“He’s probably just not used to being here. I’d better lie with him until he falls asleep. I’ll try and sneak back out when the coast is clear.”
“Don’t bother,” I said, the words sounding sharper than I intended. I stood and turned my back to him, opening the sofa into a bed. “I mean, I’m beat, too. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Kevvy,” Tony implored.
“Daddy,” Rafi whined.
“Tony,” I barked. “Just go. I’m fine. Good night.”
“Good night,” Tony said, sounding sad. He walked into the bedroom.
“Nite, Kebbin!” Rafi called, happy now that his dad was in sight again.
“Night, little man,” I responded.
It was turning into the closing moments of The Waltons, only no one was in their right bed.
I was tempted to go in and give Rafi another good night kiss, but I held back. He really was very sweet with me. He’d already taken to throwing his arms around me and saying “I love you, Kebbin,” and I always hugged him right back.
I never answered in kind, though. I wasn’t quite sure how we all fit. I liked Rafi very much. But there was no connection there. I worried about getting too close to him and Tony changing his mind. Leaving me behind for the safer choices. It made me sad.
I lay on the uncomfortable sofa bed. I thought of Tony twenty feet away yet in another world. One where he was a daddy, not another guy’s boyfriend. I knew he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to successfully combine the two. Another depressing thought upon which to dwell.
Luckily, I had the pounding pain of my unrelieved and aching testicles to distract me.
Lust hurts.
6
Driven
“He was even better,” Andrew whispered to me, although we were behind the closed doors of his glass-walled private office and no one could hear us unless we screamed, “than advertised.”
“That’s great,” I said politely, hoping if I showed the minimal possible interest I’d be spared the grisly details.
It was three days after Tony had left me blue-balled on the couch. The episode of my mom’s show that Freddy had sneak-peeked at in my apartment had aired to the world the day before. Grateful for the exposure, and pleased with how he’d come across on screen, Brock Peters called Andrew and invited him out for drinks. They wound up at Brock’s place.
“There’s this scene in The Legion of Super Twinks vs. the Beastly Bears of Doom where Brock hooks his heels behind his ears, which I’d always assumed was done with CGI. Well, it turns out he really can . . .”
I tried not to listen. Tony’s next visitation with Rafi wasn’t for another few days, and I was hoping he and I could finally finish our lovemaking. I’d have to remember to call him when I got out of here.
“Then, just like he did to Rod Racer in Buffguy, the Vampire Player, he flipped me over and . . .”
I also had to call Freddy. He’d left a message that he had gotten together last night with Cody, a guy I’d introduced him to a few months ago. They’ve been dating on and off since then—the closest Freddy’s come to a relationship in, well, ever. I knew Cody was frustrated that they weren’t more of a couple, but he was also glad to take what he could get. I thought Cody was a terrific catch, and I hoped Freddy had good news about how things were going.
“All of a sudden, Brock does this thing from Gone with the Rimmed where he takes a guy’s ass and . . .” Andrew’s eyes were gleaming and I swear he was starting to drool.
“Enough!” I said, unable to tune out more of Andrew’s endless recap. “What was this—actual sex between the two of you, or the porno version of a Civil War reenactment?”
The light in Andrew’s eyes blinked out so quickly that I felt a little guilty for pulling the curtain. “I know, I know,” he sighed. “It was kind of weird. Brock was nice enough, and, well, you saw, incredibly good-looking. Technically, the sex was great, too. Quite the workout. Very, ah, aerobic.
“But I couldn’t separate the real person from the guy in the movies. Everything we did felt like a rerun, even if it was the first time I was actually in the scene, as opposed to just watching it.
“What really ruined it for me, though, was the feeling that he was performing. Putting on a show for me. Like he had to be ‘Brock Peters’ as opposed to a mere ordinary lay.
“The whole thing was a little depressing. Brock seemed so . . . mechanical about it. It makes me look at porn differently. Maybe it’s not much fun after all.”
