Lunar Park (5 page)

B
y this time, Jayne had moved out of Los Angeles and into the anonymous suburbia of the Northeast, close enough to New York for meetings and business but at the same time safely distant from what she saw as the increasing horror of urban life. The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was the initial motivation, and Jayne briefly considered some exotically remote place deep in the Southwest or the vastness of the heartland, but her goal eventually simplified itself into moving at least two hours away from any large city, since that’s where suicide bombers were blowing themselves up in crowded Burger Kings and Starbuckses and Wal-Marts and in subways at rush hour. Miles of major cities had been cordoned off behind barbed wire, and morning newspapers ran aerial photographs of bombed-out buildings on the front page, showing piles of tangled bodies in the shadow of the crane lifting slabs of scorched concrete. More and more often there were “no survivors.” Bulletproof vests were on sale everywhere, because scores of snipers had suddenly appeared; the military police stationed on every corner offered no solace, and surveillance cameras proved useless. There were so many faceless enemies—from within the country and abroad—that no one was certain who we were fighting or why. Cities had become mournful places, where everyday life was suddenly interrupted by jagged mounds of steel and glass and stone, and grief on an unimaginable scale was rising up over them, reinforced by the stained, tattered photocopies of the missing posted everywhere, which were not only a constant reminder of what had been lost but also a warning of what was coming next, and in the endless CNN montages of people wandering around in a slow-motion daze, some wrapped in American flags, while the soundtrack was Bruce Springsteen softly singing “We Shall Overcome.” There were too many fearful moments when the living envied the dead, and people started moving away to the country, the suburbs, anywhere. Cities were no place to raise a family, or, more pointedly according to Jayne, start one. So many people had lost their capacity for love.

Jayne wanted to raise gifted, disciplined children, driven to succeed, but she was fearful of just about everything: the threat of pedophiles, bacteria, SUVs (we owned one), guns, pornography and rap music, refined sugar, ultraviolet rays, terrorists, ourselves. I took anger management sessions and went over “past wounds” with a therapist after a brief and heated exchange concerning Robby popped up in an otherwise innocuous conversation between the two of us. (It was all about what he wanted. It was all about what he needed. Everything I desired was overridden, and I had to accept this. I had to rise up to it.) I spent that summer trying to get to know this worried, sad, alert boy who gave evasive answers to questions I felt demanded clarity and precision, and also Sarah, who was now six and basically just kept informing me of how bored she was by everything. Since camp had been canceled, Jayne and I organized activities to push them out of their stupor: the karate class, the oboe lesson, the phonics tapes, the smart toys, the trip to the wax museum, the aquarium we visited. The summer was saying no to Robby (who considered himself a “professional” video game player) because he wanted to fly to Seoul for the World Cyber Games. The summer was getting acquainted with the wide array of meds the kids were on (stimulants, mood stabilizers, the antidepressant Lexapro, the Adderall for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and various other anticonvulsants and antipsychotics that had been prescribed). The summer was building a fort. It was decorating cookies. It was a silver robot I purchased for Robby, to which he responded, “I’m too old, Bret.” It was the astronomy CD-ROM he wanted instead. It was the summer of the trampoline I bought and the minor injury Robby sustained while attempting a stunt. We went for walks through a forest. We took nature hikes. I couldn’t believe I actually toured both a farm and a chocolate factory, and also petted a giraffe (who later was killed by lightning after a freak summer storm) at the local zoo. I became reacquainted with Snuffleupagus. The summer was colors and shapes and counting with Sarah, who could say
“Hola,”
and there was always the blue dog and the friendly dragon and the puppet shows where the animals interacted suggestively with one another, and I would read
The Poky Little Puppy
to her on CD-ROM, which made the book seem cold and barren, the illustrations staring out at us from the empty glow of the computer screen. It all seemed vaguely unreal to me. I was thrust into the role of husband and father—of protector—and my doubts were mountainous. But I was moving with a higher purpose. I was involuntarily striving toward something. I took a more commanding tone with the children when they were acting surly or indifferent or spoiled, which seemed to relieve Jayne. (But Jayne also requested that I stay “focused,” and so I easily secured a position as a creative writing teacher at the local college—even if the group of students met only once a week for three hours.) I found myself changing and had no choice but to feel that this conversion validated me. I no longer craved action. The tightness of city life vanished—the suburbs were fragmented and rambling; there was no more flipping through the devil’s dictionary (Zagat’s) to find a decent restaurant, and the bidding war for reservations disappeared. Who cared about the VIP booth anymore, or mugging for paparazzi on the red carpet at movie premieres? I was relaxed in the suburbs. Everything was different: the rhythm of the days, your social status, suspicions about people. It was a refuge for the less competitive; it was the minor leagues. You simply didn’t have to pay as much attention to things. The precise pose was no longer required. I had expected to be bored, and to be angered by that boredom, but it never materialized. Passing by someone pruning a shrub did not spark the powder keg of regret I expected. I had canceled my subscription to
I Want That!
and for a while I was okay. One day late in August I drove by a simple field dotted with poplars and I suddenly held my breath. I felt a tear on my face. I was happy, I realized with amazement.

