Still Holding

The Eternal Return

COLD L.A. SPRING.

A luxe, hidden warehouse space just off Fountain.

An audience of twelve, each sitting apart.

Handsome pair onstage — young woman, young man.

The unkempt harridan in a mohair cape forbiddingly occupies an aisle seat. Pinches nostrils between thumb and forefinger as she focuses. Famous old habit. Reading glasses hang low on a long garish chain.

“Don’t you feel how good it smells?” asks the actress of her partner.

(Strindberg chamber play.)

Doesn’t “own” the scene — hasn’t cracked it. Running on fumes. Actor fumes…

“That’s from the palms that are burning,” she says. “And Father’s laurel wreath. Now the linen closet’s on fire — it smells of lavender — and now the roses. Little Brother, don’t be afraid! Hold me tighter! — ” Lurches into him.

Without moving a muscle, Jorgia Wilding screams from her perch, in full-tilt boogie nostril pinch. “You’re making emotional choices without physical commitment. Gerda ain’t just fidgety—watch your body, Toya. Choreograph the inner landscape, distill the gestures! Otherwise, it’s Strindberg Lite. It’s Nick at Nite.”

An intern approaches, votive before an altar. Bends and whispers into Ms. Wilding’s ear — the old woman flinches at his announcement — before receding into darkness.

She stands, commanding the troops: “All right — from ‘Don’t say anything bad about Father.’ ”

She exits. The actors softly rappel to the foot of the scene.

In the lobby, she cannot suppress her emotions upon seeing him.

(A large Fijian stands in the doorway blocking the sunlight.)

“Kitchener, my God! What a wonderful surprise!”

They embrace. She presses him close — he feels right as rain.

“How are you?” he asks.

She pulls back to take him in.

Right as rain!

“I’m well, I’m well!” Jorgia says, discombobulated. “But more to the point — how are you?”

“Gettin there. It’s a… long and winding road!”

Notes the smallest slurred impediment, and emphatic tone that she shrewdly ascribes to nervousness. The Henry Higgins in her thinks: Easily modulated.

What an effort his journey must have been!

“I cannot imagine,” she says, with mother’s tender grace. “But I’m right in the middle — Would you like to come watch class?”

He knows the sacred teaching comes first.

“No — not now. Thank you. But I have a question.”

She cocks her head expectantly.

“Jorgia, I would like to know… if you — would have the time… to help — me.”

• • •

TULA DRIVES HIM back to the bungalow at the Bel-Air.

He steps from the car with a slight lope but overall gliding gait.

Media hunters and gatherers have tread heavily since Turkey Day, when Kit and Cela made their move — since the Götterdämmerung ugliness of the Riverside decampment. Kit makes an effort not to be mobile before dark (Jorgia was an exception), so as to cramp the stalkerazzi’s style. While still lucrative, bounty for stolen images has suffered devaluation, the trouble being that Mr. Lightfoot looks much like he always did: a rough prince. There has not been captured, nor could be now, that pesky drooling onto stubble; no shambling Rain Man heart tuggers; no scary Chris Reeve telephoto rehab cum-shot. Glam, dignified, and amazing looking, he is nothing short of the hunky poster boy for neurological recovery. There’s a gold mine in the girlfriend, though, God willing: fourteen weeks pregnant. Shoot both in one frame — though the couple make sure they’re never together, outdoors — and the gross is around $400 K, worldwide. Tabloid-fueled rumors of incestuous scandale (was she Dad’s galfriend too?) goosed the price even further.

Cela’s swollen belly floats toward him as he walks through the door. Everything smiles at them now. He rests a hand on the ripeness; then her hand on his, warming the womb. Her once and future kings.

On Her Own

ALREADY MARCH, and the tree isn’t down. The maid carefully dusts the ornaments. She told her mom she was just going to leave it, and her manager loved that because it was great, quirky shtick for interviews, which she’d been doing a lot of since the Spike Jonze movie came out.

Becca went to Waynesboro for Thanksgiving, then Dixie brought two favorite cousins out for Christmas. She came back again for her daughter’s birthday — the Ides of March — when Becca threw herself a party at Boardner’s. The entire talent team was there plus Annie and Larry, Becca’s new acting coach, fellow dramatis personae from Metropolis, and last but not least Sharon Belzmerz, the angel in her corner from the very beginning, who not only introduced her to Spike Jonze (more or less) but got her a part on Without a Trace and hooked her up with a former associate who placed her in national Ford and Cingular spots. (Whenever they were in public and she’d had a few Flirtinis, the casting director liked to refer mischievously to Becca’s Six Feet Undergirl “moment” like it was some kind of softcore skeleton in her closet.) More important, Sharon had been instrumental in getting Becca the A & E pilot she’d just finished shooting, 1200 North, in which she played Rhiannon, wild-child Paris Hiltonesque daughter of a rich Bay Area matriarch (think Danielle Steel). After the overdose of a boyfriend, Rhiannon decides to take a nun’s vows. Testing her faith and resolve, Marlee Matlin (family friend and wise mother superior of an East L.A. Carmelite monastery) bids Rhiannon first do a year of volunteer work at the nearby USC–County trauma center. Dana Delany plays the chief surgeon. Seeing aspects of herself in the young girl, Dana takes Rhiannon under her wing.

Becca was shocked when Dana swept into the Boardner’s patio with her sometime beau David Gough, a TV star in his own right. (She hadn’t expected her to come.) Dana was so elegant, chummy, and unaffected, and a slightly tipsy Mrs. Mondrain kept saying to her face how she was “television royalty.” But when Marlee made her entrance, Becca’s mom really lost it — she’d been such a huge fan since Children of a Lesser God and even done volunteer work with deaf kids in Charlottesville. Larry Levine took some portraity digital shots of Dixie with Marlee, Dana, and David (which she downloaded to the family Web site as soon as she got back to Becca’s) before calling in the Cameron, the Jim Carrey, and the Barbra, for a campy group pose. Becca had invited them at the last minute because she’d panicked that none of her invitees would show; most look-alikes were so needy, they’d go anywhere they were asked. They were sweet and harmless, and now she felt sad for them — a million miles away.

• • •

THE DUNSMORES didn’t know about 1200 North, and Becca wanted to keep it that way for as long as she could. She had escaped the Mulholland guesthouse last year (on the anniversary of 9/11, which felt appropriate), the very day that Grady was arrested for assaulting a UTA agent during one of their out-of-control theme parties. Last summer Cassandra took a lover, a gaunt woman with hep C that she’d met through Dr. Janowicz’s sudden wealth syndrome support group. (She had recently won an eight-figure settlement on behalf of her obese husband, whose death had been attributed to a ride on the Magnum XL-200 roller coaster at Cedar Point.) It seemed that almost immediately after they’d been introduced, Cassandra had insisted her new friend become an equity holder in QuestraWorld, sharing CEO, CFO, and COO duties. This became a bone of contention with Grady, whose OxyContin intake rapidly escalated around the time the threesomes became Sapphic, behind-closed-doors twosomes, which egged him on to calamitous Hard Rock Casino sorties; Cassandra, conferring with their Encino lawyers, took a flurry of steps to limit his monthly draw, concerned that he was “blowing the legacy.” Though Mama Cass had given up on the family (such as it was) reality skein, as far as Becca knew, the “entity”—at least Grady anyway — was still actively hyping “To Kill a Unicorn,” the buried, Saran-Wrapped pages of which he had finally uncovered at a site one hundred yards from a Lands’ End outlet in Primm, Nevada. (Once retrieved, he kept right on, to the Hard Rock.) But even with the low buzz in the press about Herke Lamar Goodson’s upcoming trial, “Unicorn” was going nowhere fast. The Dunsmores tried for months to get her to call Viv Wembley to see if she would be interested in starring or maybe just producing (as a full QuestraWorld partner), and Becca thought that was a measure of how crazy the couple was because they already knew that Viv had threatened Becca with a restraining order and was terrified of her at best. Months ago, the young actress made the mistake of telling Cassandra that Viv’s business managers had fucked up and she’d never signed a confidentiality clause like Gingher and the rest. Cassandra said that if Viv didn’t help with “Unicorn,” Becca should just tell her she was going to sell a memoir “to the highest bidder.” Becca said that was blackmail and she was going to pretend she didn’t even hear it. The Dunsmores continued to be psychotically oblivious to the fact that “To Kill a Unicorn” happened to be written and conceived by the homicidal friend of the man who’d assaulted Viv’s former fiancé—hel-lo! Apparently, they didn’t see that as an obstacle. Annie said they should definitely be committed.

