by William Poe
“She’s a sweet person,” Thad confessed.
“What? Hard-ass Thad, sentimental?”
Instead of a slap, Simon earned a grab. “You’re the one who’s hard,” Thad joked.
“I don’t want to go downstairs just yet,” Simon whispered.
Thad placed a hand gently on Simon’s face and pulled him close. The pair kissed, losing themselves in lovemaking, savoring each other like two people starved of love.
Afterward Thad turned onto his back and laughed.
“That was some serious sex. Why are you laughing?” Simon asked, but he found himself laughing as well. “It’s like being high on drugs, isn’t it? Better, though.”
“I was laughing because right at the crucial moment, I heard your mother calling. I almost lost it.”
“Glad you didn’t!”
“Bubby,” came Vivian’s barely audible voice. Simon would never outgrow his childhood nickname.
Vivian slept in a room on the ground floor once occupied by Aunt Opal, where Lenny had stayed when his heart condition made it impossible to navigate a flight of stairs, especially toward the end, when he needed to pull an oxygen tank on rollers everywhere he went.
“We’ll be there shortly,” Simon called out.
“All right, hon,” Vivian acknowledged, straining to project her voice.
Simon and Thad found Vivian was sitting at the dinette table looking out at the pond and biting into a slice of toast, her plate a messy affair, evidence of trying to manage a butter knife to spread jelly with one hand. Cicero, Simon’s Boston terrier, who had accompanied him on his dash from Los Angeles, the beloved dog that Thad had once kidnapped to punish Simon for a perceived flirtation at the Spotlight Bar, sat attentively beside Vivian’s chair. Cicero had become her dog, a surprising turn since, throughout Vivian’s life, she had professed a dislike for animals (secretly pleased that Lenny never became a veterinarian). Cicero now slept on her bed and always earned a food reward, no matter how many times Vivian scolded him for begging at the table. It was a kind of heaven for Cicero after enduring ill treatment during Simon’s drug abuse, often going unfed for days and, when Simon met Thad, becoming a pawn in their tumultuous relationship.
Cicero had spent his first six months as a puppy in the window of a pet shop at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, awkwardly standing on the wire floor of his cage, which over time had caused the outer toe on each paw to retract. Simon had bought Cicero during a period of sobriety at the height of his business success, a time when Simon often made purchases on a whim. Before Cicero reached two years old, Simon relapsed into his addiction, the beginning of the rough period for Simon but also for Cicero, culminating in harsh mistreatment when Simon left Hollywood on his final road trip to Sibley, when Cicero would find himself locked in motel bathrooms, unfed because Simon, stoned to near unconsciousness, forgot he was inside. Cicero had managed to survive his trials and forgave Simon; even so, when Simon came into the room, Cicero nudged close to Vivian’s leg.
“It’s such a beautiful morning,” Vivian remarked. “Let’s walk out to the pond. I want to check on the barn.”
Thad didn’t like to think about barns and ponds, and so he offered to stay behind to make a proper breakfast. Vivian had gotten very little nourishment from her toast-making effort.
“I suppose goat herding is country enough for you?” Simon teased, a question Thad ignored with a curled lip. He was willing to help but unhappy that, when Vivian had received a goat from the people who’d moved into the Corley house beyond the creek—Ernie’s old house—she had asked him to position the animal around the property in order to keep the grass short. Thad would have preferred to take out Vivian’s riding lawn mower, but Vivian thought that would be too much to ask. Connie’s oldest daughter, Cheryl, mischievously named the goat Ferdinand, partly because her younger sister, Victoria, had trouble pronouncing it, but also because Cheryl once had proudly recited back the name Ferdinand Fitz-Fossillus Feltspar when Simon finished reading to her the Edgar Allan Poe story “Lionizing.” Cheryl had not understood the story, but she delighted in the odd names of the characters.
Vivian held onto Simon’s arm as they made their way through the morning air, walking the dewy acre that separated the mansion from the swamp’s watershed, which the Powell family had always called the pond. The clay forming the bank in that part being too hard for cypress to sprout, the terminus had become an algae-filled nursery for mosquitos, with flat-top granite outcroppings beloved by snapping turtles as a place to warm themselves.
