I of the Fish

The secretary escorted me into my attorney's office where I was greeted by a stench that would have made a zookeeper sick.

"Come in, come in," he growled, knuckle-walking to the door to take my hand. Kenny had his jacket off, his simian breasts exposed beneath a custom shirt monogrammed at the cuff. I noticed black clumps on the window overlooking Wilshire Boulevard.

"I see you've been throwing your shit again."

"Eh," he dismissed with a wave, "associate pissed me off."

At Horace Mann, Kenny Gutstein had been a scholarship kid like me. Grew up in a development in the Bronx. Dirty white bricks and terraces with dead plants. A mezuzah on every door.

"What's wrong with your face," he asked.

"Dental problem."

He dipped his non-opposable thumb into a vat of Rogaine and smeared it onto his head. "If it's herpes, I got a doctor in K-town..."

"It's not herpes."

Like me, Kenny had grown up an angry child. Angry because the chicks at HM wouldn't look at him. Angry because he had to wear the same ratty, winter coat for years on end, even when it no longer fit and the goose down flew out the collar. But whereas my anger was tempered with the belief that I would someday overthrow the system with my Upper West Side liberal ideals, Kenny was from the Bronx and, therefore, suffered no utopian delusion about an egalitarian crusade that would rescue the world from greed and iniquity. Kenny's anger was an American anger, simple, Republican in nature, and bent on a vengeance he hoped to satisfy with an accumulation of money and pussy.

"You know you're being sued," he mentioned, his voice deep and mellifluous, a New York accent croaking with authority.

"The credit card thing," I asked.

"No." Ropes and a swinging tire hung from his ceiling. "Some clown named Juan Remarqo claims you've been ripping him off."

"Never heard of him," I said.

"He's with a big firm. Sold some screenplays. Has a deal at Fox."

"Can you take care of it?"

Kenny leaned forward, simmering on his haunches. "I'll make him wish he was never born."

In high school, Kenny joined the debate team, ran cross country and threw a fastball in the mid-eighties. He worked weekends at The Gap and busted his ass to earn a 3.0 at a school where a 3.0 was no easy feat. He needed a good score on his SAT's to land a scholarship to a college he could afford, but the poor bastard couldn't crack the test. No matter -- I took it for him. And during his junior year at Binghamton I took his LSAT's to get him into UCLA Law.

"I've been reading your blog," he said, kicking off his Testoni's so he could grip the desk with his feet. "I like the chapters about you, but Fish's childhood stuff is shit."

"I don't pay you for your creative input."

"Half the comments agree with me."

"The people commenting don't know where the story is going."

"And you do?"

Perhaps it was the anger that got Kenny moving backwards on the evolutionary chain. It started with a hunched posture and protruding brow. Then he went bald but gained the coarse, black thatch that covered his body from neck to toe. Then he made partner and began walking on all fours, leaning on his knuckles for support. I never knew whether the transformation was a medical condition or a professional choice, but either way, Kenny seemed oblivious to the humiliation it caused his family and friends. That or he didn't care. The women sure didn't. Hell, in Los Angeles the broads would fuck a reptile if it drove a Porsche, and Kenny drove an Aston Martin with a special compartment for his pistol and his coke. The kid who couldn't get laid in high school was now accompanied by a bevy of gazelle-thin ingénues at every premiere, six-feet tall and holding his hairy hand while his Ferragamo tie dragged along the red carpet.

"So what's the deal with Fischman," I asked.

"You're to provide him with a childhood. One chapter a month blogged online for a year. Like you've been doing. Only change the names so you don't get sued." With his foot, Kenny opened a drawer, pulled out a stack of paper and threw it at me. "Here. Sign it."

The stack contained thirty-odd pages, stark white except for the last where there was a line for my signature.

"This contract is blank," I said.

"Relax, will ya? I haven't had time."

"You want me to sign a blank contract?"

"I'll fill it in as we go."

"Will Fischman sign it blank too?"