Meanwhile, Grady got “Unicorn” to Eric Roberts with $300,000 attached even though Cassandra and the gaunt woman, as co-CEOs, — CFOs, and — COOs, hadn’t approved the offer. Fortunately or unfortunately, Eric passed. (Grady suspected he was lied to when told that Mr. Roberts had been given the script for perusal — else why would the actor have Pasadena’d? Becca presumed the party-pummeled talent agent was somewhere in the mix.) The gaunt woman thought they should approach Adrien Brody, ASAP. Cassandra couldn’t believe it when Grady emerged from a narcotic haze just long enough to inform them that the property was now “out” to Mickey Rourke. The gaunt woman said Mickey Rourke had his face beat in a Florida prizefight, and looked like “a ghoul in a Lara Croft.” “Mickey just might say yes,” Grady said gallingly. “Mickey likes money. He’s doin his comeback thing. Mickey wants to be a star.”

Becca’s only wish was to get these people and their bad karma off her. She knew they’d turn into heat-seeking missiles the minute they got wind of success — if 1200 North was picked up for September, Grady and Cass would be all over her. By then, she hoped to be able to hire a bodyguard, or even have a big agency like ICM or CAA looking out for her: if she was going to be making potential millions, they’d be highly motivated. But until that day came, the Dunsmores had to be considered loose cannons. She’d keep a distance but play the coddling game too.

Becca used her Cingular checks to rent a place in Silverlake. She hung Chinese lanterns around the patio that overlooked the sloping house from the hill’s high end. That’s where she finally moved the yuletide tree, as a kind of performance piece installation. But the flocking was gray, and nothing smelled like Christmas anymore.

Under the Medication Tree

AFTER LISANNE’S hospitalization, Reggie Marck spoke with a certain party in upstate New York who was dismayed to learn that her niece had given birth. Lisanne had talked freely of the old flame (the boy’s alleged father), and while she had kept the details to herself, the lawyer didn’t feel he was in violation of a confidence when revealing as much to the aunt. She immediately put him in touch with Robbie Sarsgaard.

While Reggie knew that Lisanne was where she should be, at least in the short term, he didn’t feel the same about little Siddhama. He had a gut aversion toward Philip Muskingham and, for all his money, felt him to be of questionable parenting skills. Moreover, he didn’t think it practical or even appropriate to lean on the sister or the Loewensteins to fill that role. As an attorney and longtime friend of Lisanne, he was mandated to protect the welfare of Siddhama at all costs and, though it was unlikely, to block any potential efforts of the DCFS to gain custody of the child. (Philip had shown no inclination to petition for an even temporary guardianship.) That was why he decided to take a flier and, through the aunt, contact the blood father, for whom, during a rare conversation about the gentleman, Lisanne had evinced a historical, more than glancing affection. His initial idea was to suggest that he come to Los Angeles — if amenable — and stay awhile on Reggie’s dime. Mr. Sarsgaard listened and immediately acceded, but said he would pay his own way.

He was joined by his elderly spouse. Reggie and the Muskinghams took the couple for dinner at the Grill, the sanguine result being that Philip had them relocated from the Embassy Suites to a spacious Fairfax District duplex where they might live with the baby (an arrangement happily promoted by the Sarsgaards that would, perforce, be perfunctorily reassessed upon what turned out to be the first of Lisanne’s many releases and readmits). Robbie said neither he nor his wife had anything to tie them to Albany and were free to stay “for the duration.” The Rustic Canyon nannies were retained. Philip felt unburdened, and gratified in doing right by Siddhama and those concerned. Further, his good deed assuaged the of late morbid fear that, in her madness, Lisanne might confess their sexual secrets — more to the point, his own aberrations — to the hospital staff. (Though he sneakily comforted himself with the notion that her claims would most likely be dismissed.) At any rate, this particular chapter’s end had been considered a fortuitous one, not least because there was great relief that it was the pug and not the precious child who’d been harmed. That Lisanne had somehow stopped herself from committing such an unthinkably atrocious act allowed a measure of optimism about her future and the future in general to creep in.

• • •

SHE SPENT SO MUCH time in the hospital, first at Cedars, then in private facilities that Roslynn and Mattie found by research and word of mouth.

H.H. the Vulnerable Lisanne McCadden — that’s how she always signed in, on admission.

Between stints, she would be released to Rustic Canyon, then, after only a short while home, returned to lockdown. For months and months she vanished to the world and to herself. She felt like the ghost of a burnt-out barge floating on a wide, dark river.

On bright construction paper, a bardo-diorama of dementia, she pasted a mandala montage of the Materialized Realm of the Paradise of the Medicine Buddha. For who was the Buddha if not the Great Physician, Great Healer, the Lord and Scientist who held the vaseless vase of ambrosia in his hands? He would cleanse her of toxins and set her free. Look what he kept in his beggar’s bowl: the Three Nectars that cured disease, reversed aging, and propagated Ultimate Awareness. Honey that broke the chains shackling all sentient beings to the Wheel of Deluded Existence…

OM AH HAM

She knew she needed to say it over and over while spinning Kalachakra — the great Wheel of Time. Everything was Great. Great OM,

seed sound for the two-petaled sixth chakra, was fixed at the brow, the area of Kit’s injuries, its vibration heard whenever male and female energies merged. HAM

emanated from the throat chakra while preparing the gullet channel for devotional receipt of nectar.

Yet only

OM AH HAM

could rally the Three Ambrosias to vanquish the Three Poisons — aggression, greed, ignorance — the very same fires that stoked the conflagration called samsara.

Snake! Rooster! Pig!

Lisanne had long since memorized the Wheel of Becoming — the laminated poster she’d picked up that day at the Bodhi when she ran into Phil not yet Philip, pervert and — no, that wasn’t fair — sweet-souled benefactor and godfather to her son not of him, and she rotated its twelve radiating rungs in her mind each moment of every hour of the nuthouse day until they became swift second nature. For what was a mandala but a visual mantra, so said the guidebook of guidebooks, her mantra through its turning was “Kitlightfoot/Clearlightfoot/Kitlightfoot/Clearlightfoot,” and like the blur of spokes in a carriage wheel, they soon became one. As she hummed, she began (as was proper), with the miniature painting that depicted Ignorance — rendering of a blind man with a cane. “That’s me,” said Lisanne. “For I am but a cripple surrounded by fields of brilliant jewels, a cripple who has chosen not to see.” She wanted to help him, but he just went on, tap-tap-tapping, alone. Who was she to think she could help? She could smell his stubborn breath, stagnant and ketotic, like her own. Right beside the crooked man, moving clockwise, came Actions, bearded thrower of clay pots, busily making karma. (The Wheel said that even thoughts and intentions bore the burden of consequence. Every time one had a bad thought it was like putting another pot in the kiln, a pot that would need to be shattered if one was ever to be free.) The hairy, red-faced golem was born of mud, and now here she was in this wreck room bardo because she had worshiped gods with clay feet. How could the humble workshop of a wise old pot thrower be a place of such misery? So: there was no solace, not even in the touch of wet earth. Then came the restless monkey of Consciousness, swinging compulsively from tree to tree, harbinger of the talking ape — it had taken all this, Lisanne thought with a smile, doped up, locked in bedlam, to at last understand what the sangha meant by “monkey mind.” The fourth spoke, a scene of passengers in a boat, reminded Lisanne of the time her parents brought her to Disneyland and she sat in a theme-ride canoe (like the passenger section of an airplane with its wings detached), methodically ratcheted by track and chain through still then rushing waters… This part of the Wheel was called Name and Form, and she watched as the boat of her pale, heavy body drifted down the great polluted river of samsara. Kitclearlightfoot Clearlightfoot Kitclearlightfoot Clearlightfoot Kitclear — others in the dugout being simply Forms and Aspects, luminescent phantoms of her own personality and nonphysical self. Leaving the river behind, Lisanne shook herself dry and approached an empty house with six windows that always reminded her of the cover of a Nancy Drew mystery. The bodhisattvas said the windows were the Six Senses through which we perceived the world.

