Read Online I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner - Free Book Online Page A

ditching him before Simon could lock on to his coordinates. “But thank you much. Kind of you to drop by.”
    â€œMy mother thought it would be a good idea to cut through the normal channels—you know, eliminate the middleman.”
    DeVore stopped in his tracks. “Calliope said you should come here?”
    Neither of them looked as if they believed it.
    â€œWell, actually, she suggested I drop it off at the guest house for when you come on Wednesday—at five o’clock. Five’s your time, isn’t it?”
    â€œI see. Then let me have it.”
    â€œI can still send it to your agent.”
    â€œHand it over and I’ll look at it tonight.”
    Hassan made his exit, “Heart of Arknes” in hand. Simon crouched at the edge of the Fellcrum Outback, collecting thoughtsand breath, amazed at the adrenaline the afternoon had required. On the other side, they readied for camera. The Dead Animal Guy sat cross-legged amidst the rocky purplish wilderness, contented, a solitary celestial soldier. Only the presence of a lone grip, Styrofoam cup in hand, surveying a table of pastries, fruit and trailmix, invaded his fantasy, rooting it in the workaday.

    Gliding down Sunset Boulevard. Something in the road. Harpy upon him, hurls him to the ground, scattering teeth to curb like a bloody herd of mah-jongg chips. The dreaming physician ran eastward with the piggybacked cargo, necrotic hands clapped around his neck—trying not to glance down at the wormy holes in the cuticles—apocryphal howling wind chilling him to the bone. Rounding the recurring corner and standing at recurring gate…
    On the way to Malibu, Dr. Trott turned over last night’s images; they still had punch. Same dream, of varying degree, for weeks. Tranquilizers didn’t help. He wondered if soon he would be in the grip of agrypnia, the insomniac’s insomnia: total inability to sleep.
This disorder
, said the literature,
fatal if it lasts much longer than a week, is also seen in diseases and intoxications—especially
encephalitis lethargica
and ergot-poisoning
. He felt foolish and anachronistic, the “recurring nightmare” concept itself a throwback to the fifties, to the time of shelters and tailfins and Miltown.
The Three Faces of Les
.
    It was a big blue Sunday and Obie invited him to the beach house for a screening of
Teorema
. The old friends had had a few whispery, dishy early morning phone chats (Obie saying everyone was full of shit and no one would be able to prosecute, Les trying to believe, scared, needy, unconvincingly cavalier, hanging on Big Star skirts through the incessant hiccups of her call-waiting; just when the paranoia started to recede, Obie would click back on and ask if he had any Percocets. Les would panic, wondering if the feds had tapped the line, and ask, stilted and absurd, if she was kidding. “You know, you should really try to stop being such a fag,” she’d say—so cutting and unnecessary—then take another call and leave him dangling, marooned and punished) but this would be the first they’d seen of each other since the “controversy.”
    Moe Trusskopf, Obie’s personal manager, lay sunning on the deck with a new boyfriend, a sweet-faced gay mafia moll who’d been onthe circuit awhile and was looking to settle down. Les remembered him from the office. About a year ago, he came in with a boil on his ass; he lanced it, then jacked him off. (Moe knew the story, and introduced the boy as Lancelot.) He’d met Cat Basquiat before too, but not in the comfort of his professional offices. At twenty-three—ten years younger than the hostess—his fee was in the mid-sevens and rising. His mother had recently died, rendering the tiny MOM tattoo on his hairless chest mildly poignant. He had a manta ray–shaped birthmark on the upper left quad and pierced nipple as lagniappe. Les scanned greedily. The whole package