Wag the Dog (22 page)

Jackie sat unresponsive to Dylan's small disasters: it was her husband's time to be a Real Human, not a Film Director. It was his time to deal with the Child. His Son. Whom she had borne the Pain of Bearing for Him.

Beagle wanted to respond. But he had a leaking pen in his hand with no cap. It was a gift from some goddamn studio head who would expect him, the next time he did a film with that goddamn studio head, if he still had a job, to sign the contract with the goddamn gift pen and say something inane like, “You gave me this pen. It's my favorite and I want you to know that I've been saving it for a moment like this.” Inane, absolutely inane. But important. He knew that from his mother. He also knew, from life as well as from his mother, that wherever he put the pen, it would roll off, it would fall to the floor, keep rolling and disappear into a crack, drop to the bowels of the
earth, and some janitor person would end up with an incredibly overpriced and decadent pen. Without the cap. He couldn't put it in his pocket because he didn't have the cap and the ink would just pour out of it, a spreading black stain, growing like the Blob. He still didn't know if it was washable ink.

He looked at his wife in silent plea. He saw her face and saw all that she thought. Why had he married a movie star? Even one whose butt meant as much to the world of posters as Farrah Fawcett's hair once had? Why not some placid, undemanding creature who cared about his needs. Who wanted nothing more than to make a home, care for the child, love her husband, have sex with him when
he
wanted the way
he
wanted.

Dylan had one hand on a sandwich, pulling at the wax paper. The cook was adamant about never using plastic wrap.
Jamais.
He had his other paw around one of the prize Cokes. It was one of the old-style bottles, with that curvy, womanish shape and the raised letters in the glass, a veritable icon of Americana. What a soft drink!

Beagle had only one hand. He did what he could. He wrapped his free hand, the left, around his son's waist, and lifted him from the mess he was making. Dylan had a firm grip on the wax paper, which began to unfold. When he rose in the air, the paper completed its unfolding and the sandwich tumbled out. Sometimes the bread falls butter side up, sometimes it doesn't. It didn't. Turkey, goat cheese, sun-dried tomato bits, homemade mayo, all made intimate contact with the greasy, germy, gooey floor of the box reserved for Disney at Dodger Stadium.

Dylan wanted the sandwich. He began to wail.

It was good, Jackie thought, for her husband to once in a while go through what she had to go through all the time. She didn't really have to go through it all the time. Just between the times when she had fired the nanny and before she had hired the new nanny. Not an infrequent occurrence because she only wanted the very best for her child. And sometimes it took as long as a week to find a new one.

Dylan had a distinct sense of proportion. A Coke bottle
was not the right shape for a sword or spear. Too thick. Too squat. Definitely not in the stabbing or slashing category. It was, like hammers, clubs, and cups, in the banging class. While he wailed over his fallen food, he flailed the bottle, with a certain enthusiasm, at his dad's head.

He missed. Much to his disappointment.

Beagle tried to grab the bottle without dropping the pen.

Jackie looked at the food on the floor with disgust and wondered if her husband would have sufficient awareness to pick it up before Dylan ate it. She bet herself a $7,800 dress that he wouldn't. If he picked it up before she mentioned it, she would pay for the dress herself. Or forgo it.

Dylan, really pissed that he'd missed, flung the bottle at his father. Who ducked. Which was difficult since he was still holding Dylan and the pen. He stepped on the sandwich and slid. He loved the kid enough that his deeper instincts finally emerged and he let go of the pen, held Dylan, and did all he could to fall in such a way that he was the only one hurt. And he was hurt. Not permanently. But painfully and embarrassingly.

The bottle flew out of the box, onto the field, narrowly missing a bat boy dashing through foul territory for reasons that might be understood by baseball fans, but not by Beagle. The bat boy looked around to see from whence the dangerous projectile had been launched. Several of Beagle's neighbors pointed at the Disney box, just as Beagle pulled himself to his feet.