Simon couldn’t stop thinking about Ernie, how they’d met as preschoolers soon after the family had moved into the mansion, how they’d become instant friends, concocting imaginative games whenever they were together, a picnic table serving as a whaling ship, with stripped mimosa limbs their harpoons, each woodland hill the site of a long-lost fort—Simon and Ernie, the Inseparables. When Ernie’s older brother Jay began molesting him, and Ernie taught Simon the games they played, the innocent adventures soured, and the two companions, though still spending time together, felt separated by secret emotions they couldn’t understand, emotions that became barely recognized as guilt and self-loathing once they approached puberty, when finally, with sexuality ruling their bodies, jealousy tore them apart.
Ernie and Simon might have become lifelong companions, but Ernie never came to terms with his feelings for Simon; instead, he tried to be like other boys and date girls. Loneliness caused Simon to experiment with hallucinogens, excused as a way to seek mystical enlightenment—anything to avoid the question of his sexual identity. Ernie, driven by his own denials, began sniffing glue, progressing to heroin by the time he reached high school. The religion of Sun Myung Moon, despite its falsehoods and deceits, rescued Simon from imminent destruction, but no savior redeemed Ernie. He died at the age of twenty-two, victim to heroin, dying alone in a liquor store parking lot slumped in the front seat of his truck, needle hanging from his arm, a pint of whiskey spilling onto the seat beside him.
“It’s so sad what happened to Ernie,” Vivian remarked, noticing Simon’s gaze in the direction of the Corley house. “You were the cutest little boys. I remember watching you and Ernie play out here by the barn. It didn’t take much to keep you entertained.”
“We were close for a long time,” Simon said. “Closer than you might know. I truly loved Ernie.”
Vivian squeezed Simon’s arm. “I wish I had understood what you were going through.”
“At least you and Dad didn’t get divorced like Ernie’s parents. That was one trauma I didn’t have to face.”
“Stay away from those awful drugs,” Vivian said, nearly in tears. “You weren’t yourself when you came home.”
“The drugs tempt me,” Simon admitted. “But these days, I want more from life.”
“That’s why I wanted you to come out here to the barn with me,” Vivian said as they made their way through the wooden double doors. “Derek replaced the hinges. See how freely the doors open? It’s awful stuffy, but at least the water doesn’t get in. The roof’s still good, and Lenny had the floor concreted before he died. You know how he spent all our money during those last few months. He even had that heater over there installed.” Vivian pointed to a stove that looked like the one in the mansion’s upstairs bathroom, but this one stood alone rather than being recessed into the wall. “I think he wanted to turn this into a workshop, but I can’t imagine what he thought he was going to build. He couldn’t even walk out here with his oxygen tank.”
Simon realized then what Vivian was planning to suggest.
“You and Thad could live at the mansion, and you could paint here in the barn. It’s sure big enough.”
When Simon had driven away from Hollywood, his idea was to make it to New York City and establish himself as an artist—a cocaine fantasy, but one with a germ of truth. Simon had dreamed of becoming a professional artist since childhood.
“I’ll give it some thought,” Simon promised, fo
rming a mental image of himself slinging paint onto a twenty-foot canvas as the Jackson Pollock of Arkansas. “I hope the bats would leave me alone.” For years, the rafters above the planked ceiling had been home to a colony of fruit bats.
“I haven’t seen them fly out of here in a while,” Vivian said. “Maybe they found a better home. There’s a raccoon living around here somewhere for sure. He goes down to the creek to wash the food he steals from the garbage can—no matter how tight I push down the lid, he gets into it.”
Thad called from the back porch, “Breakfast!”
The three residents of the mansion sat down to a banquet of vegetable omelets, hash browns, link sausages, and fresh biscuits with giblet gravy.
Cicero sat by Vivian’s chair with an irresistible expression of longing. He would soon get all the table scraps he could eat.
