Beginnings and Ends (Short Story)

From
Shadowland
, Episode 60, “Eighth of Nine Lives”

Starring Robin Chadwick Cassidy as Joe Laughlin

Los Angeles, present day

Richie West ambushed me. The meeting is supposed to be about my contract for the next Pierce Cane movie, but I realize within seconds of walking into his office that this is about my past few weekends and the current rash of rumors
.

“Academy Award nominee Joe Laughlin! Thank you for coming in! Close the door, Maureen, close the door! It’s hard for me to meet for lunch these days.” Richie gestures grandly to the cast on his ankle, his foot elevated on a stool with a maroon velvet cushion.

I turn to see Rich’s assistant expertly keep Billy and Freedom and the rest of my entourage out of the room as she closes the door behind her, leaving me alone with my manager for the first time in years.

It suddenly occurs to me that Richie went to Aspen with the intention of breaking a bone, purely so that he’d have a reason for this closed-door private meeting
.

“Sit down, sit down,” Richie continues, but I stand because now that I’m here, I know what’s coming.

“Skip the bullshit,” I say. “What the fuck
is
this?”

His smile vanishes and his eyes turn hard as he glares up at me. “An intervention.”

I do sit down then, leaning back in the chair to further telegraph my disdain. “Fuck you.”

“You’re pushing your luck,” he tells me sternly. “Harder and farther, every year. It’s getting out of hand. The rumors—”

“There’s not an A-list actor out there who isn’t surrounded, twenty-four/seven, by a cloud of rumors—”

“But with you, they’re all true.”

“Not all of them,” I counter with a shrug even though my heart is racing. “I’ve never used heroin. And I’ve never killed anyone. At least not intentionally.”

“Skip the bullshit, Joe.” Richie intentionally throws my own words back at me. “You know damn well which rumor I’m talking about.”

I gaze at him across the wide expanse of his desk, daring him to say what neither one of us has uttered, even though he’s worked for me for over five years.

“I know that you’re gay.” He doesn’t say it, but I don’t have to search too hard to see the judgment and condemnation in his eyes. Or maybe I’m imagining it
.

“We need to strategize,” he says instead. Gently. Quietly. “You need to let me help you get this nightmare under control. Your mistake was in going this alone. What, do you think you’re the first? You’re not. And you’re not the last, either. Far from it. It’s just not that big a deal. I’ve written a press release. That,
plus you making a brief statement, will end this shit for once and for all. And then—”

I can’t take it anymore. I’m up and out of my chair, but I don’t run to the door. I go to the liquor cabinet that makes up one entire wall of his massive office. I don’t bother with a glass. I just grab the whiskey and take a long hit, straight from the bottle. It burns, but it’s a familiar burn so I have some more.

Richie, for once, just sits and silently waits for me.

This is surreal. I never dreamed that this day could come, not in a million years. A press release and a brief, personal statement and the bullshit that is my miserable charade of a life will be over? Once and for all, he said. If Richard West really believes that the world has progressed to a point where an A-list action star can come out of the closet, and it isn’t a huge fucking deal, then things are better than I ever imagined
.

And maybe it’s that particular thought that brings me back to the real world—the angry, ugly, hate-filled one in which we really live
.

I turn back to Richie, bottle still in hand. I don’t put it back because I’m pretty sure I’ll need more. “Read it to me.”

“What?”

“The press release,” I order him, fighting to keep the panic from my voice. “Fucking read it to me.”

He shifts some papers around on his desk before giving up and waking up his computer, finding the file and reading from his monitor. “From the offices of Richard West and Associates, for immediate release, June twenty-fourth—”

“For the love of Jesus God,” I say.

Richie bristles. “If I hadn’t started there, you would’ve shouted about
that
. And, for the record, it’s already done. I sent it out this morning.”

The world shifts beneath my feet
.

“Without showing me?” I stumble back to the chair, because my legs won’t hold me. “Without
asking
me? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t see that you had a choice after last weekend’s antics,” Richie informs me, a tad sanctimoniously. “It’s my job to protect you—”

“Just read. The fucking. Thing.” The voice that comes out of me is from between clenched teeth.

