Reilly stepped over to one of the tables and watched as a young man with a pierced lip and a tattoo sneaking up the sides of his neck drew an elaborate dragon design on a piece of thick paper, which was then taken to a nearby table by another tattooed kid, who cut it into a stencil. The focus they had on their work was impressive. Neither of the artists looked older than fifteen.
Hank stood behind them and watched.
“Awesome work, Skeet. Great cuts, Lucia. I can’t wait to see the shirts when they’re finished,” he said, with an encouraging pat on each back.
Reilly watched Hank talk to his helpers and smiled. Hank had always been a positive person, even at his lowest moments. And between the two of them, coping with the pressures of Hollywood and dealing with coming out to not-so-very supportive parents, she had seen Hank at some pretty low points in his life. But he always responded with an upbeat attitude, and she was impressed to see it reflected in his work and in the people he worked with.
Reilly picked up a small stack of stencils and sorted through them.
“I’m not gonna see you on a documentary anytime soon am I, Hank? Sweatshops in America: From Skateboard to Sewing Machine,” she teased. She watched through her lashes for his reaction. She was only half-kidding.
“Only if it’s good for business,” Hank teased back, smacking the bottom of the stack of stencils Reilly held. She almost dropped them, juggling them back into a neat stack that she placed back on the table. Then she trotted after him as he made his way to another set of tables.
“Aren’t you a little worried about having so many kids hanging out here? Do you think that it might bring some unwanted elements into your work?” asked Reilly when she caught up to him. She tried to sound casual, but in her own ears she sounded judgmental—and not at all unlike her mother. She cringed and wondered if there was a way to take back her last words. His glance told her that he had heard it, too.
“Actually, no. Just the opposite. Everyone knows that this is a drug-free, attitude-free zone. They bring that shit in here, and they’re out. No exceptions,” said Hank, slashing the air for emphasis.
“You sound like such a badass!”
“You say that like it surprises you!” Hank said as he stopped abruptly and faced her with his hands on his hips.
Reilly just laughed.
“Yeah. You are such a badass, Hank. You. The guy that hid behind me when that muscle-bound guy at the frozen yogurt place caught you drooling over his boyfriend’s ass!”
“I wasn’t drooling. Besides, I couldn’t help it. It was right there, asking to be looked at. And that giant had muscles on his eyeballs, Rye! His eyeballs!” said Hank, taking his hands from his hips and pointing at his eyes.
“So you used me as a shield?”
“Okay. I admit, it wasn’t my finest hour,” conceded Hank as they watched the skaters zip up and down the concave pipe. “So far, the kids have policed themselves. You’d be surprised. They rise up to the expectations that are set for them. If you expect them to act like punks, they will. If you expect them to be cool, they’re cool. Besides, the majority of the kids here aren’t even kids. They might act like it, and dress like it, but most of the people you see here are twenty, or older. Most of them are our age, if you can believe it. Skeet, the guy who just drew the dragon design? He just turned thirty-one.” When Hank saw Reilly’s raised eyebrow, he laughed. “I’ve been begging him for his secret. I’d be a gazillionaire if I could bottle that shit!”
Reilly continued her tour of Hank’s warehouse and grew more impressed with her friend’s work. When demand for his designs outgrew his capital for the raw materials and space he needed, Reilly had loaned him the money to grow his operation so he could keep up. With that decision, not only had she become the unofficial spokesmodel for the clothing line, she had become a silent partner in one of the hottest niche fashion houses in California.
“Hank, I’m so proud of you! You’ve done so well with all of this.”
“Thanks to you, Rye. I did okay before, but you wearing my stuff has taken it to another level. Plus the loan. I can’t thank you enough. I just hope you keep liking what I put out.”
“A few years ago your stuff was a little too punk for me,” admitted Reilly. “Either you’ve tamed it down, or my taste has changed. But I do like the edgy vibe of the stuff that you design for me.”
