I tell her again to take all the time she needs and I promise to be here no matter what and she stops shredding her Kleenex and looks instead at me. “What would I do without you?”
“Irrelevant,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She hugs me and she cries again and one of the numerous pins in my suit pricks me and I bury the pain and I savor the pain. He’s dead. Julie Santos killed him. After all this time, I finally got a little fucking help from the man upstairs and I squeeze my girlfriend and I count my blessings. She pats my back. The tailors return and Love dries her eyes.
“You really do look hot,” she says.
The suit will be ready in time for the funeral. Milo is too sad to write a eulogy and Ray is in shock and I am the loyal boyfriend so I step up and I don’t just jot down some bullshit about his sense of humor and his big, fat heart. Fuck, no. I write the fuck out of this eulogy and it’s right up there with The Third Twin and my kidnapping script, the one I’ll volunteer to finish, now that he can’t because he’s dead.
Love and I emerge from the limousine and the carpet leading into the Beverly Hills Hotel is pink and green. Love says this was their favorite place when they were kids and they had their sweet sixteen party here and she is crying again and I hold her.
“I’ve never been,” I say.
“Well,” she says. “We stopped coming here a while ago, I don’t even know why. We practically grew up in here. They have this soda fountain and we used to get cheeseburgers and then we would stay in a villa and sneak out and run around in the garden.”
“You’re adorable,” I say, and I mean it. When we first met, I was uncomfortable. I thought all this shit with the palm fronds and the multiple bathrooms mattered. But childhood fucks you up, no matter what it looks like. I see that now. The closer we get to having the baby, the less hostility I feel toward my parents. I don’t resent my mom for dumping me at Key Foods anymore because I found warmth there. Poor Forty couldn’t find the warmth in here, this pink and green paradise, this Beverly Hills Hotel.
Memories are all the same at their core; it’s just us trying to keep each other alive, the best parts anyway. We’re all pretending that Forty was a wonderful person and Love is saying something about Beverly Hills 90210, abut Brandon and Brenda Walsh, how they used to call Forty the anti-Brandon.
Everyone who’s anyone is here. Agents, executives, producers, Joaq, and I am the one who Love holds on to, the one who has held it together, the one who will eulogize the man who was like a brother to me. The lights dim. A video begins, a tribute to Forty and “The Big Top” by Michael Penn plays, the song that closes Boogie Nights, and there are pictures of sober Forty and clips of drunk Forty and there is Forty skiing on the water and skiing on the mountains and he is laughing and he is a child and then he is an adult and then he is a child again.
Life.
I cry. It’s important that I show emotion, I realize this, but it’s also genuine. The song has always moved me, the circus sounds, the applause, the blunt sadness and the fatality of life, the way the song doesn’t end so much as it peters out. And now it’s his funeral song so it can’t be mine. Or maybe it can; maybe funerals are different from weddings and people don’t remember them and talk about them, blow by blow. The Michael Penn orchestral dirge slows down and the song slips into silence. The lights come up. It’s my turn. Love kisses me. I step toward the podium.
“I think we all need a moment of silence,” I say.
It’s the right move and I bow my head and everyone does what I do. I have never understood why an Armani suit should cost so much money until now, as I stand here anticipating, trying not to stare at Reese Witherspoon, and readying my pages. I take the mic. “Good afternoon,” I begin. “My name is Joe Goldberg and I am so blessed to know the Quinns, my surrogate family.”
I eulogize the fuck out of Forty Athol Quinn and it’s lucky that I got a head start when I thought he had drowned in the desert. It had to be altered because of his freak end, but the rewrite is good. Great even and I should have a job writing eulogies. The best ones celebrate the person’s potential; they emphasize that person’s unique contribution to society. I talk about Forty calling me Old Sport the very first time we met.
My audience is loving this and I seize this opportunity to educate them. I tell them about one of my favorite books and I’m sure most of them haven’t read it because most of these people focus their energies on reading fictional narratives. But there’s important nonfiction out there that’s useful at a time like this, particularly for Forty Quinn.
“The book is called Life’s Dominion,” I begin. “And it poses a philosophical question. Anyone could stand up here and speak to Forty’s charming wit, his burgeoning brilliance, his generosity, his swagger, his madras shorts and madcap sense of adventure, his extensive knowledge of film and his idealist sense of commitment. We’ve seen his smile, his joy,” I say, pointing at the wall where his life just played out. “But what you can’t see in those pictures is Forty’s philosophy about life itself, and this is where I think I can best pay tribute to him by telling you about Life’s Dominion.” I take a deliberate, staged breath. “The book poses a question we face every day, all day. What is the right choice? A bus is packed with adults, all of whom have lived, all of whom have mortgages and children, attachments. And there is a stroller crossing the street. The bus can brake and go off the cliff and everyone dies. Or the bus can run over the stroller and the child goes.”
Amy Adams tilts her head. Joaq is rapt. “Ronald Dworkin argued that there is no universal right or wrong because it’s valid to say that life is valued based upon what one has already done. But it’s also possible to say that life can’t be qualified, that the baby might have gone on to cure cancer, to win an Oscar.” I know my crowd. I see people whispering, wondering who I am. “Forty Quinn was a unique man. He was the baby in the stroller, the one with everything ahead of him, the potential we all know about, these scripts he sold, after working so hard for so many years to forge connections and get better. He earned his success and it would be remiss to say that anything was handed to him because he grew up running around here,” I say. Amy Adams nods.
“Quinns give. And Forty gave us his stories, the ones he tried so hard to tell, year after year.” I shake my head. Megan Fox uncrosses her legs. She wants me. “I mention Life’s Dominion and Ronald Dworkin because something you might not have known about Forty Quinn was how much he read, how much he wrote, how passionate he was about learning.” That’s the thing about the charade of love; nobody gets mad when you don’t back up your lofty statements about someone’s triumphant life with tangible facts. I look at Love and she smiles. She likes this story I’m telling because the truth would be terrible. “He told me how much he learned from Life’s Dominion shortly before . . .” I trail off.
Reese wipes her eyes and Love’s tears are soaking her dad’s jacket.
“Let me say what we all know. Forty was a giant. He was a force. He was one of the people on the bus, one of us, a person with deep ties in the community, a person who spread his joy everywhere he went. Mrs. Quinn, if you’ll cover your ears, I can tell you how much they loved him at Taco Bell.” I get laughs through tears and I wait for my silence. “Very few people are able to straddle those quadrants of life. Forty is the only person I’ve ever known who could do that. He could play with toys, he could make you feel like the best was yet to come, and he could make you feel like what you’d done was worth everything.”