They found themselves on line for a hot dog behind Oberon and Dr. Trott. A little girl stood on his shoes. He introduced her as Tiffany, and the child extended a hand for Calliope to shake. Calliope asked Obie if she’d gotten her message. Obie said she hadn’t. They were joined by Donny Ribkin and Ursula, Tiffany’s mother. Les made a joke about therapist gridlock, then Donny said seeing Mitch and Calliope in public was like walking in on your parents while they were doing it. Phylliss Wolfe came over and said they almost had enough for a minyan. Ursula asked what a minyan was and Phylliss said it was “Yiddish for encounter group.”
Only on the ride home did Calliope realize the mother and child she met were the players in Obie’s hellish home-movie, with Donny Ribkin as co-star. She shivered, recalling the hairless white arm and the girl’s tender grip, limp as a rag doll’s.
The Dead Pet Detective had a job in Laurel Canyon; Fluffy was in the cellar, party-heartying with the larvae. It was strictly a BYOL scene — bring your own Lysol — and before you could say yech, the little wrigglers were doing the Top Ramen tango. After, he stopped at the Canyon Mart and impulsively bought flowers and sandalwood incense for Serena.
There were police cars in the driveway. The front door was open and Simon stepped inside. Men in suits were questioning the new nurse, who was near hysteria. Seconds later, Donny Ribkin barreled from the kitchen.
“This is insanity! How could this fucking happen?” He locked eyes with Simon. “What are you doing here?”
“I just stopped to give these to Serena.”
“Thank you, but you’re going to have to leave. I’m sorry.”
“Is she okay?”
“Look, you have to leave, okay? Thank you very much.”
He jostled Simon out without even taking the flowers. Had Serena died? She’d been sick enough that her death shouldn’t have aroused such mayhem. What did Donny’s words in the hall mean? The mood of the house seemed more interrogatory then postmortem. Might she have been killed by a burglar? That was too farfetched…maybe the old woman took an overdose and that’s why the nurse was being grilled. Yes — that made most sense. Or maybe she wasn’t dead at all. But if that were true, where was the ambulance? And if she was already at the hospital, what was the son doing here? If she was dead, who were these people? Where was the coroner? It felt like something had just happened: they never rushed a body out of a house like that.
His car was parked curbside. Simon tossed flowers and incense onto the front seat through the open window. A policeman left the front porch of the home across the way. A woman in a bathrobe covered her mouth with a hand, stricken.
“Do you think she’s wandering the streets somewhere?”
“If she is, I would hope someone will take her in and give us a call.”
“Poor darling! She’s been so ill.”
Simon ran to the side of the house.
He could smell her as he shimmied through the access. She was ten yards in, sitting against a post. He whispered “Serena” and hunchbacked toward her. The eyes were open. A horde of disorganized ants in the superheated throes of discovery laid claim to the darkening ground beneath the bloody, blown-out engine room of her bowel. They would say it was delirium, but Simon knew why she had come. He choked back tears, wondering what to do next. She looked so perfect there, timeless and untroubled — Serena. He would keep her from the maggots.
Above came the querulous footsteps of the son and the men, and Simon wished this house could lift off, basement jettisoned, to find its lonesome orbit somewhere near the Fellcrum Outback. The Dead Animal Guy in Space would petition the Vorbalidian Elders for mercy and they would grudgingly comply, resuscitating her with the proviso she could never return to Earth. Together, they’d cross the firmament of the cellars of eternity, performing obsequies over the dead.
On the eve of burying Serena, the agent had a massage. He got a name from Laura Dern’s chore whore. The masseuse spent a lot of time moving her hands over his body without touching—“dispelling dark energy,” she said. Someone must have blabbed about his mom dying. It was lovely being rubbed out there on the patio. He got sleepy. The fountain tinkled and the hill rustled with scavengers. The girl said she saw a big raccoon.
All day long, he’d been airing the place out. Donny loved this house; maybe he’d move in for a while. Strange, but he’d never bought, always rented — he thought he must have got that from his father. Bernie was always bouncing from duplex to hotel. Serena had kept things up pretty well, though the lot was probably worth more than the house itself. Whole thing might bring two-point-seven — with the market the way it was, who knew. Maybe two-three, two-one. He’d find some Persian schmuck-Jew or Big Star wannabe, sell it for cash, then buy a place in Mandeville or Rustic Canyon. Three acres felt about right. He could actually afford to spend five mill, if he had to. Five mill on a house. You could get something really decent for that. Lying there, getting his bad energy laundered, Donny performed a sprightly minuet of acquisition: he could retire in Fiji or the Côte d’Azur if he chose, or spend a million on a Pissarro. Lasso koi from the Sargasso or bid on a boulle Louis XIV bureau plat at Sotheby’s, three million for a piece of fucking furniture, thank you very much. Something to set the teeth of his colleagues on edge — they were always jockeying for rarefied outside investment interests that made them more than “just agents.” How about the Donny and Serena Ribkin Foundation? Generous and unconditional stipends to radical artists. Whatever he came up with, the grieving son promised himself Jessye Norman would sing at his next birthday.
The service at Hillside would be small. He hadn’t yet called his father. The old man was probably gambling at some West Hollywood card club or standing at the Peninsula bar, informing a hooker his son was king of ICM. He could see it: Bernie at the cemetery, sussing out the gallery, slithering up to a mark, one of the agency crew, pitching his loser sequel there at the open pit as the casket ratcheted down. Well, fuck him. He’d have to read about the death of Donny Ribkin’s mother in the trades. Then he could make his phony graveside communion—oh, the way we were! — hike up the hill for the big false moment, standing on the grassy doormat of her remains with supermarket flowers and crocodile tears. What a ham. His drinking buddies from the Golden Years were buried there, Dick Shawn and Vic Morrow. On the way back to his bunged-up Range Rover, the old bag of semen might even take a walking tour, stop and say hello. All that gloom sure made a fellow want to play an exacta or two — from the memorial park’s gentle slopes, you could practically see the track…. Donny was hard for half the massage, cock straining against the sheet like a dumb, friendly ghost. He didn’t feel remotely erotic, but that was of no consquence; day after night after day, the absurd beggar made its demands. Energy Girl worked around it, never making a move. Wouldn’t toss it a nickel.
The agent got restless and went to see Ursula. On the way, the radio said Oberon Mall had overdosed. He doubled back to Cedars. When he got to the hospital, the media circus had already staked its tents. Donny parked across and sat in the darkness, immobilized. He didn’t have it in him tonight, not just because of his mother’s death, though that was handy. No one would exactly expect him to show up at the ER with the lawyers and publicists. He was thinking more along the lines that it was time to change his life, disappear somewhere in a three-hundred-thousand-dollar motor home; cliché agent burnout thoughts, life as Lynchian road show. Nic Cage could play him in the movie of his life. Donny began to laugh, then saw his mother drifting before him in a Valentino; she hovered outside the windshield, an ancient dulcinea on the hood, trying so hard to charm the Acolytes at Les’s, so valiant, smiling through a veil of eviscerating pain. The agent wept convulsively until the windows fogged, shielding him from the prying searchlight eyes of Entertainment Tonight.