medieval religious painting.

• • •

AFTER HE HAD been cremated, Lisanne kept dreaming that she was a victim of one of those undertaker scams and that what she thought were the dusty remains of her father were actually those of animals or indigent men. Finally, to break the cycle, she went downstairs.

Her aunt sat in Dad’s favorite chair half asleep, the cool, ash-filled vase poised on a thin shellacked table beside her. It took four hours — four whole hours to burn a body then grind its bones to dust. Lisanne picked up the urn, revolved it, then quietly set it down. She traced a half circle around it, then tapped the tabletop’s veneer. Just the kind of piece people bring to Antiques Roadshow, she thought randomly.

Lisanne heated up milk in a saucepan. While her aunt slept, she padded to the library to browse the bookshelves so she might further distance herself from the soot of nightmare. Her father had been a professor, a learned man. She drew a forefinger over the spines: Poverty — A History; Wedekind’s Diary of an Erotic Life; The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought; The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa; The Book Lover’s Guide to the Internet; a cool green, five-volume set called Mexico — A Traves de los Siglos; Hardy’s Selected Poems. She never really knew him, nor would she now by his obscure and bloodless books. They would crumble soon enough, like the body of their collector, whose exit she’d been too late to observe.

“Why didn’t you fly?”

The aunt appeared in the door like a dark oracle.

“Because it terrifies me.”

Lisanne paused, wondering if she should go on. Why should she have to explain herself to this crone?

“And because I would have had to drug myself into a coma, which always makes me uncomfortable.”

The old woman winced at her niece’s low comedy but said nothing. She left the room.

Lisanne climbed the stairs and returned to the same bed she’d slept in as a girl — the same bed her mother chose to die in, ten years back. She had missed that death too.

She took half an Ativan and settled under the covers, imagining herself on a 747, first class, selecting wines and cheeses offered by the handsome steward… joshing with a flirty fellow passenger after a spate of turbulence… the uneventful landing… the connecting plane and swift arrival to hospital… Dad’s deep-water eyes rising just once more to surface sea brightness at the unexpected sight of her, and the aunt’s tearful relief as she entered the room… a convocation of hands prayerfully entwined as he shanty-sighed his last respirations, sinking back to the briny depths.

As the first wavy softness of the drug entered her bloodstream, Lisanne’s thoughts drifted to her high school boyfriend. The aunt said Robbie had moved back to town six months ago. It was at least ten years since they’d spoken and she decided to see him before the train left for Chicago on Sunday night.

Command Performance

“WHAT THE FUCK are we doing here?” asked Kit.

They were at a club on the Strip frequented by young television stars.

“My roots, baby,” said Alf. “Television made me what I fucking am. Jus’ loves comin back to look after the little ones.” He scanned the room with a vulpine smile. “You’re so mega, Kitchener. Your very fucking presence makes ‘em nutsoid. Look at ‘em! Look! Trying to be all cool and not make eye contact — sad but so sweet.”

Kit looked around in exaggerated disgust. “I meet enough TV dickheads through Viv.”

“Think you’re gonna marry her?”

“Man, I don’t know. It’s hard. It’s fucking hard. Sometimes I think that’d be… kinda great? You know, I love her — I really do.”

“I know. I know. Great gal.”

“Sometimes I think: OK. Let’s do it. The whole yadda-baby thing. Because she’s hot, she’s in my blood, man. Other times, I just stare at the fucking ceiling. And it’s like… whoa! Can’t give up the whores.”

Alf got quiet.

They erupted in laughter, tilting back shots.

“Still into the Buddhist thing?”

“Still into it,” said Kit, by rote. He was used to the tepid inquiries. “I’m a lapsed Buddhist,” he added with a smirk.

“Fallen monk.”

“That’s me, honey. After the fall.”

“I read this interview with Oliver Stone? He said he was attracted to Buddhism because it wasn’t on some morality trip like most religions.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Kit. “Buddhism’s all about morality. Right thought, Right action.”

“I think I’m really gonna try it,” said Alf.

“Uh huh.”

“I’m serious—at least the meditation thing. Friend of mine has this machine, this mask and headset that put out these crazy lights and sounds. Very sixties, bubba. Supposed to put you in an alpha state without having to sit for ten hours a day. Kinda jump-starts you. He drops the shrooms, then straps it on. Cause I don’t know if I could do that — the whole sit thing that you do. I mean, I got discipline but…”

“You’re disciplined at getting blow jobs.”

“From your daddy. And he’s good, too. Guess you gave him a lot of practice. I was listening to these Joseph Campbell tapes on the way to Vegas. The ones with Bill Moyers? Downey’s totally into them. We were on our way to see the Stones. Did you ever listen to that Campbell shit? He’s a trip.”

“Get thee to a monastery. I’ll hook you up.”

Kit flinched at his own words. He hated his behavior of late, the way he acted, spoke, thought. His only comfort was in telling himself that he was in the at-least-conscious throes of some sort of perversely pathetic karmic regression. For years he had been meticulous, impeccable, mindful — now he was frivolous and inane, wasteful, asinine. A flabby bullshitter: every gesture and every breath was false, vulgar, wrong. He was a poisoned well. It was becoming intolerable to be in his own skin. He’d long since betrayed the precepts and spirit of his practice. When he thought of Gil Weiskopf Roshi, his root guru, monitoring his lifestyle from the afterworld, Kit shuddered with embarrassment before noting that even his shame and remorse were bogus and hypocritical. This sort of masochistic digression formed the backdrop of his days.

Alf saw a friend come toward them from the bar. “Heads up for my man Lucas. Good little actor — got a Golden Globe.”

Lucas was upon them. He said hello to his old friend, then turned to Kit, awestruck. “I just wanted to tell you what a big fan I am of your work.”

“Thanks.”

“And Viv’s great, too. I just did an arc on Together. She’s good people. Very cool.”

Alf stood up. “Be right back. I see someone I think I want to fuck.”

“Boy or girl?” said Kit.

“Girly-man,” said Alf. He leaned over to Lucas and stage-whispered, “Try not to drool on my bro, OK?”

Kit wasn’t thrilled to be left holding the bag with Golden boy.

“You’re into Buddhism, aren’t you?”

“Right.”

Oh God here we go. Suddenly he felt how drunk he was.

“My sister’s deep into it. She spent nine months at an ashram in the Bahamas. What’s it called, the meditation?”

“There’s different kinds.”

“It starts with a v—”

“Vipassana?”

“Yeah! That’s it — vipassana. That stuff is serious. She’s way into yoga too. She’s really close to Mariel Hemingway, who’s completely addicted. She wrote this memoir? — Mariel, not my sister — with the chapter headings all named for yoga poses? Did you read that?”

“No.”

He kept his ego in check. What was the point in dissing this nervous kid?

“So, how long you been knowing Alf?” asked Kit.

“We did this series, a summer replacement. Kinda were roomies — lived down the hill from Hustler’s. On Sunset? Before that, we both tended bar at the Viper. Went on auditions together, slept with each other’s girlfriends. You know the drill. Alfie’s gone a little farther careerwise than I have. Can’t complain.”

“You won the Globe! That’s pretty major. What was that for?”

“Savage Song.”

“Right! The software guy with Tourette’s? Man, I saw that. Viv thought you were amazing. Kept buggin on me to check it out.”

“Thank you. I can’t believe you actually watched that! Thank you. Yeah, that was difficult, cause there were, like, so many Tourette’s flicks. It’s hard to stand out.”

“Ever think you’d fuck it up? I mean, you go out on a major limb when you do the disability thing. I don’t think I have the chops.”

“I researched it pretty well.”

Alf came back to the table accompanied by a redhead with a tiny dragon tattoo on her neck. They ditzed around while Kit and Lucas hunched over, talking between themselves like new best friends.

“I kind of got to know a lot of those people. My accountant’s actually got Tourette’s.”

“You have to do it,” said Alf, having overheard. “You gotta reprise your Golden Globe — winning performance!”

“You mean, now?” said Lucas, a twinkle in his eye. Alf knew his buddy would do anything in front of The Idol, for a laugh.

“Kit, you gotta see this!”

“What?” said Kit, with a half smile. He swallowed another shot.

“OK, I’ll show you,” said Lucas. He spoke directly to the superstar, as if it were Kit, not Alf, who’d been egging him on. “But only if you put me in your next film.”

“Done,” said Kit, along for the ride.

Alf rubbed his hands together and said, “Let’s roll.”

Lucas stood and instantly adopted his small-screen persona, barking, spitting and spewing obscenities with startling spasmodic accuracy as the clubbers reacted first with stunned silence then shrieks, laughter, and war whoops.

Chagrined, Kit found himself laughing louder than anyone — to the starstruck onlookers it almost seemed like he was part of the show. He’d been feeling so miserable and so derelict, and now all his self-loathing tumbled forth with unstoppable fury.

Asses into Seats

BECCA GOT TO the L.A. Convention Center early. She went to the Subaru exhibit, but no one was there.

As she left the hall to find a coffee, Elaine arrived with a gaggle of look-alikes in tow. She was glad to see “Drew”—she insisted on calling her brood by their celebrity names — and quickly introduced her to Cameron, Louie (Anderson), Cher, and Whoopi. Shoving Cameron at her, she bemoaned that Lucy (Liu) had car trouble and wasn’t going to make it. Today, the Auto Show would have to get by with just two Angels.

A few aloof staffers appeared and faintly sniggered while Elaine gathered the ducklings round for an impromptu seminar. Subaru had a Hooray for Hollywood! theme going, and the idea was for the look-alikes to encourage spectators to sit in the cars, kick the tires, and whatnot. Before Elaine even finished, Whoopi dived right in, spritzing a Japanese couple with Hollywood Squares—type zingers. The Louie was heartened and impulsively uprooted a prepubescent girl, forcibly settling her into one of the car’s open trunks so that she stood in it upright. The dad took pictures of his bemused, giggly daughter.

The Cameron was awkward at first but in between entertaining consumers spoke excitedly to Becca of Elaine Jordache’s Angels Master Plan. She was tall and had no ass. Becca thought the most Cameron-like thing about her was definitely her smile, which shone grotesquely without requiring cue. She wore clear braces (she said she was “currently under construction”), with a view toward making wideness and whiteness closer to Cameron’s; the lips were chapped with grape-colored gloss ill-applied. Becca couldn’t understand why the girl couldn’t at least have given the mouth — her prime asset — a little more prep time.

Some kids came over and hassled them. “Are you supposed to be Drew Barrymore?”

“That’s right,” said Becca, extending an arm to one of the cars. She thought she may as well use them for practice. “Now be an angel and take a seat in the new Impreza — it never fails to impress!”

“Take a seat on my face,” muttered his friend. They cracked themselves up until a mean-looking staffer sent them scurrying. Out of harm’s way, one of the boys shouted: “Hey, everybody! Drew Barrymore! Over there! It’s Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz of Charlie’s Angels!” His buddy added, “Free blow jobs, free blow jobs! They’re giving out free blow jobs!”

They disappeared into the crowd.

Becca introduced herself as Drew (per Elaine’s instructions), showing browsers to their cars. All in all, people were kind, and flattering about her resemblance. She had read that a lot of Hollywood power-types came to the Auto Show — you never knew who you’d make an impression on. Her Southern charm and sunny spirit lightened everybody’s load. She even won the staffers over.

After an hour or so, she took a break. She saw Elaine over by a customized SUV, having an argument with the handsome man who had impersonated Russell Crowe in Playa del Rey. Becca hid herself behind a display and eavesdropped.

“I told you to bring the armor!” she hissed.

“I said that I couldn’t find it. I didn’t want to be late.”

He was docile — a far cry from his brutish behavior of the other night.

“Well, next time I say bring it, bring it. Or there won’t be a next time. They specifically asked for the armor, and now I don’t even know if they’re going to pay for you, understand? If you ask for Mickey Mouse, you damn well expect the ears.” She tapped her foot with irritation. “Start paying attention or there won’t be a London and there won’t be a European tour. Understood?”

“You’re a little over the top, don’t you think?”

“There won’t be a European tour, Rusty! Am I making myself understood?”

He stared at the ground in the diffident way that had charmed Becca when they first met. “Understood.”

Elaine stormed off.

Rusty — she wondered what his real name was but liked Rusty just fine — approached the Subaru space, defeated. She was reminded of the scene where Joaquin Phoenix stabs Maximus, mortally wounding him before their Colosseum showdown. Becca discreetly circled around so that they both approached the exhibit at the same time. When he saw her, he seemed to reach out and retreat all at once. She said hello, and he nodded in a way that broke her heart. Becca saw him deflate as he stood there in his shabby Beautiful Mind suit, watching the Louie cavort with people’s kids. He listened to the other look-alikes introduce themselves by their celebrity names, and seemed to steel himself; then, in a remarkable rally, he approached a young black couple and vigorously said, “G’day, mates — I’m Russell Crowe. Come have a seat in the Subaru Baja! I assure you its south of the border qualities won’t disappoint. As a real Insider, let me tell you this little vehicle’s no croc—or ‘Crocodile’ Dundee! So c’mon over, put a shrimp on the Barbie doll and let me give you something strictly L.A. Confidential: I got half A Beautiful Mind to give this Gladiator”—arm sweeping toward polished passenger door—“an Academy Award — for Best Car of the Year!”

The Fireman’s Fund

THE COLD, MOLDY, red-shingled string of cottages was called The Albany. A voice inside her — the snotty L.A. voice, the wry deadpan voice of her boss, Reggie Marck — said, Hey: it doesn’t get much more imaginative than that.

Robbie wouldn’t take her home, and she knew that meant he was involved. Though maybe not. Lisanne wouldn’t ask. Maybe he had a roommate he was embarrassed to parade her in front of, the kind who would tease him about porking a porker. She understood. She’d never made love at this weigh-in. He seemed excited enough, and besides, she didn’t care. She only wanted communion. She had almost forgotten what that was like.

He was an athlete in high school. It was torrid between them, but when Lisanne got accepted to Berkeley they broke up. Robbie stayed behind and drove an ambulance, with the idea of eventually enrolling in med school. When the company went bankrupt, he took the EMT course for paramedics in training and began working for the city. His story was that he injured his back lifting a gurney and wound up addicted to painkillers. He moved back in with his mom, inheriting a small amount of money when she died. Lisanne didn’t want to know too many details.

The sex was still good. She got vocal and cried out to God. That surprised her. He went down on her, and that was rough; she instinctively covered the fatness of a thigh with one hand while drawing up folds of belly with the other. While he worked down there, she thought about enrolling in an obesity program at UCLA. You ate seven hundred calories a day for months and lost three or four pounds a week, the only drawback being that your breath stank as your body began to devour its stores of fat. There was a moment of embarrassment when he spoke up and said it looked like she had some discharge. She switched on a lamp, but it was only a small wad of toilet paper. He went back to his labors — nothing seemed to turn him off.

Robbie lit an après-sex joint and proceeded to get all happy. She smoked and choked. He asked if she wanted to come see his house (the one he had bought and was slowly fixing up) and glowed like a cheap guru when she assented. Her cohabitation theories might have been wrong after all.

The ride was freezing and quiet. The truck smelled of desuetude and cigarettes, old mud, junk mail, torn vinyl promises. She hadn’t been this loaded in a long time. She became focused on the long, trembling metal stick that ruled the roost, the crystal of its eight ball cupped in Robbie’s hand like an animal’s heart. She watched the arcane, manly, unfathomable patterns of his upshifts and downshifts with the attention of an adept. The engine provided heat; there wasn’t even a radio. Her ex seemed to lose impetus as they drove, but Lisanne thought maybe that was because there wasn’t any more weed. Robbie clearly had a tolerance.

A light flurry of snow blew down as they pulled into the drive. It felt like high school, playing hooky to do something dirty.

“How long you been here?” she asked as they stepped out.

“About a year,” he said. “My grandma stays with me.”

“I thought Grannie was dead!”

“That’s Mom’s mom — remember Elsa?”

“Sure do,” she said.

“Well, Elsa died about a year after Mom.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah, well, it was time for her to go.”

“So this is your dad’s mom?”

“Uh huh.”

“I don’t think I ever met her.”

“She lived in Rochester. She’s kind of a hermit.”

When they entered, the house was filled with shadows. A cloud of perfume pressed on Lisanne like a rag of chloroform. A petite, hawklike figure watched them from the other side of the kitchen counter.

“Maxine?”

“Yes?”

Lisanne was suddenly self-conscious that she hadn’t showered. Robbie’s eyes were bloodshot. She felt dodgy and illicit.

“This my friend Lisanne, from L.A. — her dad died. I told you about her,” he added. “We went to high school together.”

“Hello,” said Lisanne, brightening like a loser.

Perky whore.

The pot was still kaleidiscopically working on her.

“Hiya,” said the woman.

Her features grew more distinct as Lisanne’s eyes adjusted to the light. She looked around seventy, of slender frame and predatory countenance. She was meticulously groomed, and Lisanne pegged her wardrobe as vintage — Chanel or YSL.

“I was just getting ice cream,” said Maxine. “Y’all like some?”

Robbie turned solicitously to Lisanne, who shook her head. In the full fluorescence of her stonedness, her man looked wild and bereft, startled to have put them in this wrong, weird predicament.

“Actually,” said Maxine, “it’s soy. They call it Soy Dream and it’s raspberry. I am absolutely hooked and don’t care who knows. Do I, Robert?”

“No ma’am!”

“Aren’t I absolutely hooked?”

“Yes ma’am!”

“Hook, line, and stinker. Bell, book, and candle.”

“May I use the bathroom?” said Lisanne.

She could feel her smile becoming fixed and ghoulish; Robbie pointed the way.

Lisanne listened to the voices engaged in low argument as she douched.

The Greenroom and Beyond

“HE’S BEEN VOTED People magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ more times than anyone on the planet — and he can type too. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome… Kit Lightfoot!”

The supernova took the stage with his patented self-effacing panther walk. The band raucously played the well-known theme from an early megahit. There was a large contingent of fans and screamers toward the front.

They embraced. After the applause died down, Jay did his jokey debonair thing. “Those screams — if our viewers at home are wondering — are partially for me. Something in the aftershave.”

Laughter. More swoons, hoots, and hollers.

“All right,” Jay chastised. “That’s enough now!”

He turned to his handsome guest. “So how the hell are ya?”

Hair-trigger whoops came before he could answer. Kit raised an eyebrow at the audience and chuckled. A few isolated screams.

“I’m great. I’m great, Jay.”

First words greeted by more electric commotion (everyone was having fun, and fun was what it was all about) which gradually though never completely faded away.

“I saw you at a benefit last week,” said Jay.

“For scleroderma,” said Kit, nodding.

“Yes. For a lovely lady who Mavis, my wife, has actually known for years — Char Riordan. They’re doing wonderful research.”

“Yes.”

“Making great strides. Do you go to a lot of those things? I would imagine you get asked to lend your name to causes.”

“This business is so frivolous, Jay, and so many of us have been absurdly blessed. I mean, let’s face it, I put on makeup for a living—”

“You could always work on Santa Monica Boulevard…”

“Don’t quit my day job, exactly! But I think we get compensated on such a ridiculous scale, that we’re… compelled… to do what we can. Otherwise, you’re just a kid in a sandbox. I try to do my share.”

Applause kicked in, soberly encouraged by Jay. “So you went last week—”

“I had a personal connection. Viv and Char — the woman being honored — are very, very close.”

“That’s of course Viv Wembley,” said Jay, pausing to acknowledge the audience as they whooped and applauded. “In case the folks out there didn’t know,” he added with a wink. “The very lovely, and by the way very funny star of Together. And I want to get to some other things — it’s well known you have an interest, a long-standing interest, in Buddhism, and you’ve agreed to talk with us a little about that tonight in connection with an upcoming event — which is something you rarely do and I’m thrilled you’re going to enlighten us, so to speak. But first, I’m dying to ask you a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Someone told me you and Viv have nicknames for each other.”

The audience hooted while Kit squirmed appealingly. “Who told you that?”

“Vee haff ways. Now come on, Kit, tell us what she calls you.”

He hemmed and hawed. The crowd cajoled.

“She calls me Bumpkin.”

The audience let out a happy groan. Warm laughter. Wolf whistles.

“Now come on!” said Jay, admonishing the mob. “I think it’s very sweet.” He turned back to Kit. “She calls you Bumpkin.”

“That’s right, Jay.”

“And… what’s your nickname for Viv?”

“I don’t think we should go there.”

The audience protested, then began to plead.

“This is a family show,” Kit added.

Laughter. More pleading. Isolated begging whoops.

“Now, you were supposed to do a cameo on Together—”

“Jay! I thought we were moving on!”

“We are, but this is important. I heard Viv was mad because that cameo hasn’t yet happened.”

Kit looked at the host with keen-eyed admiration. “Oh, you are good. You are really good.”

Audience laughter.

“Bumpkin’s been a very bad boy,” said Jay.

“Yeah, she’s not too happy. But I’m busy! I’m in the middle of shooting a picture! I’m in a little bit of hot water here, Jay, help me out!”

“I’m trying to be sympathetic. But to most of us, being in hot water with Viv Wembley probably isn’t the worst thing in the world.”

“Think you’re man enough to handle it?”

The audience laughed. Jay cracked up, blushing.

“When we come back, I want to talk about the Dalai Lama — he’s a friend of yours, right? — and the important work you’ve been doing building clinics over there.”

“Helping to,” Kit added, with a modest smile.

“Where are they, India?”

“Yes,” Kit said matter-of-factly. “India.”

“For the refugees.”

“For whoever needs them.”

Jay looked straight into the camera and said, “Kit Lightfoot. Right here. Right now. Wearing makeup. So don’t touch that dial.”