She continued her clockwise march.

There: a couple, tangled in erotic embrace.

Whenever she saw them, they rekindled emotions of that historic day in Riverside. If only she knew then what she now knew to be so simple — that by copulating, the star-crossed pair hadn’t merged but instead created a duality, a space between them, as Joshu Sasaki Roshi presciently foretold in his story of Monk, Novice, and Dog. Unwittingly, monk and student had carved a divide in which something could arise then fall away, be it thought, mood, or sentient being. (Lisanne felt she must instinctively have known that. For the pug, though pure, was an obstacle to their merging.)

She came to a man with an arrow in his eye. She thought it the most haunting of her encounters, because he offered both eternal chastisement and eternal hope. Neither sadistic nor morbid, the message was so clear — she was saddened the whole world couldn’t instantaneously understand — ALL SENSATION IN SAMSARA IS PAIN BECAUSE ALL SENSATION REINFORCES THE DELUDED SELF. If only we could awaken, we would see: even cancerlike pain could be turned to bliss!

She dreaded the adjacent image-form: a woman drinking wine. This was Craving. Remorsefully, Lisanne hovered o’er. She knew she had thirsted too much — for Kit’s love and his child, his approval and energy, his amazing, oversized world. Standing next to the wino was a slut reaching out to a tree that burgeoned with fruit — she was the one they called Grasping — then came a third termagant, flat-footed and smoky-haired, heavy with child. (The bodhisattvas had given her the name of Existence.) The trio taunted, and Lisanne’s womb panged for the Panchen boy she no longer knew.

Resurfacing in the hospital’s rec room, the last few thangkas came in a blur. Exhausted by her centrifugal self-reflection, she tearfully blotted out Siddhama’s face, closing ears to his cries, nose to his smells, letting herself be jostled by the watery turbulence of Birth, Aging, and Death. In the last scene-spoke, a man was carrying a corpse on his back: the corpse was that of Lisanne. The carrier was Lisanne too, trudging to sky burial grounds, where her white, cotton-clad load would be unraveled by itinerant monks, its flesh-and-bone cargo feasted upon by turkey buzzards. Perforce, Lisanne would move on — was this not the legacy of all sentient beings? As a unit nurse called out her name, she felt her vision clouding over; the tip of the blind man’s cane hardened in her hand. Reborn on the Wheel, she feebly made her way forward, blind, crippled. Soon she would come to the pottery shed of the bearded thrower of Karma…

I must escape the Wheel or I’ll be crushed. On the ward, the only thing she could do was accelerated phowa practice, not 21 but 2,100 times a day, for Lisanne knew that was the only way to overtake karma accrued from past lives. She prayed to outrun the Wheel held by Yama in his tall white teeth. Yama, Lord of Death.

“For I have no choice and cannot endure the pain any longer.”

• • •

HE WOULD GO and sit with her. Mattie never did. Reggie and Tiff came, during that first month at Thalians. Roslynn too. Mrs. Loewenstein usually visited once or twice for each admission, as long as the hospital was in California. But Philip sat three times during the week and every Sunday, no matter where.

They did not learn the circumstances of their mother’s birth until after her suicide. (The death of their father by heart disease had come a year later.) Their mother’s mother had been abducted by a middle-class, overweight white girl who was unable to bear her black boyfriend a child. Later in court she said she was afraid the boyfriend would leave her. The white girl went to trade school to study vocational nursing. This was in Chicago. She was especially rapt by the class in which cesarean technique was discussed. She feigned pregnancy (with the same enthusiasm as Lisanne concealing her own), disappearing in her alleged fifth month owing to the alleged infant’s premature entry into the world. She lay in wait. She struck Philip’s grandmother on the head, shoving her into the open trunk in a dark suburban parking lot. (She’d been following her for a week.) She drove to her parents’, who were in Milwaukee, and with whom she had been living since things got rocky between her and the boyfriend, whom they had actually met and urged her not to see. In the basement — her father was a woodworker — she cut the baby from his grandmother’s womb with a car key and her father’s cooper’s adze. It was nearly to term. By some miracle — the lord smiles at drunk, dogs, and eviscerated fetuses — Phil and Mattie’s mom survived. The coroner said (it came out at trial) that their grandmother was most likely alive during the procedure and may even have lived to see the girl holding the baby in her arms, trying to make it suckle.

Philip sat with Lisanne’s pale, troubled form. They sat outdoors, and at partially-roofed-over picnic tables and in sundry rec rooms. She didn’t say much. Sometimes they held hands. His mother, after many bramblescratched wanderings, had killed herself with barbiturates and a plastic bag, just the way the “Final Exit” book said you should. The old newspaper articles Philip’s father had left in the bank box with his will told the story of how the overweight white girl hanged herself with a bedsheet during the trial and how it took her ten days to die. Now here he was with Lisanne, and sometimes it felt like sitting with the Chicago girl, the sick marooned white whale who delivered his mom, sitting beside her mournful ICU deadweight, and an indomitable pity overtook him, for all God’s lacerated children. Here he was with Lisanne, who he thought had (comparatively) been shown great mercy, and who he tenderly prayed would one day see that and come back to the world, not for his sake but for her own and for that of their beautiful Siddhama.

An Actor Prepares II

HE MET WITH Jorgia three days a week, hours at a time. She imposed diction, rhythm, and presence, forcing him to project until hoarse and lung-numb. All the nonsense sounds, guttural, chirpy, and ludicrous, the Sid Caesared ornithological speaking tongues, brought him back to Viola Spolin and Del Close and the exhilaration of his improv glory days. She forced characters, broken accents, unbroken focus. They sang false soprano, belched and drummed, hiccuped and fizzed, coughed, vaudeville-sneezed, then howled at the rafters — Jorgia was one wily coyote. Cackled, wheezed, farted, and masticated, rolled on the floor like bellowing spastics, ejaculating hot breath, arses upright on sore kneecaps, shitting vowels into space. Set about to righteously erase the Self. He plunged and soared, banking on thin hot air — wailed, hooted and yippeeed, dowsed for water and delved — into all realms of senses: common-, horse-, -memory.

Did sits together too. (Jorgia, the old yogini.)

• • •

AFTER A FEW months, he had the notion to put up a Sam Shepard play. The timing would have to be right. So much had been wrong; he was changing all that.

• • •

THEY MOVED to a house on Stone Canyon Road.

The private cops were gladdened — hotels were harder to secure than houses, and the Bel-Air was a bitch.

A restraining order against the dad, but so far, no problems. Hadn’t proved inflammatory, as sometimes happens.