I thought about my own time in the sex trade. “You shouldn’t generalize,” I said. “I’m sure there are some guys in porn who are totally jaded and burnt out, but I’m sure there are others who keep it in perspective. You’re a full-time TV producer used to running the show, but it’s not like that affects every other aspect of your life. You don’t go into the supermarket and tell the manager where to stack the cereal boxes, or rearrange the lighting when you go to a club. There’s a difference between what you are and what you do. A healthy person can separate the two.” Who had recently told me that?
Andrew looked thoughtful. “You think?”
I know. “Yeah. I hear you talk about Brock, and I figure it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. Did years of being in porn make him into a self-centered lover, who’s more concerned with technique and dazzling his partner than he is with forming an actual connection? Or, was he a ridiculously handsome, narcissistic stud who got into movies because he already saw sex as a ‘performance’? One in which he was the star?”
Andrew rested his chin in his hand. He nodded. “Maybe. I don’t know. You’re right about one thing. It wasn’t so much that I felt he was aping his films that bothered me, it was the total lack of interest in, like you said, ‘making a connection.’ I could have been anyone. He wasn’t expecting to ‘enjoy’ me; he was looking to ‘wow’ me.”
“That’s the thing with narcissists. It’s all about them. Brock wasn’t looking for a lover. He’s looking for an audience. For attention and applause. And, if my two semesters of psychology at NYU can be trusted, it’s a deeply ingrained personality trait. Here’s my bet: Porn didn’t make him that way; he makes porn because that’s the way he is.”
Andrew smiled. “I feel kind of . . . relieved. It really bothered me how . . . detached Brock seemed. I mean, generally when a guy has his head between my legs, I think he’s at least a little into me. But not Brock. He reminded me of those guys who demonstrate home appliances at department stores. It’s a good show and everything, and at the end you might get a tasty treat, but he’s still just going through the paces. I thought maybe I was losing my mojo.”
Andrew was still probably one of the ten best-looking guys I’ve ever met. “You haven’t lost a thing,” I assured him. “You just happened to spend the night with a guy who wasn’t looking for mojo—he was looking for a mirror.”
“How did you know he asked me to put one by the bed?” Andrew asked. “Did I tell you that part?”
I’d been speaking metaphorically, but I figured it didn’t hurt to leave Andrew guessing. “The magic eye of Kevin,” I said, tapping my forehead, “sees all.”
In hindsight, I’d wish I did. Then I’d have known to get out of there before disaster came crashing through the door.
“What,” my mother screeched, her voice reaching a frequency I’d have thought capable of breaking windows, “is this fakakta dreck?”
This didn’t look like it was going to be good. She came crashing into the office like a hurricane, only less concerned with the damage she might be leaving behind. She flapped a paper in her hand wildly. Worst of all, she was using Yiddish, always a bad sign.
Andrew, who was paid by my mother and therefore contractually obligated to placate her, sprang to his feet. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyes soft with concern.
“This!” she wailed, directing a withering gaze at the paper she clutched in a death grip.
“This what?” Andrew asked.
“This!” my mother
said louder, as if the problem was that we couldn’t hear her. People in New Jersey could have heard her.
“Sophie,” Andrew said in the low, measured tones of a person trying to talk a jumper off a bridge, “why don’t you sit down and we can . . . ?”
“Sit?” my mother echoed, as if Andrew had asked her to commit hara-kiri. “This is not the time for sitting! This is the time for action! Sitting around,” she cried, thrusting the paper she held at Andrew like a dagger, “is hardly going to get us on this!” She returned to shaking the paper like a crazy woman.
“Okay,” I said, having had my fill. “Enough with the drama, Mama. We can’t even see what you’re talking about if you keep waving that around like you’re trying to put out a fire. Maybe if you let one of us see it, you could get an answer.
“So, why don’t you settle down”—I pointed at the small sofa in Andrew’s office—“and we can talk like normal people.”
She collapsed into the seat with a resigned plop and sighed heavily.
“Oh my god,” she said, no longer loud but with a miserable whine in her voice, “I just threw a diva fit, didn’t I?”
