by Jay Lygon
A hand touched my back. “Hiding?” Alberto asked.
“I see you made it in,” I said. I turned around to look back into the party.
His mega-watt smile beamed at me. “You see why I need you to help me? I would have never thought of this on my own.”
Across the room, Harris whispered and smirked while he stroked the arm of the actress beside him. When the model on the other side got huffy, he nuzzled her neck. Our eyes met. He moved through the throng and said a quick hello before returning to his circle of admirers.
The wall of silence around me was broken. People cautiously made their way over for small talk. I guess if Harris Smith thought I was worthy of attention, so did they. One of the models on the outside of the circle tried to attach herself to my arm. I tried to think of a polite way to tell her I was of no personal or professional use to her.
Alberto lifted his camera to his eye and took a shot of Harris Smith’s hand sliding up the thigh of a regal brunette. Maybe it was just me, but I could have sworn Harris staged it for Alberto. He certainly held the pose long enough.
***
By the last day of the film festival, I sincerely hoped I never heard the words media junket, actor, director, movie, or press conference again as long as I lived. As a favor to George, instead of going to see a film that had great buzz, I suffered through a painfully bad comedy. I also agreed to interview the star, who turned out to be a snotty little shit with a drug problem, something his management told me I better not mention if I ever wanted to work again. I was already in a crappy mood, and that crass display of power only made it worse. It was as if someone had taken the things I hated the most about Hollywood, boiled them down to an intense concentrate, and spread it in a thick layer over my afternoon.
My mood wasn’t much better when I got back to Venice. On my way back to the hotel, I plodded past perky tourists dragging suitcases up and down the little bridges that connected the tiny islands. Confused by the streets that could end abruptly at a canal, they milled about, blocking my path. It took every ounce of manners not to snap at them.
I was in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and I couldn’t even be bothered to appreciate it as I followed my now-familiar path from the vaporetto dock to our hotel. If normal people could have seen my aura, I’m sure it would have looked like a little black rain cloud hanging over my head.
I figured that after I got back to the hotel, I’d do a little obligatory sight-seeing with Hector, a quiet dinner, some quick sex, and then the sweet oblivion of sleep. Fuck. I’d forgotten my blog entry. Okay. Blog entry, sight-seeing, food, sex, sleep. Hell, the way I felt, I was willing to give up sight-seeing, food, and sex if I could just get into bed. Hector would be pissed off if I didn’t spend some time with him, though. Every night, just as we’d be ready to go to dinner, I’d get an invitation to an exclusive party. He’d sigh and tell me to go, but I could tell he was getting frustrated. I was, too. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why suddenly I was so popular. Maybe it was because people recognized that Park Avenue Magazine had a lot of clout. That had to be it. Either that, or people saw that others invited me to parties and pack mentality took over. Overnight, I’d gone from D list to B, and was well on my way to A. Too bad that didn’t mean a whole lot to me.
***
“Thank the Gods the festival is over,” I told Hector as I collapsed on our narrow hotel bed and sank down into the soft mattress.
Hector chuckled. The ancient bed frame creaked under his weight as he crawled in beside me. “Poor Baby. It’s hard work being glamorous.”
“It is! I know you’re laughing at me, Sir, but Gods! The screenings, the interviews, the parties, it never fucking ends.”
Hector rolled me on my side and smacked my butt. “That’s for the gutter mouth. And it does end, Baby. It’s all over now.” His big hand rested between my pecs. “Now it’s just the two of us.”
“Can I show my collar now?”
“Moonlight. A little restaurant overlooking the canals. Some wine…” Hector said as he caressed me.
“Mmm-- Shit! My phone. Sorry, Sir.” I dug into my pocket for my cell phone. The number meant nothing to me. Frowning, I flipped it open. “Hello?”
A young male voice asked, “Is this Sam Dewey?”
“Sure.” Even though Hector’s hand was slowly moving down my stomach, I squinted and tried to concentrate on the voice.
“Thank goodness! Listen, I’m Joseph Dudeka’s personal assistant, and he’s going to kill me. I was supposed to invite you to a dinner party on his yacht tonight, but I couldn’t find your number until now.”
Gee. If Joseph hadn’t thrown my business card in the trash, it probably would have been easier to find me.
“Who is it?” Hector whispered. His evening beard was raspy against my cheek.
I put my hand over the phone. “Someone inviting me to a party.”
“Another one?” Hector frowned.
The voice in my other ear rattled off instructions on how to get to the yacht.
Hector nuzzled against my neck and pressed his lips above my slave collar. The heat of his breath made me shiver even though it was a hot day. The hotel room wasn’t air conditioned, unless you counted opening up the windows that overlooked the canal and hoping a breeze would find its way through the labyrinth of Venetian streets to the window as air conditioning. Normally I wouldn’t have minded, but the past couple days I’d spent a lot of time standing out in the Italian summer sun, under stuffy media tents, or inside crowded screening rooms.
