Topanga Canyon (K/Mc, NC-17, AU) 2/2
<< Part 1
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As the sun heads for the horizon they go to a restaurant a little way up the coast, drinking and eating at an easy pace, filling in the rough outlines of their lives for each other. Jim dropped out after a year in college, drifted around the country until he washed up in L.A., and used the first burst of money from his acting career to fuel a mania for travel. He’s skied in the summer in Argentina, spent Christmas in a jungle lodge in the Amazon, slept in a van on the beach while surfing in Baja. It seems like too much for a person who’s rising 30, but Leonard’s learning that Jim loves nothing more than to smash obstacles--of odds, access, career possibilities.
Leonard sees how frighteningly easy it is to acclimate to privilege. They’re sitting at the best oceanview table in a restaurant that was full when Jim walked in without a reservation. They fight over the check, Jim winning with a firm hand, a self-mocking smile and reminder that Leonard is his guest. When they leave, Jim’s car is waiting for him, surrounded by a small crowd pretending to look at their cell phones while their eyes slide hungrily over it and him.
Night settles in, cool and clear. Leonard’s sun-soaked body shivers a little in its short sleeves, and Jim closes the roof on the car and leans over to rub Leonard’s goosebumped forearm. It gets Leonard’s engine running, low and deep like the one under the hood.
They walk through Jim’s front door and Leonard tries to repulse the little ripple of home. Leonard is a den-wolf by nature; he likes to growl at the world from the warmth and safety of his cave. This is Jim’s cave, but he gets the same feeling; walking in the door into the dark, Jim flipping the switch and dropping his backpack with a thud onto the floor.
Where things go from here, Leonard isn’t sure. When Leonard drives down to Atlanta for the express purpose of hooking up, it’s understood that fucking is the main point, and equally clear (to Leonard, at least) that Leonard will not stay the night. This is a date of sorts, with all of a date’s weird choreography and the added awkwardness of Leonard staying in the same house.
“C’mere,” he says, sliding open the door onto the deck. Leonard steps back out into night air, cooler here for the cliff exposure. Jim leans on the balustrade, arms crossed to keep himself warm, and points at the stars.
“It’s pretty clear tonight. How are you on constellations?” The moon hasn’t risen yet, and the skyglow from the city fades above the canyon wall.
“Pretty crappy. I grew up in the city, remember?” Leonard leans in next to Jim, close enough that their arms are touching.
“City boy,” Jim chuckles. “That doesn’t fit you at all. Okay, so--look. That’s the Big Dipper, right? It’s part of Ursa Major. Those two stars on the outside part of the cup point to Polaris, the Pole Star. That’s what the ancient navigators used to find their way across the oceans. They think maybe Polynesians made it here, to Malibu, and taught the local people how to build their style of canoes. Pretty amazing, huh?”
Leonard is more amazed that Jim knows this than by the fact itself. Jim’s got weird pockets of specialized knowledge that smack of of a book-loving child.
“You always been interested in the stars?” Leonard asks, shifting his weight a little in Jim’s direction.
“Yeah, I guess. My mom was into it. She bought me a telescope, when I was little. Say what you like about Iowa, but the sky is big and dark.” Jim’s voice has gone soft, the energetic lines of his body lax; there’s a vulnerability there. Leonard slips a tentative arm around Jim’s waist and he leans in, easily, as if it’s something they’ve been accustomed to do for a long time.
It’s just as easy to find Jim’s mouth, to turn and let the banister support his weight, hanging over air, while Jim’s body slides across his own, a shock of warmth and hard bone and muscle. He smells like clean sweat and salt air, delicious, and his mouth is hot and salty.
“Thank fuck for that,” Jim hisses into his ear after a few minutes, his body full against Leonard’s, so that Leonard can feel the press of Jim’s erection against his thigh. “If I’d had to be a fucking gentleman all night, it would have killed me. Watching you eat breadsticks--I thought I was going to have to pull you under the table.”
Leonard’s laugh turns into a gasp as Jim’s fingers slide into the waistband of his pants, clumsy and urgent. He jimmies the fly open and tugs Leonard’s pants and shorts down, all in one shot. Leonard’s cock springs into the cool night air and Jim wraps warm hands around it.
“Fuck yeah,” Jim says, breathless, like Leonard’s dick is a fast car.
He kneels down and sucks it into his mouth like he can’t wait another second. Leonard grips the balustrade and glances around, briefly panicked at the exposure, but there’s nothing but darkness. Jim’s mouth around him feels like slipping into a warm bath, except that it’s the opposite of relaxing. Jim’s hands stroke his thighs, and his eyes roll up to the stars above.
Jim takes his time, savoring, exploring Leonard’s ass with his hands, using his lips and tongue in ways Leonard hadn’t known were possible. It’s not just a shockingly good blowjob, though Leonard would be fine with that; Jim is showing him something, demonstrating something about life even as the tip of his tongue rings Leonard’s foreskin: Anything good can always be better.
Leonard runs his fingers through Jim’s hair, thankful. Jim seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself but Leonard’s innate sexual gallantry won’t let him prolong the inevitable. As he lets it build he tries pulling away, just a little, as much as he can with his hips fenced in by the railing, as a warning that he’s going to blow. Jim stays put and if anything shuffles a little closer on his knees, cupping Leonard’s balls, redoubling his efforts in a way that almost brings tears to Leonard’s sun-bleached eyes.
Orgasm hits him like a blow to his sacrum and he shoots, sand slipping away under him, gripping onto the railing so he isn’t pulled out to sea. There’s white light and a wash of pleasure across his nerves and brain and he actually cries out, a rarity. He swears he can feel Jim smirking, lips still wrapped around his softening cock. He takes an amazingly long time to swallow.
When Leonard gets muscle control back he reaches down to lift Jim up off what must surely be sore knees, but Jim rises easily, dragging his hands up Leonard’s sides, up under his shirt to his ribs. Leonard kisses him, long and deep, tasting himself and ghosts of wine and pepper.
“Do you have to be so damn good at everything you do?” Jim grins and rubs his hand along the scratch of Leonard’s stubble.
“I mostly concentrate on the sex. It’s amazing how much easier everything else is once you get the hang of that. Speaking of which--I’m fucking cold. Let’s go inside.” He threads his fingers through Leonard’s and pulls, Leonard following willingly.
Leonard loves the stillness inside, the big empty place with only the two of them and the creak of the floorboards. He arrived 10 hours ago in a stranger’s house, and now he’s here with Jim, who only lets go of his hand to grasp the rail as they go down the spiral stairs.
They pass Leonard’s bedroom and Jim doesn’t pause, just jerks a finger toward it.
“I had the housekeeper put actual sheets on your bed just, you know, in case. But you don’t have to bother mussing them up; she’s cool.”
“Was it that much of a sure thing?”
“With me? Yeah. But let me ask,” Jim says, as they arrive at his bedroom. “Out of curiosity, is there anything I could have done to fuck it up?”
“You could have been a conceited asshole. But I was pretty sure you weren’t, unless that bump on the head you took in April altered your personality.” Jim flicks on the lights and Leonard gazes on the inner sanctum. After the car, he’d expected--may not ceiling mirrors and satin sheets, but some kind of visible testament to Jim’s surely staggering ability to get laid. Instead, there’s blond wood and pearl grey fabric and not much of anything else, except a huge, abstract painting that looks like hills, maybe the hills around this house. It’s unsettling, in a way; there’s no evidence in the house of any other human beings in Jim’s life, unless there’s a hidden study somewhere with photos on the mantel, somebody’s shirt forgotten in a closet.
“Something definitely happened in April,” Jim says. “You fucked my concussion away, for one thing. Best medical treatment I ever got; that hillbilly hospital of yours is pretty advanced in that respect. Oh, that reminds me--you’re having lunch tomorrow with Dr. Lena something-Eastern-European, director of the Emergency Medicine Center at UCLA.”
Jim is in the process of shucking his shirt, so Leonard has to wait an agonizing three seconds to say “I’m what?” to his face.
“Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to sleep in. I’m meeting with my agent mid-day anyway. We’ll get you a car into the city.” He drops his T-shirt on the floor and goes for his belt buckle. “What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’re--who did you have to call to get that meeting? And why?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” The jeans drop to the floor with a clank. “UCLA is the best hospital in Los Angeles County and one of the top hospitals in the country according to U.S. News and World Report.” This is not a sentence Leonard ever expected to hear while watching someone strip off his briefs. Jim’s erection appears unaffected by the conversation, though even it isn’t enough to distract Leonard from the topic at hand.
“I’m sure that’s true, but what does that have to do with me?”
“Professional contacts. Networking. Future possibilities.” Jim folds his arms, looking as businesslike as he can while naked. “Aren’t you going to undressed?”
Leonard actually starts unbuttoning his shirt before stopping dead. “God damn it. I guess this is some weird kind of favor, but you could warn a guy. How did you even get me a meeting like that?”
“This one was easy. Me to my agent’s dad to David Geffen and then to the hospital.”
“Oh, fantastic.” Leonard hasn’t had a string pulled for him since his dad insisted Leonard apply to Tulane as a legacy, a status his grades rendered irrelevant. Leonard wonders how Jim expects this favor to be repaid. “Some bigwig is making her have lunch with an idiot she barely knows on her day off. She’ll be in a great mood.”
“Ahh,” Jim scoffs, reaching for Leonard’s top button, “not everyone is as pure as you. You probably don’t eat the cookies your grateful patients bake for you.”
“This isn’t exactly cookies.”
“What, the lunch this? Or this this?” Jim’s hands stop halfway down and drop to his sides. “Aww, fuck, do I have to say it? I like having you around. That was kind of the theme of the earlier parts of the day--the walking on the beach and candlelight dinner and whatnot. The theme of this part is that I find you insanely hot and would really like to fuck your brains out, as proven by the fact that I’m still hard after thinking about David Geffen. Go chow with the lady, tell her how much better you do things at Central Bumfuck Hospital for all I care.” He gives an aggrieved little sigh. “I was just trying to help.”
That pretty much crushes Leonard’s rebellion, and he mentally files Dr. Lena Whatever under I’ll worry about it tomorrow. Jim finishes unbuttoning his shirt but keeps teasing, grazing his fingers up Leonard’s sides, pushing the shirt open so he can graze fingers against Leonard’s nipples. It’s clear now to Leonard that Jim’s life is a vector, and that the seeming tranquility of this place is an illusion: it’s an airplane moving through space, keeping a steady speed so there’s no sense of movement at all, until you look down and see the terrain has changed completely underneath you.
Leonard shakes his arms a little and his shirt slides off, Jim’s hands filling the void, stroking over Leonard’s pecs and shoulders. The two of them are the same height, and Leonard likes that, likes being nose to nose and shoulder to shoulder and being able to look directly into Jim’s eyes. Jim cups a hand against his cheek and says, “You’re still having fun, right?”
“Sure.” Hard not to, with Jim’s warm hands all over him.
“Just curious...you ever bottom? Is that something that you like?”
“Yeah, I have.” He tries to sound nonchalant. The truth is that--in light of his trust issues and safety issues and all-around issues--he’s only tried it a couple of times.
Jim presses, “As in, you like it, or you can take it or leave it?” Now Jim’s hands have circled their way around to his ass, by way of introduction.
“As in, I’d like to try it again. See if I can improve on the last times.”
“Ah,” Jim says, digging his fingers gently into Leonard’s flesh. “A challenge.”
“Shower first, maybe?”
Jim leans in and takes a breath of him, like he’s sniffing wine. “Doesn’t matter to me; you smell great. But sure.”
Of course, Jim’s got a shower the size of some New York apartments, with jets the likes of which he’s only seen in in-flight magazines. He lets Jim strip off his pants and they hop in into the steam together. It’s curiously innocent, or at least seems that way until Jim gets hold of the soap and starts lathering, slippery hands running over his shoulders and down his back and between his cheeks. Jim’s hair curls at the ends and his cheeks turn pink and his eyes sparkle, and Leonard realizes just how far gone he is, into this fantasyland of Jim’s creation, into Jim himself. It’s unfair, really--Leonard’s been living off crumbs, occasional weekend dalliances with men who, though no older than Jim, knew so much less than Leonard about what they wanted from life and from Leonard himself.
