Maybe the Moon

quirky idea that it might just attract attention, generate a little press, at least. And the audiences would certainly be more savvy and receptive than your typical MTV viewer. This could be just the right venue for me, the more I think about it.
    I’m on the balcony of Callum’s suite at the Chateau Marmont,six stories above Sunset. I’m in terry cloth after a noontime swim, cool-skinned and wet-haired, my nipples still pleasantly taut. A lovely, warm breeze is blowing. Callum and Jeff are down at Greenblatt’s, buying sandwiches, since there’s never been room service here. They’ve promised to bring me back a turkey on rye. Our view is toward the south: an unbroken sweep across the palmy, saffron-hazed plains of West Hollywood, with a four-story Marlboro Man looming preposterously in the foreground. The hotel itself is a funky jumble of towers and terraces, with a sixty-something-year history that’s almost inseparable from legend.
    Most people think of the Chateau as the place where Belushi bit the big one, but it’s got a lot more going for it than that. There’s all sorts of gossip in a book Callum bought at the front desk. For starters, an extremely young and horny Grace Kelly used to cruise the halls here, looking for guys who’d left their doors open. Howard Hughes and Bea Lillie and James Dean all hid out at the Chateau at one time or another, in varying states of emotional disrepair.
    What’s more, when Garbo was in residence, she always floated facedown in the pool, they claim, to keep from being recognized. (“Look, there’s a corpse in the pool!” “That’s no corpse, silly, that’s You-know-who!”) The very canvas awning above my head was the one that broke Pearl Bailey’s fall—well, caught her, actually—when she toppled from the ledge of her balcony after a festive lunch. She was feeling no pain, according to the book, and was in no particular hurry to leave when a hook-and-ladder came to her rescue.
    As you must’ve guessed, Jeff and Callum are an item now. Having spent the better part of last week shacked up in this suite, they finally surfaced and invited me over for a morning of sun by the pool. Jeff is trying his damnedest not to look dramatically altered, but any fool can see he’s dorky with happiness. Callum, on the other hand, appears pretty much the way he did at our first meeting: just as sunny and steady and obliging, just as unreadable. Even in the midst of laughter he seems to be holding something back, as if observing himself—and everyone else—from a safe distance.
    Callum did lose Jeff’s phone number. Or says he did, anyway. I guess it’s possible he never intended to call Jeff back and was merely shamed into a second date by the fact that they had me in common, but I seriously doubt it. Not the way they’re acting now. Earlier, down by the pool, I caught them swapping a look of such pie-eyed lovey-doveyness that I find it hard to believe anyone was pressured into anything.
    Not that we’ve discussed such matters— or the question of those girlfriends back home. I’m assuming that was Callum’s way of getting me off his case. We’ve mostly just talked about Mr. Woods and my video and Callum’s new movie, which is a big-budget thriller that has no connection whatsoever with Philip Blenheim. Callum plays a rookie cop whose little brother is kidnapped by a psychopath. I hinted around coyly about any “small roles” that might be available, envisioning myself as a crime lab researcher, say, or an observant street person who provides the missing clue, but Callum just smiled sweetly and said the script was already set. They’ll be shooting in two weeks at Icon. Marcia Yorke is the other lead, playing Callum’s girlfriend. He told me the name of the director, but I can’t remember it.
    I must admit it’s a novel sensation to see Jeff paired off with someone younger than himself. Ned Lockwood, after all, had a couple of decades on Jeff, so I guess I’ve come to think of the younger man’s role as Jeff’s natural, perennial state. Ned was a nurseryman, for the record, a big, hulking sweetheart of a guy whose bald head stayed nut brown throughout the year. He was a lot less serious than Jeff, a real joker sometimes, and I was just crazy about him. He was somewhat of a legend in his youth, Jeff tells me: a generous soul generously endowed. Ned was Rock Hudson’s lover for a brief period during the Pillow Talk era, when Hudson, in his mid-thirties,