JUSTIFY MY SINS
A Hollywood Novel
in Three Acts
Felice Picano
Justify My Sins: A Hollywood Novel in Three Acts
Copyright 2018 by Felice Picano
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or conveyed via the Internet or a website, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Please address inquiries to the publisher:
Beautiful Dreamer Press
309 Cross St.
Nevada City, CA 95959
U.S.A.
www.BeautifulDreamerPress.com
[email protected]
Pubished March, 2019
This is a work of fiction. Most of the names, characters, businesses, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Electronic Book Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-9981262-9-6
Cover Design by Kei.
Cover Layout by Tom Schmidt.
Selected works
by Felice Picano
The Lure
Eyes
Like People in History
The Book of Lies
True Stories
Nights at Rizzoli’s
Justify My Sins
A Hollywood Novel
in Three Acts
ACT ONE
1977: THE PITCH
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted,
She’s got the Mercedes-Bends.
She’s got a lot of pretty, pretty boys
That she calls friends.
--The Eagles, “Hotel California”
CHAPTER ONE
“Mon-ey!” the chorus sang out. “It’s a gas!” they added ecstatically.
“What?” Vic yelled into the receiver.
When the woman answering—Maggie it sounded like—yelled back and he still couldn’t make out what she was saying, he shouted, “I can’t hear you. Hold on. Let me shut this off.”
He slid over the desk, pressed the button that lifted the arm off the LP, and returned to the phone.
“That’s better. Now what were you saying?”
“We had a bet, “ Maggie said. “I say it’s Atom Heart Mother. Justine says it’s Dark Side of the Moon.”
The music Vic was playing in the background, she meant.
“Hope you didn’t bet a lot,” he said, “because Justine’s right.”
“Rats! Well it was your literary agent, Marcie, who called just before you got into the apartment. She said it was very important.” And in a lower voice. “She said it was from Hollywood.”
“O-kay!” he cheered.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to Hollywood, Mister R.,” Maggie said.
“Jus, He’s going to Hollywood,” Vic heard her say to her colleague at the phone answering service in an aggrieved voice.
“I thought you would be happy for me,” he complained.
“We are, Mister R. Well, I am,” she modified. “But you know it’s always sorta’ been a long-distance dream of mine.”
He hadn’t known that.
“Maggie!” he said, “Planes leave twice a day outta Kennedy headed for El Lay.”
“You know what I mean, Mister R.! Being invited! Having someone else pay!”
She sighed.
“That’s what’s happening with you, right? Someone’s inviting you out there and paying your way and your stay at where? the Beverly Hills Hotel, I’ll bet?”
“If you put me through to Marcie, I’ll find out where I’m staying and I’ll be able to tell you all the lurid details,” he tempted.
“Oh, sure. Sorry, Mister R. Hold on. Here goes.”
He heard it her starting to dial.
Maggie broke in to add, “You’ll make sure and call us back, won’t you, Mister R.?”
“Maggie! Dial! Dial my literary agent.”
She dialed and her heard it ring once, twice. Dane, his agent’s most recent—and most wildly irreverent—gay male assistant answered.
“She’s in a good mood, for once,” Dane giggled. “Better get her while she’s hot.”
Dane put through the connection and Marcie answered with a resonance as though she were deep within someone’s toilet.
“Why do you sound as though you’re in Antarctica?” Victor had to ask.
“I’m—can you hold on a sec, Vic?—Ooops! There goes the fuck—” A crash followed, followed in turn by a much chastened Marcie, completing her sentence, “—ing table with the lamp my tight assed mother gave me last Chanukah.”
Before he could ask, Marcie explained:
“I was attempting to stand on my head, against the wall. Yoga,” she added lamely. “It was your idea, Victor.”
“For your two hundred year old spine? You never did any yoga when I suggested it before. Has Mick finally talked you into doing some postures?”
“Rick,” she corrected, “did, in fact, show me a few postures.”
He could hear her shushing Rick and getting him out of her office.
“Rick,” he stood corrected. “I’ll just bet Rick was showing you ‘some postures.’ What was he doing while you were standing on your head and answering the phone? Jerking off? Or was it something a smidgen more oral in nature?”
“God, you’ve got a filthy mind” she said, then chuckled. “Thank God for that. Or you’d be just another client instead of my favorite ever client.”
Rick was Marcie’s twenty-four year old lover, literally an actor model waiter, almost a decade younger, whom Vic and she had chanced upon together six months before in the Vampire Diner over Denver omelets that looked as though they might contain bits of some of the afternoon’s pudgier customers, along with Black Russians of a most suspicious frothiness. The place was of course packed at 3:41 on a very early Sunday morning from local clubs debouching when they’d finally fled the ghastly turistas and a very stoned, octopus-like, groping Liza-Minelli-and-Friends mass at Studio Fifty Four. Marcie had instantly declared the boyishly cute waiter with a nice bod to be gay. But Victor had taken one look at his flat-footed stance and dreadful sneakers—black and white high top canvas with red white and blue laces—and had as immediately intuited that no one even vaguely homo could be that color-challenged. So they’d done as usual when interested in someone and both made a play for him, taking turns while the other one was in the john. Result: the past fall and now winter, Rick was living in Marcie’s townhouse-cum-office uptown. He sometimes acted, sometimes modeled, and sometimes waited tables, this time at the neighborhood Country Cousin, where he smiled pretty and acted clumsy and “kinda dumb,” so naturally the over-intelligent and older faggola clientele that predominated were charmed and gave him phone numbers which he bunched up and ditched nightly and sizable tips which went right into the tight band of his BVDs without, alas, altering his taste in wardrobe.