How Verde Was My Valle

RUSTY INVITED BECCA to his apartment. They met instead at the Rose Café, a few blocks from where he lived. She wasn’t ready to be alone with him just yet. There was something so tender about him but something dangerous too, like the actor he portrayed.

When she asked his real name, he said Rusty, without a trace of irony. He said he was from Sarasota. His father was a wealthy entrepreneur who, among other ventures, had been involved in business dealings with Burt Reynolds, a pal from college. About himself, Rusty used the term jack-of-all-trades. He had worked as a racetrack stable hand, a private nurse to the wealthy (“like the guy who killed that billionaire in Monaco,” he said with a laugh), and a thief whose expertise was delivering the items on grocery lists of antiquarian books for reclusive bibliophiles. He was so disarmingly forthright that Becca didn’t know which fanciful story to believe.

She immediately regretted asking if he had an agent. She should have known that Elaine Jordache was his lifeline to the business, such as it was. When Becca mentioned her work with Metropolis, Rusty said he did theater too, when he could, preferring it to the game of auditioning for film or television, which disgusted him. He asked if she was single, and Becca felt foolish because she told him about Sadge and how everything was between them — just blurted it out. He put his hand on hers and she laughed nervously then got teary-eyed, the two of them like an image from the cover of an old Pocket Books romance. He asked again if she felt like coming to his home. Becca shook her head. He smiled, pleased by her reticence.

“Then let’s go to Magic Mountain.”

She left her car in the lot.

• • •

THEY WERE ON the freeway, heading north. She wanted to be cool around him and not make any missteps. She was glad when he turned up the radio because it calmed her not to have to make conversation. He knew all the words to “Baby, I’m Yours,” and even though half-goofing, his voice was sensuous and beautifully modulated. He kept looking over, winking devilishly. She felt like she was high.

Rusty took an off-ramp and after a few miles, they pulled onto the grounds of a sprawling hospital. When Becca realized that Magic Mountain had been a joke or a ruse, she got nervous. They parked and began to walk. To allay her fears, he began a little travelogue. He said that, fifty years ago, Valle Verde had been featured in a Brando movie about paraplegics in rehab. He had lots of Hollywood trivia like that in his head.

Rusty confidently threaded his way through a maze of polished linoleum corridors, with the occasional nod to a passing nurse. He was an old hand. No one stopped them or asked who they were visiting. Young, heavily tattooed men loitered in wheelchairs, alone or in quiet groups. Most of their heads were shaved. One bore the legend CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING on his skull. Rusty said they were gang bangers whose luck had run out.

He led her into a patient’s room. A brawny, shirtless man stood by the bed with an attendant. He looked at Rusty with cold hostility before breaking into a grin, as if for a moment he hadn’t recognized him.

“Hey now,” said the man.

“Hey now,” said Rusty.

(Old Larry Sanders freaks.)

Becca hung back while the men embraced.

“Jesus, it stinks,” said Rusty. “What’d you, just take a dump?”

“Nature’s finest.”

“This is my friend Becca — Becca, this is Grady.”

“Hello, Becca.”

“Hi.”

“Grady Dunsmore, at your service.”

His hand felt damp when she shook it.

“Need servicing? Give Grady a call.”

“Hey now,” said Rusty, chastising. “Heel, boy. Stay at your curb.”

“Hey now.”

Grady wobbled on his good leg while bracing himself against the slim Filipino man who was helping him dress.

“Wish I knew you were coming, motherfucker. Always so sly. Slip and slide. Stealth-Man.”

“Into the night, baby.”

“See, cause now I gotta go do my thing. My get-better thing.”

“They gonna work you?”

“You better believe it.”

“Put you through some major pain?”

“I already prepared.” He voodoo-rattled a bottle of pills. “Gots to take the vikes before Ernesto puts me through my paces.”

“How long you gonna be?”

“I don’t know — forty-five? Maybe an hour. Can you hang?”

“Absolutely. I’ll try on a prosthetic or two.”

“Knock yourself out, Mad Max.”

“Hey now.”

“Eat me.” Then, to Becca as he left: “Pardon my Spanish. And watch him closely. See that he doesn’t steal any of my shit.”

Benefits

IT TOOK LISANNE a few days to shrug off the torpor of the trip back across America. There was so little to do on a train that one’s cycle shifted — Lisanne’s did, anyway — she slept practically from sundown till dawn.

Reggie kept her workload to a minimum. At the end of the week, he asked for a favor. A longtime client and somewhat eccentric old friend, Tiff Loewenstein, copresident of Fox, was being honored at Casa del Mar. Reggie and his wife were unable to attend. He knew how fond Tiff was of Lisanne (through the years, she’d become so much more than the firm’s amanuensis) and asked her to do some hand-holding. He said Tiff was a wreck. He’d been drinking and had thrown up in the living room, like a dog. His wife kicked him out.

When Lisanne got to the penthouse suite, Tiff answered the door, sobbing and half-dressed.

“Hi, baby,” he said with a scary smile. “Thank you for coming! Can I get you anything?”

She trailed after as he cried his way to the bathroom.

She had come to his rescue at her boss’s behest before, when Tiff was depressed and holed up in the Colony. (Once he even tried to kiss her. He was drunk and begged forgiveness the next day.) They had an easy intimacy. In the summers, the Loewensteins asked her to Malibu on weekends, and she grew to be a kind of auntie to their kids.

She was a commodious, safe harbor, someone he could pour his heart out to. He appreciated her wit — and they had more than a few phobias in common. Lisanne had never become acquainted with the man who was a feared Hollywood player; she knew only the vulnerable, courtly, rollicksome bear, and thought the world of him.

“Roslynn threw me down the stairs, did Reggie tell you?”

A butterfly bandage graced his temple.

“Are you all right?”

“I had Armani send a tux over… this one’s from Dolce, think it’s too long? They say that’s the style, but I think it’s for a younger man. Roslynn wouldn’t even let me back in the house! I don’t know if I can squeeze into this.” His hand rose to a second bandage when he caught her looking. “No, no, that’s from the cancer. Can you believe? They did a little scrape. You know, I was one of those kids who didn’t even like to swim in a pool. Never swam in the ocean. Never been a sun freak — that’s Roslynn. Thank God it isn’t melanoma.” He sighed, wiping away fresh tears. “Thank you for coming, Lisanne! So that fucker your boss couldn’t make it, huh? Well fuck him. I’m kidding. Reggie’s one of the good guys.” He sat and sipped his drink. “Everything OK? Everything OK with Reg and Janie and the kids?”

“Everyone’s great.”

“Christ, what a year. I got hit with prostate, did Reg tell you that?”

“No. He didn’t.”

“They irradiated, which was fine — until two weeks later. That’s when you wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Top of your lungs. I’m not kidding, Lisanne. You try calling the doctor and you get one of those messages saying which buttons to press but you can’t because you’re screaming. I told him I wanted liquid morphine. He said, ‘I can’t do that.’ Didn’t want to give it to me. I said, Then I’ll kill myself because I can’t live with that kind of pain. No one can. And I know myself. I told him I would kill myself and take him down with me, and make sure everyone in this city knew his name before I went. So he gave it to me — two drops under the tongue. And I’ve hardly used it, Lisanne, but I just had to know it was there on the nightstand. Makes me feel better. Because you don’t want to live, Lisanne. You can’t live — not with pain like that. Michael Milken’s been a godsend. And Dominick. Talked me through a lot of it. I even talked to Giuliani.” He started crying again. “You’ve got to take care of yourself, Lisanne! You’re a beautiful girl but you’ve got to take care of yourself. Lose some of the weight. Will you please? Cause you’re open to the heart stuff and the diabetes. You look beautiful, by the way — you’re a gorgeous lady. Do you know I’ve completely changed the way I eat?” He hoisted his glass in the air. “This is a recent thing — the wine — I never drank the way I’m drinking now. And it’s gonna stop tomorrow. The cigarettes too.” He took a deep drag then lifted his shirt like a tease, to show the nicotine patch. “Know what it’s all about? Changing the environment of your body. Cancer likes acid, acidic foods. Loves acid. And sugar. That’s where it likes to grow. You’ve got to go alkaloid, acid versus alkaloid. Raw veggies — alkaloid. Broccoli. I have wheatgrass every day, Lisanne, like a fucking goat. Colonics three times a week to flush out the toxins. They did some tests (all I do are tests) and found I had high levels of mercury. Having all the old fillings taken out. Ever had a colonic? I don’t have a choice. You can do it over in Culver City, there’s a marvelous place, I’ll make the call. Seema — she’s the girl to ask for. You’ve got to take care, Lisanne, while you’re young. My daughter in Michigan — Kittie — you’ve never met Kittie — from my first marriage — had a double mastectomy. They took the tits, the implants, the whole shebang. Shitty implants to begin with. She’s got a South African doctor, a real Christiaan Barnard type. He cut everything off. She’s got tattooed nipples now. He put a hose in there — she comes to the office and he pumps ‘em up with saline, right under the muscle. She calls ‘em Magic Tits. Know what Kittie said when they were wheeling her down to surgery? ‘Dead tits walking!’ The schvug orderlies turned white. Then she wasn’t healing so they put her in a hyperbaric chamber. She’s been through major tsuris. Remember Michael Jackson and the chimp and the hyperbaric chamber? We’re Ashkenazy, so Kittie’s getting herself tested for genetic markers — if they’re positive, he’s gonna rip her ovaries just to be safe. She was taking this nausea pill during chemo. I went to pick the prescription up and the pharmacist says, Boy, she’s got great insurance. It was fifty bucks for thirty pills. I say, So how much would it be without insurance? He goes to the computer. Thirteen hundred dollars! For thirty pills, Lisanne! The country’s a nightmare. They stick it to you cause you’ve got cancer and can’t do without. Who wants to be nauseous? So they rob you. What are we gonna do when the smallpox comes if we can’t even deal with fucking nausea?”

“Tiff,” she said, taking away his drink. “Why don’t I call room service and get you some coffee?”

He sniffled, patting her hand. “Thank you, dear. Thank you. So glad you’re here. You’re a real mensch. What do they call a girl-mensch? A womensch? A wench? Listen, sweetheart: any time you want to leave that slick bastard and come work for me, you’ve got a job. Pay you twice what he gives you. But you’ve got to take care of yourself, Lisanne.” He went and stood before the mirror. “Know what my friend Feibleman said? Do you know Peter Feibleman? I love him — brilliant writer. You should eat his fuckin paella. One day he’ll make us all dinner. Sylvia Plath was a huge fan. Not his cooking — his novels. He just went through the prostrate thing too. Said the radiation took away the ‘punctuation’ of sex. And that’s true. All the commas and semicolons are gone. There’s no catharsis. You’re chemically fucking castrated. That moment where life used to hang in the balance — that ‘little death’— gone. You come, or think you do, and then you say, Was that it? Feibleman says, ‘I don’t have that seizure anymore, that paroxysm. I go right to wanting the cheeseburger.’ Don’t you love that? The cheeseburger! But I’ll tell you something, Lisanne: I always wanted the fuhcocktuh cheeseburger. I wanted it before the shtup. Know what I’m addicted to? Know what sex is for me now? Tributes. The cancer took away food and sex and left me with tributes. I’m worse than Quincy — Jesus! They can’t stop giving and he can’t stop getting. Did you know he got a Grammy for Spoken Word? For reading his autobiography out loud! Is that not genius? King Coon goes to Cancún,” he said nonsensically. “A sweet sweet man. Beautiful spirit. We’re supposed to go to Africa in September with Bono. Next month we’ve got Sting and the Poitiers and Medavoys at the Kofi Annan dinner. I got the Ark Trust Genesis in two weeks at the Hilton. (In my honor.) Then the ‘Starlight Dream’ gala-thing at the Kodak — for me and Quincy. Then Roslynn and I have the cervical thing — what’s it called? — whatever, at the Peninsula. Would you go with me, Lisanne? Unless some miracle happens with Roslynn by then, which appears doubtful. Kittie’s flying out for that, you’ll love her. A funny funny lady. And that’s all in one weekend!” He laid upon the bed and sighed. “You wade through crap all day and then you put on a tux and feel less like a putz. Hey, that rhymes. And you know what? The applause ain’t so bad either. But I wanna tell ya, I’m seriously addicted. Does that make me a terrible man, Lisanne?” he asked tearfully. “Does it? Does that make me terrible?”

A Beachside Reunion

KIT WAS IN the trailer with Xanthe, his assistant. He was at the beach opposite Temescal Canyon, shooting a film with Jennifer Lopez and Anthony Hopkins. Alf and Cameron Diaz, sometime flames, dropped by the set.

“Thought you might like a little orgy to start your day,” said Alf.

“Hope you like to watch,” said Kit to Alf, then belched.

“Ready-teddy,” said Cameron. “That’s what I’m here for. To be fucked like a righteous animal.”

“Careful what you say around the Man, Cam,” said Alf. “There have been some fairly ugly rumors about Mr. Raffles.”

Kit gave Alf the evil eye.

“Oh yeah? Who’s Mr. Raffles?” she asked.

“His dog. Mr. Raffles seems to have that certain je ne sais ménage à trois quoi.”

Cameron laughed, and Kit got off the subject by asking if next week they wanted to go to Harrison’s ranch in Jackson Hole with Callista, Ben, and Jennifer. Cameron couldn’t because she had to be in Monaco for an AIDS costume ball.

Xanthe answered a knock at the door. She took Kit aside and said his father was there to see him.

• • •

BURKE LIGHTFOOT SAT at the end of a catering table. He stood when he saw his son approach. The waves crashed weakly a few hundred yards off, lending the reunion a petty dramatic touch.

“Hey there, Kitchener!” said Burke, with an oily smile. (As any Kit-watcher knew, the star had been whimsically named after the first Earl Kitchener of Khartoum.) He extended a hand, and Kit reluctantly shook it, squinting in the sun so as not to fully take the man in.

“Hey.”

“I was on my way to Santa Barbara,” Burke said unconvincingly. “Saw all the trucks and asked about the commotion. Cop said it was a Kit Lightfoot movie. ‘Now wait a minute, that’s my son!’ ”

“Yeah, right,” said Kit, sucking in snot and tapping a cigarette against the bottom of his boot. “I’ll have that guy fired.”

Burke laughed it off. Kit wasn’t sure why the man bothered to lie anymore.

“Saw you on Leno,” he said.

“Uh huh.”

“I didn’t know you did all that fund-raising.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t.”

His father shone with good health and good cheer. He was a handsome, lanky New Englander; Kit’s mom was an American beauty with a touch of Cree. It was a right-on gene pool.

“Anyhow, thanks for seeing me,” said Burke. “I know it was unannounced.”

“That’s your thing, right? ‘Unannounced.’”

“Your mother was rather spontaneous herself,” he said folksily.

“Don’t drag her into it.”

“All right.” Burke knew when to acquiesce.

“Look,” said Kit, cynically. “I don’t know what you think we got goin. Or what you think we’re gonna get goin—”

“I don’t have an agenda, Kitchener, other than seeing my son. Fathers tend to want to do that.”

“Oh really? Well, this father”—he jabbed a finger toward Burke—“didn’t tend to want to. Didn’t tend to want to do shit until I started making bread.”

“That isn’t true,” said Burke, stung.

“Why don’t you tell me what husbands tend to want to do? Now that I know all about dads.”

“I was there for your mother—”

“Right!” Kit exclaimed, with a nearly out-of-control donkey laugh.

“—as much as she wanted me to be. And you know that. But she had you. R. J. didn’t want to see me when she was sick. She had you and that was enough.”

They listened to the waves. Crackle of a walkie.

“Look, son… I won’t take any more of your time. But while I’m here, I wanted to tell you I came across some of her things, from when we were in college. Love letters — beautiful. Thought you could drop by the house and see ‘em this weekend. If you’d like.”

Kit blew a ring of smoke. “Call Xanthe,” he said. “She’ll give you a FedEx number and an address.”

“I’d rather not send that precious material through the mail,” said Burke, shrewdly playing out his hand. “I’ll wait till you’re in the neighborhood.”

“You might have to wait a long time,” said Kit, standing. “And it’s probably not a good idea to drop by without calling. In fact, it’s probably not a good idea to drop by at all.”

“You’re the boss.” His father gathered up an old leather satchel. “One more thing — may I trouble you? Grant School’s having a benefit. Remember Grant? They had some pretty severe water damage to the auditorium. That’s where you did The Music Man. ‘Trouble in River City! With a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool!’” He pulled a stack of headshots out — Kit at the beginning of his career. He drew a fancy Waterman from his coat. “I told them I’d help. If you can sign some eight-by-tens, they’ll be the hit of the auction.”

Pool Party

THE REALITY SHOW relocated from Tasmania to the Canary Islands. Sadge kept Becca on a tight leash until he left. He wouldn’t even let her answer the phone. A guy kept calling at all hours, asking for her. It gave Sadge the creeps. Whenever he picked up, the voice would say, “Is this fat Jack Black and the Heart Attacks? Is this Tenacious D?” Becca had given Rusty her cell phone but didn’t know how he got the home number. She didn’t think Elaine would have given it to him. He denied making the calls.

• • •

SHE ASKED WHY he called himself Rusty and he said because that was his name. Then he said it was Elaine’s idea. Anyway, he liked using his counterpart’s “appellation.” There was a purity in it, he said. Like the servants in that movie Gosford Park who took the names of their masters.

• • •

SADGE WAS IN the bathroom when Becca’s phone vibrated — it said UNKNOWN in the little luminous window. It was Rusty. He asked if she wanted to go to a party Grady Dunsmore and his wife were having. He was out of the hospital and celebrating in his new house. Rusty said he’d pick her up at Ürth Caffé at nine. She impulsively called Annie and asked her to come. Becca told Sadge that Annie was having monster period cramps and she was going to bring her Vicodin and stay for Six Feet Under.

Rusty wasn’t thrilled that Becca had invited her friend along. When he called her the chaperone, Annie got feisty with him, which he seemed to like. Becca was quiet as he drove, subdued, entranced, in her mind already his girlfriend. Annie hassled him about beating on that guy in Playa del Rey. Rusty enjoyed the razzing. Becca could tell that Annie thought he had his redeeming qualities.

They drove up Laurel Canyon to Mulholland. Annie asked about his friend’s house. Rusty said it had been in escrow for six months and finally closed, and that Nicholson and Brando apparently lived right across the street. Annie asked about Grady’s injury. Rusty said he’d been shot by the police a few years back. The girls left it at that.

A valet took their car. Decorated golf carts ferried guests to the house, but the trio chose to walk through the gate and descend the long, steep drive. The fractured tiara of a mansion lay below. There were crowds of people, and Becca gradually made out a South Seas theme. Fiery tiki torches surrounded the pool. Women in grass skirts served drinks and canapés.

They saw Grady beaming at them beyond the sliding window of the living room. Music boomed from inside and liquor sloshed from his glass as he limped out to give his old bud a modified bear hug.

“You did it,” said Rusty. “It’s a fucking palace.”

“Yes, we did it, we fucking did! Absolutely. But all this?” He put an arm around Rusty’s shoulder then took in the pool, the revelers, and the evening air itself before glancing Becca and Annie’s way. “Everything you see? A tribute to Questra. Wish she could be here to see it.”

“She is here. She’s here.” Rusty thumped Grady’s chest at the heart. “Here, there, and everywhere.”

His maudlin friend let it sink in. “Thank you. Thank you for being here and thank you for fucking saying the beautiful shit that only you can say.” Grady turned to Becca. “An awesome cat. He’s crazy — and fuckin awesome. But you probably already know that.”

“You remember Becca,” said Rusty.

“Hey now,” said Grady. “I’m not gonna forget Becca. Ain’t nobody gonna forget Becca. Welcome. Welcome to my righteous home.”

“This is my friend Annie,” she said.

“Hi,” said Annie.

“Hey, Annie Fannie.” Suddenly energized, Grady looked all around him again. “Place is a trip, ain’t it? We got Hefner beat.”

“It’s incredible,” said Annie, in earnest. Grady’s hoarseness and cock-eyed brio reminded her of a younger Nick Nolte.

“Three acres! That’s one more than Marlon. But the house is a pile — it’s a teardown. Used to belong to Russ Meyer. Know who Russ Meyer was? Ol’ Russ was seriously into the female anatomy, with special emphasis on the breast. The large breast. Man was my hero. Did you see the pool yet? Check it out. There’s an observation room down below. Super sixties! Ol’ Russ used to like to sit and watch titties float by. I don’t even think they had implants back then — no silicone, anyway. No Viagra either. Fuckin Stone Age.”

Grady got pulled away. He waved at Rusty and the girls as he was sucked into the house.

“What does Grady do?” asked Becca as they headed toward the pool.

“Personal trainer. He was Kevin Costner’s stunt double — before he fucked up his leg. They still work out together whenever Kevin does a movie. He’s K.C.’s camera double too.”

Annie said, “I don’t understand how he has this place.”

“A settlement from the city.”

“The shooting?” asked Annie.

“Nah, that’s a whole different deal. Their little girl drowned in a municipal pool. A light in the tile shorted out or some such shit — the kid he had with Cassandra. Questra. Electrocuted her. Took five years, but they got eight million. You’ll meet Cass. She’s around somewhere. Trippy lady. Hard-core.”

They passed the tiki bar, where drinks were being dispensed from an enormous ice sculpture. Blue-tinted gin flowed over the massive crystalline chunk into high-stemmed glasses. Just before the stairway that led beneath the pool came a makeshift shrine. The framed photo of a shiny-smiled toddler was surrounded by leis and votive candles.

They went down the storm cellar opening to a small booth with a glass wall allowing a view of the swimmers. Their shoes puddled. It was dank and smelled of mold. A girl smoked a joint, nodding her head in stoned, silent assention at what she saw through the aquariumlike window: a disembodied woman, about six months pregnant, sat on the steps of the pool getting head from a fat old Hell’s Angel type. Everything was below the water from the breasts down. The bearded biker wore only Levi’s. Every twenty or thirty seconds, he surfaced for air before going down again.

