by Joe Keenan
“So how you doing, James Bond?”
“Not bad, Mishtah Caliber. And yourshelf?” I replied, wishing I did a better Sean Connery. He laughed though and we sat, ordering drinks from the saucer-eyed bartender who’d practically teleported himself to our booth. When he’d gone I looked around at the other patrons, several of whom were glancing our way.
“Do you think it’s safe to talk here?”
“I think we’re okay if we keep our voices down.” He jerked his head toward the bodyguard, who’d stationed himself at the bar. “Anyone gets too close, Ravi’s here.”
Our drinks came and we toasted.
“How’s the script coming?”
I said it was going well and he said he couldn’t wait to read it. He asked about my background, where I’d grown up, how long I’d been writing. His interest seemed genuine; every answer met with follow-ups and the attention was going to my head faster than the Cosmo I’d ordered as a subliminal hint that he could consider me his bitch.
“Gosh,” I said finally, “you must think I’m an egomaniac, prattling on about myself this way.”
“I’m curious. When you do what I do the people you meet know a lot about you and you know nothing about them. And I want to know about you, Phil.”
“That’s really nice of you. It’s just... y’know,” I said, glancing meaningfully at my watch.
“Right,” he nodded, then leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “So, let’s hear it. Lily and Monty. What are they saying about me?”
“Well,” I said, suddenly flushed. “Basically, they say that you’re, uh, well...gay.”
He stared at me, his expression unchanged.
“And?”
It was suddenly clear to me how foolish I’d been to think Stephen would respond to this “bombshell” with gasps and calls for smelling salts. It was hardly news to him that he was gay, nor was it any surprise that his aunt and uncle knew, having once caught him with a mouthful of tennis pro. What he wanted to know was what they planned to actually publish. I repeated their stories about him filching Monty’s porn and the tennis instructor, plus Lily’s claim that they’d dined with him and Andrew, his now disclaimed, then quite open, boyfriend. He took it all in, his face calm and inscrutable. When I’d finished he sat a moment digesting it, then said, “Anything else?”
I hadn’t planned on telling him about the hustlers since Lily didn’t even know and I feared embarrassing him. But I sensed he could tell I was holding something back, so rather than sow mistrust, I lowered my voice to a murmur and said, “I didn’t bring it up ’cause it won’t be in the book, but Monty says he’s heard stories about you more recently. He said he’s heard them from... well, his hustlers. He mentioned a Kyle.”
His impassive demeanor cracked a bit. He exhaled sharply and, raising his eyes to heaven, downed the rest of his scotch. The bartender, noting this, practically pole-vaulted over the bar to ask if we’d like another round.
“Please,” said Stephen.
When he’d gone Stephen favored me with a weary smile.
“Thank you for this.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Now, I’d like you to do something for me. Two things actually.”
“Name it, Stephen.”
“Steve. First I want you to keep this to yourself. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, don’t. Not my family or Sonia or your partners.”
The bartender returned with our drinks, then hovered a moment as though hoping we’d ask him to join us. Stephen shot him a perplexed look and he withdrew, a maidenly blush on his cheek. Once he was out of earshot I asked Stephen what the second thing was. He took a sip of his drink, then leaned in so closely I thought for a breathless moment he might kiss me.
“Talk her out of it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Lily. Convince her to leave this stuff about me out of the book.”
I sat there a moment, slightly dizzy from both the tallness of the order and the intoxicating proximity of his face.
“Uh, okay,” I said finally. “I mean, I’ll try.”
“It’s not enough to try, Phil. You’ve got to do it.”
“Oh. Okay, then, I will.”
He sat back but his eyes never left mine. He frowned sexily, distending his lower lip in a come-hither pout.
“You think I’m a hypocrite, don’t you?”
“No!”
“A self-loathing closet case?”
“Not a bit!”
“I’m glad, Phil. Because I’m not. I just think what Lily’s doing is wrong. If she wants to tell her story, that’s fine. But this is my story. The only one who has the right to tell it is me. And I will.”
