There was no further tension between Jeff and Callum that night. At least not around here. They even got affectionate at one point, Callum rubbing the back of Jeff’s neck and squeezing his knee when I talked about the day we rented That Movie so Jeff could see if Jeremy and Callum were the same person. The more I’m around them, though, the more hopelessly different they seem. Jeff is open and vulnerable, but also abrasive and hyper, while Callum is affable and coolheaded and unrevealing to a fault. Opposites attract, sure, but there has to be something in common, doesn’t there?
Jeff called later that night, after Renee had gone to bed. I knew he’d do this, so I’d waited up for him. As usual, he just began talking without announcing himself.
“You asleep?”
“No.”
“Is Renee in the room?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Not a bit.”
“Sorry I fucked up your party.”
I told him he hadn’t, so he shouldn’t expect an absolution anytime soon. Then I asked him where Callum was.
“Back at the Chateau. He has to be up at five. There are movies to be made and psychotic queers to be put in their place.”
I sighed at his renewed ranting. “Didn’t you guys make up?”
He made an unreadable grunt.
“What does that mean?”
“That I was gutless,” he said, “and let it drop.”
Touched by this attempt at compromise, I slipped into my Pollyanna mode. “Maybe it won’t be a problem, Jeff. I mean, if they fixed the script like he says…”
“They haven’t fixed shit. He just said that to get off the hook.”
“C’mon now. He sounded concerned enough.”
“Yeah. About his own ass. That’s the only reason he even thinks about this. He’s petrified he’ll be outed if this becomes an issue.”
I digested that for a moment. “You think it will? Become an issue?”
“It could. Very easily. It’s the meanest script I’ve ever read, Cadence. It cost two and a half million dollars, and it’s just one more lousy cheap shot at fags. I’m not the only person who’s gonna be pissed off.”
I asked him what he expected Callum to do.
“He could raise a stink. If he won’t come out, he can at least tell the press the movie’s homophobic. He’s the star, for Christ’s sake. What if Wesley Snipes took a role in a film that turned out to be racist?”
“But didn’t he see the script before he accepted the role?”
“Yeah, well…let’s not get into his ethics.”
I hesitated a moment, then said: “Maybe we should.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t get it, Jeff. Why are you still seeing him if he’s such a scumbag?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just said he didn’t have any ethics.” There was no response to this, so I added: “How pretty can a dick be?”
“You know,” he said quietly, “I’ll always be sorry I told you that.”
I told him maybe so, but the information was nonetheless pertinent to our discussion.
“He has other qualities,” he said.
“Like?”
“He can be very…personal and tender. When we’re by ourselves.”
Personal and tender. I could imagine the sway that would hold over Jeff. Especially now. If Callum had been the first person to make him feel human again after Ned’s death, it would be tough for Jeff to renounce that sensation completely, even for political reasons. It would mean starting all over again from rock bottom.
“Personal and tender is good,” I said. “Maybe that should be enough.”
“I tried that,” he said. “I kept the whole damn thing in a vacuum for at least two months. No demands on his conscience, no expectations, nothing.”
“And?”
He snorted bitterly. “I ended up in a closet at the Chateau Marmont.”
“Pardon me?”
“OK, it wasn’t a closet; it was a fucking kitchenette or something. But it felt like one.”
“Jeff…”
“Leonard showed up unannounced at the suite one night, and Callum asked me to hide in the other room.”
“You’re joking.”
“I wouldn’t joke about something that humiliating.”
“But Leonard is gay.”
“So what? He gave Callum explicit instructions not to get laid until the movie’s over, and Callum promised him he wouldn’t. You know how this crap works. There’s big money riding on that piece of cryptofascist dreck.”
I giggled just a little. “So you hid?”
“Don’t rub my nose in it, Cadence.”
“I think it’s kind of sweet.”
“Well, it wasn’t; it was degrading. All I could think was: Here I am, the fifth or sixth best-known gay writer in L.A., this fucking elder statesman of Queer Nation…and I’m acting out some Feydeau farce, cowering in a goddamn closet—”
“Kitchenette.”
“—from a couple of other fags, for Christ’s sake. One of whom, need I remind you, is an official self-loathing shithead of the Hollywood establishment.”
He meant Leonard, I presumed. “I thought he knew about you and Callum.”
“Not as far as I know, he doesn’t.” He brooded over that in silence for a moment. “You haven’t talked about it, have you?”
I told him I hadn’t dared even mention Callum to Leonard ever since Leonard lied to me about Callum’s being back in town, since it was never prudent to embarrass Leonard in the act of spinning a big one—he was liable to turn poisonous on the spot.
“He might pump you,” said Jeff. “So play dumb. Callum thinks Leonard smells a rat.”
“Why would he pump me?”
“Well…he knows you know Callum.”
“Yeah, but he thinks I think that Callum’s still back in Maine.”
“No he doesn’t. Callum told him he ran into you at Icon.”
“Oh.”
“Leonard even called a few days ago, asking what you were up to.”
You should’ve seen me perk up at that one. “Leonard called Callum about me?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t say. Or at least Callum didn’t bother to tell me if he did.”
