Wag the Dog by Larry Beinhart

written a screenplay that would be perfect for Magdalena, just perfect, if I could just show it to Ms. Lazlo, just leave it on the seat of her car, you know, it would be so good for both of them, because once Magdalena read it, she would be glad she had discovered it.
    In order to speak, Maggie and I either go out on the beach or put on loud music. If it’s my choice, it’s country. We whisper in front of the speakers. She says Hank Williams is growing on her. Hank Junior pisses her off because he switches back and forth between being great and being dumb. She likes Willie, but then, she says, she liked him before me. But mostly she’s impatient. She doesn’t like the waiting.
    I hear about Nick Jackson and the gerbil at least once a day, and every single person who tells me the story tells me that they personally heard it from either the doctor who removed it from his famous rectum or from a doctor who is very close to the doctor who did the gerbilectomy. 15
    Aaron Spelling has a little soiree. The driver who brings Kenneth Branagh goes out with a girl who is a maid who, he says, is best friends with Melanie Griffith’s maid. He tells me that when Melanie was pregnant, she did special exercises so that she could start having sex with Don Johnson again immediately after she had the baby. She couldn’t stand the idea of not doing it, even the very next day. 16 I ask him if he knows Beagle. He says yeah,he drove him once. I ask when. It was only a couple of weeks ago. I ask how he looked, did he look sick? “I heard he was sick,” the guy says, “but he didn’t look sick. Pale but not sick. He and his wife were having a big fight.” About what? “About their son. Beagle gave him some war toys. GI Joe dolls or something, and his wife was livid. Kid wanted ’em, Beagle says. I don’t care, his wife says. Real, what you might call strident. I would call her a bitch. Wife talks to a man like that, she needs an attitude adjustment, if you know what I mean. But it’s none of my business. I just transport ’em, I don’t critique ’em.”
    When Maggie comes out, it’s with Kenneth Branagh. They stop and stand and talk for a minute—out of earshot, but it has a special warmth and intimacy. She touches his arm. She laughs her laugh. He gives her a ciao -type kiss on the cheek; her body presses against his and lingers long enough for him to feel it’s a body.
    I should be cool. I try to be cool. I hold the door open for her and don’t say anything. As we drive down Sunset, she puts a CD on the player. Not country. Classical. She puts it up loud. Then she says, “Don’t look at me that way.”
    â€œWhat way?”
    â€œLike you’re my father or my husband.”
    â€œI’m neither,” I say.
    â€œThat’s right, you’re not.”
    â€œYou’re an independent, grown-up woman who kisses me on the beach from time to time . . .”
    â€œTwice.”
    â€œYes,” I say. “Twice.”
    â€œWe have to stop this, Joe. We have to. I can’t have you trailing behind me like some puppy. Branagh’s brilliant. As it happens, he’s got a wife he’s in love with . . .”
    â€œThey all have wives they’re in love with. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? You want to hear tapes of happy husbands? I got tapes of happy husbands saying, ‘I love my wife, but she doesn’t suck like you do, baby.’ I once recorded the wife of the CEO of MacGregor Defense Industries, she was talking to her daughter’s tennis coach, she said, ‘I love my husband, I really do. But his thing, it’s just smaller than yours.’ Being in love with his wife means shit . . .”
    â€œThe point is,” Maggie says, “the next time he makes a picture—and he’s going to make more pictures—it’s important that Magdalena Lazlo is in his mind. Even if he