“So you and Layla are gonna be an item?”
“I don’t know about that. An item? Where do you get your vocab from?”
“Mostly from reruns of Leave it Beaver on TVLand,” Brendan admitted.
“Well, just stop,” Will told him.
“But it’ll be cool. We can do double dating and stuff like that.”
“Brendan you are so weird.”
Brendan stopped. Brendan was a few inches taller than Will. He was long and drawn out, taller than a lot of people though there was something in Brendan that made him seem shorter. He was shy a lot of the time and, Will sensed, possibly needy.
“I didn’t meant it in a bad way,” Will told him. Will shrugged. “Heck, I’m weird too. Who else would chase after Layla by passing notes for three months?”
“You know what?” Brendan said, “Layla’s kinda weird too.”
“I know.” Will said. “That’s why I like her.”
“I thought you liked her because she was pretty. I mean she is pretty, right?”
“Pretty is as pretty does.”
“Now what does that mean?”
“It means,” Will paused. “It means… It means what it means.”
“You got on me for saying item. Now I can get on you for saying that.”
“It means beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“I think you made that up,” Brendan said.
“I didn’t. I… look, my dad says pretty is as pretty does. I just think Layla’s really… amazing. I can’t believe we’re going out.”
“Is it worth being shot down all those other times.”
Will frowned.
“Yes, Brendan Miller, it is.”
“Girl, get your ass out of the way so I can see Natalie…” Tara said, and murmured, as Adele moved, “and her fine ass.”
“I’m trying to tell you about my life.”
“Look, Adele,” Tara told her, putting down her lemonade. “Two o’clock is ME time. More specific. One Life to Live time, and if you come callin’ while Todd and Blair are on, you have to deal with—goddamn, here they are. Why don’t they send Todd’s ass to jail? You know he never learns. Never fucking learns. Now, if they sent his skinny ass to Young and the Restless he would learn. Cause those motherfuckers over in Genoa City… They don’t play. Not even Sharon and Lauren. And they’re the good ones. You know, I saw this old clip on YouTube the other night… where Lauren was scrapping with Sheila. You remember Sheila? On Bold and the Beautiful—”
“Tara!”
“Adele,” Tara turned away from the television. “I’m gon tell you this once. Hoot was a dog when you married him. He was a dog when I said, girl, don’t marry him. But you thought, what does that dumb dyke know? Well, it turned out this stupid dyke knew a lot. Um hum. And as far as I’m concerned, you well rid of his sorry ass.”
THERE WAS NO port in Port Ridge. Of course, though Todd looked for a ridge he couldn’t find that either. About a hundred fifty years ago, before the railroad had become the rage, the state had planned to put a canal with a system of ports all through the area, and every town that was going to be a port stop had an appropriate port name. Port John, Portage, La Porte, Port, Lockport, Landport, Portland, Port Ridge. The ports never came. Only the names remained. .
Port Ridge, being just a little outside of what they called The Region had become a high end sort of town, full of boutiques and white stucco hotels. Even in early spring in the Midwest there was a Palm Springy air about it, Todd thought, as he drove up Merideth, the broad avenue that went east and west in the city.
There was an old, respectable neighborhood full of ancient houses half hidden behind great oaks, statuesque maples. Guy McClintock did not live here. Guy McClintock lived on Arrowhead, a grandiose subdivision of McMansions built close enough to the highway.
In fact, as you approached the end of Arrowhead you went higher and higher up a windy, strangely empty asphalt street, and the houses were further and further apart and then, at the top of the hill was the very large house that fit the description and matched the address Todd had been given.
“I like ours better,” he murmured.
Guy had referred to his house as “The Eagle,” and the only description he had given of it was that it was the highest, on top of a high hill in Arrowhead. There really wasn’t much else that he could have said. Like a lot of large houses it wasn’t particularly pretty. To Todd it seemed like a split level on steroids. There was no gate. Just a circular driveway that, before the house split in two ends toward either side of the house to what Todd surmised were parking lots, hidden by shrubbery. Todd wasn’t sure where to park.
But as he was wondering, out came a beautiful, muscled cariacature of an All American, buff, blue eyed, full of Boy Scout earnestness.
“You must be Mr. Meraden. I’m Holt. I’m here to take you to Mr. McClintock. Javier will park your car.”
A pretty Latin boy with glossy black hair and snug blue shorts stepped out, the sun flashing on his shades, and Todd was more intimidated than aroused.
Todd slipped out of the car, handing the keys to Javier, and even though it was a beat up Land Rover, regretted giving his keys to a someone he’d never met. At the same time he thought that someone like Javier must sniff to have to drive a battered Land Rover even a few feet to a parking space.
Holt placed a companionable arm over Todd’s shoulder, and led him into the foyer.
“Mr. McClintock’s been very excited about meeting you.”
Todd nodded. He was taller than Holt, but he felt too tall and too thin next to his muscular, tanned perfection.
