My Lucky Star

by Joe Keenan

  The question of my fee arose. I knew things could get sticky if her publisher tried to pay me, necessitating tax forms and such for the nonexistent Glen, so I suggested we keep our arrangement informal for now. After all, I could hardly expect a woman of Lily’s stature to enter into a contract with me until I’d proven my mettle. Once we were, say, a few chapters in, we could take the matter up again and decide on a reasonable fee. Lily agreed and I rose and thanked her again for entrusting me with her story.

  “Please! It’s I who am grateful to you. But I must warn you,” she added darkly, “that it will take more than talent to write this book. It will take courage!”

  “Oh?”

  “You don’t know what powerful forces are working against us.”

  “Who?”

  “My sister for one. She’s absolutely panicked about this —as well she should be. There are quite a few things she doesn’t want the world to know about her — shameful things. It will pain me to tell them, but what can I do? Sugarcoat the truth? I think not!”

  “And of course,” added Monty, “there’s Stephen and his lovely goatee, Gina —”

  “I’d hardly call her a goat, Monty. She’s quite pretty in her way.”

  “I said ‘goatee.’ ”

  “Sorry?”

  “As in ‘beard.’ ”

  “She hasn’t got a beard.”

  “How many of those have you had, love?”

  “You mean Stephen’s gay?” I exclaimed, sounding more overjoyed than I’d meant to.

  “Heel, boy. Yes, he is. Or, at any rate, was. He lived with us through much of his teens while Mother was off on location and at that time—”

  “Oh — beard! ”

  “— he was, I assure you, gayer than a Mardi Gras float. When magazines from my private collection went missing, they could invariably be found under the guest room mattress.”

  “And that day in the pool house—!”

  “With the tennis coach!”

  “ So embarrassing!”

  “And you’re putting all this in the book?” I asked, shocked.

  “Well, it’s hardly a secret,” said Lily, freshening her drink. “All my friends have known he’s gay for years.”

  “That’s because you tell them, dear.”

  “Besides,” added Lily, “how can I possibly convey Diana’s failings as a mother without describing her monstrous insensitivity to Stephen when she found out? Couldn’t deal with it at all. She was horribly mean to him whereas we accepted him just as he was. She had her way in the end of course. It’s because of her that he’s living a lie today.”

  “Well, that,” allowed Monty, “and the thirty million a picture. So I doubt he and Gina are turning cartwheels over this book, to say nothing of that human pit bull they’ve put on retainer.”

  “Sonia Powers!” scowled Lily, washing the name off her tongue with a hefty swig. “The rude cow! Calls me every day!”

  “Their publicist,” explained Monty. “She guards like a mother tigress the padlock on Stephen’s closet—a curious vocation for a woman well known to be the town’s leading vaginavore.”

  “Let her try to stop us!” said Lily defiantly. “Our voices will not be stilled!”

  “So,” said Monty, clapping my shoulder, “are you with us, Glen? You’ll stand side by side with us against the enemies of truth?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “You’ll scoff at their threats and sneer at their bribes?”

  “I’m working for you, not them,” I replied less than accurately.

  “That’s the spirit!” cried Lily. And with that, she rose and showed me to the door, warning me as she did to be discreet about my assignment, discussing it only with those whose trustworthiness was beyond question.

  “You know. Like my manager, Lou.”

  MY FEELINGS AS I drove back to the Chateau were mixed. On the one hand I was thrilled I’d gotten the job and elated to have found that Stephen was not the rumor-plagued straight boy his handlers so vehemently proclaimed him but the genuine man-loving article. At the same time I was unsettled to find that Lily and Monty did not seem at all like the base fends their family and Sonia had made them out to be.

  Readers of my earlier histories will recall that on my one previous foray into home infiltration my victims had possessed the good grace to be so odious that any backstabbing mole in their employ could consider it a privilege to betray them. But Lily, while undeniably gaga, seemed rather sweet—sweeter certainly than her imperious sister— and Monty was downright delightful. The thought that I’d signed on to be the viper in their midst pained me. To avoid dwelling on it, I turned my thoughts to Stephen.

