“Don’t you think it’s weird, though?”
“What?”
“Philip showing up like that. Just after Callum had said all that stuff.”
“Maybe.”
“And maybe not?”
“It’s a small world there, isn’t it?”
“Not that small. Not usually. Philip walked in like he was looking for somebody. It’s like the whole thing was a setup from the beginning.”
“For what?”
“I dunno. So we could make up gracefully, I guess.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t sound too convinced.
“Look,” I said. “Remember that call I got from my agent a few weeks ago?”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“Yeah, well, he said something big was about to happen.”
“He did. Jesus, you’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“And then Callum, who has the very same agent, invites me to the studio, sends a limo for me, butters up my ass like it’s corn on the cob…”
Neil chuckled.
“And tells me how Philip never stopped loving me—which is a lie, let’s face it—and then Philip comes strolling in with a shit-eating grin on his face, tells me how fabulously I sing, how great my dear old mother was, and just happens to let it drop that he’s working on a musical. It’s so obvious, Neil. He wants me for something.”
Neil nodded slowly. “Sure seems like it.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“But why wouldn’t your agent just call you?”
“Because he knew there was bad blood between me and Philip. He got Callum to be go-between to spare Philip the embarrassment. That way Philip didn’t have to apologize. It took a few minutes out of his day, and we all just pretended that everything was hunky-dory. It’s the way they do things. If they need you badly enough, you’re their new best friend again.”
Neil’s eyes widened, taking it in. He was finally looking as excited as I felt. “What’s the musical about?”
“I don’t know. He left in a big hurry, as usual. Period was all he said. Think of that: a Philip Blenheim musical!”
“Maybe you should call your agent.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Let him call me.”
“Don’t be too proud, now.”
“I’m not. I just think it’s the smartest way to handle it. He’ll call, you watch. Tomorrow or the next day.”
He looked at me for a moment, then kissed me on the forehead.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Oh…I let the others go.”
I grimaced sympathetically. PortaParty felt like ancient history already—at least since lunch—but I couldn’t help identifying with the other performers. We’d been a family of sorts, once upon a time, driven by the same dreams. Until Neil and I narrowed it down to two.
“It was pretty grim,” said Neil.
“I guess so.”
“Julie was OK, but Tread flipped out.”
“Poor guy.”
“He even offered to work for nothing.”
“Oh, no.”
“I feel rotten about it.”
“Don’t, Neil. It’s not your fault.”
“I know.”
I was beginning to feel a bit guilty myself. I’d come galumphing in there, after all, flaunting my good news, on what could well have been the worst day of Neil’s whole year. “What happens now?” I asked.
“Check in with Arnie, I guess. See if there’s any lounge work available.”
I winced inwardly, not only at the sound of “lounge work” but at my own fading memory of Arnie Green’s office. The morning I had thrown myself on the agent’s mercy suddenly seemed so long ago. I hated to think of Neil, with all his talent, starting from scratch in that seedy little room.
“You know,” I said, “if my movie happens, they might need a pianist.”
He shook his head, smiling faintly. “I don’t think it works like that.”
“It might.”
He wiggled closer to me and began unbuttoning the front of my dress. “Lots of things might happen. Ever done this with a limousine waiting?”
“Nope.”
“Me either.”
“That was the idea,” I said.
When we were naked, we had our first all-out fuck. Neil was reluctant at first, largely on my account, so I took the bull by the horns, so to speak. I rolled a condom onto his cock with leisurely precision, as if working clay on a slow-spinning wheel, then eased myself down a bit at a time until that sweet certainty filled me so completely that it became more mine than his, part of my own skeletal system, next-door neighbor to my heart. When I hit bottom, he smiled languidly, then cupped his hand against my cheek and began to move inside me.
I actually had visions when I came, Technicolor images that whipped and roiled through my consciousness. In one I was a ragged peasant girl, a dwarf revolutionary manning the barricades at the Bastille. In another I was the plucky star of a small traveling circus in the forties. In both I was singing with such bell-like brilliance, such total conviction, that everyone on the sound stage, even the director himself, was stunned by my performance. Just as I was taking my bows, Neil came, arching into me with a growl of primal release. Maybe it was just me, but it felt remarkably like applause.
17
THERE WAS A SMALL FIRE AT THE FABRIC BARN LAST NIGHT, SO Renee has three days off while they clean up the mess. With all that time on her hands, she’s as frisky as a kid sent home from school after a bomb threat. She tried to organize a shopping trip first thing, but I told her to go it alone, thinking I should stay near the phone in case Leonard called.
He didn’t, of course.
Not so far, anyway, and it’s almost four o’clock.
This makes two days and counting.
Fuck him. Just fuck him.
18
FIVE DAYS SINCE THE BIG LUNCH, AND STILL NO WORD FROM ANYBODY.
Renee is back at work, so I’m rattling around alone in my suburban cage.