“You will? ”
He glanced quickly around the bar, then returned his riveting gaze to me. His eyes blazed with sincerity and there was even a hint of moisture in the corners.
“Yes, I will. Trust me, the day will come when I write my story, and when I do, I’m telling everything. And if my family or the studio or my agents don’t like it, well, fuck ’em. My life is mine and I’m not ashamed of any of it.”
His words had a profound effect on me. I gaped worshipfully at him like some transported pilgrim beholding a saint’s tibia. To know that he planned to commit so courageous an act, albeit at some distant and unspecified date, further solidified my belief that he was as noble as he was scrumptious. I struggled to frame some suitably eloquent response, but the best I could manage was, “Wow! That’s great.”
“It’s what I’ve planned all along. It’s just a question of when.”
“When were you thinking?”
“When it’s time. When it feels right. It has to feel right.”
“Well, of course.”
“But when that time comes I don’t want my aunt to have beaten me to the punch. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely. It’s just...”
“What?”
“I’m not sure how to convince her. She seems pretty determined.”
He shrugged and blinded me with a grin.
“You’re a pretty persuasive guy, Phil. You convinced me to hire you even though you’d never had a picture made. If you could pull that off, talking an old lady into leaving some gossip out of a book should be nothing.”
He gave me an encouraging clap on my shoulder. His hand lingered, lightly rubbing my upper arm. “Say, you’ve been working out, haven’t you?”
Good God, was he flirting with me?
“A little,” I said bashfully.
“It shows,” he said. He gave my biceps a firm squeeze, a gesture that carbonated my bloodstream. If two Cosmos can make the nice-looking fellow who’s flirting with you seem like a movie star, imagine what it’s like when the flirter actually is a movie star. A pleasant wooziness stole over me and I feared that any moment my head would loll back and my tongue damply unspool the way Homer Simpson’s does when he dreams of doughnuts.
He withdrew his hand from my arm, then leaned in toward me again, his tone thrillingly intimate.
“Can I count on you, buddy?”
“Absolutely!”
“You’ll do this for me?”
“Come hell or high water!”
“Thank you. And thanks for being my friend. I don’t meet a lot of guys I feel I can... trust. But I feel that about you. And if you come through for me, I’ll be grateful.” His eyes traveled shyly south, then rebounded back up to meet mine. “ Very grateful,” he repeated, fixing me with a gaze so smoldering, so freighted with sex it would not have surprised me to glance down and find that my shirt was unbuttoning itself.
I boldly returned his gaze, throwing in a few sex rays of my own, and said, “I won’t let you down, Steve. I promise you that —”
“Hey, Stevie! Who’s your boyfriend?”
The voice, brash and grating, had come from the bar. I looked up and saw a beefy, fiftyish man wearing a conservative gra
y suit. He had mottled, leathery skin, short carrot-colored hair, and a bulbous misshapen nose that bespoke a lifelong devotion to gin and fisticuffs. His bearing suggested a military background. He had that swaggering, contemptuous air certain old soldiers display when confronting effete men whose bodies, they feel certain, contain an unmanly shortage of shrapnel.
I despised him on sight, partly because of his annoying machismo but mostly because he’d intruded at the very moment when my —my? Everyone’s! — dream was finally coming true.
The instant Stephen heard the man, his sex face vanished, replaced first by an annoyed grimace and then, as he turned to face his heckler, a cool insolent smile. The interloper started toward us and Stephen’s bodyguard shot over to intercept him. Stephen waved the guard away, informing him the fellow was an “old friend.”
“Hey, Rusty. Been a long time. Not long enough, but long.”
“Who’s your boyfriend?” repeated Mr. Surly.
“Why? Jealous?” He turned to me. “Meet Rusty Grimes. He’s what passes for a DA these days.”
I realized at once the source of their enmity.
