“But you said you were joining Lily on her press junket.”
“Ah, the junket!” he said, laughing heartily. “I’d forgotten you’d swallowed that one. No, Lily is not on a press junket. The last time Lily had a press junket the preferred mode of transport was stagecoach. Junkets are what Lily claims to have when she needs to hide out and heal after making yet another assault on time’s ravages. I tried like hell to talk her out of this one. ‘Lily,’ I said, ‘pull that mug of yours any tighter and you’ll look like a bongo with lips.’ But no, she’s determined to look her best for the floods of attention she poignantly expects to receive when her next picture escapes quarantine. So, this, ” he said, gesturing toward the salon, “is where you do your — cough, cough—‘physical training’? Well done, I say. A boy couldn’t ask for a swankier workplace.”
“What do you —?” I began, then stopped, gleaning his drift. “Oh, no, Monty, please! You don’t think I work here?”
“Now, now,” he clucked tenderly. “No need to be embarrassed— not with me of all people.”
“Monty, I swear! I’m here as a guest.”
“On what Lily pays you? Which, if I’m not mistaken, is thus far nothing? And did I not just hear Miss Finch remind you quite firmly that you were in her employ?”
“Actually—” I began, then paused, stymied.
Actually what?
Actually, Moira was not my employer, merely my blackmailer?
Actually, I could afford to come here as I’d been paid handsomely to write a screenplay for his estranged sister and nephew?
Actually, I was here as their guest?
No, I decided — better Monty should think I was a garçon de joie than start to question how I could afford such luxe accommodations or why I happened to be here on the same weekend as Stephen and Diana, whose presence he could not fail to note as they were even now parading into the salon.
“There, there, Glen,” said Monty, copping a benevolent feel of my biceps. “You mustn’t be embarrassed. I don’t think one bit less of you. Why if not for you and your selfless brethren this world would be a far duller place and yours truly a bitter old queen incapable of spreading sunshine. Have you known Moira long?”
I replied ruefully that we went way back.
“Remarkable girl, Moira. Like all true entrepreneurs she has perceived a need others have not and rushed to fill it. For decades gay film stars have scratched their heads and asked, ‘When will someone open a top-notch boy brothel I can bring the wife and kiddies to?’ Thanks to Moira, their cries have been heard. Oh dear lord!” he said, glancing into the salon. “Have you a feather handy? Because now would be an excellent time to knock me over with it.”
Turning, I saw Stephen, Diana, and Gina sitting in a corner, cozily chatting with Sir Hugo, who’d appeared in the third Caliber picture as Sergei, a sinister Russian who, like most Caliber villains, was stubbornly bent on having the planet to himself.
“Well, there you have it, Glen — exhibit A! My world-famous nephew, sitting there, brazen as you please. No question what he’s here for. We both know it —know it, hell, you are it. But does he skulk? Does he blush? Does he don false mustache and hooded parka? No, he just waltzes right in, head high, one arm round the missus, t’other round his sweet old mum. Let’s go vex them, shall we?”
“No! I shouldn’t!”
“Come now. You’ve been hearing about them for weeks. You can’t pass up the chance to finally meet them.”
“I can’t!” I said with a damp shiver, panic having transformed my armpits into powerful twin showerheads. “I’m not supposed to fraternize with the patrons!”
“A rather silly policy given your other duties. The customer’s always right, dear, and that would be me, so let’s go!” Seizing my wrist, he dragged me into the salon and we soon stood looming behind his unsuspecting kin. They appeared to be gossiping. They were leaning in very close toward one another, grinning wickedly as they poked the ashes of God only knew whose reputation.
“My, my!” boomed Monty. “This is a small world!”
Four heads swiveled and three jaws dropped as they beheld him leering down at them, his arm draped over the shoulder of their once indispensable, now apparently compromised young mole.
“How well you all look! Hugo, my love, it’s been ages! Haven’t seen you since—dear lord, Thailand, was it? And Diana, radiant as always.”
