the eggy-weggy properly teed up?»
«Chris, your London vocabulary is really driving me crazy.»
«Be that as it may, I repeat, is the eggy-weggy properly teed up?»
Susan checked the foil wrapped chocolate egg perched on a Marlboro box. «Ready for action.»
«Okay then, Sooz, it's time for whackies!»
Rudy, sensing a trophy, slunk into a shooting angle behind Susan, then in tassels, while Chris called out, «Wait! Your tassels are a mess.» With the fingertips of one hand he held her nipples in place while using his other hand to rake the tinsel. «
«Thank you,
«We Brits are so dominant, so forceful.»
«Sun's almost up,» called Nash, the drummer.
Susan moved into position. Far across the vast geographical sore, the first chinks of sunlight were breaking through the horizon's rock. Susan shouted, «Foreplay!» and walloped the Kinder Egg with such force that it vaporized and fell into the canyon as a mist. Rudy's flash coincided with the sunrise entering into her eye, and she wasn't sure which was which. The photo was a winner: faded child star now in second bloom as rock-and-roll mama.
«
«You liar. You just like me because I got you a green card.»
«You just like
«That's not true. I
«You just love
And so went life on tour. Susan was alpha road-rat on the North American tour of Chris's band, Steel Mountain, the highly caste-conscious temporary family fueled by drinking, smoking, copious drugs and arcade games inside buses that stank of the ghosts of a hundred previous bands.
Susan married Chris two years after the network canceled
The match had its pluses and minuses. Chris had money and Susan did not. Her earnings from her years in TV had been squandered and lost by her mother and stepfather, a fact that she had laboriously kept out of the media. Also, Chris was gay, information that would surely have given surprise to his head-banging musical constituency. Above all, Susan was still in love with the Catholic, divorce-phobic Larry Mortimer. While once it had been easy to find reasons to be around Larry, now Susan needed a better pretext — marrying Chris to land him a green card restored her to Larry's inner-circle. The green-card deal with Chris seemed like just the ticket, and for a while it worked. But when Chris wasn't touring, he lived in London. Susan stayed in California, the partnerless weeks and months adding up across the years. She lived by herself most of the time, in Chris's Space Needle—like orb atop a pole that had the distinct aura of having been handed down from a long succession of emotionally adolescent, newly monied entertainment people. It had filthy shag carpets in longdiscontinued colors, appliances that probably hadn't worked since the dawn of TV dinners, and the impending sensation that the Monkees would pop in through a window at any moment and burst into song. In the Space Needle, Susan realized that the phone really didn't ring too often, and when it did, it was for Chris. Any scripts Larry sent her were for titty flicks. Their phone calls were many: «Oh, come
«You're rock and roll now, Sue. You need to be a Young Mom for TV movies. You know — two kids — those new minivans people are driving. Fridge magnets. People read about you and Chris and the rest of those gorillas trashing a Ramada on a tour and it scares them off.»
«I'm unbankable, Larry. Say it.»
«You're crazy. I send you a dozen scripts a week.»
«Slashers and titties.»
«That's not true. They're entry points.»
«Entry to nowhere. I'm stereotyped as either the sucky little Bloom daughter or the slutty rock bitch.»
«I'm not going to have this conversation, Susan, because it goes nowhere.»
«Don't hang up, Larry.»
«Take acting lessons. Karate. Put on that blue lace number you wore for me down in Laguna Niguel and give Chris a peek. It's so hot, he'll switch.»
«You
«Liked? Ooh —
«I looked hot in it? You didn't act like it.»
«I've got worries.»
Larry went quiet. After a while, Susan said, «Can you come over tonight?»
No answer.
«Good-
«
«Hey, Chris. Larry's being a jerk. Where are you?»
«At a chic little Kensington soirйe, and it's so lofty I feel faint. I'm hiding in the library right now.»
«Whose party is it, Chris?»
«Guess.»
«I'm not in the mood to — »
«Think “palace.” »
«No!»
«Oh God. Oh God. I can't believe I'm going to ask you the question I'm about to ask: what's
Chapter Six
Two weeks after John had left Cedars-Sinai, he was physically restored, but his old life and its trappings felt archaic, slightly silly, and woefully inadequate to meet the changes he felt inside — as if he were now expected to play CDs on a wobbly old turntable with a blunt needle. He kept trying to see his life as Susan saw it, or rather, how his life might seem to the woman in his vision, whose identity remained unknown. He was thumping out tuneless rhythms as he walked through the fuck-hut's slate and aluminum walls. Yes, he was experiencing a type of freedom associated with no longer caring about keeping up the appearance of wealth, but with this freedom came a rudderless sensation, one that made him giddy, the way he'd felt as a child as he waited for week upon agonizing week for the postman to deliver a cardboard submarine he'd sent away for — a device that had promised to take him far away into a fascinating new realm, but which upon arrival was revealed to be as substantial and as well constructed as a bakery's cardboard cake box. But
The sun had set. Another day was over. He'd spent the morning speaking with a lawyer inquiring about his will. He'd spent the afternoon at City Hall doing some paperwork. He was still thumping when the doorbell ran (two bars of Phillip Glass). It was the twins Melody had promised. He sighed and buzzed them into his polished-steel