Kenny rocked back and forth in his chair, a gesture showing frustration, or so I remembered from watching the Discovery Channel. He pushed a button on his console and called for an associate. Within seconds, the most frightened 30-year-old I'd ever seen entered the room and took a position by the desk.

"At this point, you'll write everything on the site while Fish provides page maintenance, advertising and PR to build up your traffic." He unbuckled his belt. "Once you have an audience, who's to say someone else can't imitate your style and write under your name?" He rolled onto his desk while the associate yanked off his pants. "As the site grows, you can hire a staff to churn out new material." The associate pulled Kenny's feet into the air, pulled off his diaper and wiped his ass. "Or have your fans submit chapters while you sit back and edit." He put a fresh diaper on my attorney. "Or get someone else to edit." I recognized his Harvard tie. "But you have to start it. Provide Fish with as much of a childhood as you can until he or someone else takes over."

I told Kenny I wasn't comfortable with other people writing under my name.

"Get used to it. Digital media is highly malleable. There's no way to protect it from being altered, copied and redistributed."

"I don't want anyone writing under my name," I held firm, "and I don't want anyone editing what I write. Fish and I agreed to this. I expect him to hold to what he agreed."

Kenny told the associate to get the fuck out of his sight. The man obliged, and Kenny leaped to the top of his desk where he began jumping up and down, feet pounding against metal to create a tumultuous din.

"If you're not satisfied with my approach to negotiating your contract, then I'd be happy to recommend an attorney who charges by the hour!"

He was always making this threat. Truth is, Kenny would have loved to drop me as a client. He worked at a 5% commission, and there was little profit in the deals I brought in. Every hour he spent with me was an hour he lost money.

"You don't need to remind me that I can find another attorney," I said. "Maybe one who doesn't break the law by brokering a deal between two parties he represents. Maybe one who took his own LSAT's and didn't cheat on the bar."

"Grrrrrrrrrrrr!" Kenny grabbed a rope and swung to the far corner of the room where he perched on a shelf, poised to pounce. "You talk to me that way in here? In my own Goddamn office!"

"I'm just reminding you of why I know I can trust you to deliver a contract in which I'll be fairly compensated."

Kenny swung his body back and forth across the room careening dangerously close to my head.

"There's no money in this contract," he stated. "Gornischt. Twenty bucks and an oak leaf."

A sharp pain stabbed me in the gums. A debilitating ache stretching from teeth to ear amplifying the echoes of the copiers, the faxes, the ringing phones and intercoms from other rooms. A white noise cacophony calling to me like a copper wire threaded into my eardrum.

"What's wrong with you," he asked as I clutched the side of my head. Had I heard him right? Did he really say there's no money?

"What do you mean there's no money?"

Kenny gripped a light fixture with his feet and hung upside down, his snout an inch from my face.

"Ad revenue," he farted. "Depending on how much traffic you generate. Paid quarterly and you'll split it 50-50 with Fish."

I asked how much I could expect from ad revenue.

"Don't quit your day job."

"I don't have a day job."

"Then you better get a day job."

I thought of all the hope I'd had on my way to the office. That I would finally have a job writing. That I could get off unemployment and stop borrowing from friends and family. That I could get a human girlfriend or buy Svetlana for a night. That I wouldn't have to bleed from the gums anymore or live in a mold and roach-infested apartment with cracking walls and one lightbulb that I carried from room to room.

"So what am I doing this for," I asked. "If I'm barely getting paid, why would I take the job?"

"Beats the hell out of me." Kenny swung into the window glass and slid down the sill before curling into a shape like Rodin's thinker. "Of course, there are benefits to increasing your presence on the web. Pretty soon, everything will be online. Every book in the library will exist as digital content. The entire way we read and process information will change, and this change will affect our institutions in ways we cannot predict. The Internet will get faster and more agile while the old technologies stagnate with dull content geared exclusively toward mass entertainment. Copyright laws will be irrelevant in a era where we can cut and paste large chunks of information and manipulate them as we please. The bible of the next millennium will be written in binary, assembled in open source and available the instant of its creation."

