The Bones (14 page)

"Dr. Singh says the swelling goes down in a couple of weeks. You don't mind if I walk around like this for now, though, do
you?"

"Just put something on when the pizza guy comes."

"You were saying about your infection . . ."

"I'm at the Comedy Shop the other night and this guy is heckling me so I do what I usually do, you know . . . I tied him in
knots and I think I embarrassed him in front of his girlfriend, which, when the guy is a drunken sociopath, is not a good
idea. So I'm having a drink after I do my set and all of a sudden I feel something raking down my back, tearing at my skin
almost like a cat was scratching me."

"He attacked you?"

"With a fork!"

"Frank, why didn't you tell me?"

"I just told you why I didn't tell you. But I got a scrip from Cashman and I'm glad I can help." Frank always thinking of
others, a regular saint.

She kisses him on the mouth, careful not to press the new additions against him for fear of aggravating her situation. They
kiss for a few moments and then Honey, her suspicions allayed by the tale of the forkwielding fan, leads Frank into the bedroom.

A few moments later, with Honey in bed on all fours and Frank distractedly humping away behind her, the phone rings. There
had been a time when they had sex that a stick of dynamite could have detonated in the closet and Frank and Honey would not
have stopped rutting. The building could have caved in around their entwined bodies, surrounded them in rubble and torn pipes,
covered them in a cloud of dust, and still they would have kept at it like weasels, so devoted were they to the pure carnal
pleasure each took from the other.

That time had passed.

Both Frank and Honey, believers in the canard that their lives could be changed with a single phone call, glanced at the caller
ID: NADA.

Honey forms words first. "Are you going to get it?"

Frank answers by picking up the receiver, multitasking. "Hello."

"Frank, it's Tessa from Robert Hyler's office." Ah, the lovely Tessa, Frank almost able to smell her Pear's-soap scent as
he continues to move in and out of Honey at a slightly slower pace.

"Hi, babe. How's tricks?"

"I'm good. Are you coming to the office soon?"

"If you're there." At this, Frank sees the dragon tattoo on Honey's shoulder shift position and a millisecond later Honey's
one-eyed profile, hissing.

"Stop flirting with her!"

Frank covers the mouthpiece with his hand, giving Honey a hard thrust, intended to distract; instead, it has the opposite
effect.

"I'm working, babe," Frank whispers. "It's part of the job." The dragon having returned to its original position, Honey staring
at the pillow, not pleased. Then, back into the receiver: "Does the Hyler woman want to talk to me?"

"He's waiting," Tessa replies, not getting into the gender-shifting game Frank is playing.

At that moment, Robert: gets on the line and Tessa's soothing English tone goes silent, the imagined scent of Pear's evaporating.

"Frank." Matter-of-fact. "How you doing?" Matter-of-fact never a good tone with Robert, who loves to call with glad tidings
and could make a simple "Hello" sound like Christmas morning.

"I'm great, Bobby. What's shaking?" The blood in Frank's loins is starting to punch the clock and head out for the day what
with all these conversations. He quickens the pace of his thrusts in an attempt to delay the exit dash.

"Lynx passed on your idea."

So much for stanching the internal flow. Frank's suddenly flaccid member forlornly flops out of the peeved Honey as he sits
on the side of the bed, his free hand working his right temple where he is starting to notice a dull pain.

"What do you mean they passed? Was it a soft pass?"
Soft pass
meaning "Can we come back in and try again after making humiliating adjustments?"

"It wasn't a soft pass. It was the kind of pass where they don't want to do it."

"You're killing me, babe."

"Now listen, and let me finish before you jump down my throat. I talked to Pam Penner about
Kirkuk
and they're still interested in you, but they're about to go out to Cheetah Thayer, so if you're going to do it, you have
to decide now."

"Cheetah Thayer?" This name is a cannonball fired across Frank's bow, Cheetah Thayer being a comic ten years younger than
Frank whose act consists of caterwauling as if Arabs are torturing him while he works his way through a series of banal observations
about politics and family life, ending with an impression of Bono from U2, to whom he bears a faint resemblance. Frank holds
Cheetah in very low regard.

"They're ready to give him the show."

"Forget it, Bobby. Any interest in the record deal?"

"We first discussed it an hour ago. Give me a few minutes."

"I'd like to get something in place before we establish a Mars colony," Frank says.

Another twenty seconds of subtle digs, both Robert and Frank annoyed with the other, and the conversation is terminated. Frank
is naked and motionless on the side of the bed, headache arriving, depression phoning from the Greyhound station, murmuring,
"I'm in town, Frank, send a car." Honey lies on her back, looking over at Frank, whose shoulder she is seeing for the first
time since his close encounter with the animal kingdom.

"A guy did that to you with a fork?"

"Yeah, that's what I said."

She sits up and runs a press-on nail along the skin next to the wound.

"Really?" Her tone suggesting something other than credulity.

"I'm lucky he didn't kill me. I could see that headline: 'Bones Assassinated with Fork.'" Frank grandiose enough to think
someone murdering him would qualify as an assassination, a homicide with a larger agenda. "You don't want to get smoked in
a ridiculous way," he reflects, knowing he can divert her, at least temporarily, by riffing on the subject at hand, Honey
always one to stand back and watch him rip. "Like getting hit by a Good Humor truck or something. You don't want to die getting
hit by some guy dressed head to toe in white with a money changer on his belt. Because that's how they're gonna remember you.
He's the guy who was crushed by a truckload of toasted-almond bars."

But it doesn't work. Honey's not distracted.

"What happened to the guy? Did they arrest him?"

"He got away in the confusion."

"Really? He got away?"

Same lack of credulity; the whole absurd death-under-the-wheels-of-an-ice-cream-truck run not working at all.

"Babe, what's with the third degree? It's enough someone stabbed me with a fork, I don't need Helga, She-Devil of the SS,"
referring to the Aryan Honey, "beating up on me like I'm Rabbi Flakeman of Chelm."

"I'm Helga now?" Pissed. That's what Frank calls her whenever he wants to draw attention to their disparate ethnicities, Honey's
being German-Irish and Frank's being obvious.

"I mean, that fat dyke Pam Penner just passed on my show, never mind she didn't stop grinning like an idiot the whole fuckin'
meeting, so frankly I don't need any shit from you or your new tits right now. And, by the way, I'm paying for the procedure
in installments, which means I have to do three nights in Sacramento next week so Dr. Nasrut Singh doesn't come in here and
repossess them."

Frank, having worked himself into a righteous froth, goes to take a shower, his diatribe having had the effect, along with
the Vicodin, just now kicking in, of momentarily silencing Honey. But after a few minutes of soaping and shampooing during
which he wonders how much longer he can take having to make up ridiculous lies to cover his philandering, he squints through
wet eyes and makes out her still-naked form on the other side of the shower curtain.

"I've owned cats, Frank," she informs him in an even tone. "That thing on your back looks like a cat scratch."

All is quiet as Frank works the cream rinse through his thick hair. When did Honey turn into Hercule Poirot?

"Whose cat was it, Frank?"

"I told you what happened."

He tilts his head back, letting the water run the milky dregs of the conditioner out of his hair and down the drain. Watching
it swirl on the shower floor and wondering whether to unburden himself, he quickly realizes that could do no possible good,
which leaves silence as the only plausible alternative for the time being. His mind goes to his soon-to-be-paid- for house
in Playa Perdida and whether he might entice Candi Wyatt down there for a weekend of sodomy and burritos.

Honey abruptly pulls the curtain back and stares at Frank's damp face, red from the heat of the shower, her own determined
physiognomy wrenched into place, ready to do a job. She prepares to deliver an ultimatum, one that will set the course of
their relationship from this point on, her nakedness taking nothing away from her clench-jawed determination.

"You're going to do that Eskimo show."

"That is not going to happen."

"Then I'm moving out."

Five minutes later Frank gets out of the shower. He towels off and heads for the bedroom, where there is no sign of Honey.
He gets dressed in silence and goes to the kitchen. No Honey. Looks out the back window toward their small pool, where he
often sees her relaxing on a chaise longue with
People
or, lately, the
New York Review of Books.
Not there. Frank takes a Corona out of the refrigerator and sits at the kitchen counter. At this point, he is wondering if
Dr. Nasrut Singh put some kind of time-release assertiveness-inducing chemical in Honey's implants because, narcissist that
he is, Frank can see no other cause for her recent behavior.

