Object of Desire (17 page)

Gregory was making quite the slobbering sound when I heard the sliding wood door of the study start to open. I turned, not inclined to move or pull out of Gregory's mouth.
So let his housekeeper see,
I thought. I didn't care.

And then my eyes met those of Frank.

“Oh, Jesus,” Frank said, quickly sliding the door shut.

Gregory pulled off my cock long enough to gripe. “I told him I was doing an interview. Sorry about that.” Then he resumed his slobbering.

I looked down. A glob of his saliva dropped from his chin onto my shiny black boot. And then another. And another.

“Okay,” I said. “I can't do this.”

Gregory looked up at me, spittle all over his lips.

I was zipping up. “I'm sorry. I just can't.”

“What is the matter?”

“I can't do this!” My voice was louder than it needed to be. “He
saw.
I just can't do this. Sorry.” I buttoned my shirt.

Gregory got to his feet, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “It doesn't matter, Danny. He's just a friend. He doesn't care.”

“Well, I do.” I stuffed my bolo tie down into the pocket of my jeans. “I'm sorry. I need to leave.”

He arched a bushy eyebrow at me. “I thought you were serious about becoming an actor.”

“Guess not
that
serious.” I let out a long breath. “Thanks for the blow. It was good. But I have to go.”

He shrugged. “Fine. Your choice.” He picked up the receiver of a phone on the bar. “I'll call my driver—”

“No,” I said. “No driver. I don't mean to be rude. But no driver. Nothing.”

Gregory laughed. “But how will you get home?”

“God gave me two feet. I'll use them.” It was a line my mother had always said.

It only made Gregory laugh harder. “I have news for you. It's a long way down that mountain—”

“I know,” I said. “So I'd better start now.”

I slid open the wood door and hurried out into the hallway. I saw Frank at the far other end of the house, in what appeared to be the kitchen. He watched me as I walked briskly toward the front door, my boots clicking on the parquetry floor. From the study behind me, Gregory emerged.

“Danny, wait!” he called. “You can't walk all the way back—”

“Yes, I can,” I said, heading out the front door. “I don't care how long it takes. I'm walking home.” Outside, I broke into a jog, taking the steps down the hill two at a time. I didn't want them to see that I had started to cry.

The night was dark. And Mulholland Drive was very long and very twisty. Even when I got to the end of it, I knew I had steep, winding Laurel Canyon to deal with. How long would it take me to get home? Ninety minutes? Two hours? Four? My heart was racing in my chest. The cocaine was making the anxiety even worse. In the darkness, I began the long trudge down the road, one foot in front of the other, barely seeing two feet in front of me. Every once in a while, through the trees, I'd catch a glimpse of the lights of West Hollywood far below. Cars raced past, their headlights swinging across me. A couple of drivers honked at me when they were startled to see a figure moving on the side of the road. I tried to stay on the grass as much as I could, but the road was so dark, and sometimes I wasn't sure where the pavement ended and the grass began. I was also scared of losing my footing if I walked too close to the precipitous drop; then I'd go tumbling down the rocky edges of the Hollywood Hills.

I may as well just toss myself over the side,
I thought, like that girl Randall had told me about who'd jumped off the Hollywood sign to her death when she realized she'd never be a star.
I may as well just jump.

More headlights swung across me, causing me to squint into their glare. A car slowed down and pulled alongside me. From what I could make out, it was an old Plymouth Duster. The driver was leaning across the front seat and rolling down the passenger window.

“Danny,” came a voice from inside the car. “Get in.”

I stopped walking. It was so dark that I couldn't make out who the driver was at first. Then I recognized him. It was Frank.

“No, thanks,” I said and resumed walking.

He got out of the car. I heard the door slam in the darkness behind me. “You'll get killed out here,” he called after me. “Please. Let me drive you home.”