CHAPTER SIX
Vivian’s proposal warranted careful consideration, but before broaching the idea with Thad, Simon decided to explore possibilities. If he stayed in Sibley, money would be a challenge. Simon had left rehab penniless, and the money Charlotte had stolen from his Spanish client—Hollywood Pictures, SA, run by Emilio, who produced hardcore pornography, and husband-and-wife team David and Irene, who managed general business affairs—never strayed far from Simon’s thoughts. It was foolhardy to think that Sibley’s remoteness would protect him, but Simon needed to believe it.
Simon had known the deal with the Spanish company held great risks when he went into it, having learned while in Spain, negotiating, that the company engaged in nefarious activities. Still, the warnings had come from one of Emilio’s porn stars, and Simon chose to doubt it. Simon’s small enterprise licensing video rights for low-budget American films to foreign countries made a good profit, but at the rate he was going, Simon would never get rich—and that was what Simon wanted, because at that point, he fantasized, he would embark on a new career as an artist.
Rudy Gutierrez had introduced Simon to Charlotte. Rudy was an acquaintance from the Spotlight, a gay haunt at Selma and Cahuenga in Hollywood, advertised by its owner as the crummiest bar in Hollywood, an assessment with which an uninitiated customer, encountering the male hustlers and drug dealers who frequented the establishment, clandestinely plying their trade, might agree. Charlotte was a former exotic dancer and manager of a dance club in Miami before relocating to Hollywood, fleeing her own unsavory dealings with Miami’s underworld, representatives of which demanded monthly payments from strip clubs such as the one Charlotte managed, and whom Charlotte tried to cheat—something that should have alarmed Simon when he learned about it but that instead, in a twisted turn of reasoning, had caused him to trust her more.
Unfazed by Simon’s carousing and drug use, Charlotte ran his business affairs for several months before moving into Simon’s house in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Silverlake, expertly making excuses when Simon failed to return phone calls and/or to show up for meetings. Charlotte knew Simon could ruin her plum situation and often warned him about the extent of his drug use, varying the theme “you’re going to lose everything if you don’t slow down.”
Simon’s business associates had reached their limits when he failed to show up at an all-important film market in Milan, Italy, called MIFED—an acronym derived from the name of the industrial convention center that hosted the event—because he was too high on cocaine to make it. The failure served as one of the triggers that sent Simon fleeing Hollywood hoping to outrun his addiction, a ploy that led to worse effects on his mental health and that strained his family’s tolerance to its limits when he showed up on the doorstep of the mansion, nearly dead. Simon’s flight set Charlotte on her determined path to salvage what she could before he ended up in jail, or worse.
Simon ventured to contact the one film supplier who might work with him, Wally Freeze, creator of sexy but relatively unobjectionable videos, who, along with a silent partner named Martin Fast, owned a company called Fast-Freeze Productions. Simon hoped for an exclusive deal to market Wally’s newest videos, but when he reached him from Sibley, Wally insisted that Simon could only market videos listed on their original contract.
“Even that feels like a risk,” Wally said sharply. “I heard through the grapevine that you had left town and cleaned up your act, but I’ve seen too many people, you know, relapse. Anyway, the new company I’m working with should have luck in overseas markets, but…” Wally’s voice trailed off as if he had not meant to bring up the arrangement with a different company. When Simon asked who it was, Wally replied, “Just someone I’ve spoken to. We can discuss the future when our contract expires…a little over a year, right?”
“Something like that,” Simon demurred.
“There’s a call coming in. I have to take it. Let me know when you’ve made sales. Your lab letters are still in effect; I just need to give them the go-ahead to copy the master tape and let the customs broker know.”
Before Simon could say good-bye, Wally hung up the phone.
At least Simon had some hope of making money, but few markets remained for Wally’s videos. Simon had given up trying to make sales before he left Los Angeles, waiting instead to benefit from Fast-Freeze’s strategy of churning out a new title every month, drawing upon a stable of athletes, cheerleaders, and struggling university students from the Southern California area to produce an hour-long video of the twenty-something men and women taking off most of their clothes. Bel Air Babes and Co-ed Jell-O Wrestling were among the titles that had launched Simon’s business when he’d left his job as a salesman with Nicolò, the Italian entrepreneur introduced to Simon by Scott Mansfield.