Hank inspected the tee shirt Reilly was wearing. Scoop-necked and three-quarter length sleeves, the distressed material had a carefully stenciled image of a woman holding several shopping bags, as well as a Chihuahua in a designer carrying tote—both the woman and the dog were living voodoo dolls. Reilly’s cargo pants were also part of Hank’s collection, with a small voodoo doll Chihuahua stenciled on the back pocket. The pants came with a detachable chain that hung from one of the front belt loops and ended in the back pocket, but Reilly wasn’t comfortable with that statement, so she had taken it off.
“To be honest, I don’t think you could have pulled it off before the—a couple of years ago,” said Hank, hesitating over giving voice to the moment when her style had changed. Even Hank had a hard time defining Reilly by the heinous mistake she had made. Reilly appreciated the sensitivity, but at the same time, she knew that she didn’t deserve to be given an easy out. She wanted to put it out there, take responsibility for it, but at the same time, she didn’t want to make the whole thing about how she felt or how she was doing. That would have been disrespectful in light of what she’d done. So she didn’t say anything as Hank continued. “No offense, you’ve always been fab, Rye. But you used to have that girl-next-door-growing-into-a-sophisticated-lady thing going on. Sleek and put together. It was nice. Maybe too nice. But, now, you have a little edge going on. It’s a little bad-girl, and a lot sexy, and it definitely suits you.”
“Thanks, Hank,” she said regarding him out of the corner of her eye. “I think.”
Hank just laughed and put his arm around her shoulders as they walked toward the front of the building.
“So, I’ve been meaning to ask you what you want to do with your car. I kept it at my place for a while. Now I’m storing it here, out back,” said Hank. His words were casual, but the arm around her shoulders told her otherwise. She was sure he felt her back stiffen.
The car.
When the trial was over, and all of the evidence had been returned to her, she had been in prison. Her accountant had paid the impound fees, and Hank had picked up her stuff. Her mother had asked her what she wanted to do with the car during one of her visits to the prison, and Reilly had asked her to see if Hank would deal with it. Since then, when Hank or her mother brought it up, she changed the subject. The stuff was meaningless. She had no idea what had been in the car. A jacket? A pack of gum? It was nothing important. As for the car, she wasn’t sure that she would ever drive again. If she did, she certainly would never drive that car.
“I can keep it here for you as long as you want,” added Hank when Reilly didn’t respond. “Or I can get rid of it for you, if you want. You know—make it disappear,” he said in his best Al Capone imitation.
“Would you?” responded Reilly after another pause.
“Sure. I can do that.”
“Thanks. You can just sell it, though. No need to find car-sized cement boots.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” asked Hank before they were interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Hey, you two!”
Reilly was relieved to drop the topic and turned to see a sorely missed friend coming toward them.
“Cray! I didn’t think that I would see you until shooting started,” she said, referring to Dare to Dream, the sequel to Salsa Nights that they were scheduled to start filming in a few weeks. She threw herself into his arms when he got close enough. “What are you doing here? Researching a role?”
Cray was so clean cut that he’d literally been the poster boy for BYU before he caught his big break in Hollywood. Standing in the workshop, he stood out like a missionary a
mong the punks and skaters that wandered the premises. She wondered what the parents of the innocent sheep who attended that hallowed institution would think if they knew the recruiting model that graced the literature they held during freshman orientation would have been excommunicated for what he had done with the photographer after the photo shoot.
“Why not? It seems to fit you pretty well,” said Cray, stepping back to inspect her. He gave a playful tug on the belt loop of her baggy cargo pants. The form-fitting tee shirt she wore stopped a fraction of an inch above the waistline of her pants, showing off a little skin. He pulled down the fabric as if he were trying to cover her up. She smacked his hands away.
“What really brings you down here? I can’t believe I haven’t seen you since I’ve been back. It seems we kept exchanging messages.”
She saw Cray and Hank exchange a look.
“I was out of the country. Hank said you’d be down today, and I thought that I’d surprise you.”
“You guys know each other?” she asked scrutinizing one, and then the other.
