16.Jackie was eating by himself in a very popular Los Angeles restaurant.
It was the type of restaurant that wouldn’t want this story written about it. The type of restaurant that bestowed extreme loyalty upon its patrons, its “family.” One had to admire the loyalty. If you reached a certain status, you retained that status in the restaurant’s eyes no matter if you retained your fame and influence or had fallen from grace years ago. The only thing that would instigate a regular being shunned is if they shot one of the waiters, and even that wasn’t a given.
Jackie ate at this restaurant several days a week. He liked the idea of only eating at a few places regularly. It had an older-world quality to it. Not like these assholes who needed to eat at the newest hot spot so they could seem “in the know.” Jackie liked to have a place or two to hold regular court. It was a powerful look. You were assured a good table. Most of all, it was in no way lonely or sad if you ate alone. If you held a regular table you were never really eating alone. You were eating with the whole restaurant. You were eating with family.
Jackie was enjoying a delicious plate of shrimp and linguine, one of his go-to dishes. To Jackie, there was never so elegant a combination of olive oil, garlic, and white wine. To Jackie, there was no one who understood al dente in Los Angeles the way his home away from home did. Maurice the waiter, a vaguely European man, maybe from France, maybe from Eastern Europe, checked on Jackie often, but not too much. Maurice knew the exact line not to cross in order to avoid being characterized as high maintenance.
“How is the linguine tasting tonight, Mr. Cohen?”
The same question every time, and Jackie loved giving the same answer. Upon being asked, he’d orgasmically roll his eyes, pucker his lips, and gently kiss his fingertips.
“Why, Maurice, it gets better with every bite.”
Most nights he was able to enjoy the dish without guilt, but this wasn’t one of those nights. Jackie knew he should not be eating pasta. His doctor had told him to stay away from carbs altogether. He had to lose weight. Not that he was massively overweight, but he was maybe the fattest he’d ever been despite the fact that he was lifting weights somewhat regularly. However, this was mostly being done for his upper body (chest, arms, shoulders, etc.) and did very little to attack his gut. And the gut is where all the disease is held. That’s where the impending heart disease, diabetes, and fatty liver disease were waiting to get to work at killing his fat ass early.
However, it wasn’t like there was cheese or red meat involved in a plate of linguine and shrimp. Or even fried food, for that matter. He couldn’t remember if shellfish was still thought to have high cholesterol or not, but he had specifically asked Dr. Silvershein if shrimp was okay, and gotten a completely straightforward yes.
One thing was for sure. The pasta was not a good choice. Not a good choice at all. But what was done was done. He had had a stressful week. Three deals had fallen through and he’d had a terrible meeting with a director wherein the director thought it was a good idea to critique some of Jackie’s actor habits. This was a commentary Jackie in no way asked for, and anyone who knew Jackie in the slightest knew he’d rather be vomited on than critiqued.
He’d thought the comfort of the pasta would make him feel better, but, of course, it didn’t. It made him feel even more like shit. It would have been better to just get some branzino and their arugula salad (hold the pecorino, of course). But he didn’t. He didn’t, so now the only answer was to begin tomorrow with gusto. With a true dietary focus on living longer. He was actually not even in the danger zone. Not yet. Dr. Silvershein was all about preventative medicine. This was a matter of making sure the light did not go from yellow to orange, but instead went back down to green, where it would hopefully stay for the rest of Jackie Cohen’s especially long, happy, and healthy life.
Jackie was tired. Very tired. The stress and overeating wiped him out. And the fact that he was wiped out just from some pasta and some good old neurosis only increased his spiral. He was not at his best. He needed to go home. Sit on his Bellini sofa. Smoke a joint. Forget about the linguine. But first he needed to piss. So Jackie Cohen made his way to the men’s room.
As he walked past the tables, he felt eyes on him. He always liked that. He was grateful for it. He wondered how many of the stares belonged to beautiful women. He thought that maybe his evening was about to change. Instead of smoking a joint and falling asleep to an old episode of Miami Vice, maybe Jackie might be smoking a joint and shtupping a twenty-five-year-old model/actress/singer/songwriter/activist.
Jackie entered the bathroom. It was empty. He’d half hoped someone would be in there who would help him distract himself from his linguine shame so that he’d be able to reenter the dining room in confidence and seal the deal on whatever vixen was hopefully about to throw herself at him. But an empty bathroom was probably better. Any sort of social interaction could have thrown him into an even deeper spiral even more than his current thoughts, especially if that interaction was being had with someone who knew him. Even worse if they were a fan. Fans in bathrooms have no sense of boundaries. But he was alone. He pissed in solitude. His piss made him feel better. One of those pisses that pisses out the day.
He then washed his hands, forgetting, just as he forgot every time he washed his hands at this restaurant, that the hot water was scalding. He yanked his hands away with a muffled yell.
Jackie now was keyed up even more. He was worried that something was wrong with his memory. How the fuck do I forget every time that the goddamn water here burns the shit out of my hands???!!! Was this “lack of memory” because of his past hard-drinking days? Was this because of his current weed-smoking regimen? Was it from cracking his head open on the bottom of his cousin’s pool when he was twelve? It didn’t make sense that he’d forget when his memory functioned on such a high level with so many other things. Jackie could still memorize a multipage monologue as quickly as reciting the alphabet. But why, then? Had something happened in this bathroom in the past that he had blocked out, that was now causing him to disassociate? Was the monotonous repetition of coming to this same restaurant making him go into some kind of shut-down mode? Regardless of the answers to any of these questions, Jackie was now in the midst of an even greater panic.
He walked hurriedly back toward his table, looking to flag down Maurice on the way so he could pay the check and get the fuck out of there. Jackie had started to almost reach a jog, when a hand reached out and grabbed him.
“Where you going, Jackie?”
Jackie looked down, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. He didn’t want to believe his eyes. His eyes were looking at the last person he wanted to see. The hand that was gripping Jackie’s arm was the last hand he wanted grabbing him. The hand belonged to one of the three most hated men in all of Hollywood, and sitting at the table with him were the other two.
Jackie was amazed—he knew that the restaurant was loyal to its customers, but how could it still let these three men in? It had to be the only restaurant that was still doing so. Why these three men would be willing to be in public also dumbfounded Jackie. They were ignoring the very real possibility of other patrons physically attacking them. These men were the garbage of the garbage. Despised. Not just bad guys. The REALLY BAD guys. Jackie had thought that two of them were in prison. These men had had more power over the industry than anyone could ever have imagined. These men broke boundaries in entertainment most people didn’t even know existed. These men changed how movies and TV were made. These men were rapists.
Harry Weingarten, Calvin Steinberg, and Max Laberten all sat in their seats with wide, menacing grins. The hand gripping Jackie was Harry’s. A large meat mitt.
“Where you going, Jackie?” asked Harry. “You gonna just pass our table like we don’t exist?”
Jackie didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe his eyes, plus his burned hands were pulsating.
“I didn’t see you guys.”
If these men had the capacity to laugh they would have done so. Instead they just looked at each other with suspicion. Harry then released his paw from Jackie’s arm and used it to indicate the open chair at their table.
“Have a seat with your old friends, huh?”
If Jackie had had more of his wits about him, he would have continued walking. Brushed them off with a smile. He would have gotten the hell out of there as fast as he could. There was nothing these guys could do to him now. It didn’t matter if he offended them. Offending them was like offending a corpse, and these men would have no ghosts to haunt anyone. Even their ghosts had been killed. But Jackie was caught too much by surprise, and before he knew it, he had sat himself down in the chair.
Harry, Calvin, and Max all stared at him. Jackie had no idea what to say. There was a part of him that just wanted to tear them apart for thinking they had the right to talk to him. That they would be so careless and selfish as to drag him into their filthy spotlight, and make him look like a conspirator, or a sympathizer, or, worse, a fellow sexual predator. Then again, one couldn’t really expect rapists to be skilled at thinking of others before themselves.
He now had a closer look at the three guys. They all looked way worse than when he had last seen them. They all seemed to have aged by fifteen years. You’ve seen the degradation of a president’s looks before and after they leave office. These guys were certainly at the end of their second term. Their skin was gray with yellow patches. The circles under their eyes were darker than the restaurant’s lighting. They could all take their leftover food to go in the bags under their eyes. There also seemed to be a smell. Jackie couldn’t tell if his nose was maybe making this smell up, if the horrific sight of these monsters was telling his brain that there had to also be a smell. But Jackie smelled the faint scent of rot. Bad breath. Extreme dehydration.
Calvin Steinberg leaned forward. “How are you, Jackie?”
Jackie put on the fakest grin he could muster. “Oh, me? I’m good. I’m doing just fine . . . How are you guys?”
The disgraced three all looked at each other again. Max Laberten rubbed his temples. “How do you think we are, Jackie? We’re terrible.”
Harry slammed the table with his palm. “Everyone’s turned against us. People whose calls I used to not take are now not taking my calls.”
Calvin Steinberg wiped the crust out of his eyes. “We’re facing jail time, Jackie. Prison. And not fucking Martha Stewart prison. Real prison.”
Jackie shook his head as his stomach started to really turn. “Surreal. It must just be surreal.”
Max took a sip of his martini. “Where is the fucking fairness here?”
Harry shifted in his chair. “These women. They all saw their chance and they took it. You almost have to admire the hustle. They jumped on the victim bandwagon, and twisted some meaningless messing around into something sinister.”
Calvin mopped the sweat on his forehead. “You know the other day I was kicked out of a grocery store? A grocery store! I don’t even think that’s legal. Isn’t that illegal?”
Harry played with his fork. “All of these bitches should be the ones behind bars, not us. You work your life for something, then some jealous woman decides to destroy you, just ’cause after you shtupped her you didn’t fall in love.”
Jackie again shook his head. “I know. I know . . . it’s the times we live in. The Supreme Court of public opinion.”
What the fuck am I saying? Why am I still here? thought Jackie. He started to really panic. He started to really go inward. He thought about how his hands were not necessarily the cleanest. That there were definitely bad things he had done in his life, too. Nowhere near the level that these scumbags had, but he was by no means any type of angel. He then started to wonder how many things he had done that were unforgivable and disgusting that he wasn’t even aware of. Maybe he was just like these guys. Maybe these guys really didn’t have any sort of sense of what they did wrong. Maybe to them the ninety-six women who had accused them were just liars. Maybe these pricks really believed that they were the victims after all. Fuck, how crazy is that? But maybe he was also that crazy. He started racing through his past. Every encounter. Every word said. Every gesture. Every fuck. What was the nature? What were their feelings the minute they left his sight? Pretty much all of them still talked to him, unless he was the one who cut off communication. Those were just the crazy ones. Of course the crazy ones could lie, but he had his truth. He would fight tooth and nail for his side, and he’d win, because his conscience would be clear. He’d blaze a trail of integrity and responsibility. He wasn’t like these guys. They weren’t even the same species. These were dirt people. Not even dirt. Something far filthier. Too filthy to be described. And Jackie would not be lumped with them. And if he was going to be seen with them as he was most certainly being seen in this very moment, it would be on his terms. Not theirs.
With this Jackie shot up from the table. Harry, Calvin, and Max looked at each other. Jackie slammed his newly burned fist on the table and pointed his finger from the other burnt hand right at their disgusting mugs. With the next words he said, Jackie made sure to raise his volume to its maximum level. And Jackie at his quietest was louder than anyone else at their loudest. It sounded as if he was sitting next to every single person in the restaurant.
“All right, let’s get something straight. I stopped here to talk to you people for one reason and one reason only. And that’s to tell you that you have no business being here. Here as in this restaurant. Here as in this city. Here as in public at all. You only deserve the deepest darkest hole in the earth in which you hopefully will experience even just a fraction of the pain you’ve inflicted on the women you’ve heartlessly abused. And in that pain I hope you will see how you could have been different. How you could have been a different person your whole life who would have avoided becoming the person that you are. No one will mourn you when you die. So good luck. God forgive you, and GodDAMN YOU!!!!”
Jackie walked away. As he strolled back to his table, again looking for Maurice to get his check, he was met with an eruption of huge applause and cheers. Jackie stopped, faced his army of dining fans, and raised a charred fist of solidarity in the air.
In the midst of the applause, Maurice discreetly made his way to the table of the disgraced three.
“Gentlemen, my deepest apologies. But you are to vacate the premises immediately.”
Harry Weingarten gave the last smile he would ever smile again in public. “Really, Maurice? What a fucking surprise.”