“That’s Cass. Grady’s old lady.” Then, with a smile: “I told you she was hard-core.”

Impermanence

LISANNE THOUGHT ABOUT letting Robbie know that she was expecting. She would have e-mailed, had he been an e-mail person. Anyhow, she was glad he wasn’t.

It would have been so easy to have the doctor flush it away. She wasn’t showing and was hefty enough to think she never would, even if she carried to term. For the moment, Lisanne had the perverse luxury of putting the whole thing out of her head. She went to yoga a lot that week over on Montana. There was a kind of remedial class for fatties, newbies, and old folks.

To her shock, one morning Kit Lightfoot and Renée Zellweger slipped in, just as class was beginning. (She wasn’t sure if they came together.) The ninety-minute session was difficult though not nearly as crowded as the advanced levels — a hip choice, thought Lisanne, for a celeb. She could deal with Renée, but having Kit there made it tough to concentrate. She’d always had a crush on him: now there he was, barely ten feet away, sweating his tight, insanely famous butt off. The teacher kept telling everyone to “stay present,” and Lisanne thought she must have picked up on her delirium.

After the group Namastes, Lisanne lay in the corpse pose, trying to time her departure from the sweat- and sage-scented room with Kit’s. When he left, she waited a beat, then got up to stash her mat in the anteroom. She retrieved her things from the shelves and laced up her shoes in slow motion. Her mind wandered. The next thing she knew, Kit brushed past. He looked in her eyes and smiled and Lisanne’s heart actually fluttered. With a surrealistic pang, she thought of her pregnancy. Renée emerged from the large room. The two stars said quietly enthusiastic hellos. They left, and Lisanne discreetly followed.

Her car was conveniently parked a length away from Renée’s. Lisanne opened the hatchback so she could fuss around while eavesdropping.

“Gonna go see the monks?” Kit asked.

Renée grinned inquisitively.

“The Gyuto monks,” said Kit. “They’re making a sand mandala at the Hammer.”

“Oh! I heard about that,” said the actress excitedly.

“It’s very cool. You should really try to get over there.”

“Those are the guys who do that weird throat-chanting thingie?” She imitated the gargling sounds, and Kit laughed.

“Tantric monks,” he said, nodding. “They had a school in Tibet for like five hundred years. They were forced to go to India in ‘fifty-nine — like everybody else. They’ve been making a mandala all week.”

“At the Hammer?”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s so cool.”

“It’s really a kind of meditation. You sit, don’t you?”

“Yes. But not as much as I’d like.”

“No one ever sits as much as they’d like. So you know a little about what they’re doing, then.”

“A very little.”

Lisanne got the feeling Renée was vamping.

“When they’re finished designing the mandala, they destroy it.”

“Destroying the mandala,” she said, with a respectful laugh. “That really sounds amazing.”

“It’s not about making art. That is a component — because the mandala and the meditation itself are both art. It’s really more a way of showing dedication and compassion to all living things.”

“Sentient beings.”

“Right. It’s about impermanence.”

“And they’re doing that today? They’re still doing that today?”

He nodded and lit a cigarette. “The deconsecration ritual isn’t open to the public, but I could definitely arrange for you to go in. If you want to see it. I’m kind of a patron of the San Jose Center.”

“Kit, that would be so great! I would love that.”

• • •

LISANNE PLANNED to take off early from work and finagle her way into the mandala ceremony, but everything conspired against her. A string of tiny crises kept her longer at the office; when she finally got in her car, traffic was gridlocked. Her repertoire of residential street detours failed abysmally.

When she got to the museum, the guard signaled that the exhibition was closed. She stood there downcast.

Moments later a monk in orange robes appeared, on his way in. He was short and radiated a cliché, childlike bliss. Unexpectedly, he took Lisanne’s arm, gently ushering her into the large hall. She felt like Richard Dreyfuss at the end of Close Encounters.

While her eyes adjusted, she looked around for Renée, but the actress wasn’t there. Neither was Kit. One of the masters had already begun sweeping away the colored sand. The Yamantaka deity, an emanation of the Bodhisattva Manjusri, was disappearing. The eight heads and thirty-four arms, two horns—“the two truths”—and sixteen legs (sixteen kinds of emptiness), the nakedness that symbolized abandonment of the mind, the self, and its worldly concerns were all being swept into a container. The monks would offer the commingled grains to an undisclosed local body of water. Water, which reflects both the world and infinity at once.

Now Lisanne had no doubts.

She would keep her baby.

Reunions

KIT GUNNED the Indian down the 60, toward Riverside — the familiar, unfamiliar route. The faux-stucco skin of the old house was thick with cement spray-on coatings, ordered throughout the years by Burke in varying fits of mania. Seasonal cosmetic makeovers were his thing.

The sun-bleached DeVille was in the drive, and a junk car too. It was less than a beater — no wheels and up on blocks. Urchins ogled the chopper.

Kit sat in a ratty chaise, feet propped on a tire swing, sipping beer while scanning love letters and ghostly Polaroids of Rita Julienne. Burke came from the house bearing gifts: coleslaw, corn, and KFC. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have provided something a little more sumptuous,” he said, delighted his son had shown up.

“That’s cool,” said Kit benevolently, softened by the words and images of his beloved mother.

“See? You’re like your old man after all. You arrive unannounced.”

He let the remark slide. “I see the neighborhood hasn’t changed. Still shitty and depressing.”

“That’s Riverside!” said Burke.

He talked about a methamphetamine lab that had been busted up a few blocks from there. A chemical odor hung in the air for weeks— no one could figure out where it was coming from until someone’s lawn caught fire.

“I’m telling you, it was straight out of David Lynch.” He looked over Kit’s shoulder at a snapshot. “Catalina. You were conceived on that trip. Did we ever take you to Catalina?”

“No.”

“We had a wonderful time there. Years later we went back and had a not so wonderful time.” He sighed. “Such is life.”

“Look,” said Kit, neatening the documents. “I think I’m gonna head back.”

“But you didn’t eat,” said Burke, waxing paternal. “Have a bite before you go.”

“Some other time,” said Kit, lighting a cigarette. He lifted his feet off the tire.

“Don’t you want to see your old room? It’s exactly as you left it.”

“Got to keep it authentic for the tour groups, huh, Burke.”

“I thought we could go by the school and have a look at the future Kitchener Lightfoot Auditorium.”

“They’re not going to do that, are they? Name it after me?”

“I know they want to. I’m told ten thousand will make it happen. It’d be nice press,” said Burke, smiling like Cardinal Mahony. “I’m always looking out for you.”

Kit got the notion to fuck with him.

“Do you need ten thousand, Dad?”

The man chuckled like a bad actor.

“I don’t need it. I could use it but I don’t need it. Not personally. The alma mater needs it: Ulysses S. Grant.”

“I’ll send a check over, OK?”

“That would be a beautiful thing.”

“Now who should I make that out to? You, Dad? Or the school? If I made it out to the school, that’d probably be better. For me. I mean, tax-wise.”

“Either way,” said Burke, staring off with stagy indifference. “Either way’ll do. To the school would be fine.” A pause, then, “It’s just… I’m not one hundred percent sure if Grant School is the right entity. I’m not sure they have their funding entity together yet. They could be calling that project something else. So if you write the check to me, that’s fine too, I’ll hold it in escrow then funnel it to the correct entity. No problems. Make it out to me, son — or leave the pay to line blank — not the amount — and I’ll turn it over. Save your business manager the hassle of a reissue.”

Cela appeared at the front fence and made a dash to Kit’s arms. Pleased at the fortuitous arrival, Burke said, “Kit Lightfoot, this is your life!” He went inside so the high school sweethearts could be alone. Kit was certain his father had alerted her, because she was dolled up more than a Saturday afternoon would call for.

“What a surprise.”

“How you doin, Cela?” She was still gorgeous to him, but drugs had taken their toll. She was old around the edges.

“Slummin today?”

“Just a little,” he said.

Some preteen girls pressed up against the driveway gate and giggled.

“You look great,” said Kit. “You been all right?”

“Not too bad. Burke and I have a pretty good thing going — we do the Sunday Rose Bowl swap, in Pasadena? Find all kinds of stuff then sell it on eBay. I know you’re doin OK.”

“Can’t complain.”

“Oh and hey, thank you for the eight-by-tens. That was a bonanza. People at the swaps go nuts for anything of yours that’s signed. Especially when Burke says he’s your dad — which, to his credit, he doesn’t a lot of the time.”

The Afterworld

IT WAS COLD but fun laying on the slab.

Thanks to Elaine Jordache and her connected friend, Becca had been hired to play a cadaver on Six Feet Under. She was a little embarrassed to tell Annie, even though the casting people said it was the most coveted “extra” gig in town. Evidently, the producers were superfinicky about who they hired. Becca’s mom was thrilled. She immediately ordered HBO.

All the actors were really nice. They felt bad for the extras because they had to spend so much time on their backs, sometimes wearing uncomfortable prosthetics.

“You look so much like Drew Barrymore,” said a regular.

“I think she might be a little bit heavier than I am right now,” said Becca. She didn’t mean to sound catty.

“She’s a big fan of the show. Her agent supposedly even talked to Alan about coming on, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”

There were actually two Alans. Everyone was always mentioning one or the other without using last names. (If you were “family,” you knew who they meant.) Becca had met the executive producer-sometime director Alan, but not the executive producer-director-writer-creator Alan.

“The show doesn’t really work that way,” the regular went on. “They don’t usually cycle in movie stars. It’s not like The Sopranos. Thank God.”

The actor went away, and a few minutes later another actor who Becca thought was gay sort of hit on her. He asked if she’d read about the mortician who had been caught posing bodies so a friend could take arty photographs.

“It was so Witkin,” he said. She didn’t know what that meant. “We actually did a story line kind of like that — life imitates art. Did you see L.A. Confidential?”

“Uh huh.”

“Remember the whole thing with Kim Basinger? The call girls who looked like celebrities?”

“Uh huh.”

“Wasn’t she supposed to be, like, Veronica Lake? You could seriously do that — I mean, as Drew Barrymore!”

Becca smiled politely from her cold metal tray. Even though she knew he was just being friendly, she didn’t like the suggestion that she could capitalize on her looks by being some kind of whore. But she was a captive audience and not in any position to take offense. All the cadavers spent their time praying that Alan—any Alan — would bestow upon them lines for, say, an impromptu dream sequence or that in some future episode they’d at least be allowed to cross over to the living for a speaking role. A speaking role was the Valhalla.

The first A.D. called camera rehearsal.

She lay there quietly amid the tumult, pondering her life. The relationship with Sadge was coming to an end; a strange and powerful new man had entered the scene. The strange and powerful new man frightened her, but Annie said that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t a great thing, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could even be a good thing.

Becca played a game with herself between takes, seeing how long it took to get wet while thinking of him.

School Days

“SCHOOLS NEVER LOSE that smell, do they?” asked Kit.

“That smells-like-teen-spirit smell?”

He cocked an eye.

“Did we ever fuck anywhere on campus?”

“Hey, mister,” she said. “I held out a long time. Don’t go mixin me up with somebody else.”

They sat on a plastic picnic table outside the auditorium. Padlocked vending machines, scratched with graffiti, hibernated against the stained cinder block wall.

“I wish I could have seen your mama before she died,” she said. “I miss her, I truly do.” She shook her head. “That was a rough time for me—’Cela Byrd: The Rehab Years.’ It’s all about me, isn’t it?” she said, sardonically.

“You doing OK now?”

“Still peeing in a bottle. Hey, my birthday’s coming up! AA — six months. Wanna give me a cake?”

“Love to.”

“So… you gonna marry Viv Wembley?” She smiled as Kit simulated a blush. “Well you should. She’s pretty! And I love that show, it’s hilarious. She’s from L.A., right?”

“Orange County.”

“Michelle Pfeiffer’s from OC too. I read that somewhere.”

A faraway girl approached on a bike. The sight of her summoned a memory.

“Remember when we got loaded at that Christmas party?”

“Yeah,” said Kit.

He fished a roach from his wallet.

“And we went into that room where everybody left their coats and purses and shit? And you, like, stole all the money—”

“I wasn’t the only one! You had some magic fingers.”

“I did, didn’t I?” she said, sex creeping into her voice.

“You surely did.”

“Please don’t call me Shirley. Remember that from Airplane! I loved that movie.” She put her hand on his leg. “We had something special, huh. First loves…” She unbuckled his belt. He lit the roach. “You don’t know how fucked up it’s been, Kit. Sitting in rehab, watching you in a movie. Reading about you in People. Or wherever. At the premieres. Always with someone else. There I am thinking: That girl should have been me. I used to tell people we went out, but I stopped. I was in jail once, all like, ‘He was my boyfriend! You don’t understand! He took me to the prom!’ That was a low point. As worsts go, that was a personal best.”

She kissed him lightly once or twice to see how amenable he was, then drifted down and put him in her mouth.

The faraway girl was closer now and stood on her bike, watching.

A Gathering at the Rose

BECCA DROVE SADGE to LAX. He would be away about three months. It was understood that when he returned, he’d find his own place. He would for sure have the money by then, anyway.

On instinct, Becca drove to the Rose and parked in the lot. She decided to go for a stroll and check out Rusty’s building. Why not? He had described it to her. It was right on the boardwalk, a few doors up from the Figtree.

Suddenly, Elaine Jordache emerged from the café. She dawdled, then Rusty came out holding a coffee and talking animatedly to a blondish young man of slight build. He wore an incongruous dress shirt and tie along with a warm and wolfish, slightly bemused grin. Becca slid down in the car seat to watch.

A boy barely out of his teens was the last to join them. He held a binder and hung behind the blondish man with subtle, efficient obsequiousness. The trio strolled toward a vintage convertible with the boy lagging behind. The blondish man enthusiastically shook hands, first with Rusty then with Elaine. The boy-assistant got into the convertible and started the car. Becca couldn’t quite hear the words but thought Rusty was complimenting the blondish man on his car as the latter climbed into the passenger seat. There were a few more good-byes as boy-assistant and blondish boss pulled away.

Becca slunk lower as Rusty walked Elaine to her car. They stood talking awhile in earnest. The mood got lighter, and Becca’s heart sickly speeded as she wondered if he was going to kiss Elaine on the mouth. He bussed her cheek. Becca, vindicated, swore eternal allegiance. Elaine drove off. Rusty strolled from the lot toward the beach.

She considered going inside for a fruit plate then embarking on her mission, as planned. She could linger at the pier or have a cappuccino at Shutters before dropping in at Rusty’s on the way back. Take him by surprise.

Then she thought better of it, having had enough excitement for the day.

A Brief History of Tantric Buddhism

IN HER BED, Lisanne McCadden dreamed of Kit Lightfoot.

They were by the ocean, making a movie. Filming was delayed because an animal got caught in a generator and the crew was trying to free it with long, lacquered sticks. Kit lay on his side on a peaceful promontory overlooking the water. He was sketching in the sand, and something about the way he concentrated reminded Lisanne of the monks she’d seen at the Hammer Museum. A talking baby was there, like in one of those old Ally McBeals. When Lisanne woke up, she couldn’t remember anything the baby had said.

She thought the dream was psychic because a few minutes after she arrived at work, Reggie gave her a pair of tickets to see the monks perform that very evening at UCLA. She thought of who she might ask but no one seemed handy. She decided to go alone.

• • •

THERE WERE ABOUT a dozen of them onstage, but this time they wore elaborate costumes and headdresses. A small photo of H.H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama rested on an altar, with an architectural model of a many-layered temple beside it. Microphone headsets were the monks’ only bow to modernity. The characteristic amplified yoy-oy-yoy-oy-yoy throat chants accompanied drums and weird metal instruments, creating a haunting cacophony of sounds. At varying times, the holy men looked as if they were making signs and signals with their hands like ballplayers, but Lisanne hadn’t rented binoculars so couldn’t be sure. The man beside her was snoring and no one seemed to mind. A row ahead, a bored little boy fidgeted. Lisanne thought it sweet that his father had brought him to the ceremonies.

Slowly and fantastically, it dawned upon her that just one aisle over and four rows down, sat none other than Kitchener Lightfoot, flanked by Viv Wembley and the comedian Paul Reiser. Kit’s eyes were closed. He looked as if he was mediating.

After a few minutes of obsessing, Lisanne looked down at her program to distract herself. It said that tantric meditation was considered the “quick” way to enlightenment. Books of the tantra described not just one Buddha but thousands. A tantric meditator was supposed to visualize that he or she was actually one of those Buddhas, and she wondered if that’s what Kit was doing that very moment.

Her mouth moved as she silently read that

Vajrabhairava’s name means “Diamond Terrifier.” His bull-like face indicates that he has overcome Yama, the bull-headed Lord of Death. From the top of his head emerges the small peaceful face of Manjushri, who embodies all of the wisdom of all the Buddhas; Vajrabhairava symbolizes that wisdom transcends death.

Maybe Kit was just going over lines in his head, for tomorrow’s shoot… or maybe he was thinking: Who is that girl across the aisle, four rows back, the Rubenesque milkmaid who charmingly does not even notice how totally into her I am? Who is that amazing, secretly pregnant, sweet-faced executive assistant who could have no possible way of knowing that I am only sexually excited by similarly proportioned women who also happen to be phobic about flying? I need to have her in my life!

She gave herself the chuckles amidst all the sacred rituals. But try as she might, she couldn’t imagine what was going on in the head of Viv Wembley or Paul Reiser.

A Colony of Angels

ELAINE LEFT a message for her to call back as soon as possible. It was urgent.

Cameron Diaz — the true Cameron — was throwing a birthday party for Drew and got a brainstorm to have the “Angels” there, along with half a dozen other look-alikes. Elaine had already managed to get hold of the Cameron and the Lucy Liu, Cher, David Letterman, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Carrey, and the Pope. When Becca asked if Rusty would be there, Elaine said no. Becca was relieved.

• • •

SHE HAD NEVER been inside the Colony. The guard waved her through, and she felt a curious, unexpected sense of belonging. When she saw the true Kid Rock climbing into a pickup, her nerves got all jangled and she wondered if she’d be able to pull this off.

A stern coordinator was waiting — the party wasn’t yet under way — and Becca was ushered into a kind of bull pen set up in the garage. Costume and makeup people descended on her with pins, Pan-Cake, and cigarette breath. The Cameron was sitting in a chair having her zits covered, Lucy’s hair was being straightened, and a bug-eyed, too-old Tobey Maguire was in the middle of a close shave. The Cher, who Becca thought to be a really good Cher, wandered in smoking. She said she didn’t think this was the true Cameron’s house; a makeup person concurred, but no one seemed to know who the house belonged to. Sting supposedly lived down the street but was never in residence, and the coordinator said Elaine told her that he rented the house out during the summer for ninety thousand dollars a month. Becca had a hard time believing that anyone would rent a house for that kind of money.

The true Cameron poked her head in and shrieked when she saw Elaine’s Angels.

“Oh my God! It’s fantastic!” she said, clapping her hands together. “You guys are incredible.”

The Lucy said, “Flip the goddamn hair!” and that went over big — the true Cameron split a gut. The true Selma Blair wandered in, and Becca was beside herself. She couldn’t wait to tell her mom. And the party hadn’t even started!

The Angels were brought in for maximum effect, when the birthday was in full swing. Ben Stiller was there with his wife and baby, as were the true Demi Moore with the true Ashton, and the true Tobey. When Cher showed up, she clucked her tongue at her double — Becca figured the singer had seen her share of impersonators and wasn’t as psyched as the younger stars about having a look-alike. The true Rose McGowan arrived with Pink and Pamela Anderson, the latter sans Kid Rock. Rose went and talked to the Cher, who evidently she’d once hired for Marilyn Manson’s birthday. Tom Hanks mingled with the look-alikes and seemed to get the biggest kick out of the hammily decrepit, hunched-over Pope, whose “day job” turned out to be that of a somewhat wealthy Valley restaurateur. Becca and the Cameron were hoping against hope that Sting would drop by. No such luck.

There were so many famous people that she became numb. (She spaced out after seeing Jackie Chan with Owen Wilson. It all became a blur.) But the celebs weren’t very engaging; except for Tom and Rita, they preferred talking amongst themselves. Becca liked schmoozing with faces she didn’t recognize — that was much more intriguing. She figured that anyone who had been invited in the first place was by definition “a player,” a behind-the-scenes heavyweight. Those were the people who might actually be helpful in the long run. One turned out to be the writer of her all-time favorite movie, Forrest Gump. He lived a few doors down. His mom had just died, and he was so sweet and open about it that soon there were tears in his eyes and in Becca’s too. They were joined by a cordial, unassuming fellow named George and his exuberantly pregnant girlfriend, Maria; he turned out to be a bigshot Simpsons writer. They talked about all kinds of interesting things, and then the Forest Gump man introduced her (first as Drew Barrymore then as Becca Mondrain) to Tom Hanks just as Tom was leaving. Rita was saying her good-byes but soon came over. Tom was funny in a pretend-dark kind of way and started chatting with Becca like she was the true Drew. Then he did a kind of triple take, as if he’d been tricked, screwing up his eyes to have another look. “Drew better watch her back,” he said menacingly, as he sidled out. He did this cute thing where he kept looking over his shoulder at her with hooded, accusing eyes before smiling warmly then tipping an imaginary hat in good-bye. Rita looked like she wanted to stay a little longer, but her husband gently led her by the wrist. Becca was sure to make eye contact with her, though, mindful of the fact that it was Rita who discovered My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a stage show, and Rita who convinced Tom and everyone else to take a chance on putting up the money for a film version. Maybe she would see Becca onstage one day and extend her the same opportunity. Hollywood was full of those kinds of stories.