Richie sniffs and makes an overly dramatic
I’m in pain so you’re an asshole for being mean to me
face as he shifts his injured foot to a more comfortable position and then reads, “Academy Award winner and current nominee Joseph Laughlin announces his engagement to Irene Anderson. The couple will be married, immediately, in a short, private ceremony in Las Vegas.”

I stare at him in a mixture of shock and disbelief.

A roar fills my ears, drowning out Richie’s words as I realize the motherfucker didn’t out me after all. Instead he has me getting married
.

To Irene. Who is also one of his clients. Who’d been the candy on my arm for the past few weeks of this relentlessly dull and still ongoing awards season
.

Jesus, I’m so fucking stupid. I can’t believe I actually thought Richie West was going to guide my coming out, like a Sherpa leading me to a higher plain where honesty and truth prevailed. I can’t believe that I didn’t know—instantly—
that if I did come out, he would drop me like a stone. He’d be certain that I would never again open a picture in this town
.

And he’d be right
.

Richie leans toward me, and I force myself to hear what he’s telling me.

“Here’s the prenup.” He hands me a hefty document that’s covered with brightly colored Post-it note tabs and arrows. “Have Irene sign it exactly where it’s marked. And here’s the confirmation number for your flight to Vegas. You’ll be staying at the Grande, in their honeymoon suite. My driver just picked her up, they’ll be here momentarily. You don’t need to go home to pack—you can get whatever clothes and shit you need when you get to the hotel.”

I like Irene—she’s beautiful in a quirky way. She’s also funny and smart. She’d be my fag hag if she knew. Fuck me, does she know …?

Richie reads my mind. “She doesn’t know anything. But I tipped her off to the fact that you’re madly in love with her. Pop the question in the car to the airport, and after she swoons, she’ll say yes.” His phone rings and he picks it up. “Okay, great,” he says to whoever’s on the other end. “He’ll be right down.” He hangs up the phone and looks back at me. “She’s here.
Bong, bong, bong, bong
.” He makes wedding bell sounds, which is a really dickish thing to do.

I don’t move. I just sit there, clutching that bottle.

“If you’re going to make this work,” he tells me, speaking slowly as if talking to an imbecile as he reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a small paper packet that he then tosses to me, “you’re going to have to fuck her. Regularly. Often enough so that she glows when she’s in public.”

I open the packet and the little blue pills are unmistakable. Viagra. “I don’t need that,” I tell him, tossing it back.

What I don’t tell him is that I already have some of my own. I carry it with me, in case of emergency. But somehow he already knows that
.

“Let me know if you run out.” He puts the packet back. “Oh, and while you’re gone, I’m gonna hammer out a deal with Ventura Studios. For
Awaken the Dawn
, that costume drama that you turned down last month.” He smiled. “Because it’s a perfect vehicle for your new bride.”

The douchebag is using my predicament to turn Irene into a star
.

And wasn’t that why I hired him? Because he has the reputation to bitch-slap a losing scenario into a major win.…

Richie hits the button for his intercom. “Maureen! Come escort Academy Award nominee Joe Laughlin to my car downstairs.”

The door opens and Maureen is back. She tries to take the bottle from me, but I won’t let it go, and she quickly surrenders, focusing instead on getting me up and out of my seat.

As I’m walked out of Richie’s office and down the hall toward the main door, my boys are there in the lobby, waiting for me. Billy’s perched on the receptionist’s desk, and curiosity and concern are in his brown eyes as he looks up. “What the fuck was that about?” he asks.

And the world shifts for me again, because Richie West now knows a secret that I’ve managed to keep from my best friend from fifth grade, my wingman, my
chief of staff. Billy has no clue who I really am. Billy, who’d told me just last night that he was crazy in love—with Irene Anderson …

Maureen keeps me moving even as she stops the boys from following. “The party Joe’s going to this afternoon is a private one,” she tells them primly, and they grin and nudge each other, imagining me between a pair of smooth, soft legs.

I get into the elevator with Maureen. And because I’ve opened that bottle, she pushes the button for the garage with pursed lips. I don’t give a shit. I tip my head back and drink it, all of it.

This is the only way I’m going to make it through the next few hours, days, weeks, months, lifetime.…

I’m not just going to fuck Irene in that honeymoon suite at the Grande, I’m going to fuck Billy, too. And then, after my new bride is asleep, I’m going to slip out of the room and find some stranger to fuck in some back alley, behind the piles of trash
.