“Monty,” she sighed. Her expression could not have been bleaker had she just been asked to sit down by a frowning oncologist. “Allow me to introduce a delightful young friend of mine, Mr Glen DeWitt. Glen, this is my sister Diana, my nephew, Stephen, his wife, Gina, and Sir Hugo Bunting, whom you may already have met.”
On hearing me introduced as Glen, Stephen visibly relaxed and flashed me a knowing smile. Monty, he knew, would read this smile as meaning, “So you’re Uncle’s latest, are you?” but I knew it in fact meant, “Well done, you dashing young master spy —let’s get naked later!”
What had I been worried about?! My cover was intact and the situation, though tricky, offered a splendid opportunity to display my skills as a double agent. How impressed Stephen would be by my suavity under pressure, how dazzled by my inspired decision to pose as a spa employee.
“Gosh!” I exclaimed, extending a hand to Diana. “It’s such an honor to meet you. I’m a huge fan.”
“Thank you, uh... Glen, was it?”
Stephen took my hand and gave it a firm, deliciously prolonged squeeze.
“Nice to meet you, Glen.”
“The pleasure’s all mine, Mr. Donato.”
“Please, Stephen.”
“Charmed,” said Gina, her performance, as always, painfully stilted. “How lovely to meet you, Philip.”
“Glen,” corrected Stephen.
Sir Hugo extended a languorous hand and asked rather pointedly how I knew Monty.
“He’s my part-time secretary,” said Monty, chivalrously sparing me the ire he knew I’d reap if he exposed me as Lily’s coauthor. “He’d told me he had another job but I had no idea till just now that it was here.”
Stephen blinked.
“So you work here?”
“Yes.”
“Doing what?” Sir Hugo asked eagerly. It bears mentioning at this juncture that Sir Hugo had recently triumphed on the London stage as Falstaff and had required no padding. As he was now eyeing me like I was a pastry cart, I decided it might be prudent to bill myself as the spa’s bookkeeper.
“Actually—”
“Glen’s a very gifted masseur.”
“Really?” said Sir Hugo, tucking the bib into his collar.
“Lovely seeing you, Monty,” said Diana, her magisterial little wave a signal that our audience was over. Monty eyed her in puckish amazement as if to say, “Come, love—you can’t think you’ll get rid of me that easily?”
“So, Stephen,” he said, impudently perching on the arm of Diana’s chair, “first visit here?”
“More like his seventh,” said Gina. “Stephen just loves it here. Me too. It is so hard for people like us to find a place that just gets it. Where we can come and know we won’t be mobbed and photographed ’cause they get it and don’t let just anyone in.”
“So one had thought,” remarked Diana to her martini.
“And the treatments are fantastic. Stephen’s had this shoulder problem for years from this stunt he did. He says the people here are the first ones who’ve really been able to help him.”
“Get right in there, do they?” asked Monty. “Deep tissue?”
“They’re good,” nodded Stephen.
“Glad to hear it,” said Monty. “Nothing like finding a masseur who can knead away all your nasty stiffness, leaving you limp and contented.”
Stephen, far from seeming rattled by Monty’s innuendos, just took them in with a resigned smile that afforded me new insight into their peculiar relationship. Stephen, I now saw, knew he could hide nothing from Monty. He knew equally well though tha
t Monty, however much he teased, would never expose him. That would take Spite, a quality Monty did not possess, his sisters having appropriated the family’s full allotment. The weary smile he offered in response to his uncle’s sly digs was like that which a Mercedes, if it could, might bestow on a dog that had given chase and caught the bumper in its teeth. “Okay, you’ve got me,” it said. “Now what?”
“Tell me, Glen,” said Gina, padding her role, “did you have to study for a long time to be a masseur?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve trained quite extensively,” I said, deadpanning that I’d just completed a three-year course at the West Hollywood Institute for Advanced Relaxation. Gina nodded earnestly as Stephen squelched a giggle.