Leonard grabs the soap away from Jim, and gives a little prayer for his own soul.
Jim’s skin is warm and slick under his hands, and Leonard, feeling justified in his greed, wastes no time in reaching for his cock. It’s already half hard and rises beautifully into his hands. Jim’s cock has been haunting his dreams for weeks, slipping across his inner eye when he’s been looking at charts, hovering just outside his peripheral vision when he reviews X-rays. It’s been a struggle for him not to see it as a weakness, the helpless craving that ruined his marriage, the way an especially pretty one attached to a blue-eyed movie star has ruined his peace.
“I dig your brain,” Jim says, between mmmm sounds, “but seriously, you need to switch it off." He runs a a wet hand through Leonard’s hair. “We’re the only ones here. Forget about everyone else.”
It’s easy for Jim to say, lord of his own mountain empire, pleasing to God and man. It pisses Leonard off a little, but the pissed-ness doesn’t touch the desire, and so he ends up gripping Jim’s cock a little harder than he intended, pushing him back against the stone-tiled walls of the shower with unaccustomed force. Jim just squeezes his eyes shut and bares his teeth with pleasure and says, “Yeah, that’s it.”
Leonard rides Jim’s cock with his hand, and when he finds a rhythm, he cups the beautiful curve of Jim’s ass a few times and then slides his fingers between his cheeks. It’s hot there, even hotter than Jim’s heated skin, and he lets his fingers roam, enjoying the different textures. When he finds the telltale pucker, he presses against it, not entering, but it’s enough; Jim tenses and begins to mutter yeah, yeah under his breath, and a second later he comes, Leonard tearing himself away from Jim’s eyes just in time to see him shoot. It’s mesmerizing, a miracle of hydrostatic pressure and physiology; it is what it is, but it also hits Leonard somewhere deep, in the solar plexus, in the groin, in the most atavistic parts of his brain. He feels some loss when the water washes it away.
Jim rests, propped up by the shower wall, for a few moments, lips curved in a beatific smile, cock only a little bit softer. Then he puts his hands on Leonard’s shoulders, kisses him hard, and pats him on the ass.
“Clean up,” he says, pushing open the glass shower door. “I’ll go get stuff ready.”
Leonard wonders what kind of “stuff” he means and begins to clean himself a little self-consciously. He towels off and leaves the towel on the rack, not knowing what he’ll see when he opens the bathroom door, but it’s just Jim lying on his back on the bed, holding his iPhone above his head. The room is semi-dark thanks to lights under the lip of the bed that make it look like it’s floating.
“Dashboard lights?” Leonard says.
“Ha,” Jim says, plunking his iPhone on the bedside table. “Stories of my sexual escapades are--well, they’re not exaggerated, necessarily, but they’re a completely different from what’s in the tabs.”
“The ones involving guys, for instance.”
“Oh, hush,” Jim pulls a bottle of lube from the nightstand and holds it next to face with a grin, like he’s shooting a cheesy commercial. “I don’t hide anything; why should I? It’s the impulse to hide things that gets you in trouble.”
“Hiding in plain sight, in other words?”
Jim works an eyebrow. “I thought we’d agreed to leave your brain in the shower. Now get in my bed. Please.”
Leonard climbs onto the bed and into Jim’s arms and they kiss for a while, Jim’s mouth as casually luxurious as everything else around here. This time, though, Jim isn’t a mirage that’s going to vanish with the dawn; he’s a guy Leonard knows, a guy he fucks, a guy who could maybe be a friend.
When the feel of Jim’s lips sliding wet and a little rough against his own starts to get his motor running again, Jim untangles himself and grabs a couple of pillows.
“You’ve had a long day,” he says. “Why don’t you lie down and let me drive?”
Leonard, having no problem with that, does as he’s asked, and Jim starts a back rub that has Leonard making embarrassing sounds within minutes. Jim’s hands are warm against his cooling skin. It’s such a luxury to be touched like this.
After a thoughtless while, Jim tugs a little at Leonard’s hips so that he’ll raise them and make space for a pillow underneath. Jim’s hands knead his ass, part massage and part prep, loosening him up. Leonard breathes and tries to let go, of half-involuntary internal muscles and inhibitions.
“I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you,” Jim says, contemplative. “But you’re how I’d want to look, if I could choose.”
It’s a strangely extravagant compliment. “You wouldn’t be an actor, then. And finding shirts that fit is a bitch.”
Jim begins to stroke a finger down between Leonard’s cheeks, making his brain go numb. “I could definitely be an actor, but I could also be something else.”
“A doctor, maybe?”
“Nah. I hate needles. And hurting people in general.” Before Leonard can form a rebuttal, he feels Jim’s breath, hot and damp, and there’s a moment of suspense before Jim’s tongue finds its mark with a precision that makes Leonard yelp.
“Damn it,” he gasps, as Jim doesn’t stop. “Don’t, okay? It’s not safe like this--” He holds onto the pillow for dear life. “Without-- things--”
“I don’t need things; I’m sure it’s safe. Knowing you, you probably test yourself once a week, right?”
“I’m not talking about that, I’m--”
“I know, I know.” Jim manages to sound self-righteous from a spot just above Leonard’s ass crack. “You just showered. I’ve had every vaccine on the planet. Just once, why not acknowledge that the odds are in your favor?”
Caution is Leonard’s religion, including an assumption that anything that can go wrong will. He tries to believe in the penumbra of Jim’s good fortune.
“Just this once,” he sighs, and lets go.
What Jim proceeds to do with his tongue makes Leonard turn to water. Everything is hot, everything is wet, everything is beautiful. Leonard’s cock, in a state of grace, fills slowly, without urgency. He feels a cool slickness and then Jim’s finger inside him and he begins to moan in earnest. Time slows to nothing, and it’s so perfect that tears come to his eyes.
“Jim,” he sighs. “Ah, God.”
Jim answers by stroking a hand through his hair and nudging the blunt head of his cock where his fingers just were. He rubs it up and down for untellable minutes and for once, Leonard doesn’t feel greedy frustration building to climax. Images form behind his eyes: sunshine and blue ocean, little birds running back and forth ahead of the foam, and Jim’s immaculate smile, seen as if in retrospect, even though Jim’s right here.
“You ready?” Jim whispers in his ear. All Leonard has the strength to do is nod. Jim spends a minute rubbing his face in Leonard’s hair, kissing his shoulder, and then he pushes in, slowly, filling Leonard up.
+++++
Leonard wakes with the birds, internal clock still set for East Coast time, though his body feels all California: a little sore, a little sunburned, completely relaxed. He lies in bed for a while, watching a wedge of sunlight move slowly across the wood floor, looking at Jim’s sleeping face. Leonard’s never particularly liked watching people sleep; when they’re stripped of personality, it looks too much like death. But Jim sleeping looks like Jim awake: eyes crinkled at the corners, lips curved up, fingers tenaciously clutching a ball of sheet.
After a while, Leonard pulls on his shorts and wanders into the kitchen. He doesn’t dare touch the espresso maker, which looks like the ground station for a baroque satellite, but there’s one of the pod jobs and he manages to make a cup of coffee without causing a flood. He carries it onto the deck and enjoys the last cool air sinking as the canyon comes alive. Birds size him up, and a lizard clicks at him. He’s on an alien planet, but it’s starting to feel normal and right; later, he’ll remember to panic about it, but for now, he’s enjoying a damn good cup of coffee.
A half hour or so later, Leonard turns to see Jim in the doorway, arms folded like he’s been there a while, wearing pajama bottoms and nothing else.
“I’m glad I found you. I thought maybe you’d bolted.”
“Sorry. I have a hard time sleeping past 7, even at home.”
“An early riser? Oh, joy.” He ambles over and stands behind Leonard, kneads his neck for a minute or two before running his fingers through Leonard’s messy hair and stealing a gulp of his coffee. “I’ve got people coming over in half an hour or so. Business and stuff--I know it’s Saturday, but it can’t be avoided.” He bends over to kiss Leonard’s cheek. “Good morning, by the way. I’m sorry you didn’t, but I slept like a fucking log.”
They eat a lazy breakfast--bread and fruit and whatever else Jim can pull out of the fridge--and Leonard gets dressed in time not to frighten Jim’s housekeeper. The next arrival is Paul, a curly headed Mouseketeer of a personal assistant, who disgorges a laptop and a half-dozen other electronic devices onto Jim’s dining table and begins tapping away while Jim paces around the living room.
“If they get me the draft of the contract on Monday, Stella’s going to need at least a day to review it, so Wednesday is the earliest I can meet with Walter. How’s the afternoon looking?”
Paul clicks away. “Good. Lunch with Irene; she’s only in town this week.”
“Do I have time for a haircut?”
“In the morning, yes. Rivage?”
“Okay, but I want Andres, not Val. She has some kind of obsession with side parts.”
Leonard heads to his room to grab a paperback.
“Len!” Jim calls after him. “Don’t forget your lunch with the doctor.”
“Damn it.” Leonard couldn’t be less interested at the moment in a business lunch. “I didn’t bring a jacket and tie, and I have no idea where I’m going.”
“Hydra at 12:30,” Paul says. “The car will be here at 11:45. I suggest a jacket; check your closet.”
Leonard does, thankful for the fiction that he slept in the guest bedroom, and strangely not miffed that Jim called him “Len,” a nickname he’s resisted since he was old enough to talk. In the closet, he finds a dozen shirts and a half-dozen jackets and pairs of slacks that smell like the kind of shop Leonard would never dream of going in. Everything fits perfectly.
“Damn,” Jim says the second he reappears. “I can honestly say I’ve never wished I was the dean of a prestigious medical school more than at this moment.”
Leonard tugs at his cuffs, still disbelieving the whole thing fits. “How did you--”
“Just call me your fairy fucking godfather. Though actually, it was mostly Paul. I told him what you looked like--” Jim traces broad shoulders and a narrow waist in the air “--and he figured out your size. In clothes, that is.”
Leonard glances nervously at Paul, but the kid just gives him a wide-eyed smile and says, “There are more shirts in the back of the closet, for tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“We’re going to a club in Hollywood,” Jim says. “I can pretty much guarantee you’ll hate it, which I’m sorry about, but it’s good for me to be seen out and about during the negotiations. At least you’ll meet some of my friends.”
Leonard pulls Jim a little distance away from Paul and his fevered tapping. “The clothes,” he says. “The car service--whatever else. You’ll let me know how much it costs?”
“Bah. You think I pay for any of it? It’s a strange consequence of fame, but people give me free shit all the time. And even if they didn’t--my dumb ideas, my dime, okay?”
Before Leonard can answer, there’s a knock on the door and Jim goes to answer it, returning with a nice-looking young man wearing his glossy black hair in an unflattering bowl cut.
“Len, this is Rob Benjamin my agent. Rob, this is Len, my-- He’s Dr. McCoy.”
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Rob says, looking anything but. Leonard shakes his hand, while Rob looks at him like he’s a fox about to make off with his prize chicken. “I believe I observed your driver out front.”
“Yeah, you better scoot,” Jim says. “You’ll see Rob later. He’s coming out with us.”
“That’s one of your friends? Your agent?”
“Sure.” Jim looks blank. “My attorney’’s coming, too.”
“What about the kid?”
“He’s not drinking age yet, and his mom would kill me.” He grabs Leonard’s shoulder and have pats, half pushes him out the door. “See you later. Break a leg.”
+++++
Dr. Lena Vladimirescu is already seated when Leonard arrives at the restaurant, looking as pleased as any doctor at being kept waiting. She’s a good-looking dark-haired woman in her mid-60s and a full professor at UCLA, which is enough to keep Leonard from ordering anything that contains garlic or spinach. She’s polite but Old World frosty, peppering Leonard with questions and stabbing hard at an undressed salad with her fork.
“We don’t have any open positions at the main campus,” she says, after Leonard, in an effort to get a conversation going, mentions the well-known shortages in Emergency Medicine staffing.
“I’m not surprised. Even with the demand being high, I’m sure you’ve got your pick of the best.”
