L.A. Success (4 page)

He opened the gate to the courtyard.
He looked like a bruiser, a real tough guy, except that he was wearing thin,
white linen pants. I could see his neon-purple unit sling through them. He had
a white tank top on and around his neck he had a tiny purple scarf, I guess to
go along with the underwear. He was one of those guys who can shave in the
morning and have a five o'clock shadow by lunch. He had black hair and was
furry like a gorilla. His skin was tan and looked oily. I guessed that was
because of tanning lotion, because he had a lawn chair with a beach towel on it
there in the courtyard. Some kind of enormous black poodle was at his feet
having a sniff at me.

“Hello to you,” he said. He looked
at my Arnold and then followed the treasure trail with his eyes. That’s what I
call the strip of hair leading from my belly button down south. Helen used to make
fun of me and say it was more like a treasure hunt.

“Hi. I'm the gay that called you.
Guy. Guy, I mean, who called about the house sitting.” I felt pretty stupid
right about then, but he was a good sport about it.

“You think I went too far?” He pointed
up and down at his outfit. “I'm trying out some new looks, but I don't know if
I pulled this one off right.”

I didn't really know what he wanted
me to say here.

“Well, I can see your package,
pretty much,” I said.

“Of course you can. But what I mean
is do I look too 'nouveau gay'?”

I was thinking right then that my
cup of Starbucks wasn't going to be the skeleton key I had hoped it would. I
was going to have to say stuff.

“I don't know too much about this
sort of thing, but when you opened the gate, I was thinking you were trying too
hard,” I said, worried that I'd piss him off and not get the job.

“Hmm...Why don’t you come in and sit
down. It's so refreshing talking to someone who will tell me his honest
opinion.”

I walked into the courtyard. As he
was shutting the gate, the big poodle made a run for it.

“Stay! You're going to get yourself
run over!” he yelled, sounding like the voice on his answering machine. “I just
got this dog. He's almost full grown, but I don't think anyone has ever trained
him,” he said, switching back to the deep chick voice.

We walked over to the front door and
went in. His house wasn't very well decorated. I liked it a lot, but I thought
that a guy who was like this guy would decorate different. He had some
black-and-white photos of far-west landscapes on the walls. He didn't have a
lot of furniture, but what he did have looked like it came out of a bachelor
pad: black leather sofa and love seat, wood coffee table, kick-ass
entertainment center, a collection of nature magazines—that kind of stuff. He
invited me to sit down on the couch.

“Would you like a beer?” he asked.

“That'd be great.”

He went into the kitchen. I reached
over and picked up a hunting magazine from the coffee table. And then I
realized what was up. This guy must have been pretending to be gay for some
kind of mission. Maybe some wife thinks her husband is cheating on her with a
man, and Dennis here is gonna get naked with him and then, right before the
doing, whip out a camera and spring the divorce papers on him.

He came back with a couple of Buds.
That did it—now I was sure.

“Are you on a secret-agent thing,
where you gotta pretend to be gay?” I asked. “Your phone message said you were
'in the field'. Is this your undercover persona?”

He looked kind of sad all of a
sudden. He sat down on the love seat, took a big swig of beer and stared up at
the ceiling. Then he started talking in his answering-machine voice and never
went back to the other one.

“Nah, I quit the business a few
months ago. But I did something like what you described, except I didn't have
to disguise myself. A client hired me to follow and take pictures of her
husband because she believed he was hiding his homosexuality. I started
following him around—I have the three very different cars you saw outside so
that I don't get caught when I tail someone. I found inconspicuous places to
park around the various restaurants and offices he visited every week. In order
to be sure I'd get good shots, I started taking establishing photos of him
alone. I printed them out and almost immediately had a strange reaction to the
photos. I thought I was having déjà vu, so I looked over the photos again and
again to find what it was. And then I simply had to admit to myself that I was
staring at this man's face, dreaming about him.”

“So you didn't want to piss off your
client by doing her husband?”

“No,” he said, “it's not that.
Understand that before that time, I had always believed myself to be straight.
I had held all of it inside, and it was eating me up.”

“It's good you came out then,” I
said. “Did you catch that guy in the act?”

“Almost immediately. He had several
lovers all over L.A. He even had an apartment in West Hollywood that he had
kept hidden from his wife. One of his lovers lived there. Oh, clever Ignacio—that's
the husband's name. He's half Spanish.”

“I'd of kicked his balls in if I was
his wife. Did she go crazy all over him?” I asked.

“Well...She never found out. I
approached Ignacio one day with some of the more candid photos I had taken and
showed them to him. I opened up and explained who I was, but told him I could
no longer go through with it because I was having...feelings. He seemed to
understand what I was talking about. It must have been written all over my
face. He invited me to dinner to talk it over. It seems like a cliché, but he's
the only one who really understood where I was coming from. After a little
while he broke it off with all the others. We've been together ever since.”

“What happened to the wife?”

“Oh, she still doesn't have a clue. I
showed her a bunch of photos of him exiting buildings all by himself and told
her he was just a busy businessman.”

“Why is he staying with her?” I
asked.

“Her father is very wealthy and is about
to pass on. When he does...” he said and then stopped. He seemed to realize he
was telling me too much. “Well, let's just say that Ignacio and I will be
together then.”

“Damn. You were a detective guy, and
one day all that changed,” I said.

“The thing is, I don't know how to
be like Ignacio wants me to be. Look at me in this outfit. Sometimes I don't
know why I can't just throw on my old clothes, except now that I've lost so
much weight they don't fit me anymore. I think I was overeating before out of
anxiety. I used to be as fat as...well, I was closer to your size. Ignacio
helped me start exercising because he doesn't like heavy men. He also said I
needed to update my wardrobe to reflect my new life, but this just isn't
comfortable.”