It suddenly occurred to me that Stephen not only knew firsthand what went on here—he assumed I knew as well and had from the start. I found this disconcerting. I wanted him to see me as a confidant and potential paramour, not as some lowly panderer. On the other hand, he had taken quite a shine to the place. If I confessed I’d had no idea it was Boys R Us when I brought him, might I seem naive to him, a mere dupe? Was I better off playing the worldly young sophisticate whose sexual mores, like his own, bordered on the Parisian? It was all a bit dizzying, though not half so dizzying as it would shortly become.
“So, Glen,” said Sir Hugo, “might I engage you for a massage later this evening? After dinner say?”
As I was replying that my dance card was regrettably full, Stephen’s eyes widened and he rose abruptly from his seat. Diana, gazing at something behind me, looked similarly distraught. Turning to see what had occasioned their alarm, I found myself standing nose to nose with Claire.
“Hello, Ph—” she began.
“NicetomeetyouGlenDeWitt!” I said with frantic geniality.
“Sorry?”
“DeWitt.”
“Claire,” said Stephen, darting between us, “I’d like you to meet my uncle Monty. Monty, this is Claire Simmons, a very gifted writer who’s working on a script for us.”
“Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise,” she said. “I’ve seen some of your movies.”
“Then accept please my profound apologies.”
“Monty,” continued Stephen, “was just introducing us to his secretary. Glen...DeWitt, is it?”
“Yes. DeWitt.”
Claire’s nothing if not a quick study, and the merest glance at our anxious smiles conveyed to her all she needed to know. Monty, for reasons yet to be strangled out of me, knew me as Glen DeWitt, and all present were keen that he should continue to do so.
“Nice to meet you, Glen,” she said, offering her hand. I took it and for the second time in less than an hour an irate female sank her fingernails into my palm.
“Glen also works here,” said Gina.
“Really?” she said pleasantly. “And what do you do here, Glen?”
“I’m a massage therapist,” I said, forcing myself to meet her ominously cordial gaze. I recalled with a pang her earlier demand to know if there was anything (italics hers) I’d omitted to tell her and my assurance that there was not. This was not a point she would fail to press when next I took the witness stand.
“A masseur!” she exclaimed, enchanted. “This is my lucky day. I have the most unimaginable pain in my neck. Perhaps you could pop up to my room and work your magic on it?”
You’ll remember that the last time Claire made such a request I submitted to the interview, manfully resisting the impulse to flee. This, however, was before she’d walloped my shoulder, kicked my shin, and dug her nails into my palm. I sensed that were I now to explain my alternate identity as Glen, not to mention Glen’s dual career as biographer and courtesan, her response would be even more pugilistic. This I refused to submit to; I was a male prostitute now and had a duty to protect the merchandise.
“Sorry,” I said. “All booked up.”
“Are you sure?” She frowned, rubbing her neck. “You know how these things only get worse if you put off dealing with them.”
“Can’t be helped. Monty has dibs on me.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Shall we get started?”
“Oh, yes, let’s!” he replied with the simple delight of a child accepting a lollipop.
“Nice meeting you all,” I said, waving and backing away.
“We’ll see you about,” purred Hugo.
“Count on it,” said Claire.
I scooted across the salon as Monty trotted behind, wagging his tail. We passed through the etched-glass double doors into the hushed, dimly lit treatment center.
It had a spare Zenlike oval foyer with a curved glass reception desk and lit shelves displaying the spa’s pricey product line. Three corridors, radiating diagonally like rays of a sunbeam, led to the spa’s gym and treatment rooms. The reception desk was unmanned but I saw a comely, tunic-clad attendant approaching via the left corridor. Since sex worker Glen would obviously have known this woman and I did not, I promptly banged a right down the opposite corridor. I turned a corner, then another, and found I’d reached a cul-de-sac, a short hall with doors on either side and an upholstered bench set into the wall where it dead-ended. I slumped onto it and gazed fretfully up at Monty’s beaming face, wondering how one tactfully rescinds an offer of paid nooky.
“About that massage—” I began delicately.
“Oh, dear,” said Monty. “Don’t like the sound of that.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” I fell silent, inspiration failing me.