“That is true.” She puts down her fork mid-bite. “I’m glad you understand that. We don’t make exceptions, even for...”
“Oh.” Leonard has a moment of uncomfortable understanding. “You thought-- Doctor, I want you to know that I didn’t request this meeting, and I’m not looking for any kind of favors or, well, anything really. My friend, he-- I guess he thinks this is how things work; you just pick up the phone and ask for whatever you want. I would have cancelled but I figured it was rude at this late date. I hope it’s not a complete waste of your time.”
Dr. Vladimirescu visibly relaxes and picks up her fork again. “Southern manners are not something we see very much of around here. It’s no trouble. I have had to do worse to keep the money flowing. Academia is just another form of business, as I am sure you learned at Tulane. And during your residency, which was where?”
“Emory.”
“Close to home. Your first choice?”
“Yes. I had a family,” he says, swallowing on the past tense. “I didn’t want to uproot them if I could help it.”
“Very thoughtful.” She pauses for a moment, considering, and then reaches into her slim handbag and pulls out a card. “As I said, we have no positions open now at the campus, but there are several at Harbor. Reasonable hours, part-time is an option. If you are ever interested, call me. Personally.” She actually smiles.
Leonard tucks the card into the pocket of the jacket that doesn’t belong to him, and smiles back, bewildered.
+++++
The car and driver take Leonard to an address on the beachfront in Topanga where, per Jim’s semi-comprehensible text messages, they’re going to be meeting Rob the agent and Stella, Jim’s attorney.
The house is nondescript from the road, but Stella is not. She greets Leonard at the door, a stunning African American woman with a razor-sharp chin-length bob, tilting her head to look up at Leonard in spite of four-inch heels, yet still managing to be imposing. She accepts his handshake, gives him the European kiss-kiss on each cheek, and leads him inside.
“I’m house-sitting for a client. He got a gig in Europe and had to leave on short notice, and he’s completely paranoid about renters. The problem is that I’m going to be moving myself in a few weeks. Jim!” she yells into the interior. “You said you’d help me out. Do you know anybody who’d take this place?”
Jim is standing by the door to the deck, wearing dark pants and a dark blue shirt, close-fitting shirt, hardly less jaw-dropping than the ocean view.
“Well, it’s not great--teak and bamboo, brown brown brown and so dark. And the bathroom--” He ambles toward an interior door and peeks in. “Ugh. Brass fixtures and Hollywood lighting. If I pop the CD player, am I going to find Hootie and the Blowfish?”
“He wasn’t this bitchy when he lived in a garage in Santa Monica,” Stella says to Leonard. “It’s progress, I guess.”
“But the view sells, it right?” Jim reemerges from the hallway. “I mean, you’d live here, Len, wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Fuck, check this out!”
At Jim’s exhortation, Leonard peeks into the master bedroom and sees that it opens onto the deck via double doors between the full-length windows. “I’ve only seen houses like this in movies. Don’t you get storms?”
“If there’s a tsunami, you’re fucked, but other than that, it’s just floods, wildfires, landslides, earthquakes, sharks--the usual. Lots of property damage, but everybody just shrugs and rebuilds. Plus it would be a great excuse to get rid of the glass blocks in the bathroom.”
Jim walks out onto the deck and Leonard follows. To their right is a crazed jumble of oceanfront houses; to the left, a public beach. It’s the kind of afternoon he’d kill for, back home, and yet the beach isn’t crowded.
“How did the meeting go?” Jim asks.
“Okay, I guess. I think she liked me.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
They lean on the railing in easy silence. After a while, Jim says, “How about Jo? Would she like it here?”
Leonard thinks his nature girl, her father’s daughter, with her love of the backwoods and her disdain for shopping malls. “She’d love it. It must be great for kids--just let ‘em loose on the beach.” He imagines Jo roaming the wide beach like a ghost of something that will never happen climbing the rocks, peering into the tide pools, maybe learning to surf. He might have to arrange that some day, though a transcontinental trip would be a tough sell to Jocelyn.
His brooding mind is already thinking of logistics--whether it would be too expensive to book a suite so Jo could have a bedroom of her own--when Jim nudges his arm.
“Hey. I brought you a shirt. You can change in the guest room.”
Leonard tears himself away from the salt spray and does as directed, feeling as if he could switch personalities as easily as he switches shirts. Dr. Leonard McCoy of Clarkesville, Georgia, is an overnight bag in Jim’s house, ready to be changed back into for the journey home.
When Leonard reappears, Rob the agent is sitting with his legs crossed and his back straight in a leather chair, leafing through a magazine in the way Leonard hates, pushing at the pages so that every one ends up creased. He gives Leonard a bare nod of acknowledgement.
“And also,” Rob says, “Brett Samuels Is a complete, unmitigated ass, who screwed me five years ago on the Walton deal and still owes me $1000 from the Breakwaters charity golf tournament, as well as three days in Palm Springs that that I will never get back. I also believe his sailboat may have been captured by pirates off Catalina.”
“What makes you think that?” Jim says, dead serious.
“His unavailability for the entire weekend. Given the magnitude of this deal, it’s the only reason I can imagine for him being out of contact.”
“Unless he just wants one last chance to fuck around with you,” Stella says.
Jim makes a dismissive gesture and works at a smudge on the beige leather sofa with his thumb. “You watch--it’ll be at least a week before they come back to the table. They want me, so they hate me. They hate how much they want me. And they hate being parted from their money, so they’re going to draw it out as long as they can.”
Stella uncrosses her splendid legs and stands up. “It’s a good thing I charge by the hour. So are we going to go?”
“Yes, let’s go be pretty in Los Angeles.” Jim offers an arm to Stella; all Leonard gets is a dour look from Rob. Nonetheless, when they pile into Jim’s SUV, Leonard gets shotgun and Stella and Rob get in the back seat and onto their phones.
“This may be a naive question, but what do you want with so much money, anyway?” Leonard asks quietly. “Isn’t what you have enough? You have a great house and a bunch of cars and it’s pretty obvious you don’t like making crappy popcorn movies, so why do it? Just to be the biggest and the baddest for a while?”
Jim pats Leonard’s knee. “Spoken like someone who does something useful for a living. For me, money is independence. Yes, in the short term it means I’m going to be in at least one braindead rom-com, and a superhero movie, and a Something 2: A New Beginning. But then I’m going to start my own production company. Not some vanity shit in a trailer on the back lot, but a real one that runs the way they should be run, without a bunch of mouth breathers sitting behind limestone desks. A good place for creative people.”
“I thought all actors wanted to direct.”
“Not this one. I want real control.” He gives Leonard a sidelong glance from under his long eyelashes. “Some people consider power an aphrodisiac, you know.”
“Yeah, well,” Leonard notices the back seat has suddenly gotten awfully quiet. “Some people are idiots.”
+++++
Leonard enjoys dinner because he’s not really expected to talk; Jim, Stella and Rob carry on a steady and sometimes simultaneous conversation heavy with names Leonard doesn’t recognize. After that they head to the club, a nondescript hotel space with an interior like a 1960s spaceship, all silver with white sofas and rainbow lights. An obsequious host leads them to a back room framed by you’re-not-allowed curtains and settles them into a private alcove. Stella slides in next to Leonard and orders a cocktail with a French name and Jim gets a bottle of vodka for the table. A woman in a pale gray catsuit with a retro pile of platinum hair mixes vodka tonics for far longer than required.
“I hate this place,” Stella says, sipping her golden drink.
“Indeed,” Rob says. “You say that every time we come here.”
Shiny people drift from alcove to alcove, holding drinks. It’s got a sybaritic Roman feeling about it, except that the orgy possibilities seem remote; other than drinking and maybe a little covert drug use, they mainly seem to be working angles of one sort or another--trading industry gossip, looking for hookups. Rob seems to act as gatekeeper, approving the supplicants who approach Jim’s table to talk to Jim himself, or dismissing them with a backhanded, insulting politeness that Leonard grudgingly admires. Stella annotates the visitors with her beautiful lips an inch from Leonard’s ear:
“He just signed with CAA.”
“She survived four seasons on Wilder Dreams.”
“Oh God, her--she’s on one of the housewife shows, maybe. I don’t even know.” This last gets the heave-ho from Rob after a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to grope Jim.
“I believe your friends are looking for you,” Rob says.
“Really?” She struggles to look over her shoulder without falling off her high heels. “I don’t see them.”
“I’m quite sure that if you stand up and walk away, you will.”
Another of Jim’s actor friends, a guy named Scott with a pleasant but unactorly face, appears with two women, one well-polished and blonde who sits next to Jim, and the other dark-haired and short, who drops down next to Leonard.
“A guy at my table says you’re a model--he says you did a Prada campaign in Europe. Is that true?”
Leonard coughs. “Do I look like a model?”
“Actually, yes. There’s an easy way to check, though. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Eleven.”
She laughs. “So, not a model. What do you, as they say, ‘do’?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“No shit--really? This is my lucky day. First I sell a pilot to CBS, and now I find a handsome doctor in the ass-end of Western civilization.”
“Congratulations on your success.” Rob’s hand, bearing a business card, stretches toward them from the other end of the banquette. “Do you have representation?”
“Not yet,” she says, pocketing the card. “Thanks.” Then, to Leonard, “You’re not one of those Dr. Feelgoods, are you? Plying Jim Kirk with Xanax and Oxycontin?”
“No, I’m an ER doctor from Georgia, visiting for the weekend.”
“Too bad.” She stirs her drink with her finger. “I could use a supplier. No, I’m just kidding--I’ve got to keep a clear head, if I’m going to write 22 episodes of a drama about a family with a reality show based on their repo business in New Orleans. Plus, they’re vampires.”
“That sounds--”
“I know. Don’t worry, it’ll be funny, and it represents the terminal evolution of the vampire craze, so there’s that to be said for it. Anyway, they’re not sexy vampires, which is why it’s a miracle it sold. You’d watch a funny meta-reality drama about non-sexy vampires, wouldn’t you?”
“I would, but I don’t own a TV.”
“Ooohhh,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That’s great--a hot doctor practicing in L.A. with a bunch of celeb patients, except he hates Hollywood and doesn’t even own a TV. I don’t suppose you’re a single dad?”
“I am, actually. Twelve-year-old daughter.”
The woman sighs. “Perfect. We’d have to make her a little older so she can go to The Grove alone. But I could definitely sell that.” She sticks out her hand. “I’m Tonia, by the way.”
“Len,” he says, taking her hand.
“Hi, Len.” She keeps it for a minute. “I want you to know that I’m not usually this annoying to strangers. I’m just high on life right now. And tequila. Mostly tequila.”
There’s a shuffle as somebody new arrives at the table, and Rob takes advantage of it to effect a shift that puts him next to Tonia and Leonard next to Jim. After a few minutes, the visitor slaps Jim on the shoulder and wanders off, and Jim puts his hand on Leonard’s knee and leans in to talk in his ear.
“She’s cute,” he says. “Are you going to share, or shall I find someone for myself?”
“What?”
“The girl.” He nods toward Tonia. “We can get a room right here in the hotel. Two, if you’re feeling shy. I was holding off because--”
“Jim,” Leonard says, finally getting it, “I don’t want to take her home; why would I?”
“It just looked like--” Jim looks at Tonia, and at the blonde sitting next to Stella, the one Stella had said was on some TV show. “Whatever you say. But for now, you’ve got to dial it down. That girl thinks she just hit the jackpot.”
“I wasn’t flirting with her! We were just talking.”
“You were existing, which is enough. But since you’ve crushed my hopes of an epic four-way, the least you can is take me home and show me a good time. Hey.” He leans over and pats Stella on the shoulder. “I’m about done here. We’re going to give Marta a ride back to her hotel.”
Jim scoops up the actress, and Leonard goes to say goodnight to Tonia, who looks puzzled but hands him a card. It’s got a little cartoon of a writer tearing her hair out.
“Call me,” she says, “if they ever let you out of Georgia again. I can talk about things besides business. I read books, too.”
