Читать книгу Between Boyfriends - Michael Salvatore - Страница 11

The next day was as chaotic and poorly choreographed as a Bollywood musical. It was so haphazard that by noon I was actually considering changing my name to Kumar “Steven” Patel, but I reeled myself in knowing my mother would have a coronary if I turned my back on my Sicilian heritage, even if she was developing a taste for cumin thanks to the latest occupant of the Salvatore DeNuccio Towers, the widow Padma Maharaji. As one madcap hour evolved into another I could almost hear the high-pitched nasal twangings of a chorus of Hindi dancers wearing Western garb and gyrating in front of a huge waterfall. Then in the middle of a sun-drenched desert. Then stopping traffic in the center of Bombay’s busy market district. My day, like a screwball comedy in Sanskrit, clung desperately to its through line.

Here’s how the day went. Bright and early on Tuesday morning I marched into the ITNC studios with the determination of Norma Rae and the optimism of Gidget, resolved to ask Lorna Douglas if she would star in my mother’s Christmas celebration. But by our first early morning break my resolve recoiled. I succumbed to the belief that if you think the answer to your question will be bad it’s safer to avoid asking the question altogether. By ten-thirty, however, I realized that if I didn’t report back to my mother with a yea or a nay as to Lorna’s participation pronto, she would use her maternal powers to psychically haunt me from the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel. She had done it before; she would do it again.

Luckily, luck was my lady and I spotted Lorna sitting by herself during a break in taping. Her lips were moving like those of a silent film star on crack, so I could tell she was using her down-time to memorize lines while a few feet away the makeup team surrounded her costar, Lucas Fitzgerald, to reapply a fake scar to his face. I knew it would take them more than a few minutes since Lucas’s character, Roger Renault, was a race car driver who had sustained terrible burns from a recent boating accident and the resulting scar started at the left side of his forehead, ran over the bridge of his nose, somehow never made contact with his incandescent blue eyes, and ended on the sharpest point of his right cheek. The implausibility of the scar was matched only by the implausibility of my question getting a positive response from Lorna. But the time had come for me to somehow try and make the implausible plausible.

“Hey, Lorna! Sorry to interrupt, but this December my mother is organizing a Christmas musicale for her senior citizens’ group in New Jersey and she’d like you to be the headliner and perform for free,” I explained. “So how’s about it?”

“Cool,” was Lorna’s monosyllabic reply.

For a second I thought she was referring to her scene partner’s scar, which I had to admit did look grotesquely arousing, and in the next second I understood why Lindsay found the guy in Mask a masturbatory fantasy, but in the second after that I realized Lorna had seriously answered my indecent proposal.

“You’ll do it?” I asked.

“Sure,” she monosyllabically replied.

Just as I was beginning to think Lorna was saving all her dialogue for the camera, she added her disclaimer.

“As long as there’s no press, I can use my own band and it’s before the GMHC show,” she demanded. “It’ll be like a rehearsal.”

If all women were so accommodating and logical, I might consider heterosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.

“Lorna!” I squealed. “Forgive my zeal, but you are the first woman since Lynda Bertadotto to make me truly happy.”

“Who’s Lynda Bertadotto?” she asked.

“Sixth-grade teacher,” I explained. “She made me sit next to Richie Troisi so I could help him with his sentence deconstruction. He looked just like Scott Baio and I still have the puka beads he gave me as a thank-you for helping him master the intricacy of the adverbial clause.”

“God, that’s romantic,” Lorna said. “Pathetic, but romantic. You should have the writers include that memory in my back-story.”

“I’m sorry, but I prefer to keep the puka beads private,” I replied. “Richie’s married now with three kids and, well, I’d hate to stir up trouble.”

“Gay and moral,” Lorna said with a sad smile. “Another illusion shattered.”

I ignored her stereotyping and circled back to the reason for our conversation—I needed to lock her in before the makeup team was finished cosmetically mutilating Lucas’s otherwise flawless face and she would be called to the set.

“So I’ll get the details from my mother, and her girl—which is me—will be in touch with your girl, who actually is a girl,” I stammered, “and a mighty pretty one I might add.”

Lorna tilted her chin to the left and clenched the skin around her eyes the same way she did when her character, Ramona, put a hit on her sister Renata’s psycho doctor, Rodney, when she found out he caused Roger’s accident as an act of revenge against Renata’s family. I knew that look could not be good.

