Until I Find You

you—he wants, more than anyone, to see you win.”

There was a lot of waiting at the Academy Awards. Erica took Jack and Miss Wurtz inside the auditorium, where they waited for an eternity. Jack drank too much Evian and had to pee—this was before Billy Crystal was carried onstage like a baby by a motorcycle cop in sunglasses and a white helmet, and the evening officially began.

Jack had a sixth-row aisle seat. All the nominees had aisle seats; Richard Gladstein sat in the aisle seat in front of Jack, and Wild Bill Vanvleck had the one behind him. Miss Wurtz was seated between Jack and Harvey Weinstein. Caroline didn’t remember who Harvey was—Jack had introduced them twice at the party the previous night—but she knew he was someone important because there was a television camera pointed at him from start to finish. For reasons that would remain unclear to Jack, Miss Wurtz deduced that Harvey was a famous prizefighter—a former heavyweight champ. (Quite possibly she’d overheard someone saying how much Harvey enjoyed a good fight. Jack could think of no other explanation.)

The Best Supporting Actor award was announced fairly early in the program. When Michael Caine won, Jack knew it would be a long wait for the writing awards, which were near the end of the evening. Almost no one sat through the entire program—especially not if you’d had as much Evian as Jack. But you had to pick your pee-break pretty carefully; they would let you leave or go back to your seat only during the TV commercials.

Miss Wurtz became enraged at those award-winners who overspent their allotted forty-five seconds for their acceptance speeches. Pedro Almodovar really pissed her off; in accepting the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for All About My Mother, Pedro went on for so long that Antonio Banderas had to pull him offstage.

“Buenas noches!” Miss Wurtz called out to Almodovar.

They took their pee-break—that is, they took Jack’s pee-break, since he was the one in dire need of it—during the presentation of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. This year it went to Warren Beatty. Caroline was cross with Jack for causing her to miss it. Miss Wurtz had once had a crush on Warren Beatty. “Nothing compared to what I felt for your father, Jack, but it was a crush just the same.”

By the time they were back in their seats, Jack had to pee again. He whispered to Miss Wurtz that if he didn’t win, he would have to pee in his Evian bottle. (Jack was counting on there being a men’s room backstage—if he could get there.)

Finally, the writing awards came; thankfully the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay preceded the award for Best Original Screenplay. Kevin Spacey was the lone presenter. Annette Bening was supposed to join him onstage, but she was arguably too pregnant to risk the short trip from her seat. Spacey made a joke about how she was “due to go into production herself.” He said further: “I could not ask her to climb stairs, unless of course she wins the Oscar. Then she’ll climb up here on all fours.”

Jack took this as an unfavorable omen for his chances to win. Given his night in Helsinki with the pregnant aerobics instructor, the very idea of Annette Bening on all fours in her condition filled him with remorse. But it was only seconds after that bad moment when Kevin Spacey said, “And the Oscar goes to—” Jack didn’t hear the rest because Miss Wurtz was shrieking.

“Think of how happy William is for you, Jack,” she shouted in his ear, between kisses. Of course the camera was on them, and Jack was aware of The Wurtz looking past him to the camera; she knew exactly where the camera was because it had been pointed at Harvey Weinstein, the former prizefighter, all night. Jack was on his feet—Richard was kissing him, Wild Bill, too. Harvey crushed Miss Wurtz and Jack in one embrace. When Jack stepped into the aisle, he saw Caroline blow a kiss to the camera—her lips forming the name William as she did so.

Jack took the Oscar from Kevin Spacey and spoke for only thirty-five of his allotted forty-five seconds; in a small way, this made up for Pedro Almodovar thanking the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of La Cabeza, the Sacred Heart of Mary, and all the rest of the living and the dead. Of course Jack thanked his third-grade teacher, Miss Caroline Wurtz, because he knew that the camera would go to her if he did. He thanked Mr. Ramsey, too, and naturally he thanked Richard, and Wild Bill, and everyone at Miramax. Most of all, Jack thanked Emma Oastler for everything she’d done for him, and—largely because he knew how angry it would make the blonde—he thanked Leslie Oastler for her contributions to the screenplay. Lastly, Jack thanked Michele Maher for staying up late to watch him. (In his heart, he hoped Michele’s sort-of boyfriend was watching, too. Hearing Jack thank Michele might make the boyfriend jealous and lead to their breaking up.)