Drew Barrymore approached with two gays in tow. It was Becca’s moment of reckoning.

“You are so scary. Do you think I could call you on the phone? Like when I’m having a shitty moment in a relationship? Which is pretty much all the time.” She turned to the gays, who laughed in chorus. “Or how about when I just really don’t want to deal with my family — or lawyer or agent or whatever? Couldn’t you just, like, come over and kind of live through stuff that I’d rather not?”

“Drew,” said Becca, gasping from the thin air. “I’d come and wash dishes if you asked.”

She knew she sounded like a rube, and the queerfolk winced, but Drew laughed, laying a hand on Becca’s arm to put her at ease. Becca nearly burst into tears.

“Oh my God!” said Drew exultantly, a lightbulb going off. “You could have a baby for me!”

The gays laughed some more and one said, “She could fuck for you.”

“Thank you, no,” said Drew. “I’d rather do that myself. For now.”

More laughs from the gays. The beautiful black girl from Saturday Night Live came over with the true Cameron, who saucily threw an arm over Becca’s shoulder. “Well,” she said. “If it isn’t Dylan Sanders…”

Becca sucked it up and said, “Flip your goddamn hair!”

Everyone laughed and she felt redeemed.

At 20^th Century-Fox

LISANNE CALLED Tiff Loewenstein. She’d been meaning to do that as a friendly follow-up to their gala at the Casa del Mar, but she had a hidden agenda as well. Tiff got on the phone right away. His lunch had canceled and he asked her to join him at the commissary.

It had been a while since she’d been on the lot. Lisanne loved the bustle of a studio. The hallways of the executive building were cool, creamy, and hushed, for that wonderful retro mausoleum effect. Everything was perfectly production designed, with a forties ambience. Deeper into the honeycomb and closer to the offices of power, posters of blockbuster films gave way to gauzy Hurrells of bygone stars: Davis, Cagney, Crawford, Hepburn.

She was met in the anteroom by one of three secretaries, then led back to his plush Art Deco domain. Tiff rushed over from his desk, kissing both her cheeks. He immediately informed her of two upcoming events for which he “sorely” needed companionship on the weekend. Friday, he was to receive the KCET Visionary Award (Biltmore ballroom); the following night, he would be honored at a benefit for the Children’s Burn Foundation (Beverly Hilton). “What, may I ask, is your availability?” he said, somewhat wryly.

It didn’t seem like the right time to ask how things were going on the home front, or if they were going at all. Since he was dateless for his tributes, she assumed the worst.

“You’re in luck. As it turns out, I’ve been relieved of my duties as Karl Lagerfeld’s muse. I’m completely at your disposal.”

He laughed, took her arm, and swept her out.

• • •

“HOW’S THE KIT Lightfoot movie going?” she asked, after ordering.

Tiff occasionally waved to well-wishers — only rarely was he approached in full greeting. As a rule, it was understood the mogul was not to be disturbed.

“Phenomenal. I think it’s gonna be a big hit.”

“He’s really good.”

“Number one. Very down-to-earth — an old-fashion movie star. And he gets the biggest compliment I have. Know what it is?”

She shook her head.

Tiff said, “He’s not a prick.”

“Do you know him? I mean, very well?”

“What, you have a crush?” His antennae were up.

“I meant, do you ever socialize—”

“Because he’s very much a twosome, you know,” he chided.

“So I heard,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I’d be very jealous if you wound up on his arm at a benefit.”

“I would never be unfaithful,” she said, patting his hand. “Unless, of course, I was the honoree — then I just might drag him along. Naturally, he would have to consent.”

“Fair enough. All’s fair among love and consenting honorees.”

“Are they still shooting?”

“For two more weeks.”

She got very brave and casually said, “I’d love to visit the set.” Better just to come out with it.

Two men interrupted to say hellos, then the food arrived. She would have to find a way to circle around again.

Since they’d been seated, Lisanne had noticed heads consistently turning toward one of the booths in the back.

“Is that Russell Crowe?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

Tiff glanced over and laughed.

“See the blond kid? Adam Spiegel—Spike Jonze. He did Adaptation and Being John Malkovich.”

“I know who he is. I love his movies.”

“He’s sitting with Charlie Kaufman.”

“That’s Charlie Kaufman? God, he looks like J. D. Souther.”

“Who’s J. D. Souther?”

“He wrote songs for the Eagles.”

“Well, that’s him—Garbo himself. Two Jews from Verona. Spike’s a rich kid. The Spiegel catalog. Der Spiegel says that’s a myth, but he’s full of shit. You know who he’s married to, right?”

“I love her. Are they doing a project with Russell Crowe?”

“I wish. They’ve got a meshuga project that Charlie’s writing, about look-alikes. That’s who that guy at the table is — a Russell Crowe look-alike.”

“What is that.”

“Bottom feeders who come to Hollywood and get jobs impersonating movie stars.”

“Sounds kind of interesting.”

“Maybe too interesting. When someone wants to spend forty million of the studio’s money, I need more than ‘interesting.’ Now, if we could get the real Russell Crowe to be in their movie and pay him ‘look-alike’ prices, that would be interesting. Who knows. Could happen. You still didn’t give me an answer — which benefit would you favor, Ms. McCadden? The Friday or the Saturday?”

“That’s a tough one.”

“Tell you what. Go to both and I’ll make you a deal.”

“Shoot.”

“You can bring something to your friend for me.”

“My friend?”

“Mr. Lightfoot. See, I have a gift for him. Come to both benefits and you can be the messenger. I’ll so anoint you. Because I’m a very anointing person.”

The Varieties of Religious Experience

KIT SAT ON A cushion in his private zendo, facing the Benedict Canyon hillock that rose up like a ziggurat. A landscape architect had trucked in tons of dirt for the effect.

He stared at an abstract, shifting patch of sun on the teak floor a foot or so beyond his knees.

His next film, an Anthony Minghella, had fallen through. He was scheduled to do a Ridley Scott but not for at least ten months.

He thought of going to India for the Kalachakra Tantra, the annual Wheel of Time rite in which thousands of initiates experience rebirth en masse, coming through childhood to visualize themselves as buddhas. Seeing the Gyuto monks had triggered the notion of pilgrimage. The Dalai Lama, his teacher’s teacher, was scheduled to preside over a gathering of some quarter million devotees. Kit had attended such a ceremony before with His Holiness in Madison, Wisconsin, albeit on a far smaller scale.

There, in that unlikely place, the actor had spoken words of promise, before infinity: “O all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, please take heed of me. I, Kit Lightfoot, from this time henceforth until arriving in the essence of enlightenments will generate the excellent unsurpassed mind of intention to become enlightened in just the way the Protectors of the three times become definite toward enlightenment.” A sand mandala representing a palace was created, and the pilgrims were mentally guided through it. After a number of days, the rituals and blessings ended when the Dalai Lama himself swept up the colored sand with a broom, in readiness for dedication to the waters.

It seemed like a lifetime since he’d been to India. He had journeyed there with his teacher, Gil Weiskopf Roshi. They had visited Lumbini, birthplace of Prince Siddhartha Gautama; Bodh Gaya, where Siddhartha was realized beneath the Bodhi Tree; the Deer Park at Sarnath, where he gave sermons on the Four Noble Truths; Sravasti’s great park that hosted the Buddha’s meditation retreats, and where he converted a notorious murderer; and a saal forest in Kushinagar, the final, unglamorous place in which he left the world. The trip saturated him, and he craved India’s sounds, smells, and heart. He craved his teacher too, who had died a year after his mother passed on, to the day — craved the Dharma anew. A few months ago, he’d made vague plans to travel with Meg Ryan at Christmastime to see Ramesh, a disciple of the great sage Nisargadatta Maharaj. But now he was thinking he should make the trip alone, confining his visit to Bodh Gaya, where this year’s Kalachakra would be held.

He readjusted himself on the cushion and focused his breath, suppressing a smile as the mischievous, deconsecrated image of his old friend Alf bobbed before him. Alf wanted to go to a Golden Globe party at the Medavoys’, but Kit had bailed because he didn’t have a film out and was envious of those who did, jealous of the actors — some unknown, others long forgotten and now rediscovered — whose fates had contrived to cast them in one of those overrated, dark horse indies that infect hearts and minds each awards season like a designer virus. He felt defunct, used up, ashamed of his body of work. In the middle of his meditations

he returned to his breath, pushing through. He focused on another trapezoidal tile of sun. Insect buzz. His attention flitted from the face of his root guru, Gil, to a page of Rita Julienne Lightfoot’s love letters to the smell of her hospital room to the taste of Viv’s mouth to the little girl who watched as he came in Cela’s mouth on the edge of the playground of Ulysses S. Grant School.

Alf loomed again, the irrepressible jester, trickster. Shapeshifter. He got his kicks by tweaking his more famous friend and knew what buttons to push. Yesterday, he’d made a point of telling him Spike Jonze was up to something big — Spike was about to do a really wild film, “more genius than Adaptation,” about celebrity look-alikes. Alf said he didn’t know much more than that, but did know Spike was supposedly out there looking for a “Kit Lightfoot type.” When he heard that, Kit had laughed out loud, playing it cool. (He’d secretly resolved to phone the director at home and get the friendly lowdown. If there was something for him, he’d most likely have heard. Spike would have called or his people would have approached.) Kit wanted to do challenging work; it haunted him that he hadn’t yet made his bid. He was desperate — so he told himself — to do something magnificent, to work with an art house hotshot, any hotshot, young or old, step right up. He completely understood Tom’s need to have done the Kubrick thing. Respected it. Admired it. Then the Master went and died, as if in homage to Tom’s great taste and timing, Tom’s great luck. Kit kept telling himself that he wanted to do a film to challenge him in his core the way his practice once had, back in the day. But even if he found the right project, there were obstacles to surmount — he knew that he needed to be empty enough to exceed real or imagined boundaries. Maybe he just didn’t have it in him; never did and never would. Maybe he was just a pretty boy with swagger, gutless and not that bright, the King of People’s Choice. And that was that.

He shivered, straightening his spine.

The zendo had been built by master carpenters from five-hundred-year-old Japanese cedars without benefit of nails or glue. Each morning, the toryos had made offerings of sake and rice to their tools before setting to work. Architectural Digest wanted to put it on their cover, but Kit turned them down in his nobility. He flashed on the whore and the extemporaneous teisho before the shrine of the Buddha: the pornography of hubris. How had the path led him to this? He felt in danger of dying.

Like a warlock, he summoned a Kalachakra invocation to clear the air—“I will achieve complete enlightenment through the four doors of thorough liberation… emptiness, sinlessness, wishlessness, and non-activity!” These words he had said in Wisconsin, before his mentor and friend, the Dalai Lama. These words he had said before Prince Siddhartha, before timeless Shakyamuni, before Nothingness. He whispered Om shunyata-jnana-vajra-svabhavatmako ham and bowed deeply to the void, the hum of his words merging with the drone of a faraway leaf blower.

Stagecoach

RUSTY PICKED BECCA up around seven. Even though Sadge’s things were still in the apartment, she felt single. It was a turn-on. He came in and sniffed around like a cartoon dog. He sniffed his way to the bedroom, and she laughingly had to keep hauling him out.

They drove to Beverly Hills and parked near the big church where Bo Derek got married in Becca’s mom’s favorite movie, 10. Suddenly she got the crazy notion Rusty was going to take her to Crustacean. She started worrying about the sullen maître d’ but figured he probably wouldn’t recognize her — tonight, hair and makeup were in anti-Drew mode.

Rusty walked them toward Wells Fargo, saying he needed cash. He went past the ATMs and into the building’s lobby. It was already after seven.

“The bank’s staying open late,” he said, with a smile. “Just for me.”

For a fleeting moment Becca thought he was going to commit armed robbery, but then she saw a gala group on the other side of the tall windows. A guard was at the entrance. Rusty said, “We’re with Grady and Cassandra Dunsmore,” and he let them in without a hassle.

A peculiar, festive scene greeted them within. Gang bangers and their relations, some in wheelchairs (she was reminded of Valle Verde), upended slim-necked Coronas and sipped champagne from plastic glasses beside jovial white men in suits and loosened ties. A table had been set up with Costco deli platters, some as yet unwrapped; people seemed more thirsty than hungry. Motown played on a boom box. The high-spirited wives wore satiny dresses and as many tattoos as their spouses. Toddlers ran manic circles around their grandparents. Some of the gray-haired folks also had tatts.

“Hey now!” shouted Grady, on seeing Rusty come toward him.

“Hey now.”

They did their bear-hug thing.

“The gravy train has finally pulled into the station!”

“You mean the Grady train,” said Cassandra, waddling over, napkin filled with canapés and little sugar-dusted donuts. Her belly had grown since Becca last saw it underwater.

“You got that right,” said Grady.

“You’re both wrong,” said Rusty. “It ain’t the Grady or the gravy — it’s the ‘bullet’ train.”

“The bullet train!” exulted Grady. “That’s right! That’s dead-on! It’s the motherhumpin bullet-in-the-leg train!”

They had a laugh, then Rusty said, “You remember Becca.”

“I ain’t fuckin senile.” Grady turned to his wife. “Tha’s Rusty’s lady.”

Cassandra nodded, in Barbara Stanwyck—The Big Valley mode — all steely, matriarchal approval. They’d actually met at the party but Cassandra didn’t recollect.

“Honey,” she said, taking Becca’s elbow with mock intimacy, “would you make one thing clear to your boyfriend for me?” She paused for dramatic effect before saying, “He ain’t gettin any! Not a dime, OK? He ain’t gettin even the caboose of the bullet train! Not a red Indian cent!”

Cassandra choked as she laughed, fizzing up tiny sprays of Diet Pepsi that cooled an exhalation of cigarette smoke.

“Now, hey, Cass,” rebuked Grady. “Don’t be like that. When we party, everybody parties!”

A bank bureaucrat spoke up, and the lawyers motioned their clients to gather round — time to get serious. The families of the men hung back respectfully.

“What’s going on?” whispered Becca.

“Payback,” said Rusty in like tones. “I told you: Grady got shot by Rampart. LAPD planted dope on him. Did nineteen months. Got out three years ago, when Perez talked. Took this long for the settlement.”

“Settlement?”

“One point eight.”

“One point—”

“Mill.”

“But who are the others?” she asked, not really comprehending.

“All plaintiffs. Grady said some are detainees — guys held in jail longer than they were supposed to. That’s a no-no. Class action, big time.” Becca couldn’t keep up. “The county had to fork over twenty-seven million. See the chick standing next to him? To Grady? She got busted on some domestic violence thing. They held her an extra day and strip-searched her. Ugly bi-atch. Screws must’ve been hard up! Well, she’s rich now. For that kind of money, I’d do twenty-four hours standing on my head — or sittin on a dick. That’s what’s called a detainee. Most everybody here has the same attorneys.” He nodded toward a charismatic, black-stockinged woman in a pantsuit. “Ludmilla Vesper-Weintraub. She’s got a thousand clients, I shit you not. And every one of ‘em is gonna be motherfuckin rich.”

“But the money they got for their little girl…”

“That don’t have nothing to do with this. Can you believe it? They won the lotto twice! Can you fucking believe the karma of these people? Wheel of Fortune, man. Blazing Sevens.”

Grady bounded over. “The moment has come! The time is upon us!”

“What’s happening?” asked Rusty.

“They’re gonna dole it out, soul man. Then we are going to get our asses over to Gardena! We are going to get in that limo and cruise on down to Hustler Casino! Gonna play me some twenty-one.”

Cassandra kissed her husband, deliberately regurgitating a stream of soda into his unsuspecting mouth. Grady belched it back at her, and they both laughed gutturally.

“See that jail-face?” said Grady to his friends. He pointed surreptitiously to a short, muscle-bound skinhead standing in a corner with his wife and kid. “He got two million for doing less time than I did. Fucker already spent half his life in the penitentiary. I asked him what his thing was, and you know what he said? ‘Raping niggers.’ ”

Deities

LISANNE FINALLY CALLED to say she was pregnant. Robbie didn’t have much of a response. At the end of the brief conversation he told her to take care of herself, as if she’d said she was down with a cold or the flu.

• • •

TIFF’S OFFICE LET Sotheby’s know that Lisanne would be picking up the item. When she got there, they were friendly enough but made her show ID.

She’d thought about bringing Kit something personal — a flower, maybe, to grace the gift — but discarded the notion as amateurish. No coy upstaging allowed. Something like that might get back to Tiff. No, she would just have to be as charming and low-key as she could, in spite of her schoolgirl jitters. Besides, Tiff was the one who deserved the flowers. It really was awfully grand of him to have engineered the meet.

When she arrived at the beach location, a cop directed her to a parking space beside the famous Indian motorcycle. That’s when her heart began to pound. A baby-faced A.D. appeared and led her to Kit’s trailer. She cracked herself up with wild, nervous thoughts along the way. She imagined the star, a legendary on-set practical joker, coming to the door nude with a big veiny hard-on. They knocked at the trailer’s door, and there was no answer. Just as they turned away, Lisanne said, “Wait! Something’s wrong. I can feel it.” Before the A.D. could restrain her, she burst in to discover Kit on the floor, facedown. She began resuscitation efforts as her escort ran for help. The star, in diabetic semicoma, dumbly began to explore her mouth with twitchy, treacly tongue as she breathed warm life into his grateful bronchi—

A slender brunette in a headset answered the door. She smiled in a way that made the already paranoid Lisanne certain that Mr. Loewenstein had tipped them off about the “messenger” and her minor crush. The gorgeous, multitasking assistant motioned her in.

“What’s happening with Aronofsky?” The unmistakable voice came from deeper inside. “Are we supposed to meet?”

“Darren’s on his way back from Boston. We’re trying to set a place and a time.”

“He can come to the house — wherever. And, Xan? I want to call Spike. At home.”

Without warning, Kit emerged, barefoot in blue jeans. At first, he didn’t see Lisanne. He wore a tight cotton T, and actually stretched in front of her. A tattooed spiritual symbol floated above a hipbone.

“I want to find out if my homeboy Alfalfa is full of shit,” he said, winking at Lisanne. “But that’s not really accurate. I know he’s full of shit. I just want to find out how much.” He turned his full attention to the visitor and said, “Hi.”

“Hi.”

She waited to see if he recognized her from that time at yoga (she hoped he didn’t) but there wasn’t a flicker. Lisanne introduced herself, announcing that she was an emissary from the “offices” of Tiff Loewenstein. She said it drolly, as if speaking of a cardinal. She wanted to come off just a little bit sophisticated, and it seemed like he appreciated that and got where she was coming from. She reiterated that Mr. Loewenstein was adamant in his desire the package be delivered personally, and that she was performing her duties as his “special envoy.”

He took the box and opened it as he parodied the studio chieftain railing about his “tribute addiction.” Aside from the occasional impulse to prostate herself at his feet, the besotted go-between was relatively at ease.

“Wow,” he said, pulling the figure from a beautiful velvet sack. Xanthe came over to gawk.

It was a golden Buddha, mounted on dark wood, without question the most beautiful thing Lisanne had ever seen. Kit read from a creamy insert card that fixed its provenance to the thirteenth-century. His finger delicately transcribed the air above its head.

“The crown symbolizes reaching enlightenment,” he said, with casual authority. “Usually they’re five-pointed.”

The transcendent sculpture sat in lotus position. With deft elegance, one of its hands reached over a leg to touch the ground.

“Touching the earth,” said Kit. “To touch the earth spirit means that he’s conquered Mara, the world of illusion.”

“It’s so beautiful,” said Lisanne.

That was all she came up with, but she was glad to have said anything.

“What’s it made of?” asked Xanthe.

He traced a hand over its belly. “Copper.” Kit leaned over, crinkling his eyes in scrutiny. “See the gems in the crown? Whoa. What is that, lapis? And the tiny symbols on the sash? See the little symbols?”

He bade them draw closer. Lisanne could smell him. She felt her leg touch his.

Xanthe called his attention to an envelope tucked within the box. He opened it, reading the note from Tiff aloud. “But I should have got you this.” Kit removed the paper clip and looked at the photograph beneath that had been ripped from the auction house catalog. The mogul had underscored the accompanying text.

AJNA-VINIVARTA GANAPATI

COPPER ALLOY

TIBET CIRCA 15TH CENTURY

The exotic form of Ganapati is supported by a monkey goddess engaged in fellatio, sitting on an amrita vase flowing with jewels and menses. He is depicted with three heads: the elephant-headed Ganesha (primary) with a rat head to its right and a monkey head to its left. The role of the deity is to appease the suffering of insatiable beings.

$10,000 — $15,000

Kit laughed, then became almost somber.

“Get Loewenstein on the phone, OK, Xan?” He shook his head. “That’s a serious gift. That’s a very serious gift.”

Xanthe immediately got through. She handed him the cell.

“Mr. Loewenstein! Mr. Loewenstein! Head, from a monkey! Yes! Yes! The gift that keeps on giving!”

Then he expressed awed appreciation and began his sober thanks, disappearing into the bedroom as he spoke.

There was nothing for Lisanne to do but go.

Hustlers

HUSTLER’S WAS ONLY forty minutes away. It was a shock to Becca that casinos existed in places other than Vegas, Reno, and Atlantic City. Rusty said that gaming was all over the place — even Palm Springs. Cassandra said the American Indians owned more casinos than Donald Trump. You could even gamble on-line.

It was their third consecutive night. (And their last, according to Cassandra. “Cause our money’s gettin royally flushed.”) Rusty’s guesstimate to Becca was that the couple had dropped at least two hundred thou. They were given the royal treatment. They had their own private blackjack table if they wanted, and everywhere they went security guards politely followed, even standing outside when the girls used the powder room. Cassandra sometimes needed help walking, and the guards were there for that too. Now in her eighth month, she claimed to have stopped drinking but still took painkillers. She said that was OK because she knew a doctor who prescribed certain pills that wouldn’t hurt the fetus. Grady was sloshed and kept wanting to hire the affable men away (he kept slipping them hundies) to be personal bodyguards. Cassandra put the kibosh on it, in a friendly way. “I don’t want no cop knowing where I live,” she said to Becca under her breath.