I stopped walking. The headlights of an oncoming car momentarily blinded me, and I felt the rush of air as it zoomed past. I turned around and walked back to Frank's car.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“Just drop me off at Santa Monica and Fairfax.”

We both got into the car. It smelled of bananas and coffee. I left the window open to keep the fresh air flowing. My head was really starting to spin. Frank didn't say anything right away. He just put the car into drive and steered it back onto the road.

“Look,” I finally said, “about what happened back there…”

“None of my business,” Frank replied.

“I'm not a hustler.”

“None of my business.”

We drove in silence for a while.

“Yes, I knew what I was getting into,” I said, unable to bear the quiet. “But I just couldn't go through with it after you walked in.”

“It's okay, Danny.”

I leaned my head against the side of the door, breathing in the night air. “I'm not a hustler.”

“So you've said.”

“But you don't believe me.”

“I believe you.”

I turned and looked at him. “It's just that I really need an agent! I came out here to make it as an actor. You think I want to keep dancing on a nasty old box in a skanky old bar for the rest of my life?”

Frank laughed. “I doubt they'd let you do it that long. Usually strippers get forcibly retired at the ripe old age of twenty-five.”

“I'm not a stripper, either. I'm a dancer.”

“Danny, it's okay. Really.”

I started to cry again. My tears were an embarrassment, but I couldn't help them. They just came. Gushing down my cheeks like waterfalls.

“Hey,” Frank said. “Baby, don't cry.”

He reached over and touched my cheek with his fingers.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“It's okay.”

We were heading down the mountain. “Just drop me off on Santa Monica,” I said. “I'll walk home from there. I need to clear my head.” It was pounding actually, and I could still taste the coke in my throat. My nostrils itched. I kept wiping my nose, and Frank must have figured things out.

“You need something to eat,” he said.

“I'm not hungry.”

“Okay.”

We drove in silence again for a while. There was a backup of cars ahead of us, a constellation of red taillights clustered at the bottom of the hill.

“I hate this road,” Frank said.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Venice Beach.”

“I've never been there.”

“Never been to Venice Beach?” he asked. “How long have you lived in L.A.?”

“Little over a year.”

“You should check it out sometime. It's like a small town in the midst of a big city. Great beach, too.”

I looked over at him. “How do you know Gregory?”

“Long story,” he said.

The traffic was moving again. “You can just drop me off…oh, I don't know. Maybe at the bar. I can't go home yet. My roommate is like a mother hen, and he'll start asking all sorts of questions.”

Frank looked over at me kindly. “Might I suggest a bar is the last place you should go when you're feeling like this?”

I sneered. “Then what would you suggest?”

“Come with me. I'll show you Venice Beach.”

I said nothing.

“Okay?” he asked.

“You don't have to take care of me.”

“I'm not. I'm just offering to show you a part of town you've never seen.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you don't want to go with me—”

“I do.” I looked at him. “I do want to go with you.”

So we headed through West Hollywood, down La Cienega and onto Venice Boulevard. I couldn't quite believe the way the night was turning out. I'd thought I'd be planning my future as an actor with Gregory Montague, and here I was instead, heading to Venice Beach in a beat-up old Duster with Frank Wilson. That was his last name, I learned. I also learned that he was born out near Palm Springs, and that he taught English at a high school in Inglewood, and that he was in the process of getting his master's, and that he hoped someday to teach at the college level. Frank reminded me a little of Randall: he had that ambition to become something serious. It wasn't ambition like mine, which was to become something frivolous.

When we got to the beach, I was struck by how fierce it was. Nothing like the soft, gradual beaches of the East Coast. Here the Pacific slapped the coast with big, pounding waves, ridden by surfers whose long golden hair reflected the moonlight. We headed down the boardwalk, the neon of the shops and cafés burning through the darkness. A Rastafarian in dreadlocks and a colorful knit cap played a reggae guitar; Asian girls roller-skated down the boardwalk, holding hands. Off to our left, adjacent to the sand, was Muscle Beach, an outdoor gym. Bodybuilders so big they seemed ready to explode hunched over benches, curling dumbbells, wearing nothing more than Speedos.