“You stupid motherfucking cocksucking asshole drip! You're the type of rich dumb fuck that should be banned from world-fucking existence. I hate your type. Your type should roll over and join the bronto-fucking-sauruses in ex-fucking-tinction. I ought to take this fucking bottle, climb up there, and shove it up your reamed-out asshole, Drip Face,” the bat boy said in the colorful way that we've come to associate with the American pastime. He raised the bottle threateningly. Then he saw it. “Wow!” he said. “St. fucking Louis! Wow. Chill dude. You must be really feely. Give my regards to your babe, dude. I got your Coke and I'm keeping it.”

Beagle addressed his wife. “This is your”—Beagle tried
very hard not to curse in front of his child; he bit his lip—“fault,” he said. Without a single adjective.

“You can't take care of your son without assistance for one minute and it's my fault. I think you better look at yourself.” She nodded in that infuriating way. In another age, a more primitive and honest one, he would have killed her.

“This is your idea of a family outing. Thank you very much. It's lots of fun,” he said in a little boy's ugly, mocking voice. “Oh, boy. I take a day off to bring my son to something he has no idea what it is and that I don't like. Another wonderful idea, brought to you by Mommy.”

“I was trying to help you,” she said. “To do something masculine in which you could bond with your son. Who is a very masculine person. You don't do enough with him. If you don't like what I suggest, why don't you come up with something yourself? You should spend some time with your family.”

All this time, Dylan, still held by his father, was squirming to get down. “OK,” Beagle said, and put him down. Jackie watched him go right for the sandwich remnants, which now had not merely fallen on the floor but had been ground into the dirt when her husband stepped on them.

“You set things up,” Beagle said. “You set this up to be a disaster.”

“I didn't set anything up,” Jackie said. Of course she hadn't. She was doing what was best for everyone. Her husband needed a lesson in awareness. If he got one, it was obviously his own doing, and very much for the good.

“You don't even fucking realize it—”

“Watch your mouth in front of the . . .”

“The . . .” he mocked her.

“You have a nasty streak,” she said.

Dylan peeled some turkey from the floor. It had attached itself to thick black goo that old soda often becomes. Chunks and flakes of indecipherable substances in various shades of brown and gray also adhered to it. There was a faint aroma of cleaning fluid as well. He put it toward his mouth with great anticipation.

“I knew it,” Jackie said, snatching the filth from her son's mouth. “I knew you wouldn't even think to clean that up.”

“Clean it up?”

“Yes. The sandwich. Am I your slave? Who is going to clean it up?'

Beagle, who felt he had barely survived his fall and his encounter with the bat boy, had yet to give the mashed sandwich much thought. “I . . . uh . . .” he said.

“Because I'm a woman and you're a man. I make my own money, buster, and I don't have to be a little
Hausfrau
for you.”

“What is going on?” he said.

“I'll tell you what's going on. Your son is eating filthy old
shit,
shit from the floor of a public stadium. It could be a public toilet and it wouldn't be dirtier, and you don't have enough awareness, awareness to do anything about it.”

“Jackie,” he said, “shut the fuck up.”

“I will not.”

“Of course you won't. You don't know how to shut the fuck up.”

“Why don't
you
shut the . . .”

And, having degenerated into a kind of generic husband-wife exchange, it went on for a few more minutes with little to distinguish their celebrity ugliness from the common rancor and spite of people who have neither their glamour nor their riches. Finally, Jackie snatched up her son and the car keys and marched off, leaving Beagle, who had no desire to be there, there.

He was so relieved that she was gone that he decided to stay rather than go anywhere where they might meet by chance. What the hell, a ball game was supposed to be therapeutic. Or something.

It wasn't. It was incomprehensible. He opened a sandwich that Dylan hadn't dumped. It was weird but tasty. He looked around. Thousands of people were watching, with varying degrees of attention, but certainly staying and participating. The guy in the box next to him seemed to be—Beagle searched for a word—happy. That was it.

The guy was smoking a large cigar. And showing no shame about enjoying tobacco. Even though he was there at the game, he listened to it on the radio as well. His name was Tubby Bayless. He was an ex-DEA agent who'd made extra
money dealing confiscated drugs and pocketing dealer money. He'd invested, rather blindly, but luckily, in some Hawaiian cane fields. A Japanese golf course developer had paid top dollar for the land because it formed the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and part of the seventh holes.

“Can I ask you something?” Beagle said.

“Shoot, buddy,” Tubby said.

What Beagle really wanted to ask him was the secret of happiness. But he didn't. Instead, he asked, “How come people like baseball? What is it? I'm a film director. And I work very hard to make sure one of my films goes from action to action to action, always building. You know? With pace, with rhythm. Then this . . .” He pointed at the field. “I don't get it.”

Tubby blew a couple of fat smoke rings. He looked philosophic and reflective, a carnal Buddha. Maybe sent here to give Beagle a message. “Ahh, baseball,” he said. “Baseball is not a game of action. It is a game of potential and possibility. I was a cop. Of sorts. When you're a cop, you spend lots of time watching and waiting. Maneuvering ever so slightly, hoping your quarry finally gets in position for you to pounce. You ever go hunting?”

“No,” Beagle said.

“Well, you don't look like the killing type. But you never know.” Tubby shrugged. “Anyway, the moment of the kill, if it's game or busting through some spic's door, guns drawn, there's an adrenaline rush. A definite adrenaline rush. But that's not what it's about. Just like making love's not about coming. I'm a regular philosopher, right? You want a cigar?”

“Uh, sure,” Beagle said. Not a smoker, he thought maybe tobacco was the secret of happiness, if the Buddha liked it and the Indians too.

Tubby took one out of his pocket and passed it over the rail to Beagle. “What it's about is the potential. The potential for action. Is she gonna go out with you, is she gonna get a little tiddly or high or whatever her preference is. You're moving, she's moving . . .” He gestured with his hands, they circled each other, two plump predators dancing.

Beagle had the cellophane off the cigar. It was terrifically phallic. He admired it. He didn't have a match.

Tubby popped a big kitchen match with a red and white tip out of his pocket. “Hate butane.” He flicked it with a nail. It flared and smelled of sulfur, good old-fashioned demon sulfur. He leaned over and gave Beagle a light. “That's why people stop fucking the people they're married to,” he said. “Because coming's not what it's about. It's not about the rush. It's about potential. Anticipation. Baseball is a game about potential and anticipation.”

Beagle took a puff. It was rich and slightly sordid at the same time. But it was the gesture—holding, taking the smoke in, exhaling it, watching it float away—rich in cinematic memories, that was really fulfilling. He began to relax and got a sense of male comradeship.
See what the boys in the back room will have.

“This guy's good,” Tubby said about the radio announcer and turned him up louder. “Listen.” There was a man on second—
in scoring position
—the man at bat was—
the tying run is at the plate!
—the count was two and one—
he better not get behind the batter, if he stays ahead of the batter here, he's got him, he's that kind of pitcher.

Tubby blew a smoke ring. “You get it?”

Beagle, getting a little buzz from the tobacco now, tried a smoke ring too. It didn't quite do it. “No,” he said.

“If the count gets to one and two, he can throw shit and the batter almost has to take a cut. He's changed the potential. If the pitcher throws a ball, he's behind. Now the batter can lay back—a little—and choose. And the pitcher has to throw something pretty decent or risk a walk. Changed the potentials, get it?”

“Yeah,” Beagle said. “I get it.” And he did. He nodded and began to see the action in the nonaction. He took another puff, the buzz got a bit buzzier, and suddenly he understood something very basic about directing reality. He remembered being in New York at the time the Mets were in the play-offs against the Houston Astros. There was one very long game that went on forever. It went on so long it totally defeated the schedules and expectations of normal life with the result that New Yorkers, all suddenly turned into fans, found themselves
tracking the game in bits and pieces as they passed through their lives—watching a television in a store window or through the window of a limousine with a tiny TV playing in the backseat, asking freight-elevator operators—freight-elevator operators always have radios—or total strangers, “What's the score? What's happening?” It was like wartime. “What's the news? What's the news? Have you heard the latest?”