“Just a little one,” I reassured, rising to join her on the sofa. I took her hand in mine. She squeezed back with the same pressure with which she’d previously throttled the paper into submission. I heard one of my knuckles crack. At least, I hoped that was all it was. A broken finger or two wouldn’t have surprised me.
I ignored the pain and soldiered on. “Now, what’s all the fuss?”
“This,” she repeated. But now she actually handed me the paper, which made the conversation more productive. “Look!”
I looked.
“The nominations for the Daytime Emmys,” she moaned. “Someone just showed me. And look—under Best New Talk Show. Notice who isn’t there?” Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s the Jewish thing, isn’t it? They always hate the Jews.”
The nominations had come out yesterday, but I guess no one thought to tell my mom. Probably an oversight, I reluctantly admitted to myself. Luckily, Andrew and I had discussed them, so I had the words to put her at ease. Andrew and I exchanged relieved glances before I explained.
“It’s not you,” I explained. “It’s the rules. A show has to have been on for six months before it can qualify. We’ve only been on for four.”
The tension drained from my mother in a palpable rush of relief. Her fingers released my hand, which I pulled back and flexed. It seemed like all the digits still worked.
“So it’s not,” my mother asked, “an anti-Semitic thing? In your opinion?”
My mother blamed the majority of her self-caused problems on anti-Semitism, an issue about which she was very sensitive. Which made it so odd that she’d married my father, a German who looked like the poster child for the Aryan nation. It was from him I’d inherited my blond hair and blue eyes.
“I think it’s just the rules, Ma.”
My mother turned her face to Andrew. “I’m sorry about that little outburst, darling. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it’s this studio—the ghost of Yvonne possessing me.”
“Yvonne isn’t dead,” I reminded her.
“Well,” my mother observed, “you can’t have everything.”
“It’s hard,” Andrew said, still speaking with the caution of someone defusing a bomb, “to be in the public eye. Sometimes, you just have to let off a little steam.”
“It’s so nice to have a professional like you on my team,” she answered him. “But there’s still no excuse for bad manners. Promise me—you’ll tell me if I’m becoming too much of a pain in the tuchus, won’t you?”
Talk about a golden opportunity. “You’re already . . .” I began.
My mother cut me off. “I was talking,” she said, icily, “to Andrew.”
“Oh.”
She put her arm around me. “I’m your mother, darling. I’m supposed to be a pain in your ass. It’s in the job description.” She looked at the list of Emmy nominees again.
“This does get me thinking,” she offered.
Andrew and I looked at each other with an unspoken “uh-oh.”
“I’m never going to be nominated, let alone win this thing, unless we start doing some more serious shows around here.”
“Serious?” I asked.
“Let’s face it.” My mother sat up on the sofa, her posture eager and determined. “Nobody’s getting any awards for shows like we’ve been doing. Yes, it’s all very entertaining to interview transvestite dentists and the women who love them, but it isn’t the kind of serious-minded feature that’s going to get me recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.”
She knew the name of the organization that awarded the Emmys? I was impressed. It must have shown on my face.
“See?” she said, smugly. “I can use the Google.”
“Really? I bet Nancy looked that up for you,” I asserted, crediting my mother’s personal assistant.
“So what if she did?” my mother answered. “I can use the Nancy. The point is: I get things done. And it’s all up here,” she said smugly, tapping her forehead the same way I had moments before when talking to Andrew. I shivered in the way I always did when noticing any resemblance between us.
“Which is why,” she continued, “I think we need to tackle some bigger stories. If I want to play in the big leagues, I’m going to have to show I have the chops to do investigative reporting like a real journalist. Like a Barbara Walters. Or a Kelly Ripa.”
“Don’t forget Sherri Shepherd,” I offered.
“Exactly!” my mother enthused. “We need to dig deep, team. Find the big stories. Expose injustice. Make some headlines.”
Suddenly, my mother was turning into Perry White. For no good reason, I wanted to run around the offices like a lunatic screaming, “Stop the presses!”