Each night, Larry Flynt was supposed to be tooling around the premises in his gold-plated wheelchair, but whenever they asked, a pit boss would say he wasn’t in town. Larry’s brother was there, though. Well, whoop-dee-doo. The Dunsmores weren’t too eager to meet frère Flynt. But the casino manager said the Dunsmores and their friends should come to Bel-Air and join Larry for cocktails when he got home from wherever. The funky invitation only rankled them more.

“Shit,” said Grady, “Larry can come to me. Wheel his diapered ass on up to Mulholland!”

Cassandra made a point of laughing louder than she might have.

“Got a bigger house than him anyhow,” said Grady. He thought about that and said, “Well, maybe not.” The Dunsmores had a real conniption over that one. No one was feeling any pain.

Becca was returning from the rest room when she saw Rusty and the decorous blue-haired lady. She was in her seventies and clutched his arm with arthritic hands.

“Now young man, I know who you are and I respect your privacy, your right to privacy as a human being. But you, young man, belong to the world. And you are in a public place — not a very wonderful public place, I may add — so you cannot mind if I call you to task. I know that you are Russell Crowe. And I cannot remember if you are an Australian or a New Zealander, but I am of a certain age that allows me to say what’s on my mind. I am an elder, and while we do not honor elders in this country as we should and as they do in others, I know that you will not object — and I don’t care if you do! — if I tell you, young man, that you are simply marvelous. A marvelous actor. And a wonderful lit’ry man. You are authorial. I have never heard such marvelous acceptance speeches in my life! So marvelously composed and thought out, with such theatricality! I wish, young man, that you would write a book—not one of those damn tell-alls but a real book, a book of poetry, the poetry that’s within you. A memoir or a marvelous novel. Dylan Thomas is there, inside. Now I know when to shut up, I’ve lived long enough to know that, and I will leave you be, young man.” She clenched him hard and fast. “Don’t let them be your master!” she said, cautioning like a feral gypsy. “You are the artist. You have the power.”

She winked, then hobbled away on a tripod cane.

Becca slipped her arm in Rusty’s. They ambled to the sushi bar.

“California roll, Ms. Barrymore?” he said.

“No thanks.” She was happy to see him in such good humor — and that he hadn’t taken offense at the old woman’s eccentric ambush. “Been gambling?”

“A bit.”

“Does Grady give you money?”

Wrong question. She saw his face cloud over, then reappear.

“I assure you that when he does, it won’t be for gambling. Not this kind.”

She softly tickled his knuckles as if to undo her crassness.

“I think they’re just about ready to leave,” said Rusty. “Want to go over to the Four Seasons? Or do you want to go home?”

“What’s at the Four Seasons?”

“I think they’re going to get a room. We can hang awhile then split.”

Next Day Delivery

VIV WORKED LATE. They judiciously kept separate homes, but she stayed over most of the time. She didn’t always tell Kit when she was coming, and this time the house was dark. He might be out. She was on her way to draw a bath when Viv saw his shadow in the living room.

“Oh my God, you scared me! Bumpkin, are you OK?”

She turned on a lamp. He was on the floor beside the couch, drunk. He looked as if he’d been crying.

“Bumpkin?” She kneeled beside him, like a nun to a homeless person. Softly, she said, “Honey, what’s going on?”

“This,” he said, proffering a script. “This is what’s going on.”

Viv opened it — there was no title page.

“Special Needs. That’s what it’s called. Though Darren said that may change.”

“Darren?”

“Aronofsky.”

“He wrote it?”

“I don’t know, Cherry Girl. I think so.”

“And you love it?” she said, with a broadening smile.

“God wrote it,” he said. “Bin Laden wrote it. Jeffrey Katzenberg wrote it. Cherry Girl wrote it. My dead mother wrote it…”

“Kitchener — do you think you’re going to do it?”

She knew how unhappy he’d been, how much he wanted to work on something amazing. She had never seen him like this before. Shattered and ecstatic.

“If I don’t do it, it’s gonna do me.” He reached for the shot glass, downing its contents with melodramatic finesse. “A script comes from nowhere — and it’s like whoa, ‘beginner’s mind.’ You don’t bring anything to it, it just is. You can see it — the way you used to see shit. Before the shoe dropped or the whatever and you became a product. A corporation. Brand-new again. Beginner’s mind.”

Viv grabbed him and gave his neck a hundred little kisses while he squirmed and smiled, pouring and swallowing another shot.

“Bumpkin, do you know how lucky we are? How fucking lucky we are? That you can just stand there — for however long — and whisper in the wind: I want something crazy and brilliant, something I can finally be passionate about. And when you’re ready — when you’re ready to receive—God just returns that, returns all that energy, he fuckin FedExes it to you cause you’re so pure and you’ve worked so fuckin hard, Kit — not just on yourself but you have helped so many people—God just sends it right back to you on the whirlwind!”

“Hey, Cherry Girl, you know what? I think I wanna marry you.”

At Sarbonne Road

LISANNE WENT to her favorite Level 1 at Yoga Circle. There were only five people in attendance — a guy fatter than she was; a sixty-something socialite type with a wrist splint and a ton of face work; an even older, hollow-cheeked Nefertiti type in a turban, with weirdly elongated muscles; a grumpy, inflexible fellow in his fifties who looked as if he’d been forced by a probation officer to attend; and Marisa Tomei.

Afterward, she overheard the actress talking to the hippie girl at the front desk about a meditation class that night. Lisanne boldly asked if anyone could come. Marisa was sweet as could be and actually wrote down the address for her.

• • •

THE CLASS TOOK place at a private home in the Bel-Air hills.

The Yoga House sat on the edge of a vast property belonging to the producer Peter Guber and his wife, Tara. After Marisa left, the hippie said that Tara used to be Lynda, before taking a spiritual name. She said that Tara was one of the Buddhas who took female form, specifically to help women. Tara was born of tears shed over the suffering of sentient beings. Lisanne thought that if you had to give yourself a new name, that was a pretty good choice.

The night was windy and spectacular. The zendo sat on Sarbonne Road, high on a hill. Lisanne was surprised at how quiet it was, the kind of sepulchral stillness that, in the midst of an enormous city, only the very rich could afford. She parked on the slope and descended the driveway on foot.

A small group (Marisa was nowhere in sight) milled about or sat on cushions in preparation for what a flyer on the desk called satsang. Lisanne slipped off her shoes and signed the guestbook. She wrote out a check for the suggested “dana”: $15. She retrieved a Mexican blanket from the corner of the studio and on her way back to the sitting area studied the black-and-white wall photos. Some were of a woman doing yoga while pregnant; others of the same woman, older now, in symmetrical yogic poses with a man. Lisanne assumed the woman was Tara Guber.

A handsome, fortyish guy came in — the one in the photographs with Tara — and quietly bantered with a few of the sitters before stepping onto the platform. He assumed the lotus position, facing out. He was lithe and unpretentious, smiling at the group.

“We’re going to begin in silence,” he said. “The Upanishads said the only thing of real value is silence. That’s where the answers are. Tonight, we’ll begin with silence — and end with silence.”

He said he wasn’t going to guide them and they should just close their eyes. He told everyone to slowly find their breath (an instruction that puzzled Lisanne). After ten minutes or so, he said, “Open your eyes.” They were now free to ask questions.

Lisanne couldn’t quite grasp the evening’s format — because of what Marisa Tomei had said, she thought she would be attending a meditation class. But her back was already hurting so she was glad to have respite. The man beside her kept doing the kind of desultory leg stretches that dancers do, even though tonight clearly wasn’t about movement. Another woman took her watch off, positioning it so she could constantly read the time. Lisanne related to that. She had always, to her chagrin, been a clock-watcher.

Someone asked about “chakras.” How does energy move up to the head then out the crown? The teacher gave a thoughtful, seemingly roundabout answer, in which he invoked a tantric prayer called “The Power of Regret.” He said that during certain meditations, one visualized the Buddha dropping light and nectar down like a purifying stream through the crown of the head so that it filled one’s totality with bliss. Another woman asked if it was all right to meditate between one and four in the morning. The teacher said his teacher told him that a yogi should be asleep during the day and awake at night. By that he meant “awake while sleeping. As with Christ: ‘I am in the world, not of it.’ ” As a rule, he cautioned them against baroque, late-night gestures. He said that if you were awake at that hour, it probably meant that you were “over-amped.” There was, he added, a tantric practice where one meditated in the middle of the night, in water up to one’s belly, during a full moon. Meditated on the moon in the water. Even though the teacher seemed learned, Lisanne found herself judgy and cynical. He just seemed too handsome to be taken seriously. Too California, too Malibu surfer. Too something-something.

After the Q & A, he led the class in breathing: stomach-tucked rapid breaths, and “bumblebees”—in through one nostril and out the other. (It suddenly occurred to her that it was probably time to have a doctor check the fetus.) This part was hard, but she liked it when, at the end, he had everyone breathe “into your hearts,” then out to infinity.

He asked them to settle into lotuses for closing meditation. Lisanne kept adjusting her legs, occasionally opening her eyes in slits to observe the serene, sandy-haired Aryan guru erectus. He made no perceptible movement; she couldn’t even see his respirations. Her stomach growled and gurgled as she listened to the electronic rush of hedges just outside the window, buffeted by the Santa Anas. The hypnotic sound of the leaves and her own breath led her back to that magical visit to Kit Lightfoot’s trailer and how he had patiently explained, like a kind, scholarly Adonis, the recondite attributes of the golden Buddha. At last, her mind alighted on the soot that was the residuum of her father.

A few minutes before the hour, the teacher chanted a mantra that began and ended with AUM, and they all joined in. Lisanne liked that part even though the man next to her — the irritating stretcher, who, instead of even attempting a lotus was the only person to have deployed one of those portable back-support chairs that were stacked along the wall (Lisanne had thought of using one when she first came in but couldn’t figure out exactly how they worked) — began to consciously harmonize, annoying her to no end.

Riding in Cars with Boys

THE BAR AT the Four Seasons was mobbed. Big-bellied Cassandra sat on her stool and got dirty looks for nursing a snifter of Petron. Becca wasn’t sure when she had begun drinking again.

Mrs. Dunsmore grunted because there weren’t any celebrities. “I guess Thursday’s bridge and tunnel night.” Becca never understood that phrase.

Grady waved his arms from the lounge — their suite was ready. Rusty helped Cassandra up, and Becca followed. A familiar-looking woman touched her arm.

“Becca? It’s Sharon — Belzmerz. You came in to read for me.”

“Oh, hi!” she said, gushing. “How are you!”

“The director really liked your tape,” said Sharon.

Becca was so flummoxed to be “recognized” by a professional that she didn’t know what the lady was talking about.

“He finally looked at it — he’s a little slow.”

“Oh! That’s… great!” stuttered Becca, feeling like a fool.

“Are you still at the same numbers?”

Sharon was tipsy. It was loud and she pushed in so close that Becca could see down her throat.

“Yes! And you have my cell—”

She made a move to her purse for a pen, but the casting agent stayed her hand. “I’m sure we have it. Anyway, I can always reach you through Cyrus.” She asked if Becca still studied with him. Then she changed her mind, and they exchanged phone numbers and e-mails. Becca couldn’t believe Sharon Belzmerz was actually giving out her home phone.

“That is so great,” said Becca, referring back to the director. “I thought they had totally decided to go with somebody else.”

It was Sharon’s turn to be puzzled. A light went on: “Oh! That director did! He did go with someone else. I’m sorry.” She tapped her glass. “Too much wine. Another director saw your tape, and he’s very interested. Spike Jonze.”

She dropped the name with the brio of a homespun pimp.

“Spike Jonze?”

“He really likes you. But now I have to get back to my friends. Call you Monday!”

“Nice running into you!”

As Becca moved through the crowded bar, her skin was flush with the excitement of the encounter. She felt that all was preordained and that she’d just been moved by an invisible hand (in the form of Sharon Belzmerz) upon the great magnetized Ouija board of show business destiny.

For the first time since she came to L.A., she felt like a celebrity.

• • •

THE SUITE WAS HUGE. Grady lit a joint, and Cassandra said, “Hey, didn’t they tell you this was a nonsmoking wing?” Room service brought pizza, caviar, ice cream, and booze, and everyone broke apart, then came back together again, disappearing into the bedroom for lines of coke. When Rusty told her the cognac cost eight hundred dollars, Becca said, “Sorry, but I cannot compute.” Cassandra said she was drinking only tequila now. She said it was the purest and actually benefited the baby homeopathically.

At one in the morning, she began to cry over her drowned daughter. “I’m sorry, sweetheart!” she shouted, through pugnacious tears. Whenever Grady went to her side, she shoved him away like a diva. “Baby-girl Questra, I am so sorry I didn’t protect you! Forgive me! Forgive your mama!”

Repelled at the sight of the stoned, egregiously mawkish woman, Becca became sickened by her own response — who was she to judge? She, who didn’t know the first thing about the blood, sweat, and tears of birthing a child, the agony and the ecstasy, the responsibility, and maybe never would…. What gave her the right to sit on high? How could she dare resent someone who’d been through what Cassandra had? Becca shuddered with the realization: It was their money she resented them for. Disgusting! As if they didn’t deserve every dollar! The police had cold-bloodedly shot Grady down, then planted the dope — and if that wasn’t enough, they’d watched their little baby girl die through the negligence of a city maintenance crew. Becca Mondrain, you ought to be ashamed.

Rusty took her to the bedroom. They did more coke, and he kissed her on the bed awhile. When he got overly sexual she became uncomfortable (he hadn’t shut the door), but he kept on. She could hear Cassandra petitioning her unborn son as she roved the living room like a wounded animal.

“I’ll protect you,” she blubbered. “God help me, I will. I won’t let them take you away from me!”

“Come on, Cassie girl,” said Grady, helpless to assuage. “Ain’t nobody gonna take our baby away.”

“They will, they will, they will!”

“Why’d they want to do that, Cass?” His gently logical tone was that of a hostage negotiator.

“The motherfuckers—”

“Why’d they wanna try and take our baby away? Huh, Cass? Why—”

“And if they do,” she said, inconsolably, “someone’s going to righteously pay, understand me, Grady? Someone’s going to fucking pay! Because no one takes my babies! No one takes Cassandra Dunsmore’s babies, I showed ‘em that already. I made them pay.” Chin lowered, she addressed the womb. “And they’re not going to touch you, OK? Mama Bear ain’t going to let them fucking touch you!”

Becca was dizzy and drunk. Rusty was eating her out when the couple came in, Grady holding his wife’s hand like she was a child just retrieved from Lost and Found. Becca tried to get up, but Rusty was too heavy on her. Grady went to the bed while the half-dressed Cassandra wailed through her soliloquy, incognizant of anything but faceless oppression and grief. Her gut protruded like a cruddy seedpod. Grady stripped off his clothes. He showed Becca his cock — HARD TIMES was inked on it — then let it dangle down. He fastened his mouth to Becca’s freckled tit.

“They killed you!” shouted Cassandra. “But you’re not dead, Questra — you’re not dead! I know you’re not dead. You’re right here with me. Such an old, beautiful soul… how could you be dead? You can’t. You’re not. And we’re rich now and so are you. And when your little bro’s born? We’re gonna go to Disney World and Hawaii and Ground fucking Zero—we’re gonna do all the things families do, OK? Together. And if something happens to little bro at Disney World, if he gets fucked up on Space Mountain, we are gonna take care of business! We gon’ take on Eisner, the King Jew! Better believe it. Cause the jury is our friend, Questra Girl, the jury know how to take care of the Dunsmores. Oh, my baby! My precious baby, baby, baby! You’re gon’ have everything your mama never did, that’s right. That’s right! Cause your mama loves you so much. OK? Loves you so much. Loves you so much. Loves you so much. Loves you so much. Loves you…”

Storming the Temple

KIT MET DARREN Aronofsky in the courtyard of the Chateau. They talked around the project awhile. Matthew McConaughey came through with his dog and said hello.

The director said he wrote Special Needs in just two weeks’ time. His friend Paul Schrader (who loved the script) thought that was a good omen — Paul said the screenplays that exploded out of you always proved to be the most enduring. The germ of the idea had occurred to him while he was watching an old Cliff Robertson movie called Charly; as it turned out, Special Needs was Charly in reverse. What would happen, he wondered, if a famous actor set out to do a film — say, a character study of a retarded man — and before shooting began, sustained injuries in an auto accident that left him “neurologically impaired”? As the story wrote itself out, Darren said that his conceit, which seemed at first a kind of knee-jerk satirical response to a genre that had become a perennial audience pleaser and vainglorious actors’ showcase staple, revealed itself to be more layered and poignant than he could have imagined.

Whatever its origins, Kit thought the script was incredibly complex and controversial. The role would allow him to walk several high wires at once. It was risky (there was always the danger of falling; he recalled his conversation with “Mr. Tourette’s”), but he knew he had no choice. He would face his shame and his fear. Each morning when he awoke, Kit felt like a dud, a popinjay, a cosmic fraud — the biggest travesty of all being that he dared call himself a Buddhist. He was diseased, and further from the Essential Truths than ever. Now, in desperation, he at least owned that terrible, shiny thing his teacher had warned him of:

Hope.

He knew the battle was not in Bodh Gaya — it was in Hollywood, the place where he practiced his craft, the place he had seduced and been seduced by, that had brought him godhood then brought him to his knees. This was his crucible. He remembered Gil Weiskopf Roshi telling him of an enlightened master who refused to allow soldiers into his temple. With joyful indifference, the monk set the room ablaze. “To meditate, seek not the mountain stream — to a still mind, fire itself is cool and refreshing.” The conflagration would be here, not there. And it had already come.

Darren asked what the rest of his day was like. Kit said he was free, and the director suggested a field trip.

• • •

THEY WERE MET in the waiting room by a thin black queen of indeterminate age. He wore hospital whites, a hairnet, and aviator glasses with smoky green lenses.

“Mr. Aronofsky!” He shook the director’s hand, then looked at Kit and smoldered, as if wanting to take a bite. “And you must be Mr. Lightfoot. Been expecting y’all — though your girl didn’t say when. Don’t get me started, you can drop in any time you like! I know y’all’d like to get straight to business, but I have to do my official meet-and-greet thing. Won’t take but a minute. My name is Tyrone Lamott, and I am Valle Verde Liaison for Television and Motion Pictures. I am media liaison, that’s right. And Mr. Lightfoot, Tyrone is a very large fan and thought he would just get that out of the way so he don’t salivate over y’all while y’all are here. No no no, that just wouldn’t do. Now just so’s y’all don’t think we are pikers, I must inform that we’ve had ‘em all come through, the full gambit — Mr. DiCaprio for Gilbert Grape and Mr. Hoffman for Rain Man, Mr. Ford for Regarding Henry—we have seen quite a few. Because we are the best. But, Mr. Lightfoot… Tyrone will say for the very last time that you are the one among all the others who thrill him most!”

As they toured, the staffers gawked. Tyrone sternly, comically shooed them away. “G’on, now! G’on about your business!” After walking what must have been three city blocks, they approached one of the stations.

“Roy getting bath,” said a Cambodian nurse, with a curious eye to the guests. “Be done in few minute.” She broke a toothy smile as her giggling cohorts gathered round. “Is Kit Lightfoot?”

“Yes, Connie. Is Kit Lightfoot.” He turned to the men. “That’s Connie Chung. I give all my girls names. Freshens ‘em up. Now go check on Roy, girl!” he said, with outrageous dispatch. “These are busy, busy men! Go tell Roy he gonna meet hisself a movie star!”

“Tyrone,” said Darren humbly. “What happened to Roy?”

“Glioblastoma multiforme. Now I don’t know if that’s what y’all are looking for—”

“Is that a tumor?” asked Kit.

“Uh huh,” said Tyrone. “But he’s doin real well.”

Nurse Connie emerged from the room and said they could go in.

A pale, beleaguered man stood at the bed, poorly draped by a shabby robe. He was around forty and attended by an orderly, who wasn’t thrilled to be part of any dog-and-pony show.

“Roy, you got y’self some visitors! This is Dar-ren.”

“Hi, Roy.”

“He’s a very famous director. And this is Kit Lightfoot.”

“How are you?” the actor softly inquired.

Roy took them in, blank-faced.

“Do you recognize him from the movies?” said Tyrone. “Huh, Roy? I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you recognize him from the motion picture big screen.”

Kit was mildly uncomfortable with the approach but let it go.

The man spoke up, in a garbled drone. With Tyrone’s coaxing, the words became apparent:

“I… fuck. I fuck. I–I fuck.”

Connie Chung held a hand over her mouth, embarrassed.

“Roy Rogers fucks a lot,” said Tyrone, rolling his eyes. “Least he say he do. If you believe Roy, he get more pussy than Julio Iglesias.”

“I fuck! I fuck! I fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” barked Roy, smiling gleefully as he got up to speed.

“He gettin excited — cause you here, Mr. L.”

Other nurses gathered in the doorway. More hands to giggling mouths. Nurse Connie and the orderly lowered the patient back on to the bed.

“Roy Rogers had his own business. Didn’t you have your own business, Roy?”

“Fuck!” He laughed, messy and unnerving, full of spittle. He stood up again. Tyrone put a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder and said indulgently, “Naw, it wasn’t the ‘fuck’ business. I think he had a McDonald’s.”

Kit noticed a horseshoe-shaped scar over his temple.

“Those Golden Arches made lots of money for you, too, didn’t they, Roy. Roy got some grown-up kids,” said Tyrone, turning to Nurse Connie. “I guess it ain’t been no Happy Trails.”