As Marcie was, in her own blunt if not exactly accurate terminology, “past her prime” at thirty(ish?), and already married and divorced once (that she’d admit to; Vic had qualms and questions, questions and qualms), the Rickster was a definite find. Even when pouting, which meant whenever Marcie was calling the shots and paying (that is, always), he was admittedly arm-candy-supremo. Not that Marcie was in any way unattractive. Her face was amazingly pretty and still quite young, in that good-complexion-despite-light-freckling, lose-your-baby-fat-later southern Russian manner, with twinkling bl
ack eyes and loads of curly jet hair. Recently, she’d managed to locate two seamstresses whose talent was to wrap her zaftig torso in fashionable rags so she appeared even stylish going out to the Met’s First Night of the Season or whatever benefit Vic had been comped tix for. Marcie had no trouble at all being everyday voluptuous, but it was her misfortune that she couldn’t abide the guys (and there were plenty) who whistled at her crossing First Avenue over-quickly on tottery heels, guys Vic thought were hotter than hot. No, instead it was the more epigone she desired: men with very white skin and very fine blond-like hair, with sharp ridged noses, and obvious shoulder blades, sporting first names like Bryce and Connor and pedigrees yea long. Luckily the Rickster had something else yea long to compensate and his Fallen Angel demeanor fitted nicely into Marcie’s official, let’s-not-be-too-recog-nizably-anything-at-all ethnic category.
Vic said, “I’m going to be even more of your favorite client when you tell me about our big motion picture coup.”
“Well, to be honest, Vic, I don’t know who these people are. They aren’t the top major players in town, Trent admits.” (Trent was Marcie’s agency’s lawyer.) “Although this one guy, Ed Trefethern, seems to have invented the ‘Made for TV Movie of the Week.’ That’s not so shabby!”
“Yessssssssss. Go on.”
She said the magic words: “They’re making an offer on Justify My Sins.”
“Meaning what? They want to do it as a TV Movie of the Week?”
“From what we can figure.”
“Vagueness from Marcie Stein Whittaker? The sharpest gal agent in the New York biz?”
“The thing is, Vic, they’re all out there in El Lay, and they’re all men, even the assistants.” (Two counts against them, Vic thought.) “And they don’t really communicate all that well by phone.” (Third and most cruel count against them.)
Vic knew these problems were deeply confounding to Marcie, if not downright insulting in their foreignness. Had she been born in Chechnya, Palau, or along the Rio Quadalquivir, locales without reliable telephone service, someone of Marcie’s smarts, ambition, and seriousness of intent would probably have ended up a jailworthy street huckster, a Sister of Mercy Mother Superior, a dictator’s string-pulling courtesan, or something equally discreditable. Instead, she’d become one of the hottest literary agents, not only by virtue of her instinct for what would sell, but also by consciously chatting up the most senior editors and, more crucially, their often ignored assistants and Gal Fridays. She would arrange to meet the latter on the sly at Bloomie’s “blush” counter to try some new samples, and commiserate with them about nondescript beaus from Fort Lee, New Jersey over half-gallon Capuccinos at pokey delis next to vest pocket parks. As a result, her agency’s manuscripts found themselves subtly moved to the top of whatever pile, her phone calls somehow always got through, and she could actually get multiple bids on books those rare times she “threw an auction.” But what could Marcie possibly schmooze about? How could she possibly “get to know” a SoCal assistant named Moby or Harv who lived in The Blue Pacific Arms in Torrance Beach sharing four pieces of furniture in a five room flat with another guy and an Iguana named Bogart (because it smoked unfiltered Camels)? Especially if said assistant drove a raked GTO and possessed a Dopp kit containing nada but Baby Oil, Prell, and Lava soap—if he even had one. What could they possibly discuss? Where to find a superior board wax for his new cherry-wood Shorty? The built-in flaws of dual carburetors? Did mai tais get you bombed deeper, or just faster, than Planters Punches?
“Have Dane talk to them. He’s sure to find the one ‘sister’ among them all.” Victor suggested. “Even if it were a tribe in the Amazon, Dane would locate the ‘sister’.”
“I have, and Dane has, but he says even that guy’s not much help. Dane actually dubbed him ‘faux gay.’” She audibly pouted. “So Trent asked the company to Telex over the deal. He’s just gotten all nine pages of it, his secretary told me. He’s got to go over it inch by inch. If it looks at all good you’re going to have to go out there and see them and the situation for yourself.”
“Meaning?” Vic prompted.