While the kisses on my neck grew longer, Hector’s hand finally finished the long trip from my chest down to my groin. He roughly groped me through my pants. His teeth sank into my skin. He straddled my thigh and ground against it as his breath grew ragged.
I slid away from Hector and sat up. Dinner with Joseph Dudeka. When would I ever get another chance? It was my fanboy dream come true. A second wind of energy shot through me. Holy Hannah. Dinner with my idol. Maybe being a minor celebrity wasn’t such a chore after all.
The guy on the phone was still yapping. “Sam, are you there? Anyway, I hate to ask, but can you make it tonight? And please, don’t tell Joseph that I called you at the last second like this, because it’ll mean my job. Okay?”
Hector looked pretty angry.
“Um, I’ll get back to you.” I hung up.
“Who was that?”
“Sir, I know I haven’t been around to serve you, but please, this is important. Joseph Dudeka asked me to dinner on his yacht. You know what a fan I am of his work.”
Hector got off the bed. He walked to the bathroom door, turned, and stomped back to me. Dark aura gathered around him. “Are you a fan of his work, or does he turn you on?”
“What?”
“Dinner alone on his yacht? Come on, Sam. You weren’t born yesterday. He’s making a move on you. I never figured you for the type to be seduced by money. Guess I learn something new every day.”
That just hurt. “The invitation was to a party, not dinner alone with him. If you don’t trust me, why don’t come along, Sir?”
“I had plans for us, Boy. You’ve been ignoring me all week. This is our last night here.”
“You made me go to those parties! I begged you to let me stay with you, but you ordered me to go. What am I supposed to do, Hector? Maybe I’m too stupid to get it. So you tell this idiot how he can make you happy, and he’ll do it. Spell it out for me. Talk slow and use small words. Draw me pictures. Anything! But don’t blame me for obeying you. It isn’t fair.”
His nostrils flared as he drew in deep breaths. He slowly released his fists.
I pulled a pillow into my lap.
Hector ambled over to the window. He rubbed his scalp. “You’re not stupid, Sam. You know I don’t like it when you talk about yourself like that,” he said softly.
I hugged the pillow to my chest and rocked. Fatigue settled back down over me, and the pit of my stomach felt hollow.
“Do you really want to go to this dinner? Be honest, Sam.”
The temptation to say yes was as strong as the urge to say no. I got off the bed and went to him. I rested my forehead against his back and hugged him.
“We can always come back to Venice when you aren’t working,” Hector said.
“Can we stay another day? It would be just the two of us, I promise.”
“I have to get back to work, Sam. You know that.” He patted my hand. “Call him back and tell him that you’ll be there.”
“Is that an order, Sir?”
Hector’s shoulders slumped. “That’s an order, Boy.”
***
Except Joseph Dudeka’s personal assistant, I was easily thirty years younger than the rest of the dinner guests on the yacht. My invitation had to have been a mistake, because they were the elite of European film. Joseph’s wife, a stout, Slavic woman who giggled a lot, kept trying to drag me into the conversation. After a while, though, she and the assistant talked about personal things, so I just sat there and absorbed what the rest of the guests were talking about. I wasn’t bored, though.
After dinner, the men went to the deck and hauled out cigars. I tagged along.
Joseph sat next to me and patted my knee. “You’re very quiet for an American.”
“I like to think about things for a while before I talk about them.”
“He’s like the old-fashioned cowboys,” a writer from Prague said. The man had chain smoked through dinner and was already opening another pack. “Why is it that in the westerns, cowboys are men of such few words?”
I shrugged. “Maybe to keep from getting trail dust into their mouths.”
I didn’t think I was all that witty, but they laughed. Maybe they were indulging me.
“Tell me, Mr. Dewey, what led you to film critique? Were you a film student? An actor?”
“I’d never get in front of a camera. As school projects, I made five short films, and I enjoyed the work, but as you gentlemen are all aware, film is a collaborative art. You have to be able to communicate your vision to the actors and crew, and you have to listen to their input. My problem was being too shy to tell them my vision. The films we made were okay, but I regretted each one, because they never felt as if they were mine.”
Chuckles of regret rose with the wispy plumes of cigar smoke.
“Ah, Mr. Dewey, I feel that way about every one of my films,” Joseph said.
The man from Prague nodded. “I can’t watch any film of my scripts, because I wince through it.”
“It’s always ‘I should have done this in this scene,’ or ‘why did I insist on such a cumbersome line of dialog?’” another man said.
Joseph leaned forward as he spoke quietly of his disappointments with the film that had made me such a fan of his work. As he spoke, the other men nodded and sighed wistfully.