“Those are great ideas,” Andrew agreed with the patience of a man who’d spent the last two years working with a woman even more deluded than my mother. “We’ll get right on it. I see no reason why we can’t combine the fun lifestyle advice and entertaining human interest topics we normally cover with some harder-hitting reportage.”
I knew my mother would be impressed, if by nothing else, Andrew’s use of the word reportage in the same sentence as the nonsense we usually aired. Sure enough, she sprang up and pulled the seated producer’s head to her in an embrace that threatened to suffocate the poor boy in her ample bosom. “I knew I could count on you,” she beamed.
“You too,” she told me. “Except, not for anything constructive.”
“Nk ooo,” Andrew said.
“Sorry,” my mother said, releasing him from the deep valley of her breasts. “What was that, sweetheart?”
He gulped in a breath. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” my mother gushed. “I can’t wait to get something I can really sink my teeth into.”
Instinctively, I put my hand over my jugular.
7
Fallen Angel
“Trust me,” I’d told Andrew, the minute my mom left his office, “in a few days she’ll have lost all interest in becoming the next Diane Sawyer. We just have to provide a distraction. I say we go for an episode where she takes some of her girlfriends to Chippendales. They start all embarrassed and silly, tentatively slipping dollar bills, with the delicacy of vestal virgins, into the dancer’s G-strings, and by the end they’ll be kneading those boys’ buttocks like dough. That’ll take her mind off things.”
It’d improve Andrew’s mood, too, I reckoned. Although maybe the last thing he needed was more testosterone-fueled narcissism.
Andrew drummed his fingers on his desk. “I don’t know,” he said, a little dreamily. “Have you considered your mother might have a point?”
“Crazy say what now?” I asked.
“Listen.” Andrew leaned forward, his eyes a little brighter. “I’ve spent two years producing hundreds of hours of daytime television that, combined, have had ab
out as much impact on the world as a butterfly’s fart. That’s a lot of my life to waste on nonsense, Kevin.”
“It hasn’t all been nonsense,” I countered. “You’ve entertained a lot of people. Touched some, too.”
“Not enough,” Andrew said. “I think she’s right—we should set our sights a little higher. We reach millions of viewers a week, Kevin. We could be educating them. Enlightening them. Instead of being satisfied feeding them . . . drivel.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself,” I argued. “Too hard on the show, too. This isn’t the CBS Evening News. It’s a fun, gossipy talkfest with a wacky hostess who the audience, god help us, seems to love. It’s exactly what the people who watch it want it to be.”
“Is it? And, even if that’s true, is it enough?” Andrew ran his hands through his hair. “Maybe I’m stuck on this thing with Brock. He was so focused on giving me what he thought I wanted, there was no chance I’d get what I needed. By pandering to my expectations, he wound up putting a lot of effort into leaving no real impression whatsoever.
“It was all artifice and no substance—stunts and clown cars. Cotton candy—eat as much as you like and you’re still hungry. It’s sweet going down, but it dissolves into nothing before it even reaches your stomach. In the end, you feel as empty as you did before. Is that what we’re serving?
“Maybe—every once in a while—we can provide something a little more filling.”
Great. Andrew was having a midlife crisis in his twenties. He’d bought into my mother’s insane idea to disrupt the formula of her inexplicably popular show. Whatever happened to “Don’t mess with success”?
Not to mention the absurdity of imagining my mother as some bastion of journalistic truth seeking. Unless you count the TV listings or coupons, I don’t think she’s ever read a newspaper. As far as general information, if it wasn’t covered on Entertainment Tonight or in US Magazine, she didn’t know it happened.
And yet . . . my cynicism wasn’t particularly attractive, either. What, exactly, was so threatening about my mother’s and Andrew’s enthusiasm? Instead of being appalled by their desire to elevate what they did, what if I let it inspire me? Hadn’t I just done it with my own life—left the safety of easy money and the freedom to do as I pleased for the chance for a “real” job and a life with Tony?
Third You Die (Kevin Connor Mystery) Page 5
