Topanga Canyon (K/Mc, NC-17, AU) 1/2
Summary: Sequel to Tallulah Falls; modern-day AU. Leonard visits Jim in California. What the sunshine started, Jim plans to finish.
Warnings: Explicit sex and language.
Length: 14K
Thanks to the adorable caitri for her wonderful and on-point beta-ing. I'm the one whose knowledge of Malibu and Hollywood is terrible; she knows everything.
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Leonard gets off the plane from Atlanta with a wrinkled shirt, gritty eyes, and a sense of displacement that traveling the width of a continent isn’t enough to explain.
The concourse at LAX looks like the one he just left--identical stores selling fat and sugar and scandal--narcotizing crap to pacify people to the point that they don’t mind being stuffed into metal tubes and blasted across time zones. It’s overbright and surreal, not in a shiny futuristic way but in the way of most public spaces, full of ambling, distracted people with their eyes on electronic devices, bumping into each other to a soundtrack of televisions and canned music.
It could be that society’s going to hell in a handbasket, or it could just be that Leonard hates flying.
It’s not quite a full-blown phobia; he didn’t vomit or pray, but he did grip the armrests and look for excuses for his usually anti-social self to strike up a conversation with his seat mate, a financier on the way home from visiting her daughter at college. The outrageous cost of tuition and the frustrating indecisiveness of youth got Leonard as far as cornfield country, at which point the woman broke off conversation to watch the movie, which inevitably turned out to be Jim Kirk starring in some ensemble rom-com with a perky blonde set in an implausibly clean and uncrowded Manhattan. Leonard had spent the next hour fighting the urge to drink or lean over and say to the nice lady Coincidentally, I’m going to L.A. to fuck that guy.
At least, that’s what Leonard assumes is on the agenda. It’s been eight weeks since Jim Kirk arrived in Clarkesville, Georgia, on a mission to disturb Leonard’s peace. Leonard’s peace is now thoroughly disturbed, and he accepted an invitation to visit for the weekend without any idea of why his poor company would interest someone whose face appears in magazines opposite expensive perfume ads.
Leonard’s met just outside of security by an amiable, youngish driver in a blue blazer with a sign that says DR MCOY. The guy insists on taking Leonard’s bag and pulls around a few minutes later in a Town Car. Leonard climbs into the back, feeling conspicuous even though there’s a traffic-stopping blonde in an open Jeep just a few car lengths in front of them. The air smells like tropical rot without the tropical flowers: exhaust and sweat and uncollected garbage. The driver rolls up the windows and pumps up the air conditioning and the car cruises into mid-morning traffic, Leonard relieved he doesn’t have to go near the place again for four days. It’s been years since Leonard has been anywhere for a long weekend that isn’t an amusement park with Joanna.
He’s not sure what he was expecting from Los Angeles--sun-washed Jet Age buildings in bright Disney colors--but what he gets is an endless jumble of strip malls and concrete blocks, set on streets with names as familiar as those on a Monopoly board: Culver, Wilshire, Sunset. Acting studios are as common as donut shops and as run down, and just as Leonard’s thoughts crest in cynicism, the car glides out from a tunnel and he sees a slice of blue-green Pacific.
Sprawling seaside developments follow, charmless strip malls and yoga studios and parking lots, but Leonard’s hungry eyes stay fixed on the ocean. The water is part of his far-off retirement dreams, a vague idea of seeing Polynesia or buying a sailboat and heading for the Keys. Nothing signals not-real-life to Leonard’s brain as clearly as blue ocean. He begins to relax, sinking deep into the leather seat where the asses of thousands of businessmen have gone before.
After a few miles, the car turns right and starts to wind up into the dry hills. Leonard’s looked at the map and knows he’s near Malibu, but life here looks familiar and prosaic: trashcans and mailboxes, dog-walkers and joggers. After a couple of hairpin turns and a long climb, they pull up to an electric gate and the car is buzzed in. The house--Jim’s house--is close to the road, a collection of flat rooftops hidden by an ordinary hedge. The car and driver evaporate and Leonard’s visions of peacocks and Gloria Swanson are replaced by Jim, standing at the door in jeans and a T-shirt, barefoot, looking younger and more sweetly handsome than Leonard remembers.
“Hi,” Jim says.
“Hi yourself,” Leonard replies, with more of a bass growl than he intends.
Jim just laughs and looks pleased. “Shit, I’ve missed you.” He gives Leonard a peck on the cheek, no more than a dry brush of lips, and carries his bag inside. “Come on in,” he says, when Leonard hesitates like a vampire at the threshold. “Mi casa, and all that.”
The interior of the house is woody and modern and everything matches, but it’s not overwhelming. Then they step into the living room, Leonard’s jaw drops.
The house is perched on the edge of a canyon, and beyond the endless ridges of gray-green, the hazy crests of the Sierras rise. It’s so exactly what Leonard would have bought for himself--if he were young, rich, blessed and Californian--that his eyes water, and he feels an impulse either to hug Jim or punch him.
Jim stands there for a minute, following Leonard’s line of sight, and the slaps him on the shoulder, a little too hard.
“C’mon. Let’s get you settled.”
He leads Leonard down a spiral staircase to the second floor and then into a pleasant room with a single bed. He plops Leonard’s bag on the bed and gestures around like he’s the bellboy angling for a tip.
“Your own balcony, your own coffee maker. A door that locks! See, I’m a gentleman.”
“It’s nice,” Leonard says. The truth is that it’s nicer than any hotel room he’s stayed in. “Do you mind if I wash up?”
“Sure. Bathroom’s through there, towels are clean. Can’t really say the same for their owner.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing the doors lock.”
