A Star is Born (11 page)

I returned to the room, took the credit card from my wallet, and set about destroying the card. When I had managed to get it into several different pieces (not an easy task, using just the sewing scissors the hotel provided in the room), I handed the pieces to Bill. I opened the door to the room and held up my hand, gesturing for him to leave.

“Mark! We have to talk! Destroying your cell phone and your credit card are not going to accomplish anything.”

“Correction.
Your
cell phone and
your
credit card. After all, as you just told me,
you
pay for both of them. You can rest assured that those days are over.”

“
Enough
! We need to talk.”

“Yes, I agree that we need to talk, but I’m not ready yet. I’m still too mad. I’m still too sad. I need a little distance to gain a little perspective.”

“Mark, I’m so sorry. I screwed up, big time.”

“Yes, you did.” I paused, looked down and then back up at Bill. “And I’m very sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” he asked me.

“Maybe sad would be a better word than sorry. I’m sad because I really liked
us
. I thought we were good together. I really thought we had something good. And I’m going to miss that so desperately that it hurts.”

With tears in his eyes, Bill said, “I’m so sorry. I screwed up. Please forgive me.”

“I’m not ready to have this conversation yet. I’ve told you that. I’m tired. I’m angry. I’m hurt. I’m sad. I’ve asked you to leave. Please go.”

“Not until you talk to me and let me explain.”

“Explain what, Bill? Explain how your dick jumped out of your pants and ended up in some man’s mouth with you laying back, your shorts at your ankles and your eyes closed while he blew you? Explain that? That all seems pretty clear to me. Remember, I was there. I was watching for a good five minutes. I watched you and that, that, that slimeball.”

Bill tried to lean in and kiss me, but I pushed him away. “I’ve asked you to leave twice now.” I still held the door open, hoping that he would take the hint and leave.

“Please, talk to me.”

“I can’t, Bill. I hurt too much inside at the moment.”

“Let me make you feel better,” he asked. The man was desperate, more so than I would have expected.

“Oh?” I asked, in surprise and disbelief. “And how do you think you could do that? Hmm?”

“Let’s have sex, Mark. Please.” He tried to kiss me again, but I again pushed him away.

“
No!
” I said angrily.

“Please.”

“No. I don’t have any condoms, Bill.”

“We’ve never used condoms,” he said in confusion.

“That’s right. That’s when there were just two of us in the relationship. But now that you’ve added at least one other person to the relationship, I can no longer count on you being safe. I can no longer count on you watching out for my health. If you’ve had sex with one man, I quite logically have to wonder how many others there have been besides him. And I have to wonder what you’ve done with them and what bodily fluids have been exchanged with them. And I have to wonder what potential STDs you’ve been exposed to and could transmit to me.”

“We didn’t do that, Mark,” he started.

“I don’t care what you say, Bill. You lied to me before, so why should I believe a thing you say now? I can’t, and you know that.”

“Please, Mark. I love you.”

“You have a mighty odd way of showing me that you love me, Bill.”

Bill was full out crying now.

“Do you love him?” I asked.

“
No
! Never,” he said between tears.

“Then why did you have sex with him? No. Actually, I don’t want to know. I don’t care. Do you have any idea how much it hurt me to walk around the corner of that house and find Derrick on his knees in front of you? Do you have any idea how much that hurt? A lot. It hurt me a lot. And it made me think: what else have they been doing while I wasn’t there? If I’m watching them having sex outside where anyone could see them and photograph them, what have they been doing
inside
at night with the curtains closed? You’ve got to see this.”

He nodded. There was no way he could disagree with what I had just said. His tears continued to roll down his cheeks.

“You hurt me, Bill. You betrayed me. You took one of the most intimate things we shared as a couple, and you did it with someone else.”

“Please, Mark. I’m so sorry. Please, let’s—”

“No condoms, Bill. No condoms, no sex. Go away.”

“I’ll go buy condoms. But I want you to come with me. Every other time when I turn my back you disappear. I’m not falling for that again.”

“I’m going to bed, Bill. I’m tired.”

“Please, Mark. I love you. I can’t live without you.”

I stared at him, not angry, but hurt. And I’ll admit it, his tears were getting to me.

“Fine,” I said, somewhat disgusted with myself. “But I’m not having sex with you.”

Bill Tries to Explain

B
ILL
remained silent as I sat on the bed, not looking at him. “Mark, I made a mistake. I made a horrible mistake that I regret.”

“Why do you regret it, Bill? Do you regret it because it was wrong? Because it was a betrayal of us? Or do you regret being caught? If I hadn’t walked in and seen the two of you, would you have told me? Would you have finished and then picked up the phone and called me to tell me what you had just done?” He was silent. “No. Of course not. And I have to think: what else have they done when I wasn’t there? You two have been spending a huge amount of time together. If I can’t trust you, then there is no one that I can trust. I’m tired, Bill. I’m going to sleep. You should leave.”

I wanted him to leave so that I could get undressed and get under the covers and go to sleep, but I could see that there was no way I was blasting him out of there. Bill started to get onto the bed with me, but I stopped him and pointed to the sofa.

“Please, Mark,” he said. “I want to have sex with you.”

“Bill, I told you ‘no’, and in case you didn’t know, ‘no’ means ‘no’.”

I turned off the light. I lay on my side, turned away from Bill, and closed my eyes.

“I love you, Mark. I really do. I’ve always loved you, and I always will love you. You are the love of my life. You saved my life. I owe you my life. I treated you like crap, and I apologize for that. I made a huge, horrible, ugly mistake that I will regret for the rest of my life. I am so sorry that you were betrayed. I regret it—not getting caught, but I regret
doing
it in the first place. I hate myself for doing something so stupid. I let my dick do my thinking. I am so sorry that I hurt you. I love you more than life itself.”