The house was very large and lacking in furniture. It was mostly white and blue, blue from the sky coming through the large windows, white walls, white carpet, white furniture where furniture was. There were several beautiful men, some in shorts and tee shirts, a few in stylishly baggy jeans and tee shirts, mostly white though a few were Latin. Todd, thinking of Fenn, looked for a Black one. To no avail.
“Hey, Holt,” an ordinary looking boy greeted him. He was cute, but in a boyish way, and Holt waved back and told Todd, “You wouldn’t know it but he is hung like a horse. We call him the elephant because….” Holt swung his arm like what Todd eventually realized must have been a trunk, and grinned.
“You know you could do this too. Guy takes all kinds.”
Todd opened his mouth to say something, to say he wasn’t quite sure what the hell was going on. But just then Holt said, “Here we are, now,” and they came into a room while Holt put a finger to his lips.
“Yes, that’s really hot. That’s totally hot!” a skinny, large nosed man was saying. “I really like that. Just be raw with it. Now look at the camera. Do it, look at him, and then look at the camera,” he was saying in a hushed and reverent voice.
Todd stopped himself from shouting out. He had seen this on the computer and on a few DVDs. But he was standing in the middle of it now, in a bedroom. And along with the nasally, large nosed man were three cameramen, circling the two on the bed who were fucking each other.
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, fuck me!” the boy on his back shouted, his voice wet with pleading while his fucker, glossy buttocks sweating, nostrils flared and snorting, pulled the boy’s legs over his shoulders, eyes boring into the camera while lust and panic washed over his sweating face.
Todd looked away embarrassed, stiff.
“Mr. Meraden,” he heard the nasally voice, and he turned around.
“You’re Guy?” he said to the large nosed man.
“It’s really good to meet you,” he said.
Todd looked at him, dumb. He heard the guy being fucked cry out, and then he turned away from it.
“Some people get nervous the first time they’re this close up to the action,” Guy said in an understanding tone. “Soon you give in to the excitement. And it is exciting.”
He gave Todd a knowing wink.
“Mr. Meraden—”
“Please,” Todd croaked, “Call me Todd.”
The buff guy fucking the boy bellowed out his groaning orgasm, and Todd shook with it.
“Well then, Todd… I saw your documentary on religion and homosexuality last year, and I was completely impressed.”
“Thank you,” Todd said, feeling that this was completely the wrong place for such a discussion.
“And that…” Guy said with a broad smile over his homely face while the boy screamed out in ecstatic climax, “is why I want you to shoot my next movie.”
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?”
“No,” Todd said. “This is great news.”
“This man… this Guy McClintock… wants you to shoot a porn? You’re going to shoot a porno?”
“Okay, Fenn,” Todd said. “Number One, I’m not the first to shoot a porn. Number Two, and a huge Number Two, I’m not shooting a porn.”
“Well, then what the hell are you doing?”
“I’m going to go to the house for a weekend and just shoot life there. It’s supposed to be the life of a pornstar for one weekend. But really, to get the full effect we may be doing it a couple of weekends. I was thinking over the course of it. The best part of this is there isn’t really a script. Most of the work will come later when I’m editing… all by myself. Right here.”
“Well, there is that.”
“And you were worried about how this new play you’re doing wasn’t going to take in that much money. We could go a long way toward… financial security.”
“Is there really such a thing?” Fenn looked around their bedroom.
“When I didn’t have a home I worried I’d never have one. When I got one I worried I’d never have anyone to share it with. When you came around….”
“I know, we keep worrying. I know. But we don’t worry about the same thing all the time, and after this you bet your ass we won’t be worrying about the bank taking the house.”
Fenn shrugged, nodded, and said, “Todd?”
“Um hum.”
“Just... How secure are we going to be?”
“Is seventy-five thousand dollars secure enough?”
He spritzed his water.
“What? Are you fucking me?”
“Not yet. But I could.”
“You can now and every night,” Fenn said. “Goddamn. Thirty thousand for three weeks of work with a video cam.”
“And expenses,” Todd added. “So can I do the movie?”
“Do the damn movie.”
“I couldn’t believe that only about a hundred miles from us, great porn, well, porn is being made,” Todd said.
“People come from all over to be in these movies. And, Fenn, you ought to have seen some of these people. Well, really, all of them. I mean, I felt so insignificant. They were just working out and they were so buff. The most perfect representations of manhood you could dream about.”
Fenn Houghton pulled the fork out of his mouth and dug into the cake. He stuck another piece in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. At last he said:
“I thought I was the most perfect representation of manhood you could dream about?”
“They’re the most perfect representations who have to work at it,” Todd modified.
Fenn stuck his finger in a hunk of frosting and said, “I bet the poor things don’t eat.”
“Well, the really built ones probably do.”
“But they have to work out all the time, right?”
“Well, they’d have too.”
“Doesn’t seem like much fun.” Fenn eyed his glass of milk on the side of the bed and then drank down about a third of it.
“Were they as sexy as me?” he said, wiping the milk from his mouth.
Todd gave him a hooded smile and said, “Not by half.”
MORE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS
