“I’d like us to have lunch on Saturday,” said the producer. “Can we go to the Ivy on Saturday? I read your book… and so did Mikkel Skarsgaard. Do you know his work? He’s very intrigued. Miriam didn’t tell you about this?” The boy shrieked for his great-uncle, making a general ruckus. Klotcher left to find him, with a parting shot to Thad: “See you on the bridge!”
“Who the fuck is Mikkel Skarsgaard,” asked Thad of Clea.
“A famous Danish DP. It’s good.”
“What’s good?”
“It’s good that he read it.”
“Why is that good?” he said, annoyed.
“Because he’s really hot.”
“Oh goodie, he’s hot. He’s hot hot hot!”
“And he wants to direct.”
No one said anything. I was about to come out. I assumed his mother had wandered off with Klotcher. I hesitated. More silence, then Clea entered the bedroom without warning. We heard Morgana return to the trailer — and gave each other a look. The fact we’d have to pass by them in order to exit had a paralyzing (and alluringly voyeuristic) effect. We intuitively sensed a primordial mother-son spectacle looming.
“Awfully small, this trailer, isn’t it?”
“It’s television, Mom.”
“I would think they’d at least have found you something bigger. Don’t the agents tend to all that? Miriam — is she as effective as she could be?”
“Miriam’s not my agent, Mom.”
“She isn’t?” said Morgana, baffled.
“She’s my agent for books.”
“Then she is your agent.”
“Not for TV or movies. Just books.”
“Well, maybe you’d do better to go elsewhere.”
He let that one go.
“You haven’t done any films lately, have you, Thad.”
“I don’t know, Ma. Have you seen me in any?”
She let that one go.
“Are you really out here taking pictures?” he asked suspiciously.
“There were a few legal things I had to attend to connected to the estate. As it turned out, your father owned a condo in Century City. Another little secret,” she said ironically.
Since his mother had opened the probate door, he decided to step in.
“There’s some stuff I wanted to talk to you about. I was going to wait, but — I wanted to ask… if Dad made any provisions.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. The lawyers are going to be calling.”
“Calling?”
“That’s what I said. You’ll have to ask the lawyers.”
“Because I could use some help! The IRS thing, the ‘offer and compromise,’ or whatever — the thing my accountant was working on didn’t come through.”
“You told me that — at the funeral.”
“I thought I’d be paying pennies on the dollar. That’s how he represented it—”
“You told me, at the Vineyard.”
“—but it just didn’t happen. I might sue the idiot for malpractice.”
“You can’t sue the world, Thaddeus.”
“He never should have repre — you start having these expectations. Anyway, I made a deal, with the government. My accountant made a deal, but it’s usury. It’s like thirty eight thousand a month, for five years. I may as well have borrowed from the Mob.”
“You should have thought about that when you didn’t pay taxes.”
He let that one go too. “So what do the lawyers want? Why are they calling me?”
“About Jack’s will.”
Clea and I gave each other a look again.
“So, who you taking pictures of?” he asked, forcedly casual.
We were actually now spying on them through a crack in the door; a bit insane. Morgana gave her son a blank look. She knew exactly what he wanted from her, but sometimes did the vacant-look routine, just to make him “work.”
“For your book.”
“Oh, I’ve forgotten their names,” she said, bullshitting. “Someone… wait a moment. He wrote A Staggering Work of Genius.”
“Dave Eggers?”
“Yes. Oh — and another: David Wallace Foster? Or maybe it’s David Foster Wallace.”
“Foster Wallace,” said Thad, quizzically. “He was at the funeral. I didn’t talk to him. Why was he at the fucking funeral?”
“Pretty soon,” she said, ignoring his ire, “your mother’s going to have to walk around with Post-its glued to her forehead.”
“Where are you going to shoot them?” he asked, like an undercover Fed consorting with an assassin.
“Wallace Foster or Foster Wallace teaches nearby. Relatively. Someplace called Pomona. A lot of these colleges pay, Thad. Irvine too. Big, big budgets. They’re going to drive me. Evidently they give him millions to teach. You know, he was a great fan of Jack’s — they used to chat on the phone at indecent hours. Alice Sebold teaches there too. Her husband’s quite well known, as well. A novelist. They’re both bestsellers. I’m going to do both of them, then fly to San Francisco for Eggers and Michael Something.”
“Chabon?”
“Yes. He won the Pulitzer. And I believe he makes quite a living writing screenplays.”
“Jesus,” Thad muttered. “Mr. Spider-Man 2!”
Long, chafing pause.
“Why don’t you do me?” he asked.
“What?”
I could see her face contort, as if he’d said something in a rough, dead language.
“Can’t you take my picture?”
“Well, of course I could,” she said emptily.
He snickered before saying, “Then why don’t you?”
“I doubt the publisher would allow. These things aren’t my choice, you know.”
“Why not? You’re taking the pictures, aren’t you?”
“They give me a list—”
“It’s your fucking book, isn’t it?”
“Let’s not get overblown, Thaddeus. Yes, it’s my book but it’s their decision. We’ve been doing it like this for years, you know that. Anyway, it’s appearances — how could you be included in the series without cries of nepotism?”
“Of course!” he said, sarcastically. “There would be a public outcry! Not to mention I’m not remotely in the League of Superhero Writers! The great Alice Sebold,” he sputtered. “She’s right up there with Virginia Woolf! Maybe I should go get myself raped then write a slender memoir. Parlay it into a tender little porn novella—with me, the adorably sodomized angel, high in the sky! Throw in a decapitation — decaps are all the rage! Oh, boo hoo hoo! Readers and Book Clubs’ll love it! Yes! If I get myself fucked up the ass and beheaded, with my heart yanked from my chest and eaten by some teenage Liberian warrior — no, wait! Not a Liberian, a librarian. There’s just my head left, upchucking lyrical little monologues… The publishers will line up for the advances!”
She composed herself during his fit.
“The writers on the list are widely read, Thaddeus, in the popular sense—”
“Have you read them, Mother?”
“Of course I haven’t. You know I don’t read.”
“Then how do you know they’re widely read?”
“That’s a nonsensical question. The publishers have that information — BookScan, it’s called. It has nothing to do with my having read them or not.”