Jim gives a half-laugh and runs a hand over the nape of his neck. There’s an awkward pause where Leonard doesn’t want to start undressing, but doesn’t want to seem uncomfortable with undressing. The elephant in Leonard’s room is the degree to which he’s here on some kind of transcontinental booty call, summoned out of Georgia to give Jim a break from a monotonous procession of perfect, tanned bodies.
“I’m doing some accounting stuff--you know, fun with spreadsheets,” Jim says finally, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Take your time. I’ll be in the dining room.”
Leonard waits a few beats until he hears Jim’s bare feet retreating, and then closes the door.
His black nylon bag sits in the middle of an expanse of glossy cherrywood, looking as cheap and out of place as Leonard feels. He rifles around for his toiletry case, eyes roaming the room. It’s decorated with black-and-white photos, same as the living room--a bicycle abandoned in a cornfield, an old gas station with dark clouds behind it; pretentious arty shit, Leonard wants to say, except that he likes Jim and wants to believe that if Jim would pick this house, he’d at least tell the decorator what to put on his walls.
Leonard showers and puts on a clean shirt and linen pants and sandals, and emerges feeling like he’s shed his East Coast skin. Jim hooks an arm around his waist and pulls him close, something between a hug and a nuzzle, as if he’s a returning visitor, an old friend.
“Get anything to eat on the plane?”
“Something that wanted to be a sandwich when it grew up.” Jim grins and waves for Leonard to follow him.
Jim’s kitchen is huge and shiny as a magazine, a reliquary for high-end appliances he doubts ever get used. Jim opens the double doors of the fridge and starts to rummage, bringing out a random assortment of cheese and cold cuts and things in takeout containers. He grabs a loaf of decent-looking bread and begins hacking at it with a bread knife, spraying crumbs on the floor, which is shiny and pristine. Leonard infers a maid.
“So, how’s Jo?” He shoves a piece of bread in his mouth and hands another to Leonard.
“Fine. Looking forward to summer.”
“How’s the hospital?”
“Understaffed.”
Jim snorts. “Especially with you gone. Good. It’s good for them to know how much they need you.”
“Everything’s got an angle with you, doesn’t it?” Leonard says, realizing too late the source of the Things are quiet, too quiet feeling that’s been bugging him since he arrived.
Jim frowns and chews, not as if he’s mad, but as if he’s trying to puzzle something out. He swallows and reaches out a hand to squeeze Leonard’s arm.
“I understand this is weird for you, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m not expecting epic sex on the granite countertop in the next five minutes. You’re here because I want your company, that’s all.”
“I know,” Leonard says, wanting to add, That’s what so weird about it.
“Right. Good. Then grab some of this shit and let’s go outside.” Jim hooks his fingers around the necks of a couple of cold beers and leads Leonard back down the spiral staircase, two stories down. Leonard’s relieved to see that the house isn’t actually perched, half-floating, on a cliff face, but has a side door leading out to a leafy patio. There are stone pavers across a shallow fish pond and, at the rear, a small but artful waterfall, which crumbles Leonard’s resolve to stay cool about the obvious wealth oozing out of every well-placed rock.
“I’ve never known anybody who owned his own waterfall.”
“I know, right? It has a switch, isn’t that wild?” He spreads the food out on a redwood table hands Leonard one of the beers. “The thing is, five years ago I was living in this shithole one-bedroom in Westlake with two other guys. There were, like, whole generations of mice that grew up in our closet. We figured they wouldn’t go near the kitchen because they were afraid of the roaches. The guy next door--his main form of exercise was screaming, mostly in the middle of the night. It smelled of garbage and everything was horrible except that the swimming pool was immaculately clean, like they’d just cleaned up after finding a body. That freaked me out so much I never went in it. And now I have my own waterfall.” His tone is matter of fact, neither reverent nor incredulous at his good fortune.
Leonard snorts and accepts a takeout container of some kind of noodles. “What about the mice? Do you still see them?”
“We hang out sometimes.” Jim takes a pull of the beer and maybe catches Leonard staring at his lips. It’s hard not to, and not only because Leonard is freshly impressed with how good-looking Jim is, au naturel in ratty old clothes, licking cheese spread off his fingers. The beer and the hot, filtered sun are relaxing him, along with Jim’s relentless normality in the face of being a guy who owns a waterfall.
“And this--” Leonard glances around. “This just kind of happened?”
“You haven’t been working Google very hard, have you? It’s an exciting story of sheer, magical luck that gets more exciting every time I tell it.”
“Then it should be plenty exciting by now. Can I hear it?”
Jim mimes having his arm twisted. “If you insist. Okay, short version: one of the roommates in the mouse apartment was a capital-A-Actor, always going on auditions, and I used to give him shit because he never landed anything, even though Yale Drama School, Actors Studio, etcetera etcetera. I bet him $100 I could get a callback if I came to one of his auditions, and I didn’t just get a callback, I got the role. Then one of the supporting actors went into rehab, and the director had already decided he liked me, so he gave me the part.”
“You were a natural, obviously.”
“Uh-huh,” Jim says, taking it not as a compliment but a statement of fact. “That was the easy part. Son of a bitch never gave me the $100, though.” He points at Leonard with a piece of celery. “Your turn. Tell me about the shittiest place you ever lived.”
