CHAPTER 9
Violet came through, Reid thought as he watched the driver carry his luggage into the house.
“Put those in the bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall,” he told the man, who nodded and hurried off.
Reid looked around. Yes, Violet had done well. Of course, for what he’d paid the owner for the place, it should have been great. She’d already rented it to a group of queens from New York for the summer, and in the end Reid had offered her three times what they were paying to get her to give them some story about burst pipes or the installation of a new septic tank so that he could have it.
Now it was his from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Three glorious months away from Los Angeles. Three months he and Ty could spend together. Well, more or less together. They still didn’t travel openly together, and there was no chance of them appearing in public as a couple. But within the walls of the house, they could act like any other lovers.
“The bags are all upstairs, Mr. Truman.” The driver had returned.
“Thanks, Evan,” Reid said. He stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out some bills, which he handed to the waiting man.
Evan nodded. “Give us a call if you need anything while you’re here,” he said as he left.
When Evan was gone and the door was shut, Reid finally relaxed. He was alone. Apart from Violet and Ty, no one else knew where he was. Violet had been instructed to tell anyone who called that he was in Europe at a spa. He knew people would assume that meant rehab, but since everyone in Hollywood was in and out of clinics on a regular basis, he didn’t really care. Violet would pass along any truly important messages, and he would have her relay his replies. Since no directors, agents, actors, or producers in town knew how to write their own e-mail or make their own calls, he knew he would be protected by the natural firewall provided by the network of assistants who really kept everything running smoothly. He didn’t even know a gaffer who didn’t use a publicist these days.
With nothing else to do, he gave himself a tour of the house. He’d seen pictures, but they hadn’t done the place justice. Not that the place was anything grand by Tinseltown standards. There were only three bedrooms and two bathrooms. But the living room was big and airy, the kitchen filled with every possible convenience, and there was a small office upstairs where he could set up his computer if he felt the inclination to do any work.
Best of all, the house looked out on the ocean. He could walk out his back door and right down to the beach. The windows of the big bedroom upstairs also looked out on the water, and the smell of the sea filled the rooms. Reid closed his eyes and breathed it in. He was so used to the stink of Los Angeles, with its herds of cars clogging the streets like drunken cattle and its blanket of smog wrapping everything in dirty gauze, that he’d forgotten what the real world smelled like. Now it came back to him in cool, salty drafts that tickled his skin and made him shiver.
He couldn’t wait to show the place to Ty. He looked at his watch. Two hours until Ty would arrive from New York. He was in rehearsals for his new film, but the entire cast and crew had been given the long Memorial Day weekend off. Reid and Ty would have four whole days together before Ty returned to the city and the cameras.
Reid’s cell phone rang. Hoping it was Ty, he fished it from the pocket of his coat. But it was Violet. Reid hit the answer button.
“Hey,” he said.
“Good. You made it.” Even Violet’s voice radiated efficiency and a love of order. Reid smiled.
“Yeah, I’m all in,” he told his assistant. “The house is fantastic.”
“There should be enough food for a couple of weeks,” Violet informed him. “I sent a list of your favorites to the people who will be doing the housecleaning for you. When you run low, just tell them what you want and they’ll get it.”
“Thanks,” said Reid. It had been so long since he’d prepared food for himself that he hadn’t even thought about how that would be handled. It was the one aspect of his vacation he was perfectly happy to have someone else take care of.
“If you want someone to do the cooking, I can arrange that as well,” Violet continued.
“No,” Reid said, suddenly feeling a rush of independence. “I think I can manage that.”
“Are you sure?” Violet’s confident tone slipped into surprised uncertainty.
“No,” Reid said. “I’m not at all sure. But I’m going to give it a try.” He was looking at his summer as a break from his old life, and that meant doing as much on his own as possible. “But I’ll take the cleaners. Vacuuming was never my strong suit.”
Violet rewarded him with a rare laugh, a sparkle of vulnerability that Reid found wonderfully refreshing. He’d always thought she was much too serious for someone not yet thirty.
“One more thing,” she said, the serious demeanor returning.
Reid groaned. “Is it work-related?”
