«Rav ishing,» said Chris.
«You liar. You just like me because I got you a green card.»
«You just like me because I let you sing backup vocals on tour.»
«That's not true. I love you for the 10K a month you put into my savings account.»
«You just love me for the manliness of my member.» Chris dropped his trousers and wagged his hips back and forth, establishing a lewd pendulum as the crowd on the roof shrieked in unison.
And so went life on tour. Susan was alpha road-rat on the North American tour of Chris's band, Steel Mountain, the highly caste-conscious temporary family fueled by drinking, smoking, copious drugs and arcade games inside buses that stank of the ghosts of a hundred previous bands.
Susan married Chris two years after the network canceled Meet the Blooms, and her TV career vanished in a puff of dust. Her then agent-manager-lover, Larry Mortimer, phoned her with news of the cancellation while she was in Guam shooting a Japanese commercial for a lemony sports beverage called Pocari Sweat («Hey team — let's Pocari!»). Larry was getting bored with TV and had just entered the world of rock management and had connected Susan to Chris.
The match had its pluses and minuses. Chris had money and Susan did not. Her earnings from her years in TV had been squandered and lost by her mother and stepfather, a fact that she had laboriously kept out of the media. Also, Chris was gay, information that would surely have given surprise to his head-banging musical constituency. Above all, Susan was still in love with the Catholic, divorce-phobic Larry Mortimer. While once it had been easy to find reasons to be around Larry, now Susan needed a better pretext — marrying Chris to land him a green card restored her to Larry's inner-circle. The green-card deal with Chris seemed like just the ticket, and for a while it worked. But when Chris wasn't touring, he lived in London. Susan stayed in California, the partnerless weeks and months adding up across the years. She lived by herself most of the time, in Chris's Space Needle—like orb atop a pole that had the distinct aura of having been handed down from a long succession of emotionally adolescent, newly monied entertainment people. It had filthy shag carpets in longdiscontinued colors, appliances that probably hadn't worked since the dawn of TV dinners, and the impending sensation that the Monkees would pop in through a window at any moment and burst into song. In the Space Needle, Susan realized that the phone really didn't ring too often, and when it did, it was for Chris. Any scripts Larry sent her were for titty flicks. Their phone calls were many: «Oh, come on, Larry. We can do better than this. How hard can it be to land a TV movie?»
«You're rock and roll now, Sue. You need to be a Young Mom for TV movies. You know — two kids — those new minivans people are driving. Fridge magnets. People read about you and Chris and the rest of those gorillas trashing a Ramada on a tour and it scares them off.»
«I'm unbankable, Larry. Say it.»
«You're crazy. I send you a dozen scripts a week.»
«Slashers and titties.»
«That's not true. They're entry points.»
«Entry to nowhere. I'm stereotyped as either the sucky little Bloom daughter or the slutty rock bitch.»
«I'm not going to have this conversation, Susan, because it goes nowhere.»
«Don't hang up, Larry.»
«Take acting lessons. Karate. Put on that blue lace number you wore for me down in Laguna Niguel and give Chris a peek. It's so hot, he'll switch.»
«You liked that negligée?»
«Liked? Ooh — Susan.»
«I looked hot in it? You didn't act like it.»
«I've got worries.»
Larry went quiet. After a while, Susan said, «Can you come over tonight?»
No answer.
«Good-bye, Larry.» She slammed down the receiver and it rang almost simultaneously; she picked up the phone and barked, «Hel lo.»
«Suzie, if you're going to be such a shit about a simple little ringy-dingy, then I needn't waste my time here.»
«Hey, Chris. Larry's being a jerk. Where are you?»
«At a chic little Kensington soirée, and it's so lofty I feel faint. I'm hiding in the library right now.»
«Whose party is it, Chris?»
«Guess.»
«I'm not in the mood to — »
«Think “palace.” »
«No!»
«Yes.»
«Oh God. Oh God. I can't believe I'm going to ask you the question I'm about to ask: what's She wearing?» Susan's preoccupation with Larry's dwindling role in her life, for the moment, was deflected. «Steal me a pair of Her shoes and I'll never de-alphabetize your tapes ever again.»
Chapter Six
Two weeks after John had left Cedars-Sinai, he was physically restored, but his old life and its trappings felt archaic, slightly silly, and woefully inadequate to meet the changes he felt inside — as if he were now expected to play CDs on a wobbly old turntable with a blunt needle. He kept trying to see his life as Susan saw it, or rather, how his life might seem to the woman in his vision, whose identity remained unknown. He was thumping out tuneless rhythms as he walked through the fuck-hut's slate and aluminum walls. Yes, he was experiencing a type of freedom associated with no longer caring about keeping up the appearance of wealth, but with this freedom came a rudderless sensation, one that made him giddy, the way he'd felt as a child as he waited for week upon agonizing week for the postman to deliver a cardboard submarine he'd sent away for — a device that had promised to take him far away into a fascinating new realm, but which upon arrival was revealed to be as substantial and as well constructed as a bakery's cardboard cake box. But ahhh , the waiting had been so wonderfully sweet.
The sun had set. Another day was over. He'd spent the morning speaking with a lawyer inquiring about his will. He'd spent the afternoon at City Hall doing some paperwork. He was still thumping when the doorbell ran (two bars of Phillip Glass). It was the twins Melody had promised. He sighed and buzzed them into his polished-steel atrium. «I'm Cindy,» said the sister in the pink angora sweater with bare midriff. «And I'm Krista,» said the other in green. They looked at each other, smiled, and overstated the obvious: «We're twins!»
«Yeah, yeah.»
He showed them the living room with its suede walls and panoramic windows exposing a constellational view of the city lights below. «Can I fetch you drinks?» he asked, inwardly noting how many times he'd asked this same antique question.
The girls exchanged looks. «Just one,» said Krista.
«That's all we're allowed,» added Cindy. «Jack Daniels if you have it. With maraschino cherries. I just adore them.»
«Why just one drink?» John asked.
More looks were exchanged: «We've heard you can be demanding,» said Cindy, to which Krista added, «We're going to need our wits here.»
«Wits?» said John. «Oh God,relax. Sit down. Look at the view. I don't want anything. Wait. Yes I do. I just want to talk.»
«That's okay. We get that all the time,» said Krista.
«What — guys who only want to talk?»
«No. More like guys who don't want to feel like they're consorting with hell-bound floozies, who believe that a cozy chat beforehand will absolve them of moral contagion.»
John looked at Krista:«Absolve them of moral contagion?»
«I'm an educated woman,» said Krista.
Cindy said, «Krista,don't. »
«Don't what ?» asked John.
There was a pause: «Don't be smart.»
«Why not?» John asked.
«It's a turnoff to customers.»
John howled. «You can't be serious!»
Krista said, «Mention politics or use a big word and a guy deflates like a party balloon.»