But by the end of that summer everything I had learned started to disappear.

The “problems” that developed within the house over the next two months actually began late in October and hit crisis point in November. Everything collapsed in a time frame made up of twelve days.

I
’ve recounted the “incidents” in sequential order.
Lunar Park
follows these events in a fairly straightforward manner, and though this is, ostensibly, a true story, no research was involved in the writing of this book. For example, I did not consult the autopsy reports concerning the murders that occurred during this period—because, in my own way, I had committed them. I was responsible, and I knew what had happened to the victims without referring to a coroner. There are also people who dispute the horror of the events that took place that autumn on Elsinore Lane, and when the book was vetted by the legal team at Knopf, my ex-wife was among those who protested, as did, oddly enough, my mother, who was not present during those frightful weeks. The files that the FBI kept on me—beginning in November of 1990, during the prepublication controversy surrounding
American Psycho,
and maintained ever since—would have clarified things, but they have not been released and I’m barred from quoting them. And the few “witnesses” who could corroborate these events have disappeared. For example, Robert Miller, the paranormal investigator I hired, simply vanished, and the Web site where I first contacted him no longer exists. My psychiatrist at the time, Dr. Janet Kim, offered the suggestion that I was “not myself” during this period, and has hinted that “perhaps” drugs and alcohol were “key factors” in what was a “delusional state.” Names have been changed, and I’m semivague about the setting itself because it doesn’t matter; it’s a place like any other. Retelling this story has taught me that
Lunar Park
could have happened anywhere. These events were inevitable, and would have occurred no matter where I was at that particular moment in my life.

The title
Lunar Park
is not intended as a take on Luna Park (as it mistakenly appeared on the initial Knopf contracts). The title means something only to my son. These are the last two words of this book, and by then, I hope they will be self-explanatory to the reader as well.

Regardless of how horrible the events described here might seem, there’s one thing you must remember as you hold this book in your hands: all of it really happened, every word is true.

The thing that haunted me the most? Since no one knew what was happening in that house, no one was scared for us.

A
nd now it’s time to go back into the past.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30

2. the party

“Y
ou do an awfully good impression of yourself.”

Jayne said this after she looked me over with a confused expression and asked pointedly what I was going as to the Halloween party we were throwing that night, and I told her I’d decided to go simply as “me.” I was wearing faded jeans, sandals, an oversized white T-shirt with a giant marijuana flower emblazoned on it and a miniature straw sombrero. We were in a bedroom the size of a large apartment when we shared this exchange, and I tried to clarify things by raising my arms up and turning slowly around to give her a chance to check out the full-on Bret.