Simon found Thad upstairs, sprawled on the bed reading a Harlequin Romance, one of dozens stacked in a crawlspace under the stairs—Vivian’s stockpile, books she had devoured each time a new one showed up on the rack of the grocery store where she had been a bookkeeper and sales clerk until her stroke made working impossible. Those novels had transported Vivian to exotic locales and stimulated vicarious emotions she’d never experienced with Lenny. Thad read the romances as comic relief, often remarking with amazement that anyone could find the stories believable and yet admitting with a laugh that recent events seemed just as preposterous as the contrived dramas, even suggesting that he might submit his own story for publication: the saga of Thad and Simon’s epic romance.
The image in front of Simon was a pulp fiction dust jacket: Thad’s lithe body stretched supine from headboard to base, smooth skin beckoning, nylon gym shorts betraying any semblance of modesty. Fortune had blessed Simon with a handsome boyfriend, one whose time-tested commitment promised a love that would endure. Looking up from his book, Thad’s eyes appeared bluer than ever, his sandy blond hair, grown long since arriving in Sibley, forming a frame around his boyishly cute face.
“Are you comfortable at the mansion?” Simon asked.
Hoping Simon’s next statement would be “Let’s go back to Hollywood,” Thad cautiously responded, “Bored, but comfortable enough.”
“What if I decided to remain in Sibley for a few years?”
Thad set the paperback facedown on the bedspread. “I’ve been wondering what you decided to do.”
“Part of me wants to go back to Hollywood and try to rebuild my reputation.”
Thad knew what a difficult task that could prove to be; he put on a stony expression as Simon went on.
“I spoke to Wally. He didn’t sound happy about it but agreed that I could still market his films. I’d have to start small and negotiate to pay back the money I owe to the other producers; after all, I’m not the only person who has crashed and burned because of cocaine. I hate to think about it, but I need to consider paying back the Spaniards, if I could work out something with them. But I’m scared to contact them.”
“Could you make enough sales to repay them? I mean, that was the biggest contract you’d ever made.”
“I’d have to avoid going to Europe for MIFED this year, and it would be risky to attend the Ameri
can Film Market in Hollywood until I worked something out.”
Thad’s expression grew pensive. “If only I had gotten into rehab sooner. I should have taken over what Charlotte was doing for you. I’d never have ripped you off.”
“That’s sobriety talking.” Simon smiled. “You’re forgetting. You did rip me off once.”
“The jewelry I charged on your credit card. You’re right, but I was mad at you, and I was using heavily. I’d like to think that if I’d sobered up sooner, I could have helped you.”
“You know how addiction works, Thad. Nothing anyone could have said or done would have gotten me to stop until I decided it on my own.”
“Yeah, but still,” Thad sighed.
“The biggest stumbling block right now is the lack of films in my portfolio. I’m afraid to reach out to anyone other than Wally.”
Thad could see Simon becoming increasingly melancholy and tried to comfort him. “We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we? My life was going nowhere when we met, and then you showed me all the great things a person can do if they believe in themselves. I hated witnessing what happened to you, even if I was part of it.” Thad stood up and wrapped his arms around Simon, kissing him on the neck. “I’ve seen you out there in the barn, and I knew you were imagining what it would be like to start painting again. The one time I saw you working on an oil painting at the Silverlake house, it was like you were in a trance.”
“I never thought about cocaine when I was painting. I should have kept at it, but I felt guilty for being creative—that is how screwed up I’ve been. I’m still shaking off the feeling that I betrayed everything I believed in.”
“You did betray everything you believed in! They were ridiculous beliefs and needed to be betrayed. I mean, come on, they taught you that being gay is evil.” Thad hugged Simon closer. “Go ahead and set up the barn. I’ll find some way to get by here in Sibley.”