“You think she’s mighty pretty?” Lorna queried.

How stupid could I have been? Lorna may be even tempered and cooperative most of the time, but she is still an actress midway through her second contract cycle on a daytime drama and perilously close to her thirtieth birthday. Every producer knows you don’t tell an insecure, aging actress that her younger assistant is mighty pretty.

“Well, yes,” I stumbled, “in that I-was-nice-looking-in-collegewhy-the-hell-am-I-so-ugly-in-the-real-world sort of way. And by real world I mean your world and not MTV’s.”

“She does wear a lot of makeup,” Lorna rationalized.

“Applied with the restraint of a kabuki,” I offered.

This comment seemed to pacify Lorna, and her artificial warmth started to thaw the ice in her veins. Soon the actress was all businesswoman.

“My GMHC gig is December fifteenth, and we have a one-hour rehearsal on the fourteenth. As long as your mother’s thing is before then we have a deal,” Lorna said. “If not, there’s no way I’m hauling my ass to Jersey to entertain a demographic that’s not going to be around long enough to do me any good.”

Before I could mumble “That’s the Christmas spirit,” a high-pitched shriek pierced through the studio, sounding like an Indian princess after she’s been ripped from her would-be lover’s arms by a Hindi villain. In this instance, the Indian princess was being played by Lucas.

“My eye!” he screamed. “Oh dear God! My eye is on fire!”

Lucas’s eye wasn’t actually on fire, it only felt that way. Some of the glue holding the fake scar in place had dripped into his eye, causing it to turn a bright shade of red and burn like a Vietnam-era soldier’s pee the day after he grabbed himself a fine piece of poontang. Not that I have any idea what that feels like, but I’ve heard stories. Lucas cried and flailed about so animatedly it took a while for the makeup team to flush out his eye with water. He didn’t stop moving entirely until Lorna slapped him across the face.

“You’re an actor!” she declared. “Use your pain.”

I felt as if I was watching Uta Hagen bitch-slap Marlon Brando. Lucas’s one good eye focused intently on Lorna, while the other one tried desperately to open fully. It was like watching a mildly retarded baby chick being born. But there was beauty within that ghastly looking inflamed eye. And ratings.

“Action!” the director shouted.

There was a kind of hush all over the set and then the magic of soap opera began. Lucas and Lorna as Roger and Ramona played out their scene with more sincerity and passion than either of them had ever previously produced under the harsh, unforgiving studio lights. At the end of the scene Lucas dropped to his knees, not out of thankfulness that he just delivered the performance of his life, but out of anguish as his reddened eye began to swell. This time when the director shouted, it was for an ambulance.

As they wheeled Lucas away on a gurney I waved good-bye, but since I was on the side with the injured eye I’m not sure that he saw my show of support. The director called for an emergency meeting with the writers to write Lucas’s character out of the rest of the script, so I took the opportunity to press speed dial number one on my cell phone and once again call Frank. Just as I was hearing his message I got an incoming call. Could Frank finally be answering one of my many voice messages? Nope, just my mother. Well, if I couldn’t be satisfied, at least I could satisfy.

“She’ll do it,” I said.

My mother and I speak the same language so there was no need for me to explain any further.

“That’s wonderful!” she shrieked. “Paula D’Agostino is going to shit a brick when I tell her I booked Lorna Douglas.”

“I’m so glad I could help.”

“Tell your Lorna dress rehearsal will be the night before the show in the Community Room,” she said. “I’ll make some refreshments and there’ll be a small invited audience so she can get the feel of the room.”

“Ma, when exactly is the show?” I asked, then held my breath.

“The eighteenth,” she replied.

“No!” I shouted, releasing my angry breath into the spiteful, spiteful air. “You have to push it up a week.”

“I can’t do that, December is completely booked. I have the Christmas tree lighting, the nativity play, the children’s pageant starring Lenny Abramawitz as Santa.”

“The gay Jew is playing Santa?”

“The children do not need to know!”

“Ma! Lorna won’t do the show unless it’s before the fourteenth, you have to rearrange your schedule.”

“It’s too late! I’ve already printed up the calendar of events. On heavy bond paper,” she replied. “We’re locked in until the end of the year.”

“Old people need to be flexible! Death is right around the corner.”

“I have no room for death in my date book,” my mother countered, then paused for effect. “Look, Stevie, just tell Lorna to have her girl call my girl and we’ll work this out.”