  There is, of course, no more effective qualm suppressant than lust. By the time I’d passed an agreeable five minutes imagining how pleased Stephen would be with me and another five viewing a mental slide show of his astonishing face, shoulders, and thighs, my misgivings had seeped away like bathwater from the heart-shaped tub we shared in my reverie. Hadn’t Sonia warned me not to believe anything Lily or Monty said? So they’d seemed nice — what of it! Was this not a world in which the low and cunning could, as the bard put it, smile and smile and be a villain? The fading voice of my conscience muttered, “Well, you’re certainly proving that, dear.”

  “Fuck you!” I replied, “Stephen’s nipples!” and it shut up.

  WHEN I RETURNED TO the Chateau I was so eager to report my triumph to Stephen that I bypassed the sluggish elevator and sprinted up the four flights to my room, a pointless exertion, as it struck me on entering that I hadn’t a clue what Stephen’s phone number was. I mulled my options and realized I had no choice but to call the abominable Sonia and beg her assistance.

  “You think I give that number out?” she asked, sneering audibly.

  “Then he can call me. I’m at the Chateau Marmont.”

  “Look, precious, Stephen’s a busy man. Just tell me what’s up and I’ll pass it along to him.”

  I literally recoiled at this suggestion, yanking the phone from my ear and glaring at the receiver. When wooing a fair prince one prefers of course to present all love offerings in person, not hand them off to the troll at the drawbridge. Fortunately this was one of those days when the Cavanaugh brain was firing on all cylinders and I grasped immediately that Sonia herself had provided me the grounds on which to resist this demand.

  “It seems to me I just signed a document forbidding me to divulge confidential information to anyone outside Stephen’s immediate family.”

  “I’m employed by Stephen.”

  “So’s his gardener and I’m not telling him.”

  Sonia did not like this line of reasoning one bit. She thundered, threatened, and pelted me with epithets of which “snotty little fag” was by far the gentlest. Love had made me bold though, and I held my ground. Repeating that I would report to Stephen and only Stephen, I hung up on her. Forty minutes later my phone rang and I pounced on it like a coyote on a kitten.

  “Philip?”

  “Stephen!”

  “Boy,” he said with a musical laugh, “you sure pissed Sonia off!”

  “There are harder things to do in this world.”

  “I know she can be a little hard to take.”

  Be wry, I admonished myself. Be bland. Think David Niven.

  “Nonsense. I find her delightful in a snarling, feral sort of way. Oh, before I forget, you’re now talking to Lily Malenfant’s official biographer.”

  Awed silence.

  “You’re in? ”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  “Already?”

  “Yes. Or rather, Glen is.”

  “Glen?”

  “I felt it wise to use a pseudonym. Can’t have the old dear getting wind that I’m also writing a movie for you guys, can we?”

  Stephen’s response was another gratifying burst of laughter.

  “Man, I’ve played a spy on screen but you, you’re the real thing.”

  Having never before heard a se
xy megastar compare me favorably to his dashing signature role, I lost all grip on my suavity and giggled like a chorus boy being tickled by Bernadette Peters. Stephen, tactfully ignoring this, asked, a bit too casually, if Lily had offered any preview of what she planned to say about her nearest and dearest.

  “Well—!” I began, prepared to reveal all, then realized at once what a serious tactical blunder this would be. If you’re smitten with a secretly gay film star and eager to establish a more intimate rapport, is this how you tell him his aunt’s planning to out him? Over the phone? When you can’t even see his face? Of course not. When the news is this juicy you want to save it until you’re alone with him in some appropriately snug setting. Only then do you release the cat from the bag, minutely scrutinizing his face while composing your own into a compassionate and receptive mien that says, “Tell Philip. He can be trusted.”

  “Well, what?” he asked.

  “Well, she hinted like crazy. ‘Bombshells’ is the word she kept using. But nothing specific. And I didn’t want to press her. She’d just got through bitching about how the first ghostwriter she’d interviewed was more interested in you people than her. I thought if I dwelled on you too much I’d piss her off and lose the job.”

  “You did the right thing,” he said, sounding nonetheless disappointed. It occurred to me that I did have at least a few tidbits I could serve up to keep the conversation lively.