"But I need money," I said. The pain in my ear was affecting my balance. It pulled at the corners of the room, forcing the walls and ceiling to curl around me. "How is this going to translate into my making money?"

"I don't know," Kenny shrugged. He dropped down and climbed back into his chair. "I just know that Fish, my more important client, really wants a childhood... for some Godforsaken reason."

"My childhood."

"You can't copyright a childhood."

Kenny rang the dainty little bell on his desk that signaled for his afternoon feeding. The associate returned with a bucket full of fruits, vegetables and kosher meat. I had witnessed Kenny eating before, and it was nothing I wanted to see again. I quickly took up the papers and signed them, not because I liked the deal but because I needed to make a deal. Some deal. Any deal. Something that could show progress in my life and an ability to play nice with others. That and I felt physically ill and worried that I might die if I didn't get out of there soon.

"Before I leave," I said, "there's something I wanted to ask." I put a finger in my ear hoping it would straighten out the path between me and the door. "Have you ever actually met this Fischman guy?"

"Of course," said Kenny, tearing the meat from a bone. "Known him and Ethyl for years. Did you know they're having a kid?"

The associate jerked his hand away lest Kenny bite it off.

"So he's real," I asked.

"As real as you or me."

* * *

Downstairs in the parking garage, I waited for the valet to dig my Volkswagen from the depths of the building where it was hidden so that the BMW's, Lexus's and Infiniti's wouldn't ever have to exhaust the same air. A blue Prius pulled up in front of me, and the driver leapt out like a deranged ballerina in oversized sunglasses.

"Judd fucking Trichter," he shouted. It was my old friend Oliver MacKenzie, or Ollie as they call him in the tabloids. Six feet tall and anorexic to the tune of 130 pounds. Strangely androgynous like the manifestation of some Hindu god. "You coming from Kenny's," he asked.

"Just signed a contract," I said. Kenny was his lawyer too. In fact, I'd set them up together years ago.

"Congratulations," he grinned. "We should celebrate!" Ollie explained that he had just come from Kenny's office himself but had left his Harry Potter book upstairs. "Leave your car here and grab my table at Scalia's. I'm buying."

Ollie and I first met when we were 12-year-olds auditioning for the lead in a major motion picture. He beat me out for the role, and I wound up with a small, entirely forgettable part in the movie, which later went on to become a classic. Over the years, we worked together in other films, commercials and plays. He'd bring me in on projects after he was already cast or throw auditions my way for roles he had turned down. Many a year, I made my union dues and health insurance from work I never would have gotten if not for Ollie.

"So how've you been," he asked.

"Great," I said. "Couldn't be better. You?"

"Fantastic!"

The hostess seated us at an outdoor table where Ollie could face the street. This way he could pretend to be annoyed by the development execs, lunching agents, young starlets and paparazzi who interrupted us every five minutes.

"You see that redhead behind me," he asked, referring to a nervous, fidgety-looking model a few tables away.

"What about her?"

"I've been fucking her for a month." Ollie always felt a need to remind me that he was heterosexual.

"Who's the guy she's with," I asked.

"Her husband."

"He know?"

"Probably," he shrugged. "Sometimes they like me to fuck their wives."

I ordered the pasta, and Ollie got the chopped salad. He asked the waitress for Equal and demanded she take the bread away from our table.

"I heard you just wrapped a movie," I said.

"Watched the rough cut last night."

"How'd it look?"

"Awful."

Ollie came from a good family with a modest home in Westchester County. Parents who loved him and called him every day. And he was always buying them things. New cars. Season tickets to the Yankees. Hell, he could afford it. Five years ago, Ollie booked the lead in a pilot that became a hit on network television. He was making six figures a week plus whatever he earned on investments and commercials in Japan.

