Never Enough

by Alexandra Caluen

  “I said, how can you be so perfect.” Victor made a small, pained sound.

  “You were. You are. It wasn’t only the sex, you know it wasn’t. Not then any more than it is now.”

  “I know.” Victor set his free hand on Andy’s face, stroking a thumb up his cheekbone, then running his hand through the shaggy hair and down his neck. “I wish I had been a little bit braver.”

  “So do I. But you were brave enough to come back. For all you knew I was going to throw a drink in your face, make a huge scene, blow your cover and ruin your life.” Andy kissed him lightly, smiling again.

  “I knew you weren’t going to do that. You had four months and a photography exhibit you could have used to do that.”

  “I’m still dying to put some of those pictures up on a wall somewhere.

  Not to mention a few I’ve taken since then.” Victor giggled. Andy felt relieved. “How do you think Reggie would like those?”

  “Let’s wait till we need a good scandal to jump-start our careers,” Victor suggested.

  “Or until we redecorate. We could put a mural of you in the guest bathroom.” Victor laughed. Andy kissed him again. “Let’s go inside, I’m hungry.” He sat back, swung his legs off the lounger, and stood up, holding out a hand for Victor. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  “Don’t forget those cookies.”

  Chapter 10

  August 2019

  Toward the end of their second week back, when Andy and Victor were starting to be almost accustomed to it – to not having anything they absolutely had to do, to being free to do nothing if they so chose – they were starting down the stairs from doing something other than nothing when they heard Loretta talking. They glanced at each other, quickly deducing that she was in the living room, on her phone. They hung back for a second because they heard their names.

  “Oh my God yes. I know. Andy came out on location with this beard and ay papi.” She laughed. “No no no. He never wanted a woman in his life. You should have seen Victor though. Oh my God and the producer. The production assistants, everybody, it was hilarious. No, everybody’s that way about Victor too, oh of course me too. Since the first read, I was like wow.

  For a minute I thought, hmm, and then Andy came to Miami and I thought no. No no no. I would never. They’re so in love. Oh my God they’re all over each other. Yes! I can hear them on the other side of the house. I get so hot.

  It’s terrible, they can be in the fucking kitchen talking about, you know, fucking salad, and their voices change. Yes they both have a sex voice, you would die. Oh yes. I’m, my God, find me a man. I don’t know anybody here except their friends. Everybody’s married! Except this one guy, I met him at the movie premiere last winter. He was so nice. He doesn’t live close by. I don’t know, he was single then. No! Oh my God you’re so loco.” She laughed hard. “Throw me a bone, oh my God.”

  Victor and Andy couldn’t look at each other. They would have cracked up for sure. Andy had a hand clamped over his mouth. Victor was halfway through the bedroom doorway because he didn’t know if he could maintain.

  “No I’m not going to call Ernesto, he can fuck himself with a chainsaw, that piece of shit. I don’t know, I’m wearing out my vibrator.” She laughed again. “Oh yes. That’s the only thing. I’m busy learning Shakespeare. We have dinner with their neighbors a lot. They’re all in and out of each other’s houses all the time, it’s just like we were growing up, it’s nice. We’re going to a show next weekend, one of the neighbors is in it. That woman who was in the tango movie. Oh she’s amazing. There’s an after party, all their hot dancer friends will be there. God in heaven, somebody has to be single. Yes,

  maybe I can find a man there. Light a candle for me.” Another laugh. “Sí sí chica. I’ll talk to you soon. Besos a ti.”

  Andy and Victor crept back into the bedroom, easing the door shut, as Loretta was winding up the call. They went through to the bathroom, closing that door behind them too. Victor turned on the shower. Then they laughed, trying to muffle it with bath towels. “Oh Jesus,” Andy said after a while, splashing water on his face before he turned the shower off again. “Well, that answers the question of how non-obvious we are. Not at all.”

  “Do I have a sex voice?”

  “Oh, honey, do you ever.” Andy said that in his sex voice, which got a laugh – and a hot look – from Victor. “I guess I’d better locate my phone and send a text to Jim. If he’s not already planning to be at this thing next weekend, clearly he should be.”

