Maybe the Moon

asleep?”
    “No.”
    “Is Renee in the room?”
    “No.”
    “Are you mad at me?”
    “Not a bit.”
    “Sorry I fucked up your party.”
    I told him he hadn’t, so he shouldn’t expect an absolution anytime soon. Then I asked him where Callum was.
    “Back at the Chateau. He has to be up at five. There are movies to be made and psychotic queers to be put in their place.”
    I sighed at his renewed ranting. “Didn’t you guys make up?”
    He made an unreadable grunt.
    “What does that mean?”
    “That I was gutless,” he said, “and let it drop.”
    Touched by this attempt at compromise, I slipped into myPollyanna mode. “Maybe it won’t be a problem, Jeff. I mean, if they fixed the script like he says…”
    “They haven’t fixed shit. He just said that to get off the hook.”
    “C’mon now. He sounded concerned enough.”
    “Yeah. About his own ass. That’s the only reason he even thinks about this. He’s petrified he’ll be outed if this becomes an issue.”
    I digested that for a moment. “You think it will? Become an issue?”
    “It could. Very easily. It’s the meanest script I’ve ever read, Cadence. It cost two and a half million dollars, and it’s just one more lousy cheap shot at fags. I’m not the only person who’s gonna be pissed off.”
    I asked him what he expected Callum to do.
    “He could raise a stink. If he won’t come out, he can at least tell the press the movie’s homophobic. He’s the star, for Christ’s sake. What if Wesley Snipes took a role in a film that turned out to be racist?”
    “But didn’t he see the script before he accepted the role?”
    “Yeah, well…let’s not get into his ethics.”
    I hesitated a moment, then said: “Maybe we should.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t get it, Jeff. Why are you still seeing him if he’s such a scumbag?”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “You just said he didn’t have any ethics.” There was no response to this, so I added: “How pretty can a dick be?”
    “You know,” he said quietly, “I’ll always be sorry I told you that.”
    I told him maybe so, but the information was nonetheless pertinent to our discussion.
    “He has other qualities,” he said.
    “Like?”
    “He can be very…personal and tender. When we’re by ourselves.”
    Personal and tender. I could imagine the sway that would hold over Jeff. Especially now. If Callum had been the first person to make him feel human again after Ned’s death, it would be tough for Jeff to renounce that sensation completely, even for political reasons. It would mean starting all over again from rock bottom.
    “Personal and tender is good,” I said. “Maybe that should be enough.”
    “I tried that,” he said. “I kept the whole damn thing in a vacuum for at least two months. No demands on his conscience, no expectations, nothing.”
    “And?”
    He snorted bitterly. “I ended up in a closet at the Chateau Marmont.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “OK, it wasn’t a closet; it was a fucking kitchenette or something. But it felt like one.”
    “Jeff…”
    “Leonard showed up unannounced at the suite one night, and Callum asked me to hide in the other room.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “I wouldn’t joke about something that humiliating.”
    “But Leonard is gay.”
    “So what? He gave Callum explicit instructions not to get laid until the movie’s over, and Callum promised him he wouldn’t. You know how this crap works. There’s big money riding on that piece of cryptofascist dreck.”
    I giggled just a little. “So you hid?”
    “Don’t rub my nose in it, Cadence.”
    “I think it’s kind of sweet.”
    “Well, it wasn’t; it was degrading. All I could think was: Here I am, the fifth or sixth best-known gay writer in L.A., this fucking elder statesman of Queer Nation…and I’m acting out some Feydeau farce, cowering in a goddamn closet—”
    “Kitchenette.”
    “—from a couple of other fags, for Christ’s sake. One of whom, need I remind you, is an official self-loathing shithead of the Hollywood establishment.”
    He meant Leonard, I presumed. “I thought he knew about you and Callum.”
    “Not as far as I know, he doesn’t.” He brooded over that in silence for a moment. “You haven’t talked about it, have you?”
    I told him I hadn’t dared even mention Callum to Leonard ever since Leonard lied to me about Callum’s being back in town, since it was never prudent to embarrass Leonard in the act of spinning a big