—
They went to Crossroads to see their daughter in Legally Blonde. Rafaela played one of the Delta Nu sisters — a small part but she really shined. Derek sucked O2 through a nasal cannula during the show.
For the past few weeks, Tristen had been crashing on his dad’s couch in the cluttered Hollywood apartment. With Beth gone, Derek needed help. He was too weak and too bummed to resist the boy’s overtures, and signed a provisional truce with the ex as well. Thanks to the medics, there was no shortage of Percocets and grass; getting loaded did wonders for his level of interpersonal tolerance. He’d lost most of his bark, and all of his bite — he was scared. He was on the organ wait list but had been designated “Status 2,” the least needy of recipients. They said it could take months, even years. Derek saw that as a death sentence.
Their shit was upside down. They still owned the house together but in twenty years the mortgage hadn’t budged. They were half a million and change in the red, plus a hundred and thirty-three thousand in credit-card debt, plus a hundred and sixty borrowed against the property. (And another ninety grand in back taxes to the IRS that he hadn’t even told her about.) She cursed their spendthrift ways. They’d lived like delusional pimps — the Barneys shopping sprees, the celebrity doctors who eschewed insurance, the horseshit weekend getaways at the Beverly Hills Hotel. All for the look-good, what Derek called “keeping up with the Jewses.” And now she was old, a grifting wannabe dyke with just $16,000 left in her secret savings. She looked into the future, the near future, and saw a dried-up widow, a stinky hoarder living in borrowed rooms, on borrowed time.
During intermission, she brought him a tea because seeing him mingle with the parents — if he’d even had the energy to walk to the lobby — would have embarrassed her. He was sallow and gaunt, struggling.
“Did you know Bobby Altman had a heart transplant?” asked Larissa.
“Bobby Altman? Who the fuck is ‘Bobby’ Altman? What were you, a family friend? It’s Robert Altman. And he had money. If you got money, you live. If you ain’t got, you die.”
“I was searching transplants online. Tracy Morgan had one.”
“A heart transplant? From the car accident?”
“Kidney — way before. His girlfriend gave him one. She thought if she gave him a kidney they’d get back together, but they didn’t.”
“That’s what they call ‘donor’s remorse.’ Ol’ Tracy don’t need any handouts, either — nigger’s rich. Walmart probably gave him a hundred mill.”
“You knew Cheney had a heart transplant, right?”
“Heart Vader! Ol’ spotted Dick. Had his pick of donors at Gitmo too. And all those ‘black’ sites… now there’s an unkillable motherfucker.”
“—and this golfer who had, like, two heart transplants.”
“Yeah, one of the nurses was talking about him. He was probably Status 2, like me. But they took a look in his wallet and said, ‘Oh! Rich Sports Guy! Need a heart? There’s afourteen-year-old girl in line before you, she’s been on the list for three years, but fuck her, she won’t mind, ’cause you’re Mr. Rich Sports Guy! Oops — body rejected it? So sorry, sir, here, have another, our treat! ’Cause you’re Mr. Rich-As-Fuck Sports Guy!’”
Derek could be funny when he was mad — which was pretty much 24/7. She loved that about him for the first few years, before everything got old.
“Have you seen Tristen’s car?”
“Yeah,” he snorted. “He was gonna get a Tesla but apparently they go for five thousand blowjobs. The Honda was only five hundred.”
She just shook her head and asked how “the sleepovers” were going.
“They’re going.”
“Well, they’ve done wonders for him. He’s sure been a happier camper lately.”
“Been making hisself useful, anyway.”
“So sorry that Beth — your other slave — escaped the plantation.”
“Easy come, easy go.”
“What do you have him doing over there, crushing up your pain pills? Putting a polish on those nonexistent editing awards? Fielding offers from J. J. Abrams?”
“Nope. Got him hacking into the IATSE system. He’s goin’ North Korea on it. Goin’ rogue. Goin’ Putin.”
“Are you serious?”
“Creating a dummy employment file so we can keep our insurance.”
“Oh shit, Derek,” she said, with a mixture of caution and pride in Tristen’s wayward expertise.
“No other option, babe. Look at the bright side — once he’s locked us in, you can get your eyes and neck done. Have that titty reduction you always wanted. Hell, have an augmentation and a reduction. Spoil yourself! The tummy tuck’s on me, the ass lift’s on IATSE. Get your teeth and bunghole whitened. Shit, you can build yourself a hymen — get back that new car smell.”
“Fuck you,” she chuckled. “But can’t we get in trouble for that?”
“Not ‘we,’ babe. It’s on him.”
“Oh, great. Why do you fucking hate him so much?” She ignored his dagger eyes. “He loves you, Derek. God knows you’ve never given him a reason to, but he does. He loves you and you hate him.”
“I don’t hate him,” he said jauntily. “I hate you.”
“Well, get over it. He’s your son. Goddammit, it’s heartbreaking.”
“My son?” He coughed up a scrap metal resemblance of a laugh. “No shit it’s heartbreaking. Tell me about it. My heart’s so broke I need a new one.”
—
In her twenty-eighth year, not long after winning her inaugural Oscar, Dusty Wilding came out to the world. The effect of that avowal, so thinkable now but unthinkable then, lends itself to clumsy metaphor — say, pick tsunami: waves of public acclaim receded at the announcement, exposing a naked, drawnback shore of flotsam, garbage, and gasping, outrun grunion; a perplexion of outraged starfishes and nationally stunned disbelief. After shocky abeyance, a hundred-foot-high wall of murderous judgewater raked in from the heartland, destroying everything in its path on the way to both coasts (and the continents and land masses beyond). Nothing could have prepared the actress for the initial, sustained violence of cultural response, the mad ugliness of it, the innumerable FBI investigations of mayhem and threats of mutilation and death, the mockery, vandalism and hate riffs of the country’s best comedians. Against her will, she submitted to invasive shifts of bodyguards until one day Dusty’d had enough. “The tide cannot be held, let it come.” She watched from higher ground as the villages of her spirit, her soul, her very being were drowned and reordered. Most of those whom she considered friends went missing; the cats all died; only her dogs remained, limping and three-legged. Yes she had her tribe, vociferous and militant, tried and true blue, but they were outliers too. They were fragile, and died hard — many were swept to sea in those first chaotic days, weeks, and months… so many tree trunks, startled by their own amputation, a confusion of desecrated bodies and debris, with no Internet (for better and for worse) to damn the flood. Yet in all such catastrophes, one may note the photo of the single church that survives, alone and untouched, magisterially indifferent amid the ruins, a day-after symbol of Christian love and renewal — Dusty and her heart were like that. She held fast until houses and new life sprung up around her.