They exit the club with Marta the actress on Jim’s arm. Just before the door opens, Jim taps Leonard and says, “Hola--paps. Just look straight ahead and get right into the car,” and then there’s a burst of bright-white electronic flashes. It’s neither noisy nor chaotic, just a couple of young guys in white T-shirts with photographers’ bags draped around them, aiming their lenses at Jim like he’s an endangered species of bird. Jim’s shoulders hunch like he can’t help it, but Marta turns and flashes a quick, bright smile and the cameras flash at double time. Leonard, following orders, hops into the front seat of Jim’s SUV and they speed away. Leonard glances in the rearview mirror and sees the photographers in the darkness, peering at the displays of their cameras.
“Jesus,” Leonard says, nerves jangled. “How can people make a living that way?”
“Easy. They’re not people,” Marta says. She’s sitting behind Leonard, with Stella on the left and Rob in the middle--a lucky man, Leonard would have thought, except that he has his knees pressed together and his eyes on the cell phone in his lap.
“Good,” he says to no one in particular. “That was good.”
They drop off Marta at the rear entrance of a hotel lined with spotlit palms, and Rob and Stella at a more sober-looking apartment building. Stella extends a delicate, long-nailed hand through the gap in the seat.
“It was lovely to meet you, Len. I hope we’ll be seeing more of you.”
“Likewise,” Leonard says, amused. He’s not an industry person, so she’s apparently already forgotten his basic biographical details, like the fact that he lives on the wrong coast.
The silence is freshly awkward. Yesterday Jim was just Jim, his celebrity a hypothetical construct. Now Leonard’s seen it and it isn’t something that he is, it’s something that he does and apparently works at very hard, irrespective of whether he enjoys it.
The city lights disappear and they’re on dark, curving road, and Leonard says, “Why did you think I wanted to go home with that woman?”
Jim gives a one-shouldered shrug. “She was cute, and she seemed pretty sharp. A writer, right? Sounds like your beat.”
“I’m sure she’s very nice. I’m sure any guy would be lucky to have her come home with him. Any straight guy, because I’m pretty damn sure I mentioned I’m gay.”
“I know, but--” He stops, then starts again. “I mean, you were married to a woman. For six years.”
That shuts Leonard up pretty effectively, as his mouth fills with the bitter, imagined taste of his own failure. Even though he’s been divorced now as long as he was married, he remembers the feeling with aching clarity--Jocelyn’s disappointment and self-doubt in the face of Leonard’s deficient desire, her anger when he finally confessed. He’d cried, she’d cried; he’d tried to explain his guilt, his confusion, and it hadn’t mattered, because he couldn’t hide his relief or his craving for her forgiveness. She’d given it, eventually, but it had cost him everything.
“I loved my wife,” he says heavily, after a while. “I thought that would be enough.”
“And love and sex always go together?” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice. “Because you don’t fuck like a guy who hasn’t gotten laid in 12 years.”
“No, they don’t,” Leonard says stiffly, not particularly wanting to share what he considers--not sordid or shameful, but inconsequential; young bankers and traders and gallery owners, well-groomed and foul-mouthed, sleeping off alcohol and Leonard on Sunday mornings, less demanding but probably not much different in substance from what he’d get here for the same amount of effort. “But it’s always better that way, isn’t it?”
“Uh huh,” Jim says, seemingly losing interest in that part of the conversation. “I’m just relieved you haven’t been going without. I’m concerned about your sexual welfare, I really am.” And then, after a while and with a sigh, “I accept the biology of it, but it seems like a waste. Women are really great.”
“Yes, they are.” That, Leonard has never denied.
When they arrive, Leonard doesn’t even stop at his putative bedroom, just pours himself a glass of water and follows Jim into his bedroom. He strips off his borrowed clothes without ceremony and it’s like the end of an ordinary day--recapping people and places, talking about things they couldn’t talk about in mixed company.
“That actress, Marta?” Jim says. “Her agent called Rob about having us go out on an official date. I didn’t really want to have dinner with her because she always seems kinda snooty in the press, but in person? I’ve met worse.”
“You let that guy arrange your dates?” Leonard’s not sitting on the bed yet because he hasn’t been asked. “I know he’s a friend of yours, but it seems like what he knows about human relationships you could put in a thimble.”
“And yet, he and Stella are about as hot and heavy as it’s possible for two state-certified entertainment professionals to be.”
“Him?” Leonard boggles. “Her?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re moving in together; that’s why Stella is ditching that place on Beach Drive. Imagine my pride. I’m sure that when they have little baby accountants, I’ll be the godfather.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. It just goes to show that there’s somebody for everybody.”
“Or that you find big dicks in unexpected places.” He pats the comforter. “Speaking of which--”
Leonard sits down, sheets pleasantly cool against the back of his thighs. Jim gives him a smile of pure sunshine and rubs his arm for a minute. For Leonard’s dazzled heart, it’s almost enough. It’s not Jim’s fame or wealth or beauty, but the fact that Jim accepts his past without believing it means anything about the future. It’s the chance to escape the gravity of his own failure, on the tail of a rocket that’s perpetually bound for somewhere new.
They fall back on the bed together, Jim kissing him deeply and pushing a knee between Leonard’s, and for once he forgets to be afraid.
+++++
Leonard comes to in a pile of sheets and limbs. Some time in the night it got cool, and he and Jim ended up in the middle of the bed, fighting for a pillow, not yet having unconscious radar for each other.
He thinks Jim’s asleep, face down in 1000-threadcount bliss, until Jim’s hand begins to wander over his belly and hipbone.
The lazy mutual handjob that follows is pure indulgence--Leonard got plenty last night, but there are rainy days coming, so he doesn’t reproach himself. Afterward, he feels sticky and sweaty and smug, basking in the morning sun and the feeling of Jim pressed against his side.
“What do you want to do today?” Jim rasps in his ear.
“I don’t know. More of this, maybe.”
Jim smile broadens. “Good plan. But if you want to do any tourist shit--Universal or Santa Monica Pier or whatever--that’s fine by me. Since tomorrow is your--”
“Last day,” Leonard finishes. “I know.” He has a flight out in the morning. Georgia has never seemed so cold.
“Right,” Jim says around a yawn. “When are you coming back?”
Leonard feels a rush of relief and pleasure. “Not exactly sure. Might be able to get another long weekend in a month or two.”
“No, I mean for good. To live out here.”
“What?” Leonard almost pops a vertebra jerking his head around so he can look at Jim. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, you can’t act like this is a surprise,” Jim says, unperturbed. “You took the meeting about UCLA. You liked Stella’s client’s house. You practically drool any time we’re near the ocean, and look at you--you’re fucking glowing.”
“I don’t-- I’m not--” It takes a couple of tries for the engine in Leonard’s brain to turn over. “Of course I look like that; this is a vacation. I had lunch with Dr. Vladimirescu as a courtesy. We talked about some time possibly in the future--”
“This is the future.” Now Jim is scary-calm and serious. “Believe me, I know something about opportunities, and you’re never going to get a better one. You’re going to love it here, I know it, but just in case I want to make sure there’s no financial risk. You can live in the beach house rent free for at least eight months, while you look for a place of your own. It’s only about 20 minutes to the hospital, 30 with bad traffic, but you might want something closer. I’ll pay for your moving costs and whatever it takes to look after your house in Georgia. I talked to Stella about it and she thinks the easiest thing will be to put you on the payroll of my company so you can charge expenses, but we’ll see what the accountant says. Anyhow, you won’t need to feel weird about it because you’ll be submitting expenses, all nice and legal with a 30 percent tax break.”
Leonard looks at Jim like he’s just sprouted horns, the cackling demon in the monster movie finally revealed. It’s not a friendly suggestion, not even pleasant woolgathering of the kind you have over coffee on your last day of vacation. It’s a calculated plan.
“God damn it, you--” He splutters, trying to find the words to express his outrage. “You are the most manipulative son of a bitch on God’s green earth. You have to control everything, don’t you? You have everything and everyone revolving around you like you’re the goddamn sun, never mind that they have lives of their own and feelings of their own--”
“Manipulative?” Jim interrupts, sounding perplexed but not offended. “How am I manipulating you? I’m making you an offer. I understand that risk is your least favorite thing on the planet, so I’m insulating you from the risk, that’s all. Try working as a high-paid emergency doc and one of the best hospitals in the country while drinking Napa wine in front of a pink sunset, your money back if not completely satisfied.”
“That’s all you’re offering? A house, a job, a California dream?”
“That’s all, what-- Oh.” Finally, Jim has the good grace to look a little sheepish. “Yeah, there’s-- I like you, that should be obvious. I’m not trying to get you to come out here because L.A. needs another handsome doctor. But I don’t want to promise anything else because it’s kind of soon, you know? And if things don’t work out that way, I still want to be friends.”
Leonard’s heart, that faithful old dog, responds as to a whistle from his master. But that doesn’t change the impossibility of it.
“You’re forgetting something. I have a child.”
“I’m not forgetting Jo; in fact, I hope I get to meet her soon. She’s almost 13, right? Pretty soon she’s not going to want to go out with Daddy every weekend. So you go home twice a month, take a red-eye there and back, stay two days. And on the third weekend she comes here and learns to surf and goes to Disneyland and meets her favorite pop star or whatever.”
“Her mother would never--”
“A Swiss nanny picks her up at her house. English, if you prefer, but something with an accent and a uniform. If there are legal things you need to work out, Stella can help you. People do it all the time, Len. It’s amazing how money can contract time and space. So don’t worry about the logistics; just ask yourself, ‘Is this something I want to do?’”
He’s never considered a more terrifying question. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out, and Jim just smiles and pushes the hair out of Leonard’s eyes.
“You’re right, it’s unfair to ask before coffee. Speaking of surfing, have you ever tried?”
+++++
Mid-afternoon they’re sitting on an endless beach on top of their boards, Leonard chilled and breathless and exhilarated. The waves are small so the crowds are sparse, mostly beginners like Leonard, although most of them don’t have a well-fitting wetsuit and a brand-new longboard the way Leonard does.
Although he’s always had decent physical skills, Leonard would never have believed he could surf. But Jim believed, and he’s learning to trust Jim’s opinion.
They stare at the blue for a while, and then Leonard says, “Why me?”
Jim gives a little shrug. “Why anybody, right? But you--you’re the most honest person I’ve ever met. I don’t mean that bullshit honesty where you give yourself permission to tell people they suck. I mean knowing who you are and accepting the consequences of your actions. After you fucked up your family life it would have made sense to run away. I probably would have. But you just dug in deeper. And you love your daughter and you still love your wife, that much is clear.”
“You like me because I love someone else?”
Jim ducks his head. “Because you can love someone. In spite of everything that happened.”
Leonard nods because there’s not that much he can say, and so he just keeps squinting into the sunshine. It’s soaking into his skin, making sweat prickle under his wetsuit, making him run his tongue over dry lips. Jim hands him a water bottle and he drinks deeply.
“Got a couple more runs in you?”
“Sure.”
Leonard hoists the heavy board, still awkward, and they splash out into the water together, Jim paddling ahead with sure, even strokes, shoulder muscles fluid and visible under his wetsuit. They turn their boards and bob at the break, creatures of land and sea. After a few minutes a little set comes in, knee-high waves that bring no fear to Leonard’s cautious soul.
“Wait,” Jim says, sculling backward as a wave goes under them. “Wait. Okay, NOW--paddle!”
Leonard paddles furiously until he feels transcendental click of catching the wave, the momentum transferring perfectly to the board, and he grips the sides and pushes himself up, planting his feet and holding his arms out the way Jim has taught him to do. He’s riding gravity and Jim is riding beside him, balanced enough to file his nails but enjoying Leonard’s enjoyment.
Leonard rides all the way into the beach because he can, and because he’s not going to get a better ride all day.
“Okay,” he says to Jim’s back, as they wrangle their boards. “Yes.”
“Yes what?” Jim says, helping Leonard untangle the leash.
“I’ll do it. I’ll move out here.”
Jim grins like he’s known it all along, the son of a bitch. “Good. That’s good. I’ll get Paul started on the arrangements.” He strides through the shallows and onto the beach, gesturing for Leonard to follow him. “Hey, let’s go up to the Point. I think you’re ready for bigger waves.”
