Monty had taken it.
He’d seen through my feigned innocence, then spied the computer, which he knew contained a full draft of Lily’s memoir. He’d shrewdly asked me to fetch something he knew would be upstairs, then seized the laptop and ran it out to his car. That’s why he’d seemed winded when I returned. I sank dizzily onto the sofa, hyperventilating as I contemplated the terrible power that now rested in that aging delinquent’s hands.
“I thought you were getting water,” said Stephen, standing nude on the stair landing.
“Sorry. I just, uh... misplaced something.”
“Are you okay?”
The phone rang. I let the machine answer and Monty’s ebullient voice filled the room.
“Glen, you naughty boy! Or is it Philip, as Stephen calls you in that utterly captivating video? Pick up, my love! Pick up! We have much to discuss!”
Twenty
WHENEVER I LOOK BACK ON MY brief affair with Stephen—for, make no mistake, Monty’s call ended it with thudding finality—what saddens me most is that Cupid, while generously granting me two rapturous trysts with my dream guy, stinted appallingly in the afterglow department. After our first date I was granted a mere ten minutes in which to sigh and ponder china patterns before our idyll was shattered. The fat boy was stingier still after round two, letting disaster pounce a mere forty seconds after the Kleenex hit the carpet. I had thought I’d return to bed with our waters and we’d lie there awhile, limbs lightly entwined, telling each other secrets. But it was clear from Stephen’s growing alarm as I pleaded for Monty’s mercy that, while secrets would doubtless be spilled, cuddling was pretty well off the agenda.
“Oh, splendid!” said Monty after I’d snatched the phone up. “I was hoping you were still there. I just saw your debut feature, dear, and I must say, I can’t think when I’ve enjoyed a film more. It has everything—drama, comedy, suspense, dazzling plot twists, and Stephen Donato in the role he was born to play.”
“Look, Monty—!”
“Between us, I’ve never cared for his Caliber pictures. Too slick and noisy for my taste. No quibbles with this one though. In fact, I’d say it’s his first truly Oscar Caliber performance.”
“Monty, please —”
“You hear the pun? ‘Oscar’ and ‘Caliber’?”
“I get it! You have to give it back!”
“Do I?” he said quizzically. “No, dear, I don’t believe I do.”
“Give what back?” demanded Stephen.
“We’ll do a swap, okay?! I’ll return everything I took from Lily and you give back the DVD.”
“What DVD?!” asked Stephen, though I sensed from the way his hair sprang straight up like quills that he had a fair inkling. I covered the phone.
“The one Moira made! You and me at the spa!”
“You made a copy?!!”
“Ah! So Stephen’s there, is he?” chirped Monty. “I thought he might swing by to collect your plunder. Put him on, would you? Uncle wants to chat.”
“YOU MADE A FUCKING COPY?!!”
“Just one! Purely as a memento.”
“AND YOU GAVE IT TO MONTY?!!”
“Well, no, Stephen. I would hardly do that. Monty stole my laptop when he came by earlier. The DVD just happened to be in the hard drive. He wants to talk to you,” I added, hoping this might divert at least some of his anger from me to Monty.
Stephen grabbed the phone and snarled into it.
“You fucking thief! I want that DVD back and I want it now!” He listened a moment, then screamed, “HOW DARE YOU TALK TO ME THAT WAY!” (Monty, as he later informed me, had replied, “Well, aren’t you the bossy bottom?”)
Of the ensuing discussion I heard only Stephen’s side, which began with demands and threats, segued into appeals to family feeling, and ended in escalating offers of financial compensation. But Monty had no intention of surrendering his prize. Stephen closed negotiations with a curt “Fuck you,” then turned back to me. It shattered me to see the man who’d so recently gazed on me, if not adoringly, at least approvingly, glare at me now with undisguised loathing.
“Here,” he sneered, hurling the phone at me. “He wants to talk to you.”