• • •

“I DON’T WANT you driving my car,” said Kit.

“What?”

“My G-wagen. I — don’t want anyone driving it.”

“This a joke?”

“This is no joke!”

Cela, conciliatory: “Then we won’t drive it, Kit.”

Burke biliously mocked. “Then we won’t drive it, Kit.” Mad-dogged her. “Who the fuck died and made you CEO?” To Kit: “I know what this is about. This is about your little meeting with the attorneys last week, ain’ it?”

Kit vociferously shook his head.

“I knew you were having that meeting. You didn’t think I knew you were having that meeting? News flash! That meeting would not have happened if I didn’t approve it. Cause I approve your shit.”

“I don’t want anyone drive my car,” Kit said, nervously holding his ground. Self-corrected: “To drive my car.”

“Oh, you don’t?” said Burke, smugly. “Really?” Lolling the tongue in his mouth like a big ol’ bored lion. “Well how bout if those Century City attorneys drive it? Would you make an exception, Kitchener? For your precious G-wagen? I mean, you’re the head of the fleet —you can make an exception. You’re the man. I know I sure as shit would — cause they’re such good people! Oh, the attorneys (each time he said attorneys he had a gigglefit) really have your best interests at heart! The attorneys wake up each morning and say, ‘Now what the fuck can I do to help Kit Lightfoot today!’ So howze about you make a little exception, Kitchener, and let the fucking compassionate altruistical attorneys who love you so much drive your fucking car—”

“Burke, stop,” said Cela.

“You! Shut the fuck up!” Swiveled back to Kit. “In fact, the attorneys can fucking move right in! The attorneys can fucking change the sheets on your bed in the morning after you’ve soaked ‘em with your superstar piss, just like I do. Oh, they would love that so much. The wonderful attorneys can watch you stand in the kitchen and choke the chakra whenever Pam Anderson or Viv Wembley or whomever comes on TV—”

“I don’t do that!” shouted Kit.

“The fuck you don’t. You’re a horny fuck, just like your old man.” The sly smile again. “You liked porking Buddha-puss, didn’t you? Buddha-puss was a bleeder, huh. You like porking bleeders.”

“Burke, stop it! Leave him alone!”

He brutally backhanded her. She flew onto the couch. Kit grabbed at his father.

“Don’t — you — touch — her!”

Burke pranced and sang, “Macho macho man! I wanna be a ma-cho man!” Shoved his son, bam blam bam: “Don’t you think I’m tired of your shit? Now I got to hear you telling me not to drive your faggoty G-wagen? Fuck you! Where’d you think you’d be without me, Dr. Demento? Think all those people with your best interests at heart would be taking care of you?” He pretended to pound hard on a door. “ ‘Hey! Open up! Let us in, we want to take care of Kit! For nothing! We’re the compassionate attorneys, open up!’ They don’t give a flying shit about you, got it? OK? If anyone really gave a shit — except for yours truly — you’d be living with your fuckin agent. Or your fuckin fiancée, who as we all know loves you so fucking—”

“You sonofabitch!” shouted Cela.

“—so fucking much she can’t tear her ass away from you! Loves you so fucking much she hasn’t been to visit, not-a-wunst. Loves you so much she’s gobblin your homey’s dick like it was Jimmy Dean pure pork saus—”

Cela climbed onto his back as Burke pinned his son to the unvacuumed shag. Held him there while turning to Cela with full force. “That’s right, go where the money is, babe, you’re good at that. That’s where Cela goes — whoever’s got the fuckin money. Open wide for Chunky! Stuff that money in the junkie cunt—” (Back in his son’s face while the weeping Cela ineffectively clawed.) “Well, let me tell you something. I’m your father. And I should be fucking compensated. What are you gonna do with fifty million dollars, buy yourself a new brain? ‘When a man’s an empty kettle, he should be on his mettle in company or’—I’m the one doing the heavy lifting! Me, OK? Not your mama, may she rest in peace — not your precious beloved attorneys —not anyone! Capiche?”

Kit wrestled free and ran to the yard.

Burke chased him out.

Cela raced after, shrieking.

Burke tackled him. Pinned him. Kit squirmed, struggling to breathe.

“We’re in this together, or I’ll put you out on the street! I potty-trained you when you were a baby! When you were at Valle Verde, I fuckin potty-trained you again — that’s the kind of commitment I made! Because that’s the kind of father I am!”

Kit frothed and spat. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

“Oh yeah?” Burke creepily reprised:

Oh I could tell you why

the ocean’s near the shore

I could tink-uh tings

I never tunk before

Then drubbed and walloped, breaking two ribs and Cela’s jaw too before Tula rushed to put him down.

• • •

THAT WAS THEN. This is now.

Trials and Tribulations

RUSTY’S TRIAL HAD begun on Court TV, engendering a fresh wave of press about the bottom-feeding world of look-alikes. Someone was full-on blabbing to the Post about Becca’s relationship with Herke Lamar Goodson and her deposed gig as Viv Wembley’s chore whore. She suspected it was Gingher, though it may have been Larry Levine, because the two of them, Becca and Larry, had stopped talking after he got drunk at a party and made some insinuations that she didn’t care for about the nature of her even then defunct relationship with the Dunsmores. Annie said Larry was really hurt when he found out that Becca thought it was him. Annie was certain it was Gingher.

The idea of being forced to testify terrified her. She’d already told the detectives everything she knew, none of which seemed particularly special. Months ago, a Dunsmore attorney had assured her of the unlikelihood of a subpoena, but now Becca felt more vulnerable than ever. Her career was just taking off, and she was convinced that kind of exposure would finish her. She had trouble sleeping. The only thing that calmed her was when Dixie brushed her hair, which she did at all hours, at least when she was in town. Her mom was a rock.

How strange it was watching Rusty on television! He wore a tie and was clean-shaven, more Insider than Gladiator. She glued herself to the set and sometimes (especially after smoking weed) actually strained to make eye contact. It was totally surreal. Whenever the trial recessed or got bogged down in sidebars, they played Rusty’s “reel,” an anthology of forgettable ads that Elaine Jordache had procured, mostly from foreign countries — and, of course, the surviving microscene from Spike Jonze’s Look-Alike, courtesy of 20th Century-Fox. (The network was unsuccessful in getting hold of any outtakes.) The commentary provided by resident Court TV glamgirl wonks was filled with repetitious effulgence of the case “having all the elements of a Hollywood thriller,” the Greekly tragic (or Shakespearean, depending on the pundit) kicker being that the patricide’s victim, Rader Lee Goodson, was a reformed grifter and short con who had risen to be a kingpin in the world of identity theft. Identity theft: the “look-alike” son inheriting the sins of the father, then knifing him up in a fit of Oedipal rage! It was almost too “written,” too good to be true.

Still, after careful consideration of QuestraWorld’s submission, the studios deemed “To Kill a Unicorn” strikingly inept, contrived, and off-point — which under normal circumstances would have been enough to put it on a fast track to production. (The project remained a novelty item whose only generated heat emanated from the oddball producers’ curious, heavy-handed innuendo that its creator was none other than the murderer-protagonist himself.) An article in Vanity Fair wound up being optioned by a pair of former Fox executives with close ties to Tiff Loewenstein. Eventually, CBS and Showtime got into the action, but ultimately the bizarre story of the look-alike killer and his Tinsel Town sojourn slouched toward Babylon, never to be born.

• • •

“THANK YOU SO much for having me read. I loved the script so much.”

“No, it was my pleasure.”

“I so didn’t think I’d be reading for you.”

“I’m known to sit in on auditions,” he said, sardonically. “You were terrific. Sharon raved about you.”