Five years ago Grimes had charged a man named Roger Banks with the murder of Banks’s ex-boyfriend. The evidence was flimsy and many felt that in prosecuting the case the state’s lurid emphasis on Mr. Banks’s fondness for light S and M was both pointless and homophobic. Since Banks, when not applying tit clamps to recent acquaintances, was a model citizen and prominent in many gay charities, his case became a literal cause célèbre with numerous stars, Stephen among them, rallying to his defense. Banks was acquitted and two years later HBO produced an all-star film version of the case. Stephen played Rusty, complete with prosthetic nose, and his brilliantly caustic portrayal had struck Rusty as a more than adequate casus belli.
“Nice to meetcha,” said Grimes, not deigning to look at me.
“Philip’s writing my next picture,” explained Stephen. “So what are you doing in a hip place like this? Besides making it less hip?”
“Saying hi to my kid. He tends bar here. I hope this picture’s better than your last one. Whew!” he said, wittily miming a frat boy’s response to a fart. “I saw it on a plane and people still walked out.”
“If only you’d joined them.”
“Maybe this one’ll win you an Oscar to put next to your other two. Oh, wait, I forgot—you lost, right? Both times?”
This was a low blow. It was well known that Stephen, the son of an Oscar winner, yearned for one of his own and that his losses had rankled him sorely. It was then that I decided I was letting down Team Donato and risked forfeiting Stephen’s regard if I did not rally to his side.
“Are we keeping you, Rusty?” I asked pertly. “Don’t you have places to go, faggots to frame?”
Stephen smiled and Grimes, who’d not expected me to stick my oar in, gave me that squinty appraising look long favored by schoolyard ruffians.
“Aren’t you a cutie-pie? Wudja say your name was?”
“Philip Cavanaugh.”
He took a pad and pen from his pocket and made a note.
“Ooh!” I cried, mock cringing. “He’s writing my name down! How theoretically intimidating!”
“Nice seeing you, Rusty,” said Stephen.
“I get the picture. The lovebirds wanna be alone. Nice running into you, Stevie.”
He started off, then turned back to us.
“Stevie, do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
His lips twisted in a sour little smile. “Make a mistake. Just one, okay?” And with that he turned and left, waving goodbye to his son, who’d watched the whole scene with undisguised dismay.
Stephen said, “Thanks for jumping in. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Hey, any enemy of yours is an enemy of mine.”
“I appreciate that, but watch your step with Rusty. He’s a powerful guy.”
“What can he do to me?” I asked unprophetically.
There seemed little hope of rekindling the deliciously steamy atmosphere Rusty had so rudely shattered. It wouldn’t have mattered if there had been, since within moments of his departure the voice I’d been dreading called out shrilly from beyond the bar.
“Hey, guys!”
“What’s Gilbert doing here?” muttered Stephen.
“He got wind of this from our answering machine and invited himself along. He’s such a starfucker. ”
Gilbert arrived at our booth and plopped himself brazenly next to Stephen.
“I’m not late, am I? I thought we said eight.”
Stephen said that by chance we’d both arrived early and decided to have a drink. I could tell Gilbert thought he was lying but knew he’d never dare say so to Stephen. I, by contrast, could confidently expect brass knuckles the instant we reached home.
Diana showed next, and her arrival caused the furtive oglers in the bar to abandon any effort at discretion. Gilbert, aware of this, leaped to his feet and flung his arms wide in greeting.
“Darling!” he cried, his air kisses swarming around her like gnats. Diana, who’d only met him once and hadn’t expected him tonight, endured this with baffled courtesy and seemed on the verge of asking his name. Stephen, observing this, rose and, with undue gallantry, said, “Gilbert was available to join us.”
“Oh, good,” said Diana vaguely.
Gina arrived next, followed by Sonia, who was much affronted to see her two biggest clients chatting in a public bar without so much as velvet rope to protect them. She gruffly summoned the maître d’, who greeted his sovereign with a terrified smile and escorted us from the bar. He led us through the main dining room, Diana bestowing grand “Yes, it’s really me” nods on her fortunate patrons, to a private table concealed from public view behind sliding smoked-glass doors.