Monty’s tone was soothing and cheerful. “I just want you to know, Glen, that I entirely forgive your recent misdeeds. I’d be the last to blame an impressionable youth for succumbing to the wiles of a skilled temptress like Stephen. When he found out you had access to our home and Lily’s memoir, he won your heart and bent you to his evil will. But that’s all over now. You’re fatally compromised as a spy. And as for your romance with Stephen, it’s time, you must sadly agree, for a quick chorus of ‘Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye.’
“My advice to you is throw in the towel and join Team Monty! See you in the morning, dear, and I trust you and Lily will continue making splendid progress.”
I replied that I doubted Lily would care to speak to me after what I’d done.
“Not to worry. I told her that after she dozed off you’d noticed a prowler in the shrubbery. Fearing the dark hand of Diana, you collected all key documents and spirited them away for safekeeping. She applauds your vigilance. Nighty-night.”
“Wait! The DVD! What are you going to do with it?”
He emitted a short, sharp laugh like the bark of a seal.
“Why, what I always do, child! Good deeds!”
And with that he hung up.
I followed Stephen, who’d stormed upstairs to dress. He had no one to spend his fury on now but me, and spend it he did in a long profanity-strewn tirade I have no intention of reproducing here. At core I’m a pretty positive person. When a romance ends I try not to dwell on the bitter breakup but focus instead on the good times. When I think now of Stephen I like to recall the thrilling intimacy of our têteà-tête at the bar, his romantic knee squeeze under the table, the laughs, the hugs, the nipples. Likewise with the things he said to me. I’d much rather recall him saying, “Wow, I play a spy on the screen, but you, you’re the real thing!” or “Ooh, yeah, big guy, just like that!” as opposed to “You fucking incompetent shithead!” or “I wish to God I’d never laid eyes on you!”
I especially wish I could expunge from memory the scabrous exchange that made it finally and devastatingly clear to me how fine and powdery was the sand on which I’d built my dream castle.
“I’m sorry!” I mewled as he struggled into his boots. “I fucked up! I wouldn’t blame you if you fired us off the picture!”
“Fire you!” He snorted. “That’s a laugh! How can we fire you when you were never hired in the first place?”
“What?”
“The script job—it was never yours, jackass! Not from day one. We just let you think you were hired ’cause we needed you for the other job — the one you fucked up so royally!”
“But... but you paid us!” I stammered, my mind reeling.
“Which means what?” he replied with a nasty laugh.
“It was in Variety! ” I exclaimed, as though citing scripture.
“Oh, wow! So it must be true, huh? Wake the fuck up! We can announce anything we like. We just put out that release so you idiots would believe the job was yours. The next week we signed Ted Schramm to write the real script and asked him to keep quiet while we waited for you to finish with Lily.”
“No, Stephen!” I wailed, battling tears now. “You’re just saying this because you’re upset!”
“Do the math, bozo! Why do you think you only dealt with us? Why do you think you never got notes from Bobby or one fucking person from the studio? I’ll tell you why—’cause it wasn’t real! ”
The tears declared victory, cascading down my cheeks in a maudlin, hiccupping torrent. Ashamed, I averted my face, staring bleakly down at the carpet and my widely scattered smithereens.
“Hell, none of us even read your dumb script through except Gina! We didn’t tell her ’cause she can’t keep a damn thing to herself. Yeah, go on— cry, Phil! That’s gonna make me feel real bad f
or you after you’ve ruined my whole goddamn life!”
He stomped down the stairs to the foyer and, reaching the door, turned to deliver his coup de grâce.
“Oh, and from the coverage I did read of your draft, it totally sucked! I mean, Jesus, you cut the kid’s ghost! That’s the best fucking part!”
MY REMEMBER-THE-GOOD-TIMES approach to soured affairs is, of course, more of a long-term strategy and impossible to implement in the immediate aftermath of a rancorous split. My short-term approach can be summarized as follows:
a. Sob hysterically.
b. Rock back and forth, hugging self while exclaiming, “Why, [name], why?!”
c. Pour and consume a large scotch on the rocks.
d. Repeat as needed.
