Authors: Joe Keenan
“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 that
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.