The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens

  “So easy, young man,” the elegant woman said, “and you’ll be prompted by Mr. Cecil B., and his assistant, Ms. Sandra May O’Connell, who have been in our employ forever.” She sniffed her wrist, a sweet scent.

  “What’re you fuckin’ stallin’ for? It’s your big fuckin’ break, kid, take it for chrissakes, take your fuckin’ clothes off. Now!” the man said.

  “Must you?” the woman despaired.

  “How much?” Raul said. What he really cared about, right then was to make it with that guy who’d smiled at him. Of course, he was looking for his big break, too—and the money wouldn’t hurt, either, especially since, by then, he’d missed the bus to Rio Escondido and didn’t think they’d offer a refund, and he felt a responsibility to Buzzy because her rent was overdue, and she had, in effect, become his manager.

  “One hundred dollars,” the woman said, “and then more. Much more.”

  Wow! Raul thought. His first time having sex with a guy—while being coached—and the first step into big-time movies—and he’d also make a hundred bucks, even more. Still, he was nervous. Za-Za La Grande held two small cellophane packets. She tore one open, and sniffed from the white powder it contained. “Here, trésor, have a sniff, it’ll make it all feel even better, loosen you up, n’est-pas?”

  Raul barely sniffed, knowing what it was, from being around the Boulevard and seeing other guys sniffing.

  The other packet contained a rubber. “For quelques-choses,” Za-Za stumbled, “whatever occurs,” she clarified with a naughty gurgle, which bounced against her deep man’s voice. “Sandra May over there will help you put it on, if you need help. Vous le—uh-vous—?”

  Sandra May O’Connell ambled over. “Christ, what a life—from fluffer to stuffer.”

  Raul performed with the slim kid—and don’t for a moment think he wasn’t shy and embarrassed to have people watching—discovering his desires, acting out his yearnings—even before Cecil B. the coach gave instructions, which he and the other kid didn’t follow—and he and the other kid kissed and kissed and kissed—and it was great, that was the best!—and fuck it if those guys were hovering around them. He didn’t care. It was his first time, a forbidden dream realized at last, and it was beautiful and great and not wrong!

  When it was over—terrifically, messily over—the slim guy whispered hurriedly to Raul, “Don’t believe ’em, dude, about directors calling, like nobody’s called me for a movie. Ask them for the money now, or they’ll, like, cheat you. See ya later?”

  “Yeah!” Raul agreed eagerly. … “The money,” he said to the man and woman. Difficult to believe, sure, but it was dawning on him only now that he’d been lied to from the beginning.

  The man gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “The rest!” Raul said, feeling queasy about what was coming. “You’ll have to do some more fucking and shit to get full pay,” the man said.

  The woman shielded her ears, delicately. “These were auditions, young man,” she explained to Raul.

  “The money,” Raul said, his bad feelings increasing.

  “Very little work, really,” the woman sniffed, “and, truly, not unpleasant, was it?” she asked Raul.

  It had been great because he’d been making it with that guy, a first time. But this was something else, a business, and there was Buzzy to pay. “The hundred,” he raised his voice. “Give me what you said!”

  “Ah, screw ’im,” Za-Za La Grande suggested to the man. “He wasn’t that fuckin’ good.” She added: “The ingrat! I can find a hundred like him on the Boulevard on a slow day, they’re all hungry and eager and easy, and fuck him.” She tried to snap her fingers, but they merely slid against each other. “Give the fucker the boot!” She kicked one foot up, and one of her shoes slipped off.

  “The money, the money, the money!” Raul raised his voice.

  “Give him the money!” the woman said to the man. “My head is about to burst!”

  “Here, little shit—” The man fished for his wallet.

  “Must you use that hideous word?” the woman flinched.

  As Raul reached for his money, a burly, hairy gross guy he hadn’t seen before grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, and dragged him out of the room, along the hallways, and then tossed him out into an alley like trash.

  3

  Back in Lyle’s apartment—

  “See?” Raul displayed heavy bruises on his arms.

  Whether Raul had told everything exactly as it had happened or not, he had real bruises. “You remember where you went?” Lyle asked.

