On the way to the airport, Zev got the bug to hit the legendary Gotham Book Mart. He was greeted by a tidy tree farm of authors he’d never heard of, and that was surprising, because if Zev wasn’t a great reader (didn’t have the time), he definitely considered himself au courant. He scanned the major Reviews from cover to cover, and the lit rags too — he loved the ones with poisonous intramural letter exchanges the most. There were droves of people at the Turtletaub Company whose only job was to ferret out writers before they were hot, textual soldiers who did nothing but read galleys and talk to book agents all day long. Still, there was nothing like going through the stacks and sniffing out quarry oneself. Example: a short while after whizzing past the pale cashier, Zev purchased the thirteen-volume Ecco Press edition of Chekhov’s short stories, arranging for them to be FedExed to L.A. — within five days, each tale would be “covered,” i.e., broken down re: plot, characters, updatability. Like a high-brow predator, Zev stood at the register, flipping through titles — Roberto Calasso, Cormac McCarthy reissue, Penguin Henry Green — then grabbed a volume his sister had always pushed on him…Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls.
“Anything I can get you, Mr. Turtletaub?”
Your mouth around my dick came to mind but the producer asked for cookies instead; he loved the warm doughy meltiness of a front cabin chocolate chip. The steward had a rock-hard bubble ass — no Princess Tiny Meat was he, of that much Zev was certain.
A month ago, the important passenger chanced across an article in a magazine that had seized his imagination, worrying it ever since. It was about a service that arranged for persons with AIDS to get cash advances on their life insurance. It seems that within the HIV community, brokering this kind of deal had become somewhat of a cottage industry, a vulturine shadowland of the quick and the dead that Zev Turtletaub instantly saw as the stuff of potentially great drama. A towering character already floated at the edge of his mind, a dead zone Music Man, a millennium Willy Loman, and the more he dipped his beak in Gogol’s fountain, the harder it came into focus: that character was Chichikov. Who could do such an epic theme justice? A LaGravenese or a Zaillian — he’d go after talent first. Zev would talk to Alec Baldwin. Tell him this was Academy Award time, Elmer Gantry meets Inferno. It was big, it was very big, Zev could feel it. The man who threw a Jack Russell terrier into a troika of projected half-a-billion-dollar-grossing comedies would soon be known for something else, entering his middle period with a classy, unexpected Schindler’s List—like crossover coup. The beautiful part being the template was there in his hands, pages lightly smeared with fuscous-fingered bile—Dead Souls. The stage was being set for the perfect zeitgeist melodrama, a work of high, elegiac art that wouldn’t be afraid to make money, the frisson being that Gogol was public domain. The rights wouldn’t cost dime one.
He winced at the thought of his sister; she’d call his vision hubris and hate him for his efforts. Aubrey Anne was pretentious that way. He remembered when she came to the house a few years ago and Douglas fixed them a wonderful lunch by the pool. Aubrey spewed patented zingers and made diggy little looks, then announced she had AIDS, just like that. The producer felt spiteful and disconnected. He couldn’t wait for her to leave.
Locking himself in the restroom, he vomited on the descent — a septic torrent of cookies, hot fudge and shrimp, scotch and filet mignon, salad and steamed veggies, potatoes au gratin and a dozen bags of peanuts so sweet they had made him shiver.
It was raining in L.A. The steward draped the coat on his shoulders and Zev slipped him a card. Gogol and Mimsy tucked in armpits, he nodded suavely at his fellow passengers — Katie Couric, Brian Dennehy and the agent Donny Ribkin among them — and debarked. The driver waited at the gate. He took Zev’s Il Bisonte bag and walked eight paces ahead. Down the escalator and through the tube, Aubrey Anne nagged at him. A brainy type, she’d always been mad about the Russians. He could see her scrunched on the sofa, see the covers of the books with their yellow college USED stickers, her four-eyed face buried in Lermontov, The Idiot, Turgenev — and another one that stuck in his mind: This Fierce and Beautiful World. He loved that title but never remembered who wrote it. Oblomov? Maybe. One of his soldiers would find out.
Troy Capra
(Kiv Giraux lies on a blanket, sunbathing. The lawn is green, the sky powder-blue. She is topless. Troy interviews her from OFF-CAMERA. While they talk, his lens drifts languidly over the anatomy: legs, tummy, breasts, smile. Zooming in, dallying. No abrupt movements…casual and conversational. A supered title: THE FOXXXY NETWORK’S STARSHOT #10—XXX-FILE GIRLS. The short, popular segments, dubbed “Starshot Skinscapes,” usually run between feature films on the twenty-four-hour Adult Channel but lately have been airing in MTV-like blocs of five. They have an informal, documentary feel, brainchild of Troy Capra. The fresh, improvisational style and home-movie look have made them a hit with viewers)
Tell us about yourself.
(smiles, deep breath) Okay. My name is Kiv.
Kiv. That’s unusual. Very pretty.
Thank you.
Where from?
Vancouver.
Beautiful place. Lots of television production up there now.
Maybe I should go back!
We don’t want to lose you just yet. That’s close to Seattle, isn’t it?
Vancouver? Uh huh.
Home of the Grunge.
That’s right. Kurt Cobain and many others.
Lotta rain up there.
I’m a rain person.
Tell us how you got into the adult-film business, Kiv.
I was working as a dancer — in fact, I still do, between auditions. It’s something I enjoy.
Bet you’re pretty good.
I think I’m fair. Until a few months ago, I’d never even seen one — an X-movie. Then I started going out with someone—
An actor?
He was an agent.
Uh oh. Name?
…that shall remain anonymous! (laughs) He had a satellite dish—
Still seeing him?
No! It didn’t work out.
Not a big enough dish, huh.
(smiles) That’s partly true.
Most agents have that problem.
And how would you know? (laughs) He was actually very nice. For a while there, anyway!
You were saying…
Well, he subscribed to some of the satellite channels that show adult films, soft-core. You don’t really see very much.
Uh huh. And you liked watching these Disney-type—
(laughs) I wouldn’t say they were quite Disney. But everything was pretty much left to the imagination — in that sense, they were actually very erotic. And very well done.
Make mine medium rare, thank you. Now, is that the Spice Channel? (Kiv nods) And when you and your friend watched this, was that kinda like foreplay?
It did get us in the mood. But then he showed me the other channels—
The FoXXXy Network…
And they showed everything.