by William Poe
“You’ve never mentioned it,” Thad began, “but I know how much Charlotte stole from you. One of the faxes listed a company in Spain, Hollywood Pictures something, I forget the whole name. They wanted confirmation that the money had arrived.”
Simon considered explaining everything to Thad, to warn him about the identity of Howard’s Spanish partners and tell him not to go back. But what if his absence raised questions in Howard’s mind and he mentioned to Emilio or the others how he lost his best voice-over artist? What if Simon’s name came up? Better that Thad remained ignorant, hiding in plain sight.
“Remember that fellow in Culver City? The one who owned a catalog of movies from the 1960s? I was planning to negotiate the entire library with the money they sent.”
“I remember. We watched some of the old westerns. Not awful, but not great, either.”
“They were good enough for the Spanish client. Now, that huge debt is just hanging out there. If Charlotte hadn’t stolen the money, I would have lost it anyway, literally sending it up in smoke from a crack pipe. That much money in my pocket might have purchased my death.”
“Are you saying that in some awful way, Charlotte did you a favor?”
“I don’t know, Thad. Those last months I spent in Hollywood are like a dream. I’m not sure I knew what was real and what was paranoia. I knew I missed you and didn’t want to live without you. I hated that we weren’t together—that I had messed things up so badly.”
“Well, however it happened, we’re together now. We can figure out the future when I’m done with the work Howard has for me. From now on it is Simon and Thad, together forever.”
Simon took Thad in his arms and kissed him as if they would never again see each other again. Was he making a terrible decision keeping Thad ignorant of the danger from Emilio, David, and Irene?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The next day, Simon drove Thad to the airport and stayed until the plane disappeared into the clouds. Over the next few days, Cicero kept constant vigil, waiting for Vivian to come home, running to the front door if the wind jarred it, and at night hopping onto Vivian’s bed to wait for her, then creeping into Simon’s room as if to pine over her absence.
Alone with his worries, Simon fretted over the increased difficulty of making sales on Wally’s videos, though he scoured the planet for additional markets, looking through a card file of obscure contacts he had collected over the years. Simon considered the possibility of finding other low-budget videos like Wally’s; he had contacts for such producers, but if his name entered circulation, he was sure liens on his meager assets would follow. Even if the Spaniards never became alerted to his reappearance, there were plenty of other producers to whom he owed money.
Simon’s fantasies about establishing a career as an artist provided sustenance. He believed returning to college had been the right thing to do, but every contemporary artist he researched had found a collector interested in him, made it big gambling with family money, or been able to create a piece of art controversial enough to get noticed by an up-and-coming critic. Simon was simply a fellow from the backwater town of Sibley, Arkansas, a recovering drug addict, and a former cult member—neither failing of much interest to anyone.
In the evenings, listening to LPs of opera recordings, comfortably seated in the plush parlor chair once used by his aunt Opal, Simon became obsessed with ideas. What if he located Charlotte or the complicit Rudy and discovered they still had the money and that they wanted to return it to him, the pressure of a guilty conscience having gotten the better of them—an unlikely scenario, he knew, but one that provided a degree of comfort. At the very least, Simon wanted to know what had become of Charlotte and Rudy. Perhaps Rudy had made an appearance at the Spotlight, and if so, the gossipy bartender, Twiggy, would know about it. Simon jumped from the chair and hurried to the phone before he could change his mind.
“The Spotlight Bar, a delightfully crummy place,” Twiggy said cheerfully as he answered the phone.
Simon shouted into the phone so Twiggy would hear him over the din of a rowdy bar crowd. “Twig, it’s me, Simon Powell.”
“Miss Simon? Where on earth are you? Just a minute, dear.” Twiggy screamed at a customer, telling him to pay what he owed or Bouncer Bob would deal with him.
“Lowlifes,” Twiggy scolded, returning to the phone. “I hate it when they talk me into running a tab. I’m too nice. I should know better. Oh, fuck me, anyway.”
“Some things never change, Twiggy.”
“Where the hell are you? Why aren’t you here, at the bar?”
“I’m still in the South.”
“Oh, Gawd. That’s right. I forgot. How can you stand it? Is there a gay bar? I hope so. Where’s that Thad-pole of yours?”
Before Simon could answer, a brushing sound told him Twiggy had tucked the receiver between his ear and his shoulder to free his hands while serving drinks. “Oh, wait. I forgot,” Twiggy continued, “Thad was in here. It wasn’t that long ago.”
“He called me from the phone at the bar, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. Silly me. I have the worst memory.”
“Twiggy, I have a question.”
“Fire away, dearest.”
“Do you ever see Rudy, or Patricia, or that woman who worked as my secretary, Charlotte?”
“Honey, Patricia’s been eighty-sixed out of here for the longest. That girl…do you know she pulled a razor blade out of her purse and swiped it at one of the regulars who tried to reach under her dress? He didn’t believe she was a real woman. Well, she’s a real man, I dare say. Patricia told him he’d be singing soprano if he made another move.”
“That sounds like Patricia.”
Twiggy yelled at two patrons who were getting intimate with each other. Undercover vice cops frequently patrolled the bar watching for excuses to cite Don for a code violation. The police not on Don’s payroll resented the ones who were and looked for reasons to shut him down. Overt sexual contact was the worst offense, next to underage drinking.
“Now about that Rudy,” Twiggy continued, “he’s another story. Rudy knows not to show his face around here. Don told us all how he ripped you off with that Charlotte.”
“Don told you about it?”
“When Thad came in to use the phone. Wait, maybe Thad told us. Oh, honey, I don’t know. Anyway, the word is that Rudy owes you money, and Don doesn’t like that sort of thing. If anyone is going to rip off a customer of the Spotlight, it’s going to be him. Ha!”
“Sounds like you haven’t seen Rudy.”
“If he dares to come in, should I say anything?”
“No. I just wondered if he had been around. I’ll call you another time.”
“Okay, sweetcakes. Get on back now, ya hear? We miss y’all.”
“Bye, Twiggy. Love y’all.”
Sooner or later, Simon was sure that Don would miss his liar’s poker buddy and let Rudy back into the bar—Don’s banishments were rarely permanent. Charlotte had never liked the Spotlight and was unlikely to show up. She’d first gone there with Rudy after arriving in Los Angeles, and later she’d accompanied Simon to unwind after the day’s work. Simon figured she had returned to Miami, perhaps taking Rudy with her.
The call to the Spotlight made Simon long for Hollywood, despite the insanity of the place. Simon remembered the good times at the Spotlight with his bar friends, the regulars who often shared tales of better times—Tinker Bell, the ex-jockey who’d ridden famous horses to victory at the Kentucky Derby; Eddie the Hat, who might have been a hitman—if he were to be believed; Contessa, who claimed to be royalty from an Eastern European country that no one had ever heard of. And then there had been Rudy Gutierrez, a famous chef in his telling, a brag backed up by Polaroids he kept in his pocket showing him beside recognizable if not Oscar-worthy actors and actresses, many of whom had now fallen on hard times, having succumbed to the same fate as Simon.
Simon knew he needed to stop worrying about Thad and focus
on school, but school sometimes led Simon into feelings of existential doubt and confusion. Dr. Dupré had complimented Simon for his paper about Sun Myung Moon as the founder of a revitalization movement, advising him to spend the second half of the semester assessing the anticult backlash as a form of moral panic, giving Simon a list of sociology articles and scholarly books to start his research. Connie and Derek and their speeches at Christian churches served as the focal point of his paper, “Moral Panic and the Anticult Movement,” which earned him more praise from the visiting professor.
