The Chrysanthemum Palace by Bruce Wagner

Author:Bruce Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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1 Throughout the day, I heard more than a few comments in that regard, in respectful sotto from the crew.

THE MIGRAINE DIDN’T COME BUT Clea worried nonetheless.

She confided to me something I already suspected: that our friend took a daily barrage of “meds” to control various manias, compulsions, and depression and that it was paramount he neither add nor subtract from the carefully calibrated chemical concoction as it might effect a harsh imbalance of mood. Clea had seen the consequences and it wasn’t pretty. She was worried—aside from the Leopardian lapse, there were recent blips, dots, and beeps on her radar that she couldn’t yet translate—so the two of us kept close watch. Gently, she asked Thad if he was currently taking this pill or that, careful not to antagonize, in the effort to determine whether to begin the begging campaign he not abandon the pills that mattered, at least not till the end of the shoot, a tantalizingly close yet shockingly distant ten days away.

Clea and I were old hands at caretaking—Mom had been a semi-invalid since my early twenties—and made a pretty good tag team. We made sure he was well fed and lightheartedly entertained but confined to his room by shooting day’s end. While prudently maintaining a general policy against overstimulation, Clea considered the sexual act to be palliative and good for his soul, a natural antibody and witches’ brew against the virus of soft-focus schizophrenia. (She took her custodianship with touching seriousness.) Every few days, Miriam called at a late hour in a sultry voice, as if catching mossy, musky whiff of Clea’s carnal healing; though it was more likely she was trying to atone for the celibacy of her last brief visit. If she did bring up Thad, it was by way of signaling phone sex was over—the topic of his cracked psyche definitely broke the mood. She’d usually mumble something about “coming out there if things get too rickety” before slipping back into sexy sign-off mode.

The amazing Michelet had a new preoccupation—at least, new to us. He’d been contemplating a one-man show, which he’d already spoken to Mike Nichols about directing. Or so he said. Mr. Nichols was seemingly enthused. It would be the story of his life: his revenant twin, Zeus-like dad and ice queen mom—the whole shebang. Apparently it had been on his mind a long while but everything had coalesced during the trip to San Rafael. Just after our late-night parlor car confab, he’d had a powerful vision in the form of a disturbing image, nearly religious yet intensely theatrical: himself alone onstage, sitting at a table applying makeup “like a Gielgud or a Richardson” (“not Spalding Gray!” he added pithily) while intimately addressing his audience. The makeup, he added, was none other than a Vorbalid’s, the epiphany being that a monologue encompassing his life would unfold as the cosmo-cosmetic layers were inexorably applied (or removed; he wasn’t quite sure yet), until at performance’s end he stood to face

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