“I don’t know, Vic. It doesn’t look all that great to me. They’re telling us it’s too late for them to rent you a cottage at the Beverly Hills Hotel. You’d have to settle for a suite, although I insisted that if so, it must overlook the pool.”
“I see. So I can step over the railing and commit suicide at a moment’s notice. Well, that’s not too much of a disaster,” he admitted. “And transportation?”
“Well, I told them you’d been in a four car accident while performing multiple cunnilingus on a girl scout troupe, so your driver’s license has been revoked.”
“You didn’t happen to mention that the girls were all little people with muscular dystrophy?” Vic asked.
“I withheld that detail. As well as the fact that they were all actually males in girl scout drag. And so they agreed to spring for a car and driver for you for the week.”
“A week will be nice,” he mused.
“First class air tix of course. Driver meets you at the airport, naturally, et cetera,” she was reading off a list. “Room service—within limits of course. Oh, here! You’ll have one meet-and-greet with them, after arrival, and then a minimum of four work meetings.”
Vic loudly groaned, his body’s autonomic reflex to any sentence containing the letters w, o, r and k strung together like that.
“The option is for one year and isn’t terrible.” She reeled off the figures Trent had given her. “So you get to keep twenty grand less my cut even if it goes nowhere.”
“Not bad for a week’s work,” Vic concluded.
“More, of course, if it goes forward. The scenario, the script, et cetera, each raise it further up on a sliding scale. Trent will messenger you all the gories. It could add up. Call him with any questions and we’ll conference-call about it. In fact, call anyway and we’ll conference-call, okay?”
“Okay. Marcie? Now for a totally unrelated question. Did this recent crash that I overheard when calling at all involve the antique lamp from Czar Nicholas’ court that your Mother gave you for your wedding?”
“Tell me you didn’t like that lamp, did you, Vic?”
“Why? Is it totally trashed?”
“It’s fireplace chunks soon to be ashes,” she admitted.
“I absolutely . . . hated it!”
“Well, then you’re lucky. I was about to give it to you as a birthday gift.”
“Going to have to thank Rick, no matter what it was he did to you to make you topple over.”
“If you must know, he was tickling me behind the knees.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Marcie, you must be the only person on the planet who is ticklish behind the knees.”
“That’s exactly what Rick said. He didn’t believe me ether.”
“Suddenly all this has fallen into the realm of Too Much and Far Too Bizarre Information. Ciao-sers!”
“We’re still all going to the Black Party at Flamingo, yes?” Marcie asked.
“Sure, but that’s not for at least another month.”
“I know but I just found the most fabulous jodhpurs. Black rubber. Almost up to my armpits!”
“Stellar! And you’ll be carrying the riding crop too, right?”
“And I’ve got the black micro-skirt.”
“Sounds great. What about Rick?”
“Well, he’s finally agreed that it might do his career good to go.” She didn’t spell out which career. Flamingo being a private gay club, it could be any of the three: actor, model, or waiter. “So he’s agreed. However, he absolutely refuses to wear the black leather jock strap.”
“Crapola! It would look great.”
“He said his inner thighs are too hairy.”
“You mean his buns are too hairy! That’s what he’s afraid of! Showing his crack.”
“That I don’t for a second doubt, knowing wh
at kind of pre-verts will be all around him at Flamingo. But his ass isn’t hairy. It’s smoother than my boobs. At any rate, we’ve settled on these great black leather short-shorts I found down in that Ess’n’Em shop on Christopher Street. And on top, we’ve gotten him a smart crisscrossed leather and chain mail vest.”
“The jockstrap would have been sensational. But I still get to lead him into the club on a leash, correct? That was our deal.”
“Correct. And you have him for the first hour, yes. After that he reverts to me. He’s even agreed to talk dirty to you.”
“Cool beans.”
“When I told Marcel I was going to the Black Party, he’s my hair burner and queerer than three Mondays in a row, well, he nearly had a fit.”
“I told you it was a more difficult ticket to get than A Chorus Line.”
“Who knew?”
“I did. Ummm, Marcie?”
“Ummm, what, Vic?”
“I’m going to Hollywood aren’t I?’
“Looks like it.”
He jumped into the air and almost touched the ceiling.
Get that cash with both hands!—And make a stash!
CHAPTER TWO
“Turn that up, would you?” Vic asked, tapping the Limo’s glass partition to get the driver’s attention. The song was from The Eagles, a group he’d only recently heard of, and it was catchy and twangy, definitely rock and yet kinda folksy-country sounding too, and it must be a hit, as it was being played on every AM station in the country this late February in 1977.
The plane trip had been calmly, luxuriously exciting. Even better, the woman sitting next to Vic was a well-known late-night TV host’s wife. She couldn’t have been leggier, prettier, or more literate. She’d even heard of Vic, she said, from “haunting bookstores.” Not saying she actually bought or read a volume; but the word out—and she confirmed it—was that her short, cute, and very intellectual husband actually did read, rather than relying on show producers or assistants to read and then (badly) précis the guest’s writing for him.
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