“Oh.” Leonard runs a hand through his hair. “The house Jocelyn and I had in grad school, in New Orleans. A one-bedroom shotgun that smelled of mold in a sketchy neighborhood. When I tell people about it they practically piss themselves over how cute and authentic it must have been, but I can tell you, having people walk through your bedroom to get to the kitchen gets old.” Even in this otherwordly sunlight, Leonard can remember the gurgle of the old hot water heater, always on the verge of flooding the house. Jocelyn, raised in hygienic suburban luxury, had been such a good sport about it--they both had, because with a kind of anticipatory nostalgia, they’d known things would get better. “We counted once--we had furniture from eight different decades. None of it would have made it past your decorator, I guarantee.”
Jim slides his chair back and props his bare, dusty feet up on the table. “What decorator?”
“You did all this yourself?”
“Mostly. I had buyers helping me, but I knew what I wanted. I waited a year for this house while the owners dicked me around, thinking they could get more out of me because I was young and dumb.”
“And yet, no ocean view.”
“Pfft. And be stacked on top of a bunch of other rich assholes? Pass.”
It seems odd to Leonard, because he’s got Jim pegged as a social animal, someone whose energy demands an outlet, or at least an audience.
He’s contemplating this when a staccato burst of rumba music almost scares him out of his chair. Jim hauls his phone out of his back pocket, looks at the caller ID, mouths sorry, and answers it.
“Hey.” There’s a long pause filled by the tinny little voice on the phone. “Well, shit--it would have to be this week. No, no, we’ll make it happen. So what do you think we should do?” There’s a much longer pause, during which Leonard gets bored with the one-sided business conversation involving contracts and percentages and watches a buff-colored lizard stalk an insect across the sun-warmed stone. Alien birds--or at least, birds Leonard doesn’t recognize--come to drink out of the pond; a few seem to have designs on the koi.
After a while, Jim gives Leonard the just one more minute sign. “Thanks, Stel. No, I appreciate it. We still on for tomorrow night? Good, so is he. Okay, ciao, bella.” He plunks down the phone. “Sorry. I had to take that--it was my attorney. We’re working on a deal, and of course the assholes from the studio just flew back from Hong Kong or something and are ready to work. Shouldn’t get in the way of our weekend, although I may have to take some calls.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Well, it’s--” He pauses. “If it happens, it’ll be pretty big.” He gives Leonard a furtive glance and kicks at the table leg.
It’s unfair, but Leonard is faintly pissed at the lack of trust. “Are you worried about telling me? I don’t know a soul in this town. You could tell me you were fucking three goats on alternate Tuesdays and I’d have no idea who to tell.”
Jim’s lips curl. “Yeah, I know. Excess of caution. The thing is that Paradigm is offering me a six-picture deal for a shitload of money.”
“How big a shitload?”
“A hundred million--nice round number.”
“A hundred million dollars?” Leonard brain struggles briefly, trying to imagine football fields and bills lined up to the moon.
“Yeah, and they’re trying to dick me down to $95. Typical. They want to buy me and have me and show me off around town, but they don’t want people to think they’ve lost their heads.”
“But let me guess--it’s not about the money.”
“Oh, so you have read some of my interviews. No, it’s totally about the money. Six pictures, and at least four of them are going to be total pieces of shit. But I’m going to show up at six fucking thirty every day with a smile on my face, and I’m going to promote the hell out of every single one, and tell the perky morning show hosts what candy-coated geniuses those good people at Paradigm are.” During this speech, Jim’s begun fidgeting. He pulls his other foot off the table and parks his hands on the arms of his chair, as if he’s ready to spring.
“And it’s worth it? Having to promote the hell out of bunch of movies you know are crap?”
“So tell me--how much is a person’s life worth?”
“I’m a doctor. You know what I’m supposed to say: that you can’t put a value on a human life.” Leonard wishes he lived in a world where that were true, but it isn’t Black Rock, where glossy posters and the BrightIdea of the Month put a shiny patina on corporate bean counting.
Jim nods. “Yeah, well. I looked it up. An American life is worth about $7 million. Most people don’t consider that because they don’t live and work in an environment where it matters. Here, you know exactly how much you’re worth, and it’s like the number is always floating over your head, where everybody else can see it--the maitre d’, the valet parking guy, anybody you take a meeting with.”
“And that’s good?”
“Good?” Jim gives a twitchy little shrug. “It’s just the way things are. At least the rules are clear. I sign that contract, I’m worth $100 million, and I have the biggest cock in the room, until somebody gets $101.” He leans back in his chair. “So, what do you think? Too high or too low?”
“You know what kind of answer that question deserves.” Leonard knows, but he finds he can’t give it. He’s heard the truisms about actors’ fragile egos, but that hardly seems to be Jim’s problem. If anything, it’s his ruthless objectivity that gives Leonard pause.
Before the silence gets uncomfortable, Jim busts out the just-kidding grin and screeches his chair away from the table. “But enough about me. What do you want to do this afternoon? I thought we’d stay local; Friday afternoon traffic in the city is a bitch. Maybe a walk in the canyon, or on the beach?”
“Beach,” Leonard says, almost before he can finish.
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Jim’s four-car garage contains three: an SUV, a hybrid econobox, and a black sports car that looks like it’s been polished with $1000 bills.
“Guess which one I bought after I signed on to my first big picture?” Jim pops the locks on the sports car and gestures for Leonard to get in. “It’s a horrible cliche, I know,” he says, as Leonard slides his rear end across the immaculate pale grey leather. “But it’s fun to drive, and it reminds me of old times. Also, if I want to act like an asshole on the road, at least I’m feeding into the right stereotypes.”
The interior looks like the cockpit of a fighter jet and has rampant horses on every available surface.
“Buckle up,” Jim says. Leonard thinks of the canyon curves with trepidation.
“It’s not my dream to die in a celebrity car crash. Just so you know.”
