Barefoot In The City Of Broken Dreams Part 18

He dried his hair more vigorously now, and his c.o.c.k swung from side to side. It was already thicker than it had been a moment before. He was getting a hard-on.

I glanced at Kevin. As our eyes met, we shared a moment, a little like the one I'd shared with Otto back in his bedroom. Maybe it was even another diverging of the timelines, a point where things could go one of two different ways.

I stepped forward toward Daniel.

He spread his legs, bracing them, leaning back against the wall with one hand.

I bent down, my head only inches from his d.i.c.k, which was already almost fully hard. Once again, I could feel its heat.

Whatever you do, don't f.u.c.k the hot teenage boy next door.

Maybe this was what Cole Gordon had been trying to tell me that night. Even if it wasn't, once again it was really good advice.

I picked up the wet towel and wrapped it around Daniels waist, tucking it tight.

Daniel looked confused, like it hadn't occurred to him that our rejecting him was even a possibility.

Maybe in that other timeline, it hadn't been. Who knows what the three of us might have done there?

But that was that timeline, not this one. In this timeline, it was clear that there was something off about Daniel - that he wanted something from Kevin and me, but for the wrong reasons. He wasn't here because he was attracted to us or wanted to have a casual fling. He was here because he had questions about his s.e.xuality, or because he wanted to p.i.s.s off his sister. h.e.l.l, maybe he just wanted to embarra.s.s me again.

I stepped back from Daniel and stood next to Kevin, the two of us in solidarity.

Daniel looked back and forth between us again, still confused, embarra.s.sed, and also more than a little angry. Then he turned for the bathroom to get dressed again. I could hear him in there, growing angry, so mad that I could hear the whoosh of his pants as he pulled them on.

When he stepped out of the bathroom again, I said, "Daniel, stop. Let's talk, okay?"

He didn't talk. He didn't even stop. He burrowed right for the door.

"Daniel!" Kevin said, reaching for him. "Please stop!"

Daniel squirmed away. He tried to slam the door behind him, but it got caught on a piece of carpet just inside the door.

When he was gone, Kevin finally closed the door and faced me.

"That kid has issues," Kevin said.

"Serious ones," I said.

"So what do we do? Talk to Zoe?"

"I don't know. Somehow it feels like she's part of the reason he was up here in the first place. We can mention we're concerned, but she'll just ask why. And telling her what happened, that seems like it'd make things even worse. Besides, isn't that, like, outing him?"

"Still. We should do something."

It did feel like we should do something.

"But what?" I said. "I mean, apart from being here if he needs to talk."

Kevin kept thinking. I did too.

"I hate to say it," I said, "but if he doesn't want our help, I don't see what we can do. I mean, you can't really save someone from himself."

Kevin didn't say anything, and my words hung in the air, longer than I wanted, sounding harsher than I intended.

It was stuffy in that apartment, but I s.h.i.+vered.

It wasn't only Daniel I felt bad about. After all, if it was really true that other people couldn't save us from ourselves, that meant we were all pretty much on our own, including me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Friday morning, Kevin told me he had a press junket at the Beverly Hilton for an upcoming movie.

"Wait," I said. "Is that the hotel Ellen says we should boycott because it's owned by that sultan who wants to stone gay people?"

"No, that's the Beverly Hills Hotel," Kevin said. "The Beverly Hilton is where Whitney Houston drowned in the bathtub."

"Can I come?"

"Because Whitney Houston died there? It's not like there's a shrine."

"Actually, I think people still do leave flowers outside. But that's not why I want to go."

"Then why?"

"Because I've never seen it, and my week's already screwed the pooch because of all that time I spent helping Otto."

"But it'll be boring. You don't have a press pa.s.s, so you can't get into any of the events."

"I'll bring the laptop," I said. "I'll wait in the bar."

"For three hours?"

"Sure."

"Okay," Kevin said with a shrug. "It's all good."

A movie junket is when the movie studios invite all the entertainment journalists to a big hotel, and then they also bring in all the movie's stars. If you're important enough - a TV journalist, or someone from one of the big daily newspapers - you might get to spend ten or fifteen minutes alone with the movie star in one of the hotel rooms (accompanied by a publicist, of course). If you're a less important journalist, like a blogger or a writer for a small newspaper, you have to be content with attending the big press conference, where the movie stars take questions from the audience, and maybe you'll also get a few minutes with the movie star at a round-robin table with five or so other writers. (The writer, director, and producer of the movie are all usually at press junkets too, and they always have interesting things to say, but it's like what Kevin said that night at dinner: unless the director is named "Steven Spielberg" or "Quentin Tarantino," no one gives a mouse's fart.) The point is that all these writers and TV people can go home and boast to their readers or viewers how they got an "exclusive" interview with an actual movie star, making them look much more connected and important than they actually are. When it comes to Hollywood, everyone employs the Bulls.h.i.+t Factor, even the writers who write about us.

When we got to the hotel, Kevin bee-lined off to his press event. I decided to linger in the lobby. I'd been wrong: there were no longer any flowers outside for Whitney Houston. But I figured I might still run into a famous face or two. That happens everywhere in Los Angeles. Our very first week there, Kevin and I had seen Lena Headey - Cersei on Game of Thrones - in the produce section at Ralphs. But your odds are better at places like the Beverly Hilton, especially when it's the setting for a press junket for a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Julianne Moore.