Jack might have used the full forty-five seconds if he hadn’t had to pee so badly. When he left the stage with Kevin Spacey, they passed Mel Gibson coming on—Mel was the presenter for the Best Original Screenplay award, which would go to Alan Ball for American Beauty. Tom Cruise, a fellow former wrestler, tried to wrestle the Oscar away from Jack backstage; the way Jack had to pee, that bit of friendly fooling around could have ended badly. Clint Eastwood spoke to Jack. (He said: “Way to go, kid,” or words to that effect. Jack knew he couldn’t trust his memory of moments like that—the ones that mattered too much.)

Jack was still seeking the whereabouts of the men’s room when Alan Ball came offstage with his Oscar, and Jack congratulated him. (“Good job, mate,” Jack thought Mel Gibson said, but had Mel been speaking to Jack or to Alan?) After a night of waiting, everything seemed over so quickly.

At last Jack found the place he was looking for. His relief turned to awkwardness almost immediately, however, because he had never been to a men’s room with an Academy Award before. Leslie Oastler had attempted to diminish Oscar by describing him as a “gold, bald, naked man holding what is alleged to be his sword,” but in Jack’s estimation, an Oscar was longer than a porn star’s penis and a whole lot heavier. Jack wouldn’t recommend peeing with one.

It was an experience in childlike clumsiness that reminded him of Marja-Liisa’s four-year-old peeing in his parka pocket at the Hotel Torni. Jack couldn’t quite get the hang of it, so to speak. He tried pinning the Oscar under one arm, but that didn’t work very well. If you’ve just won your first Academy Award, fully understanding that you might never win another one, you’re not inclined to put it down on the floor of a public men’s room—nor would you attempt to balance it on the urinal by maintaining perilous little contact with Oscar’s sleek head by means of your chin.

Jack was glad he was alone in the men’s room; there was no one to observe his embarrassing struggle—or so he thought. Suddenly he saw, at the opposite end of the row of urinals, that there was someone else there. The fellow appeared to have finished with his business; no one could help but notice how Jack was failing to do his.

The man was broad-shouldered, with a weightlifter’s crafted body and an unbreakable-looking jaw. Jack didn’t recognize him right away, nor did he remember that the former bodybuilder had been a presenter; from Jack’s perspective, the opposite end of the row of urinals seemed a football field away. But Jack had no trouble identifying the big man’s inimitable Austrian accent.

“Would you like me to give you a hand with that?” Arnold Schwarzenegger asked.

“No, thank you—I can manage,” Jack answered.

“Goodness, I hope he meant he would give you a hand with the Oscar!” Miss Wurtz said later, when Jack told her the story. Well, of course Arnold had meant the Oscar—he was just being nice! (That the future governor of California might have been offering to hold Jack’s penis was unthinkable!)

It was bedlam backstage. At the next television commercial, Jack went back to his seat in the auditorium; he didn’t want to leave Miss Wurtz unattended. She might ask Harvey Weinstein about his greatest fights, Jack was thinking. Or, God forbid, what if there were a power outage and Miss Wurtz suffered an uncontrollable flashback to her experience in the bat-cave exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum? But by then the evening was winding down; The Slush-Pile Reader had won its only Oscar. It was American Beauty’s night, but it was Jack’s night and Emma’s night, too.

Miss Wurtz was perplexed that she could see no evidence of dancing at the Board of Governors Ball—the dinner party at the Shrine Auditorium after the Academy Awards. No amount of explaining could convince her that ball was an acceptable description of the occasion, but what did Jack care? He was happy.

They ate dinner at a table with Meryl Streep, who’d brought her daughter. Jack could see the wheels of The Wurtz’s mind spinning: here was that woman from Sophie’s Choice with an actual, living child! Jack told Erica that he thought they should leave and go to another party before Caroline committed whatever