“She is so great — she’s gotten me, like, every part I’ve ever had. And I know you’re sick of hearing it, but I loved When Harry Met Sally so much!”

“I never get sick of hearing nice things.”

They had bumped into each other in the hall, after the read, when Becca was leaving the powder room. He looked like he was angling to get away. But maybe not.

“Thanks again, Mr. Reiner!” she said, pouring it on.

As he walked off, he added, “And by the way, you were very funny in Spike’s movie.”

She thought: A “very funny” from Rob Reiner is pretty fucking great. He’d lost about fifty pounds and told Jay Leno that it was because he wanted to be around for his kids. Becca thought that was so sweet. The audience had even applauded.

He ogled her from afar, with a kind of quizzical charm. “You know, you look much more like Drew in the movie than you do in real life. If we can call this real life.”

She laughed. “So much of the Drew thing is how I wear my hair?” she said, with an old-style Valley Girl (Southern belle) upturn. “And it’s partially attitude. I mean, I gotta be in that Drew mood—know what I’m sayin?”

She felt feisty and carefree, talented and desired.

She felt like Ashley Judd.

“Thanks for coming in,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”

She almost never read with directors — the casting person put her on tape and that was the end of it. Usually, you had to get called back maybe three times before something like that would happen. She told Annie that when she came in the room and saw Rob Reiner sitting there she almost lost it. He was so down-home and had her do the scene a bunch of different ways. It wasn’t a huge role, but there were two scenes with Ed Norton and one with Dustin Hoffman, who played Ed’s dad. Dixie was gonna die when she told her. Dustin Hoffman was her mother’s all-time hall of fame fave, and Becca thought that was funny because Dixie always seemed to go for the Jews. In the movies, anyway.

Labor Day

LISANNE AND PHILIP were in Rustic Canyon, watching the remains of the Jerry Lewis telethon.

Philip was sniffling. He said that around four in the morning he’d called the on-screen number during a five-minute pledge rush to gather funds to send kids to a special MDA camp. It cost $540 a kid, he said. Lisanne thought he’d been moved by the poignancy of it, but then he confessed. Philip said he got connected to a young volunteer and told her he wanted to buy twenty pledges. That was almost ten grand, and the girl got excited. He said he would give her his credit card. He unhurriedly doled out the numbers, while saying he was also doing a certain something to himself and she told him she didn’t know what he meant (she really didn’t) and then he said that he thought she did know what he meant and he warned her not to hang up because if she did that would mean twenty disabled children wouldn’t be going to camp. The girl whimpered but stayed on the line — she was so young that she didn’t know any better. What excited him most was that he could actually see the girl crying in the back phone-bank row as she took down the bogus info. He said that, to the home viewer, nothing appeared out of line because half of the people on the telethon were always crying anyway.

• • •

“THAT’S THE THING about Jerry that always bugged me,” said Robbie.

(Lisanne left the house in Rustic as soon as Philip finished his little story; the telethon was on at the Sarsgaard’s, too.)

“He’s mean,” said Robbie. “I mean, I love ‘im and everything — and he’s the world’s biggest softie. But Mr. Lewis can be meaner than hell! Right, Max?”

“That is correct,” said the old woman from her La-Z-Boy.

Lisanne recalled the first time she saw her, in Albany, standing in the dusky kitchen. At the motel, Robbie had lied, and said he was sharing his home with his paternal grandmother. She remembered thinking, Something fishy there. Maxine Rebak was in her late sixties, and the alliance was comical to Lisanne at first but then poignant — everybody loves somebody sometime. Looking back, she wondered why he drove them over to see Max in the first place. Maybe it was some kind of ambivalent last gasp defiance toward his wife-to-be. But whatever ambivalence he might have had was now gone. They had the soft, comfy edges of any long-married couple.

Robbie met Maxine on a singles Web site. A Christian Scientist, she had registered her age as ten years younger. He advertised himself as a retired ambulance driver who became further disabled during WTC cleanup efforts, the truth being that on 9/13 he actually did start into Manhattan but was sidelined when a piston blew. That kind of bravado was pure Robbie. He was more a dreamer than a deceiver, and Lisanne loved him because he didn’t have a malevolent bone in his body. (Doesn’t have a bone at all, her dad would have wryly said.) He was a passive, sweet-hearted man. Maxine was a widow with a little bit of money. Shortly after they introduced themselves at a coffee shop rendezvous in Syracuse, she sold her house and moved in. She’d grown ill over the last few months; the road trip to L.A. took it out of her. They were married in Vegas, on the day they visited the Hoover Dam, “a thing of profound beauty” that Maxine had always dreamed of and wished to see before her death. But Siddhama superseded any morbid notions — she loved the idea of her husband being a sudden father, and seeing him with the boy gave her renewed life.

Lisanne had been in the hospital only a few days when Reggie tracked Robbie down. Reggie and the Muskinghams met Robbie and Maxine for dinner, and that was when Philip offered to lease them a duplex in the Fairfax area. The nannies’ living quarters were on the second story (that way, Max wouldn’t have to negotiate stairs), and they worked in revolving shifts so that the Sarsgaards were never without help. Between hospitalizations, Lisanne visited Siddhama whenever she wished, and while no one broached the topic of the baby returning to Rustic Canyon to live, she knew she wasn’t ready. But she was no longer afraid of her child. The aberrant ideation of his Panchen-like abduction receded, as flotsam upon floodwaters, and she reveled in their communion, staring deeply into his eyes with unneurotic affection. It was in this fashion that she willed Siddhama into being, assembled him with her love, and that he grew more real with each passing moment. She could not fathom this luscious, magical creature not being in her life.

Meanwhile, Lisanne did everything she could to reclaim her health and spirits. She went to an obesity clinic at UCLA and drank protein powder packets each day. She chugged down potassium pills with sugarless Metamucil, morning and night. She lost thirty pounds in the first month. She did yoga, Pilates, and Gyrotonics, returning to her five-mile walks along the bluff. She lifted weights and submitted herself to the energetic meridian needlings of Dr. Yue-jin Feng. (The only thing she didn’t do was meditate.) She saw Calliope Krohn-Markowitz for talk therapy five hours a week in conjunction with cutting-edge palliative care provided by Chaunce Hespers, M.D., the renowned Camden Drive psychopharmacologist. All was relatively well with the world.

She emphatically knew who this baby was — a beauteous boy child, born of the union of Lisanne Emily McCadden and Robert Linden Sarsgaard.

“Did you hear what Jerry said just before Julius La Rosa came out?” said Robbie, poised before the campfire of the TV. “Lisanne, you didn’t hear? Maxine! Max, come on, you guys have to watch! Ed McMahon was announcing Julius La Rosa — Maxine, you know Julius La Rosa”—she nodded from her chair and said, “He’s of the where-are-they-now ilk”—“what they call a singer’s singer. Tony Bennett worships him. And if Bennett’s considered a ‘singer’s singer,’ I guess that means La Rosa’s a singer’s singer’s singer. Whew! That’s a tongue twister. Sinatra loved him too — Lisanne, you’re too young. But I happen to know my saloon singers, and La Rosa coulda been big as Frank. Right, Max? Hands down. But he was cantankerous. This guy pissed everybody off… Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, the mob guys. Everybody. So McMahon introduces him — this was just twenty minutes ago! — and Jerry says, ‘Is he still alive?’ And you know that had to hurt. Jerry, with that pumpkin face full of cortisone, like he should talk! The guy comes on and sings— beautifully— What’d he sing, Max? ‘Cat’s in the Cradle’? Beautiful. And I was never wild about that song — that’s Harry Chapin, a Brooklyn boy — but it was like we were hearing it for the first time, huh, Max. La Rosa was in a tux, that’s their thing, all those saloon guys, but handsome, like he was born in it”—Maxine said, “Very”—“and probably older than Jerry, if that’s possible! So, after he sings, Jerry looks in the camera with those crocodile tears and says, ‘It don’t get any better than that, folks’—and how if there’s a pantheon, the top guys would have to be Frank and Tony and Julius (he throws in Jack Jones only cause Jack’s coming on later), and you kind of get the feeling he means it but it’s too late! OK? He’s already made the Is he still alive? remark, and that’s the thing that makes me uncomfortable about Jerry”—“So why do you watch?” interjects Maxine, without expecting an answer, then says to Lisanne, “You can’t tear him away”—“A mean motherfucker, pardon my German. And that’s why if I was famous, I would never do that show”—“Fortunately, you will never have that problem,” said Maxine—“I don’t care how many sick kids you supposedly cure. And I don’t think they’ve cured one yet. But they will, and I’m not taking that away from him. But if you do go on that show, and I don’t give a hoot if you’re the Pope, Uncle Jerry is gonna take a crap on you sooner or later. He’ll take a giant shit on your head — pardon my French — that’s from Full Metal Jacket—great movie — Uncle Jerry will crap on your head and you’ll never know until it hits you.”