“You should consider a PhD,” Dr. Dupré advised Simon during his course evaluation. “Your experience as a leader in Sun Myung Moon’s organization and the conflict generated by your sexual orientation is significant material for a dissertation. You’ll need to formulate a theory to explain the interplay between sexuality and religious devotion, of course. Catholic priesthood and the doctrine of celibacy might provide background, and then there’s the connection between eroticism and visionary experience. Look at the sculpture The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, where the love god, Cupid, prepares to pierce Teresa with his arrow.”
“The sacred versus the profane,” Simon summarized, echoing an idea that informed his art and defined his emotional and intellectual conflicts. “The desire for a sense of order against chaos.”
“Apollo against Dionysus,” Dr. Dupré offered.
“Against each other or in conjunction—I’m not sure one can be known without the other.”
“And there you have it.” Dr. Dupré smiled. “The idea for your dissertation.”
Thad would have run screaming from the room if he had overheard Simon’s conversation with Dr. Dupré. As Thad had once put it when trying to get Simon to stop talking, “Who cares about concepts? Ideas don’t put food on the table.”
After leaving Dr. Dupré’s class, Simon wandered into the lab where he had once pondered a plaster cast of Homo habilis soon after his conversion to Divine Principle theology. Simon found the same cast, recalling the fog of beliefs that had clouded his mind for so many years. The cast represented hard evidence of human evolution, a species that had survived despite the odds. Faith had given Simon the idea that behind human evolution stood a divine being. Could Simon now accept a life molded by the vagaries of natural selection and shaped by genetics and the chaos of personal interactions, foregoing the idea that his life had special meaning?
Simon wasn’t sure why he still felt conflicted.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Simon wanted to get his degree as quickly as possible, so he decided not to take a break but to continue through the summer term, a decision made easier because the university would be offering art classes. Simon especially looked forward to a course on color theory—color serving as a primary feature of his painting. Even so, Simon’s mind wandered within minutes of entering the studio as he realized he was being looked at by someone he had seen on campus but with whom he had never spoken, a Ganymede who carried his six-foot frame with swanlike grace and whose hair fell in tufts as if adorning a Greek kouros, someone Simon would have pursued if he weren’t in a relationship.
The first project in the theory class, announced by the professor with a handout (the professor being someone who disliked teaching and preferred to keep interactions with students to a minimum), was to create the illusion of depth by painting concentric circles using hues of a single color. The class set to work. Simon struggled to chase Ganymede from his thoughts.
After class, despite realizing that he was placing himself in temptation’s way, he followed the student to an open corridor on one side of a courtyard, the morning sun reflecting from a row of windows opposite. Simon introduced himself, calling out, “Hello, I’m Simon.”
The student wheeled around, gazing at Simon with an interested look. “My next class is clear across campus. Another time?” The student hurried off.
An acquaintance from Dr. Dupré’s seminar walked up behind Simon. “That’s Blaine Mathis,” the acquaintance whispered. “Gorgeous man, isn’t he?”
“Arthur, I didn’t know you were gay.” Simon also didn’t realize that Arthur knew anything about him, having engaged in conversation on a single occasion that Simon could remember.
Arthur, a young man of twenty, with probing eyes that revealed a keen intelligence, wanted to know Simon better. “I knew we were family the moment I saw you,” Arthur explained, placing his hand on Simon’s arm with a chiffon touch.
“Family?”
“Of course—family, sisters, gay men hiding in plain sight.”
“I forget I’m back in Arkansas,” Simon confessed. “No one thinks much about the differences between gay and straight where I lived before moving back here.”
“Hollywood, right? Oh, I don’t mean to sound like the local gossip. People talk, you know. You’re something of a mystery.”
Simon suspected the admissions officer of sharing information. Simon had supposed the man was gay by the way he looked at him and because of a few questions constructed to find out if Simon was married or had a significant other.
“Thanks for giving me the new vocabulary, Arthur. I haven’t met many people in the gay community here in Little Rock. I never thought about the need to be out when I lived in Hollywood. Here, just being oneself is an act of boldness.”
