Authors: Joe Keenan
W
HENEVER
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 for 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!”
M
Y
R
EMEMBER-THE
-G
OOD
-T
IMES
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.