  “Sure.”

  Why did he feel so damn protective toward him? the question nagged Lyle. Perhaps because he was a bastard, like him. Except that Raul was a double-bastard—no father, no mother. Or maybe it was only that he, Lyle, was so much taller than him.

  4

  The past invades the present.

  Detective Seagrim looked like a pirate in a movie, with an angular face and an eye patch as he waited for Tarah Worth to answer his ringing.

  He didn’t wait long because Tarah had seen him through a window and had rushed to the door, eager to get the report from the detective Lenora claimed was “the best in the industry, everyone uses him.”

  “You found him?”

  “It wasn’t easy, Miss,” he lied. The real mystery about the Mystery Cowboy was that everybody was looking for him and couldn’t find him and he was everywhere.

  Tarah took the paper with the information that would enable her to execute the scene that would get her worldwide attention.

  “I discovered something else,” Detective Seagrim said. “About you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, before you were even a starlet,” Detective Seagrim said with a squinty look perfected to indicate threat.

  That could mean only one thing, gauging from that man’s mean look: That scoundrel in her past was pushing his way into her present—at the worst time possible!

  She paid the man and retreated to her bedroom. She closed her eyes. She saw before her, as clearly as if it was there:

  Liz Smith

  Scandal!

  Los Angeles.—Super-beauty Tarah Worth, on the eve of what would have been a smashing return to the screen as the lead in the eagerly awaited sequel to great author Jacqueline Susann’s classic bestseller Valley of the Dolls has been forced into retreat after sources learned that in her early years—

  Tarah’s eyes shot open, banishing the imaginary column. Goddammit, would she have to kill for the role?

  5

  A confrontation.

  “Look who’s back, the Mystery Cowboy, also known as the Lord’s Cowboy and hung like a fuckin’ horse in heat—”

  “I will not—” Mrs. Renquist measured her words but not her rage at Mr. Renquist as they sat in their office facing Raul and Lyle, who had barged past the protesting receptionist.

  “I figured you’d come back to us, Mystery Cowboy,” the man said. “Wanna be paired next with this kid, eh?”

  Lyle tried to remember them. The man and woman in the loft? To hell with it—he was here to speak up for Raul.

  He had rehearsed what he would say. Raul had coached him, revising some phrases, adding words, helping him memorize the exact delivery. Standing perfectly straight in order to assert his declamation, Lyle began: “Sir, ma’am, I don’t want to make trouble for you, because you’ve made enough for yourselves picking up homeless boys and probably girls and enticing them with lies”—although he wasn’t entirely sure that Raul had been quite as unaware about what was really going on as he claimed to have been. “Now I want you to understand—”

  “Get quick to the part where you call the guy a low-life motherfucker,” Raul coaxed.

  Lyle continued with the part Raul had said was very important to make clear, dictating it word for word: “—want you to understand that neither I nor Raul, here with me, care a damn about what people do as long as there’s no force, and no children or cruelty, and no one’s exploited—” r />
  “—and as long we get paid the way we were promised!” Raul thrust at the man and the woman.

  Baffled by the strange scene, Mr. and Mrs. Renquist watched and heard.

  “But you’ve lied to them about how they’re going to become movie stars,” Lyle went on.

  “Get to the part where you tell the bitch she’s no better than the motherfucker even if she is wearing gloves,” Raul encouraged.

  “Oh!” One of Mrs. Renquist’s eyes twitched and she covered her mouth in shock.

  “So—” Lyle waited because this was the point where Raul had determined that he would take over. “So—”

  “So pay up, you thieving shits!” Raul addressed Mr. and Mrs. Renquist.

  “Give them the money, please, I have a beastly headache, pounded by all this rampant vulgarity,” Mrs. Renquist pleaded.

  “Maybe I would pay him now if the little punk hadn’t lifted my fuckin’ wallet,” Mr. Renquist accused.

  Lyle glanced at Raul, who shrugged.

  Mrs. Renquist dug into her Chanel purse and plucked out bills, which she flung out. “Here, here, here! Take them, take them! Only please—” She clamped her hands over her ears.

