28
Finding Emo
“It’s all set,” my mother announced cheerily. “Tomorrow’s the big day! Isn’t this exciting?”
My mother had a habit of labeling as “exciting” events I found, alternately, embarrassing, horrifying, or deeply traumatic. This was looking to be one of those that managed to be all three at the same time.
We were in Andrew’s office again, this time at the oval conference table that fit six. And six we were: Andrew; my mother; myself; Roni, the segment producer; Steven Austen, who’d be handling the makeup; and our cameraman, Laurent. The job before us was to plan the covert taping of the interview Andrew had set up for us at Families by Design, the adoption agency that had placed Adam with the Merrs, the couple who’d caged and brutalized him for the two years he’d been in their custody.
“We’re going to expose these chozzers for what they are,” my mother practically spat. Well, when I say “almost” I mean “actually.” Spittle flew from her lips at the thought of the serial child abusers. The fine spray landed on the left hand of Roni, a somewhat quiet woman in her mid-thirties who commanded respect on the set without ever raising her voice. Roni discreetly wiped the anointed hand against the leg of her jeans.
“We’ve never done a location shoot like this,” Andrew observed. “But we’re lucky to have Laurent on our team. He’s got the skills to carry the ball on this one.”
Andrew had been a jock in high school and it showed.
“Thanks,” Laurent answered. Before joining
Sophie’s Voice,
he had worked on
60 Minutes
for three years. He was well versed in covert video technology. He explained to the group—sorry, Andrew,
team
—where the cameras and microphones would be concealed on our persons. Laurent was a true geek—passionate about his equipment and oblivious to the mind-numbing boredom settling over the room. My mother suppressed yawns, Andrew started texting on his BlackBerry, Steven appeared to have fallen asleep, and even Roni, whose job was to understand all the details of any given shoot, doodled elaborate designs on her notebook while he droned on for over an hour.
The video would be streamed to monitors in a van that’d be parked on the street, as close to Families by Design as they could get. Andrew, Laurent, Roni, and Steven would be waiting for us in there, observing the proceedings in case something went wrong.
And when I say “in case” I mean “when.”
Steven was coming to apply any last touches to our makeup, a process we’d begun hours earlier in the studio.
“How close in age do you think you’ll be able to get them to look?” Andrew asked him. I don’t think Andrew had anything particularly against Steven, so why he put him in that position I’ll never know. My mother had me late in life and was a good forty years older than I was.
Steven’s eyes darted nervously around the room, like a man looking for the shooter with the worst aim on the executioner’s line.
As he’d just helped me the other day with my SwordFight makeup, I felt compelled to rush to his aid. “I was just talking to Steven about it this morning,” I answered brightly. “He says my mother and I will be totally believable as an unmarried couple looking to adopt.”
I left out the last part of his warning: “if they’re deaf, dumb, and blind. Or just very, very dumb.”
“Yes,” Andrew said, “but exactly how close can you . . . ow!”
I’d kicked him under the table. Hard.
“Andrew, darling”—my mother slipped into her maternal voice—“are you okay?”
Andrew shot me a dirty look. “I’m fine. Just a cramp.”
“Probably from sitting so long,” my mother concluded sagely. “I think we’ve covered everything we need to. Shall we break for now?”
Under the best circumstances, my mother had the attention span of a hyperactive three-year-old. I suspected she’d been looking for a way to wind up the meeting halfway into Laurent’s excruciating monologue.
“Good idea!” I sprang to my feet. “It’s a wrap!”
On set, that’d be Roni’s line, but I felt free to use it here. Steven’s grateful nod toward me affirmed I’d been right.
“Kevin, just a minute,” Andrew said as I made a beeline for the door. “Could I have a word?”
Andrew’s tone implied the word wasn’t
thanks
.
“Just one,” I said, trying to keep it light. “Choose carefully.”
“Is there some reason you kneecapped me just now?”
I explained I was protecting Steven from having to pretend that even with all the makeup in the world, he could get me and my mother looking within a decade of each other.
“Fine,” Andrew granted. “But next time you want to change the subject, can you do it without pulling a Tonya Harding on me?”
“Sorry,” I said, ducking my head, giving him a look of boyish repentance through my blond bangs. It was a move that worked with most guys. Even the straight ones fell for the contrite choirboy routine. “Forgive me?”
Andrew sat on the edge of his desk and spread his legs. He dropped a hand mid-thigh. “You could,” he offered, “kiss it all better.”
I should have known that on perennial horn dog Andrew, that look would work
too
well. Lucky I hadn’t kicked him in the balls.
“You know Tony carries a gun, right? Even when he’s off duty?”
“How is it,” Andrew asked, snapping his knees together, “that the mere mention of that man’s name is like the anti-Viagra for me?”
“It’s a good sign,” I encouraged. “It means your desire to remain alive is stronger than your desire for a blow job.”
“Oh god,” Andrew groaned. “That’s a
good
sign? What’s a bad one? Male pattern baldness? Early Alzheimer’s? Erectile dysfunction?”
“We already covered that last one. You got aging on the mind, old man?” I figured Andrew was around twenty-seven. A little young to be worried about joining AARP.
“It’s just everyone I know is settling down. Partnering up. Getting married. Whatever.” He hunched over in a defeated slump. “Soon, I’m going to be the last single man in Manhattan.”
“Please,” I said. “You’ve got more men nipping at your heels than Joan Rivers has had face-lifts. You’ve got a pretty deep pool of potential husbands out there. All you have to do is pick one.”
“That’s just it,” he complained. “How do you pick
one?
How will I know?”