Jeff came by this morning, misery in quest of company. Three days ago, over a grimly efficient little dinner at Musso & Frank’s, he and Callum called it quits.
Jeff sprawled on the floor next to me and waved an obese joint in my face.
I rolled my eyes at him. “At ten o’clock in the morning?”
He looked at me blankly for a moment, then lit the joint with a Bic, sucking in smoke, holding it, letting it go, handing the joint to me. “You’d have an excellent point, if your period weren’t coming on.”
I gave him an irritated look, my slowest burn, then took a few tokes.
“I gather no one called,” he said.
I shook my head.
“What do you think that means?”
I told him I didn’t know anymore, and left it at that. I couldn’t put words to my darkest doubts. I’m prepared to face them like a big girl, but not yet, not officially. Part of me still hopes against hope that Leonard is just dragging his feet again. I’m small potatoes in his client stew, after all. He could be tied up in negotiations for someone more important than I, maybe even someone who’s wanted for the same musical.
“You know,” said Jeff, “I could call Callum and ask him what he knows.”
This threw me. “You parted that amicably?”
“Well, no. But I don’t mind calling.”
I told him that was sweet, but I wouldn’t think of imposing. Frankly, I was worried that Jeff’s failed romance might rub off on my fledgling deal, screwing it up for good. I wasn’t sure I could trust him to stay cool about it.
He took another toke, staring contemplatively at the ceiling, then pinched off the roach and deposited it in the pocket of his jeans jacket. “You know what pisses me off?”
“What?”
“Ned warned me about this. He described the whole thing.”
“Described what?”
He shrugged. “How it would feel.”
“How w
hat would feel?”
“Sleeping with a movie star…a closet case.”
“Well, I guess Ned would know.”
“Too bad I wasn’t listening.”
“What did he say?”
“He said it could start a million different ways. But you always ended up feeling like a mistress.”
I studied his face to see how seriously he expected to be taken. “Is that how you feel?”
He nodded. “More or less.”
“Get any nice lingerie out of it?”
“Hell, no.” He laughed ruefully. “Nothing.”
“Well, fuck that.”
“Exactly.”
“When did Ned say this?”
“Right after we met. When he told me about living with Rock. I used to quote it to everybody for years, and then I met Callum, and the whole thing just flew out of my head.”
“Yeah, well…a pretty dick is like a melody.”
“Just shut up, OK?”
“OK.”
My docile response amazed him. “When did you get to be so easy?”
“Since you anesthetized me.”
Jeff smiled and was silent for a moment. Then he said: “You know…I never met anybody on that movie.”
“Really?”
“Not one soul. I never even met anyone he knew.”
I shook my head sympathetically.
“What was it like?” he asked. “You never told me.”
“The movie?”
“Yeah. Did it seem homophobic?”
I told him the killer seemed queer, but I didn’t see that much of it.
“They’re gonna picket it, you know.”
“Who?”
“GLAAD.”
I giggled. “The sandwich wrap people?”
He wasn’t amused. “The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“This shit’s gotta stop sometime.”
I asked him if he had plans to picket.
“I dunno. It’s too early to tell.”
I hate to admit it, but I was thinking about myself again, wondering if Jeff’s politics would alienate Leonard and if Leonard would take it out on me. “Does Callum know about the GLAAD protest?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s what started the last fight. I told him about it, and I said I thought it was valid. He said I was being a hothead just for the sake of it, because my lover had died and I had no place to vent my anger. So I told him I felt this way long before Ned died and that I was sick and tired of pricks like him who were willing to live a lie in exchange for stardom. He called me a fascist and accused me of trying to sabotage his career, and I told him so be it, if the career is corrupt to begin with. Why should I give a shit about a system that keeps insisting I don’t exist? This isn’t my fantasy.”
I flashed on that day in the commissary and Callum’s clumsy salacious remark about Bridget Fonda. “Do you think he might be bi?” I asked Jeff.
“Is that what he told you?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Well, he’s not, however he said it.”
I nodded.
“Trust me.”
I smiled at him faintly. “I do.”
“He is definitely a member of the greatest show on earth.”
“Too bad it wasn’t enough.”
“Well…there are all kinds of queers.”
“Mmm.”
“Just because you suck cock doesn’t mean you’re perfect.”
“That’s my motto.”
“I bet it is,” he said.
We both started giggling, rolling on the floor like puppies. Jeff’s seizure was more purgative, though, lasting longer than mine and playing itself out in a resonant sigh.
“You’ll get over it,” I told him.
“I know.”
“Did you leave him…or vice versa?”
He thought a moment. “Both, really.”
“How does that work?”
“Well…I told him it was over, and he looked relieved.”
“I see.”
“He looked very relieved.”
I hesitated before asking: “You think there’s somebody else?”
“Oh, hell no,” he said, and then thought about it and smirked. “Unless you count Billy Ivy.”
“Who’s that?”