“I’ve decided against wearing masks,” I said proudly. “I want to be real, honey. This is what’s known as the Official Face.” As I continued to turn I noticed Victor, the golden retriever, staring at me, curled in a corner. The dog kept staring and then yawned.

“So you’re going as—what? A Mexican pot activist?” she asked, too tired to glare anymore. “What should I tell the kids about that lovely shirt you’re wearing?”

“I’ll explain to the kids if they ask that—”

“I’ll just say it’s a gardenia,” she sighed.

“Just tell them Bret’s just really into the Halloween spirit this year,” I suggested, turning around again, arms still raised. “Tell them I’m going as a hunk.” I made a playful grab at Jayne, but she moved away too quickly.

“That’s really great, Bret—I’m so proud of you,” she said unenthusiastically as she walked out of the room. The dog glanced at me worriedly, then heaved itself up and followed Jayne. It did not like to be left alone in any room that I was in. The dog had been a mess ever since I’d arrived in July. And since Jayne had been obsessing over a book called
If Only They Could Speak
(which I thought was an exposé on young Hollywood but was actually an investigation of zoo animals) she had taken the dog through hydrotherapy and acupuncture and to a massage therapist (“Hey, why not get it a personal trainer?” I muttered at one point) and finally it visited a canine behaviorist who prescribed Cloinicalm, which was basically puppy Prozac, but since the drug caused “compulsive licking” a kind of canine Paxil had been prescribed instead (the same medication Sarah was on, which we all thought was extremely distressful). But it still did not like to be left alone in any room that I was in.

The party was my idea. I had been “a good boy” for four months and thought something celebratory was deserved. But since lavish Halloween parties had been a part of my past (the past that Jayne wanted to deny and erase) we fought about this “bash” (my word; Jayne used the term “bacchanal”) amiably, even playfully, until—surprise—she gave in. I credited this to the distraction of the upcoming reshoots for a movie she thought she had finished in April but that the studio wanted to tweak after audience testing proved clarifications were needed to simplify a totally ludicrous big-budget thriller that was impossible to follow. I had seen a rough cut in New York the month before and was secretly appalled but in the limo ride back to the Mercer I raved about the thing until Jayne, seething and staring straight ahead, said, “Shut your mouth now, please.” In the limo that night I realized Jayne was essentially a simple, private person, a woman who had lucked into a career that seemed fast and baffling to her and that this worry about the reshoots was at the heart of why she relented and allowed me to throw the party on the evening of the thirtieth (trick-or-treating would take up the following night). The invitations had been e-mailed to a smattering of my friends (Jay, who was in town on his book tour; David Duchovny; a few cast members from last season’s
Survivor;
my Hollywood agent, Bill Block; Kate Betts, who was here covering something for the
New York Times
Style section; and students from my writing workshop) and also, unfortunately, to a couple of Jayne’s acquaintances (mostly parents of Robby’s and Sarah’s friends, whom she couldn’t stand either but had invited in a moment of passive aggression; I kept my mouth shut). Jayne’s second way of protesting the party: no costume, just black Tuleh slacks and a white Gucci blouse. “Nothing accessorized with straw and no apple bobbing” were further demands, and when I complained during the planning stages that Jayne was lacking in Halloween spirit, her concession was to hire an expensive catering company from town. The kids were forewarned that this would be an adult party; they’d be allowed to mingle for the first hour and then it was up to bed since it was a Thursday and hence a school night. In one last-ditch effort Jayne suggested it should be a school night for me as well, that maybe my time would be better spent working instead of throwing a party. But Jayne never understood that the Party had
been
my workplace. It was my open market, my battleground, it was where friends were made, lovers were met, deals were struck. Parties seemed frivolous and random and formless but in fact were intricately patterned, highly choreographed events. In the world in which I came of age the Party was the surface on which daily life took place. When I tried explaining this in earnest, Jayne just stared at me as if I had suddenly become retarded.