"I saw your film on the internet," Ollie smirked, laughing in a good-natured, ribbing sort of way. "I think it was your most convincing work in years!"

What Ollie was referring to was not a piece I had participated in willingly. It was a short that appeared on everybody's Yahoo page for a week after it was taken from Tracy's website. It featured her punching me in the face, me bleeding from the mouth, then me crawling to the bathroom in agony.

"Was that staged," he asked.

I told him it wasn't. "Or mostly not. I think." Shit, did she set that up? Is everyone setting me up?

"I haven't seen Tracy in years," Ollie added while he typed a message on his iPhone. This was the first I ever heard that they knew each other. Great, I thought. He probably fucked her. "What's she up to?"

I told Ollie that Tracy was really into this web cam thing. That she believed it was somehow going to take over movies, TV and theater. That people watching androids go about their business in their apartments in real time would sell as mass entertainment.

"That's insane," He said.

"Tell me about it."

"Then again."

Every time I see Ollie, I always wonder why he got the part and I didn't. It was something I thought about constantly and was reminded of every time some new rejection arose. Was it because he was taller and pretty like a girl? Not Jewish? He certainly had a better attitude. Even at twelve. So much more sociable and confident in himself, even though I was clearly smarter and had the more interesting take on the role. We had auditioned against each other for nine months before it all came down to one long day at the studio in Los Angeles, where we screen-tested against each other, alternating scenes until the early hours of the morning. The casting director revealed to my mother the bad news as soon as we got back to New York. I must have cried for a month. And to this day, 20 years later, I still wonder what flaw of mine and facet of his did they see on that strip of celluloid that I could never make out.

"I'm producing a movie," Ollie said. "Starring in it too."

"Got anything for me," I asked. Shameless bottom-feeder that I've become.

"Nothing I can think of," he said, "but there might be something for Tracy."

I told him Tracy wasn't really an actress. "She's just some sort of internet phenomenon. I mean, she's only half-human."

"Yeah, but she gets like 10,000 hits a day on her site. I can sell her to overseas distributors in Korea and Japan. Plus, she'll take her clothes off, right?"

"I'm sure she will."

"Are you guys together," he asked as he flung chopped salad into his mouth. "Dating?"

"Well, yeah, kind of." That was a lie. Tracy and I hadn't spoken since the fight. But I'm a small and pathetic man, and I suspected Ollie wanted to fuck her. And I didn't want Ollie to fuck her. If he hadn't already. Which he probably had.

"Then convince her to do my movie." Like she'd need convincing. "And if she can't act, I'll pay you to coach her."

My gums hurt. My ear too. I felt feverish again and off-balance. Ollie made six figures a week while I was starving to death, and now he wanted to fuck my girl. My girl who wasn't even my girl.

"Are you alright," he asked.

"I'm fine. Why?"

"The whole right side of your face is swollen."

"It's a dental problem."

"You look like you're gonna die."

We were old friends, Ollie and me, despite whatever envy and competitiveness existed between us. Despite how everything good had happened to him and everything rotten to me. He was a good guy. People liked him. I liked him. And he liked me. How fortunate I am to have Oliver MacKenzie as a friend! In a shallow and fame-obsessed world, how lucky I am to have friends who are stars on network television!

I told him everything. About the problem with my teeth and the rain and the mold on my walls. I told him about my debts, that I wasn't getting any auditions, that I was writing up a storm but none of it was any good. That I was generally unhappy in my life and regretted my decision to ever move to Los Angeles and pursue the arts as a career. I told him about Fish and the job I accepted even though it didn't pay. I told him that I never wanted to be a blogger but it was something I fell into and couldn't get out of. That I was ashamed of my failures and how little I accomplished in my 33 years. That I had a vague sense something was controlling me and preventing me from living the kind of life I could have been proud of.

"What's controlling you," he asked. "A person? A fear? A conspiracy?"

I told him I didn't believe in conspiracies. "I'm being controlled by something I don't believe in."