“I am your girl!” I shouted. “And I’m telling you we can’t work it out unless you change the date of your show.”

“Then get me somebody else. Not for nothing, but Lorna’s looking a little tired lately. She’s always clenching the sides of her eyes. She’s going to wrinkle if she keeps doing that,” my mother informed me. “Honey, Mama has to go. Coco, the seamstress, is here and she’s going to measure me for my Halloween costume. I’m going as Barbra Streisand.”

I involuntarily pulled the phone from my ear when my mother’s voice rose three octaves and twenty decibels.

“Come with me! We can be Barbra: Before and After! You can wear a midi-blouse and be Barbra from Funny Girl and I’ll be Babs from The Prince of Tides. I’m due for a manicure anyway.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Ma, I don’t dress up like a woman.”

“Oh come on! Our only competition for Best Couple will be Sheila and Vinny Caruso; they’re going as Myron and Myra Breckinridge. Vinny’s going to be Myra, he’s got less hair on his legs.”

Faced with the realization that my mother was living in a home for aged drag queens, I hung up the phone.

“Lorna,” I started. “The Christmas thing at my mother’s isn’t going to work out.”

“No biggie,” she replied. “Why don’t you ask my assistant? She might be available.”

Lorna turned from me in what seemed like slow motion, her bouncing and behaving hair whipping through the air and making her look like a brunette Heather Locklear in a vintage water-cooler moment from Melrose Place. Until then, I had thought I handled the mighty pretty assistant near-fiasco rather well.

“Kidding!” Lorna squealed.

Obviously I had.

“That bitch who picks up my dry cleaning might be a few years younger than me,” Lorna said, “but damn, I can act!”

Learning from my earlier faux pas, I remained quiet and gave Lorna one of my I’m-such-a-proud-producer stares.

“Tell your mother I’m sorry and ask Lucas to do the show.”

Lorna once again started a slo-mo turn away from me à la Heather, but paused to glance back, allow her collagen-improved lips to slink into a smirk, and add, “I hear he’s itching to sing.”

The Melrose theme music pounded in my head as I contemplated what Lorna’s smirk suggested. Could it be that hunky Lucas Fitzgerald—two-time Soap Opera Digest award winner for Best Male Lips, one-time contender for the coveted role of young Bob Barker in the E! original drama Is the Price Right? The Untold Story of Bob Barker—was gay? He did shave his chest, contour his eyebrows, and highlight his hair, but what guy didn’t these days? Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to play the gay guessing game because at that very moment there was a scene change and I saw Lindsay striding across the studio.

“Stevie!” Lindsay yelped. “Do you know how hard it is to get onto this set? Doesn’t anyone remember that I was once the star of this sinking soap?”

“You were a day player. No better than nine out of ten waiters in the city,” I reminded him. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to take you to lunch,” Lindsay replied. “Rudy Galindo opened up a new restaurant in SoHo called Blade. Isn’t that a great name?”

“I give it a perfect six.”

“Ahh! Skating lingo,” Lindsay yelped again. “I am rubbing off on you.”

“Linds, I’d love to go, but we’re in a bit of a crisis mode here. One of the actors was rushed to the hospital.”

“Drug overdose?”

“No.”

“Alcohol poisoning?”

“No.”

“What else is there?”

“Inflammation of the eye,” I said, trying to make it sound deadlier than it was.

Lindsay leaned in confidentially and whispered in my ear.

“Is ‘eye’ a euphemism for ‘dick’?”

“No!” Now it was my turn to yelp. “Why is your mind always in the gutter?”

“Sorry. I’m pre-horny.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t just come here to invite you to lunch, I also got an invitation to a sex party tonight. Say you’ll come with me. I never go to these types of functions, but I feel like shaking things up a bit.”

I thought for a moment and realized a sex party might be just what I needed. Forget my troubles, come on get…laid. And Lindsay was actually the perfect person to attend a sex party with. He really just liked basic missionary sex, with him on the bottom of course, and wouldn’t force me to do anything outrageous. Plus he upheld the gay motto that what takes place at a sex party stays at a sex party and would never mention anything that took place ever again even if he and I were having a private conversation. Lindsay’s offer seemed almost too good to pass up, until I remembered the other man in my life.

“What if Frank’s there?” I asked.

“You can finally have sex with him.”

“I want more than sex with Frank.”

“Then what a perfect setting to discover if Frank is the right guy for you,” Lindsay rationalized. “Surrounded by a hundred hot, sweaty, horny men, you and Frank choose each other. If that’s not everlasting love, Stevie boy, I don’t know what is.”

“I can’t,” I said finally.

“Why not?” Lindsay said fitfully.

“Because I’d feel awkward and stupid if the next time I see Frank I’m standing butt naked with lube on my dick.”

“Wear a jock.”

“Lindsay, you don’t understand,” I replied. “And besides, if you’re going to a sex party tonight why are you eating lunch? You know your digestive tract is unreliable.”

“I was only going to lend my support to Rudy and sample the bar,” Lindsay explained. “I hear they have a drink called a Michelle Kwantreau. Served on ice, of course.”

“Of course. Well, you enjoy sipping Michelle, I have to put out some fires here.”

“Steven, don’t look so sad,” Lindsay said. “I will ask every man at the party if his name is Frank. And if I find him I will fuck his brains out for not returning your calls. Because even though I’m a bottom, I’m tops with my friends.”

“You’re also an asshole.”

“At least I’m a clean one.”

Lindsay gave me a surprisingly supportive hug and waltzed out of the studio waving to the cameramen and the lesbian manning the Kraft food table as if he’d just shot his last episode after an incredible thirty-year run. With charm like that it was certain that tonight Lindsay’s asshole would be as popular as it would be clean.

The rest of my work day became a logistical nightmare. I was forced to meet with the director and the writing team and together we decided to extend Lucas and Lorna’s scene to include Lucas’s emotional fall to the ground. Lorna, as Ramona, would later explain that Lucas’s character, Roger, had suffered a mild stroke brought about by the emotional confrontation. This way they could exploit Lucas’s true pain, plus explain his damaged eye if it never returned to its original state. Unfortunately, this also meant that we had to bandage the face of one of the extras to play Stroke Roger, turn all of Lorna’s dialogue into monologues, and still shoot the rest of the script, which included a dream sequence in a Las Vegas casino, the pregnant nun going into labor in a secluded cave, and the blind obstetrician trying to find his way out of a cornfield maze after being lured there by none other than Rodney, the homicidal physician. It was just a typical day in Wonderland.

After work, I decided to pay Lucas a visit in the hospital. It was, after all, my duty as producer, but more importantly, I had a variety show to cast. My actions could be judged as selfish, but anyone who has ever fallen victim to the wrath of Anjanette Ferrante would understand and temper their judgment with mercy.

Like most things on the Upper East Side, Mount Sinai Hospital was devoid of any personality. It was a commanding structure and a powerful presence, but left little impression once you hopped on the 6 train and fled downtown. There was a reason that most gay men never strayed anywhere north of East 90th Street except for a quick visit to a sick friend or the occasional desperate hookup with a bi-curious married man.

As I entered Lucas’s hospital room, I thought that either the network is doing something right or I’m doing something wrong, because his room was almost as large as my apartment—and furnished with more flair. He was propped up in bed surrounded by a smorgasbord of flora with a bandage covering his eye, watching a rerun of Will & Grace. I wondered if he was watching it out of professional curiosity or personal connection.

“Hi, Lucas,” I said. “It’s me, Steven.”

Lucas turned and when he saw me his one good eye widened with surprise.

“Hey, Steven, I can’t believe you came to see me.”

“It’s what they teach in Producing 101,” I replied. “Always visit sick employees.”

“Well, that’s very thoughtful of you,” he said, forming those award-winning lips into a genuine smile. “Thanks.”

I put my cactus plant, which had seemed quirky when I bought it, next to a gorgeous spray of yellow roses and daffodils. Bending over a bit more than necessary, I was able to read the gift card attached to the yellow floral arrangement: With one eye or two, you’re still the sexiest man alive. Feel better. Love, M. If that card had been sent to me, M would probably have stood for Mother, but that’s an issue for me and my therapist. If I could find out who M stood for in Lucas’s life, I would know if Lorna was telling the truth or setting me up for a fall. Being Italian, subtlety is not my forte, so I asked him point-blank.

“Who’s M?”

“An ex.”

“M’s an ex?”

“Yup.”

“Sounds like M wants to be an ex-ex.”

“For some time now.”

“So will M get…its wish?”

My choice of third-person pronoun did not escape Lucas. He might have been visually impaired, but he wasn’t stupid. As he stared at me with one gorgeous blue eye, I thought there was subtext underneath that gaze, but it could have been the side effects of the Percodan.

“I think the real question is will I get mine.”

Another smile, another intent one-eyed stare, another insipid plot twist involving Jack, Karen and a leaking fire hydrant.

“What wish would that be?” I asked, forcing my voice not to crack.

“Lorna phoned earlier and said you might have a proposition for me,” he replied. “One that sings with opportunity.”

It was my turn to catch the clever turn of phrase. So, Lorna had called Lucas to alert him that I might offer him the chance to star in the biggest show Secaucus has ever seen. That’s why he was acting so coy and demure. It wasn’t the Percodan, it was ambition.

“Can you sing?” I asked.

Like every wannabe starlet, from the little girl who wears her mother’s false eyelashes and dances on her dining room table to the businessman who squeezes in tap lessons between meetings, Lucas answered my question the only way he knew how, by channeling Ethel Merman and singing the chorus of “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” It was a stirring rendition and Lucas displayed a powerful belting ability and the hint of a lovely vibrato. Moreover, I really didn’t have the stamina to search for another star so I told Lucas the job was his.

“Thank you, Steven, this is the break I’ve been looking for,” he effused.

“Let’s see if you thank me after you’ve met my mother,” I said.

“She can’t be nearly as bad as the narcissistic drunk who reared me,” he confided.

I flushed. Even if Lucas wasn’t gay, maybe we did have something else in common: we were the products of questionable parenting.

“I owe you one, Steven.”

“I was counting on it.”

On my three-block walk to the subway I noticed not one, not two, but four Starbucks, which was quite a high concentration of retail outlets even for the Queen of Caffeine. I took it as a sign and decided to pop into a certain Starbucks in Chelsea that held fond memories for me. But when I got close to the door my optimism waned. Was I so lonely that I clung to the possibility that a chance encounter with a stranger in Starbucks was meant to be important and life changing—when it was more likely just a random footnote in a lifetime of romantic disappointments? Before I could answer, the bad Hindi movie that was my day provided yet another scene change as another friend popped up unexpectedly. Looking through the window, I saw Flynn surveying the room like a Connecticut housewife at a rival’s dinner party. When he caught my eye, he beckoned. The next thing I knew I was sitting across from Flynn drinking my SU in the exact same seat I had occupied a few days earlier when I thought my love life was about to take off.

“What are you doing here?” we asked each other simultaneously.

“You first,” I said, not completely willing to reveal my true intentions.

“I thought I might find Frank,” Flynn admitted.

“Me too!” I squealed, ignoring my intent.

In a tone remarkably free of pity, Flynn explained that he was concerned about me and thought it might help if he stalked the Starbucks customers in case a certain dark-haired regular-looking guy walked in alone looking for someone. I was touched by Flynn’s concern, but also felt foolish. Perhaps my behavior was a by-product of my job: it’s easy to blow things out of proportion when you’re accustomed to people regularly coming back from the dead or marrying three weeks after a first hello. Evidently, I had begun to live my life in the exaggerated terms of soap opera. The truth was, I could remain seated for the next three days and Frank wouldn’t waltz through the Starbucks doors accompanied by his own personal theme music and soft lighting.

“I can’t make any excuses,” I said. “Clearly, Frank’s not interested.”

“How does that make you feel?” Flynn asked.

I thought about it for a moment and realized I was feeling lots of conflicting emotions, but one rose to the surface with more strength and speed than the others.

“Sad.”

Flynn grabbed my hand and looked me right in the eye.

“Well, get the fuck over it already.”

A little bit of Starbucks came out through my nose as I snorted in response and even though the sadness didn’t dissipate completely, a familiar happiness was growing. If I didn’t have a new boyfriend, at least I had an old friend to keep me company. Two seconds later and that number doubled, as our mutual second-tier friend, Sebastian Santiago-St. Clare, appeared and plopped down beside us.

“Hola, señoritas,” Sebastian purred. “Are you two fucking again?”

Flynn and I let go of each other’s hands and pishawed all over Sebastian’s ludicrous accusation. We should have expected such a comment since everything about Sebastian was ludicrous. If he were to file his taxes tomorrow, he would have to list college Spanish professor, fitness model, masseur, and dance instructor as his jobs. He was gorgeous, trilingual, and extremely intelligent, but also self-involved, twenty-something, and borderline sociopathic, so it was only possible to take him in small doses. Sebastian was a living, breathing recreational drug.