“Could be,” replied Violet. “C.J. Raymacher called today.”
“Who?” asked Reid, not recognizing the name.
“That shows how often you stand in line at the grocery store,” Violet said. “C.J. Raymacher. Columnist, if you can call him that, for the Weekly Insider. Formerly of Buzz and Vanity Fair, until he was caught making up sources and snorting a significant percentage of his expense account up his nose.”
“You mean that kid who used to hang around with Drew Barrymore and River Phoenix?” Reid said.
“That would be the one,” Violet confirmed. “He used to be in all the gossip columns. Now he just writes one.”
“What does he want with me?” Reid asked her. “I’m about as gossip-worthy as Katie Couric.”
“It’s not you he’s interested in,” explained Violet. “Not exactly. It’s Ty Rusk.”
Reid felt his stomach knot instinctively. Hollywood gossip columnists had never been his favorite species, but he’d always managed to live his life below their radar. Now, it seemed, one of them had set his sights in Reid’s direction.
“Ty?” he repeated, trying to sound confused. “What about Ty?”
“He didn’t say,” Violet answered. “He just said he’d heard some information about Ty that he thought you might be able to confirm.”
“But he didn’t say what it was?” Reid asked hopefully.
“No,” said Violet. “I told him you were out of the country and would get back to him.”
“Good,” Reid told her. “Don’t call him back. Whatever it is, he’ll probably forget all about it as soon as Pamela Anderson has her implants enlarged again or Eminem pisses on someone’s mother.”
“I thought it was a little strange,” Violet continued. “I mean they usually just run things whether they’re true or not.”
“Who knows what the guy is after?” Reid said. “He probably just wants to know who Ty is banging these days.”
After a few more minutes of talking, Violet hung up and Reid sank onto the couch to think. Yes, C.J. Raymacher probably did want to know whom Ty was banging. Only he probably had some hunch that it wasn’t an actress, or any other woman. If he thought Ty was involved with some starlet, he would have called Ty’s agent, not the producer of his last movie. The only reason he might have to call Reid was if he somehow thought there was something going on between them.
This was what Reid had feared for most of his life. He’d never had a problem with being gay, at least no more than anyone else who had to go through the coming-out process and live in a straight world. He was even a supporter of numerous gay causes, donating money to the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center and several AIDS organizations. But he’d never before had to consider a partner’s visibility. Now things had changed. Not even Violet knew that Ty and Reid were an item.
No, he told himself. It wasn’t possible that this gossip columnist knew anything. He hadn’t told anyone, not even his closest friends. And Ty had certainly kept his mouth shut. They didn’t even have dinner together in restaurants unless they were in a group and could pass the evening off as work-related. While Ty was no stranger to persistent paparazzi, regularly finding himself surprised outside of restaurants and events, no one ever saw him arrive at or leave Reid’s house.
At least no one they knew about. Reid was almost certain that he and Ty had managed to keep their affair hidden from the world. But what if they hadn’t? What if someone had seen Ty coming or going? What if that someone had told C.J. Raymacher?
A story like that, even if it wasn’t true, could do a lot of damage to Ty’s image. Reid had seen it happen to other stars. Once a story was in print, it never died. Even a totally concocted story would eventually become gospel truth when it was told enough times. People would forget that it had originated in a trashy grocery store throwaway. Soon it would become “My friend knows someone who slept with him” and “I hear he hires hustlers to come to his house so no one will know.” Just ask Tom Cruise, he thought. Or Ben Affleck, or Richard Gere, or Brad Pitt. Hell, even Paul Newman was believed by many people to have gone to bed with more than the occasional man. Rumors had surrounded these actors, and many more like them, for so long that even Reid wasn’t entirely sure anymore if any of them were on his team.
Although it was true that the gay rumors had done little to affect the marketability of stars like Cruise or Pitt, Reid knew that there were many more actors for whom suspicions of queerness had derailed their careers. He thought immediately of Carter Morris. Two years earlier, Morris had been the actor of the moment, a hunky man’s man who earned overnight success starring in a drama for NBC about a rookie baseball pitcher in his first season on a team with World Series chances. Carter’s face had appeared on every magazine cover imaginable, and his star quotient went through the roof when he won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a drama. Movie offers came pouring in, and it seemed as if Morris would have his pick of roles.