  As Raul gathered the bills gleefully, the door opened, and there he was, the young man he had performed with.

  “Lank!” Raul welcomed him.

  “Raul!” Lank welcomed back. Then he addressed Mr. and Mrs. Renquist: “I’m here to collect my money, you cheating fucks.”

  Mrs. Renquist flung more bills out.

  Lank gathered them.

  “Nasty faggot shits!” Mr. Renquist shouted at them. “You’re not so damn innocent, you little fuckers. You knew the score.”

  “Then why didn’t you pay us?” Lank demanded.

  “Because you’re dumb shits!” Mr. Renquist said.

  “Must you? Must you call these children such vile names?” Mrs. Renquist cradled her head.

  “Now we’re leaving, ma’am, sir,” Lyle declaimed, and added for himself: “And don’t think I approve of all that’s going on here, either, with these street kids.”

  “Kids! Those little shit whores? Now, listen, you creep cowboy, get the fuck out of here with those two queer bastards.”

  Lyle’s fists decided fast. They clenched and one socked Mr. Renquist.

  “That’s for being a low-life bullshitter!” Raul added.

  “Ouch, shit-motherfucker!” Mr. Renquist surrendered comfortably to the thick-rugged floor.

  “Oh, must you? Must you be so crude even in pain?”

  “Bullshitters!” Lank aimed at Mr. and Mrs. Renquist.

  “Shit lying fuckers!” Raul shouted at them. “Both of you—but especially you,” he aimed at Mrs. Renquist.

  “Oh, please, oh, please stop! Please stop raising your voices, children!” Mrs. Renquist said, “my headache is assaulting me with every foul word. Please!”

  6

  A discovery.

  When Lyle, Raul, and Lank were outside and standing awkwardly wondering what to say to each other, and Lyle was thinking, what a strange, complicated world this is—how difficult to know what is always right and what is always wrong—Raul looked at Lank, the first time he’d seen him fully dressed, and saw that he was wearing boots and a cowboy hat. Then he looked at Lyle’s boots and cowboy hat. He looked at Lank, then at Lyle, Lyle, then Lank, back and forth.

  “Hi, cowboy,” Lyle said to the lanky young man.

  “I’m not a cowboy,” Lank said. “I never even been on a horse.”

  7

  A promise, this one to be kept.

  Lyle, Raul, and Lank took a bus back to Lyle’s apartment—all flush with money.

  “So now where are you going?” Lyle asked Raul, who sat facing him, Lank beside him.

  “I guess—?” Raul’s look entreated Lank’s.

  “Find a place together?” Lank offered.

  “And take Buzzy in?” Raul pled.

  “Sure,” Lank said.

  Raul looked at him with delight. He transferred his wide smile onto Lyle. “I guess we’d better go now.”

  “Guess so,” Lyle said, glad and sad, glad to see Raul happy with Lank, sad to see yet another person go out of his life—if, that is, this time Raul was really going to stay away.

  “Bye, cowboy,” Lank said to Lyle.

  “Bye, cowboy,” Lyle said back.

  Raul lingered after Lank had walked out. “I’ll always love you, you know that,” he said to Lyle. “I guess next best was to find someone who looks like you—a little bit—because, really, there’s no one else like you.”

  “Nor you,” Lyle said.

  Raul hugged Lyle, tightly.

  Lyle held his face and this time, not to save him from Brother Dan’s accusations and curses but because he wanted to—he kissed him on the lips, sealing their special love.

  “What’re you going to do now, really?” Lyle asked.

  Raul smiled his widest smile. “Become a movie star, what else?”

  “Cummon, Raul, cummon!” Lank called from outside.

  “I’m coming,” Raul said to Lank, and left, not looking back.

  Lyle prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe: Let him be okay, please. Clarita told me to turn to you. Don’t let him end up on the Boulevard like those other kids. Please, beautiful lady Guadalupe, don’t let him be one of those sad lost kids.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1

  The persistence of the past.

  The new Tarah Worth evaluated her situation harshly.