  “See if he can come to dinner this weekend,” Victor suggested. “We could get Tanith and Sid, Tina and Reza. Have a little movie-making chat fest.”

  “And it won’t be so obvious if he’s not the only guest. Brilliant strategy.” Andy kissed him. “We should go downstairs. I do not know how I’m going to look her in the eye.”

  “Oh, like you didn’t know she can hear what we do up here.”

  “All of it, apparently. She’s been so politely oblivious.” Andy checked himself out, noted the love bite on his neck, gave Victor a look. “I really am so in love with you.”

  “I know. I’m so in love with you, too.” Victor kissed him again and opened the door. They went downstairs, and everybody managed to act normal. They talked about the costumes their friend Kenji’s shop was working up for Loretta as Viola as Cesario, and for Andy and Victor as Antonio and Bassanio. They had Maria the makeup artist lined up. This was all scheduled for the following week. “Get on the phone to those people about this weekend,” Victor reminded Andy. “You know they’re all busy.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Andy found his phone in the control center off to one side of the kitchen and composed a group text. After he sent it he glanced up at Loretta. “We’re inviting some people over from last year’s movie. Tanith and some others. Apparently they’re all sort of working on this new thing she wrote for Tina.”

  “Tina the camera woman? The one who got the Eisner award?” Loretta had done her homework on their colleagues, even though her own part in

  ‘The Ghost of Carlos Gardel’ was simply to dub Vicky’s lines for the Spanish-language markets.

  “That’s right. She’s doing another graphic novel which is actually the inspiration for this show we’re going to see next weekend. So we thought it’d be fun for you to hear about that.”

  “Oh yes. Thank you!” She went and got herself a glass of water, leaning against the counter to drink it. She looked like she wanted to ask something.

  Victor made a ‘what’s on your mind’ gesture. “I loved doing that dance in the movie. I haven’t ever danced like that before. Do you think I could take some lessons while I’m here?”

  “Jesus, yes,” Andy said. “We should have thought of that ourselves.

  Dmitri’s studio is less than fifteen minutes away.”

  “Tomás works there,” Victor said. “Vince works there, you met him at the premiere. They have a lot of great teachers. Want me to take you over tomorrow, show you where it is? Then you could take Andy’s car whenever you want to go.”

  “Hey!” Andy tried to sound outraged. Loretta and Victor both laughed.

  “Fine, whatever, take my car. Let’s see about some dinner.”

  It was a full house that Saturday; even Tanith’s husband Sid, an LAPD

  lieutenant, was free to join them. Vicky and Sharon came over from next door, so every seat at the table was taken. “Mother of God,” Andy said,

  “would you look at these women. You’re all going to be out under the piazza lights later so I can take some pictures.”

  They had some catching up to do. Tanith talked a little about the most recent class she’d taught. Sid told a story about a recent case. Vicky and Sharon told stories about their little girl. Victor and Loretta described their dance shenanigans on location. Reza, who’d been Tanith’s cinematographer, talked about the house he and Tina were renovating. Tina ranted about her day job doing computer animation. Jim had a story
about a recent indie film shoot he’d worked on. Andy told everyone about his FaceTime dialogue-coaching sessions with his friend Nick. “He assures me that my English accent is approaching respectability,” he said, with the accent.

  “That’s not bad at all,” Tanith said. “But keep working on it.” He made

  an offensive gesture and she laughed. “So obviously Tina and Sharon saw

  ‘Diamond Dogs’ at the dress rehearsal. Sid’s seen it all in fragments on the Dropbox. Vicky’s in it. Are the rest of you coming next week?”

  “I think that’s a yes,” Victor said. “Are you going, Jim?” He knew perfectly well that Jim was. Andy had been in touch to say ‘get a ticket if you don’t already have one,’ and of course they’d secured one for Loretta.

  “Yes, I’ll be there. It’s going to be weird seeing a show at Chrome when I’m not taking video.” Loretta obligingly asked him about that, so he started talking about how he’d been doing video for the Underground Cabaret for eight years; how he’d pitched Andy to them for their posters; how he’d met Andy in the first place. “I was doing second assistant to the third assistant director on a production with a lot of moving parts. Andy was there, why were you there?”