“Shaw. Totally,” said Hank nodding his head, in his best imitation of a surfer.
“Really? How’d this happen?”
“Well, if you must know,” began Hank, teepeeing his fingers in front of his face, a la Dr. Ruth, “when two men who love other men meet up in the dark hallway of a sex club—”
“Shut up! Shut up! I don’t want to hear this,” said Reilly. She covered her ears and walked away.
“Just kidding, Rye! Just kidding!” Hank grabbed her arm.
“Let’s go to lunch and we’ll tell you over some chicken vindaloo,” said Cray, catching up to them.
Lunch with the Boys
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, AT HANK and Reilly’s favorite Indian restaurant, the three of them had settled into a half-circle corner booth and returned the menus to the waiter who had just taken their order. Reilly broke off a piece of fresh papadum. She dipped it in the sweet and spicy sauce and sized up her friends.
“So,” said Reilly, waving between them, encouraging them to tell the story of how they knew each other.
“We met at the premier of Salsa Nights,” said Hank, winking at Cray.
“You went to a movie premier?” asked Reilly, pinning Hank with her gaze. He hated things like that. It was one of the reasons that he had given up acting.
“What can I say? He was hot! I mean so, so hawt!” crowed Hank, shooting his finger up in a dirty reference to what the hawt guy did for his penis. Reilly hated it when Hank brought his penis up in conversation.
“That he was, my friend, that he was,” agreed Cray, mimicking the gesture.
Reilly was confused and a little grossed out by the penis bonding, but she had to wait for the waiter to refill their water glasses to ask what they were talking about.
“One more order of papadum?” asked the waiter, unknowingly imitating Hank’s and Cray’s finger gesture.
The waiter looked confused when they all broke out laughing.
“Yes, please,” said Reilly, nodding her head as she tried not to choke on the sip of water she had just taken. When the waiter was out of earshot, she whispered: “You guys are awful!”
Hank and Cray just laughed more.
“Who was the hot guy?” she asked, after the guys got their laugher under control. She looked at Hank, who looked at Cray. “Cray?”
“No. Not Cray,” said Hank, rolling his eyes at her, as if she were clueless. Reilly was irritated at his response—how was she to know?—but she was relieved that she wouldn’t have to hear about what Hank and Cray would do with their penises together. Then Cray, who was sitting next to him, smacked his arm, and Hank amended his response. “I mean, yes. Cray is hot. Beyond hot, actually. But I was talking about Noah. The guy I was dating at the time—no, make that the guy that I was doing at the time. He was a gaffer or something on the movie.”
“He was an assistant producer, you dork,” corrected Cray.
“That’s just what he said to get in your pants,” said Hank, raising his eyebrows and lowering his chin to stare at Cray.
“You lost me. I thought you were dating—I mean, doing—him, Hank? Wait. Did you both…?” she asked, without completing her question, waving a pointed finger between them.
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
“Gross,” said Reilly. She didn’t want to imagine the two of them with some random guy like that. She knew that she had no room to talk, though.
“But not at the same time,” added Cray.
“Though, if it had come up, I’d have been all over that action,” said Hank with another obscene hand gesture.
“Stop!” said Reilly. Then she realized that she was being hypercritical. She and Sylvie hadn’t been so different about their conquests. They just hadn’t talked about it openly to other people. At least she hadn’t.
“But that’s all over with now. Hank is it for me,” said Cray.
Reilly set her glass down so hard that she sloshed water onto the tablecloth.
“What? Wait! You two are together? You’re dating? How long?” she sputtered.
“Long, as in gay years? Or long, as in straight years?” asked Cray.
“She doesn’t know straight years,” said Hank to Cray before turning back to Reilly. “We might as well be married, Rye.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, like I said, we met at the premier. That was, what? Right before Memorial Day the year the movie came out? Three years?” Hank turned to Cray for affirmation. Cray nodded and took a sip of his water.