It turns out, though, that Jim is a skilled and reasonably cautious driver, taking the turns at less than race-car speed, letting Leonard’s gaze drift away from the horizon and toward Jim’s long fingers wrapped around the gear shift. It’s masculine admiration of a stereotypical masculine skill. Leonard’s conditioned himself for so long to flinch mentally from any kind of attraction to the male that he has to remind himself that he’s 3000 miles from anybody whose shock is going to have a measurable impact on his life.
“Top down?” Jim asks.
“Hell yeah.”
“Do it--it’s that button, there.” Leonard pushes the button and the car performs a mechanical striptease, pieces of the roof rotating and folding as the wind begins to whip through his hair. Leonard laughs in incredulous delight.
“Shit,” Jim says, catching his eye. “I’ve got to get you on the racetrack some time.” Jim reaches onto the dash and grabs a ball cap and a pair of Ray Bans, which he proceeds to put on while driving one-handed. Leonard, glimpsing blue Pacific from behind the next curve, barely minds.
They park in a public lot of Highway 1. Jim pulls his backpack out of the trunk and says, “I don’t expect there to be photographers, but if there are, just be cool. Don’t look at them, don’t punch them. And no PDA.”
“‘PDA’? What are you, twelve?”
“No, I just mean--”
“I know what you mean. No guy-touching where your adoring public can see.” Leonard slams the door a little harder than he intends. On the one hand, Jim plainly has physical contact on his mind, which in Leonard’s mind is good because things have been headed in a buddyish direction. On the other, it makes Jim’s exhortations to courage and sexual freedom ring a little hollow, but then Leonard has unsalvageably romantic notions and Jim has a $100 million contract being dangled over his head.
They walk around the headlands, and it’s perfection of sun and wind. Leonard puts on his sunglasses and opens his shirt by a few decorous buttons.
Jim gives a wolf whistle under his breath. “Go on, take it off. You’re begging for a tan.”
Leonard waits until they’re walking down the trail to the beach before slipping his shirt off and wrapping it around his waist. Jim gives a smile that bares his teeth and lets Leonard walk past him so that Jim can walk behind.
“Careful, that’s circumstantial evidence.”
“Of what? My good taste?”
“Your possible interest in--” Leonard lowers his voice “--you know.”
“Is that what you think I meant?” Jim trots at double time so that he can talk over Leonard’s shoulder, closer to his ear. “I don’t give a flying fuck if I get photographed with men, women or circus animals, but you won’t thank me if your photo shows up on some skeezeball website with Jim’s jaunt with mystery hunk under it and an arrow pointing to your crotch.”
Leonard feels his face get warm, and not just from the sun. Jim grins back at him and pulls off his ratty T shirt.
“You wearing sunblock?” Leonard asks, trying not to stare.
“Nah.”
“You should, you know. Your skin type is melanoma central. In fact, you should let me look at a couple of those freckles when we get back.”
“See that you do,” Jim says. “Very thoroughly.”
The last 20 vertical feet is by way of a steel staircase traversing rock. At the bottom, Leonard kicks off his shoes and feels his calf muscles bunch as he takes the first few steps across the sand. The feeling goes from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, familiar and long missed; the last time he was at the beach was more than two years ago, a medical conference on Hilton Head.
The beach isn’t crowded, even on this perfect, early-summer day; there are readers in beach chairs, couples lounging on blankets, kids playing in the sand. One of them kicks a ball toward the water and Jim jogs ahead and blocks it, kicking it back a few feet past the kid so the kid has to run. The kid squares up like a little professional and returns the kick, and within seconds the kid’s parents are whipping out their cell phones, getting ready to text OMG little Aidan on the beach with JIM KIRK!! to everyone they’ve ever met. Leonard wonders briefly if it’s part of the act, loving on animals and children, a regular guy in spite of the Italian sportscar and the perfect lips, and then feels bad about thinking that, because Jim’s clearly having an uncomplicated good time.
“You ever thought about getting a dog?” Leonard asks.
Jim cocks his head, considering. “I had one when I was a kid, but we had to get rid of it. I promised myself I’d get another one some day, but not now. I’m gone for months at a time, and I wouldn’t want to leave it alone. What about you?”
“Where I live, if a dog doesn’t hunt, you might as well dye it pink and carry it around in a handbag.” Leonard makes a sidetrack to get closer to the water. “What about kids?”
“Haven’t decided. I think I’d like to practice with the dog.”
A second later, Leonard is ankle-deep in a foaming wave. “God damn, that’s cold,” Leonard says, feeling things shrivel.
“I tell that to all the East Coasters, and they never believe me,” Jim says, extending a cautious toe out from the dry sand. “I don’t know why--under the spell of those beach party movies or something.”
“You should talk. You look like you could have starred in one.” Jim looks the part, fashionably retro with the Wayfarers and baggy shorts blowing back against long, pale legs.
“Only if I can play the bad influence--you know, the kid with slicked-back hair and a motorcycle who smokes and gropes the lead girl, and then the girl slaps him and realizes she really loves the lead boy.”
“You’re too young to have seen those movies.”
“Oh, no, I did, on late-night cable, when I was a kid. I fucking loved them--everybody was having fun and they got to surf and build fires with no adults around. That was paradise as far as I was concerned. Those movies gave me the idea to come out here, in a way.”
“You’re not from California?”
“Nope, Midwest.”
“Really?” Leonard has a hard time imagining Jim being landlocked. “What state?”
“Iowa.” Jim seems more interested in turning over a dead crab with his toe.
“Where in Iowa?”
“Doesn’t matter, it’s all the same.” He raises his eyes to the water and they turn electric blue in its reflection. “Look, dolphins!”