At such times a boy both needs and expects his closest friends to rally round and sit shivah for the relationship. Gilbert didn’t come home that night but I reached his cell the next morning and asked him to meet me for breakfast at the Chateau. I then called Claire and told her that recent developments merited her attention.
It was, I suppose, foolish of me to expect much sympathy over my split-up with Stephen, but I was not prepared for the raucous indifference with which they greeted my heartbreak.
“Excuse me,” asked Claire, “but for a relationship to end doesn’t it technically have to begin first?”
“ Thank you!” said Gilbert, slapping the table like a parliamentarian seconding a motion.
“We were very close!” I retorted angrily. “He used to phone me late at night for long intimate chats! And we had fantastic sex!”
Claire tartly replied that to the best of her recall my tryst with Stephen had been only one part of an extended sexual repast in which I had been the cheese course.
“Well, guess what? We had sex again last night and it was amazing! He was sweet and tender and couldn’t get enough of me!”
“Was this before or after he dumped you?”
I frowned sheepishly at my corned beef hash (the impulse to diet having understandably fled). “That happened afterward.”
I told them the whole shameful tale, from my film noir rendezvous with Stephen where he’d Stanwycked me into double-crossing Lily to my horrified discovery that Monty had made off with my laptop. This last item prompted a loud, extravagant groan from Gilbert even as Claire, her appetite laid to rest, pushed her frittata away.
“You lost the DVD?!” cried Gilbert, burying his face in his hands.
“I did not lose it. It was stolen. ”
“And you never made a backup?” asked Claire incredulously.
I replied indignantly that I had of course made a backup, conceding that this did us little good as I’d backed it up on my laptop.
“Well, good news, boys,” she sighed. “We’re officially defenseless.”
“Of all the dim-witted, imbecilic —!”
“Oh, thank you, Gilbert!” I said acidly. “Maybe someday you’ll do something stupid, then you’ll know what it feels like!”
Claire asked if I had any idea what Monty planned to do with his new toy. I said it was anyone’s guess but he was already having a grand time making Stephen squirm.
“No wonder he dumped you!” said Gilbert. “He must’ve gone ape shit!”
I replied that Stephen had indeed taken it badly and had said several things he was no doubt already wishing he could take back.
“So what does this mean for us?” demanded Gilbert, his tone suddenly accusatory. “Has your bungling gotten us fired off the picture?”
“If we were ever on it,” muttered Claire.
I could only stare, startled afresh at her Holmesian perspicacity.
“How’d you know that!”
“So, it’s true then?” she asked. “He admitted it?”
“With bells on.”
“Admitted what?” said Gilbert, annoyed as always when the grown-ups talked over his head.
Claire said, “When I found out the only reason we were hired was that Philip agreed to play spy, I started to wonder how ‘hired’ we ever really were—if the whole job wasn’t just a charade they’d maintain till
Philip’s work was done.”
I asked her why she hadn’t voiced this suspicion earlier.
“I only learned about your cloak-and-dagger chores at the spa. The next day Moira took over and I quit. I figured you’d be wretched enough writing the next draft with just this one without my suggesting it might be a mere fool’s errand.”
Claire, having already surmised it, took the news of our nonstarter status in stride. Our typist, by contrast, was devastated to learn that his work would not reach the wide audience it deserved.
“This is total bullshit! Are we going to let them just use us like that!”
Claire gave his arm a maternal pat. “Just walk away, dear. I did and it felt lovely. We made some money, got decent agents and a little name recognition. If I were you I’d use all that to get the next thing going. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get home and start packing.”
“Packing?” I said, alarmed. “Where are you going?”
“On a well-deserved vacation.”
She said that tomorrow morning she planned to drive up the coast with only a guidebook for a companion. She would drink in the beauty of Big Sur and wine country and hopefully meet a few Californians capable of sustaining a five-minute conversation that involved neither the weekend grosses nor pilot season. She’d then finish up in San Francisco, where she planned to look up one Henry Baumbach, a nice-looking Berkeley professor whom she’d met when he guest lectured at UCLA. They’d lunched twice and dined once.