“Oh, honey, not even Whitney Houston, god rest her soul, could have answered that question. Although she did hit number one with it.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Okay, forget the eighties pop culture reference. Listen, the grass is always greener, right? Half the people I know in relationships wish they were single. Almost all my single friends wish they had a partner. Just enjoy what you have now. The chance for variety. When you meet the right guy, you’ll know.”
“What,” he said, regarding me gravely with a dramatic hoarseness in his voice, “if the one you know is ‘the right one’ is otherwise engaged? Like, to a jealous cop who could break me in two, for instance?”
Andrew and I met in high school and I think he was still stuck there in his interactions with me. Any day now, I expected him to have Suzy pass me a note in homeroom saying,
I think you’re cute. Love, Guess who???
“You can say that to me because it’s easy,” I told him, sounding harsh even to myself. “It’s safe. You know I’m unavailable.”
He looked surprised at my directness.
“The trick,” I said, “is being able to say it to someone who
is
available. To make the offer to someone who can say yes.”
“You could say yes,” he countered. “If you wanted to. There’s no ring on your finger, Kevin. At least not yet. Are you really going to wait forever for a man who won’t even admit he’s gay?”
Was there some reason everyone felt compelled to comment on my personal life? It was starting to piss me off.
“Self-pity isn’t a good look for you, Andrew. There’s hundreds of guys out there who’d cut off a finger for you. Stop pining for the ones you can’t have.”
“Hundreds?” he asked. “Not thousands?”
Oh. My. God. “Do you want me to get the other knee? If you can wait a minute, I think I have a baseball bat in my office.”
“Fine,” he barked, but not without humor. “I hear you. Switching roles for a moment, don’t think I haven’t noticed how much time you’ve spent out of the office these past few days. You don’t have another job or anything, do you?”
No, but had the audition gone better, I might have.
“Sorry,” I said. “I had some personal issues to take care of.” Thinking how I’d run out of leads on my quest to find Brent Havens, I felt safe adding, “I think I’ve taken them as far as I can, though. I shouldn’t have to miss any more work.”
“Good,” he said. “Please don’t make me get all ‘boss’ with you. I’d hate to have my flirting mistaken for sexual harassment.”
“No,” I assured him, “you were a pig way before I started working for you. Safe as houses there, chief.”
“Cute. Just try to cut back on the outside activities a little, okay? At least during working hours.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” I said, taking this as my opportunity to make an exit. “I promise no more sneaking out during the day.”
Although I meant it when I said it, in less than an hour I’d turn that into a pie-crust promise: easily made, easily broken.
“Angel boy,” Mrs. Cherry’s honeyed voice cooed over my phone. “Is this a good time?”
“Absolutely,” I told her, encouraged by her call so soon. It was just yesterday I’d asked her to use her contacts to discover if Brent had escaped into full-time hustling. If she was calling back so soon, she must have found something.
“I found nothing,” Mrs. Cherry declared. “I’ve checked with every contact in the escorting business, as well as those brokers who arrange for . . . more permanent engagements. I even dipped my dainty and perfectly pedicured toes into the tainted waters of the gossip mill to see if he was working off the grid. Nothing’s turned up. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” I pointed out. “Maybe someone hasn’t gotten back to you yet.”
Mrs. Cherry was quiet for a moment. I could swear I felt a chill of cold air coming though the receiver.
“Darling”
—I could tell Mrs. Cherry was trying to contain her inner bitch—“no one ‘doesn’t get back’ to me in this town. If they’re smart, they answer my questions before I even finish them. I am, as they say, quite ‘connected.’ Not to mention”—she dropped her voice to a husky whisper—“I’ve got a killer rack that no man can resist.”
“So, that’s it?” I asked dejectedly.
Mrs. Cherry softened her tone. “Not necessarily, darling. He could still turn up. He’s just not working in the sex industry. Perhaps he’s selling cologne at Bloomingdales, or, I don’t know, what do
regular
boys do, darling? Attend trade school? Install cable boxes?”
Yeah, maybe. But it didn’t help me find him.
“The frustrating thing,” Mrs. Cherry said, “was for a moment I thought I’d found him.”
“What do you mean?” I perked up.
“False alarm, darling. Wrong boy.”
“How so?”
“Oh, angel, it was so silly. It happened on my very first call. There I was, at my desk—my work desk, darling, not my makeup table—eating a jelly doughnut, with the notes I jotted down after you left. Just as my first contact picked up the phone, I took a bite of my little snack and—wouldn’t you know it—just as my friend picked up, half of the doughnut’s filling squirted out the back and landed—
splat!—
right on the paper. Covered up
everything
.
Très
embarrassing.
“Now, I could have wiped it up, but it was
half
the jelly, darling. I couldn’t let it go to waste. Not when there are starving dieters right here in my building. That would be wrong.
“But I couldn’t very well lick it up while on the phone, either. I have a reputation, darling. God knows what my friend would have thought I was up to!
“I couldn’t remember the name you’d given me, but I did the best I could working from memory. I told him I was looking for a young guy who used to work for SwordFight. Early twenties, blond, boyish. I said he might be hustling, working for another studio, or hooked up with a sugar daddy. Did he have any ideas?
“Wouldn’t you know, right away he said he knew
exactly
who I was looking for. I was so excited, darling. He gave me the boy’s name and told me where he was. Sure enough, the smart kid got himself set up in style. Living with a rich patron in a building known not just for its grandeur but for its security and discretion. I wrote everything down and thanked my friend profusely. I couldn’t wait to call you with the good news! I felt like a proper lady detective, I did.
“Then, the moment I hung up, I scooped up the errant doughnut filling to discover—much to my chagrin—that a terrible mistake had been made.”