“I used to see Arnold Schwarzenegger here all the time when I first moved to Venice,” Frank told me. “That was way before
Conan.
”

I smiled, looking around at the people on the boardwalk. A couple of sixties leftovers, a man and a woman, with exactly the same long, straight gray hair, sat ahead of us on the curb, passing a doobie back and forth.

“This is
so
not West Hollywood,” I said.

Frank laughed. He gestured to a pizza joint, and I followed him inside. We ordered a large hamburger and pepperoni. I was suddenly famished. Digging in, I momentarily forgot I was with the man of my dreams. I blocked out, for the moment, just how beautiful Frank was, how green his eyes were. He had tucked a napkin into the front of his shirt, a gesture that I'd always found rather dorky. My father used to do it. But when Frank reached over with his napkin to wipe tomato sauce from my chin, I remembered exactly how I felt about him. I was smitten.

And suddenly jealous.

“Is Gregory your boyfriend?” I asked.

Frank sighed. “No.”

“You don't sound convincing.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“Then what is he?”

“Long story.”

“So you've said.”

Frank looked past me, his eyes seeming to rest on the steaming pizza ovens behind us, as if they were far more interesting to consider.

“I'm sorry if I'm prying,” I said.

“It's okay.” He looked back at me. “Gregory was very good to me when I was young. When I was your age, in fact. Back then, I was a poor kid just trying to make my way through school, and he…he helped me.”

I smiled. “So then we're not all that different, are we?”

He shrugged. He seemed a little defensive.

“I didn't mean to offend you,” I told him.

“It's okay,” he said, for something like the hundredth time. “I fell in love with Gregory. I can't deny that. He was a glamorous older man who seemed to have everything. And I had nothing.” He smiled. “I'll always be grateful to Gregory. He gave me the confidence I needed to stay in school. He believed in me when nobody else did.”

“So you were boyfriends?”

“For a while.”

“Then what happened?”

Frank smiled. “Well, as you may have noticed, Gregory likes younger guys. And eventually, I was no longer a college kid.”

I sat back in my chair. “You're still in love with him, aren't you?”

“No,” Frank said.

But I didn't believe him.

“We've stayed friends,” Frank went on. “Underneath all his swagger and airs, Gregory's a good guy. I know you probably don't feel that way right now, but…”

“I guess I was a fool,” I said.

“Why?”

“For backing out. If I'd gone ahead and given Gregory what he wanted, maybe he would've been as good and helpful to me as he was to you.”

This seemed to stir something within Frank. He sat forward and leaned across the little table we shared. “No,” he said. “You did the right thing, Danny. Gregory couldn't have helped you. Not the way you're imagining.”

“Hey, I saw the pictures on his wall—”

Frank shook his head. “Everyone in Hollywood has pictures like that. You go to an event, you pose with a celebrity, and you put it up on your wall.”

“He doesn't represent them?”

“No. This agent stuff—it's just an idea that's gotten into his head this past year. The only people he represents so far are a couple of soap actors and a guy who writes jingles for television commercials. Gregory's from money. He doesn't need to work. He just decided he'd try being an agent because he was bored and it sounded like fun.”

“And maybe a way of getting young boys to take their clothes off for him.”

Frank didn't have a response to that. Because it was true.

I was certain, sitting there, that he was still in love with Gregory. I imagined that ten years ago Gregory had been quite the debonair lover, and in Frank's eyes, he had remained that way. In fact, I felt positive that they'd still be together if Gregory hadn't had a roving eye, always on the lookout for fresher meat.

“I'm glad you said no to him,” Frank said.

I nodded. I thought I understood why.

A father with two little boys sat at the table next to us. The boys were making a mess, throwing paper plates, spilling their paper cups of Coke. A slice of pizza landed cheese-side down on the floor.