“He called me too,” I told him. “Just about the same time. He said he might have a role for me. Something big, apparently.”
“He didn’t mention Callum, did he?”
I was annoyed, frankly, that Jeff had skated so blithely around the news of my Big Break. He was the one, after all, who’d insisted that birthday parties weren’t my real career, and here he was, in all his self-centered glory, ignoring the first hopeful light to appear on my horizon in months. “I told you,” I said curtly. “We didn’t discuss your snuggle bunny.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“I knew you were mad at me.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I told him wearily.
“But you think I’m being a fool, don’t you? Or a hypocrite.”
“No.”
“It’s not like he can’t change. I was closeted once myself. It’s all just a process, really. If I’m there to encourage him and influence him in that direction, just think how it could be, Cadence. This wholesome kid that everybody loves like a little brother, who grows up to be an all-American heartthrob—a homo heartthrob, thank you, who doesn’t care who knows it. It would rock the world if he did it with a little class. He’d change the course of history.”
This altruistic speech reminded me of one Mom used to make about Paul Newman. She loved him above all other actors, worshiping at the shrine of those amazing eyes, even unto death. It was always a guilty pleasure, though, because Mom believed “her” Paul to be a secret Jew, a man who’d concealed his heritage to become a matinee idol. Still, she clung to the hope that one day he would declare himself, stand up somewhere, a
nd proclaim, “I am a Jew” and justify all her years of belief in his potential as a mensch. She was certain that day had arrived when he started pushing popcorn and salad dressing and turning the proceeds over to liberal causes. Any moment now, Mom insisted, Paul would break the news the easiest way—through delicious food—with the introduction of Paul Newman’s Gefilte Fish or Newman’s Own Family-Style Matzo Ball Soup. She waited and waited for that moment of truth, reading labels religiously, but all she ever got for her faith was marinara sauce.
I couldn’t help thinking that was exactly what lay ahead for Jeff, but I tried to be gentle about it. “What you say makes sense,” I said, “in an ideal world.”
“Meaning?”
“Well…Callum can’t change the course of history if they won’t hire him in the first place.”
“Who says they won’t? Who wrote this rule?”
“It’s just there, Jeff.”
“It’s there because creeps like Leonard Lord won’t get off their asses and challenge it.”
“In part, yes.”
“Well, we have to start asking why not. Why can’t there be gay movie stars?”
“Maybe so.” I let him hear me yawn, since I was ready to turn in. Frankly, I wasn’t sure whether this brave new crusade was for real or just his impromptu justification for an affair that seems to be going nowhere fast.
He got the message and let me go, after asking me to thank Renee for dinner and bidding me a civilized good night. I dropped the phone on the floor, snapped off the lamp, and beat a retreat into dreamland, burrowing into sheets that still smelled of Neil and the musky remains of our afternoon delight.
15
SOMETHING UGLY HAPPENED TO RENEE LAST NIGHT, SO SHE’S taken the day off from work, at my urging. She’s on the sofa now, stretched out in her ragged pink nightgown, all that yellow hair tangled up like last year’s Christmas lights, pressing an ice pack against her cheek. I made the ice pack myself, from a Ziploc bag and an old kitchen mitt. It seems to help a little, though Renee’s expression remains gloomy. Her depression has less to do with the incident, I think, than with the sudden, unflattering snapshot it provided of her life.
I’ve been pampering her all day to the best of my ability, dispensing her favorite instant coffee (Irish Mocha Mist—gag) and reading out loud from trashy magazines. I knew she required attention more than anything, so I called Neil this morning and canceled our lunch date, filling him in on the details. He got it immediately, as I knew he would, and even offered to swing by with takeout and leave us to our girl talk. Tempted though I was by a chance to see him again, I thought it best he stay away for a day or two. This is no time for Renee to be reminded of Neil’s surpassing sweetness.
Like most of Renee’s calamities, it happened on a date. This one was set up by Lorrie, her ditzy pal from The Fabric Barn, who knew a guy who had a friend who’d been “out of circulation for a while” (whatever that means—prison, if you ask me) and wanted his ashes hauled in the worst kind of way. Lorrie didn’t know this, of course, or claims she didn’t, and had no misgivings about leaving Renee alone with this dude after the four of them went out drinking in Venice. Renee insists he was “a perfect gentleman” all the way back to the Valley and didn’t show signs of actual derangement until they got here and parked in the driveway and she informed him as nicely as she knew how that the date was over.
At first he pleaded with her, she says, playing pitiful. When that didn’t work, he exploded in righteous anger, depicting himself as the victim of false advertising—Renee’s poor jiggly bod being the billboard, I suppose, and he the innocent motorist who’d been conned into taking the wrong exit off the freeway. From there it degenerated into “dirty words,” the shortest of which—“Cunt!”—slashed through the shrubbery like hedge clippers and invaded my bedroom, waking me from a light sleep. I heard a car door open and close, then another, and a sickening, high-pitched scream, unmistakably Renee’s. I flipped on the light, rolled out of bed naked, and bolted—or my own best imitation of that—to the front door.