“Three years? How did I not know? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I know, right? That’s, like, twelve years in gay years. Anyway, you had so much going on,” said Hank. With a smile and a nod of thanks, he took the new order of papadum from the waiter who delivered it to the table.
“You were a bit tied up with the trial at the time,” said Cray. He reached across the table and petted her arm. “You couldn’t even do the promotional stuff with me, remember? I had to do most of it by myself. Thank the gods that someone filmed that dance we did at that award party I threw for you. Holy crap, that dance was hot! You were on fire that night, babe.”
“Oh, yeah!” said Hank, glancing at Cray with a smile. “That video has over a hundred million views on that video website that everyone uses when they aren’t watching porn.”
“I just saw the video a few weeks ago,” said Reilly. “Internet access was limited to certain websites on the inside. A hundred million views, though? Wow!” Reilly smacked Hank on the shoulder. “Okay. I was busy with the trial. But what about when you came to visit? Why didn’t you tell me about you and Cray then?”
“You mean when I came out to visit you in the Big House?” asked Hank. “You were so quiet whenever I visited. We didn’t talk much. We just sat there most of the time. And when we did talk, I didn’t know what to tell you that wouldn’t make you feel bad.”
“That’s what my mom said.” Reilly had a sudden revelation about how she had forced people to walk on eggshells around her. She wondered if they still did. Shame welled up inside of her. She studied Cray to see how he was responding to all of this.
“Don’t look at me. You told me not to visit,” said Cray, studying the food the waiter had just set down before him.
Reilly had seen a glimpse of hurt in Cray’s eyes before he glanced away.
“I’m sorry, Cray. I was embarrassed and depressed. I didn’t want people to see me like that.”
Reilly wondered how the topic had gotten around to her and wanted to change the subject. But she also knew that they needed to acknowledge a few things before they could all feel comfortable around each other again. Again? Maybe for the first time since she’d been back, she thought. She hadn’t really talked about her experience in prison, except to give the sterile version when anyone asked: that she had kept to herself and that she had read a lot. Partly because she didn’t want to relive it through the telling, but
most of it was that she didn’t want to feed the curiosity of most people who asked her about her experience. It was intensely personal. That didn’t apply to her close friends though. Some people probably wanted to know because they loved her.
“It’s okay, Rye. I wouldn’t have known what to talk about if I had visited, anyway,” Cray said. Reilly took some comfort in Cray’s affirmation.
“I never knew what to talk about, either. I know that I didn’t act like it, but I loved hearing about what was happening on the outside. It helped to get my mind off of what was going on inside.”
Reilly realized that they were having the exact opposite discussion of the one that she had with her mother by the pool. She wondered why it had been so different when it had come from her mom.
“Was it awful?” asked Hank. He lowered his fork to give her his full attention. A rare action on his part, so she knew that he was concerned and she couldn’t just brush it off, as she was accustomed to doing. Cray continued to eat, but he was also watching her intently.
“Sometimes. On the good days. Most of the time it was worse than awful,” Reilly admitted, feeling herself pulled back into memories that she had a hard time connecting to the person that she was now. It just didn’t seem like some of it had anything to do with her. She felt like there was somehow a separate part of herself that had lived that part of her life back then, or that it hadn’t really been her. It was a disorienting sensation. She couldn’t describe it. “I want to tell you about it, and I will, but maybe right now isn’t the best time. Is that okay?”
“Sure, sweetie. No problem. Whenever you’re ready,” said Hank. He didn’t joke about the lack of spa services, non-designer clothes, or that there probably wasn’t any bottled water. Somehow he knew how precarious she felt right then. She knew he’d go there one day, but for now, he just accepted her answer, and Reilly’s heart filled with even more love for him.
“You’re a good friend, Hank.” Reilly saw Cray trying to be unobtrusive beside Hank, and she reached over and patted his arm so he didn’t feel left out of the conversation. “You are, too, Cray. But Hank has been my family since the day he made me spew milk from my nose during our screen test together when we were—” she looked at Hank, “What? Ten-years-old?”
Life in High Def Page 18