Ollie listened patiently, with genuine sympathy and concern, and when I was finished, his upbeat demeanor faded, and he unloaded too.

He said he hated the show. He had been doing it for five years and hating it for four. He thought it was a stupid show. Couldn't watch it. Couldn't sit through an episode or respect anyone who did. The fourteen-hour-days on set were agony, and he was becoming more and more of a jerk to everyone he worked with. "I'm becoming that guy," he said. "That asshole celebrity we hated when we were kids." He tried to quit, but every year they threw him more money and more pussy. He couldn't say no to either even though he knew he had enough of both. He wanted to break into film, but every movie he made was a flop. He wanted to get married and have kids, but the "it girl" he had been engaged to left him for a video installation artist from Berlin. So now he was producing a feature, starring in it too, hoping it would get him out of network television. "But the script isn't ready, the investors are pigs and, Jesus Christ, if I have another flop, I'll be stuck on bad sitcoms 'till the day I fucking croak." He got hospitalized after passing out at a Pilates session. The doctor said it was an anxiety disorder though the press claimed it an overdose and his publicist called it exhaustion. "I have to take pills now and see a shrink," he said. "I have to get my hair dyed every week because I've gone completely grey. I have to get manicures and facials and God forbid I gain a pound the network calls me in for a meeting."

"We should go back to New York," I said. "We should go back and do theater again."

"Eight shows a week for no money and you get to hear the seats flapping when they leave in the middle of a scene."

"Don't forget the cell phones," I said.

"The cell phones single-handedly destroyed the theater."

"People aren't used to sitting still anymore and devoting themselves to one, non-interactive task."

"So I stumble around a set, parroting what a committee wrote, trying to figure out which PA I'm going to bang at lunch." We sighed and laughed. "Beats working though," he said.

"How would you know," I asked. "You never worked an honest day in your life."

"But I can imagine."

"I've driven trucks," I said. "I've worked construction. Delivered pizza. Set up drinks at a bar. I worked phone sex and taught mathematics in Watts."

"You worked phone sex," he asked.

"You knew that, didn't you?"

"Fags?"

I told him I didn't want to talk about it.

"Talk about it and I'll show you a video I made on my iPhone of me fucking the redhead."

It seemed a fair trade.

"Do you want to borrow some money," he asked.

I told him I'd be alright.

"Listen," he said. "Get Tracy to do this film for me. She's perfect for the role."

"Will do, Ollie. Will do."

* * *

I couldn't write when I got home. Too uninspired. Jerked off to some internet porn and took a nap instead. Woke up at night with the one good bulb in my house flickering above me, illuminating the walls cracked from the dead mold decaying into the plaster. I was hungry but had no food. My gums were aching and the pain was back in my ear. It was affecting my hearing. Making me hear these weird blips and buzzes. This is how I'm going to die, I thought. From a computer virus and a faulty health care system. From failing to get that part when I was 12 years old.

I browsed Craigslist looking for a job, but that's a hard thing to do when your only skills are acting and blogging. And the jobs I could do I'd already had at some point and been fired from.

I'll just ask around, I figured. Maybe I can get some PA work or stand in front of a Home Depot with the Mexicans. Or maybe Tracy can hire me on as a barista. A 33 year old barista with a degree from Yale! Fuck it, why not?

I still had an eighth of a tank left in the Volkswagen, so I hopped in and drove to the cybercafé. I parked outside where I could see Tracy through the glass in the front window. First time in weeks I'd seen her. Half-Android Behind Counter, Texting. Manet could not have painted her more forlorn.

The temperature change and sound differential that occurs when you enter a room. The gradual equilibrium that a body strives for when inserted into a new environment. The way anger is displaced in the wake of a Beatles song playing on the sound system.

My mouth didn't hurt anymore when I saw her. The teeth installed by Prokurov vibrated ever so slightly the closer I approached. Like they were massaging my gums. Easing my words through a long and labyrinthine tunnel.