True West

THE PLAY OPENED in a ninety-nine-seat house for a run of twelve performances. Access Hollywood reported that scalped tickets were going for nineteen thousand dollars on eBay.

As the curtain fell on opening night, the crowd thundered, screamed, and wept. No one had ever seen anything like it or ever would. At the star’s insistence, the uncharacteristically tearful Jorgia Wilding emerged from the wings to join the cast in deep bows. That bittersweet mix of first and last hurrahs.

Though critics had been barred, many in the audience (culture vulture luminaries) posted Internet opinions — word of Web being that while Kit Lightfoot’s transcendent performance was at times halting, it was more haunting than anything else. Toward the end, representatives from a few national publications smuggled themselves past the box office, yet by the time their reviews ran (breathlessly) — the New York Observer headlined “Long Day’s Journey Into Lightfoot”—they sounded dated and glowingly apocryphal, for production had already triumphantly shuttered, having spiritedly entered the deathless annals of mythic theater lore.

Viv Wembley sent flowers.

The Leno Show

THE BAND PLAYS the Supertramp theme from World Without End as he comes out. The longest ovation in Leno’s history.

For the next five minutes, hoots, catcalls, coughs, and whatnot as the mob cathects then settles upon its collective seat.

“Wow,” says Jay. “I cannot tell you how happy I am — how happy the world is — that you’re back.”

Tsunamis, then tidewaters of applause. Kit humbly smiles and begins to respond — forced to give up, as the audience dam breaks. Awash again.

Second longest ovation in Leno’s history.

Kit’s jaw is clenched, his eyes wet. Bodysurfing the no-silence.

Jay, too, wipes away a tear. “I’m getting very emotional,” he says, sweetly shaking that ridiculous-sized chin. Slightly embarrassed, or playing at such. Now and then it’s OK to be unmanly.

Kit smiles and says nothing. Stop-starts, charmingly stymied. Audience, charmed too — way, way on his side. Still, though, he hasn’t said a word, and they’re kinda nervous about that….

How will he sound? All retardy?

Time now overdue for that first sentence moment—utterance to be reported the next day, the quip heard ‘round the world.

(That one-giant-leap-for-mankind moment.)

Finally, after a great sigh it comes:

“What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

Laughter, tears, ovation! The sentiment funny and true! And he sounds normal!

Just like they knew he would.

… more than anyone could have dreamed or hoped for.

Kiki had six writers spend two weeks brainstorming. Then Cela heard the Grateful Dead song on the radio — her suggestion. Kiki agreed. The writers’ picks were too jokey. This, the most real.

The crowd deftly replays his words in their heads, picking them clean for slurs, impediments, I Am Sam — type aftershocks.

Nothing!

(The collective Eye had already searched for skull craters beneath the chic, barely grown out buzz cut — none visible.)

“I just have one thing to ask,” says Kit.

They hang on his words. You could hear a pin drop.

“Because people worry about my mental faculties.”

All anxiously hold their breath. He’s going to say something… serious—

“You are David Letterman — aren’t you?”

Hilarity! Foot-stomping ovation! The kid stays in the picture!

Now Jay and Kit ease into the familiar, comforting shuck-and-jive What was it like?/How does it feel to be back? shtick.

Ice-breaky stuff to give guest and host (audience too) their sea legs.

Jay says, “Now, one thing the people out there may or may not know is that there was an irony connected to this whole ‘event.’ ”

“Event? You mean, when I got hit on the head?”

Laughter. A man of the people, regular guy. Deserving, courageous.

“Yes!” says Jay. “Mind if we talk about it?”

“That’s why I’m here. But you talk — I’ll listen.” Laughter. “Because, man, I am tired.”

Applause. Whoop-whoops.

Jay says, “OK. That’s fair. Fair deal.”

“I just flew in from rehab,” says Kit, on a roll. “And boy, is my mind tired.” Laughter: tidewater ripple: tsunami applause.

“Carrie Fisher wrote that for me.”

Jay cracks up.

Kit adds, “And I’m [bleeped] nervous.”

With the unexpected obscenity, Leno joyfully loses it. The crackling realness of the moment. Rapture from the crowd, then—

A (lady’s) voice, from audience: “We love you, Kit!”

Jay, sternly: “Have that woman escorted from the studio… and immediately taken to Mr. Lightfoot’s hotel room.”

Laughter. Whistles, catcalls. Applause.

A (man’s) voice, from audience: “I love you, Kit!”

Jay and his chin lose it again.

Giddiness, contagion. Punch-drunk love. Admiration for the conquering hero’s return.

Jay gently admonishes the audience like the old friends they are. “All right, calm down now.” Back to his guest. “And I want to talk about the play, True West—what a triumph— [applause begins; Jay deftly thwarts another prolonged salvo by continuing] but… and this fascinates me. You were preparing to do a film when you got [awkward] hit on the head…”

Kit nods matter-of-factly. “Darren Aronofsky. Wonderful director.”

“… now the irony is that you were actually going to play — to portray—a character who was very much like you. A famous movie actor who was normal — at least, relatively! — until he was involved in an automobile accident that rendered him with [awkward for Jay now], well, not ‘diminished capacity,’ but I guess what you’d call a kind of neurological disa—”

“Brain damage,” says Kit tersely.

The audience laughs, though slightly discomfited.

“Oops,” says Kit. “Sorry to be political incorrect.” (In a nanosecond, sharks to blood, the mob registers possible retard-omit of — ly from politically.) “Politically incorrect,” says Kit, self-correcting without fanfare — and all is well again. Just a case of nerves.

“Come on!” Kit says boisterously, throwing down a challenge to the crowd. “You can say it— brain damage!”

Raises his arms like a conductor while Jay bashfully shakes his head at the mischief making. The audience reverberates: “Brain damage!”

Not once, not twice, but three times.

Applause — ovation.

They are his.

Together Again

“HOW LONG HAVE you lived here?”

“About a year. It used to be Woody’s — Woody Harrelson’s.”

“Very cool.”

The Taosified beach house sat on two lots, north of the Colony.

She invited him over after seeing him on Leno. Why not? She apologized for not coming to the play. She said, with a laugh, that she was worried he’d have seen her in the audience and freaked out.

“Does Alf stay with you?”

“No.”

A vexing beat as the waves crashed.

“Did you know that Woody’s father is in jail for shooting a federal judge? He’s a professional hit man! People even think he might have been the guy on the grassy knoll.” Kit nodded indifferently. “You look… so great. You were so funny on Leno.”

“I missed you,” he said.

