Dead Stars (46 page)

CLEAN

[Telma&Biggie]

The Children's Hour

Servers

set up lunch on a gilded, baroque table beside the large stream that flowed thru the grotto/cave (a continuous loop) at the far edge (
which
edge Telma knew not) of the property, an unthinkable 112-acres in the heart of the heart of Bel-Air. Biggie's dad bought the original 30-acre property from Louis Trotter, the waste & excavation king, adding on whenever adjacent parcels became available. The land and three houses sitting on it—all other homes had been razed upon purchase—were owned by Closely Held Holdings, a corporation whose sole shareholders were Biggie, his brother Brando, their father Bertram, and Bonnie the absentee mom.

The enormous structures were approximately a mile apart. Each was inhabited by a single resident (Brando in the Gehry, Biggie in the Neff, Bertram in the Paul Williams), conjoined by seamless Calatrava-commissioned glass corridors, though no one had actually ever used the walkways to go from house to house, at least not to anyone's memory. Brainard Sr. hadn't left his classic Hollywood Regency since Bonnie vanished (five years ago come spring), & in fact was rarely seen at all; occasionally, Brando would report to Biggie he espied their father at some ghastly hour of night during a storm, slowly, meditatively making his way a ¼-mile or so into the wind & rain-battered, unbreakable glass cocoon, his Meerschaum Calabash in hand, an insomniac spurned by his succubus, a cuckolded Sherlock lacking the balm of opiates to alleviate the distress of cracking a case for which he would never be hired: The Wife Who Would Not Return.

“Was this here . . .
before
?” said an uncomprehending, nearly bug-eyed Telma, in reference to the cave and underground mini-river. They took an elevator to get there, and Telma noted it hadn't been a particularly
short
ride down.

“We finished last year. I think it's illegal—the city thought we were putting in retaining walls. My dad said it's some kind of architectural wonder.”

Her salmon & watercress salad just sat there.

“But what's it
for
?”

“Uhm, my mom's a spelunker. She goes all over the world exploring caves, ones with rivers flowing through. She always sends postcards. She sent me one from the Deer Cave in Borneo. And one from the Caucasus Mountains—it's the deepest in the world. She sent one from the
longest
cave. That's in Kentucky.”

“Is that where she is
now?
Somewhere in a
cave
?”

“She sent one from Vietnam with a picture of where she and Marj were spelunking. The Vietnam cave is the
biggest
one in the
world
. But the card took really long to get here so maybe they already left. It's called Hang Son Doong, & it's in the Annamite Mountains. National Geographic said the ceilings are 800-feet high. It said you can fit six 40-story skyscrapers inside
one cave
.”

“Who's Marj?”

“My mom's buddy.”

“Doesn't your mom have email?”

“No. Not really. I don't think so. She never gave me one. I think she probably just writes postcards and letters.”

“That's so weird.”

He ignored her comment. Telma regretted having made it.

“Sometimes the only way from one cave to another is by an underground
river.
They have all kinds of breathing systems, you know, aqualungs, you can go for 5 hours without surfacing. But if you use the river to swim to a new cave, and you have to go underwater for 10 or 15 minutes to get there, and on the way back, after you're walking around and exploring the new cave, if on the way back something goes wrong with your equipment or you run out of oxygen, the cave becomes your tomb.”

“How horrible!”

“Because there isn't any way back but through the river. That's why my mom and Marj use the buddy system. If one of them has an equipment failure, they can still get back because they could take turns with the oxygen on the way back. That's why they explore together. You just can't spelunk alone.”

Telma thought
OMG so rad so crazy!
& for a moment was mindlessly giddy. She stood up, made a few scrunchy elastic gargoyle faces, then sprinted alongside the river, demonically pirouetting as she went.

She stopped, about half a 747 away from her host.

“Hull there!” she shouted.

There was a faint echo.

“Biggie! How
deep
is it? How
deep
is the
river!
”

“Maybe 4½, 5 feet?” He spoke normally but the subterranean acoustics made him easy to hear. “You can program how fast you want to make the current—or make it so there's no current at all.”

“Can we
swim
in it?” she asked, slowly venturing back while doing a jig.

“
I
don't, but
you
can. I like to rowboat.”

“Let's
rowboat!
” She was positively Dionysian. “But where does it
go
? Where does the river
go
?”

“It just loops around.”

“This is so much radder than Disneyland!”

“The whole thing goes for like maybe four miles?”

“O my God.”

She could barely contain herself. After a few more cartwheels, she resumed her place at the table. Biggie was halfway through a 4-tiered club sandwich, the most beautiful club sandwich Telma had ever seen. She wanted to marry him.

“Will you come with me to the Courage Ball?”

“Sure. What is it?”

“It's St. Ambrose's annual fundraiser for pediatric oncology. I'm actually going to perform.”

This, announced with less than usual verve, owing to the development with the Canadian girl.

“Will you tell Camino so she can put it in the calendar? I'm really bad at remembering that kind of stuff.”

“
Beyoncé
's performing too!”

The elevator opened and a server stepped out, along with Camino, who stood by while he cleared the table before setting down goblets of hot fudge sundaes.

“Camino, Telma wants me to come with her to . . .” He turned to his guest. “To what is it again?”

“The Courage Ball, on the 19th.”

Telma wasn't sure if his forgetting was normal or maybe a part of what was wrong with him. Camino swiftly handed her a card with all her contact information and Telma said she would forward the invitation. Then Camino told Biggie that his other guest had arrived—“a Mr. Bud Wiggins.”