“I thought for a moment that the late Carl Sagan was actually right and I had stepped through a time tunnel,” Sebastian sneered. This, while sipping a double docchio.

“We were just having an after-school special moment,” Flynn explained.

“You and your TV references,” Sebastian snapped. “You boys need to get out in the natural light more often. Cathode ray tubes create lines on the face, and trust me, neither one of you needs any more lines.”

Flynn and I forced separate, though similar, smiles to appear on our lined faces; Sebastian was perilously close to receiving a social pink slip. But Sebastian could, as the Italians might say, turn from prick to paisan in the flick of a wrist, so it was no surprise that his next comment made us jump for joy instead of the exit.

“I have the greatest idea for Gus’s fortieth birthday,” Sebastian exclaimed. “Incidentally, can I just say that I pray to my spirit guides every night that when I turn forty I look as hot as Gussie Gus. Anyway, I propose we celebrate Gus’s age and not run from it like so many scary Marys do. Let’s cuddle up to his youth and throw a roller boogie party at Splash.”

For the second time that night Flynn clasped my hand. “That’s discotabulous!” he shrieked.

“We’ll be like Steve Guttenberg in the opening credits of Can’t Stop the Music,” Sebastian ’splained in a Spanish accent that he only employed when he was truly excited. “Buff, carefree, and so very, very gay. I think Gus’ll go for it.”

“He’ll love it,” I said. “And who would scoff at the chance to wear a tight midriff T-shirt and daisy dukes in public without being puked on by the fashion police?”

“Then it’s settled,” Sebastian declared.

It was decided that since Sebastian’s Thursday night fuck buddy did PR for Splash, he would handle booking the party, Flynn would deal with food and alcohol, and Lindsay would steer the decorations committee because history had taught us that he would redecorate whatever decorations were put up anyway. I, being the most organized, would put together the guest list and send out the invites.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, boys, I gotta run,” Sebastian announced, downing the last of his double-D. “I’m late for my Tuesday night blow job.”

“Oh, is it Tuesday already?” I queried.

“Time to be the highlight of some lonely queen’s week,” Sebastian declared. “I’ll be free in an hour if you guys want to be rounds two and three.”

We watched Sebastian’s denim-swathed ass wiggle out of Starbucks and we were confronted with the gay man’s age-old dilemma—sometimes the ass you wanted to boot out of your life was the same ass you wanted to rim. Sebastian, much more so than any of us, embraced his sexuality and didn’t care if he teetered on the edge of slutdom. Collectively, we tsk-tsked him; individually, we envied him.

Pushing X-rated thoughts from our minds, Flynn and I started to sketch out ideas for Gus’s party and soon we had come up with this: each guest had to come as a character from Can’t Stop the Music or a major icon from the disco era. Anticipating an influx of Donna Summers and Grace Joneses we decided to adapt a technique mastered by heterosexual women: the bridal registry, or what I refer to as the scam of the century. Along with the animated e-vite that we would create, we would include a list of appropriate disco era personalities that people could impersonate. Each time a guest chose a name it would disappear from the roster, thus ensuring that each guest would attend as a different disco star. To satisfy the popularity of such megastars as Donna and Grace we would allow them, and a few certain others, to have multiple listings that would reflect the range of their careers, such as Grace from her “Demolition Man” video and her grunt ’n’ glama role in A View to a Kill, and Donna as the whore of “Love to Love You Baby” and the paid whore of “Bad Girls.” I was filled with an emotion that took me higher when I decided I would break another one of my rules and don drag to attend the party as Samantha Sang. And then another emotion grounded me as I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I somehow always gave in to my mother’s wishes.

“Do you know what just happened?” Flynn asked.

“Anjanette picked out the perfect pair of pumps for me?” I guessed.

“No! You went thirty minutes without thinking about Frank,” Flynn said.

“Excuse me, Maureen McGovern, can you read my mind?” I asked.

“Stop joking, Superman, I’m serious.”

I didn’t want to get serious, but I also didn’t want to contradict Flynn. As a producer I had learned the art of multitasking and that’s what I had been doing. While laying out the groundwork for Gus’s landmark party, I was planning what I would say if Frank walked through the door.

“Wow, maybe I’m moving on,” I lied.