I removed the sombrero and looked at myself in the multitude of mirrors in Jayne’s bathroom (we each had our own), checking my hair from various angles. I’d had it colored the day before to cover the gray on the sides but was afraid I was slowly losing it, like my father had, even though Joelle, my hairdresser, kept stressing that hair loss was represented by the mother’s side of the family. For some reason, “the golden autumnal night” was a phrase that kept repeating itself in my mind as I looked at my hair, and I liked it so much that I decided to incorporate it into my new novel once I sat down the next day to go over the outline. Behind me was a walk-in steam shower with multiple showerheads and a huge tub made from Italian marble that I stared at admiringly whenever I was in Jayne’s bathroom; its extravagance touched something in me, defined in some way who I was now, what I had become even as it was also evolving into a symbol of my precariousness in this world. Hair inspection completed, I left the bathroom and ran my hands across the Frette sheets that hugged our massive bed before turning off the lights.

As I made my way down the grand, curving staircase the cell phone in my back pocket rang. After glancing at my Tank watch I checked the incoming number. It was Kentucky Pete, my dealer, and when I answered the phone he said he was en route.

Note to reader: Yes, I was no longer technically clean. I had mildly relapsed. It hadn’t taken long. A student party on campus during the third week of September, to be somewhat exact. A geek from the graduate program offered me a line—and then another—in a dingy dormitory bathroom, and then I guzzled twenty beers tapped from a keg while students huddled around me as I regaled them with stories about my former successes. Jayne was hardly oblivious but there were certain waves of information she could not bring herself to ride. If her faith in me had been vaguely faltering since the beginning of October—a sense that taking me back was turning into a mistake—it had not yet hit a crisis point. Though I could tell she was fearful, it was contained and hadn’t bloomed out of control. I felt I had time to redeem myself. But not on Halloween.

Because everything was set. The house had been redecorated by the catering company to resemble a huge haunted castle complete with cobwebs dripping everywhere and plastic skeletons and oversized vampire bats dangling from the ceilings and purple lights dousing each wall and a strobe in the foyer. A friend, the artist Tom Sachs, had designed the shipping crate that sat in the middle of the living room and shook and growled at anyone who came near it. From speakers placed outside came the sounds of chains clanking along with various authentic groans and the laughter of the dead. Ghosts made from white crepe paper were floating in the trees and intricately carved jack-o’-lanterns, burning brightly, dotted the stone path leading up to the house. And though this was most decidedly an adult party there was nothing too frightening going down at 307 Elsinore Lane—just something playful and innocent to amuse the guests. As a precaution against crashers we had hired two security guards (one made up as Frankenstein, the other wearing a Dick Cheney mask) and stationed them at the front door behind a velvet rope, each equipped with a blood-spattered guest list and a walkie-talkie. The party would be camcorded by one of my students.

I walked by the kitchen, where Jayne was conferring about canapés with women from the catering company who were dressed suggestively as sexy witches or very alluring cats. Behind them, through the sliding glass doors leading to the backyard, dry ice was being poured into the bubbling Jacuzzi, where the underwater light had been replaced by a dark red bulb for an eerie, cauldronlike effect. And beyond that the crowning touch: the entire nine acres that led from the backyard to a dark bank of trees had been transformed into a giant mock cemetery with crooked gravestones scattered throughout the field, and propped up against the nearest headstone was a plastic ghoul gnawing on a rubber femur.

In the living room a DJ was setting up an elaborate sound system in front of the Andy Warhol silk screen of me holding a pen, and after I introduced myself we went over the song list: “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding,” “The Ghost in You,” “Thriller,” “Witchy Woman,” “Evil Woman,” “Rhiannon,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Werewolves of London,” “Spooky Girlfriend,” “The Monster Mash,” etc., etc. The DJ assured me there were enough “scary” songs to last the duration of the party. Across the room was a full bar presided over by a werewolf who was preparing the evening’s specialty drink: a mandarin-flavored margarita punch, with floating lime rinds shaped like tiny green spiders, which would be served from a huge skull-shaped bowl (I would be holding a nonalcoholic beer can filled with that mandarin-flavored margarita punch). I noticed a row of severed hands lining the bar.