Past tense. The air went out of her. “I missed you too! It’s just… I–I… Kit, it was so hard for me. It’s been really hard! And… I know that sounds so self-obsessed and it’s true. I so fucked this up… and it’s been so weird just to try and stay present, to see that — to see that that’s the kind of person I am, or wound up being, because I don’t even think I’m— Sometimes it’s like, I look back and say, ‘Who was that?’ ”

He smiled sardonically. Then, with the smallest hint of a stammer: “This — this is the part where the girlfriend hasn’t seen him for a long time.” She wasn’t sure if he was being cruel. “This is the scene where they feel bad together.”

“Kit,” said Viv, starting to cry. “I am so sorry for what happened. I am so sorry that I — that I couldn’t deal with it.”

“Not your fault,” he said stalwartly, determined not to get emotional. Not to give her that.

“The whole thing with Alf—”

“Not your fault, Viv.”

“—has been pretty much over for three months.” She felt like she was on the witness stand of her own court-martial. “Not that that means anything. Or should. But he— Alf was my connection to you. And I know that sounds weird and like a cop-out…”

“It’s OK.” He wouldn’t look at her.

“It’s not OK. And I just need you to — I just walk around this planet feeling so fucking miserable. Kit, I still love you so much! And when — when you got hurt… I know it sounds like some stupid cliché—I was talking to Steve Soderbergh (not about this), and he said, ‘Clichés are true, that’s why they’re clichés’—but I think I just loved you too much to go to the hospital and see you that way—”

He looked toward the ocean. “I thought I saw a seal out there.”

“Probably just paparazzi,” she said, vaguely relieved to be taken out of her moment. “Their Malibu disguises are really resourceful.”

She changed tack and gossiped about the business. Who was sleeping with whom, who’d been fired, who was at Promises. That she’d signed with Gerry Harrington, and Angela wanted to throw Kit a dinner — Angela was working for Dolce now. They walked on the sand and smoked weed. The conversation got looser. Viv asked if he still liked to fuck. He said that he did and managed pretty well. She took a flier and said maybe they should, “as a healing thing.” Kit laughed, then she said all actresslike that no one ever fucked her like he did.

“I have a girlfriend,” he said. Square business.

“Oh. Who?”

“You don’t know her.”

“Is she an actress?” He shook his head. “Is she a Buddhist?”

He smiled. “Civilian. High school sweetheart.”

“Oh right — the old flame. I think I read that in the Post. What’s her name?”

“Cela.”

“So if she’s the old flame, what does that make me?”

A beat, then: “Candle in the wind.”

Crash Course

THE AWFUL THING was that Rob Reiner wanted her to come back and read with Ed Norton but she had to say no because of a scheduling conflict with 1200 North. Becca said, “When it rains, it pours.” Dixie said, “You mean, it’s either feast or famine.”

A & E ordered twelve, and while Becca wasn’t in every show, her contract guaranteed she’d be paid for at least six. As yet, only the pilot had been written, but according to the show’s “bible,” Rhiannon’s arc called for at least five more episodes. The agent said that if the stars (and writers) were in alignment, Becca could wind up doing eight or even ten.

It was great news. Still, she was bummed at not having a Rob Reiner film on her résumé and almost felt worse that she wasn’t going to read with Ed Norton. (She talked herself into thinking she’d have absolutely nailed it.) She sent Mr. Reiner handwritten regrets, as Sharon Belzmerz so classily suggested. Sharon was sweet and said Rob Reiner was an old hitless fogy anyway and that she’d already gotten Becca “a meet” with Brett Ratner and was working on the Coen brothers. Her near miss was still a good story — one of those gripping Hollywood yarns she could share with everyone in Waynesboro next Thanksgiving, a shining example of what her agent liked to call a “high-class problem.” It was also the kind of surefire anecdote to maybe bring up one day during a Conan or Letterman preinterview, as long as it didn’t sound stuck-up.

Hollywood Palace

PHILIP HANGED HIMSELF on Halloween night while Lisanne was at the hospice.

For the last few months, she’d been helping out at Lavendar House, a Victorian-style building over by the VA. A friend from the sangha said it would do her great good. Though Lisanne had abandoned any formal or even informal Buddhist practice, the friend had been right — working at the hospice took her out of herself and put her in touch with what was real. The mundanely majestic drama of life and death.

She was sitting with a comatose woman when the cell phone vibrated in her purse. It was Mattie, with the news. She went home to Rustic Canyon and sat another vigil. There were bodies all around her now. She felt like that kid in The Sixth Sense.

• • •

THE NEXT FEW days were filled with snakes.

Lisanne heard a paramedic on the radio, talking about the hair-raising adventures of his trade. He spoke of a Korean man who skinned snakes and ate them raw, for health purposes; he swallowed the heads too, but this time a fang sunk into his tongue. The man stumbled into the fire station saying that he had “a problem.” They were able to save him.

At night, she conjured the Temescal Canyon metta rattler, the one she never told Philip about. In her dream, they stood over it, together. The serpent spoke to them, but when she awakened, Lisanne could never remember what it had said.

On the morning of his funeral, she read an article in the Times about Amber, an eight-year-old girl killed by the family’s pet Burmese.

Robert Mountain testified that he was kept awake by the python the night before his daughter was attacked as the snake tried to escape from its makeshift cage.

Mountain said he applied about four layers of duct tape to hold a screen on the lid in place and checked on the snake before leaving for work the next morning.

Both he and his wife said they knew Moe had outgrown its cage, a particleboard bin bought from a fabric store, with a hinged clear-plastic lid that Robert Mountain had attached.

They found Amber on the kitchen floor, the snake coiled around her neck and chest. Lisanne wondered how it would feel to die like that. And what would it be like for the rescuers, to get the snake off her, seeing what they would see?

• • •

THEY BURIED HIM in a pricey Westwood mausoleum beside the Bel-Air waste management king, Louis Aherne Trotter, kitty-corner from the drawer Hefner had reserved for himself above Marilyn Monroe. Mattie was gaunt and wobbly, flanked by the stoic Loewensteins, and she pinched a handkerchief to her sopping face as if the fabric itself was her sole source of oxygen. Even Dr. Calliope attended.

Lisanne was glad to see Robbie and Maxine. He brought their son because Mattie had requested it. Lisanne was holding Siddhama in her arms as she came over. Taking the handkerchief away from her face at last, Aunt Mattie said, “My brother loved that baby so much.”

After all was said and done, Lisanne knew that he did.

• • •

THAT NIGHT, Lisanne stayed with her at the beach house. They watched Mildred Pierce against an appropriately wild-dark backdrop of ocean, and ate pumpkin pie à la mode while thumbing through old family albums. Mattie said that her brother was a “lost soul.” He’d tried to kill himself in college, then again right after Dad died. Lisanne couldn’t believe Philip never told her that.

She had left her psychosis behind. As she drifted off, pulled closer now by the amniotic rhythm of cold swells that arose and fell like mantras never-ending, shattering so near the Joan Crawford picture window, her body relaxing beside Mattie’s nameless, nearly formless form, Lisanne remembered the loving-kindness workshop teacher’s definition of a meditation practice: it is nothing but the abiding calm a man learns as he carries a bowl of scalding oil upon his head while walking through the rooms of an enormous palace.

Christmas Eve Day

AT THREE IN the afternoon, in the patio under freezing refulgent crystal blue heavens, Cela told her man she was going to Rexall Square for a bagful of nonpareils. That was her alibi.

She blasted an old Bowie CD in the BMX, south on Beverly Glen all the way to Pico, a right to Overland, down to the 10 east.