“I'd get rid of the scarf thing.
That makes it look like you're trying too hard,” I said.

He took it off. He looked much
better. And out of the sunlight, I couldn't see much of that other business
either.

“What kind of dog is that?” I asked.
It was standing outside drooling all over the sliding-glass door.

“It's a royal standard poodle. A
gift from Ignacio. He's about eight months old, so he requires a lot of
attention. I can't leave him alone, and he's a bitch to travel with.”

Dennis got up and let the beast in.
I always thought poodles were boring, but this huge thing ran around like he
was nuts. He jumped up on the couch, stepped all over my balls and licked my
face. Dennis came over and put him on the floor, but he jumped back up
immediately.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No problem. At least I know he
likes me. What's his name?”

“Manolete.”

There was no way I was going to call
this dog Manolete. It didn't look like a Manolete at all—not that I knew what
one of those looked like. It looked more like a big hairy scrotum, with all that
tight curly hair done up in circles. I decided to call it Ballsack, at least
after this Dennis guy took off.

“So what do you need me for?” I
asked.

“I'm going to be away for several
months. I don't know exactly how long. With all the stress from these changes,
I need to get away for a while. Ignacio does a lot of business in Spain, so he
suggested that I take up temporary residence in his apartment in Ibiza. He's
arranged his schedule so that he'll be with me there a couple of weeks every
month. While I'm gone, I need you to take care of my house. Come by in the
evenings and turn one light on somewhere so that it looks like I'm home. The
difficult part will be Manolete. I'm not sure how he'll do on his own. Plus,
he'll need to be taken out three times a day, at least once for exercise, or
else I'm worried he'll destroy my place. The ideal situation would be for you
to take him with you most of the time—assuming you're a dog person?”

“Oh yeah. I'm great with dogs. They
think I'm one of them.”

“I get that impression,” he said.
“You can even hang out here if you want. Watch a movie, relax in the yard,
whatever. That'll really make it look like someone is at home. Plus, every
couple of weeks I'll need you to start up my cars and let them idle for a few
minutes. Will all that fit into your schedule?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “I live less than
two miles from here, plus I have a lot more time now that I've become a
landlord. My job does itself.” I was hoping that last part didn't sound as
pervy to him as it did to me.

“Great. I'll get your contact
information so I can check in with you from Spain.”

He gave me a piece of paper and I
wrote down my phone number.

“So, how much were you thinking?” I
asked.

“Oh, yes. Sorry. I'll send you a
check every month for...” and here he told me an amount about as much as Tommy
was paying me for rent. “Is that okay?”

“That works.”

He started taking me on a tour of
the house. He showed me where he kept all the food and products for Ballsack. I
didn't understand why the dog had so much stuff, but I nodded a lot like
everything was cool. He pointed to a toothbrush and explained something I
didn't pay attention to. I'd never brushed dog teeth in my life and I wasn't
going to start now. But I knew dogs were supposed to have dog shampoo, and I didn't
see any here.

“What kind of shampoo do I use on
the dog?” I asked.

“I have an account at Pet Co. You'll
have to take him there for grooming.”

I guessed he was lazy or something,
but me, I wouldn't mind washing and combing him myself. Like that, he wouldn't
shed all over my couch when I brought him home.

He told me I'd be starting next
week. I zoned out through the rest of what he said. I followed him silently
around the house as he pointed to stuff and explained things. I think he
realized I wasn't paying attention anymore, because he started nodding yes and
pointing to some places and then shook his head no and pointed to others. One
of the places he shook no to was his bedroom. The other was the basement. Okay,
I understood. Don't go in those places.

All this being social was zapping
the energy out of me.

“All right Dennis. Thanks again for
letting me take care of your stuff. I've got to run and look after one of my
renters now. We'll be in touch. And you,” I said, giving that crazy giant poodle's
afro a tussle, “see you next week.”

“I'll leave you some instructions
and contact numbers on the coffee table,” he said.

Dennis and I shook hands. He gave me
a set of keys and then I was off.

10

When I got back to my place, I went
straight to my bedroom. I felt like taking a nap, and since I had no pressure
about my immediate financial future, I figured I'd fall asleep fast. I took off
my clothes and was giving myself a good scratching when my hand arrived near my
belly button. I reached into it, plucked out a little wad of lint and looked at
it. This stuff was strange because it was bluish. I hadn't been wearing
anything but Arnold shirts for some time, and they were white. How did this
blue lint get into my belly button? I had a real enigma here, and even after
turning on the frog barking and crawling into bed, thinking about it was
preventing me from sleeping.

I got up and put my clothes back on.
I went and plopped down on the living-room couch, and while I was drinking a
beer in front of the tube, I got an idea. That Tommy was also big and fat, so
sooner or later his belly would peek out from under his shirt like mine did.
Then I could either reach in stealthily and grab his lint, or, if he had a
shallow navel, I could just take a look. If his lint was blue also, I'd let the
whole thing slide. I mean, maybe all the stuff that migrates into the belly
hole is blue. Maybe only the blue stuff is mobile, you know, and the rest of
the colors just fall off onto the floor. There had to be a law governing lint
movement.

11

I got a great idea that week. I
decided that I was going to drag my pops up to hang out in that guy Dennis'
house. That would give my dad a little vacation and let me know how he was
doing at the same time. Plus, I wouldn't have to make the house look lived in,
because my dad would be living in it. That'd let me continue doing as little as
possible. I wasn't sure he was going to go for it though. He liked being down
in Venice. But as the rest of the week went by, I came up with the perfect
plan. It was a little expensive—I had to go buy a laptop and a bunch of blocks
of chocolate—but I was sure it'd work.