Part 2 >>
Warnings: Explicit sex and language.
Length: 14K
Thanks to the adorable caitri for her wonderful and on-point beta-ing. I'm the one whose knowledge of Malibu and Hollywood is terrible; she knows everything.
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Leonard gets off the plane from Atlanta with a wrinkled shirt, gritty eyes, and a sense of displacement that traveling the width of a continent isn’t enough to explain.
The concourse at LAX looks like the one he just left--identical stores selling fat and sugar and scandal--narcotizing crap to pacify people to the point that they don’t mind being stuffed into metal tubes and blasted across time zones. It’s overbright and surreal, not in a shiny futuristic way but in the way of most public spaces, full of ambling, distracted people with their eyes on electronic devices, bumping into each other to a soundtrack of televisions and canned music.
It could be that society’s going to hell in a handbasket, or it could just be that Leonard hates flying.
It’s not quite a full-blown phobia; he didn’t vomit or pray, but he did grip the armrests and look for excuses for his usually anti-social self to strike up a conversation with his seat mate, a financier on the way home from visiting her daughter at college. The outrageous cost of tuition and the frustrating indecisiveness of youth got Leonard as far as cornfield country, at which point the woman broke off conversation to watch the movie, which inevitably turned out to be Jim Kirk starring in some ensemble rom-com with a perky blonde set in an implausibly clean and uncrowded Manhattan. Leonard had spent the next hour fighting the urge to drink or lean over and say to the nice lady Coincidentally, I’m going to L.A. to fuck that guy.
At least, that’s what Leonard assumes is on the agenda. It’s been eight weeks since Jim Kirk arrived in Clarkesville, Georgia, on a mission to disturb Leonard’s peace. Leonard’s peace is now thoroughly disturbed, and he accepted an invitation to visit for the weekend without any idea of why his poor company would interest someone whose face appears in magazines opposite expensive perfume ads.
Leonard’s met just outside of security by an amiable, youngish driver in a blue blazer with a sign that says DR MCOY. The guy insists on taking Leonard’s bag and pulls around a few minutes later in a Town Car. Leonard climbs into the back, feeling conspicuous even though there’s a traffic-stopping blonde in an open Jeep just a few car lengths in front of them. The air smells like tropical rot without the tropical flowers: exhaust and sweat and uncollected garbage. The driver rolls up the windows and pumps up the air conditioning and the car cruises into mid-morning traffic, Leonard relieved he doesn’t have to go near the place again for four days. It’s been years since Leonard has been anywhere for a long weekend that isn’t an amusement park with Joanna.
He’s not sure what he was expecting from Los Angeles--sun-washed Jet Age buildings in bright Disney colors--but what he gets is an endless jumble of strip malls and concrete blocks, set on streets with names as familiar as those on a Monopoly board: Culver, Wilshire, Sunset. Acting studios are as common as donut shops and as run down, and just as Leonard’s thoughts crest in cynicism, the car glides out from a tunnel and he sees a slice of blue-green Pacific.
Sprawling seaside developments follow, charmless strip malls and yoga studios and parking lots, but Leonard’s hungry eyes stay fixed on the ocean. The water is part of his far-off retirement dreams, a vague idea of seeing Polynesia or buying a sailboat and heading for the Keys. Nothing signals not-real-life to Leonard’s brain as clearly as blue ocean. He begins to relax, sinking deep into the leather seat where the asses of thousands of businessmen have gone before.
After a few miles, the car turns right and starts to wind up into the dry hills. Leonard’s looked at the map and knows he’s near Malibu, but life here looks familiar and prosaic: trashcans and mailboxes, dog-walkers and joggers. After a couple of hairpin turns and a long climb, they pull up to an electric gate and the car is buzzed in. The house--Jim’s house--is close to the road, a collection of flat rooftops hidden by an ordinary hedge. The car and driver evaporate and Leonard’s visions of peacocks and Gloria Swanson are replaced by Jim, standing at the door in jeans and a T-shirt, barefoot, looking younger and more sweetly handsome than Leonard remembers.
“Hi,” Jim says.
“Hi yourself,” Leonard replies, with more of a bass growl than he intends.
Jim just laughs and looks pleased. “Shit, I’ve missed you.” He gives Leonard a peck on the cheek, no more than a dry brush of lips, and carries his bag inside. “Come on in,” he says, when Leonard hesitates like a vampire at the threshold. “Mi casa, and all that.”
The interior of the house is woody and modern and everything matches, but it’s not overwhelming. Then they step into the living room, Leonard’s jaw drops.
The house is perched on the edge of a canyon, and beyond the endless ridges of gray-green, the hazy crests of the Sierras rise. It’s so exactly what Leonard would have bought for himself--if he were young, rich, blessed and Californian--that his eyes water, and he feels an impulse either to hug Jim or punch him.
Jim stands there for a minute, following Leonard’s line of sight, and the slaps him on the shoulder, a little too hard.
“C’mon. Let’s get you settled.”
He leads Leonard down a spiral staircase to the second floor and then into a pleasant room with a single bed. He plops Leonard’s bag on the bed and gestures around like he’s the bellboy angling for a tip.
“Your own balcony, your own coffee maker. A door that locks! See, I’m a gentleman.”
“It’s nice,” Leonard says. The truth is that it’s nicer than any hotel room he’s stayed in. “Do you mind if I wash up?”
“Sure. Bathroom’s through there, towels are clean. Can’t really say the same for their owner.”
“Then I guess it’s a good thing the doors lock.”