What are his options? He can do the show without Honey, thereby saving his television career but destroying his apparently
tottering relationship. He can do it with Honey and save his television career and his relationship. Or he could not do the
show, thereby destroying both his career and whatever you want to call the sorry state of affairs at which he and Honey have
arrived. On the other hand, if the show is, as he presumes, a stinker, his television career would tank but he would still
have the increasingly enigmatic Honey at his side. None of these strike Frank as particularly pleasant alternatives as he
sits in the gathering twilight drinking his beer. Frank has another beer and then another, and as he slowly becomes drunk,
his feelings are increasingly scabrous. If that self-important twit Lloyd Melnick had agreed to cowrite
My Life and High Times,
I wouldn't be sitting here entertaining evil thoughts about him, went Frank's causal thinking. Somehow, his inability to recognize
himself, through a long series of behaviors and decisions, as the author of what he viewed as his misfortune redounded on
the balding Melnick head.

That night the Melnicks have dinner at Drago, a pricey Italian place on Wilshire Boulevard, with Marisa and Jonathan Pinsker.
The Pinskers have been friends of Lloyd and Stacy's for several years, the wives having bonded during a Mommy and Me class
at Temple Isaiah. Jonathan is an accountant at Paramount and Marisa spends his money. Their modest Beverly Hills-adjacent
house is constantly being remodeled, but no matter what Marisa does, whether it is painting or putting in a new bathroom or
kitchen countertops, she is still left with a house that is Beverly Hills-adjacent when she longs for the real thing. At dinner
the Melnicks and the Pinskers discuss their children, who had been classmates at the Montessori school, upcoming vacation
plans (the Pinskers are going to visit their families in New York), and whether Home Depot is a good stock to buy since everyone
seems to be remodeling these days.

The Pinskers are pleasant, but it is Stacy, not Lloyd, who keeps the friendship alive. Lloyd finds Jonathan irredeemably boring.
His only subject of conversation other than his daughter is business, and to Lloyd there are few duller areas. The prism through
which Jonathan Pinsker sees movies, television, and music is entirely financial, and in Lloyd's mind, it is the Pinskers of
the world, these bloodless human spreadsheets, that are ruining something that had once been great. They have been very deferential
to Lloyd since his Lynx deal was announced, the numbers being something Jonathan can relate to.

Lloyd tries hard to focus on the conversation. Periodically he interjects a comment so it does not appear as if he's fallen
asleep. He perks up when Stacy tells a story about Dustin having had a meltdown of such intensity in the women's shoe department
at Saks that when he finally calmed down, shoppers actually applauded in relief and mock appreciation. Although she is clearly
suffering with their son's behavior, Stacy manages to give the story an amusing spin, which Lloyd finds endearing.

"I can't believe you guys don't have any child care," Marisa remarks, stabbing a porcini mushroom and putting it in her mouth.

"The one real advantage of that is your kid speaks Spanish, which, I suppose, is good these days," Stacy replies. It is a
point of pride with her that she and Lloyd have never hired a nanny to look after Dustin. Lloyd would gladly spring for one,
but Stacy decided, having quit working, that she wanted to spend as much time with her son as possible. Lloyd knows, given
the boy's challenging personality, this has not been the easiest task, and he has a great deal of respect for the way Stacy
has stuck with her plan. Marisa Pinsker, on the other hand, is puzzled by what she perceives to be her friend's eccentricity.

"You should just hire a nanny, Stace. Your life would be soooo much easier," Marisa says as her husband nods mutely.

"Wasn't yours stealing from the medicine cabinet?" Stacy asks.

"Yeah, but then we got an honest one. From Honduras," Marisa adds, as if endorsing the nationality.

"I don't want a stranger raising my son," Stacy concludes, accidentally violating the social contract that proscribes the
obvious questioning of a friend's life choices. Lloyd inwardly smiles as the table falls silent for an awkward moment. Unfortunately,
when Marisa changes the subject and begins telling them what happened on her favorite reality show last week, staying awake
becomes an uphill battle. That Stacy seems to be enjoying herself does not surprise him. What does surprise him, however,
is what she says on the ride home.