We perused our menus, exchanging small talk and hearing some spicy gossip from Sonia, who had no compunction about airing the lurid misfortunes of nonclients. It was not until the waitstaff had taken our orders, served our appetizers, and withdrawn that Diana finally broached the topic of Lily’s memoir.
“I want to thank you, Philip,” she said, “for everything you’ve done for us. I can only imagine how tiresome it’s been for you, listening to Lily chatter on about herself day after day — I’d go mad in an hour! But you’ve done a wonderful job. In fact, a little too wonderful.”
“Oh?”
“I know my sister. She’s not a bright woman. But you make her sound quite intelligent, clever even. Is that quite necessary?”
“Mother,” sighed Stephen, “we can’t hire Philip for a job, then find fault when he does it well. Besides, what better way to get Lily to trust him than to flatter her?”
Diana dourly allowed that Stephen perhaps had a point but was clearly piqued by anything that showed her sister in a positive light.
Sonia said, “Anyway, the pages you’ve given us so far, it’s just childhood crap, which is not what we’re concerned about. We realize that if she’s telling her life story she’s gonna start at the beginning, but we don’t want to wait months to find out what we’re up against. What I’m talking about are allegations. Lies. Big, fat actionable lies. We know she’s told these lies in private. What we want to know is, is she planning to print them? Has she said anything negative about my clients? To either of you?” she said, including Gilbert.
“Actually,” said Gilbert, “I’ve never met her.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Well, sure,” I said cautiously. “Lily’s said a lot of things. It’s just a little embarrassing to talk about.”
“It’s embarrassing for us too,” said Stephen gently, “but it’s better for us to know than not.”
“I suppose so,” I said and, composing my features into the contrite expression the polite dinner guest wears when preparing to defame his hostess at length, pulled out a crib sheet I’d made detailing Lily’s charges. I was glad I’d brought it. Apart from serving as a memory aid, it ga
ve me something to look at besides Diana’s increasingly volcanic countenance.
In brief, I said, Lily was planning to write that Diana was an overrated actress who’d stolen her signature mannerisms and effects from more gifted and original performers; that she had, starting in adolescence, begun a lifelong habit of trading sexual favors for both material goods and career advancement and that by the time she was twenty a wag had christened her boudoir “the chamber of commerce”; that in her late teens she’d augmented her meager acting income by selling marijuana to jazz musicians and that even as a dope peddler she’d lacked integrity, cutting her wares with herbs and lawn clippings; that her sexual appetite bordered on nymphomania and that once, on a USO tour in Korea, she’d gotten drunk and pleasured no fewer than seven marines; that by the time she was twenty-four she’d had three abortions, the last of these while playing a nun; that she’d been a neglectful mother to Stephen, callously entrusting his upbringing to servants and relations; that she’d cheated on all three of her husbands; that she’d had affairs with numerous married men, several of whom she’d snagged not from passion but resentment over their wives having won roles she’d coveted; that so far as her character was concerned, she was dishonest, petty, vain, envious, cruel to underlings, alcoholic, and a world-class cheapskate.
When I’d finished there was a fraught silence at the table. It was finally broken by Gina, who said, “You’ve been to Korea?”
“Oh,” I added, glancing at my crib sheet, “she also said something about a junkie musician you were seeing in the late seventies? That he overdosed at your house and you had your gardeners bring his body back to his place to avoid the publicity.”
“How could she possibly—?!” sputtered Diana, then she cut herself off before uttering the damning words “know about that?”
“Give me those notes!” barked Sonia, snatching them from my hand. “Have you shown these to anybody?” she demanded.
“Of course not!”
“Let’s not shoot the messenger here!” scolded Gilbert, winning himself a tender gaze from Sonia. As for Diana, the actress in her had suddenly grasped that her enraged expression was making her look less like an Innocent Maligned than a Villainess Exposed. She promptly replaced it with a poignant look of wounded astonishment.