Jim gives a half-laugh and runs a hand over the nape of his neck. There’s an awkward pause where Leonard doesn’t want to start undressing, but doesn’t want to seem uncomfortable with undressing. The elephant in Leonard’s room is the degree to which he’s here on some kind of transcontinental booty call, summoned out of Georgia to give Jim a break from a monotonous procession of perfect, tanned bodies.
“I’m doing some accounting stuff--you know, fun with spreadsheets,” Jim says finally, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Take your time. I’ll be in the dining room.”
Leonard waits a few beats until he hears Jim’s bare feet retreating, and then closes the door.
His black nylon bag sits in the middle of an expanse of glossy cherrywood, looking as cheap and out of place as Leonard feels. He rifles around for his toiletry case, eyes roaming the room. It’s decorated with black-and-white photos, same as the living room--a bicycle abandoned in a cornfield, an old gas station with dark clouds behind it; pretentious arty shit, Leonard wants to say, except that he likes Jim and wants to believe that if Jim would pick this house, he’d at least tell the decorator what to put on his walls.
Leonard showers and puts on a clean shirt and linen pants and sandals, and emerges feeling like he’s shed his East Coast skin. Jim hooks an arm around his waist and pulls him close, something between a hug and a nuzzle, as if he’s a returning visitor, an old friend.
“Get anything to eat on the plane?”
“Something that wanted to be a sandwich when it grew up.” Jim grins and waves for Leonard to follow him.
Jim’s kitchen is huge and shiny as a magazine, a reliquary for high-end appliances he doubts ever get used. Jim opens the double doors of the fridge and starts to rummage, bringing out a random assortment of cheese and cold cuts and things in takeout containers. He grabs a loaf of decent-looking bread and begins hacking at it with a bread knife, spraying crumbs on the floor, which is shiny and pristine. Leonard infers a maid.
“So, how’s Jo?” He shoves a piece of bread in his mouth and hands another to Leonard.
“Fine. Looking forward to summer.”
“How’s the hospital?”
“Understaffed.”
Jim snorts. “Especially with you gone. Good. It’s good for them to know how much they need you.”
“Everything’s got an angle with you, doesn’t it?” Leonard says, realizing too late the source of the Things are quiet, too quiet feeling that’s been bugging him since he arrived.
Jim frowns and chews, not as if he’s mad, but as if he’s trying to puzzle something out. He swallows and reaches out a hand to squeeze Leonard’s arm.
“I understand this is weird for you, but it doesn’t have to be. I’m not expecting epic sex on the granite countertop in the next five minutes. You’re here because I want your company, that’s all.”
“I know,” Leonard says, wanting to add, That’s what so weird about it.
“Right. Good. Then grab some of this shit and let’s go outside.” Jim hooks his fingers around the necks of a couple of cold beers and leads Leonard back down the spiral staircase, two stories down. Leonard’s relieved to see that the house isn’t actually perched, half-floating, on a cliff face, but has a side door leading out to a leafy patio. There are stone pavers across a shallow fish pond and, at the rear, a small but artful waterfall, which crumbles Leonard’s resolve to stay cool about the obvious wealth oozing out of every well-placed rock.
“I’ve never known anybody who owned his own waterfall.”
“I know, right? It has a switch, isn’t that wild?” He spreads the food out on a redwood table hands Leonard one of the beers. “The thing is, five years ago I was living in this shithole one-bedroom in Westlake with two other guys. There were, like, whole generations of mice that grew up in our closet. We figured they wouldn’t go near the kitchen because they were afraid of the roaches. The guy next door--his main form of exercise was screaming, mostly in the middle of the night. It smelled of garbage and everything was horrible except that the swimming pool was immaculately clean, like they’d just cleaned up after finding a body. That freaked me out so much I never went in it. And now I have my own waterfall.” His tone is matter of fact, neither reverent nor incredulous at his good fortune.
Leonard snorts and accepts a takeout container of some kind of noodles. “What about the mice? Do you still see them?”
“We hang out sometimes.” Jim takes a pull of the beer and maybe catches Leonard staring at his lips. It’s hard not to, and not only because Leonard is freshly impressed with how good-looking Jim is, au naturel in ratty old clothes, licking cheese spread off his fingers. The beer and the hot, filtered sun are relaxing him, along with Jim’s relentless normality in the face of being a guy who owns a waterfall.
“And this--” Leonard glances around. “This just kind of happened?”
“You haven’t been working Google very hard, have you? It’s an exciting story of sheer, magical luck that gets more exciting every time I tell it.”
“Then it should be plenty exciting by now. Can I hear it?”
Jim mimes having his arm twisted. “If you insist. Okay, short version: one of the roommates in the mouse apartment was a capital-A-Actor, always going on auditions, and I used to give him shit because he never landed anything, even though Yale Drama School, Actors Studio, etcetera etcetera. I bet him $100 I could get a callback if I came to one of his auditions, and I didn’t just get a callback, I got the role. Then one of the supporting actors went into rehab, and the director had already decided he liked me, so he gave me the part.”
“You were a natural, obviously.”
“Uh-huh,” Jim says, taking it not as a compliment but a statement of fact. “That was the easy part. Son of a bitch never gave me the $100, though.” He points at Leonard with a piece of celery. “Your turn. Tell me about the shittiest place you ever lived.”
“Oh.” Leonard runs a hand through his hair. “The house Jocelyn and I had in grad school, in New Orleans. A one-bedroom shotgun that smelled of mold in a sketchy neighborhood. When I tell people about it they practically piss themselves over how cute and authentic it must have been, but I can tell you, having people walk through your bedroom to get to the kitchen gets old.” Even in this otherwordly sunlight, Leonard can remember the gurgle of the old hot water heater, always on the verge of flooding the house. Jocelyn, raised in hygienic suburban luxury, had been such a good sport about it--they both had, because with a kind of anticipatory nostalgia, they’d known things would get better. “We counted once--we had furniture from eight different decades. None of it would have made it past your decorator, I guarantee.”