“A lot of people fear losing their jobs because they work for a Christian,” Arthur explained. “So many of them are intolerant toward employees—and you know the law doesn’t protect a gay person from being fired.”
“It’s a shame. The world has changed, and anyway, the whole point of the American Revolution was to end theocratic rule. There is no Church of America.”
“Listen to you!” Arthur smiled. “Well, here’s to the Revolution. Meanwhile, you should come to the dance club with me one of these nights. Blaine isn’t the only hunk in town—Little Rock has plenty of choice beef on the menu.”
“I’m in a relationship, if you weren’t aware.”
“Aren’t we all,” Arthur laughed. “Oh, I don’t mean to be crass. For goodness sake, that was terrible of me, wasn’t it? Where is your boyfriend? I’ve never seen you with anyone.”
“Los Angeles.”
“Lost Angels! Well, you know what they say, out of sight…”
“But not out of mind,” Simon interrupted. “Thad and I are loyal to each other.”
“And what does he do, this Thad?”
If Simon told Arthur the truth, it would lead to a conversation Simon didn’t want to pursue; on the other hand, Simon wanted to know how Arthur would react.
“Thad provides sound effects for gay porn.”
Not skipping a beat, Arthur began, “I had a friend in Hot Springs who did that kind of work. Why doesn’t your Thad work for one of the local producers?”
“Seriously, Hot Springs?”
“You’d be surprised what goes on in that little town. As soon as the gambling ended—thanks to mean old Winthrop Rockefeller—delightfully sinful businesses came in to fill the gap.”
“You were born long after Governor Rockefeller chased gambling interests out of Hot Springs. How do you even know about it—a class in Arkansas history?”
“Sweetie, I’m from Hot Springs. The front door of our house has four bullet holes from a tommy gun, which, by the way, ranks us among the premier Hot Springs families. Happened sometime in the 1930s. No one remembers why they targeted our family, but one of my great-grandfathers managed a speakeasy, so bootlegging probably had something to do with it.”
Arthur’s stories were intriguing, but Simon wanted to know about Blaine.
“Can’t tell you much, Simon,” Arthur demurred. “Blaine keeps to himself. He will be friendly one moment, aloof the next. I know he’s one of us, though. Queer as they come.”
Queer as they come. The turn of phrase made Simon recall Lenny and his “queer as a three-dollar bill” comment about Liberace
“Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer to go dancing.”
“Any time.” Arthur risked pecking Simon on the cheek with a light kiss, but not before checking for anyone who might see them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You remember me telling you about those people coming from Spain?” Thad began during a phone conversation. “The ones partnering with Howard to make a video?”
“Most definitely,” Simon replied.
“The heads of the company showed up at Howard’s ranch yesterday. Curious thing—a young guy named Felipe came with them.”
Simon realized that Thad’s opening question had been a setup to see how Simon would react.
“Felipe started telling me about an American film distributor he met in Barcelona. Then he mentioned Bel Air Babes, and I realized the American had to be you. Felipe claimed he couldn’t remember your name. These are the people who sent the money Charlotte stole, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going away from the phone for a minute.” Thad put down the receiver and shut the door. “I checked to make sure no one was on the extension in the other room. Howard has been putting out rails of cocaine. It’s made him paranoid.”
“Thad, I hope you haven’t…”
“Not even tempted. Seeing the change in Howard as soon as he snorts the first line, I see clearly what it did to me. Howard wasn’t doing drugs when I first came here. The drugs started when he found out that one of the new actors used a fake ID to get hired. Turns out the kid is only sixteen. Howard freaked out when the background check came through, since he’d already shot footage with him. Howard destroyed the master tape, but he’s worried about blackmail because he thinks the cameraman kept a copy. The other day, Howard installed cameras in the hallways and at each of the entrances; it’s like being in a juvenile detention center.”
“When you first mentioned Emilio, David, and Irene, I should have explained who there were.”