“What does he want?”

“Your brother said it's about one of your projects. He said you made the appointment yourself.”

“O!
I
know what it's about. My
Antigone
.”

The server stepped back into the lift after setting down a fresh pitcher of pink lemonade. Camino followed him, and briefly held the door to keep it from closing.

“Shall I say that you're on the way up?”

“As soon as we finish our dessert.”

Camino smiled, the door closed, & they ascended.

“What's
Antigone
?” asked Telma.

“It's a Greek play.”

“What's it about?”

Biggie just shrugged. Telma thought he might be getting tired, but she'd be going soon & had to ask one more question.

“She didn't come home even when she was in Kentucky?”

Biggie didn't respond. It was as if he hadn't heard her. The silence was awkward but she decided to ride it out.

“Kentucky has the longest cave in the world. It's called the Mammoth Cave and it's over 350 miles long. I always Google Earth whatever cave my mom and Marj are exploring.”

Telma wasn't sure if the oddness of his response was due to Asperger's (her mom put that in her head) or something as-yet undiagnosed & more serious.

“My mom sends me postcards, she doesn't do email. They're spelunkers,” he said, wrinkling his forehead. “My mom and Marj. That's why we put the cave in. Because it's undiscovered, and she loves finding new caves. If you're going to be a spelunker, you have to live by the buddy system.”

. . .

Biggie looked away as Bud shook his hand. They sat in the living room, Bud making awkward desultory talk while Biggie majorly fidgeted. Then Biggie stood, motioning for Bud to come along; the rest of the meeting was held in the boy's bedroom.

“Your brother tells me you're the idea man.”

Bud felt like he was auditioning for a reality show.

Biggie was already engaged in front of the monitor; without taking his eyes from it, he told Bud to come closer. The writer wheeled up a chair and looked over Biggie's shoulder.

“Is that Google Earth?”

Bud never used it before. Biggie said he was in Vietnam, at a great cave. He used his “man on the street” cursor to fly over hillocks & mountains. The sea level indicator rose and fell.

“You can't go
inside
the caves, but you can see all around them. You can even see the parking lot where people leave their cars.”

“Pretty amazing.” (And it was.)

“You're not on Wikipedia,” said Biggie.

Oy.
“Thank God,” said Bud—which would have been a not brilliant but OK response if Biggie had asked why he wasn't on Facebook or Twitter, those being things one could elect to be a part of or not. Whereas a Wiki page was created without one's participation or approval, based solely on the small or large mark one had made in general society. Bud prayed the boy would just let it go; he didn't feel like being busted.

“So,” said Biggie. “My brother said that you—can you refresh me as to why you're here again?”

Whatever was wrong with the kid happened, at the moment, to work in Bud's favor.

“Your brother said you had an idea . . . Brando said you had
lots
of ideas—but I guess the one he said he wanted you to talk to me about was a drama. And not a comedy. He said it wasn't mainstream. Your brother's hiring me to write the script of it. He wanted us to meet, so you could pitch me the idea.”

“O! Right! My
Antigone
!” He actually turned to look at Bud. “Have you read the play?”

“In college,” Bud lied. He hadn't read it
or
gone to college.

“Can I just email you the article my idea is based on?”

“Whatever works.”

He wrote down his email; Biggie sent the attachment right then.

“Your name's Bud,” he said, swiveling in his chair again to face him.

“Correct.”

“My brother likes
high concept
but I'm moving away from that. I'll still feed him ideas. Though it's starting not to feel right anymore.”

Bud understood exactly what the kid meant. Maybe Brando was right. Maybe they
would
become soulmates. Maybe Bud would move in after all.

Biggie turned back to the screen. “What's your address? I mean, to where you live?”

He realized that his host wanted to travel to Bud's home via Google Earth. He gave him Dolly's address in the flats; if he was faster on his feet, he would have given him Tolkin's. As Biggie entered “111 S Cañon,” Bud said, “It's a little apartment in Beverly Hills that I only use to write”—he knew the building was going to look shitty & radiate loserdom. The saving grace was, he had a feeling the kid's pathology precluded him from judgment.

Just when Bud was fantasizing that the satellite images would be fucked up or hopelessly scrambled, a perfect photo of the front of the apartment house coalesced into crystal clarity. You could even see the car that belonged to the Vietnamese owner parked in the driveway. Biggie did his man-on-the-street thing, and began to walk around the building. Bud had never seen anything like it. Suddenly, they were on the south side, looking into Bud's room, the room he had lived in intermittently for over 40 years. For a moment, the screenwriter panicked, thinking that Biggie could make an adjustment that might show Bud inside masturbating, an activity he engaged in four to five times a week to burn off nervous energy and facilitate creativity. Biggie continued his saunter around to the back of the building, where Dolly's old Lincoln Mark IV had been parked with two flat tires for the last five years. She no longer had a license (she wouldn't physically be able to drive it even if she did), but refused for nostalgic reasons to have it towed for the tax write-off. Bud asked Biggie to “walk” to the rear of the car and focus on the license plate—there it was,
. Biggie flew to the front of the building to show him another feature, one that allowed you to go back in time and see what the place looked like from the first day that Google had photographed it ten years ago . . . they watched how the façade of the building had changed year to year with the Vietnamese woman's remodeling. Bud could recall each of those annual façades, viewing them beside the parallel timeline of his failure as a son, a man, an artist.
Jesus.