Jim slides his chair back and props his bare, dusty feet up on the table. “What decorator?”
“You did all this yourself?”
“Mostly. I had buyers helping me, but I knew what I wanted. I waited a year for this house while the owners dicked me around, thinking they could get more out of me because I was young and dumb.”
“And yet, no ocean view.”
“Pfft. And be stacked on top of a bunch of other rich assholes? Pass.”
It seems odd to Leonard, because he’s got Jim pegged as a social animal, someone whose energy demands an outlet, or at least an audience.
He’s contemplating this when a staccato burst of rumba music almost scares him out of his chair. Jim hauls his phone out of his back pocket, looks at the caller ID, mouths sorry, and answers it.
“Hey.” There’s a long pause filled by the tinny little voice on the phone. “Well, shit--it would have to be this week. No, no, we’ll make it happen. So what do you think we should do?” There’s a much longer pause, during which Leonard gets bored with the one-sided business conversation involving contracts and percentages and watches a buff-colored lizard stalk an insect across the sun-warmed stone. Alien birds--or at least, birds Leonard doesn’t recognize--come to drink out of the pond; a few seem to have designs on the koi.
After a while, Jim gives Leonard the just one more minute sign. “Thanks, Stel. No, I appreciate it. We still on for tomorrow night? Good, so is he. Okay, ciao, bella.” He plunks down the phone. “Sorry. I had to take that--it was my attorney. We’re working on a deal, and of course the assholes from the studio just flew back from Hong Kong or something and are ready to work. Shouldn’t get in the way of our weekend, although I may have to take some calls.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Well, it’s--” He pauses. “If it happens, it’ll be pretty big.” He gives Leonard a furtive glance and kicks at the table leg.
It’s unfair, but Leonard is faintly pissed at the lack of trust. “Are you worried about telling me? I don’t know a soul in this town. You could tell me you were fucking three goats on alternate Tuesdays and I’d have no idea who to tell.”
Jim’s lips curl. “Yeah, I know. Excess of caution. The thing is that Paradigm is offering me a six-picture deal for a shitload of money.”
“How big a shitload?”
“A hundred million--nice round number.”
“A hundred million dollars?” Leonard brain struggles briefly, trying to imagine football fields and bills lined up to the moon.
“Yeah, and they’re trying to dick me down to $95. Typical. They want to buy me and have me and show me off around town, but they don’t want people to think they’ve lost their heads.”
“But let me guess--it’s not about the money.”
“Oh, so you have read some of my interviews. No, it’s totally about the money. Six pictures, and at least four of them are going to be total pieces of shit. But I’m going to show up at six fucking thirty every day with a smile on my face, and I’m going to promote the hell out of every single one, and tell the perky morning show hosts what candy-coated geniuses those good people at Paradigm are.” During this speech, Jim’s begun fidgeting. He pulls his other foot off the table and parks his hands on the arms of his chair, as if he’s ready to spring.
“And it’s worth it? Having to promote the hell out of bunch of movies you know are crap?”
“So tell me--how much is a person’s life worth?”
“I’m a doctor. You know what I’m supposed to say: that you can’t put a value on a human life.” Leonard wishes he lived in a world where that were true, but it isn’t Black Rock, where glossy posters and the BrightIdea of the Month put a shiny patina on corporate bean counting.
Jim nods. “Yeah, well. I looked it up. An American life is worth about $7 million. Most people don’t consider that because they don’t live and work in an environment where it matters. Here, you know exactly how much you’re worth, and it’s like the number is always floating over your head, where everybody else can see it--the maitre d’, the valet parking guy, anybody you take a meeting with.”
“And that’s good?”
“Good?” Jim gives a twitchy little shrug. “It’s just the way things are. At least the rules are clear. I sign that contract, I’m worth $100 million, and I have the biggest cock in the room, until somebody gets $101.” He leans back in his chair. “So, what do you think? Too high or too low?”
“You know what kind of answer that question deserves.” Leonard knows, but he finds he can’t give it. He’s heard the truisms about actors’ fragile egos, but that hardly seems to be Jim’s problem. If anything, it’s his ruthless objectivity that gives Leonard pause.
Before the silence gets uncomfortable, Jim busts out the just-kidding grin and screeches his chair away from the table. “But enough about me. What do you want to do this afternoon? I thought we’d stay local; Friday afternoon traffic in the city is a bitch. Maybe a walk in the canyon, or on the beach?”
“Beach,” Leonard says, almost before he can finish.
+++++
Jim’s four-car garage contains three: an SUV, a hybrid econobox, and a black sports car that looks like it’s been polished with $1000 bills.
“Guess which one I bought after I signed on to my first big picture?” Jim pops the locks on the sports car and gestures for Leonard to get in. “It’s a horrible cliche, I know,” he says, as Leonard slides his rear end across the immaculate pale grey leather. “But it’s fun to drive, and it reminds me of old times. Also, if I want to act like an asshole on the road, at least I’m feeding into the right stereotypes.”
The interior looks like the cockpit of a fighter jet and has rampant horses on every available surface.
“Buckle up,” Jim says. Leonard thinks of the canyon curves with trepidation.
“It’s not my dream to die in a celebrity car crash. Just so you know.”