+++++
As the sun heads for the horizon they go to a restaurant a little way up the coast, drinking and eating at an easy pace, filling in the rough outlines of their lives for each other. Jim dropped out after a year in college, drifted around the country until he washed up in L.A., and used the first burst of money from his acting career to fuel a mania for travel. He’s skied in the summer in Argentina, spent Christmas in a jungle lodge in the Amazon, slept in a van on the beach while surfing in Baja. It seems like too much for a person who’s rising 30, but Leonard’s learning that Jim loves nothing more than to smash obstacles--of odds, access, career possibilities.
Leonard sees how frighteningly easy it is to acclimate to privilege. They’re sitting at the best oceanview table in a restaurant that was full when Jim walked in without a reservation. They fight over the check, Jim winning with a firm hand, a self-mocking smile and reminder that Leonard is his guest. When they leave, Jim’s car is waiting for him, surrounded by a small crowd pretending to look at their cell phones while their eyes slide hungrily over it and him.
Night settles in, cool and clear. Leonard’s sun-soaked body shivers a little in its short sleeves, and Jim closes the roof on the car and leans over to rub Leonard’s goosebumped forearm. It gets Leonard’s engine running, low and deep like the one under the hood.
They walk through Jim’s front door and Leonard tries to repulse the little ripple of home. Leonard is a den-wolf by nature; he likes to growl at the world from the warmth and safety of his cave. This is Jim’s cave, but he gets the same feeling; walking in the door into the dark, Jim flipping the switch and dropping his backpack with a thud onto the floor.
Where things go from here, Leonard isn’t sure. When Leonard drives down to Atlanta for the express purpose of hooking up, it’s understood that fucking is the main point, and equally clear (to Leonard, at least) that Leonard will not stay the night. This is a date of sorts, with all of a date’s weird choreography and the added awkwardness of Leonard staying in the same house.
“C’mere,” he says, sliding open the door onto the deck. Leonard steps back out into night air, cooler here for the cliff exposure. Jim leans on the balustrade, arms crossed to keep himself warm, and points at the stars.
“It’s pretty clear tonight. How are you on constellations?” The moon hasn’t risen yet, and the skyglow from the city fades above the canyon wall.
“Pretty crappy. I grew up in the city, remember?” Leonard leans in next to Jim, close enough that their arms are touching.
“City boy,” Jim chuckles. “That doesn’t fit you at all. Okay, so--look. That’s the Big Dipper, right? It’s part of Ursa Major. Those two stars on the outside part of the cup point to Polaris, the Pole Star. That’s what the ancient navigators used to find their way across the oceans. They think maybe Polynesians made it here, to Malibu, and taught the local people how to build their style of canoes. Pretty amazing, huh?”
Leonard is more amazed that Jim knows this than by the fact itself. Jim’s got weird pockets of specialized knowledge that smack of of a book-loving child.
“You always been interested in the stars?” Leonard asks, shifting his weight a little in Jim’s direction.
“Yeah, I guess. My mom was into it. She bought me a telescope, when I was little. Say what you like about Iowa, but the sky is big and dark.” Jim’s voice has gone soft, the energetic lines of his body lax; there’s a vulnerability there. Leonard slips a tentative arm around Jim’s waist and he leans in, easily, as if it’s something they’ve been accustomed to do for a long time.
It’s just as easy to find Jim’s mouth, to turn and let the banister support his weight, hanging over air, while Jim’s body slides across his own, a shock of warmth and hard bone and muscle. He smells like clean sweat and salt air, delicious, and his mouth is hot and salty.
“Thank fuck for that,” Jim hisses into his ear after a few minutes, his body full against Leonard’s, so that Leonard can feel the press of Jim’s erection against his thigh. “If I’d had to be a fucking gentleman all night, it would have killed me. Watching you eat breadsticks--I thought I was going to have to pull you under the table.”
Leonard’s laugh turns into a gasp as Jim’s fingers slide into the waistband of his pants, clumsy and urgent. He jimmies the fly open and tugs Leonard’s pants and shorts down, all in one shot. Leonard’s cock springs into the cool night air and Jim wraps warm hands around it.
“Fuck yeah,” Jim says, breathless, like Leonard’s dick is a fast car.
He kneels down and sucks it into his mouth like he can’t wait another second. Leonard grips the balustrade and glances around, briefly panicked at the exposure, but there’s nothing but darkness. Jim’s mouth around him feels like slipping into a warm bath, except that it’s the opposite of relaxing. Jim’s hands stroke his thighs, and his eyes roll up to the stars above.
Jim takes his time, savoring, exploring Leonard’s ass with his hands, using his lips and tongue in ways Leonard hadn’t known were possible. It’s not just a shockingly good blowjob, though Leonard would be fine with that; Jim is showing him something, demonstrating something about life even as the tip of his tongue rings Leonard’s foreskin: Anything good can always be better.
Leonard runs his fingers through Jim’s hair, thankful. Jim seems to be thoroughly enjoying himself but Leonard’s innate sexual gallantry won’t let him prolong the inevitable. As he lets it build he tries pulling away, just a little, as much as he can with his hips fenced in by the railing, as a warning that he’s going to blow. Jim stays put and if anything shuffles a little closer on his knees, cupping Leonard’s balls, redoubling his efforts in a way that almost brings tears to Leonard’s sun-bleached eyes.
Orgasm hits him like a blow to his sacrum and he shoots, sand slipping away under him, gripping onto the railing so he isn’t pulled out to sea. There’s white light and a wash of pleasure across his nerves and brain and he actually cries out, a rarity. He swears he can feel Jim smirking, lips still wrapped around his softening cock. He takes an amazingly long time to swallow.
When Leonard gets muscle control back he reaches down to lift Jim up off what must surely be sore knees, but Jim rises easily, dragging his hands up Leonard’s sides, up under his shirt to his ribs. Leonard kisses him, long and deep, tasting himself and ghosts of wine and pepper.
“Do you have to be so damn good at everything you do?” Jim grins and rubs his hand along the scratch of Leonard’s stubble.
“I mostly concentrate on the sex. It’s amazing how much easier everything else is once you get the hang of that. Speaking of which--I’m fucking cold. Let’s go inside.” He threads his fingers through Leonard’s and pulls, Leonard following willingly.
Leonard loves the stillness inside, the big empty place with only the two of them and the creak of the floorboards. He arrived 10 hours ago in a stranger’s house, and now he’s here with Jim, who only lets go of his hand to grasp the rail as they go down the spiral stairs.
They pass Leonard’s bedroom and Jim doesn’t pause, just jerks a finger toward it.
“I had the housekeeper put actual sheets on your bed just, you know, in case. But you don’t have to bother mussing them up; she’s cool.”
“Was it that much of a sure thing?”
“With me? Yeah. But let me ask,” Jim says, as they arrive at his bedroom. “Out of curiosity, is there anything I could have done to fuck it up?”
“You could have been a conceited asshole. But I was pretty sure you weren’t, unless that bump on the head you took in April altered your personality.” Jim flicks on the lights and Leonard gazes on the inner sanctum. After the car, he’d expected--may not ceiling mirrors and satin sheets, but some kind of visible testament to Jim’s surely staggering ability to get laid. Instead, there’s blond wood and pearl grey fabric and not much of anything else, except a huge, abstract painting that looks like hills, maybe the hills around this house. It’s unsettling, in a way; there’s no evidence in the house of any other human beings in Jim’s life, unless there’s a hidden study somewhere with photos on the mantel, somebody’s shirt forgotten in a closet.
“Something definitely happened in April,” Jim says. “You fucked my concussion away, for one thing. Best medical treatment I ever got; that hillbilly hospital of yours is pretty advanced in that respect. Oh, that reminds me--you’re having lunch tomorrow with Dr. Lena something-Eastern-European, director of the Emergency Medicine Center at UCLA.”
Jim is in the process of shucking his shirt, so Leonard has to wait an agonizing three seconds to say “I’m what?” to his face.
“Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to sleep in. I’m meeting with my agent mid-day anyway. We’ll get you a car into the city.” He drops his T-shirt on the floor and goes for his belt buckle. “What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’re--who did you have to call to get that meeting? And why?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” The jeans drop to the floor with a clank. “UCLA is the best hospital in Los Angeles County and one of the top hospitals in the country according to U.S. News and World Report.” This is not a sentence Leonard ever expected to hear while watching someone strip off his briefs. Jim’s erection appears unaffected by the conversation, though even it isn’t enough to distract Leonard from the topic at hand.
“I’m sure that’s true, but what does that have to do with me?”
“Professional contacts. Networking. Future possibilities.” Jim folds his arms, looking as businesslike as he can while naked. “Aren’t you going to undressed?”
Leonard actually starts unbuttoning his shirt before stopping dead. “God damn it. I guess this is some weird kind of favor, but you could warn a guy. How did you even get me a meeting like that?”
“This one was easy. Me to my agent’s dad to David Geffen and then to the hospital.”
“Oh, fantastic.” Leonard hasn’t had a string pulled for him since his dad insisted Leonard apply to Tulane as a legacy, a status his grades rendered irrelevant. Leonard wonders how Jim expects this favor to be repaid. “Some bigwig is making her have lunch with an idiot she barely knows on her day off. She’ll be in a great mood.”
“Ahh,” Jim scoffs, reaching for Leonard’s top button, “not everyone is as pure as you. You probably don’t eat the cookies your grateful patients bake for you.”
“This isn’t exactly cookies.”
“What, the lunch this? Or this this?” Jim’s hands stop halfway down and drop to his sides. “Aww, fuck, do I have to say it? I like having you around. That was kind of the theme of the earlier parts of the day--the walking on the beach and candlelight dinner and whatnot. The theme of this part is that I find you insanely hot and would really like to fuck your brains out, as proven by the fact that I’m still hard after thinking about David Geffen. Go chow with the lady, tell her how much better you do things at Central Bumfuck Hospital for all I care.” He gives an aggrieved little sigh. “I was just trying to help.”
That pretty much crushes Leonard’s rebellion, and he mentally files Dr. Lena Whatever under I’ll worry about it tomorrow. Jim finishes unbuttoning his shirt but keeps teasing, grazing his fingers up Leonard’s sides, pushing the shirt open so he can graze fingers against Leonard’s nipples. It’s clear now to Leonard that Jim’s life is a vector, and that the seeming tranquility of this place is an illusion: it’s an airplane moving through space, keeping a steady speed so there’s no sense of movement at all, until you look down and see the terrain has changed completely underneath you.
Leonard shakes his arms a little and his shirt slides off, Jim’s hands filling the void, stroking over Leonard’s pecs and shoulders. The two of them are the same height, and Leonard likes that, likes being nose to nose and shoulder to shoulder and being able to look directly into Jim’s eyes. Jim cups a hand against his cheek and says, “You’re still having fun, right?”
“Sure.” Hard not to, with Jim’s warm hands all over him.
“Just curious...you ever bottom? Is that something that you like?”
“Yeah, I have.” He tries to sound nonchalant. The truth is that--in light of his trust issues and safety issues and all-around issues--he’s only tried it a couple of times.
Jim presses, “As in, you like it, or you can take it or leave it?” Now Jim’s hands have circled their way around to his ass, by way of introduction.
“As in, I’d like to try it again. See if I can improve on the last times.”
“Ah,” Jim says, digging his fingers gently into Leonard’s flesh. “A challenge.”
“Shower first, maybe?”
Jim leans in and takes a breath of him, like he’s sniffing wine. “Doesn’t matter to me; you smell great. But sure.”
Of course, Jim’s got a shower the size of some New York apartments, with jets the likes of which he’s only seen in in-flight magazines. He lets Jim strip off his pants and they hop in into the steam together. It’s curiously innocent, or at least seems that way until Jim gets hold of the soap and starts lathering, slippery hands running over his shoulders and down his back and between his cheeks. Jim’s hair curls at the ends and his cheeks turn pink and his eyes sparkle, and Leonard realizes just how far gone he is, into this fantasyland of Jim’s creation, into Jim himself. It’s unfair, really--Leonard’s been living off crumbs, occasional weekend dalliances with men who, though no older than Jim, knew so much less than Leonard about what they wanted from life and from Leonard himself.