  “Boy, Lily sure likes her cocktails.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Almost as much as Monty likes his hustlers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I got there he was entertaining one in the pool house.”

  “No!”

  Surprise had lowered his guard and he said this in a voice that was thrilled, gossipy, and—dear diary!—very gay.

  “Scout’s honor. And this before lunch, mind you.”

  “You’re sure it was a hustler?”

  “Teeny little cutoffs and two beepers on his belt. I didn’t see his ass but I’m guessing it had a bar code on it.”

  “Did Lily see this?”

  “Sees it all the time apparently. He tells her they’re his students. Says he’s giving them acting lessons.”

  “Acting lessons?” said Stephen, roaring with laughter. “That old goat! He’s fucking shameless!”

  “My God,” I thought, “I’m dishing with Stephen Donato!!”

  “Anyway, I’ll be seeing Lily every day starting tomorrow, so I should have lots to report soon. Perhaps,” I said, screwing up my courage, “we could talk over coffee or a drink?”

  He said he was leaving tomorrow for a week of “fucking reshoots” on his most recent film, a fourth Caliber picture, but would be happy to meet when he returned, presuming I had anything of substance to report.

  “Oh, I’m sure I will!”

  “How about, uh, a week from Wednesday? Say around seven?”

  “Works for me!” I replied, my heart beating so briskly I was afraid he’d hear it over the phone.

  “It’s a date,” he said and hung up.

  A date!

  He called it a date!

  Not me— him!

  “I have a date with Stephen Donato!” I cried as though cueing the orchestra to strike up the title song in the giddy musical my life had suddenly become. I bounded ebulliently from my suite, danced down the stairs, and practically floated across the street to Sunset Plaza, my feet only touching the ground when I reached Crunch Gym, where I took out a one-year membership and inquired about personal trainers.

  Ten

  OH, ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. Just what, I hear you asking, did I imagine in my most girlish flights of fancy was going to happen romantically between me and a film star twice voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive? It’s a fair question and one I asked myself with some regularity. My answers varied widely according to my mood and recent intake of wine.

  There were moments, nocturnal and chardonnay-abetted, when I actually believed we might fall into an affair, or at any rate a fling, or at least One Very Special Night to Be Remembered Always. The scenarios I spun ran something like this:

  Stephen, deeply impressed by my spy craft, writing skills, and recent progress at the gym, invites me to his secret pied-à-terre in West Hollywood. His ostensible purpose is to discuss the screenplay but he mainly wants to offer his side of the gay stories I’ve heard from Lily and Monty. He admires me so that it pains him to think I may secretly regard him as a hypocrite. His voice choked with emotion, he describes to me the demands and pressures, incomprehensible to the nonmegastar, that have kept him from publicly acknowledging his sexuality. He speaks of his loneliness and lifelong dream of meeting a caring, nonjudgmental soul mate who’ll understand his dilemma and embrace him as he is. I embrace him as he is.

  On other nights, too tired to mint such elaborately romantic scenarios, I devised more streamlined versions.

  I bring new script pages to his trailer on location. He has just stepped out of the shower. “Don’t just stare,” he drawls saucily, “make friends with it.”

  These reveries were balanced by moments of rueful realism in which I sadly acknowledged that my odds of bedding Stephen were roughly the same a cocker spaniel might enjoy in pursuit of a pilot’s license. Most of the time I hovered between hope and despair. How, I reasoned, could I begin to assess my chances with Stephen until I knew him better? And if the possibility of a dalliance seemed indisputably remote, was it really impossible?

  Certainly anything seemed possible in those first heady weeks after I’d won Lily’s trust and cemented our place in the glittering orbit of the Malenfants. In that brief, idyllic period the news was so consistently good I began to feel as though somewhere on high the Showbiz Gods were commencing each morning’s meeting with a brisk bang of the gavel and a hearty, “What shall we do for Cavanaugh today?”