  The detective she had hired to find the Mystery Cowboy would now attempt to blackmail her with information she had thought dead in the past. She did not even wonder how he had uncovered it; the fact of it drew her total concentration. She was on the brink of getting the role of a lifetime. She was forty years old. All right—she was forty-two. Goddammit, forty-five! Screw it, screw it, screw it!—she was fifty. Almost fifty. Nearing fifty. Some people still thought of her as a starlet. All this called for adjustments, and she would make them, one at a time.

  She called a cab.

  When the driver stopped to let her off before the designated address, she waited for him to ask for an autograph. He didn’t. Of course, Tarah tried to dismiss, he didn’t speak English, or perhaps he had been so struck by her beauty, or maybe the giant Versace sunglasses she was wearing had disguised her too entirely. Fuck it, she was facing it all. The cab driver didn’t have any idea about who she was.

  She took the elevator, a clear cylinder that allowed passengers to gaze at the breadth of the city. As she made her way along the corridor to the office she had called ahead, she made sure her high heels tapped on the floor to announce her assertive arrival.

  She brushed past the little creep at the receptionist desk. She said: “Tarah Worth!” and swept into the main office.

  “Max!” she greeted the man seated in the expansive room.

  “Dorothy Hotchkins? Is that you?” the gaudy man asked.

  For a moment she hadn’t recognized her real name, but she did recognize the man who was again intertwined with her life—and her future.

  Tarah looked around. Was that hated creature, his frigid wife, lurking here, despite her demand on the telephone that Max send her away, whatever it might require?

  He understood her trepidation. “No, Wilma isn’t here. She’s having her hair colored.”

  “That dreadful black without a hint of highlights,” Tarah remembered.

  Max moved a chair next to hers. He held her hand. “It’s good to see you, doll—”

  Doll! She had succeeded in giving a relevant meaning to the word “doll.” “You’ve changed very little, Max,” she lied. He was even grosser than she remembered, his suit shinier.

  “Except for a few pounds, less hair—and some fresh bruises on my face, donated by a dissatisfied … performer,” he tried to laugh off the last. “We all change, Tarah Worth.”

  “Ummmm. … I’m not here to renew our … relationship, Max,” Tarah g
ot that out of the way, though she’d never been sure what had really existed between them.

  “The time when we did that movie?” Max said. “That time is gone, Dorothy. I make videos now, for the Internet. Big porn movies died with poor Hunk Williams; remember him?”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Worse than that, he stopped being able to get it up!” Max laughed. “Now he rummages wistfully through the dildoes fashioned from his famous organ. I use him now and then; he’s a trusted chauffeur.”

  “I’m here because of that movie, Max.”

  “The short blue movie you made for us? … Blue movie. That sounds odd now, in the time of live sex on the Internet. Performers are a dime a dozen, on every corner in Hollywood. When they’re through after their brief span, there’re dozens more—and there’s something for everyone!—and me and Wilma are at the crest of it,” he said proudly. “We’ve survived well.”

  “Wilma,” Tarah tossed the name away with disgust. “The prude, the porn empress who can’t stand foul language. Do you still drive her insane with your foulest vocabulary, Max?”

  Max threw himself back so far with laughter that his suit—which would certainly shine in the dark—made a threatening sound. “Yes! One day she really will die from those headaches she claims my coarse language gives her. You always knew—didn’t you?—that I speak that way only because it drives her crazy.”

  “Everyone knew but her.” Tarah touched her lips, to make sure her gloss had not been smirched. “Max! I believe you may be getting a call from a smarmy detective I had occasion to hire; he will be asking about that movie—”

  “Nasty Desires?”

  She winced.

  “Nasty Desires,” Max repeated. “Sounds sweet now.”

  “It wasn’t sweet,” Tarah asserted, “it was ugly.” Like you, she wanted to add, like you and your hideous wife—even more coarse now, bragging about your sordid recruiting; I needed the few dollars you paid me, very few. But she couldn’t say any of that; she needed him as an ally. “Now the tabloids and God knows who else will be trying to get a copy of it if that detective carries out his not-too-subtly hinted threat to expose me to—”