Leonard grabs the soap away from Jim, and gives a little prayer for his own soul.
Jim’s skin is warm and slick under his hands, and Leonard, feeling justified in his greed, wastes no time in reaching for his cock. It’s already half hard and rises beautifully into his hands. Jim’s cock has been haunting his dreams for weeks, slipping across his inner eye when he’s been looking at charts, hovering just outside his peripheral vision when he reviews X-rays. It’s been a struggle for him not to see it as a weakness, the helpless craving that ruined his marriage, the way an especially pretty one attached to a blue-eyed movie star has ruined his peace.
“I dig your brain,” Jim says, between mmmm sounds, “but seriously, you need to switch it off." He runs a a wet hand through Leonard’s hair. “We’re the only ones here. Forget about everyone else.”
It’s easy for Jim to say, lord of his own mountain empire, pleasing to God and man. It pisses Leonard off a little, but the pissed-ness doesn’t touch the desire, and so he ends up gripping Jim’s cock a little harder than he intended, pushing him back against the stone-tiled walls of the shower with unaccustomed force. Jim just squeezes his eyes shut and bares his teeth with pleasure and says, “Yeah, that’s it.”
Leonard rides Jim’s cock with his hand, and when he finds a rhythm, he cups the beautiful curve of Jim’s ass a few times and then slides his fingers between his cheeks. It’s hot there, even hotter than Jim’s heated skin, and he lets his fingers roam, enjoying the different textures. When he finds the telltale pucker, he presses against it, not entering, but it’s enough; Jim tenses and begins to mutter yeah, yeah under his breath, and a second later he comes, Leonard tearing himself away from Jim’s eyes just in time to see him shoot. It’s mesmerizing, a miracle of hydrostatic pressure and physiology; it is what it is, but it also hits Leonard somewhere deep, in the solar plexus, in the groin, in the most atavistic parts of his brain. He feels some loss when the water washes it away.
Jim rests, propped up by the shower wall, for a few moments, lips curved in a beatific smile, cock only a little bit softer. Then he puts his hands on Leonard’s shoulders, kisses him hard, and pats him on the ass.
“Clean up,” he says, pushing open the glass shower door. “I’ll go get stuff ready.”
Leonard wonders what kind of “stuff” he means and begins to clean himself a little self-consciously. He towels off and leaves the towel on the rack, not knowing what he’ll see when he opens the bathroom door, but it’s just Jim lying on his back on the bed, holding his iPhone above his head. The room is semi-dark thanks to lights under the lip of the bed that make it look like it’s floating.
“Dashboard lights?” Leonard says.
“Ha,” Jim says, plunking his iPhone on the bedside table. “Stories of my sexual escapades are--well, they’re not exaggerated, necessarily, but they’re a completely different from what’s in the tabs.”
“The ones involving guys, for instance.”
“Oh, hush,” Jim pulls a bottle of lube from the nightstand and holds it next to face with a grin, like he’s shooting a cheesy commercial. “I don’t hide anything; why should I? It’s the impulse to hide things that gets you in trouble.”
“Hiding in plain sight, in other words?”
Jim works an eyebrow. “I thought we’d agreed to leave your brain in the shower. Now get in my bed. Please.”
Leonard climbs onto the bed and into Jim’s arms and they kiss for a while, Jim’s mouth as casually luxurious as everything else around here. This time, though, Jim isn’t a mirage that’s going to vanish with the dawn; he’s a guy Leonard knows, a guy he fucks, a guy who could maybe be a friend.
When the feel of Jim’s lips sliding wet and a little rough against his own starts to get his motor running again, Jim untangles himself and grabs a couple of pillows.
“You’ve had a long day,” he says. “Why don’t you lie down and let me drive?”
Leonard, having no problem with that, does as he’s asked, and Jim starts a back rub that has Leonard making embarrassing sounds within minutes. Jim’s hands are warm against his cooling skin. It’s such a luxury to be touched like this.
After a thoughtless while, Jim tugs a little at Leonard’s hips so that he’ll raise them and make space for a pillow underneath. Jim’s hands knead his ass, part massage and part prep, loosening him up. Leonard breathes and tries to let go, of half-involuntary internal muscles and inhibitions.
“I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you,” Jim says, contemplative. “But you’re how I’d want to look, if I could choose.”
It’s a strangely extravagant compliment. “You wouldn’t be an actor, then. And finding shirts that fit is a bitch.”
Jim begins to stroke a finger down between Leonard’s cheeks, making his brain go numb. “I could definitely be an actor, but I could also be something else.”
“A doctor, maybe?”
“Nah. I hate needles. And hurting people in general.” Before Leonard can form a rebuttal, he feels Jim’s breath, hot and damp, and there’s a moment of suspense before Jim’s tongue finds its mark with a precision that makes Leonard yelp.
“Damn it,” he gasps, as Jim doesn’t stop. “Don’t, okay? It’s not safe like this--” He holds onto the pillow for dear life. “Without-- things--”
“I don’t need things; I’m sure it’s safe. Knowing you, you probably test yourself once a week, right?”
“I’m not talking about that, I’m--”
“I know, I know.” Jim manages to sound self-righteous from a spot just above Leonard’s ass crack. “You just showered. I’ve had every vaccine on the planet. Just once, why not acknowledge that the odds are in your favor?”
Caution is Leonard’s religion, including an assumption that anything that can go wrong will. He tries to believe in the penumbra of Jim’s good fortune.
“Just this once,” he sighs, and lets go.
What Jim proceeds to do with his tongue makes Leonard turn to water. Everything is hot, everything is wet, everything is beautiful. Leonard’s cock, in a state of grace, fills slowly, without urgency. He feels a cool slickness and then Jim’s finger inside him and he begins to moan in earnest. Time slows to nothing, and it’s so perfect that tears come to his eyes.
“Jim,” he sighs. “Ah, God.”
Jim answers by stroking a hand through his hair and nudging the blunt head of his cock where his fingers just were. He rubs it up and down for untellable minutes and for once, Leonard doesn’t feel greedy frustration building to climax. Images form behind his eyes: sunshine and blue ocean, little birds running back and forth ahead of the foam, and Jim’s immaculate smile, seen as if in retrospect, even though Jim’s right here.
“You ready?” Jim whispers in his ear. All Leonard has the strength to do is nod. Jim spends a minute rubbing his face in Leonard’s hair, kissing his shoulder, and then he pushes in, slowly, filling Leonard up.
+++++
Leonard wakes with the birds, internal clock still set for East Coast time, though his body feels all California: a little sore, a little sunburned, completely relaxed. He lies in bed for a while, watching a wedge of sunlight move slowly across the wood floor, looking at Jim’s sleeping face. Leonard’s never particularly liked watching people sleep; when they’re stripped of personality, it looks too much like death. But Jim sleeping looks like Jim awake: eyes crinkled at the corners, lips curved up, fingers tenaciously clutching a ball of sheet.
After a while, Leonard pulls on his shorts and wanders into the kitchen. He doesn’t dare touch the espresso maker, which looks like the ground station for a baroque satellite, but there’s one of the pod jobs and he manages to make a cup of coffee without causing a flood. He carries it onto the deck and enjoys the last cool air sinking as the canyon comes alive. Birds size him up, and a lizard clicks at him. He’s on an alien planet, but it’s starting to feel normal and right; later, he’ll remember to panic about it, but for now, he’s enjoying a damn good cup of coffee.
A half hour or so later, Leonard turns to see Jim in the doorway, arms folded like he’s been there a while, wearing pajama bottoms and nothing else.
“I’m glad I found you. I thought maybe you’d bolted.”
“Sorry. I have a hard time sleeping past 7, even at home.”
“An early riser? Oh, joy.” He ambles over and stands behind Leonard, kneads his neck for a minute or two before running his fingers through Leonard’s messy hair and stealing a gulp of his coffee. “I’ve got people coming over in half an hour or so. Business and stuff--I know it’s Saturday, but it can’t be avoided.” He bends over to kiss Leonard’s cheek. “Good morning, by the way. I’m sorry you didn’t, but I slept like a fucking log.”
They eat a lazy breakfast--bread and fruit and whatever else Jim can pull out of the fridge--and Leonard gets dressed in time not to frighten Jim’s housekeeper. The next arrival is Paul, a curly headed Mouseketeer of a personal assistant, who disgorges a laptop and a half-dozen other electronic devices onto Jim’s dining table and begins tapping away while Jim paces around the living room.
“If they get me the draft of the contract on Monday, Stella’s going to need at least a day to review it, so Wednesday is the earliest I can meet with Walter. How’s the afternoon looking?”
Paul clicks away. “Good. Lunch with Irene; she’s only in town this week.”
“Do I have time for a haircut?”
“In the morning, yes. Rivage?”
“Okay, but I want Andres, not Val. She has some kind of obsession with side parts.”
Leonard heads to his room to grab a paperback.
“Len!” Jim calls after him. “Don’t forget your lunch with the doctor.”
“Damn it.” Leonard couldn’t be less interested at the moment in a business lunch. “I didn’t bring a jacket and tie, and I have no idea where I’m going.”
“Hydra at 12:30,” Paul says. “The car will be here at 11:45. I suggest a jacket; check your closet.”
Leonard does, thankful for the fiction that he slept in the guest bedroom, and strangely not miffed that Jim called him “Len,” a nickname he’s resisted since he was old enough to talk. In the closet, he finds a dozen shirts and a half-dozen jackets and pairs of slacks that smell like the kind of shop Leonard would never dream of going in. Everything fits perfectly.
“Damn,” Jim says the second he reappears. “I can honestly say I’ve never wished I was the dean of a prestigious medical school more than at this moment.”
Leonard tugs at his cuffs, still disbelieving the whole thing fits. “How did you--”
“Just call me your fairy fucking godfather. Though actually, it was mostly Paul. I told him what you looked like--” Jim traces broad shoulders and a narrow waist in the air “--and he figured out your size. In clothes, that is.”
Leonard glances nervously at Paul, but the kid just gives him a wide-eyed smile and says, “There are more shirts in the back of the closet, for tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“We’re going to a club in Hollywood,” Jim says. “I can pretty much guarantee you’ll hate it, which I’m sorry about, but it’s good for me to be seen out and about during the negotiations. At least you’ll meet some of my friends.”
Leonard pulls Jim a little distance away from Paul and his fevered tapping. “The clothes,” he says. “The car service--whatever else. You’ll let me know how much it costs?”
“Bah. You think I pay for any of it? It’s a strange consequence of fame, but people give me free shit all the time. And even if they didn’t--my dumb ideas, my dime, okay?”
Before Leonard can answer, there’s a knock on the door and Jim goes to answer it, returning with a nice-looking young man wearing his glossy black hair in an unflattering bowl cut.
“Len, this is Rob Benjamin my agent. Rob, this is Len, my-- He’s Dr. McCoy.”
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” Rob says, looking anything but. Leonard shakes his hand, while Rob looks at him like he’s a fox about to make off with his prize chicken. “I believe I observed your driver out front.”
“Yeah, you better scoot,” Jim says. “You’ll see Rob later. He’s coming out with us.”
“That’s one of your friends? Your agent?”
“Sure.” Jim looks blank. “My attorney’’s coming, too.”
“What about the kid?”
“He’s not drinking age yet, and his mom would kill me.” He grabs Leonard’s shoulder and have pats, half pushes him out the door. “See you later. Break a leg.”
+++++
Dr. Lena Vladimirescu is already seated when Leonard arrives at the restaurant, looking as pleased as any doctor at being kept waiting. She’s a good-looking dark-haired woman in her mid-60s and a full professor at UCLA, which is enough to keep Leonard from ordering anything that contains garlic or spinach. She’s polite but Old World frosty, peppering Leonard with questions and stabbing hard at an undressed salad with her fork.
“We don’t have any open positions at the main campus,” she says, after Leonard, in an effort to get a conversation going, mentions the well-known shortages in Emergency Medicine staffing.
“I’m not surprised. Even with the demand being high, I’m sure you’ve got your pick of the best.”
