The Bones (45 page)
Authors: Seth Greenland
Frank picks up the phone and dials. One ring, two, then a voice on the other end, a little sleepy, still early.
"Hello?"
"Mercy, it's me."
Silence on the other end. Frank hears a bird singing outside the window, looks at the blue water kissing the sand. Two fishermen
pull their small boat ashore. Then: "Frank?" Complete shock, her voice a smoky whisper. Disbelief, a choked sound. Laughter,
floating through the wires, or was it a sob, perhaps both? More silence. It's an effort for her to get a word out, but she's
trying. The fishermen are unloading their catch now. Mercy collects herself, and she doesn't let him down when she clears
her throat and asks, "How's my favorite dead man?"
"You like the beach?"
"If Oklahoma had one, I'd never have to leave."
The conversation goes on like this, as if it's an ordinary occurrence for a man the whole world believes to be ashes in ajar
to call up someone he's been wondering about and ask her to fly south. To Frank it feels like the most natural thing in the
world.
In the late spring, a little over a year later, Lloyd and Dustin are spending a Saturday afternoon at the Los Angeles Zoo.
Lloyd tried to move back in with Stacy, but after weeks of halfhearted attempts at communication inevitably followed by ruminative
silences, it became apparent that it was no longer going to work, and he got a place in the Oakwood Apartments, a well-known
Los Angeles way station for lonely men leaving falling marriages. Lloyd has made a conscious effort to spend more time with
his son, and the boy, who had often been skittish when alone with his father in unfamiliar surroundings, has started to look
forward to their outings, which have included a Dodgers game, a trip to the Long Beach Aquarium, and of course Disneyland.
Lloyd has grown to enjoy these times with Dustin far more than he could have anticipated. Now he holds his son's warm hand
in his as they walk through dappled shadows toward the chimpanzee area, a remarkably well-landscaped environment of boulders,
tall grass, crags, and water, all designed to foster the illusion in the simian mind that nothing is amiss.
Once Lloyd put his legal difficulties behind him, he returned to Los Angeles to face a new professional world. True to Harvey
Gornish's word, Lynx declared him in breach of his contract and his deal was abrogated around the same time
Happy Endings
was canceled. Not long after the Lynx checks stopped arriving, they were forced to sell the Brentwood house, and to Stacy's
immense chagrin she and Dustin are currently back in Mar Vista, where she suffers like a White Russian exiled to Paris by
the arrival of the Bolsheviks. Lloyd has recently joined the writing staff of a long-running sitcom, one he would not watch
if he were not working on it, and so continues to responsibly provide for his fractured family. He is well regarded in the
writers' room, and what transpired in Oklahoma has supplied him with the patina of boundary-breaching eccentricity so prized
by his comfortable colleagues, whose own glaring violations of the social order consist of activities like turning up in the
express checkout line at the Whole Foods market with eleven items when they
know
they're only allowed ten. The result of Lloyd's journey into the shadow world is that he is slowly beginning to feel less
uncomfortable in his own life, more accepting of his limits, and finally, grateful for his luck. Upon receiving an invitation
to the publication party for his former assistant's novel, something that would have once sent him over the edge, he reacted
with a level of equanimity only partially attributable to the increase in his Paxil dose.
Now in odd moments at the office and occasionally in the evenings in his one-bedroom apartment, he labors over his still-untitled
book about Frank with lowered expectations. After having written more than a hundred pages, he showed it to a few people and,
upon discussing the manuscript with them, decided to throw it out and start over, the consensus being it lacked an animating
idea or philosophy. But Lloyd considers himself an artist and has decided to persevere in his quest to prove it to the larger
world.
"Daddy, look," Dustin says, pointing in the direction of the ersatz jungle in which several primates are capering. Lloyd gazes
in the direction indicated by his son and notices one of the chimps has an impressive erection, which he is absentmindedly
fondling. At the same time this happy chimpanzee is contentedly nibbling a banana. A Mexican family—mother and father with
three kids—watches the spectacle, pointing and laughing, enjoying their time together. Lloyd envies the chimp, his desires
basic and easily met, untroubled by the need to be more than he is, to foist himself again and again upon an indifferent world.
While this paragon of nature continues to simultaneously consume his banana and masturbate, Lloyd wonders if this irreducible
act might conceivably suggest some kind of unifying credo, which he could elucidate and render as a worldview, the notion
that we are at the mercy of our basic immutable nature, whatever it happens to be, and are only truly contented when fulfilling
the destiny it foretells. For the monkey, it's easy enough since his needs are of a purely physical kind: to have a sated
libido and a full stomach. Sex and Bananas, as it were. But for Lloyd, who is only beginning to understand the degree to which
self-knowledge figures into the human aspect of this equation, it is not quite so blissfully uncomplicated. He realizes if
a worldview is to have any actual resonance in the life of the person who posits it, it must not simply be explicated but
embodied, enacted, lived fully each day, for it is only then that one's destiny can be fulfilled.
Having had enough of the chimpanzees, Dustin takes his father's hand and leads him toward a new adventure, his six-year-old
mind unbowed by experience, alive with possibility. As they walk past the reptile house and toward the big cats, Lloyd once
again finds himself thinking about Frank. Despite the passing of time, the memory of the other man remains a beacon that,
while dimming a little more with each passing day, will abide with him forever.
Burn till there's nothing left but the bones.
Late that afternoon, when he drops Dustin off at the house in Mar Vista, he gets out of the car and hugs the boy, holding
on to him for an extra second (is he bigger than he was two weeks ago?). Although still in his forties, Lloyd knows he is
no longer young and his already attenuated time with Dustin is fleeting. He watches his son run up to the front door and ring
the bell. In a moment, Stacy appears and Dustin vanishes into the house. Stacy waves at Lloyd and gives him a half smile.
She has learned to temper her anger about the dissolution of the marriage, comforting herself with the knowledge that Lloyd
had disappointed her in every way that mattered, so she's going to be better off in the long run. As for Lloyd, now that he
isn't expecting anything from Stacy, he no longer has to hate her. He waves at his soon-to-be-ex wife and gets back in his
car. Then he drives through the gathering twilight to his apartment, where he will prepare a simple dinner and watch television
until it's time to go to sleep.
Thanks, you've been a great crowd. Please remember to tip your waitress.
Thanks to Dick Lochte, Tom Teicholz, David Kanter, John Tomko, Billy Diamond, and Larry David for generously reading early
drafts of this book.
Thanks to my excellent agent Henry Dunow. His enthusiasm and myriad skills have been a boon to me from our first conversation.
Thanks to my editors Colin Dickerman and Panio Gianopoulos. Their insightful suggestions improved the manuscript significantly.
Thanks to Leo Greenland and Drew Greenland for unstinting encouragement.
And finally, thanks to my wife, Susan, and our children, Allegra and Gabriel, for everything.
Seth Greenland is an award-winning playwright. He has written extensively for film and television. A longtime New Yorker,
he lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
The Bones
is his first novel.
The text of this book is set in Bembo. This type was first used in 1495 by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius for Cardinal
Bembo's
De Aetna,
and was cut for Manutius by Francesco Griffo. It was one of the types used by Claude Garamond (1480—1561) as a model for his
Romain de L'Universite, and so it was the forerunner of what became standard European type for the following two centuries.
Its modern form follows the original types and was designed for Monotype in 1929.