Yanking the cord that enables me to open said door, I eased out onto the little brick porch. Renee lay on the lawn next to the driveway, propped up on one elbow and whimpering softly, having just been hit. Her dream date stood over her, snarling and cursing under his breath, a surprisingly skinny creature considering the ferocity of his voice. He had a pale, chinless, ferrety face that might have struck me as pitiful under other circumstances. Under these, it seemed like depravity itself.
“OK, cowboy, get the fuck outa here!”
This was me, thank you very much. I don’t know where that cowboy shit came from or who I thought I was—Thelma and/or Louise, I guess—but the sheer audacity of the act produced the desired effect. The guy wheeled around to find the source of this angry chipmunk voice and discovered under the porch light a fat child with tits and pubic hair, watching his every move.
“I mean it,” I said. “I’ve already called the police.”
As if in response to this invocation of authority, a light came on at the Bob Stoate residence. Renee’s date glanced toward it, then back at me, then down at Renee, who was stumbling to her feet finally, no longer whimpering. The mere sight of her naked rescuer had apparently been enough to stun her into silence.
“Do you know this asshole’s name?” I asked as she hobbled toward the stoop.
She made a feeble sound that meant yes.
“Get inside, then.”
She slumped past me into the house. Her assailant muttered something unintelligible—I doubt seriously that even he knew what it meant—and climbed into his car, slamming the door shut violently. By the time the little worm had scratched off into the street, spewing gravel, Mr. Bob Stoate, the Toyota salesman, had appeared on his own doorstep, wrapped in a terry-cloth Lakers robe and brandishing a pistol.
“It’s OK,” I yelled to him. “He’s gone.”
He peered at me, aghast, across his driveway.
At this point modesty seemed superfluous. “Sorry about the outfit,” I said.
“Did he hurt you, Cady?”
This is just about the nicest thing anyone from that house has ever said to me, and I came close to being touched and responding in kind, except that I wasn’t really dressed for it. “No,” I told him. “I’m fine. I think he hit Renee.” And I retreated into the house, feeling exposed for the first time.
Renee was crumpled on the sofa, sobbing.
“Did he rape you?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“I’ll run a tub,” I said.
I stood by the tub and scrubbed her back with a sea sponge. She had finally stopped crying, but she was still a mess.
“I think you should call Lorrie,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because that prick tried to knock your head off.”
“It’s not her fault,” she said.
“I’ll call the cops, then. What’s his name?”
“Skip.”
“Skip what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Renee…”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Lorrie will know.”
“No she won’t,” she said. “She only knows Barry.”
“Her date?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll call Barry, then.”
“No.” Renee shook her head dolefully. “Just leave it, OK?”
“He hit you, goddammit.”
“I know.” She started to sniffle again. “What’s the matter with me, Cady?”
“Nothing. Jesus, Renee, it’s not your fault.”
“I should’ve never went on a stupid blind date. They never work out.”
“Well…yeah. Maybe that’s true.”
“And the regular ones don’t, either.”
“Oh, c’mon. Some of them do. You’ve met some nice guys.” I couldn’t name any right offhand, but it seemed like the thing to say. Fortunately, Renee didn’t challenge me.
“But they never last,” she said.
“Well…”
“I have to find somebody.”
“Why?”
“Because…never mind.”
When Renee resorts to “never mind,” you know the truth is about to surface in some convoluted form or other. “C’mon,” I said, biding my time as I swiped the sponge across her spacious pink back. “You’re twenty-three years old. You’ve got all the time in the world.”
“Not if…” Again she cut herself off.
“Not if what?”
“If you move out.”
“Why should I move out? This is my house.” I saw it now, of course, ever so clearly.
“Yeah, but you’ve got a boyfriend now.”
“Not,” I said emphatically, appropriating one of her more asinine pop phrases.
“But I thought…”
“We’re seeing each other, Renee. That doesn’t mean we own each other.”
“You sleep with him.”
“So?”
“Well, I thought…”
“He has a kid, honey. It’s his whole life. He’s not gonna ask me to come live with him.”
“Maybe he will.”
“Yeah, and maybe the moon is cheese.”
“But if he came to live here…”
“With the kid?” I rolled my eyes for her. “I don’t think so.”
She giggled, mostly out of relief, I think. I wondered how long she’d been dwelling on this desertion/eviction fantasy and if it had actually driven her to go shopping for shitheads. I began to feel guilty about the lump rising on her face. “We’re a team,” I told her. “I thought you knew that.”
“Well…”
“Nobody else would put up with me, honey.”
“Oh, Cady!” In a rush of pure emotion, Renee pivoted toward me like an overaffectionate baby elephant, making me drop the sponge.
“Don’t hug me,” I said, stepping away. “You’re wet.”
So we’ve been bonding today, us girls. Renee’s spirits have lifted considerably since I started writing, but she still hasn’t left the sofa. Now that she sees Neil as less of a threat to us, she’s begun to extol his virtues, how nice he is and how talented and how cute.