  For starters there was my lovely mention in Variety. I was told to look for it by Bobby Spellman (who, after three days of avoiding our calls, was once more our dearest friend). The morning it appeared I raced down to the lobby at eight to be sure to get one of the Chateau’s small allotment of copies. The agreeably large headline read “Spellman Coaxes Donato, Malenfant into ‘Hiding.’ ” I was so excited I began reading it right there at the front desk.

  Stephen Donato and proud mom, Diana Malenfant, who’ve been in hiding as acting partners since playing the beloved floozy-and-waif duo in Sophie and Sam, will pair up again for The Heart in Hiding, a WWII romance/ adventure from producer Bobby Spellman. Making the pic even more a family affair will be Donato’s wife, Gina Beach, who’ll play his love interest. The plot, says Spellman, “has moving echoes of the Anne Frank story” but with “strong action elements” and “this time,” he promises, “the good guys win.”

  I skipped ahead, scanning eagerly for our names, and finally spotted them one paragraph from the end.

  In a move that raised insider eyebrows, the writing chores for the high-profile project will go to three tyro scribes, Gilbert Selwyn, Philip Cavanaugh, and Claire Simmons. The trio, with no screen credit to date, won the assignment on the strength of their spec script. “They are kickass talents,” said Spellman, “who share my dynamic vision for this unforgettable story of courage and triumph.” Trio is repped by Josh Soboloff of CAA.

  I was unable to resist sharing this milestone with Sandra, the amiable day manager. Her eyes bulged gratifyingly when she saw the names Malenfant and Donato. She congratulated me warmly, mentioning in passing that she was an actress.

  Some benevolent Showbiz God, observing this scene, gave a worried cluck and said, “How is Philip to get on with his work with all these new admirers pestering him? I say we move him out of that hip Hollywood hotel and into an even hipper movie-star home in the hills. All in favor?”

  There was, in fact, an authentic Showbiz God behind this move, namely Max Mandelbaum. The mogul, though delighted for Maddie’s sake that her son’s career was off to such a roaring start, could not
help noting that the job would keep Gilbert in LA and more specifically his guesthouse for the foreseeable future. Was it fair, he asked Maddie, to expect so dynamic a young man to molder in sleepy Bel-Air tethered to Mother’s apron strings? Wouldn’t he be happier on his own enjoying the gay social whirl of West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip? Thanks to his new income Gilbert could easily afford to lease a nice little house, especially if his partners joined him and shared the expense.

  As luck would have it an associate of Max’s knew of just such a house, a stylish three bedroom high atop the strip. It was now under lease to the Scottish heartthrob Angus Brodie, who’d made waves this past summer as Gwyneth Paltrow’s psycho boyfriend in Forever, Baby. He was leaving soon for a lengthy shoot and hoped to sublet it. Max endorsed us to Angus’s manager and by week’s end the keys were in Gilbert’s hands.

  Gilbert, whose tightness with a dollar has been noted, had not seen his windfall as presenting any reason to cease mooching off Max. He accepted his eviction philosophically though, reasoning that he’d managed an impressive run and that when the Houseguests Guild held their annual awards banquet, he’d be a shoo-in for the Golden Sponge. Besides, for Gilbert, to whom Hipness was all, the cachet of inhabiting a genuine movie-star bachelor pad provided at least some compensation for the regrettable expense.

  I was pretty puffed up about the move myself, even though I’d never seen Mr. Brodie’s films and wasn’t crazy about the house itself. It was one of those spare, starkly modern LA homes that make you feel you’ve awoken in some future society where fashion favors shaved heads and jumpsuits, and possession of chintz is a felony. I kept this opinion to myself, though Claire, who came with us to inspect the place, voiced it freely.

  “You don’t find it a tad sterile?”

  “No,” I fibbed. “I think it’s nice and... airy. Those huge glass walls.”

  “It looks like a great party house!” said Gilbert.

  “It looks,” said Claire, “like a very small airport.”

  My other reservation was the rent, my share of which came to two thousand a month. I tried to persuade Claire that if she joined us and shared the expense we could find ways to make it homier. She declined, saying that it would be aggravating enough writing with Gilbert; if she had to live with him on top of it, the most she could hope for would be a sympathetic jury. She opted instead for a frugal but charming one-bedroom flat on King’s Road.