“That is true.” She puts down her fork mid-bite. “I’m glad you understand that. We don’t make exceptions, even for...”
“Oh.” Leonard has a moment of uncomfortable understanding. “You thought-- Doctor, I want you to know that I didn’t request this meeting, and I’m not looking for any kind of favors or, well, anything really. My friend, he-- I guess he thinks this is how things work; you just pick up the phone and ask for whatever you want. I would have cancelled but I figured it was rude at this late date. I hope it’s not a complete waste of your time.”
Dr. Vladimirescu visibly relaxes and picks up her fork again. “Southern manners are not something we see very much of around here. It’s no trouble. I have had to do worse to keep the money flowing. Academia is just another form of business, as I am sure you learned at Tulane. And during your residency, which was where?”
“Emory.”
“Close to home. Your first choice?”
“Yes. I had a family,” he says, swallowing on the past tense. “I didn’t want to uproot them if I could help it.”
“Very thoughtful.” She pauses for a moment, considering, and then reaches into her slim handbag and pulls out a card. “As I said, we have no positions open now at the campus, but there are several at Harbor. Reasonable hours, part-time is an option. If you are ever interested, call me. Personally.” She actually smiles.
Leonard tucks the card into the pocket of the jacket that doesn’t belong to him, and smiles back, bewildered.
+++++
The car and driver take Leonard to an address on the beachfront in Topanga where, per Jim’s semi-comprehensible text messages, they’re going to be meeting Rob the agent and Stella, Jim’s attorney.
The house is nondescript from the road, but Stella is not. She greets Leonard at the door, a stunning African American woman with a razor-sharp chin-length bob, tilting her head to look up at Leonard in spite of four-inch heels, yet still managing to be imposing. She accepts his handshake, gives him the European kiss-kiss on each cheek, and leads him inside.
“I’m house-sitting for a client. He got a gig in Europe and had to leave on short notice, and he’s completely paranoid about renters. The problem is that I’m going to be moving myself in a few weeks. Jim!” she yells into the interior. “You said you’d help me out. Do you know anybody who’d take this place?”
Jim is standing by the door to the deck, wearing dark pants and a dark blue shirt, close-fitting shirt, hardly less jaw-dropping than the ocean view.
“Well, it’s not great--teak and bamboo, brown brown brown and so dark. And the bathroom--” He ambles toward an interior door and peeks in. “Ugh. Brass fixtures and Hollywood lighting. If I pop the CD player, am I going to find Hootie and the Blowfish?”
“He wasn’t this bitchy when he lived in a garage in Santa Monica,” Stella says to Leonard. “It’s progress, I guess.”
“But the view sells, it right?” Jim reemerges from the hallway. “I mean, you’d live here, Len, wouldn’t you?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Fuck, check this out!”
At Jim’s exhortation, Leonard peeks into the master bedroom and sees that it opens onto the deck via double doors between the full-length windows. “I’ve only seen houses like this in movies. Don’t you get storms?”
“If there’s a tsunami, you’re fucked, but other than that, it’s just floods, wildfires, landslides, earthquakes, sharks--the usual. Lots of property damage, but everybody just shrugs and rebuilds. Plus it would be a great excuse to get rid of the glass blocks in the bathroom.”
Jim walks out onto the deck and Leonard follows. To their right is a crazed jumble of oceanfront houses; to the left, a public beach. It’s the kind of afternoon he’d kill for, back home, and yet the beach isn’t crowded.
“How did the meeting go?” Jim asks.
“Okay, I guess. I think she liked me.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
They lean on the railing in easy silence. After a while, Jim says, “How about Jo? Would she like it here?”
Leonard thinks his nature girl, her father’s daughter, with her love of the backwoods and her disdain for shopping malls. “She’d love it. It must be great for kids--just let ‘em loose on the beach.” He imagines Jo roaming the wide beach like a ghost of something that will never happen climbing the rocks, peering into the tide pools, maybe learning to surf. He might have to arrange that some day, though a transcontinental trip would be a tough sell to Jocelyn.
His brooding mind is already thinking of logistics--whether it would be too expensive to book a suite so Jo could have a bedroom of her own--when Jim nudges his arm.
“Hey. I brought you a shirt. You can change in the guest room.”
Leonard tears himself away from the salt spray and does as directed, feeling as if he could switch personalities as easily as he switches shirts. Dr. Leonard McCoy of Clarkesville, Georgia, is an overnight bag in Jim’s house, ready to be changed back into for the journey home.
When Leonard reappears, Rob the agent is sitting with his legs crossed and his back straight in a leather chair, leafing through a magazine in the way Leonard hates, pushing at the pages so that every one ends up creased. He gives Leonard a bare nod of acknowledgement.
“And also,” Rob says, “Brett Samuels Is a complete, unmitigated ass, who screwed me five years ago on the Walton deal and still owes me $1000 from the Breakwaters charity golf tournament, as well as three days in Palm Springs that that I will never get back. I also believe his sailboat may have been captured by pirates off Catalina.”
“What makes you think that?” Jim says, dead serious.
“His unavailability for the entire weekend. Given the magnitude of this deal, it’s the only reason I can imagine for him being out of contact.”
“Unless he just wants one last chance to fuck around with you,” Stella says.
Jim makes a dismissive gesture and works at a smudge on the beige leather sofa with his thumb. “You watch--it’ll be at least a week before they come back to the table. They want me, so they hate me. They hate how much they want me. And they hate being parted from their money, so they’re going to draw it out as long as they can.”
Stella uncrosses her splendid legs and stands up. “It’s a good thing I charge by the hour. So are we going to go?”
“Yes, let’s go be pretty in Los Angeles.” Jim offers an arm to Stella; all Leonard gets is a dour look from Rob. Nonetheless, when they pile into Jim’s SUV, Leonard gets shotgun and Stella and Rob get in the back seat and onto their phones.
“This may be a naive question, but what do you want with so much money, anyway?” Leonard asks quietly. “Isn’t what you have enough? You have a great house and a bunch of cars and it’s pretty obvious you don’t like making crappy popcorn movies, so why do it? Just to be the biggest and the baddest for a while?”
Jim pats Leonard’s knee. “Spoken like someone who does something useful for a living. For me, money is independence. Yes, in the short term it means I’m going to be in at least one braindead rom-com, and a superhero movie, and a Something 2: A New Beginning. But then I’m going to start my own production company. Not some vanity shit in a trailer on the back lot, but a real one that runs the way they should be run, without a bunch of mouth breathers sitting behind limestone desks. A good place for creative people.”
“I thought all actors wanted to direct.”
“Not this one. I want real control.” He gives Leonard a sidelong glance from under his long eyelashes. “Some people consider power an aphrodisiac, you know.”
“Yeah, well,” Leonard notices the back seat has suddenly gotten awfully quiet. “Some people are idiots.”
+++++
Leonard enjoys dinner because he’s not really expected to talk; Jim, Stella and Rob carry on a steady and sometimes simultaneous conversation heavy with names Leonard doesn’t recognize. After that they head to the club, a nondescript hotel space with an interior like a 1960s spaceship, all silver with white sofas and rainbow lights. An obsequious host leads them to a back room framed by you’re-not-allowed curtains and settles them into a private alcove. Stella slides in next to Leonard and orders a cocktail with a French name and Jim gets a bottle of vodka for the table. A woman in a pale gray catsuit with a retro pile of platinum hair mixes vodka tonics for far longer than required.
“I hate this place,” Stella says, sipping her golden drink.
“Indeed,” Rob says. “You say that every time we come here.”
Shiny people drift from alcove to alcove, holding drinks. It’s got a sybaritic Roman feeling about it, except that the orgy possibilities seem remote; other than drinking and maybe a little covert drug use, they mainly seem to be working angles of one sort or another--trading industry gossip, looking for hookups. Rob seems to act as gatekeeper, approving the supplicants who approach Jim’s table to talk to Jim himself, or dismissing them with a backhanded, insulting politeness that Leonard grudgingly admires. Stella annotates the visitors with her beautiful lips an inch from Leonard’s ear:
“He just signed with CAA.”
“She survived four seasons on Wilder Dreams.”
“Oh God, her--she’s on one of the housewife shows, maybe. I don’t even know.” This last gets the heave-ho from Rob after a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to grope Jim.
“I believe your friends are looking for you,” Rob says.
“Really?” She struggles to look over her shoulder without falling off her high heels. “I don’t see them.”
“I’m quite sure that if you stand up and walk away, you will.”
Another of Jim’s actor friends, a guy named Scott with a pleasant but unactorly face, appears with two women, one well-polished and blonde who sits next to Jim, and the other dark-haired and short, who drops down next to Leonard.
“A guy at my table says you’re a model--he says you did a Prada campaign in Europe. Is that true?”
Leonard coughs. “Do I look like a model?”
“Actually, yes. There’s an easy way to check, though. How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Eleven.”
She laughs. “So, not a model. What do you, as they say, ‘do’?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“No shit--really? This is my lucky day. First I sell a pilot to CBS, and now I find a handsome doctor in the ass-end of Western civilization.”
“Congratulations on your success.” Rob’s hand, bearing a business card, stretches toward them from the other end of the banquette. “Do you have representation?”
“Not yet,” she says, pocketing the card. “Thanks.” Then, to Leonard, “You’re not one of those Dr. Feelgoods, are you? Plying Jim Kirk with Xanax and Oxycontin?”
“No, I’m an ER doctor from Georgia, visiting for the weekend.”
“Too bad.” She stirs her drink with her finger. “I could use a supplier. No, I’m just kidding--I’ve got to keep a clear head, if I’m going to write 22 episodes of a drama about a family with a reality show based on their repo business in New Orleans. Plus, they’re vampires.”
“That sounds--”
“I know. Don’t worry, it’ll be funny, and it represents the terminal evolution of the vampire craze, so there’s that to be said for it. Anyway, they’re not sexy vampires, which is why it’s a miracle it sold. You’d watch a funny meta-reality drama about non-sexy vampires, wouldn’t you?”
“I would, but I don’t own a TV.”
“Ooohhh,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That’s great--a hot doctor practicing in L.A. with a bunch of celeb patients, except he hates Hollywood and doesn’t even own a TV. I don’t suppose you’re a single dad?”
“I am, actually. Twelve-year-old daughter.”
The woman sighs. “Perfect. We’d have to make her a little older so she can go to The Grove alone. But I could definitely sell that.” She sticks out her hand. “I’m Tonia, by the way.”
“Len,” he says, taking her hand.
“Hi, Len.” She keeps it for a minute. “I want you to know that I’m not usually this annoying to strangers. I’m just high on life right now. And tequila. Mostly tequila.”
There’s a shuffle as somebody new arrives at the table, and Rob takes advantage of it to effect a shift that puts him next to Tonia and Leonard next to Jim. After a few minutes, the visitor slaps Jim on the shoulder and wanders off, and Jim puts his hand on Leonard’s knee and leans in to talk in his ear.
“She’s cute,” he says. “Are you going to share, or shall I find someone for myself?”
“What?”
“The girl.” He nods toward Tonia. “We can get a room right here in the hotel. Two, if you’re feeling shy. I was holding off because--”
“Jim,” Leonard says, finally getting it, “I don’t want to take her home; why would I?”
“It just looked like--” Jim looks at Tonia, and at the blonde sitting next to Stella, the one Stella had said was on some TV show. “Whatever you say. But for now, you’ve got to dial it down. That girl thinks she just hit the jackpot.”
“I wasn’t flirting with her! We were just talking.”
“You were existing, which is enough. But since you’ve crushed my hopes of an epic four-way, the least you can is take me home and show me a good time. Hey.” He leans over and pats Stella on the shoulder. “I’m about done here. We’re going to give Marta a ride back to her hotel.”
Jim scoops up the actress, and Leonard goes to say goodnight to Tonia, who looks puzzled but hands him a card. It’s got a little cartoon of a writer tearing her hair out.
“Call me,” she says, “if they ever let you out of Georgia again. I can talk about things besides business. I read books, too.”