“No need to explain, dear,” he said, sitting next to me. “I had my hopes, of course. But I suspected you were just using me as cover to get away from that Claire girl. Can’t say I blame you.”
“Oh?”
“She obviously wanted more than a neck rub. That look she gave you—pure female rapaciousness. It’s a look I’ve often seen Lily give to Italian waiters and, on our last vacation, to numerous gondoliers. You had to save yourself and I’m glad to have been of assistance.”
“Thanks, Monty.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to express your gratitude more acrobatically?”
“Gosh, Monty,” I blushed, “it would just seem kinda—”
“Say no more.” He gave my knee a chaste pat. “You’re quite right. We know each other too well. We’ve reached the point where the attraction is not, alas, mutual and commerce is unseemly. Luckily for me we’re in a place that teems with mouthwatering alternatives.” He rose “Now if you’ll excuse me, Lily will be wondering where I’ve gotten to.”
“Lily’s here too?”
“Yes and quite unfit for human eyes. She’s skulking in our cottage, sucking back the gimlets through a hole in her veil.”
He started down the hall and I called after him. “Careful who sees you. Claire thinks you’re with me.”
He adopted a comical Prussian accent and said, “I vill be stealthy as a cat!” before tiptoeing away. I watched him go, then slumped, exhausted, against the wall. Some weekend in the country this was turning out to be! We’d barely been here an hour and were already up to our necks in pity and terror. “What next!” I thought.
Just then the door to my right opened and a young man wearing a turban and white terry robe poked his head out. His face was concealed beneath a thick mask of beauty goop, its hue a bilious aquamarine.
“Philip! I thought that was you I heard.”
“Gilbert!”
“Hon, you have got to get a massage here!” He peered down the hall, making sure we were alone, then turned back to me and whispered in naughty glee.
“The masseurs put out!”
Sixteen
WE RETREATED TO THE SAFETY OF Gilbert’s massage room, a spare, serene chamber with a cool slate floor, dove-gray walls, and cove lighting. I swiftly related the harrowing events that had transpired since his cowardly flight from the bar, getting as far as Moira’s proud performance in Call Me Madam before pausing to catch my breath. Gilbert was, as usual, slow to grasp the broader implications of the situation. br />
“Well,” he said after a pensive silence, “she’s nuts if she thinks I’m paying for that blow job.”
“That is not the issue!”
“You think Stephen will cover it, being host and all?”
“Gilbert,” I snapped, “we’re talking about a criminal enterprise here—and we’re practically accomplices! She forced us to shill for the place, and now you’re a goddamn customer.”
“You’re only a customer if you pay, which as I made quite clear —”
“Wake up, you brain-dead slut! What if Moira gets busted? What’s to keep her from dragging us into it?”
I cannot say if he rolled his eyes, as they were under cucumber slices, but he waved a dismissive hand.
“You worry about everything. ”
“Well, one of us had better ’cause that’s only half of it! Monty’s here!”
Gilbert frowned. “Has he seen you?”
“Yes. He still thinks I’m Glen. But he also thinks this place is the second job I’ve been telling him about. He thinks I’m one of Moira’s rent boys!”
Gilbert sat up and removed the cukes.
“You told him that?”
“I had to!”
“And he bought it?” he asked with more astonishment than I felt was warranted.
“He assumed it, thank you very much!”
“Well, no offense, hon, but you’ve seen Moira’s boys. We’re talking USDA prime. You’re more like a nice Salisbury steak.”
“I seem to recall being good enough for you for six months!”
“True. But you weren’t charging me.”
I replied with some asperity that there were more pressing issues at hand than my credibility as a top-shelf courtesan. For starters there was Claire, to whom I’d been introduced only moments ago as Glen.
“Ouch! How’d that happen?”
I described the scene in all its horror, ending with my flight to the shelter of the spa.
“Well, guess that cat’s out of the bag,” said Gilbert. “I mean, once you and Monty took off you just know Claire must have asked Stephen or Diana what the hell was going on.”