I rolled onto my back, a little pissed that he wouldn’t let me go to sleep. “So, if you love me more than life itself”—(danger, danger, danger—don’t talk when angry)—“you would walk out onto the balcony and throw yourself over?” I had told him I was too angry, but he wouldn’t back off.

He looked at me, thought for a minute, and said, “Yes.”

“You would walk out into the middle of the busiest street in Honolulu with hundreds of cameras clicking away, take off all your clothes, and walk naked down the middle of the street for all the world to see?”

“Yes. You want me to do it?”

I smacked him on the side of his head. “
No
! You dumbass! No, I don’t want you to do something so stupid as to kill yourself! Don’t ever even think about that! Just… don’t. I would die right along with you, and I’m just starting to live… and I like life.”

“Me too. I like the life we’ve built together.”

“I did too.”

“What can I do to make it up to you?”

Thinking for a moment, I said, “I would ask you to promise that you would never do anything so stupid ever again, but at the moment I don’t believe that a promise from you would amount to anything, so I don’t know how to answer your question.”

Bill was on his knees now, on the bed beside me. “Do you remember when I found you at the hotel on Maui?” he asked. “You said that I looked like crap. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I remember. And you
did
look like crap. You still do.”

“Do you know why I looked like crap?”

“No. Why?”

“I had flown back to California to try to find you and talk to you. I was convinced that you had flown home, and I was desperate to talk to you and apologize for my stupidity. But you weren’t there. I called my credit card company, and they told me that you had checked into a hotel on Maui, so I raced back to the airport, grabbed the first flight I could find—the only seat they had was in the middle in the back in coach—and flew back to Hawaii. I’ve barely slept since you—”

“Since I caught you two together. You can say it. It is, after all, what was going on.”

“Since you caught me with Derrick. There. I said it.”

“Why did you do it?”

“It had been a rough day of filming. It started off great, and we were getting a lot done. But there was one scene in the afternoon that just wasn’t working. We worked. We tried it. We tried it again. And again, and again, and again. It just wasn’t working. We called it a day and went back to the house. We got something to eat. I said something about missing you to Derrick. He asked me why I missed you. I told him I missed you because I loved you. I missed sleeping next to you. I missed you because you were my best friend.

“He pushed me by asking what else I missed. I was so tired that I described what I missed doing with you. And as I did, I got hard. I didn’t have a shirt on. All I had on were my shorts and sandals. He came over to me and stroked me through my shorts. I pushed him away. But he kept coming back. I asked him to stop, but it felt good so I didn’t protest as much as I had.

“He slipped his hand into my shorts, stroked me… and I thought with my dick instead of my brain. I should have stopped him… but I didn’t, and I take responsibility for that. It was my own stupid mistake, and I apologize for making that mistake. It is a mistake that I will regret for the rest of my life.”

He stopped talking and looked at me. He was still on his knees while I lay on my back.

We were both quiet for a few moments.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “I know that that wasn’t an easy thing to say. And I thank you for sticking with it and for saying it.” He started to lean forward toward me, but I held up my hand to stop him.

“Not so fast,” I said. “I still haven’t forgiven you. Not to mention, what happens now. You two still have to work together. I can’t trust you two together any longer. What happens now?”

“I’ll quit,” he simply said.

“You’ll be sued. You’ll lose your case and be fined huge amounts of money. You’ll never work in Hollywood ever again. You’ll be broke. And because you’ll be broke, I’ll be broke as well. And I don’t want to be broke. You need to finish this project. When you’re done you’ll both earn a boatload of money.”

“We have signed contracts for another film after this. What do I do about that?”

“I don’t know. I can only think about this one step at a time. First I need to figure out about this mess. I have school. I’m flying home tomorrow because I have to go back to class, do my homework, write my papers, finish my assignments, and get ready for finals. You don’t, but I do. The only way I will be able to trust you both together is if I’m here watching your every move. But I can’t do that. So what do we do? Do I go to the set and tell everyone, cast and crew, what happened, what I walked in on, and ask them to be my eyes and ears? Talk about embarrassing, but I’ll do it if we can’t identify an alternative.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. Since I had thrown mine to the street below, I knew that it wasn’t mine. Bill stood and found his phone. He checked the caller ID and answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Yes. Hi.” There was silence for a moment. “Yes. I’m sorry,” he said with his head down. More listening. “Yes. Yes. No. Okay. Sure.” Looking at me, he asked for the number of the room we were in. I gave it to him, and he repeated it to the caller on the other end of the conversation, along with the name of the hotel and its address, which he read from the notepad beside the hotel telephone. “Okay. Of course. Yes. Obviously. Yes.” He held the phone out to me and said, “Here.”

Confused, I took the phone and cautiously said, “Hello?”

“Mark. Why aren’t you answering your phone?” I heard Moira ask.

“I threw it to the street from sixteen floors up, so it is most likely in a few dozen pieces.”

“You’re with Bill. Are you two talking?”

“Yes. He showed up at my door, after tracking me by checking up on my credit card activity and phone calls. I’ve asked him to leave so that we can talk about this later when I’m less angry, but he is a persistent prick.” Bill smiled as I said that last sentence. She talked and I listened.

When I disconnected the call, I handed his phone back to him.

“So she wants to meet with us,” he said.

“Sounds that way. I guess all the forces of the world have conspired to keep me from getting any sleep tonight.”