They exit the club with Marta the actress on Jim’s arm. Just before the door opens, Jim taps Leonard and says, “Hola--paps. Just look straight ahead and get right into the car,” and then there’s a burst of bright-white electronic flashes. It’s neither noisy nor chaotic, just a couple of young guys in white T-shirts with photographers’ bags draped around them, aiming their lenses at Jim like he’s an endangered species of bird. Jim’s shoulders hunch like he can’t help it, but Marta turns and flashes a quick, bright smile and the cameras flash at double time. Leonard, following orders, hops into the front seat of Jim’s SUV and they speed away. Leonard glances in the rearview mirror and sees the photographers in the darkness, peering at the displays of their cameras.
“Jesus,” Leonard says, nerves jangled. “How can people make a living that way?”
“Easy. They’re not people,” Marta says. She’s sitting behind Leonard, with Stella on the left and Rob in the middle--a lucky man, Leonard would have thought, except that he has his knees pressed together and his eyes on the cell phone in his lap.
“Good,” he says to no one in particular. “That was good.”
They drop off Marta at the rear entrance of a hotel lined with spotlit palms, and Rob and Stella at a more sober-looking apartment building. Stella extends a delicate, long-nailed hand through the gap in the seat.
“It was lovely to meet you, Len. I hope we’ll be seeing more of you.”
“Likewise,” Leonard says, amused. He’s not an industry person, so she’s apparently already forgotten his basic biographical details, like the fact that he lives on the wrong coast.
The silence is freshly awkward. Yesterday Jim was just Jim, his celebrity a hypothetical construct. Now Leonard’s seen it and it isn’t something that he is, it’s something that he does and apparently works at very hard, irrespective of whether he enjoys it.
The city lights disappear and they’re on dark, curving road, and Leonard says, “Why did you think I wanted to go home with that woman?”
Jim gives a one-shouldered shrug. “She was cute, and she seemed pretty sharp. A writer, right? Sounds like your beat.”
“I’m sure she’s very nice. I’m sure any guy would be lucky to have her come home with him. Any straight guy, because I’m pretty damn sure I mentioned I’m gay.”
“I know, but--” He stops, then starts again. “I mean, you were married to a woman. For six years.”
That shuts Leonard up pretty effectively, as his mouth fills with the bitter, imagined taste of his own failure. Even though he’s been divorced now as long as he was married, he remembers the feeling with aching clarity--Jocelyn’s disappointment and self-doubt in the face of Leonard’s deficient desire, her anger when he finally confessed. He’d cried, she’d cried; he’d tried to explain his guilt, his confusion, and it hadn’t mattered, because he couldn’t hide his relief or his craving for her forgiveness. She’d given it, eventually, but it had cost him everything.
“I loved my wife,” he says heavily, after a while. “I thought that would be enough.”
“And love and sex always go together?” There’s a hint of amusement in his voice. “Because you don’t fuck like a guy who hasn’t gotten laid in 12 years.”
“No, they don’t,” Leonard says stiffly, not particularly wanting to share what he considers--not sordid or shameful, but inconsequential; young bankers and traders and gallery owners, well-groomed and foul-mouthed, sleeping off alcohol and Leonard on Sunday mornings, less demanding but probably not much different in substance from what he’d get here for the same amount of effort. “But it’s always better that way, isn’t it?”
“Uh huh,” Jim says, seemingly losing interest in that part of the conversation. “I’m just relieved you haven’t been going without. I’m concerned about your sexual welfare, I really am.” And then, after a while and with a sigh, “I accept the biology of it, but it seems like a waste. Women are really great.”
“Yes, they are.” That, Leonard has never denied.
When they arrive, Leonard doesn’t even stop at his putative bedroom, just pours himself a glass of water and follows Jim into his bedroom. He strips off his borrowed clothes without ceremony and it’s like the end of an ordinary day--recapping people and places, talking about things they couldn’t talk about in mixed company.
“That actress, Marta?” Jim says. “Her agent called Rob about having us go out on an official date. I didn’t really want to have dinner with her because she always seems kinda snooty in the press, but in person? I’ve met worse.”
“You let that guy arrange your dates?” Leonard’s not sitting on the bed yet because he hasn’t been asked. “I know he’s a friend of yours, but it seems like what he knows about human relationships you could put in a thimble.”
“And yet, he and Stella are about as hot and heavy as it’s possible for two state-certified entertainment professionals to be.”
“Him?” Leonard boggles. “Her?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re moving in together; that’s why Stella is ditching that place on Beach Drive. Imagine my pride. I’m sure that when they have little baby accountants, I’ll be the godfather.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. It just goes to show that there’s somebody for everybody.”
“Or that you find big dicks in unexpected places.” He pats the comforter. “Speaking of which--”
Leonard sits down, sheets pleasantly cool against the back of his thighs. Jim gives him a smile of pure sunshine and rubs his arm for a minute. For Leonard’s dazzled heart, it’s almost enough. It’s not Jim’s fame or wealth or beauty, but the fact that Jim accepts his past without believing it means anything about the future. It’s the chance to escape the gravity of his own failure, on the tail of a rocket that’s perpetually bound for somewhere new.
They fall back on the bed together, Jim kissing him deeply and pushing a knee between Leonard’s, and for once he forgets to be afraid.
+++++
Leonard comes to in a pile of sheets and limbs. Some time in the night it got cool, and he and Jim ended up in the middle of the bed, fighting for a pillow, not yet having unconscious radar for each other.
He thinks Jim’s asleep, face down in 1000-threadcount bliss, until Jim’s hand begins to wander over his belly and hipbone.
The lazy mutual handjob that follows is pure indulgence--Leonard got plenty last night, but there are rainy days coming, so he doesn’t reproach himself. Afterward, he feels sticky and sweaty and smug, basking in the morning sun and the feeling of Jim pressed against his side.
“What do you want to do today?” Jim rasps in his ear.
“I don’t know. More of this, maybe.”
Jim smile broadens. “Good plan. But if you want to do any tourist shit--Universal or Santa Monica Pier or whatever--that’s fine by me. Since tomorrow is your--”
“Last day,” Leonard finishes. “I know.” He has a flight out in the morning. Georgia has never seemed so cold.
“Right,” Jim says around a yawn. “When are you coming back?”
Leonard feels a rush of relief and pleasure. “Not exactly sure. Might be able to get another long weekend in a month or two.”
“No, I mean for good. To live out here.”
“What?” Leonard almost pops a vertebra jerking his head around so he can look at Jim. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, you can’t act like this is a surprise,” Jim says, unperturbed. “You took the meeting about UCLA. You liked Stella’s client’s house. You practically drool any time we’re near the ocean, and look at you--you’re fucking glowing.”
“I don’t-- I’m not--” It takes a couple of tries for the engine in Leonard’s brain to turn over. “Of course I look like that; this is a vacation. I had lunch with Dr. Vladimirescu as a courtesy. We talked about some time possibly in the future--”
“This is the future.” Now Jim is scary-calm and serious. “Believe me, I know something about opportunities, and you’re never going to get a better one. You’re going to love it here, I know it, but just in case I want to make sure there’s no financial risk. You can live in the beach house rent free for at least eight months, while you look for a place of your own. It’s only about 20 minutes to the hospital, 30 with bad traffic, but you might want something closer. I’ll pay for your moving costs and whatever it takes to look after your house in Georgia. I talked to Stella about it and she thinks the easiest thing will be to put you on the payroll of my company so you can charge expenses, but we’ll see what the accountant says. Anyhow, you won’t need to feel weird about it because you’ll be submitting expenses, all nice and legal with a 30 percent tax break.”
Leonard looks at Jim like he’s just sprouted horns, the cackling demon in the monster movie finally revealed. It’s not a friendly suggestion, not even pleasant woolgathering of the kind you have over coffee on your last day of vacation. It’s a calculated plan.
“God damn it, you--” He splutters, trying to find the words to express his outrage. “You are the most manipulative son of a bitch on God’s green earth. You have to control everything, don’t you? You have everything and everyone revolving around you like you’re the goddamn sun, never mind that they have lives of their own and feelings of their own--”
“Manipulative?” Jim interrupts, sounding perplexed but not offended. “How am I manipulating you? I’m making you an offer. I understand that risk is your least favorite thing on the planet, so I’m insulating you from the risk, that’s all. Try working as a high-paid emergency doc and one of the best hospitals in the country while drinking Napa wine in front of a pink sunset, your money back if not completely satisfied.”
“That’s all you’re offering? A house, a job, a California dream?”
“That’s all, what-- Oh.” Finally, Jim has the good grace to look a little sheepish. “Yeah, there’s-- I like you, that should be obvious. I’m not trying to get you to come out here because L.A. needs another handsome doctor. But I don’t want to promise anything else because it’s kind of soon, you know? And if things don’t work out that way, I still want to be friends.”
Leonard’s heart, that faithful old dog, responds as to a whistle from his master. But that doesn’t change the impossibility of it.
“You’re forgetting something. I have a child.”
“I’m not forgetting Jo; in fact, I hope I get to meet her soon. She’s almost 13, right? Pretty soon she’s not going to want to go out with Daddy every weekend. So you go home twice a month, take a red-eye there and back, stay two days. And on the third weekend she comes here and learns to surf and goes to Disneyland and meets her favorite pop star or whatever.”
“Her mother would never--”
“A Swiss nanny picks her up at her house. English, if you prefer, but something with an accent and a uniform. If there are legal things you need to work out, Stella can help you. People do it all the time, Len. It’s amazing how money can contract time and space. So don’t worry about the logistics; just ask yourself, ‘Is this something I want to do?’”
He’s never considered a more terrifying question. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out, and Jim just smiles and pushes the hair out of Leonard’s eyes.
“You’re right, it’s unfair to ask before coffee. Speaking of surfing, have you ever tried?”
+++++
Mid-afternoon they’re sitting on an endless beach on top of their boards, Leonard chilled and breathless and exhilarated. The waves are small so the crowds are sparse, mostly beginners like Leonard, although most of them don’t have a well-fitting wetsuit and a brand-new longboard the way Leonard does.
Although he’s always had decent physical skills, Leonard would never have believed he could surf. But Jim believed, and he’s learning to trust Jim’s opinion.
They stare at the blue for a while, and then Leonard says, “Why me?”
Jim gives a little shrug. “Why anybody, right? But you--you’re the most honest person I’ve ever met. I don’t mean that bullshit honesty where you give yourself permission to tell people they suck. I mean knowing who you are and accepting the consequences of your actions. After you fucked up your family life it would have made sense to run away. I probably would have. But you just dug in deeper. And you love your daughter and you still love your wife, that much is clear.”
“You like me because I love someone else?”
Jim ducks his head. “Because you can love someone. In spite of everything that happened.”
Leonard nods because there’s not that much he can say, and so he just keeps squinting into the sunshine. It’s soaking into his skin, making sweat prickle under his wetsuit, making him run his tongue over dry lips. Jim hands him a water bottle and he drinks deeply.
“Got a couple more runs in you?”
“Sure.”
Leonard hoists the heavy board, still awkward, and they splash out into the water together, Jim paddling ahead with sure, even strokes, shoulder muscles fluid and visible under his wetsuit. They turn their boards and bob at the break, creatures of land and sea. After a few minutes a little set comes in, knee-high waves that bring no fear to Leonard’s cautious soul.
“Wait,” Jim says, sculling backward as a wave goes under them. “Wait. Okay, NOW--paddle!”
Leonard paddles furiously until he feels transcendental click of catching the wave, the momentum transferring perfectly to the board, and he grips the sides and pushes himself up, planting his feet and holding his arms out the way Jim has taught him to do. He’s riding gravity and Jim is riding beside him, balanced enough to file his nails but enjoying Leonard’s enjoyment.
Leonard rides all the way into the beach because he can, and because he’s not going to get a better ride all day.
“Okay,” he says to Jim’s back, as they wrangle their boards. “Yes.”
“Yes what?” Jim says, helping Leonard untangle the leash.
“I’ll do it. I’ll move out here.”
Jim grins like he’s known it all along, the son of a bitch. “Good. That’s good. I’ll get Paul started on the arrangements.” He strides through the shallows and onto the beach, gesturing for Leonard to follow him. “Hey, let’s go up to the Point. I think you’re ready for bigger waves.”