“You have a new beau?” I asked.
“Possibly.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Gosh,” she said dryly, “I had this strange feeling that dragging you two in might jinx it somehow. Odd superstition. Can’t think how I came by it.”
She rose and, the thought of leaving LA having restored her appetite, plucked a muffin from the pastry basket.
“You have my cell number,” she said. “Please don’t use it.”
“Well, I’m sorry!” fumed Gilbert when she’d gone. “Why should we just roll over like good little lackeys? I mean, Gawd, with everything we’ve got on them?”
I pointed out that we could no longer prove any of it.
“We could still raise a nice little stink! There are enough tongues wagging already about why Stephen’s in bed with Moira. I say we let the scheming bitch know who’s boss!”
I said I saw little hope of wringing concessions from Moira, who’d be mad enough at me for letting the disk fall into Monty’s hands. Gilbert didn’t care, contending that Moira’s fury could not begin to match his own. When I saw there was no hope of dissuading him, I decided to tag along so as to limit the carnage and glean what, if anything, was new on the Monty front.
We approached in stealth, obtaining our studio drive-on through Max. We easily located the offices of Finch/Donato Productions and Gilbert led the charge into its serene blond wood antechamber. He gave our names and demanded to see Moira immediately, adding that if she refused our next stop would be the LA Times. The receptionist was a slender young Asian queen whose languorous hauteur could not conceal the raging curiosity Gilbert’s ultimatum had stirred in his breast. He pressed a button and murmured into his headset.
“Miss Finch will see you shortly,” he said, using only his eyes to direct us to the sofa.
“Oh, right,” scoffed Gilbert. “Like we’re going to sit here while she slips out the back. Fat chance, Madame Butterfly!”
He barged down the hall toward the door that bore Moira’s name in raised brass letters. I trotted behind while the gatekeeper, who had much to learn about sanctum guarding, struggled to extricate himself from his headset.
When Gilbert burst in, Moira, who was seated in a rich brown suede chair, leaped up, a radiant smile of welcome on her face.
“Well, look who it is! What a nice surprise!”
We were thrown by her cordiality until we realized that her performance was purely for the benefit of her illustrious guest, who rose now from the matching sofa.
“I’d like you to meet two dear old friends of mine, Philip Cavanaugh and Gilbert Selwyn. We go back ages! Guys, this is Harrison Ford.”
We didn’t chat very long with Harrison, but he struck me as a very polite, genial, and, I hasten for clear reasons to add, non-male-bordello-patronizing sort of fellow.
“Nice to meet you, Harrison,” I said, moving toward him and extending my hand. As I was congratulating myself for having struck just the right warm-but-not-fawning note, my shin collided with the coffee table, striking it so hard that Harrison’s coffee sloshed over.
“You all right there?”
“Ow! Yes, fine! Hope we’re not interrupting?”
Harrison said they’d just been discussing a “little project” but were pretty much done. He bade us farewell and Moira saw him out, asking him to think it over and call her. When she’d closed the door she walked calmly to her desk, picked up a lovely Montblanc pen, and stabbed Gilbert in the neck with it.
“OWW!”
“You miserable fuckers! If you EVER try to threaten your way in here again I’ll have your damn legs broken! I mean it! And you —!” She jabbed a red-lacquered nail at me. “You starfucking jackass! I’ve been on the phone all morning trying to calm Stephen down and convince him I can handle this mess you’ve made! I don’t know what the old queen wants but it better be reasonable or I swear to God I’ll whack him!”
“I’m bleeding, you crazy bitch!” cried Gilbert, dabbing his neck with a hankie.
“Baby.”
She sat behind her desk, its chair imperially high, and glared across at us.
“If you’re looking for your final script payment, have your agent call. If you’re looking for anything else, fuck off.”
Gilbert, his attempt to project manly menace badly undercut by his canary yellow Miyake T, demanded that we be reinstated as the sole authors of The Heart in Hiding.
“We worked our asses off on that script and it’s a damn good one!”