"Hey you," I spoke, humble and sweet. Manipulative if you want to be cynical.

She looked up for a moment before turning back down to her dishrag and her counter. "Hey yourself."

Tracy cut me a sandwich and poured me a cup of tea. Refused my money when I offered to pay (thank God). I sat with my laptop, typing away as an intermittent stream of cyber dorks approached the counter to hit on her. She smiled and flirted with them all. All thinking they had a chance. Little pricks, maybe they did. But then her shift ended, and it was my table she came to with the chess set.

"Want to play," she asked.

"You look thin," I mentioned while we set up the board. "You been pluggin' in?"

Tracy rolled her eyes, which I took for a yes. I couldn't figure out what it did to her system when she plugged in directly instead of switching out batteries. It appeared to drain her or burn up something inside. I don't know the technical specifics, but it was clearly some self-destructive addiction like drinking, smoking or writing.

"A friend of mine died today," she said.

I told her I was sorry to hear it.

"He was a Facebook friend."

"So you didn't really know him?"

"I knew him through Facebook."

I asked what the protocol was when someone dies on Facebook.

"I should write something on his wall."

"Or poke him," I said. "Assuming it's too late to turn him into a zombie."

Tracy was an awful chess player. I asked her once how a computer could be so bad at chess, and she replied that she wasn't a computer, she was a half-android, and where the fuck did it say a half-android was supposed to be good at chess?

"How's it going with Fish," she asked.

I told her about my experience with Kenny. Told her I wasn't going to be making enough money to get by on. "In fact, I'm thinking of dropping the whole project."

"But you already signed."

"So I'll breach the contract." The unwritten contract. "What are they going to do, dock my pay?"

"Why are you so hung up on money," she asked. "Isn't it enough that people read and enjoy your work? That's what the Internet provides: a platform where you can create and enjoy art without the corruption and restraint of the market."

I told Tracy that that was all well and good, but that there were certain practical realities that couldn't be ignored. "It's a lot of work writing that thing, and it ain't paying the bills. I don't have time to provide that jerkoff with a childhood if all he's paying me is twenty bucks and an oak leaf."

"But don't you enjoy writing," she asked.

"In fact, I do, but that doesn't negate my need for food and shelter. I need a job, Trace, I'm starving here." I moved a piece on the chessboard and sipped my tea. "I mean, maybe there's a chance I could continue if you could get me a shift or something?"

"A shift," she asked, incredulous. "You want to serve coffee?"

"I don't want to, but until I find something that pays..."

"But you're an actor," she protested. "And a writer. I mean... people know you."

"It's been a long time since anyone recognized me on the street."

"Why don't I just lend you some money," she offered.

I told her I'd rather work for it. "I'm not comfortable taking a loan from you."

"But I'm not comfortable with your working here," she admitted. "Besides... you're hardly a reliable employee."

I asked her what the fuck that meant.

"You told me yourself you've been fired from every non-acting related job you've ever had."

Tracy made a terrible move with her pawn allowing me to set up a knight fork against her rook.

"I had lunch today with Oliver MacKenzie," I said.

"You know Ollie?"

"Sure I do. We grew up together. In the business."

"I know Ollie."

"Do you," I asked, playing dumb.

"We met at a club," she said. "Years ago." Yup. She fucked him.

"He saw the film of us on Yahoo," I said.

Tracy smiled and blushed. "Did he like it?"

I told her he did.

"What else did he have to say?"

I told her he was producing a movie.

"How exciting!"

"Starring in it too."

"He always wanted to do that," she moved another piece into another trap. Lord only knows what thought governed the moves she made on the chessboard. "What's the movie about," she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Some kind of romantic comedy I think."

"Who's in it?"

"They're casting now."

She was about two moves from checkmate.

"Did Ollie mention he knew me," she asked.

What a small and pathetic man I am.

"Nope."

Posted by Judd Trichter at 7:56 AM

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