“Well, it’s a start,” Flynn said. “I guarantee you, Stevie, that by the time Gus’s party rolls around you’ll have a boyfriend who loves you almost as much as I do.”

Sometimes truth flows effortlessly into the air. When it does it’s important to catch it so you can remember it at a later date like when you’re just about to fall asleep and you’re feeling a little bit lonely. I mentally stored Flynn’s comment, certain that I would need to use it later that night.

I watched Flynn walk down the street for a moment, then continued on my way. It was a balmy night, which meant the streets were packed, but I felt like a ghost floating through the horde of happy-go-luckies. Every once in a while when one of the happy boys brushed against my shoulder, I thought I got a fleeting idea of what they felt like on the inside. Many of them were as depressed as I was. If it weren’t for the ringing of my cell phone, I would have walked the entire way home in my dismal reverie.

“Lindsay?”

“Stevie! Sebastian just called me about Gus’s party!” he exclaimed. “Disco rocks!”

“I thought you had plans tonight,” I said. “Where are you?”

“The sex party,” Lindsay confirmed. “When Sebastian called he was getting a blow job. How surprised was he when I said ‘So am I’?”

“How surprised am I that none of us can sustain a romantic relationship,” I said, obviously still connected to my dismal reverie.

“Oh, please! One underwear optional party doesn’t define who I am.”

“I know, I’m just in a bad mood.”

“Well, stop it!” Lindsay yelled. “No, not you! My friend. You keep doing what you’re doing.”

At this point I became aware of the thump, thump, thumping of house music and the clang, clang, clanging of chains and realized Lindsay was most likely spread-eagle in a sling. I could hear an occasional grunt and labored breathing so I could tell that he was also getting slung in the sling. Outside, the clouds rebelled and suddenly I was being slung by a fierce downpour. Darting in between pedestrians and partygoers, I tried to run alongside buildings to escape the raindrops but when another call came, I was already so drenched I couldn’t see clearly and inadvertently hit CONFERENCE instead of HOLD and wound up in a three-way conversation with Lindsay and my mother.

“Stevie!” my mother shouted.

“Stevie!” my friend shouted.

“Can you hear me now?” my mother shouted louder.

“Can you hear me now?” my friend shouted even louder.

“Ma!” I shouted. “Hold on, I have Lindsay on the line and I need to disconnect.”

“Lindsay!” my mother shouted again.

“Hello, Mrs. Ferrante!” Lindsay shouted back.

“Um, Lindsay, now’s not the time,” I whispered.

“How’ve you been, honey?” my mother rattled on. “Have you heard from Nancy Kerrigan lately? Is she still complaining?”

“Yes, and it’s still ‘Why me? Why me?’ I’ll give you ‘Why’—ahhh!”

“Lindsay!” I shouted, desperately trying to disconnect the call but unable to see the touchpad.

“I’m sorry, Lindsay, I forget how badly the skating world treated you. You’re always asking, ‘Why pewter? How could I lose?’”

“Who’s your daddy?” said the man fucking Lindsay.

I felt my ulcer exploding deep within my abdomen as I frantically started hitting buttons on my phone.

“Ma! Hang up and I’ll call you back.”

“I said, ‘Who’s your daddy?’” the man fucking Lindsay repeated.

“Steven,” my mother started, “I did not know Lindsay was adopted.”

“Ma! Would you please, for once, do as I say and hang up?”

“Tell him I’m very good with genealogy. I found out your father was the fourth cousin of Sophia Loren’s brother-in-law.”

“Oh God! Yes!” Lindsay cried.

“That’s right, honey!” my mother cried in reply. “Mama can help you too!”

Finally, the Lord helped me and I was able to shut off my phone so my mother could let Lindsay get fucked in peace. If only she would extend me the same courtesy, my life would be a little less complicated. Or would it?

Before I went to bed I made one final phone call. Once again I got Frank’s answering machine. I listened to his deep voice one more time, then turned off my cell phone, not bothering to worry whether or not Frank was on the other end screening his calls or getting a late-night cup at Starbucks or lurking in the shadows at Lindsay’s sex party. Wherever he was, he wasn’t in my life because he chose not to be there. Flynn was right; I was already surrounded by love. Once I realized that, it was easy to look at my life like an audience member watching a nonsensical Bollywood movie. I didn’t analyze it, I didn’t judge it, I simply accepted it for what it was.