“This porn star, a local kid. He plays college boys in skin flicks…wrestles in jockstraps, gets fucked with a tie on, that sort of thing.”
“Of course.”
“Callum’s obsessed with him. Back in Maine, he used to jerk off to him in Honcho. Then he moved back here and got the video, which, I swear, never left his VCR at the Chateau Marmont.”
“You watched it together?”
He nodded. “I got off on it the first time, but it turned into a real thing with Callum. After a while he never had sex with me at all without Billy Ivy’s preppie butt on the screen. It got to be almost insulting. Then one night Callum came to Silver Lake—the only time he ever did—and flipped through one of my Advocates and found out that Billy Ivy has his own eight hundred number for outcalls in L.A.”
“Phone sex, you mean?”
“No. The real thing. If you’re tired of his movies, you can call up and order him.”
I smiled at him. “You think Callum did?”
“I know he did. He says he didn’t, but he did.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It bothers me that he lied.”
“Nothing else?”
“No. I’m a sex-positive person.”
I gave him a dubious look.
“OK,” he said, “it bothers me a little.”
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t why we split, though. He just panicked because I told him he should come out.”
“Ah.”
“I didn’t bully him or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
“I was really gentle about it. I told him just to think it over…how much more peaceful he’d be, how much it would mean to millions of gay kids who’re still struggling with it.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t. The blood just drained out of his face, and he changed the subject.” Jeff traced a pattern on the carpet with his forefinger. “That was it. I became the enemy after that.”
He seemed so filled with sadness that I refrained from comment.
“You know,” he added, “I thought I could fix him.”
“Yeah.”
“My first mistake, right?”
“Maybe not.”
“Yeah. It was. Nothing ever changes here, and you can’t do shit about it. That kid is twenty years old, and he might as well be Rock in 1949. They just keep making ’em.”
“Someday it’ll change.”
“Right,” he said. “In the meantime, Ned would be laughing his ass off.” He stroked the carpet slowly, soothingly, as a form of punctuation. There were tears blurring his eyes, but whether they were for Callum or some dim, resurfacing memory of Ned was far beyond my powers of observation.
19
I’M SO MAD I COULD SPIT. ONE WEEK AND TWO DAYS AFTER THE lunch at Icon, Leonard finally called. I don’t much feel like writing about our conversation, but I’ll do it, anyway—in the interest of thoroughness, if nothing else.
“Doll.”
“Leonard.”
“How are you doing?”
“Swell.”
“Terrific. Look, this thing is on.”
“What thing?”
“The thing I told you about. You free a week from Saturday?”
A low-grade dread began to seep through my system like pale-green poison. Blockbuster musicals are not generally described as being “a week from Saturday.” I sat down on the floor, took a deep, cleansing breath, and collected myself. “Just tell me what it is, Leonard, and I’ll tell you if I can do it.”
He didn’t answer right away, obviously conscious of my frag
ile state. “OK…how does this grab you? Meryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Jay Leno, Candy Bergen, Sly Stallone, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Annette Bening, Warren Beatty, Madonna…Stop me when you’ve had enough.”
“No, go ahead. Keep jerking my chain.”
“I’m serious.”
“Right.”
“It’s a tribute, doll.”
“To what? My gullibility?”
He laughed. “To Philip Blenheim.”
I said nothing.
“You still there?”
“I’m listening, Leonard. Keep talking.”
“Well…the UFL is giving Philip their Lifetime Achievement Award, so they’re having a big blowout at the Beverly Hilton. It’s like the night of nights. HBO is televising it, ET’s gonna cover it. I haven’t seen a roster like this in years. Bette’s gonna sing, Patrick Swayze’s gonna dance. Barbra might even sing, for Christ’s sake….”
What can I tell you? I tried to stay cool, but my face had already gone up like a baked Alaska, flaming in early celebration. “And they want me?”
“Who else?”
“To perform?”
“No, to bus tables. Of course to perform.”
I laughed extravagantly, because Leonard suddenly struck me as the wittiest man in the world. “You’re really serious?”
“I’m really serious.”
“Jesus.”
“No need to thank me,” he said. “Your ecstasy is my reward.”
I hooted. “My ten percent is your reward.”
“Well, that too.”
“It does pay, doesn’t it?”
“Does it pay? the woman asks. Does it pay?”
Suddenly the pieces fell into place. I flashed on Philip at the Icon commissary, that strange new respect in his eyes, telling me how exquisitely I sang, how he’d recognized my talent even in the old days. Then I remembered Leonard’s inquiry about my weight when he’d first teased me with that “something kind of big.” Then, with no effort at all, I saw myself onstage at the Beverly Hilton before an all-star black-tie audience, singing “If,” or maybe something entirely new, while Meryl and Madonna listened from the wings in rapt amazement and jaded producers scrambled for the phone.
“So,” said Leonard, “they’re giving the suit a thorough over-haul.”
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