Moe Trusskopf, Obie’s personal manager, lay sunning on the deck with a new boyfriend, a sweet-faced gay mafia moll who’d been on the circuit awhile and was looking to settle down. Les remembered him from the office. About a year ago, he came in with a boil on his ass; he lanced it, then jacked him off. (Moe knew the story, and introduced the boy as Lancelot.) He’d met Cat Basquiat before too, but not in the comfort of his professional offices. At twenty-three — ten years younger than the hostess — his fee was in the mid-sevens and rising. His mother had recently died, rendering the tiny MOM tattoo on his hairless chest mildly poignant. He had a manta ray — shaped birthmark on the upper left quad and pierced nipple as lagniappe. Les scanned greedily. The whole package gave the potential indictee a stony hard-on.
The viewing room had a clarinet-sized Giacometti, a Noguchi landscape table, a Kitaj pastel and a Baselitz “inversion.” The projection screen dropped down over one of those big Ed Ruscha movie paintings that spelled The End. Baccarat bowls brimmed with blue M&Ms and rock candy. The doctor liked Pasolini well enough but wasn’t up for it. He let his thoughts drift back to a year ago, Lancelot face-down on the table, Les numbing and pressing and draining. Time for some dilatation and curettage…When his rubbery attention snapped back to the screen, the father was about to discover Terence Stamp in bed with his sleeping son.
“Like to have been a fly on that wall,” said Moe.
“How ‘bout a fly on those jeans?” said Obie, and everyone laughed.
Les wandered again, rudderless, this time to a recent meeting with the lawyer. While the attorney general’s formal accusations were imminent, counsel was confident the matter would end in a letter of reprimand from the Medical Board — a slap on the wrist. If that wasn’t forthcoming, an alternative might be probation and community service; at worst, a DEA administrative hearing aimed to revoke or curtail the dermatologist’s prescriptive powers. Les sucked on a saccharine crystal. The baronial law office yanked inside-out like a sock, reborn as a dungeon with a Philippe Starck sink — the free-floating physician now in protective custody at the downtown jail in all its slabby City of Quartz splendor, co-starring with Terence Stamp in Kiss of the Spider Woman. Stamp sure was gorgeous. Could’ve used a nipple ring, though.
Cat Basquiat had his tongue in Obie’s mouth. When Les reached for the M&Ms, Moe said, “What are those, Percocets? I got a headache, Les. Gimme.” Lancelot laughed. Obie said, “Don’t tease, Moe, you know how delicate he is.” Les managed a smile as he faced the screen again, then whoosh back to the clink for some requisite cyst-popping and rimming of trusties whoosh to a DEA meeting, where he stroked out in mid-testimony, crapping his Tommy Nutter trousers as he fell from the witness stand. The rest of his days would be spent in a gold-plated wheelchair, feet drooping down like an unemployed marionette.
Les shuddered, shrugging off this specialized humoresque, knocking a loafer askew and propping a foot up. He reached into the bowl and licked another sugarcane pebble, dreaming of Rock Candy Mountain mistily shrouded by this boy Basquiat’s anal fumes, all vinegar and tuberoses.
How thrilling the proximity, and how improbable to share the citadel! He would have accepted the lowliest position — polishing marble there, or candlesticks. For Big Stars were different than you and me, this he knew from an early age. The boy who watched reruns (The Rifleman, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best), too ashamed of his looks to go to school, knew. The boy who locked himself in the bathroom, tetracycline vials around the sink like votive candles, his face an angry mask of suppurating knots, knew — fussing with them till they wept clear fluid, as if drawn from spinal waters. All he wanted was to be Kurt Russell. Won’t someone make it so? Jan-Michael Vincent…any old sunbaked smooth-faced boy in hip-hugger jeans would do. He longed for fields of undamaged skin, craving Sal Mineo’s buttery cheeks — when they finally came (still sitting on bathroom floor, eyes clenched shut, mirror forgotten for now), he rode to the dusty ranch and necked with Johnny Crawford while his father was at the General Store. The things they did in that barn…he would have “Lucas” next.
Les planned to become a psychiatrist — he would listen to Big Star woes, a shoulder for Big Star tears — but changed course in mid-residency. He was moonlighting at a Malibu emergency room when Streisand came in with an allergic reaction to fish. She was hyperventilating and badly mottled. He shot her up with Benadryl and right away she could breathe again. Any intern could have done it, but Streisand thought he was God. She invited him to her home for a troubled-youth charity hoedown. Les didn’t know a soul yet there he was, bonding with Larry Hagman and Ray Stark, Ann-Margret and Shirley MacLaine. That’s when he had the vision, more like a religious exfoliation: skin as the Comer, hotter than plastic surgery. O Pioneers! Now, after all these years, they wanted to drag him from penthouse to pillory and march him down Wilshire to the hillock of Via Rodeo, for all the Big and Little Stars — and the nothings — to see.
“How are you?”
Obie tucked herself into the chair, hunched in a fetal position. “It’s been a real shitty week.”
“What happened?”
“Stuff with Cat. Career shit. Bullshit.”
She was going to cancel, but had canceled the last three sessions already. She blew her nose and Calliope pushed some Kleenex.
“Are you sick? You don’t look like you’re feeling well.”
“I think I have a — this sinus infection. And there’s…this drug thing, so stupid. With Les. It’s more a pain in the ass than anything else. Have you read about it?”
“I saw something in the paper.”
“It’s like, enough. It’s so ridiculous. Poor Les — he’s really upset, he’s like, shaken. You know, he’s concerned about his career.”
“As he should be.”
“Has he talked to you about it?”
“You know I wouldn’t share something like that.”
“Nothing’s going to happen.”
“There are no guarantees. And it can’t be much fun.”
“I know — I’m not in denial, I’m not saying it’s nothing. It’s just, I’m so used to—he’s not. He’s never been in the glare of the whole whatever. But there’s no way, that would be insane. I mean, for them to—I’m the one, if anyone. And it’s such a victimless crime, if a crime at all. I mean, don’t these people have better things to do? I want to talk about something else.”
“Did you take anything today, Oberon?”
“What?”
“Did you take anything today?”
“No! Why?”
“You’re slurring some of your words.”
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the Zoloft.”
“Zoloft doesn’t make you slur.”
Obie blew her nose again, then closed her eyes. “There’s something I really need to talk about.”
“In a moment,” she said, sternly. “I don’t want to see you in here under the influence.”
“I’m not—”
“That’s a rule, Oberon.”
“I haven’t slept in two days and I have this sinus thing that I took some — what’s it called, Atarax? — it’s like unbelievable, they’re like reds. I haven’t felt this good since high school. I’m kidding. I mean, I could barely drive over here.”