It turns out, though, that Jim is a skilled and reasonably cautious driver, taking the turns at less than race-car speed, letting Leonard’s gaze drift away from the horizon and toward Jim’s long fingers wrapped around the gear shift. It’s masculine admiration of a stereotypical masculine skill. Leonard’s conditioned himself for so long to flinch mentally from any kind of attraction to the male that he has to remind himself that he’s 3000 miles from anybody whose shock is going to have a measurable impact on his life.
“Top down?” Jim asks.
“Hell yeah.”
“Do it--it’s that button, there.” Leonard pushes the button and the car performs a mechanical striptease, pieces of the roof rotating and folding as the wind begins to whip through his hair. Leonard laughs in incredulous delight.
“Shit,” Jim says, catching his eye. “I’ve got to get you on the racetrack some time.” Jim reaches onto the dash and grabs a ball cap and a pair of Ray Bans, which he proceeds to put on while driving one-handed. Leonard, glimpsing blue Pacific from behind the next curve, barely minds.
They park in a public lot of Highway 1. Jim pulls his backpack out of the trunk and says, “I don’t expect there to be photographers, but if there are, just be cool. Don’t look at them, don’t punch them. And no PDA.”
“‘PDA’? What are you, twelve?”
“No, I just mean--”
“I know what you mean. No guy-touching where your adoring public can see.” Leonard slams the door a little harder than he intends. On the one hand, Jim plainly has physical contact on his mind, which in Leonard’s mind is good because things have been headed in a buddyish direction. On the other, it makes Jim’s exhortations to courage and sexual freedom ring a little hollow, but then Leonard has unsalvageably romantic notions and Jim has a $100 million contract being dangled over his head.
They walk around the headlands, and it’s perfection of sun and wind. Leonard puts on his sunglasses and opens his shirt by a few decorous buttons.
Jim gives a wolf whistle under his breath. “Go on, take it off. You’re begging for a tan.”
Leonard waits until they’re walking down the trail to the beach before slipping his shirt off and wrapping it around his waist. Jim gives a smile that bares his teeth and lets Leonard walk past him so that Jim can walk behind.
“Careful, that’s circumstantial evidence.”
“Of what? My good taste?”
“Your possible interest in--” Leonard lowers his voice “--you know.”
“Is that what you think I meant?” Jim trots at double time so that he can talk over Leonard’s shoulder, closer to his ear. “I don’t give a flying fuck if I get photographed with men, women or circus animals, but you won’t thank me if your photo shows up on some skeezeball website with Jim’s jaunt with mystery hunk under it and an arrow pointing to your crotch.”
Leonard feels his face get warm, and not just from the sun. Jim grins back at him and pulls off his ratty T shirt.
“You wearing sunblock?” Leonard asks, trying not to stare.
“Nah.”
“You should, you know. Your skin type is melanoma central. In fact, you should let me look at a couple of those freckles when we get back.”
“See that you do,” Jim says. “Very thoroughly.”
The last 20 vertical feet is by way of a steel staircase traversing rock. At the bottom, Leonard kicks off his shoes and feels his calf muscles bunch as he takes the first few steps across the sand. The feeling goes from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, familiar and long missed; the last time he was at the beach was more than two years ago, a medical conference on Hilton Head.
The beach isn’t crowded, even on this perfect, early-summer day; there are readers in beach chairs, couples lounging on blankets, kids playing in the sand. One of them kicks a ball toward the water and Jim jogs ahead and blocks it, kicking it back a few feet past the kid so the kid has to run. The kid squares up like a little professional and returns the kick, and within seconds the kid’s parents are whipping out their cell phones, getting ready to text OMG little Aidan on the beach with JIM KIRK!! to everyone they’ve ever met. Leonard wonders briefly if it’s part of the act, loving on animals and children, a regular guy in spite of the Italian sportscar and the perfect lips, and then feels bad about thinking that, because Jim’s clearly having an uncomplicated good time.
“You ever thought about getting a dog?” Leonard asks.
Jim cocks his head, considering. “I had one when I was a kid, but we had to get rid of it. I promised myself I’d get another one some day, but not now. I’m gone for months at a time, and I wouldn’t want to leave it alone. What about you?”
“Where I live, if a dog doesn’t hunt, you might as well dye it pink and carry it around in a handbag.” Leonard makes a sidetrack to get closer to the water. “What about kids?”
“Haven’t decided. I think I’d like to practice with the dog.”
A second later, Leonard is ankle-deep in a foaming wave. “God damn, that’s cold,” Leonard says, feeling things shrivel.
“I tell that to all the East Coasters, and they never believe me,” Jim says, extending a cautious toe out from the dry sand. “I don’t know why--under the spell of those beach party movies or something.”
“You should talk. You look like you could have starred in one.” Jim looks the part, fashionably retro with the Wayfarers and baggy shorts blowing back against long, pale legs.
“Only if I can play the bad influence--you know, the kid with slicked-back hair and a motorcycle who smokes and gropes the lead girl, and then the girl slaps him and realizes she really loves the lead boy.”
“You’re too young to have seen those movies.”
“Oh, no, I did, on late-night cable, when I was a kid. I fucking loved them--everybody was having fun and they got to surf and build fires with no adults around. That was paradise as far as I was concerned. Those movies gave me the idea to come out here, in a way.”
“You’re not from California?”
“Nope, Midwest.”
“Really?” Leonard has a hard time imagining Jim being landlocked. “What state?”
“Iowa.” Jim seems more interested in turning over a dead crab with his toe.
“Where in Iowa?”
“Doesn’t matter, it’s all the same.” He raises his eyes to the water and they turn electric blue in its reflection. “Look, dolphins!”
Part 2 >>