It couldn’t be. “”Okay, so maybe you were disappointed by that one little thing in that scene, but the following scene, in the kitchen, that was brilliance! Not a word, but the tension is so tight that I squirm every time I watch it.”
Joseph pushed his silver hair away from his forehead. “I just turned on the camera and watched her act. Two words from me: action, and cut. I felt like a fraud even asking for another take. It was all there the first time.”
“But you understood that. Not everyone would,” I told him.
They put up with my obvious hero-worship with good humor, perhaps because I knew most of their work, or maybe because they sensed that I was sincere. It was like being in a master class where I was the only student. It was hard to point to any single revelation I had during that long discussion, but I felt as if I’d learned more about the making of a movie than I’d ever known before.
Joseph clasped my shoulder as I said my goodbyes. “Keep in touch. I’ll have my assistant send you my private email.”
“I would like that very much. Thank you for a wonderful evening.”
“Maybe we’ve convinced you to try your hand at another film?”
I bowed my head. “If anything, I’m more intimidated than I was before.”
The men laughed, but not unkindly.
“Maybe it will be a great film that inspires you. Or a horrible one,” the writer from Prague said, “but anyone with your passion for this art form will, eventually, yield to the temptation.”
I smiled and shrugged, because I didn’t want to be rude and tell him he was wrong.
As I walked back to the hotel, though, my feet barely touched the ground, and the insane little idea that I might, one day, try my hand at making another film would not go away.
I was still floating when I climbed into bed with Hector. I thought he was asleep, so I tried to snuggle. He rolled to his side, facing away from me. That’s when I came back down to earth with a solid thud.
Chapter 4
The Sunday following our return from Venice, I rode my motorcycle to the park for my weekly basketball game. Joey and I sat on the benches outside the court while another group finished their game. It was Labor Day weekend, so even though it was early, the park was already crowded. The scent of lighter fluid hung thick in the air. People staked out claims to picnic tables by taping clusters of balloons to the ends. Others set up shade tents and lawn chairs on the parched grass.
“Where’s Brett?” I asked.
Joey took a swig of water from a bottle. “He’s unpacking.”
“He already bought his place? Since when?” I felt as if I’d missed out on something important. Sure, Brett had been talking about buying a condo for months, but I hadn’t realized he’d done it.
“Escrow closed last week. He claims it’s a smart financial move, but I’d hate to be buying in this market.”
“Does he need help moving?”
“We moved him while you were in Venice. So, how was the festival? See a lot of stars?”
“Sure. Most of them are really short in person. And they’re so skinny that their heads look too big for their bodies. It’s kind of weird, actually. Not terribly attractive. They look much better on the screen.”
The guys on the court moved over to the metal bleachers, so we went through the chain link fence to the court.
“Are we playing one on one today?” I asked. “Or are we going to try to get a pick-up game going?”
Joey craned around. “Actually, I invited someone to join us. I met this totally hot Brazilian when I was out dancing Thursday night. He was kind of aggressive, which usually turns me off. I mean, one minute we’re dancing, the next he’s grilling me about my work and friends, but damn, he was cute. I hope you don’t mind.”
A premonition crackled down my spine.
“He’s a photographer. Just moved here.”
What were the odds? No. There was no way that out of the millions of people in Los Angeles, Alberto hooked up with Joey. Alberto talked about moving to LA every time we met in Venice, but that was just talk, wasn’t it?
“And there he is! Alberto!” Joey called out.
Alberto crossed the grass. His tight, yellow t-shirt hugged every muscle down his torso. Man, he had nice arms. Joey and I wore baggy basketball shorts, but Alberto wore the kind of tight cut-offs I used to run around in. No wonder Hector threw out all my old clothes. They made Alberto look like a sleazy slut. Not that I was complaining. It was nice to look at, especially the way it shoved his package front and center.
Alberto jogged over to us. Oh, be still my heart. From the bounce in his briefs, I guessed that the boy was going commando.
“Alberto, this is Sam,” Brett said.
“We’ve met,” I said.
“Yes! In Venice. And now I live next door to you. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Like a miracle,” I said. Joey shot a look at me. Maybe I sounded as pissy as I felt. “Next door? You mean that you moved here to Long Beach.” At least I desperately hoped that’s what he meant.
“No. Next door to you, in the vacant house. We’re neighbors!”
My guts clenched. Couldn’t he feel the bad karma that clung to that place? How could he stand to go inside it? “How nice,” I said.
A couple other guys got off the bleachers and asked us if we minded if they played, so we ended up with a three on three game going. Alberto sucked at basketball, but he looked so damn good doing it that no one complained.
“I look forward to spending more time with you, neighbor,” Alberto said.
Was his Brazilian accent naturally sexy, or did he pour it on for my benefit?