“They no come,” she said.

Tyrone took a framed photo from the bedstand and handed it to Kit and Darren — Roy and his family, in happier days.

Kit went over and steadied the man with his hands, murmuring softly while helping him to sit. The orderly dropped his sullen demeanor and pitched in, supporting Roy’s other side. The patient’s obscene perorations faded. There was something so touching and fearless about Kit’s tender mercies, and Darren knew for certain that he had found his man.

Field Trips

LISANNE SET OFF for Riverside. It was Sunday. Apart from her main plan, she wanted to scope out the famous brunch at the Mission Inn that her boss was always raving about. It turned out to be a tad Waspy for her taste. She had a general rule never to eat where women of a certain age congregated in colored hats.

She went to Denny’s instead. Lisanne thought she felt the baby kick, but maybe it was too soon for that. Maybe it kicked when one of those big fat pancakes I promised myself I wouldn’t order thunked it on the head.

It was easy to find the house. There were a thousand Kit Lightfoot links and Web sites that listed the address of the local landmark, many containing interviews with Lightfoot Senior. He spoke freely, almost defiantly, of his son’s early years, glibly advertising himself as a good parent, a tough but caring dad, an all-too-human family man who had done the best he could under great hardship, insurmountable medical bills, beloved wife dying of cancer (he fudged time lines and history), a sorrowful patriarch benevolently bewildered by his boy’s estrangement. “He’ll come around,” said Mr. Lightfoot. “He knows I’m there for him anytime he needs me.” In a more current posting, Burke Lightfoot bragged that Kit had indeed come around, and not too long ago at that, to visit the old homestead. (“I still live in the same house my son was born in. I have nothing to hide.”) In fact, it was noted, that with his father’s recent urgings, the star had made a generous donation toward the rebuilding of his grade school’s auditorium — see? Reparations were well under way, all across the board.

Lisanne took the leisurely route over to Galway Court. The Lightfoot residence was on a cul-de-sac, making it harder to do a simple drive-by. She parked a few blocks away and hid behind the classifieds, as if looking for rentals. After a few minutes she glanced around, absorbing the sights and sounds of the neighborhood. Maybe she’d take a stroll. Then she thought that wasn’t such a great idea (the street probably had its share of lookie-lous) and decided to leave. Her mood plummeted. She felt common, aimless, unveiled, one more fat, lonely fan in a vast, uncelebrated throng. In a few short moments, she had lost her special connection.

She was embarrassed at having come at all.

• • •

THAT AFTERNOON, SHE accompanied Tiff and his wife to a luncheon at a house in San Marino. The Loewensteins were being honored as the most generous of the American Friends of the Salzburg Festival. She’d been invited by Tiff before the couple had reconciled but they insisted she come. Roslynn had always been kind to her and was grateful for the neutered companionship she provided during Mr. Loewenstein’s sundry postmidlife freak-outs. As a reward, she invited along “a catch” to be Lisanne’s date.

Phil Muskingham was the anemic thirty-nine-year-old heir of a San Francisco telecom clan. He had a minor facial tic and a bad haircut. He wasn’t witty, but he wasn’t unfunny either and seemed to genuinely like her, in spite of her weight, which definitely made him more appealing. (Lisanne had been steadily gaining and thought that Roslynn must have broached the issue to the “catch” beforehand to make sure it was OK.) He was flirting with her, and she wasn’t used to that. He could have been one of those people who got turned on by fatties — hell that’d be OK too. Bring ‘em on.

The awards part of the luncheon was to begin soon. As coffee was served, Phil asked Lisanne if she wanted to walk the grounds. They set off.

“I know where I’ve seen you before,” he said. She couldn’t imagine. “Were you at a gathering a few months ago, in Bel-Air? Kind of a yoga thing?”

“Oh my God, yes!” she exclaimed in disbelief. “But — what were you doing there?”

“The Gubers are old friends of the family. Lynda—Tara—is always after me to start meditating.”

“The Yoga House.”

“I call it Yoda House. House o’ Yoda.”

“I remember you. You were next to me. You were fidgeting.”

“Back problems. I can’t sit like that.”

“That is so funny. You were harmonizing.”

“Gettin spiritual,” he said, with a goofy smile.

She thought he was cute.

“I can’t believe that was you!” she said. Maybe it was a sign from matchmaker heaven.

“Hey, didja hear about the swami at Pink’s? They asked how he wanted his hot dog, and he said, ‘Make me one with everything.’ ”

“I’ve heard that,” Lisanne said, sweetly groaning.

“So… you wanna go somewhere sometime?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. We could go out. We could go to Pink’s and be one with everything.”

“Sure,” she said, insouciant. “Why not?”

She was actually being asked on a date. We could go to a movie. Or to the delivery room together.

“Well,” he said, drolly. “I guess that’s better than just ‘Why?’ ”

They laughed. A downsized version of the Vienna Philharmonic began to tune itself, and they headed back so as not to miss the encomiums about to be sung for the studio mogul and his wife.

Dashed Hopes

BECCA DIDN’T TELL Annie about the orgy at the Four Seasons. She avoided Rusty the following week. She had a yeast infection anyway.

When she thought about it, her stomach turned. She knew everyone was really stoned, and that made the reality at least a little less harsh in her head. She didn’t think Grady had been inside her but wasn’t really sure. It made her paranoid that she might catch something. Becca flashed on fooling around with Cass, smelling her smells and licking her pussy, reaching up to rub the taut, protuberant belly while Cassandra sucked the men. She was obsessing so much about the evening and feeling so guilty that she got a flu. At her worst moment, Becca was dialing home to Virginia to confess. But then the fever broke, so to speak, and she decided on a new tack: she would pretend it hadn’t happened. When they were together again, if anyone made some smarmy reference or even hinted at a replay, she would tell them they could all go fuck themselves.

• • •

WHEN THE CASTING director called to say that Spike Jonze wanted to meet, Becca nearly fainted. Sharon suggested they go to the Coffee Bean on Sunset, to “strategize.”

She said that Spike was making a film about “the nature of celebrity and what this town does to people.” The script was by the genius Charlie Kaufman, and they were already signing up big actors (Russell Crowe, Raquel Welch, Cameron Diaz, Benicio Del Toro, John Cusack), but the real stars — the heart and soul of the piece — were look-alikes. Supposedly, Spike didn’t want to do any special effects like he did with Nic Cage and his “brother” in Adaptation; that it was important the actors resembled the stars instead of being exact duplicates. They were throwing out a wide net for look-alikes who could act, and of course Becca qualified because, as far as Sharon was concerned, she was an exceptionally talented actress who just happened to moonlight as a Drew Barrymore impersonator. Becca asked if Elaine Jordache was involved in the production. Sharon hadn’t heard the name.

In the parking lot, they clasped hands and Sharon said that she had a really good feeling about her meeting with Spike. She kept gently pinching the pressure point between Becca’s thumb and forefinger. It hurt a little but felt good too. Becca closed her eyes and asked how she knew about that kind of thing and Sharon said she’d actually trained in shiatsu and deep tissue massage; that was what she did in her college years to get by. She told Becca she would do bodywork on her if she wanted. Then she gave a quick, firm rub to the back of Becca’s neck, saying she had “a few rocks back there.” She kissed Becca goodbye on the lips but with mouth closed.

• • •

HEART IN THROAT, Becca immediately called Rusty. She was eager to share the news with him. Also, it was a feel-good way to close the book on the whole creepy sexcapade.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she said enthusiastically, “that I’m supposed to go see him tomorrow morning — some place on Gower. Rusty, I am so totally terrified!”

“Supposed to go where,” he said testily. Obtuse.

“This address on — no, Ivar. To see Spike Jonze! Oh my God, I have to rent Adaptation… I mean, I already saw it but not for a while. And I never saw Human Nature—but that’s by a different director, not Spike [she was already on a first-name basis]. Still, it’s by Charles Kaufman — I mean, he wrote it — so I probably should see it…. And Annie says there’s some other movies — the one George Clooney directed, that Drew’s in — I should— Ohmygod, Rusty, I looked on IMDb and Spike’s from Maryland, where Annie’s from! Did you know he was an actor? He was in that movie The Game and that movie Three Kings? But I don’t think I’m going to rent those. Not until he gives me a part!”

“Would you please shut the fuck up?”

“What?”

The air went out of her.

“So you called Elaine?” he said accusingly. “Or did she call you—did Elaine call you, Becca?”

“No! Rusty, what is wrong? Elaine had nothing to do with this. Sharon never even heard of her. Sharon said—”

“Sharon?”

“Sharon Belzmerz—”

“Sharon who?” he asked sarcastically.

“Sharon Belzmerz. She’s a casting director, at Warner Brothers. I told you about her — I met her through Cyrus. She put me on tape.”

“Oh. Sharon Bullshitz put you on tape. Oh! Oh. Right.”

“I ran into her that night we were at the Four Seasons”—here she did start to cry, with the forced, fractured memory of in-suite high jinks. Don’t go there. “Sharon said that someone saw my tape, someone— But why — why are you so—”

“I met with Spike Jonze, OK? OK, Becca? I already fucking met with him. Do you hear what I’m saying? I know all about the ‘look-alike’ project. And they’re not trying to find any ‘Drews,’ OK? I read the script, which not even the fucking studio has read, OK? He gave me the script. And they’re not looking for Drews.”

“OK. All right.” Her voice grew thin as she capitulated. “He just said he wanted to meet me.” Hating herself for whining. For backing down. Hating him. Fighting for breath. “He saw my tape.”

“Well,” he said, voice dripping acid, “maybe Sofia, who’s probably your new best friend, maybe Sofia is having a surprise party for old Spike. Remember the one you did for Cameron? In the Colony? The Colony’s your hood! Well, maybe they need a Drew to hand out hors d’oeuvres and blow jobs.”

“Why are you being so mean?”

“I don’t like people doing snaky things around my back.”

“But I didn’t—”

“I’ll take it up with Elaine.”

“I told you, she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“There isn’t any reason for you to go see Mr. Jonze tomorrow, OK? Unless you want to be humiliated. But maybe you do. I forgot who I was talking to. Maybe that’s your thing.”

One-Man Show

KIT WAS ALONE onstage.

He had sublet the Delongpre Avenue space from the Metropolis troupe for a private, weeklong intensive with Jorgia Wilding. When he first landed in Hollywood, he’d attended the acting coach’s legendary class. She was in her seventies now but hadn’t lost her acumen — or her bite.

He slouched à la Monty Clift, slurring and stammering his words as he flailed about in bravura Method mode.

“No!” she yelled, cutting him off from her middle-row seat. “No no no no no!” She stood and shuffled toward him. Her head poked through an immense wide-knit purple poncho, like some crusty cartoon character caught in a fisherman’s net. “You’re gonna win an Oscar for this, all right—an Oscar Mayer. Cause that’s what you’re doing. You’re hotdogging.”

She climbed to the stage. Kit hung his head and waited, as a prisoner might to receive his blows.

“What are you doing? What are you doing? You doin brain injury? Or you doin retard? I’m asking you: Is this traumatic brain injury or is this mental retardation?”

“It’s, uh, it’s both,” he said lamely.

“Both,” she said, slack-jawed. As if that were the dumbest thing yet uttered by actor or man. No one could’ve said anything dumber.

“I guess I’m not sure,” said Kit. “I’m finding my way.”

“Well, you sure as hell are. We finally agree! And by the way, ‘brain injury’ for ‘retarded’ is like Cockney for Bostonian. They’re completely different languages, OK? With their own aphasical rhythms and syntax.” She took a deep, disappointed breath. “Kitchener, we’ve known each other a lot of years.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Unless you dig deeper you’re gonna be laughed off the screen. Folks are gonna think you’re in a Farrelly Brothers movie. Sling Blade you’re not; Sling Blade you don’t want to be. But this isn’t some TV movie, am I right? This gonna be a TV movie?”

“No ma’am.”

“This is Aronofsky. He’s very demanding. I know— I worked with Ellen for Requiem. Very smart and very demanding. And he won’t let you get away with it, honey. So guess what: you’ve got homework. We need to unlearn you some bad habits. Bad movie star habits.”

“If you say so, ma’am,” said Kit.

He laughed, breaking the tension.

“Yeah, well I say so,” said Jorgia, softening. “You want to be on Jimmy Lipton’s show, doncha?” she said facetiously. “Have you done Actors Studio yet?”

“In fact I have, ma’am.”

“You did?” She seemed genuinely surprised.

“Yes ma’am.”

“I missed that one.”

“That’s probably a good thing.”

“Well, you want to be asked back, don’t you?”

“No ma’am, not really.”

They both were laughing now. It was the end of their day and he was exhausted. She was indomitable.

“All right then, let’s stop wasting time. I want you to sit on that cushion and center yourself!”

He assumed the pose of the Buddha, spine erect, eyes half-closed. Jorgia, an old yoga hand herself, sat opposite. She began to speak, trancelike: “All those years of meditating. All those years of clearing the mind. The discipline. The energy. Call on it. Call on emptiness. Dérèglement. Derange the senses. Breathe. Pull, from your root. Everything flows through you. Empty the mind. Astonish me. Astonish yourself. Be still, in the core of you. Untangle. Undo. Erase Kit Lightfoot. Kit Lightfoot is overpaid for what he does. Kit Lightfoot doesn’t know what he does. Kit Lightfoot doesn’t have a clue. Kit Lightfoot doesn’t know what he’s capable of, the heights and depths he can reach. Kit Lightfoot is retarded, brain-damaged! Kit Lightfoot is the enemy. Erase Kit Lightfoot. Breathe. Go to that yoga place. Yoga means ‘union.’ Erase the self. Breathe. Forget the self. Breathe…”

Entities

REGGIE MARCK HAD a three o’clock meeting with a married couple. They had been referred by Rodrigo Muñoz, a well-known attorney who specialized in civil rights violations stemming from police misconduct. He was seeing them as a favor to Rodrigo, who’d sought Reggie’s services after being too closely portrayed in a Law & Order episode a few seasons back. He felt maligned. Reggie had gotten a small but reasonable settlement and they’d become friends.

Rodrigo had told him some colorful stories about “the Munsters,” and Reggie thought Lisanne might get a kick out of meeting them. Lately, she’d been so dispirited. It seemed like she was gaining weight by the week. His wife thought he worried too much, but for Reggie, Lisanne was family. He asked her to sit in and take notes.

“Rodrigo said you were the Man,” said Cassandra.

“I hope I can be helpful,” said Reggie. “How’s the big guy doing?”

“El jefe?” said Grady. “Still causin trouble. Stirrin it up.”

“He keeps it real, though, that’s for damn sure,” said Cassandra.

“Sounds like Rod,” said Reggie. “He’s sharp.”

“I call him the Brown Man of Renown.”

“That’s better than the Brown Turd!” said Grady.

They bantered like that until Mr. Dunsmore finally got to the point. “See — the thing is,” he said, “that we want to make movies.”

“But we don’t know too much about it,” said Cassandra. “Ain’t our world. I mean, we’re learning, don’t get me wrong. Learnin quick. And we know a shitload of people—”

“A shitload.”

“—in the business, but the bottom line is, if they’re successful, they ain’t really in too much of a hurry to say hello. Not to no virgins. And I can understand that. Shit, I’d be the same way. Show business is a motherfucker, it ain’t a charity. Took ‘em this long to get to where they’re at and here comes some asshole wanting to know the secret of their success. Hey, how’d ya do it! I wanna be rich too! Know what I’m saying?”

“Absolutely,” said Reggie, nodding.

“There are only so many pieces of the pie,” said Grady.

“That’s what they think,” said Cassandra. “That’s the fallacy in a nutshell, see, cause that is one hundred percent, gold-plated bullshit. There’s plenty of apple pie to go around — cherry and blueberry too! Motherfuckers just greedy.”

“Greedy,” echoed Grady, like a pilgrim at a tent meeting. “Damn straight.”

“And I ain’t even sayin it’s the Jews. Cause hell, they’re the ones we need to be learning from.”

Lisanne kept her head down and scribbled furiously, trying not to laugh.

“Rodrigo said we got to form a production company.”

“That would seem a logical way to go,” Reggie said.

“Goodie!” said Cassandra, clapping her hands. “Can you do that for us?”

“Not a problem.”

“Does that cost a lot?”

“A few thousand dollars.”

“We want to get into music publishing too — we want to own catalogs. Rodrigo said that’s where the real money is.”

“If the soundtrack of one of our movies takes off,” said Grady, eyes on the prize, “we want to be ready.”

“We know lots of movie people,” said Cassandra. “Actors and directors — agents and managers too. Hey, they come to us. Jimmy Caan calls us Playboy Mansion East.”

“We live up on Mulholland, right across from Jack.”

“We started renting the house out for movie locations — the Strokes are doing a video tomorrow, and Drew Barrymore might be there cause she’s going out with someone in the band — but not cause we need the money. It’s a cool way to make connections. It’s all about networking.”

“We’re right across from Jack Nicholson.”

“You already told him that, fool!”

“And Brando. We keep asking him to come over, and one day he will. He don’t answer the phone. He’s famous for that. We heard you gotta leave a message on the machine for his pet rat or somethin. That’s the only way he’ll pick up.”

“We tried that. But he ain’t called back.”

“Oh he will. I know he will,” said Grady, winking at Reggie like a crazed hillbilly. “Cause he’s stone nuts. And he knows we’re crazy enough for him to want to get to know us. We’re his people!”

“Mr. Marck,” said Cassandra. “If you can help us with the legal then we can have more of a foundation. Cause we’re already lookin at scripts. Gonna put up a whole Web site like Kevin Spacey did so unknowns can submit screenplays.”

“Tha’s right.”

“Gonna be all over Sundance. Want to do us a Project Greenlight too. But right now we couldn’t get nothin goin if we wanted to. Rodrigo said we need an ‘entity.’ ”

“Like a poltergeist!” said Grady.

“Can it, goon,” she said, kicking at him.

“What you’ve got to do,” said Reggie, “is come up with a name for the corporation. Lisanne will send the papers to Sacramento, and they’ll do a search, for clearance. If the name isn’t being used, you’re good to go.”

“Can we put you on retainer for company business?”

“You know, unfortunately, much as I’d like to, I wouldn’t be able to take you on — that’s not really my thing. But I’ll happily refer you to someone who has that kind of day-to-day architecture already in place.”

“Cool,” said Cassandra. “We like architecture!”

“Ain’t it cool?” said Grady, doing his Travolta.

“We already come up with a name,” said his wife, proudly. “For the entity.”

She rested a hand atop her gigantic stomach and smiled. Grady reached over to pat her swollen fingers.

“QuestraWorld,” he said, beaming.

“QuestraWorld Film and Television Productions,” Cassandra added. “Incorporated.”

The Life of a Working Actress

SHE LAY ON a towel, on a Six Feet Under gurney.

They’d brought her in for another show. This time, the casting lady said that her face would probably be featured. Becca wondered if one of the actors who’d hit on her had arranged it. That seemed a little far-fetched.

She was bewildered that Rusty had been so harsh when she tried to tell him her good news. It came as a shock that he could be so insecure. But then she felt bereft and asinine, because she really knew nothing about this man. The first time she saw him, he was beating up some pathetic look-alike! She wondered if she should be afraid. With a shiver, she flashed on Grady trying to shoehorn his dick inside her. An upside-down Rusty looked into her eyes while reaching over to put his hands on her legs, spreading them for his friend. Thank God Grady was too loaded to do anything. Rusty was panting, and she could tell how much it excited him to be pimping her. (She still hadn’t told Annie.) That’s the kind of person she was dealing with. The man she’d fallen in love with.

Her back was killing her. When they were done shooting, she decided to treat herself to a massage. She was calling Burke Williams on her cell when Annie rang through. She said Becca should drive over to the theater on Delongpre right now—Kit Lightfoot was inside, rehearsing with Jorgia Wilding.

• • •

THEY SAT IN Annie’s car smoking and waiting.

“What are they rehearsing for?”

“I don’t know. I think a movie. Cyrus didn’t say. I don’t think he knows.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

“With Kit Lightfoot?”

“Heh heh.”

“Oh! You mean with Cyrus.”

“No, I meant with Jorgia.”

“Hey, if it would make me a better actress…” They laughed, then Annie reconsidered the question. “Cyrus and I? We’re kind of sleeping together.”

“I love that. ‘Kind of.’ ”

“Kinda sorta. Are you sleeping with your friend?”

Becca nodded reluctantly.

“Well that’s not very enthusiastic,” said Annie.

“Oh, it’s pretty enthusiastic all right.”

“Really,” said Annie, intrigued.

“Be careful,” said Becca, putting it back on Annie. “I mean, he’s the director.”

“I know. It’s that old saying, ‘Don’t shit where you act.’ ”

“It’s much harder to find a good acting company than it is someone to fuck.”

There was movement at the front door of the theater. A worker-type came out — false alarm.

“I’m gonna split,” said Becca. “Are you staying?”

“Guess I’ll go. And don’t tell anyone about this.”

“About what?”

“Kit Lightfoot! It’s supposed to be a total secret.”

“You should come get a massage with me.”

“Where?”

“Burke Williams.”

“I’m going to Koreatown for a sauna. It’s cheaper.”