The kids were upstairs. Robby and a friend were locked in a Play-Station 2 frenzy (the zombies with Howitzers, the charging minotaur, the deadly extraterrestrials, the forces of hell, the games that commanded “Let me eat you”) while Marta watched over Sarah, who was gazing at her hundredth viewing of
Chico, the Misunderstood Coyote.
Since they were taken care of for the night, it was time to do something about the dog. I noticed Victor sniffing disinterestedly at one of the dozens of stuffed black cats the decorators had placed around the house, and I called for Jayne to put the dog in the garage. Victor and I had a staring contest for two minutes until Jayne came out of the kitchen and simply said his name without looking at me. He loped over to her, grinning, wagging his tail, and as she led him away, the dog turned its head and glared at me. I let it go. The dog had its world—its reasons—and I had mine.

My cell phone rang again. Kentucky Pete was outside and having trouble getting past Frankenstein, who then buzzed me on the intercom and said that someone—not on the list and dressed as the corpse of Slim Pickens—was waiting impatiently by the velvet ropes. Walking toward the front door I told Pete, “Hang on, I’ll be right there, dude,” and then offered a drawn-out, ghoulish chuckle.

Kentucky Pete was a resilient dinosaur from the seventies that one of my students had hooked me up with. Overweight, with long gray hair and snakeskin boots and a tattoo of an unthreatening scorpion (it was smiling and held a Corona in its pincer) on a forearm covered with sores from the repeated use of nonsterile needles, he was the total opposite of the drug runners I had scored from in Manhattan: trim, sober, good-looking young guys who wore three-button Paul Smith suits and wanted an “in” to the movie business. To make up for his lack of sleekness Kentucky Pete had a more varied selection—he sold everything from lime green Super Vicodin caplets to two-milligram Xanax sent in from Europe to crack dipped in PCP to joints sprayed with embalming fluid to pretty pure coke, which was all I really wanted from him tonight (along with a couple of the two-milligram Xanax to get to sleep, of course). I told Jayne that he was one of my students when she caught him here the first week of October, lounging with me in the media room while we were watching a DVD of
American Psycho.
When she dragged me into the kitchen and just stared in disbelief, I stressed, “Graduate student, honey.
Graduate
student.” (When Jayne and I dated in the eighties she basically had an ice cream habit—sometimes she’d indulge, but more often than not she wouldn’t.) Not wanting Jayne to see him here tonight, I needed to take care of business fast—even though the house was now doused in so much deep purple light she could easily mistake him for someone in costume. If Jayne ran into him I would just tell her that he was a student dressed as “the grizzled prospector.”

I let Kentucky Pete in and, after hesitantly granting him a margarita, quickly led him to my office, where I locked the door and pulled out my wallet. He was in a hurry anyway; he needed to get to the college by eight to sell a large amount of dope to an affluent group of juniors. When he asked if I had a pipe he could borrow, I opened my safe. He downed the punch and heaved a huge, satisfied sigh, humming along to the Zombies singing “Time of the Season.”

(What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich? Is he rich like me?)

“What’s in there?” he asked, craning his neck, and then, “Dig the sombrero.”

“This is where I keep my cash and guns.” I reached into the safe and gave him a crystal pipe that under no circumstances did I want returned after its use. I needed two eight balls of the pure stuff and a couple of the heavily cut grams for drunken guests who were going to bum off me and be too wasted to notice the difference. After the transaction was finalized and a discount given in exchange for the pipe, I pocketed the tightly wrapped multicolored packages and led Kentucky Pete outside, walking him across the pumpkin-scattered lawn as he admiringly stared back at the elaborately decorated house.

“Whoa—this place has been turned into one spooky shack, man,” he murmured appreciatively.