  “Jesus, I can hardly even remember that far back. That was like two thousand six. Before my first exhibit. I’d only been out here for a year or so, I was still scratching around for any kind of photography job. I was doing continuity. They had really overdressed sets and a fuck-ton of costume and somehow with this huge crew they didn’t enough people to remember where all the shit went or whether the collar was buttoned or unbuttoned, so they yelled for help. A friend of a friend was involved somehow and told me about it. God that was a mess.”

  “Jim, how old were you then?” It was Tanith asking, for a reason nobody cared to investigate. She probably, being Tanith, had read the room and determined that Andy and Victor were trying to do a little matchmaking. Jim and Loretta were, after all, the only unmarried people there.

  “I was twenty-five. A few years out of college.” He was smiling.

  “Getting my ass kicked by Hollywood.”

  “Welcome to the club.” Tanith drank some wine. “It took me till age forty-two to get noticed.”

  “So I’ve still got four years.”

  “Stick around these people,” Vicky said. “All kinds of crazy shit happens.”

  “Yes.” Sharon topped up a few wineglasses. “Crazy shit. Like buying a triplex you didn’t even need.”

  “We needed it not to get torn down and a six-unit piece of garbage put up

  by some money-launderer,” Andy said. “Our life would have been hell for years, or more like forever. Fuck that.”

  “Also it’s a cute building.” Victor was smiling.

  “It’s cute now,” Sharon said. “Paige and the gang really love it. That was a good thing you did.”

  “It was all their idea. I might have left it vacant.” Andy shrugged. “We had a minute to deal with it.”

  “I remember you said that,” Tanith said. “Your minute kind of went sideways on you.”

  Victor leaned back, still smiling, a little smug. “We’ve got another minute. I’m not working till next July. We’re going to be dancing, Andy’s working on this big new photography thing, and we’re going to put together a concert.”

  There was a chorus of “No shit!” “When?” “Where?” from everybody but Vicky and Sharon. Sharon said, “Your Broadway thing?”

  “That’s right.” Victor glanced at Andy. “We’d better get our set list ironed out. Decide who’s singing what. Get Valerie started on the arrangements.”

  “Monday morning,” Andy said. “Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Well,” Tanith said, “maybe this is the point where we talk about Tina’s thing.”

  Tina shook her head. “Your thing.”

  “You started it.”

  “You wrote it.”

  “God help me,” Reza said. Victor, Jim, Sid, and Andy laughed. “Is there coffee?”

  “There is coffee,” Andy said. “Let’s get that rolling.”

  Not much later, everyone had coffee or some other after-dinner beverage, several people were having dessert, and everyone was taking turns looking at the proof of Tina’s new graphic novel. “It was Vicky,” she said,

  “which Vicky knows. After I saw her on set. I’d had this idea for a noir thing ever since ‘Agent Carter’ got cancelled.”

  “So full of rage,” Tanith said. Vicky and Sharon were nodding. Loretta

  seemed to be taking mental notes. Andy made a ‘we have it’ face and she looked relieved.

  “All the rage. Anyway, so that one image was really the first one. Vicky in the suit with the revolver, the cigarette and martini glass. I know you don’t smoke,” Tina said, semi-apologetically, “but this is set in the forties and everyone did.”

  “If we make a movie,” Tanith said, “there are tobacco-free cigarettes.”

  “Anyway I had some other stuff but it wasn’t until I saw these fuckers do their fight – I watched that fight like a thousand times while we were editing -

  that I got more of an idea about a story. But it wasn’t coming the way

  ‘Nightingale’ did, and Tanith was right there, and she can write, so I threw it at her and ran away.” Tina shrugged.

  “I really wanted to get you on the stage for this,” Tanith said, looking at Andy and Victor. “But I knew it wasn’t possible so I didn’t even bring it up.

  And what you’ll see is really only a dance concert. It’s great, and I love it, and we’re totally taping it, but what’s on the stage isn’t a movie. This book, I think, is potentially a movie. I wrote the script as if it were a movie. There’s a ton of guys in it.”