• • •

WHILE BECCA GOT rubbed, her thoughts drifted lazily to the Colony. She fantasized that the look-alike movie was a big hit. Charlie Kaufman had written a part especially for her, and Rusty was OK with that because now Rusty was famous too. He and Becca were known in the magazines as having one of those reliably unreliable on-again, off-again relationships like Ben and Gwyneth, pre-J. Lo. But they would always be great friends. She was in Malibu, at a party at Spike and Sofia’s. George Clooney and Nicole Kidman were there, and Pink and Drew and Leo and Kirsten and Tobey. Sofia’s cousin Nic Cage was grilling Becca a hamburger while they talked to Charlie K about something funny that had happened during the making of Adaptation. She was walking on the beach with the wise and amazing Shirley MacLaine (always one of her faves, and her mom’s too) and Francis Coppola, and Becca told the director how much she loved Rumble Fish and how she’d always thought of herself as the girl floating above the classroom. Then Becca was on Leno telling the already famous story of once being hired by Cameron Diaz as a Drew Barrymore look-alike for a surprise birthday party for Drew and how funny and ironic that was because of course now she and Cameron and Drew were thisclose, with Becca having subsequently been cast in A Confederacy of Dunces. Critics said she’d stolen all her scenes.

The masseuse dug too deep, interrupting Becca’s pleasant jag. She was the type who never really listened when you said you wanted it light; you could tell them a hundred times and they’d just keep digging. For the rest of the rub, Becca tensed beneath the onslaught.

The Omen

ON HIS WAY to the production office, Kit zipped into the Coffee Bean, on Sunset. By now they were used to seeing him. Even though most of the customers and employees were actors, they kept their cool. They were careful not to get too ruffled.

“Next guest in line, please!”

The server was mildly retarded. He spoke loudly, with a perceptible slur — straight out of I Am Sam.

“A large latte please,” said Kit. “With no foam.”

The server called to the nose-ringed barrista at the machine. “One no-foam latte large for guest, please!” he exclaimed, turning back to Kit. “We are living large!” He used a gloved hand to point. “Your drink will be there, sir, in ohnee one minute!”

The barrista seized the quirky moment to exchange warm, sidewise looks with the superstar. Kit could see her tongue stud.

• • •

HE DROVE TO the Valley and hung with Darren. They were shooting in ten weeks, but the kind of barely suppressed anarchy that typically characterizes preproduction hadn’t yet kicked in. Today, everything seemed under control.

A P.A. came in to say that Marisa had arrived.

Kit had met the actress before socially, with Viv. They small-talked before reading through the scene. Then Darren made a few suggestions and they started over, with a different approach. The director liked the way they worked off each other.

At the end of the afternoon, on the way to his car, Kit saw a man scurry toward him with a cockeyed, swivel-hipped gait. It was the retarded server from the Coffee Bean.

“Hi!”

He was nonplussed. Was the kid delivering cappuccinos on the lot?

“Hey,” said Kit tentatively.

“Sorry to bother you but — I just wanted to say that I think the project with Aronofsky is killer.” The tilt and slur had miraculously evaporated.

“Who are you?” asked Kit.

“Larry Levine!” said the man, sunnily. “I’m an actor. Goin up as one of your rehab buds. Kit Lightfoot and Darren Aronofsky—I am so stoked. It was a total omen running into you this morning! I’ve only been there a week but it took me months to get that job. They don’t even know I’m doin my ‘research’ thing. It’s a whole different world out there when people think you’re ‘challenged’—”

“Hey, fuck off.”

Larry Levine stood there, perplexed and bleary-eyed.

“Don’t draw me into your bullshit process, man. You want to perpetrate that nonsense on people, fine—”

“But Darren said—”

“I don’t give a shit. Why would I want to fucking hear about it?”

“I’m sorry, man,” said the dismayed actor. “I’m really sor—”

“Just stay away from me, OK?”

“I totally respect you. I—”

Kit got in his G-wagen and gunned it.

• • •

THAT NIGHT KIT and Alf were at the Standard, drunk on scorpions and laughing their asses off.

“You didn’t get spammed, you got Samed! He fucking Samed you!” cried Alf, showering spittle onto his friend. “He I Am Samed you!”

“One large no-foam latte for guest!” said Kit, in spot-on imitation.

“That is so fuckin genius. Tell you one thing, man. You better make sure they don’t hire this guy — it’s Eve Harrington time!”

“We are living large!”

“Café latte?” said Alf, in his best Sean Penn improv. “Excellent choice, excellent choice!”

“Mr. Tourette’s” stumbled over to join the dysfunctional fray.

“Shit motherfucker!” ticced Lucas, dusting off the clinical signs of what Alf called Golden Globe syndrome. “Shitpissfuckcunt. Tampaxdick down Grannie’s throat! Fuck Mommy’s hairynaziniggerass!”

Kit convulsed.

“I love my li’l guhl!” whimpered Alf, in emotional paroxysm. “Why you no think I c’n love her? You cannot take my li’l guhl! She the only-est thing I have!”

“Fuckpissnigger! West Nile smallpox shitstained babycunt JonBenet Elizabeth Smart sucksbeanerdick! Arf! Arf! Arf! AIDS! SARS! Sickle Cell! Arf! Arf!”

“Stop!” cried Kit, clutching his gut. “You have to stop!”

“Excellent choice! Excellent choice!”

“No more! No more! No more!”

Beginner’s Mind

SHE WENT TO the Bodhi Tree on Melrose. A child was forming within her, already the size of a toenail. She was lost.

There was too much to learn. She stared awhile at the statues of saints and bodhisattvas inside the glass case. Of course, none compared with Kit’s. There were crystals, beaded necklaces, and all manner of fetishes with centipedal arms. She wandered past meditation pillows, through aisles of Vedic texts and theosophy, to the only section that made any real sense: fiction. She scanned the volumes, her fingers settling upon Siddhartha. She dimly remembered reading it in high school. The pretty black-and-white cover hadn’t changed.

Poetry followed, and she saw the fat book from her father’s library—The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa.

Loitering in Eastern Religions, she quick-study gleaned a Buddhist 101 introductory: the Three Jewels (the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha) and the Four Noble Truths — (1) suffering (duhkha), (2) origin of suffering (trishna), (3) cessation of suffering (nirvana), and (4) the Eightfold Path (marga). She flipped through the primer’s pages but couldn’t focus. Instead, she selected a book called Spiritual Tourist. That was what she felt like.

She grabbed the Upanishads, recognizing the title from the blond Bel-Air guru’s mention. She picked up some incense, a poster of the Wheel of Becoming, and a few yoga magazines before returning to the shelf for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Buddhism. (Just thinking about which Eightfold Path to take first seemed exhausting.) She was going to buy a statue — a Tara or a Kali — but they were sort of pricey so she got some beautiful laminated cards instead. One was of the “Shakyamuni Buddha.”

Tad Yatha Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Shakyamuni Ye Soha

Seated on a lion throne, Shakyamuni Buddha holds his right hand in the earth-touching mudra. With this gesture he called upon the earth to witness his lifetimes dedicated to attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all beings and triumphed over Mara, Lord of Illusion.

Lisanne stood at the cash register while they ran her credit card. She was somehow ashamed — ashamed of her life — and was looking over her shoulder with random paranoia when Phil Muskingham materialized.

“Well, hello!”

“What are you doing here?”

She looked stricken, as if caught shoplifting.

“My therapist told me to pick up a lingam stone.” He held the egg-shaped thing in an open hand for her to see.

“What is it?”

“It’s supposed to balance energy — or something like that. What, are you a complete idiot?”

Lisanne was taken aback until she noticed him nodding toward the Day-Glo orange tome as the clerk bagged it.

“Yup, that’s me,” she said. “A total spiritual moron.”

“I was going to call you,” he said. “Are you free? I mean, do you have some time?”

“Sure.”

“I mean now. Because you know what I was going to do? I was thinking of going over to the Self-Realization Center. Ever been?”

“I haven’t. But you’re so funny!”

“Why?” he said, with a smile that charmed her.

“I have trouble seeing you as the mystical type.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” he said, nodding again at the hidden Idiot’s Guide. Finally, she laughed.

• • •

FOR SOME REASON, Lisanne had never been to the Sunset Boulevard Self-Realization temple or church or whatever it was. She’d passed the white-domed tower a thousand times and every once in a while read about the organization in the L.A. Times or heard from a friend how beautiful the grounds were. Phil said it was founded by the man who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi.

The adjoining well-kept park was peaceful in that cliché kind of way, and politically correct in its respectful inclusion of all major religions. A trail circled the lake (an entry sign warned not to feed the fish, who only “pretended to be hungry”). People sat on benches reading or meditating. Unobtrusive shrines to Gandhi and the Buddha garnished the walkways, along with plaques engraved with quotes from Bible and Bhagavad Gita alike. Phil couldn’t help but remark what a valuable piece of real estate the parcel would be should the Fellowship ever decide to divest.

They sat on a small viewing platform by the water. He broke the requisitely contemplative moment by offering sympathies on the death of Lisanne’s father — evidently, the Loewensteins had filled him in. He spoke of his own loss. His parents, in their late forties when he was conceived, had died within a year of each other not too long ago. Until then, Phil said he had deliberately shunned the trappings and responsibilities of the family fortune. A wry proviso of his dad’s will (he didn’t elaborate) forced him to leave the cocoon to help his sister run the charitable foundation that bore their name.

“You’d love Mattie,” he said. “In fact, you’ll love her on Saturday. Because that’s when the three of us are going to have lunch.”

Catharsis

RUSTY TOOK BECCA to Les Deux.

On the way in, they wandered over to the restaurant-owned gallery on the far side of the courtyard. There was an exhibition of bright, poster-size photographs, self-portraits of a fortysomething woman frankly displaying her genitalia. The lady behind the desk said that the subject of “the suite” was Randy Quaid’s wife, a film director. Becca couldn’t really make any sense of it. Was it porno? She tried to summon an image of what Randy Quaid looked like but kept seeing Dennis Quaid instead.

“I’m sorry,” said Rusty, a few minutes after the waiter took their order. “I didn’t mean to go off on you the other day.”

“It really hurt me.”

“I know. Sorry I’m such a dick.”

“I didn’t even know anything about it, Rusty,” she said, quickly becoming emotional. She felt like a child. “I never even talked to Elaine.”

“I know.” He delicatedly put his hand on hers. “I know. Look — there’s going to be a read-through of the piece.”

“What piece?”

“The script. The Spike Jonze thing, on Saturday. I think you should come.”

“But I already called Sharon and told her I couldn’t. That I couldn’t even meet—” She whined and fidgeted in her seat.

“It’s perfect that way — almost better. That it doesn’t come through ‘official’ channels.”

“I just think it would be weird.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s better that you were ‘reluctant.’ ”

“How can I just show up, Rusty?” she asked, with a touch of anger.

“Cause you’ll be with me.”

“So you’re doing the read-through.” She stared indifferently into space, resigned to the web he had woven. “I think I saw you with him, at the Rose Café.”

“You show up, looking totally Drew. Everyone’ll say: ‘That’s the Drew girl! The one we were supposed to meet.’ ”

“Why can’t I just call Sharon?”

“Go ahead. Call her,” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was getting nasty again. “But at this point, I think it’d be a mistake.”

“She’s mad at me.”

“Then don’t call her,” he said, laughing amiably.

“She got really mad when I told her I didn’t want to do it,” she said, tearing up again. “After you yelled at me, I called and said I didn’t want to go up for a ‘look-alike’—this whole long thing about how I was just doing that kind of work to pay the bills and if I was going to make it, I wanted to make it as myself. And Sharon said I was being really stupid and that she was the one who discovered the guy who won the Golden Globe for playing James Dean and the girl who played Judy Garland on that TV movie and how those actors were doing really, really well. She said that if you have talent—and I did, she said that I did! — then that talent comes shining through and that if you really want to make it you just have to take whatever opportunity comes your way. She said it was a really incredible opportunity to have a meeting with a famous director and that I’d come out a winner either way no matter what because even if they didn’t think I was right, I would stay in their minds for future projects. She said that actors would kill to have a meeting with Spike Jonze — and I felt really bad, Rusty!” She began to cry, full-blown. “I came off as such a jerk! Because I was loyal to you and didn’t understand! I was loyal and I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t want nice things to happen for me! I just couldn’t understand!”

A Gathering at the Gubers’

KIT AND VIV went to a gathering at the Gubers’ for a visiting holy man. H.H. Penor Rinpoche was the head of a monastery in Mysore whose lineage was associated with Kit’s teacher, Gil Weiskopf Roshi.

It was an odd assortment of people. Matthew Perry, Ray Manzarek, and Paula Poundstone listened in rapt attention alongside a contingent of poets, meditators, and a dozen or so saffron-robed monks. But the person whose presence interested Kit most was Ram Dass.

They’d met a number of years ago at a benefit in San Francisco, long before Ram Dass had suffered a debilitating stroke. The onetime Harvard professor and cohort of Timothy Leary had always been charismatic. Now, paralyzed on one side, he radiated “fierce grace.” His dancing eyes still burned with celestial fire; the famous white hair ensorcelled his head like candescent wisps of cloud. After the talk, Kit, Viv, and Matthew went over to say hello.

Ram Dass spoke slowly but without the slur-and-drag Kit had expected. He remembered seeing Kit at Tassajara in the early nineties and knew Gil Weiskopf Roshi quite well. He spoke fondly of his own guru and said that when Maharaj-ji was alive, he wished they could be together more often. But now that his guru was dead, “I’m with him all the time!” Kit asked about the experience of having a stroke, and Ram Dass showed his sense of humor to be fully intact. He mentioned a book he once wrote called How Can I Help? The moment had come, he said, to write the sequel: Who’s Going to Help Me?

• • •

“I FELT KIND OF mercenary,” said Kit, as they drove down the hill. “When I saw Ram Dass, the whole actor thing kicked in. I couldn’t wait to go say hello, then listen to how he talked. I wanted to try it out on Jorgia.”

“You are so bad,” said Viv, smiling. “But that’s why you’re so good.”

“I thought he’d be much more Kirk Douglas.” He shrugged sardonically. “I was extremely disappointed.”

“You know who Ram Dass kind of reminded me of? Larry Hagman. But I loved the man who spoke. What was his name?”

“Penor Rinpoche. He’s the real deal.”

“You met him before?”

“In Mysore.”

“I’ve seen pictures of that place. A real eyesore.”

“Haw haw.”

“Heh heh. Now who is he again? Penor—”

“A Nyingma master. A tulku.”

“What is that?”

“A reincarnation of one of the lamas of his tradition.”

“Are you going to help them?”

“They do very well without me, thank you very much. I’m going to give them money for a clinic, in honor of Gil. That’s who first took me there.”

They fell silent. He stared out the window as the dark, luxurious world whooshed past.

“I was reading,” said Kit, “about this tantric practice where you learn to use your cock like a straw.”

“What do you mean!”

“You, like, put it down and suck stuff up.”

“No way.”

“Hoover time. First you practice with water, then milk — then some kind of oil. At the end, when you’re a certified master, you’re supposed to be able to do it with mercury. Suck it up.”

“That is so weird.”

“It’s about drawing your semen and the woman’s come up to the soma chakra.”

“Oh! I’m all about that! Kids, don’t try that at home. Penor Rinpo-whatever doesn’t do that, does he?”

“He hasn’t shown me, personally.”

“Tara Guber should have a workshop.”

“Peter would be all over it! Hey, are you hungry?”

“Kind of. Want to go to the Polo Lounge?”

“Or we could just go to the Bel-Air.”

“Nah — too tired. Let’s go home.”

“We’ve grown elderly, huh.”

They passed through the gate, onto Sunset.

“Getting psyched about your movie?” she asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Superpsyched.”

“That’s so great, Kit. It’s not scaring you?”

“Why should it?”

“People are gonna think you’re making fun of retards.”

“People are going to think whatever.”

“Do you want an Academy Award?”

“Do I want an Academy Award?”

“I asked you first,” she said, impishly.

“You know what I want? You know what I really want? I want to be excited about what I do while passing my time on this fucked-up, dying planet. That’s what I want. And you know what? This little movie has me juiced about acting again. This little movie has me juiced about my fucking practice. At the end of the day, I just want to be able to live with myself, Viv. Which lately, hasn’t been so easy.”

She paused before serenely repeating: “But do you want an Academy Award?” Her tongue licked her lips. “Just answer the question.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” he said, mad-dogging her.

They laughed.

The Getty

KIT MOANED then screamed.

Viv bolted upright.

“Baby, you OK?”

“Yeah. I’m OK.”

“What was it?”

“Whoa! Fuckin strange.”

He shook himself like a beach dog after a wave.

Viv passed a bottle of water.

“I was hugging him or some shit.”

“Who?”

“The Getty kid.”

“What Getty kid?”

“The one with the cut-off ear. But there was something really fuckin creepy…”

“What.”

“I met John Paul — man, a long time ago. I don’t even think I was into my practice yet. I was hanging with Gianna Portola. She was fuckin wild before she got sober.” He laughed. Viv was glad he was out of the panic zone. “She brought me over to meet him. They used to be lovers. Somehow I kind of remember that she was still balling him, after it happened.”

“After he was kidnapped?”

“After the stroke.”

“It was a drug thing, right? A coma thing?”

He shivered again and pulled from the Aquafina. “I was curious, so she took me to see him at his house in Laurel Canyon. He got around in this supervan, Ironside style. Shit, maybe he still lives up there. It was like a very cool house with an elevator to the master bedroom. We rode it up and Gianna introduced me. Kinda ghoulish but kinda cool. He and Gianna started talking. It was a trip! The guy was talking like this, Viv, I swear to God: argabuggagoogagoolalalalmamamaoogagooguhgooguhgoo. I couldn’t understand shit! But Gianna was just gabbing away. Back and forth, back and forth. And John Paul seemed to be having a really good time. He was excited that I was there — like having anyone new around was a fun thing for him. I think that’s why she brought me.”

“So what did you dream?”

His face darkened. “It was sad. Sad, sad, sad. And he — in the dream — he, like, gave me a weird hug. Weird. Like prolonged. I don’t know. Can’t remember now.”

She softly rubbed his head. “Poor Bumpkin!”

L.A. Confidential

HE AWOKE TO the jingle-jangle light of morning. He heard voices and stood, swaddling himself in the duvet. He lit a cigarette and stepped over Mr. Raffles.

Her voice grew louder as he neared the guest bath.

Viv sat on the toilet. Her assistant stood a few feet away with pad and pen. The bath was running. The room was steamy and rank.

“I am so backed up from the codeine,” she said when she saw Kit, before directing her words to Gingher. “I need you to get me a laxative from Wild Oats. I think it’s called Quiet Moment.”

She farted loudly then laughed.

“They should call it Unquiet Moment,” said Kit. “Jesus, Viv, why don’t you let Gingher take five?”

“Because I can’t, Bumpkin, I’m on a schedule. I need to get gifts for the crew.” To Gingher: “Or Metamucil, but it has to be sugar-free.” To Kit: “What do you think about those Prada cell phone holders?”

“What do I think? I think you should concentrate on moving your bowels.”

“We have to get one of those Japanese toilets, Kit. They douche and dry you. You never need to use toilet paper again.”

“You wouldn’t be able to wipe in front of people. Won’t that be a deprivation?”

“I’m getting everyone a Mini Cooper.”

“The crew?”

“The cast, silly. Cell phone holders for the crew. And I’m going to New York in about forty-five minutes. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“No. Why?”

“I already told you, Bumpkin. I’m doing Letterman.”

“You told me two weeks ago. When you comin back?”

“Sunday. So give me a smooch.”

He edged past Gingher and knelt at the altar of the bowl, hands on Viv’s downy thighs, fingertips reaching the matching at the fold of her crotch. The assistant shyly averted her eyes while the actress closed her own to receive the courtly kiss. As their lips touched, she oopsed and the water plashed. Kit stood, shaking his head in mock disgust. Viv guffawed, involuntarily farting.

“Sorry, Gingher,” said Kit. The efficient, overweight girl had comically stepped back, with a forced smile. “Jesus,” said Kit to Viv. “Who have you become, Anna Nicole Smith? Who have we become?”

“Liza Minelli and David Gest.”

“Right,” said Kit. “I’m Liza, you’re David.”

“Don’t worry, honey,” said Viv, regaining composure as she wiped herself. “Gingher signed a confidentiality clause. It’s ironclad.”

Viv farted again. This time, everyone laughed.

“I’m outta here,” said Kit. He turned to Gingher and said, “Can you see why it took me so long to pop the question?”

“Maybe you should have pooped the question,” said Viv.

He had something to say about that, but she was laughing so hard she couldn’t hear. He took his wraparound floor-length comforter and shuffled out, shaking his head.

“Bumpkin!” shouted Viv. “Buy me something nice while I’m in New York! There could be a terrorist attack! You might never see me again!”

Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration

LISANNE WAS ENTERING the second trimester. All the mommy magazines said that any day now she was supposed to start feeling better. Less fatigued, sexy even. She felt worse than ever.

A cashier at Erewhon vibed her pregnancy and told her about yoga with Gurmukh at Golden Bridge. Lisanne got the time wrong and arrived at the end of a class. She stood outside the musty, lily-scented room while rich, distended women danced to drum and sitar. When they began to chant, Lisanne fled.

• • •

MATTIE MUSKINGHAM, Phil’s older sister, was petite and unneurotic. Lisanne liked her right away because she was one of those no-nonsense gals who called a spade a spade. Lisanne still couldn’t believe her luck — she had the feeling this sort of luncheon was arranged whenever Phil met someone who was potential relationship material. But she felt so fat. Her self-esteem was at its lowest ebb, and on top of it all, she was living a serious lie.

Rita Wilson was at a patio table with a girlfriend, and Mattie went to say hello. The Hankses were on the board of the Muskingham Family Foundation.

When the bill came, Mattie asked Phil if he’d forgotten about “the meeting,” and he rolled his eyes. He pretended to cop an attitude and said he would go only if they brought Lisanne. Mattie (who it seemed to Lisanne was also playacting) told her brother that he knew it was “strictly against the rules to bring in outsiders.” Her delivery was a bit arch. “We’ll just say she’s family,” retorted Phil. When Lisanne asked if they were talking about AA, the two laughed out loud. “I wish,” said Phil, cryptically.

