LUCA

In the years before Haze, Luca carved out a life in San Francisco. He sent his mother money once a month, told her he had a job in banking. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Let her think whatever she needed to think. Her son was a banker. He lived on Knob Hill. He had important friends. Truth was what you made of it.

In truth he hustled, did a little modeling, dabbled in porn. His stage name was Stroke. It was what he did best—to out-of-town businessmen and rich high school boys from Pacific Palisades, drag queens, and upscale biker dudes who climbed back into their suits and ties on Monday mornings. He stroked them all. Until Haze.

The guy was a crazy control freak, all lovey-dovey one minute, pissed off about something the next. There was no in between with him; it was all or nothing, and nothing wasn’t an option. Haze wanted to own him.

So Luca let him. He let him buy him clothes, rent him a bigger apartment, buy him plane tickets to everywhere he danced. Luca was smart. Smart enough to know a good thing when it was handed to him on a silver platter until the silver began to tarnish.

Haze Morton relished being cruel. At first it amused Luca because Haze was so transparent. He lived to make the people around him squirm, and Luca came to understand why soon enough. He drew no real pleasure from men, or women, only from precipitating their discomfort, from orchestrating their pain.

It was Haze who insisted Luca sleep with the twins. They were blond; pretty in a Barbie Doll way, Amanda and Miranda something. They danced with the company. Their bodies were wiry, but their breasts were too big; Haze made them wear tight bandeaus under their leotards to flatten them.

Naked in hotel rooms when they were on tour—never in New York, Luca had never even been to New York—those girls made Luca feel something he’d never felt before. He faked his disdain for Haze’s sake when, in fact, he relished sleeping with those creamy girls. He began to question what he always believed to be an inevitable progression. Maybe Randy was wrong. That thought, the idea of it, made a painful transit through his head, a needle drawing a thread of doubt until one morning he woke up angry.

They were holed up in a hotel in Venice.

“What is it?” Haze said, and wagged a bony finger at him.

Behind Haze’s head, a window draped in heavy brocade framed the Grand Canal bustling with boat traffic. Clouds billowed across a Tiepolo sky. While Haze waited for an answer, he twirled the fat yellow diamond on his pinkie. He used to wear it on a chain around his neck, but since he’d grown thin enough to wear it on his hand, he’d acquired the habit of twisting it around and around. He bragged about how much it was worth, how it was a gift from his boyfriend, Martin. Luca had come to hate all of his little affectations. He weighed the consequences of responding. It wasn’t worth starting a fight, so he rolled over and pretended to sleep.

Luca listened to Haze pour coffee from a room-service pot. The cup rattled in his hand. He wondered if Haze’s boyfriend knew how sick Haze was. Martin was in New York. He was always in New York. The entire company knew Haze was sick, lingering flus mostly. Admitting to the actual diagnosis, the death sentence, was still a few years away. Luca would be grateful later that Haze treated him like some sort of prized sports car to be polished and admired, but never driven. Haze’s sexual indifference to him, to them, he and Martin, in the end, saved both of their lives.