  “They all die,” Sid confirmed, “all but two.”

  “Because we are bloodthirsty bitches,” Vicky said with satisfaction.

  “And I kill you guys first because you’re the baddest bad guys.”

  “Take off the head and the rest of the monster runs around blind.” Sid drank some coffee. “Classic mafia tactics, actually.”

  “I can be taught,” Tanith said, giving him a sideways look.

  “So why this next?” Victor was watching Tanith.

  “Well,” she said, “after Reza handed me the first few drawings, because Tina was too chicken to do that, he said ‘the art wants what it wants.’ That was during our last week of filming. I was mostly out of my mind. All of you had completely blown my mind. When we did my little play all those years ago, my God.” She shook her head. “It was so small, but it felt huge to me.

  Our schedule was so tight. There was no time to let it breathe and grow, and I didn’t dare let go of any of it.”

  “Plus of course there was a murder investigation going on in your last week of rehearsals,” Sid murmured.

  Tanith shook herself at that memory. “By the time we did the movie I’d

  had the ‘Green Darkness’ experience, where the dancers changed the Grendel character. The same thing happened with the next show, the tango thing. The dancers turned into actors, and thank God Alison ran with it. Anyway I had that in my head when we started the movie, and I wasn’t afraid of letting it shift. The songs were the songs and the words were the words but you guys all created those characters in a very real sense. That was art happening right in front of my eyes. So when Reza said that, and I’d seen that incredible drawing of Vicky, I thought, oh fuck me here we go again.”

  “That’s pretty much exactly what she said.” Sid was laughing along with everyone else.

  “Anyway long story short, if a movie happens, I am going to grovel as much as necessary to get you guys to play my baddest bad guys.”

  Victor and Andy looked at each other. If they got killed first, the parts were likely to be small. The time investment wouldn’t be a burden. The question was whether Tanith would get this rolling when they were both available, because if the movie script was like the book, they w
ere on-screen together in every one of their scenes. “You know we’d love to work with you again,” Victor said after a moment. “I’m down with getting villainous.”

  “And as long as I don’t have to be hateful to Victor ever again, I can cope.” Andy had his hand on Victor’s thigh under the table. “You might need a time machine, though.”

  Tanith sighed. “I know. Either that or a permanent set that I can cycle guys in and out of. Conceivably we could take a year or more to film it, as people are available. Most of my girls seem to be pretty well planted.”

  “I’m planted,” Vicky said. “Dana’s planted. Tasha and Rosa are planted.

  The musical numbers you want to film at Chrome anyway.” Tanith made a

  ‘how’d you know that’ face and Vicky did an ‘isn’t it obvious’ thing. “We need our fifth girl.”

  “Oh don’t tell me you’ve got a Tomás situation all over again,” Andy said.

  Tanith made a full-body gesture rejecting that. “No. I have not hung my whole project on a single person who I do not even know if I can get. Los Angeles is so full of awesome women I could cast this last part in about ten minutes. I could cast it at this goddamned table.” She wasn’t looking at Loretta, but suddenly everyone else was.

  “Loretta can dance,” Victor said, oh so casually.

  “Yes,” said Tanith. “I know. Somebody sent me a video.” Now everybody stared at Andy, who was avoiding all eye contact while doing a fake-whistling thing.

  Tina stood up, with an air of tabling this discussion. “Where’s the bog?”

  “Over this way.” Victor stood up too, and showed her the guest bathroom. Then other people were up and moving, a few people changed beverages, and the subject was definitively changed. Andy herded the women out to the patio for a quick photo shoot. When they all were back inside there were three separate conversations happening, and nobody seemed to notice that he was doing something on his phone.

  Eventually Tanith and Sid started to make going-away noises, and that set everyone else in motion. Jim went first. Vicky and Sharon were next. Tina and Reza took off shortly after, leaving Tanith and Sid with the hosts and Loretta. “Tina’s pregnant, by the way,” Tanith said. “Reza already said he would be happy to work with Jim again. You could let him know sometime.”