As they left the Ivy at the Shore, the sibs were as giddy as children initiating a new friend into a favorite game. They told her not to ask anything more about where they were going; it would be their little surprise. Phil made Lisanne promise that, if pressed, which was unlikely, she would inform “the group” she was their half sister. No, said Mattie, not half sister — first cousin.

They swept through the lobby of Shutters, taking the stairwell to a lower floor. Lisanne was steered toward a series of conference rooms at ocean level. A few nondescript types congregated outside one of the smaller suites. The Muskinghams called some of them by first name, casually introducing their “poor relation” before going in.

A caterer put the final touches on a buffet. The arrival of Dr. Janowicz, an affable, fiftyish man in horn-rims, made for cohesion. In rumpled tweeds, he was a parody of the congenial, humanist professor, with a touch of New Yorker cartoon psychotherapist thrown in. In short order, everyone gathered fruit, bagels, and coffee, finding seats at a round table in the room’s center.

Desultory chatter was broken by the unexpected, somewhat jarring words of the ringleader. “I want to die in my sleep, in peace, like my father,” Dr. Janowicz said somberly, initiating a hush from the group. With the timing of a pro, he added, “Not like the other people who were in the car!”

When the punch line sunk in, they all busted a gut. Decorum restored, Dr. J, as they called him, said he wanted “to just throw a theme out there” and see how people reacted. He interlaced his fingers and hung his head a moment, as if summoning a word from the depths. He looked up, grinning, and said, “Envy.”

Group groan.

“Oh God,” said a thin-faced woman in ivory bangles. “Do we have to go there?”

The roundelay began, unruly and hilarious, anecdotes in which the covetousness of friends and strangers was given subtle shade or boldly drawn. Avarice segued neatly to rage; rage to impotence; and finally, to envious feelings of their own — envy toward those with simpler lives and the imagined serenity that went along. Eating disorders, insomnia, and depression were blithely noted (and their Rx handmaidens too), along with yo-yoing self-worth, psychosomatic illness, free-floating anxiety, and general feelings of impoverishment amidst plenty. Toward the end, Dr. J asked each person what nice thing they were planning to do for themselves in the coming week. When he got to Lisanne, she surprised herself by saying she was going to buy a mandala that she’d seen in the glass case of a bookstore but had thought too expensive. The group thought it a glorious idea. The puzzling session ended with everyone standing and holding hands in silent prayer.

• • •

“LONELYHEARTS,” said Phil as they drove her home.

“I thought some of them were really nice,” said Lisanne.

“Kibbitzers,” said Phil. “Whiners. How many meetings do we have left to go to, Matt?”

“I think maybe four?” his sister said. “It is by far the single most perverse thing Dad ever engineered.”

“And that’s saying a lot.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lisanne.

“We have to go to the meetings,” said Phil.

“Or we’re disinherited,” chimed in Mattie.

“Attendance being mandated by a closely monitored stipulation of our eccentric father’s last will and testament.”

“But what is it — exactly? I mean, who are—”

“A support group for rich people,” said Phil. “No one in that room has less than fifty million.”

“The meetings were hatched during the dot-com boom and kept on. For what they call sudden wealth syndrome. Funny thing is, I don’t think anyone in the industry has that kind of money anymore.”

“Oh bullshit,” said Phil. “Tell it to Larry Ellison’s grandkids. Them that got, still got.”

“Not for much longer,” said Mattie, ominously. “Don’t you read The Guardian? America isn’t long to be. The great experiment is nearly done! As the Romans’, our population shall be leveled and its cities rendered unto farmland. Hopefully, Bechtel will do the rebuild — we still have shares.”

“That joke he told about his father dying,” said Phil, “may have been the funniest joke I have ever heard in my life.”

• • •

LISANNE LEFT FOR the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Larchmont. She had just scooped up her blue-wrapped Sunday New York Times and was walking to the car when a man came toward her with a package.

“Are you Lisanne McCadden?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I have a delivery.”

She signed and went back in the house, thinking What kind of messenger delivers things on a Sunday? She opened the rich wooden box, gingerly removing the gold-flecked tissue that surrounded the dark, dense core. She gasped. The object in repose was an exquisite lotus bud, its metallic petals sensuously opened to expose what a typed enclosure identified as the tantric deity at its center: Paramasukha-Chakrasamvara — otherwise known as Supreme Bliss-Wheel Integration Buddha.

“… to save you the trip to the Bodhi Tree,” read the handwritten note. “Anyhow, my mandala can beat up your mandala. Ha ha ha. Ever yours, Phil.”

Top of the World

HE SAID THEY were there for the Spike Jonze table-read, but the valet in the Chateau garage told Rusty that he had to park in a lot down the street.

Becca, in full Drew mode, turned heads when they entered the penthouse. She wasn’t an official invite and was paranoid that someone was going to eighty-six her, but the crowd (and crowd of look-alikes) was large and the mood, casual and festive. She blended in.

Rusty went straight over to Spike and introduced Becca as “my girlfriend Drew.” The diffident director grinned and said he was glad they could make it. He was quite the gentleman. The whole “Sharon controversy” about her canceling or not canceling never even came up, and suddenly she was grateful to Rusty for his thoughtful insistence that she join him. She liked the “my girlfriend” part too, though she was a little disappointed when Spike said the true Drew wasn’t able to make it. Becca started tripping, wondering if that meant maybe she’d be reading Drew’s lines, but then she snapped to the fact that she was clueless — Rusty hadn’t told her a thing about Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay, so she had no way of knowing what kind of lines the true Drew had or if she had any at all. (Maybe the Drew look-alike had some, or maybe the part was silent.) She decided the best thing was to just keep her mouth shut and have no expectations. Don’t worry, be happy — happy to be there at all and superhappy to have been chatting with Spike Jonze, the amazing auteur.

They got some diet Cokes and wandered to the terrace.

The city view was awesome. A cluster of look-alikes huddled in a group: the Cameron that she already knew, a Kit Lightfoot, a Benicio, a Billy Bob, and a guy named Joe Sperandeo, who had been featured in Los Angeles magazine because of his resemblance to Brad Pitt. Some girl who got fixated on the true Brad and broke into his house to take a nap ended up getting fixated on Joe too. Becca heard the laugh of the true Cameron, who came clopping onto the terrace with Sofia in tow. She laid eyes on Becca and yelped with pleasure, throwing her arms around her like a long-lost friend. Becca almost peed her pants.

“Isn’t she amazing?” said Cameron to Sofia. “She was at Drew’s birthday — you were in Japan. Drew was so freaked out. I mean, it was really disturbing for her, but in a good way.”

Becca did her “flip your goddamn hair” shtick and Cameron tittered. Then Sofia, who seemed even nicer than her husband if that could be possible, told Becca how incredible she looked and Becca was bashfully glad. She somehow mustered the poise to say how much she loved The Virgin Suicides before Rusty reclaimed her, rakishly introducing himself while the other look-alikes excitedly hovered close by. Cameron giggled over Rusty’s resemblance to his temperamental counterpart (there had been a buzz that the true Russell, already cast, was expected for the reading) and howled when she saw her own doppelganger eavesdropping at the edge of the impromptu clique. The Cameron look-alike’s teeth looked like giant, lipstick-stained Chiclets.

As Becca and Rusty wandered back to the living room, John Cusack arrived. He was much taller than she had pictured. Benicio Del Toro came in close behind him, and his eyes were so hooded that she thought she would die; he was the only man in the room who could compete with her Rusty. Someone pointed out Charlie Kaufman, who was there with a girl named Kelly Lynch, not the actress but the personal assistant to the songwriter Leonard Cohen. Along with working actors and Sofia’s friend Zoë, other Silverlake denizens arrived — Donovan Leitch and his sister Ione Skye, Moon Zappa, Amy Fleetwood, and a daughter of Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood (Becca didn’t catch the name). They grabbed scripts from a box and took seats.

Annie was always telling Becca about hip industry table-reads, and now she was finally participating in one herself. (She wasn’t actually at the table; she was on a folding chair just behind Rusty, and that suited her fine.) She was so proud to be with her peers, and her dashing man. Her looks had got her in the door, and of that she wasn’t going to be ashamed. She was determined to be assessed by her merits as an actress alone. The others — the cheap Cameron and the Kit, the sleazo Billy Bob and off-the-rack Benicio — were lame and starstruck. They looked sad and out of place, like the losers left standing in musical chairs. She hoped the people who mattered would see through her Drewness to the Becca Mondrain within. If anyone in the world had the genius and sheer aplomb to look and really see, to make the most of who she was underneath it all, well then surely that person was Spike Jonze.

Coup de Grâce

KIT PLAYFULLY POSED with a family of German tourists outside Fred Joaillier, on Rodeo. A small crowd began to gather. More tourists with cameras ran over from the other side of the street.

It didn’t take long to pick out the engagement ring — a pear-shaped sixteen carats. He flirted with the older saleswoman throughout the transaction. A guard had the valet bring the car to the alley. Kit ducked out, to avoid the mob.

• • •

THAT NIGHT HE and Alf had a late supper at Bar Marmont.

“Where’s Viv?”

“Letterman — I already told you that.”

“Well excuuuse me.”

“Goin senile?”

“Nope. Goin retard,” said Alf.

“Retread.”

“Tardo. Tardatious.”

“So what’s happening with you and Cameron?”

“Why?”

“You still having a thing?”

“Uh… it’s not really going on.”

“What the dillio?”

“I think she was playin me.”

“Oh. I see. You got your heart broken.”

“No—”

“Oh man, you did.”

“No—” said Alf, suppressing a smile.

“Oh shit! Oh no! She blew you off!”

“Don’t bust my balls.”

“Threw you away like a fuckin tampon! Took your heart-cherry and stawmped on it!”

“You are outta control.”

“These boots are made for walkin’! And that’s just what they’ll do!”

A square in a sport jacket walked over.

“You’re Kit Lightfoot.” He looked at Alf and said, “I know you too.”

“You won the lotto,” said Alf, in freeze-out mode.

“You guys are really great actors. Can I bring my girlfriend over? She said it was you, but I didn’t believe her. She’s a big fan. Maybe you could sign her hand — or her tit! — or something.”

“You know what?” said Kit. “We’re off tonight.”

The square didn’t understand.

“We’re not workin. We’re just hangin,” said Alf, grinning professionally.

“That’s cool,” said the square. He was embarrassed but sucked it up. “How bout if you don’t sign anything. Just come and say hi when you leave. That’d mean a whole lot to her.”

“I don’t think so,” said Alf. Can you believe this?

“Sorry,” said Kit.

“We’re not doing the Universal Tour thing tonight,” said Alf. “We’re off the tram.”

“Some other time,” said Kit.

“OK — right on. Catch you later.”

After he left, Alf said, “Are they letting anyone into this fuckin place now?”

A security guy came and apologized. When Kit was in the club, they liked to keep a closer watch.

“We’re off the tram,” said Kit, with a laugh. “What the fuck does that mean?”

• • •

THE VALET HAD the G-wagen in front. Alf got in while Kit bolted to the liquor store for cigs. He was at the counter paying and didn’t see the square, who swiftly approached and brained him with a bottle. The girlfriend screamed. Kit collapsed. They ran out. The clerk gave chase. The actor’s foamy rictus looked like a sardonic smile.

“And fuck you too, superstar!” yelled the square from the street.

Late Bloomers

HE SHIFTED IN her belly as she tried to sleep. (She’d finally gone to the OB-GYN and learned it was a boy.) The movement stopped. She drifted off.

Yesterday, Robbie had called to inquire listlessly about the baby. She didn’t feel at all connected to her high school lover. It didn’t even seem like he could be the father, but no other possibility existed. She had a fleeting born-of-the-ether thought.

Midnight. She stirred awake and padded to the living room. The petals of the mandala were closed. (She liked closing them at night and opening them in the morning, but now that she had awakened, Lisanne wanted to commune. She wanted the deity to share her bumblebee breaths — she’d become official celebrant and caretaker of the numinous, night-blooming mandala.) Leaning over to delicately midwife the Buddha’s coppery dilation, Lisanne had a wicked thought: I could sleep with Phil then tell him the baby is his.

She lay on the couch and drew the blanket up. A cold lunar light shone down upon the spirit-machine. She remembered the handsome guru talking of the moon-in-the-water meditation and wondered why she hadn’t gone back for the weekly dharma talks. She wanted — needed — to know more about the nectar that dripped from the crown of the head, saturating one with bliss. She wanted — needed — to be in the world, not of it.

And more than anything, she wished to learn the prayer called “The Power of Regret.”

Absent Without Leave

“YOU CAN GO ahead and see him now,” said the nurse.

Alf was in a special waiting area, away from the civilian hordes. Two cops were finishing paperwork in the corridor. The tallest approached with pad and pen; Alf instinctively knew what he was after.

“Mind if I get your John Hancock? My wife would never forgive me.”

“I’ll give you my Herbie Hancock too,” he said, taking the pen.

“Her name’s Roxanne.”

He signed: “To Roxanne (put on the red light!), All my love, Alf Lanier.”

• • •

THEY LED HIM to a curtained ER stall. Kit was sitting up. An unused, blood-speckled emesis basin rested in his lap. His hair was matted at the wound. His face looked pale and drained. The right eye was puffy, but he smiled reassuringly.

“How ya doin, Dog?” asked Alf, in the grimly serious tones of an intimate.

“I’m OK,” said Kit.

“Man, you scared the shit out of me.” Alf was relieved and excited at once. “The liquor store guy ran out screaming your name— I was like, What? I went and saw you lying there… it was very Bobby-Kennedy-at-the-Ambassador! I was, like, Where’s Sirhan Sirhan?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost three.”

“This bullshit’s gonna be in the papers,” said Kit. “I better give Viv a shout or she’ll freak. Can I have your cell?”

“That mother fucker—it was the asshole who wanted us to sign his girlfriend’s tits.”

“They catch him?”

“I don’t know. The cops had me signing fuckin autographs, I was too busy to ask. They will. The liquor guy supposedly totally got his plates. He’s my hero, Dog.”

Alf handed him his phone. Kit swung a bare leg out from under the blanket. “It’s six o’clock in New York. Fuck it, I’ll call from home. Let’s go.”

“Whoa whoa whoa! What?”

“I’m outta here. I don’t like hospitals.”

“Did they say it was cool?”

“Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a shit.”

“Whoa. Dog, you have to seriously chill. I mean, you start shooting in, like, a week, right? You should stay over so they can observe you.”

“Observe this.”

“Just overnight, Dog—”

“You know what? This is the place where my mom died, OK? And you know what? Just do this with me, Alfalfa. I’ll be cool. Everything’s everything, Dog. Come stay at the house. Have a sleepover. You can observe me all you want.”

“Did you tell them you were splitting?”

“Yeah, because I have a splitting fucking headache.”

“Hey man, I’m serious. That guy didn’t just give you a little tap. Did they give you something for pain?”

“They don’t do that with a head injury.”

“They should give me something.”

“Viv’s got all kinds of shit. Beaucoup Vicodin from her root canal.” A pause, then: “So, you gonna stay over? Cause if you can’t, that’s cool too. I’ll be fine by myself.”

“Of course I’m gonna stay over. I just don’t think it’s one of the brightest ideas you’ve ever had. But whatever.”

“Thanks, Dog. Just don’t make a move on me while I’m sleeping.”

A Letter Home

BECCA WROTE a long letter to her mom.

She told how she met Spike Jonze because Sharon, a wonderful casting agent, had given him her audition tape and he’d been duly impressed. She enclosed a printout of his bio and credits from the Internet, in case Dixie didn’t know who he was (highlighting the part that said he was married to Sofia Coppola). She had planned to be on the conservative side and not reveal much more, but couldn’t help herself and wrote that Spike was in preparation for a film and that the writer Charles Kaufman, Mr. Jonze’s frequent collaborator (who of course had written Being John Malkovich, starring John Cusack and Cameron Diaz and Adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage and the venerable Meryl Streep), was quite possibly, if everything turned out right, going to create a small role tailored for yours truly. She was careful not to say anything about the new project actually being about look-alikes or bearing a look-alike “theme” because Dixie already knew about her daughter’s occasional private party and convention gigs where she was employed to be a Drew, and Becca didn’t want to give her the wrong idea or confuse her. She didn’t want her erroneously thinking that she was being considered for a part in any capacity less than that of a legit, featured player.

At first, she didn’t include anything about the new man in her life either. She did mention that Sadge was on the other side of the world editing a reality show and how that was probably not such a bad thing, “because between you, me, and the bedpost” they hadn’t been getting along all that well. But then she couldn’t help herself and, after inquiring as to the general health of her dad and brother, hinted that she was “kind of interested in someone” who also happened to be under simultaneous consideration for a role in the upcoming “Spike Jonze Untitled.” She added that “this person” was incredibly handsome and people thought he looked like Russell Crowe, whom she knew to be one of her mom’s faves.

She wrote these things down instead of saying them on the phone because it was easier that way to sort her thoughts. Whenever Becca called home, she thought she sounded like a flake. Dixie always wound up asking when was she coming back to Waynesboro — like her stint as a Hollywood failure was, in her mom’s use of the phrase, a “fate accomp.” Anyway, Becca was superstitious that the more contact she had with family, the less chance she would have at success, by her own lights. It was better, she surmised, to keep a healthy distance between oneself and one’s roots (not just geographical) — that, in order to grow, a person needed to allow a great big space for the mystery which was their birthright to shine through. Besides, by writing everything down she got a kind of overview of her life; it untangled her mind and gave her ballast. (She’d kept a journal as a girl, so it was second nature.) Putting pen to paper, she even got a funny sense of entitlement as an actress, though there was nothing really yet to show for her little boasts and efforts. At the end of the letter, she thought of mentioning the Dunsmores, because after all they were potential Hollywood players with whom she might find herself in production, but decided not to, feeling still somewhat tainted from the drug-fueled encounter at the Four Seasons. It mortified her to imagine her mother ever knowing such a thing had happened.

There would be plenty of time to call Dixie, down the line — and who knew? Maybe by then she’d have married a big wig or won a Golden Globe newcomer’s award or won a million dollars on a reality show (that, preferably, Sadge had nothing to do with). Maybe, God forbid, she’d get a weird settlement like the Dunsmores. Stranger things had happened… Maybe she and Rusty were on their way to being famous and she could go on the Leno show the way Brittany Murphy did, talking all sweet and humble, if that were possible, but Brittany pulled it off, about how before they broke up she and Ashton rented their first private jet so they could go back to Cedar Rapids, where Ashton is from, for Christmas, and then on to New Jersey to spend the rest of the holidays with Brittany’s family. (She wasn’t sure if the thing with Demi was trading up or trading down. But she knew it wouldn’t last.) Still, Becca made sure to say to herself that if she never did the Spike film, if it wasn’t in the cards, that would be OK too. She could always go back to Sharon. After the debacle, she sent the casting agent flowers and everything had been patched up (with promises of a “shiatsu date”). Sharon would get her auditions and meetings whether she scored the Spike gig or not. And if she didn’t, Becca theorized that, at the very worst, which really wasn’t that bad, it would be OK to be known as “the Drew girl” who almost worked with Spike Jonze. Sometimes that kind of reverse buzz was just what it took to launch a star heavenward. Elaine Jordache told her that for a long time Kevin Costner was known around town as the guy who got cut from a movie called The Big Chill. For a few years, the more he was edited out of projects, the more his stock kept rising. Those kinds of stories were legion.

Morning Tide

KIT WAS PROPPED in bed while Alf, who had already swallowed a Klonopin and a few extrastrength vikes, ate cold pasta and watched a Jackass DVD on the plasma. He kept an eye on his friend and gently shook him whenever he nodded off.

“They said you shouldn’t sleep.”

“That’s only for the first few hours.”

“How’s your head?”

“It’s better. Much better. So chill.”

• • •

8:00 A.M. AND ALF awakens to a Vicodin hangover.

He lays on the living room couch. Outside, preanarchy of bird chirps. For a half second, looks around in where-am-I? mode.

Hungry. Stink breath. Bladder three-quarters full.

Should have closed curtains — intolerably bright.

Mr. Raffles is on the patio, splayed indifferently upon flagstone, wide, soft belly slowly rising, falling under cold spotlight of sun.

Hears a frightful noise: garbled, prolonged scream. What what what—is it even a scream? Leaps to feet. Enters bath, shocked at what he sees:

Kit vomiting — a broken, blasted hydrant — onto walls and mirrors. Both eyes monster swollen. Stops. Retches. Convulses while still standing. Hunches. Straightens. Vomits again as if overtaken by spirits. Alf tackles him — what else to do? — slaughterhouse wrestling ring, infernal tag team. Tries holding him down — holds him — what else to do? — meaninglessly, irrelevantly, crazily — to stop time in throes of gale-force throw up while Mr. Raffles canters in, slip-sliding, paws in muck, yelp-yawn groaning. Kit bellows to sky, inciting Alf to yell himself — pure Dumb & Dumber shtick — cradles him, helplessly, hopeless, Kit blind, desperately clutching hem of Alf’s wifebeater in grand mal pietà, the Great Dane twitchy, and basso barking. Now Kit impossibly manages to look—really look—straight into Alf’s eyes, in the panic room: locked gazes, primordial silence, close fetid stink, drowned shouts in flooded engine rooms, paws and kneecaps slipping, ducking, and feinting, dog near to retching itself, forgotten grotto’s dank, drippy bacterial stench, Kit gone finally limp, Alf’s continuous scream solo now while he lurches with brotherly burden, crablike to phone, any phone, deadweight of fallen People’s Choice tucked hard to rib cage bosom as would sibling sailor’s washed-up warrior body be, figures in a majestic tempera, ruined ship loitering offshore, charred and luminous — sudden skeletal descent, descant, plainsong to ocean floor, grateful aquamarine entombment silent everlasting.