“I am home,” he said.
We wrapped the day.
1 An obsessive, repressed, dysfunctional threesome is more work than it seems. Trust me.
2 I should note our ensemble was giddy from stepping outside the box of their usual shtick, and that “Nickie” Sultan had no great desire, or ability, to rein them in. There was no shortage of Hamlet or ham.
3 In one of the writing staff’s aggravating Shakespearean asides, Thad interjected, “Forever a duo, we shall have a ‘duel’ death.”
~ ~ ~
MIRIAM SURPRISED US BY FLYING out early. She phoned on Friday evening to ask if I wanted to have a drink at the hotel; she was staying at Shutters for the weekend, “as a treat.” She would check into the Chateau on Monday.
I was at the club when she called. I finished my workout, showered, and drove to the beach. When Miriam opened the door to her suite, she was in a thongy Victoria’s Secret number. Drinks were postponed. I’d never seen her this passionate — not even the first time we fucked. It was more than exciting because the funny thing was, if I really thought about it, I couldn’t recall a woman in the past five years who seriously came. I somehow remembered the girls of summer being more vocal, spontaneous, lubricated, what have you. Lately, I connected an overall waning of erotic impulse not just to growing older but to my unthrilled partners themselves. (A friend had palmed off a couple of blue, baseball-diamond shaped Viagras which I’d yet to try; a watershed moment I was willing to postpone.) Anyhow, my unhappy assessment of the current state of affairs — at least my own — was that sex seemed to be in a sort of cross-culturally, dumbed-down, or should I say numbed-down, state. As if the whole world had forgotten how to climax, and was content merely to grope its way toward the funky, muddled, middle-aged light at the end of whatever tunnel it found itself stumbling down.
A few hours with the new, improved Miriam shot my depressing little theory to hell, and it wasn’t just a reinvigorated sense of my own powers: something elemental had been aroused that was instinctively attached to making babies. It’s incredible how simply we’re wired. In the days that followed, Miriam became my A1 breeding candidate, alpha bitch and repository of all manner of marital fantasies. I imagined us betrothed in elaborately catered affairs in Angkor Watt or New Zealand, lovingly captured in the New York Times Weddings/Celebrations section. Dad would happily pay through the nose; the bliss of it might even heal Gita of her tremors, allowing her to walk again. (Sorry, folks, but it’s true — at the root of everything is the need to please one’s parents.) Miriam would be a few months pregnant during the ceremonies, a saucy zitz and added delight to the gathered tribes. Oh, did I mention those tribes would be flown in by chartered jet? Knowing Perry, elaborate trust funds would already be in place, ensuring cushy futures for hordes of children, as Miriam would undoubtedly prove herself to be in possession of a shockingly fertile womb. HBO would pick up Holmby Hills and I’d settle into “the life,” that of a proper man and mogulian force to be reckoned with. I’d give great amounts to expunging this and that disease, enshrined and honored at black-tie galas, just like Dad. How would Clea react? Sure, she’d be hurt — at first. There’d be some fireworks… where’s the fun without fireworks? Besides, Miriam totally got it, understood from the beginning that Clea and I were contentious, harmlessly amorous siblings. To soften the blow, god-motherhood would thus be conferred. Clea would prove herself a natural, spurred on to drop a few kids of her own (by anonymous donor). If it was too late, I’d spring for a Mongolian, hiring a pro to arrange trips to orphanages and facilitate paperwork.
That’s how I walked around — wearing the scent of Miriam’s ovulations like a dreamy cologne, in full acceptance that the tidal tug emanated from the dictates of social order, not soul mate. But sometimes they seemed damn hard to tell apart.
~ ~ ~
WHEN THAD’S LUNCH WITH MORDECAI and the Danish DP wannabe director was canceled, Clea got it into her head we should all go down to Disneyland. It’d been a rough week and she thought it might be “fun” to get him out of the Chateau and “into open air.” I hadn’t been to the Magic Kingdom in years; the escapade jibed perfectly with my second adolescence (courtesy of Miriam). Still, I was surprised at the level of Thad’s excitement when she floated the idea.
When we arrived in Anaheim, he suddenly got excited about California Adventure — so instead of going to Main Street, we hung a right. Friendly guards cursorily searched the girls’ handbags then pointed us toward the truncated Golden Gate Bridge that served as the corollary theme park’s entrance.
A sense of horror quickly descended.
There was nothing but wide-open spaces filled with porcine, handicapped families tooling around in rented, motorized tricycles. In place of attractions, an onslaught of shops — vast franchised plains of promotional material that looped back on the World of Dizleenan like a nauseating Möbius strip. Wall-to-wall music of the overamped John Williams variety piped relentlessly through invisible speakers, inflated and gaudily anticipatory, a sound track typically heard over opening (or closing) credits of a Spielberg extravaganza; everywhere you turned the orchestra strained toward something massive yet all one encountered were sprawling boutiques, screaming toddlers, and crippled fatties in PC motorcarts. Clea wanted to go roller-coastering and finally, miles away, we spotted “Mulholland Madness.” Weirdly, the point of the ride was to simulate what it would be like to speed around Mulholland Drive. There was a long line but a “cast member” (translation: wage slave) signaled us through, having cheerfully recognized Thad as a VIP. It was lame enough to see a replica of the Manhattan skyline in Vegas, or the Eiffel Tower in Orlando, but something else entirely to take a forty-five-minute sojourn from the Chateau in order to be whipped around a simulacrum of my native Mulholland. Soon, no doubt, there’d be a new wonderland — a mini-Disneyland within the park itself, a glorified, edited version of the Happiest Place On Earth™, with tinier boutiques filled with bitsy souvenirs. Secondhand reality was hot! I thought about my faux-Dynasty project, Holmby Hills, and got even more dejected.
As my mood grew more cynical and downcast, Thad became contradictorily energized. He tugged us this way and that, as if burning off the nervous energy accumulated during the week. He and Miriam walked arm in arm, chortling about her brainstorm to make him a bestseller. (I was genuinely glad to see him upbeat.) Then he’d hook up with Clea and off they’d go while Miriam and I strolled among the meat puppets, dissing Black Jack Michelet. She was resolute her plan would succeed, giving Thad the last laugh. She wanted to huddle with Perry for his blessing and approval; I told her I would seriously lobby the cause. Basically, I’d agree to anything she asked, which had nothing to do with the fact she was my potential wife and the mother of my children, nothing to do with the fact at that very moment she had arched her neck to inhale the scent of my inner ear, nothing to do with the fact she was joyfully showing off the sun-bleached hair on her forearms, parading them for my delectation, and that her eyes witchily widened when I brushed her thigh and kissed a strawberry wedge of lip (in full view of grimy-costumed Cast Members, and the riveted toddler-spawn of a paraplegic dad) — and certainly nothing to do with the fact I found her crusade to get Thad his millions to be heroically sound, just, and true.