Then he’d been photographed kissing another man while on vacation in Greece. The picture had been on the front page of every entertainment rag in the United States within forty-eight hours, along with statements made by one of Morris’s exes, a bitter college boyfriend with an ax to grind and photos of him and Carter together to back up his claims. Although NBC continued to support the show, many viewers didn’t, and after its first season finale it was unceremoniously dropped from the fall schedule.
Morris himself had refused to talk about the incident, hoping it would fade from memory. Sadly, it was he who faded from memory. While Reid had tried to help him out by getting him bit parts in some of the movies he produced, other producers and directors were not as kind. To them, Carter’s image and reputation as a leading man were tarnished by the fact that he slept with other men, and they chose to go with stars who could more easily provide female viewers with fantasy material and male viewers with someone they could idolize. Eventually Morris had left Hollywood, defeated and broke. The last Reid had heard of him, he was working as a bartender in some state he couldn’t imagine people actually lived in—Wyoming, or perhaps one of the Dakotas.
He didn’t want that to happen to Ty. His career was at a delicate stage, one where fans would forgive him for certain indiscretions, like a DUI incident or perhaps a violent altercation with a nosy journalist. In a strange way, that would even make him more popular. Like Russell Crowe or Robert Downey Jr., it would lend to him a certain helplessness that would make women want to take care of him and allow men to feel more like him. But it would be difficult for him to overcome something like the revelation of his sexuality, at least for the moment.
The question was how to handle things. Based on what he knew, Reid wasn’t convinced that Raymacher was even on the right track. But supposing he was, how much did he know? Reid didn’t think it was too much. If he had real proof that Ty was a fag, he wouldn’t have bothered to call. He would have just printed what he had and let the shit fly. By calling Reid, he was trying to get something more to go on. But what? It was almost impossible that he would know that Ty and Reid were involved. Was he hoping that, faced with questions about his leading man’s bedroom behavior, Reid would somehow accidentally blurt out the truth? It had happened before, he knew, but it was a long shot. Still, Raymacher was a gossip columnist, and there was nothing beneath such a person.
After much thought, Reid still hadn’t decided what, if anything, to tell Ty. He could just ignore Raymacher. If the guy actually had any real dirt, he would resurface and they could deal with it then. If not, he would simply fade away. Either way, it wasn’t an immediate problem. More pressing was what Reid was going to make for dinner.
He got up and went into the kitchen. As promised, the pantry was well stocked, as were the refrigerator and freezer. I’ll have to remember to give Violet a raise, he thought as he rummaged around, trying to decide what to make for his and Ty’s first night in the house. His assistant had indeed remembered all of his favorites. Now it was just a matter of finding something he could actually cook.
He settled on pasta. As his mother had always told him, anyone could boil water. He proved her right, and before long he had a pot of penne bubbling on the stove. Another pan held sauce from one of the many jars that lined the shelves. And Reid was just making a salad when the door opened and Ty appeared.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called out.
Reid wiped his hands on a towel and went to greet his boyfriend. “You look great,” he said as he gave Ty a hug and a long kiss.
“That’s because I came straight from the set,” Ty told him. “Once I shower and wash this makeup off I’ll look like my ugly old self.”
“Maybe I should shower with you then,” Reid suggested, beginning to unbutton Ty’s shirt. “That way I can have you before the glamor wears off.”
“Can dinner wait?” Ty asked, nodding toward the kitchen, where the pasta sauce was filling the air with its fragrance.
“Yes,” Reid replied, sliding a hand inside Ty’s pants. “But I can’t. Now get upstairs while I turn the stove off.”
Ty headed for the stairs, whistling happily, while Reid returned to the kitchen. As Reid watched his lover bound up the steps, he made up his mind. He wouldn’t say anything about the phone call from Raymacher.
Why ruin the summer? he thought as he put a lid on the pasta and headed after Ty.