Misericord…
Odd title. Intriguing word, though. Bud Googled.
1) an apartment in a monastery where certain relaxations of the monastic rule are allowed, especially those involving food and drink, to accommodate infirm monks; 2) a shelf, or “mercy seat,” on the underside of a hinged seat in a choir stall against which a standing chorister could lean, during lengthy services (often inscribed with scatological graffiti); 3) a dagger used to administer the mercy stroke to a seriously wounded knight.
Jesus. Infirm monks… secret apartments for DaVinci Code-type bacchanalias… hidden, porn-carved “mercy” seats… a medieval dirk for coup de grâces… the word was an entire book — say, by Eco or Borges — a novel in itself! In just four syllables and 10 measly letters, it managed to evoke more feeling, more subtlety, more narrative (three acts, ending with a killing!) than Bud would ever be able to conjure in five pages, or 50, or 500.
He lay flat on his back awash in depression, murdered by the word as surely as a knight by a dagger. Only trouble being, it didn’t put him out of his misery.
. .
Bud was bored and stoned.
Marta picked him up the Forbes Top-Earning Dead Celebrity issue. You had to earn at least $6 million for the year to qualify. Michael Jackson was still riding high.
Tolkin called to cheer him up. He said he went with Brando to the Westside Pavilion to watch a movie by a director whom the kid was interested in. It was in 3D. Michael said that when you walked out, you threw your glasses in a recycling bin that said KEEP 3D GREEN. Michael said it was the best, most insane slogan ever.
. .
He got an email from one of David Simon’s assistants, asking for an update on his contact information.
It gave him the idea to update his iPhone addressbook. He was surprised to find his father still in there. Bud kept his old cellphone number, forgetting that he edited the rest, in case he was ever back east and wanted to visit:
. .
He had a nice conversation with Keira Thompson, head of development at Ooh Baby. She was glad to hear Bud was leaning in the comedy direction on the problematic Biggie project, and happy to be brought into his confidence. He even shared about having some conversations with Tolkin about it. No harm.
He’d read a few articles about the Brainards online, and become curious about the source of their wealth. When they finished with the business side, Bud kind of circled the topic. Keira wasn’t skittish about it at all. She said the dad was a genius who found a way to patent “concepts.”
“Brando said one of the big things his father came up with was the idea of asking people for the last four digits of their social. Prior to that, people were reluctant to give their whole number over the phone. It made them feel vulnerable. The consequence was that merchants and banks lost billions of dollars a year in sales because people refused to verify. Most of this was before the Internet, Paypal and eBay and what have you, now people give all kinds of personal information to their computers, I know I do. Anyway, Brando said his dad told the banks (and they told the merchants) to have the person on the phone just ask the consumer for the last four digits—psychologically, that made all the difference. People didn’t hesitate to ID themselves anymore. He still gets royalties off that idea! And there was another weird benefit. Brando said the cumulative time saved by having people repeat four numbers instead of twelve was like HUGE — like, at the end of the year it added up to hundreds of thousands of man hours. So they saved all those salaries too! The ones they would have had to pay to have more people working the phones.”
. .
Bud unobtrusively recuperated in his very own apartment for infirm monks. Marta did heroic double duty, performing all the functions of an LVN. If the pain was particularly bad, he wasn’t shy about using the bedpan. His door had no lock — no way to control the comings and goings of a sleepless, nomadic mother.
One night he awakened from a sedative-induced sleep to Dolly giving him a sponge bath.
“Once you pass 80, it’s time to go,” she said, in media res. He was too groggy to question the surreal scene. “The people who get sick, refuse treatment, then die a few days later — those are the ones who got it right.”
“Mom… what are you doing?”
“Sponging you. What does it look like I’m doing? What a chin you have! And what handsome shoulders. I look at you and see your father. You know what kept us together? The sex. The sex was all we had. You know, you’re handsome. You’re handsome and you know it. Everybody knows it — they say, ‘Here he comes! Here comes Handsome Bud Wiggins!’”
. .
He put down the novel — alas, the courage to say he was done.
He’d been working on it for years. Finally, he could freely admit he had absolutely nothing to show for it. He used to fantasize about being a literary man, but the literary era was over. When he was a boy, the scene was vibrant. Mailer stabbed his wife and duked it out with Vidal, Capote was a sacred monster, Styron a nasty drunk, Cheever a nasty drunken fag. Now there were only aging wonderboys like Do-Gooder Eggers, Vegemitey Mouse Foer, & Franzen, the King Rat who preened about spreading Big Brain’s ashes in some bandana republic before snitching off his BFF’s minuscule frauds of reportage. In one of those phoney New Yorker tell-alls masquerading as elegant meditations, he diddled himself — with precious, casually trenchant reflections on Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson & the Novel; on islands & isolation; on the special agonies of bestselling literary men, and the very special agony of loving his Hideous Friend — before getting to the cumshot of how much I loved and invested in him and how much he betrayed me and his wife. Bud thought it would have been far more interesting if Franzen had fucked the widow, which the essay actually wound up doing. It was a bitchy, addled Psychology Today-level treatise that literally posited that D. Footnote Wallace hanged himself as a career move! “In a sense, the story of my friendship with him is simply that I loved a person who was mentally ill.” Bud said outloud, Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? As Fran Lebowitz might jest, “If you think you can write Saint Genet but you aren’t Sartre—don’t even try.”
How many copies did Freedom sell, anyway?
Like five fucking million—––—
I’m done, he said.
The dream is over…
His phone rang.
“Bud?”
“Oh, hi Tolkin.”
“How’s the hip, kiddo?”
“On the mend.”
“Listen, I’ve got some good news.”
“Jesus, Michael, you’re like the fuckin tooth fairy, it never stops. I love you, man.”
“Remember the David Simon meeting you took?”
“Sure. The Wire guy.”
“Right… they’re going into production — on the Hollywood project. David told me he lifted a section from one of your stories.”
“What stories?”
“What do you mean, what stories. From Force Majeure!”