The Last Thing I Saw - Stevenson Richard (книги без регистрации .txt) 📗

The reception, Brandstein had told me on the phone, was to launch Hey Look TV’s new reality show The Boys from Nipple Clamp Junction. The show followed the lives of the employees of a sex toy shop in West Hollywood, chronicling their ups and downs, loves and losses.

“That’s Myron Pfluge over there,” Tate said, as we moved into a sea of chattering men and a few women, most of them buff, buffed, and erect, and all of them nicely gotten up in discreet shades of cotton, linen and leather. “Myron is the show runner for The Boys. He’s best known for running three gay film festivals and a publishing house into the ground, and now Hal has given him a chance to show what he can do with a weekly TV series.”

Brandstein added, “Everybody knows exactly what kind of fiasco to expect, including Hal, but as you can see from the festive air here today, nobody gives a fuck.”

“So HLM programming is all just—what? A tax write-off?”

“Oh, no,” Tate said. “Hal truly believes he’s performing a public service. His contempt for gay America is so wide and so deep that he really thinks The Boys from Nipple Clamp Junction is what gay audiences want to sit and look at.”

“Some do, of course,” Brandstein said. “Several hundred, according to projections I’ve heard.”

“Hal badmouths his own shows all the time and splits his gut laughing about screwing over the people who produce them. He doesn’t give a damn about talent or audiences, except in one case. People say he’s embarrassed that he hasn’t produced anything that would make his mother proud. His father, old Maurice Skutnik, was a gnarly old SOB, people in Siskiyou County say, who couldn’t have cared less that his only son was a cynical purveyor of schlock to the nation’s undemanding homosexuals. But Sandra is a sweet, semi-clueless old dame, I’ve heard, who hopes someday Hal will win the Irving Thalberg humanitarian award at the Oscars.”

I said, “It sounds as if he has a ways to go.”

We had made our way to the bar and placed our orders for wine and in my case Perrier, no beer being available.

“Hal has been telling people,” Brandstein said, “that he’s got a project in the works that’s going to win him an Emmy before his mother dies. Some script that’s in development. It’s something Mason Hively is going to direct, and that tells you right there what to expect. Have you ever seen Dark Smooches?”

“Parts of it.”

“Then you know. Creativity-wise, Hal is delusional. And speaking of the prince of dingy smooches—there he is.”

We approached a knot of four men, three of whom were grinning and nodding at a man with his back to us. The back and top of the man’s head did look like a rice paddy in the dry season, with withered stalks that seemed to have been treated not with cosmetics but with a product manufactured by Sherwin-Williams.

As we moved around to face Skutnik, he caught a glimpse of Brandstein and glowered for just a hundredth of a second—it was just this side of subliminal—and then he beamed and crooned out, “Rob! Rob! And Floyd! Floyd! Doll face! Welcome, welcome!”

The three men who had been grinning and nodding picked up an extrasensory signal that their time with Hal was up, and they moved on.

“Hi, Hal. Congratulations on the series,” Brandstein said. “It looks like another notch in HLM’s glittering belt.”

Skutnik guffawed. “Oh, honey, the show is a total piece of shit, and don’t you believe anybody who says otherwise. I mean, do I give the fag public what it wants, or don’t I? We’ll do a hundred thousand DVDs easily, and we’ve already sold foreign rights to Latvia and Korea. Would I overestimate gay men’s tastes in entertainment? Never, ha ha ha!”

Tate said, “North or South Korea?”

“Oh, ha ha, that was funn-eee! North or South Korea! Rover, Rover! Come over here and listen to Floyd’s joke about our sale of The Boys to Korea!”

A large blond man with muscular breasts, an obvious Wendy’s habit, and a certain desperate glint in his eye ambled our way with a drink in one shaky hand. With the other he squeezed Brandstein’s upper arm and planted an air kiss in the space next to his head. Tate was greeted similarly, and returned the air kiss, and then he introduced me to Skutnik and Fye as “our friend Don Strachey.”

Fye grasped my hand briefly and looked straight through me as he was doing so, but Skutnik acted momentarily startled at the mention of my name. “And how do you know these two disgusting faggots, Don?” Skutnik asked me, and looked as if he was actually interested in my reply.

I said, “I’m visiting from the East, and Rob and Floyd are showing me some L.A. local color. You know, a tour of the movie stars’ homes, the Getty, a reception honoring The Boys from Nipple Clamp Junction. I’m having a marvelous time, thanks to Rob and Floyd.”

“Have fun,” Fye said tonelessly, looking over my shoulder for somebody who wasn’t a tourist.

Skutnik said, “Are you in the industry back on the other coast, Don?”

“No, I’m just a happy consumer of entertainment. I’m self-employed.”

“At what?”

“I’m a private investigator.”

“A real, live PI! How exciting!”

“Excitement is rare, luckily. Mostly I just go around poking my nose into other people’s business and asking questions.”

“Rover!” Skutnik sang out. “A fag private eye. Maybe there’s a reality show in it? You are queer, aren’t you, Don?”

“Actually, I have a wife and eleven children back east.”

Fye was focused on something dramatic going on in his own head, but Skutnik was all ears. “I’m surprised to hear that. I’ve heard that Albany is gayer than Fort Lauderdale. Are your wife and kiddies here in L.A. with you? I suppose they’re out at Disneyland for the day, and you and Rob and Floyd are enjoying a boys’ night out. Did I hit the nail on the head?” He winked.

I smiled and said, “I’m just pulling your leg, Hal. I’m gay as a coot. No wife, no young ‘uns. Just an Irish Catholic boyfriend, a thirty-year mortgage on a townhouse, and a couple of overpriced gym memberships.”

“Oh, that’s funny! You really had me going. Are you and your perverted mister lawfully wed in the state of New York? I don’t see a ring on your finger, but maybe you’ve got it wrapped around some other fat digit, ha ha!”

“Timothy and I have talked about marrying, and we’ll get around to it sooner or later. We’re devoted to each other, and we want to support the cause. Though there wouldn’t be all that many legal benefits for us, since there’s no federal recognition. I’m already in Timmy’s state-employee health insurance plan, which is lucky for me.”

“Yes,” Skutnik said, looking at me carefully. “I suppose in your line of work, Don, you often get hurt.”

“Once in a while it happens. Not as often as happens to private eyes in the movies, of course. We’re actually more like investigative reporters than tough guys with gats.”

He didn’t pick up on that or at least didn’t register any change in expression. “What are you working on now, Don? Or are you on vacation?”

Looking distracted, Fye excused himself with a little gesture.

“I’d like to say I’m out here for the sunshine and salad bars, Hal. But I’m actually working on a missing person case.”

“Really! What? Did Grandpa wander off, ha ha?”

“No, a writer is missing. His mother hired me to find him. Eddie Wenske. He was on assignment for The New York Times when he seemed to disappear in January. He was seen out here early this month. But then the trail goes cold.”

“Oh my God, Eddie Wenske!” Skutnik exclaimed. “That humpy young fag who wrote Notes from the Bush! I met him. He came in to see me, in fact. When was that? God, December, I think. Before Christmas.”

“He was out here then, that’s right,” Tate said.

“Yes, he was writing something about gay media, and of course he came up to have a look at our operation. I mean, if you’re writing about beans, you’d want to interview Heinz. Am I right?”