She’d done all the major shopping— loved Christmas — and had just about finished this crazy collage thing (corny paper cutout tributes to their love), thinking she was so clever until suddenly realizing what a fool she was for having completely spaced on the mother lode of oldies — a treasure trove of Ulysses S. Grant stuff, photos of Kit with R.J., and God knew what else — that was sitting in storage, gathering dust. Imagining the bounty that awaited her, Cela began to think in terms of actually doing an oversize triptych. That was OK by her. Kit would love it. She’d stay up late like she did when she was little, cutting and pasting, giggling to herself while he chilled in front of the $20,000 slimscreen. She’d have to chase him off if he snuck up to see what she was doing.

The 10 to Azusa, then north to Badillo toward the Covina U-Stor — down the road from Uncle Jimmy, who’d helped move all her Riverside belongings. She hadn’t seen any of the packed things since (or Uncle Jimmy either), but now and again they spoke on the phone. Cela wanted him to visit the new house, but they hadn’t been there all that long and she thought it better to hold off. (They were phasing out some of the security guys, and it felt nice to have the place to themselves.) Uncle Jimmy wasn’t sensitive — all he ever wanted to know was when was she gonna invite him to a big premiere. He had a thing for Nicole Kidman and kept saying, wickedly, “When you gonna hook me up with Nicole? Time she had a man’s man.” Uncle Jimmy had a heart of gold. He was diabetic, and had had a few scares. She gave him Christmas money so he could spend the holiday up at Russian River.

She went by his house, knowing he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t it be funny if he was? Then she realized her true impulse, and made the detour, heart beating faster.

There were tenants in her old place, but it looked woebegone. Cela changed her mind about driving past Burke’s; too radioactive. She grew faintly nauseated. Everything was saturated with sunlit anomie. Neighborhood kids were staring at the BMX. She gunned it.

• • •

SHE RUMMAGED among the stacks and laughed: she was Pack Rat Supreme, always had been. (That was always Burke’s joke, whenever they went to Vegas. There was Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and Cela Byrd and the Pack Rat.) What a sad bunch of shit — broken lamps, fucked-up chairs, dusty file boxes marked COURT, REHAB/JOURNALS, MAMA, LEGAL, TAXES, MISC., SWAP MEET…

— there it was: PIX/YEARBOOKS.

She pried the carton out from under and took the lid off. Whoa. Better make that two triptychs. Mebbe three. The first thing she laid eyes on was a half-ruined Polaroid of them smoking a doobie in front of a bonfire, age thirteen. Couldn’t remember a thing about it. Blurry, smudged, time-sealed — might be fun to blow up and wallpaper the den with. Or hang on the side of the pool house, ten by ten, with a special outdoor coating.

She had planned to throw everything in the car but couldn’t help getting engrossed. Accordingly, she didn’t see the silver Range Rover, the one Kit allowed his father to keep, the good riddance “bone” as Burke called it, quietly berth a few doors down. There was a small crack in the windshield; a few holes had been punched in the passenger door, to fix a dent.

Cela startled as he sauntered over, framed in the metal roll-up door against the cloudless Covina sky.

“Hey, babe.”

“What are you doing here?” She stayed down, kneeling and semisorting, trying to be cool.

“I rent a unit,” he said, smiling. “For my unit.” Always the salacious double-entendre. “Dr. Phil, is that not OK?”

“Did you follow me?”

“Saw you in the hood a little while ago,” he said. “Gettin nostalgic?” She sighed and went back about her business. “A preggers gets mucho hornito. Thought you might be havin an ‘afternoon delight’ moment.”

“You are disgusting,” she said, coldly.

“Might just wanna DNA the kid, you know,” he said, lasciviously apprising her belly. “Could be mine. But in order to do so, I may have to serve you with a su-penis.”

“Can you just leave me alone?” She decided she would motor in about thirty seconds. “We’ve already done this dance, Burke.”

“Done this dance?” he said, ascerbically. “That’s some shitty dialogue, babe. Right out of a Kit Lightfoot movie.”

She stood up. “I think you better get in your car.”

He stepped back, as if in mortal terror. “Mommy! Mommy, you’re scaring me!” A lurid quick change to fawning admiration: “Oh boy, you’ve gotten tough. Wow! You are one tough macha. Wouldn’t want to tangle with you, chola, huh uh. No way.”

“Burke, I don’t want to do this.”

“You don’t have a restraining order against me too, do you, Cela? Cause far as I know, my ungrateful shit-heel son is the one who filed. Though I do believe it’ll come out in the wash it was counsel’s idea.”

“I wonder why someone would have had the audacity to get a restraining order.” Now that she was on her feet, she felt bolder. “Isn’t that outrageous? Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that you beat the shit out of your own kid and broke my fucking face?”

“You know,” said Burke, “experts will tell you that restraining orders aren’t always a good thing.”

She got adrenalized. Her brain told her to run, but she walked resolutely past. He spun her around and forced her back.

“Get your fucking hands off me!”

“Hey, hey, hey.”

“I’ll call the police—”

“Here’s my phone,” he said, jamming it to her cheek. “Call Chief Bratton and tell him you’re being diddled by an armadillo. Who gives a flying fuckito? Listen,” he whispered. “You went with the money and I cain’t blame you. Hell, I admire you. You fucked the money with my come still runnin down your leg. Mo better power to ya. You testified against me at trial. Dragged my name through the mud and left me with squat. I put a lot of bread into that piece of shit rental you were living in, Cela. Put a lotta money into you. Hey: my prerogative and my pleasure. Where you livin now? A fifteen-million-dollar house? Is Catherine Zeta-Jones knocking on your door to borrow sugar, all neighborlike? Bra-vo, baby. You were sucking his dick right under my nose.”

“I didn’t do anything under your nose.”

“Cept let me eat your pussy. That was under your nose.” He laughed. “No — that was under my nose. And you let him watch, remember? Cause that’s your thing. Your freak thing. That’s what you’re into.”

“Stop it.”

“You cunt.”

He pulled a gun. She shook — gone bloodless.

“Take your pants off.”

“Please don’t—”

He punched her face and ordered her again. She hunched, dizzy and bloodsprayed, struggling to stay upright. She took them off. He kept the gun on her and flicked the roll-up switch. The iron drape descended with a sickening, inexorable grind. He pushed her face to the cement, unzipping his fly and greasing the cock with a gob of spit.

She is only worried about the baby. She is determined not to bring it up for sympathy, for she knows he will not respond. It may only enrage him. She is beyond pain, protest, and tears. She is beyond.

“You coulda stayed with me,” he said, panting as he forced himself in. “He coulda cut us a check. We had a good thing. Why’d you have to go get greedy on me?”

Absurdly, he riffed on the good times: the barbecues, Bellagio, Sunday Rose Bowl swap petty larcenies. What a team. Riffed on this and that, then popped one off in the tummy. Whoops, he said, with a grin. She looked at him, astonished. Writhed beneath as he dug in deeper. Squealed, gasped, and bled. “Not such a bad way to go, huh?” She made other sounds now. Dire. Rattling. “Though you may have some trouble coming. I know I won’t.” Shot twice more as he came. Who needs Viagra. Her eyes widened. She wheezed and made sounds again. He said, Shake, rattle, and roll. Climbed off pretty quick, clucking and tetchy, recoiling at the mess. Lock and load. Wiped himself with her Levi’s before zipping up, then used the jeans to dam the blood so it wouldn’t run into the thoroughfare just yet. Flicked the clappety roll up. Ducked under it macho-style, then ambled to the Range Rover, sucked in snot, and spat it out while looking first left then right like a badass B-movie bandito — peering down empty conjunctions of deserted asphalt alleys, in unwitting parody of the careful killer.

He stood catching his breath in the cool air. Had second thoughts. Walked back and triggered the door, ducking out again. It descended, shutting Cela’s body into darkness.