I made a quick scan of the lobby. In my mind, people immediately fell into three categories: industry types who just happened to be in the lobby of the hotel for business; publicists and studio people involved with the movie junket; and the journalists who'd come to the junket.

Everyone looked tanned and toned and pretty, except for the writers who mostly looked like pudgy, pathetic dorks. I was starting to get annoyed by how right Otto had been about both the Bulls.h.i.+t Factor and the Screenwriter Loophole.

I looked down at myself. I didn't look as sleek and tanned as the pretty publicists, but I didn't look quite as rumpled and dumpy as the journalists either.

I'm starting to fit into this d.a.m.n town, I thought. Who knew?

Almost immediately, I recognized a familiar face across the lobby - an actor. What was his name? I couldn't remember. I knew he'd been on Ugly Betty at some point, and he had a new show now.

I crept toward him like a lion stalking a gazelle. He was by himself, looking around, probably for some publicist to tell him where to go. Or maybe he wasn't here for the junket. Maybe he'd come to the Hilton to meet his agent for lunch. He was wearing white skinny jeans and a pale blue b.u.t.ton-down, untucked, and he was shorter than I expected, but he was definitely cute. He had a mop of brown hair, impressively jumbled, and I wondered exactly how long it had taken for him to get it to look so perfectly uncombed.

He'd stopped, so I stopped. I looked around, pretending I was momentarily lost, like I was maybe waiting for a friend. I pulled out my iPhone, pretending to text.

I couldn't resist glancing down at his a.s.s.

It was a great a.s.s, even what I could see of it under his untucked s.h.i.+rt.

That a.s.s has been on television, I thought.

He turned for the restroom, but I wasn't about to follow him. That was too creepy even for me.

I turned and made another scan of the lobby, licking my proverbial lion chops. Where the h.e.l.l was Jennifer Lawrence, who I just knew would want me to be her BFF if she ever met me by, say, b.u.mping into me in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton?

A familiar face materialized right in front of me. Once again, it took me a second to remember who it was. There was something off about him. Was it the face? He was good-looking, but a lot older than I remembered.

"Oh!" I said. "You're Declan McConnell."

Talk about ghosts from the past! Back when I was in high school, my friends and I had volunteered to be extras in this zombie movie they'd been filming in town. It had turned out to be a terrible movie, but the experience itself had been pretty interesting. At one point, I'd even had a chance to talk to the star - Declan - for a few minutes, and he'd given me some good advice about high school.

Declan looked over at me, his face blurring in confusion.

"Sorry, you probably don't remember me," I said. "I was an extra on Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies? You talked to me once and were really nice."

His eyes slowly found their focus.

"s.h.i.+t, that was, like, five million years ago," he said.

I suddenly realized what was off about Declan McConnell. It wasn't just his age. He wasn't dressed like everyone else in the lobby, like either the publicists or the journalists. He was dressed like he worked in the hotel, somewhere between a busboy and a bellhop. He had a stain on his s.h.i.+rt - something dark yellow that I hoped didn't smell as bad as it looked. Was he some kind of handyman?

"You're not here for the junket," I said stupidly.

"Nah," he said. "I work here at the hotel."

I didn't know what to say to that.

I thought back on what I knew about Declan's career. It's true that he wasn't a big star when they'd shot Attack of Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies. He had a supporting role on a sitcom, but it had been cancelled pretty quickly. He'd also been in a few smaller movies, although I couldn't think of any that he'd done since Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies. After I talked to him on the set of the movie, I followed his career for a while. Did Twitter and Instagram even exist back then? I couldn't remember, but if they had, I would have followed him.

He'd been a rising star. He was even up for a role as a superhero at one point. Deadpool? But that had ended up going to Ryan Reynolds.

I thought back to the time I'd talked to him on the set of that movie. He'd told me that even though he was still playing teenagers, he was actually twenty-eight years old. He hadn't really looked like a teenager, but he'd looked like a "movie teenager": younger than he really was, and also incredibly cute, which meant that n.o.body gave a rip about accuracy anyway. That had been eight years ago.

He wasn't young and cute anymore. You could tell he'd been hot - I guess he was still hot, for an ordinary, non-actor person, I mean. But now his skin sagged and had blotches, and his teeth were yellow. Even his posture was bad. If he looked five or six years younger than his years before, now he looked at least five or six years older. I couldn't help thinking: At some point in the last eight years, he must have looked his exact age. Was the day after that the moment when the twinkle had left his eye?

I'd been so awed by him before. Now it felt like I was talking to one of my dad's friends.

What the h.e.l.l happened? I wanted to ask.

"What a piece of c.r.a.p that turned out to be," Declan said, and I realized he was talking about the movie.

"Yeah, well," I said.

Declan glanced over at the bathroom. He looked desperate. At first I thought maybe he needed to pee, but this was a deeper, sadder kind of desperation.

This was like a scene from a movie: meeting a rising young star, and then years later running into him again, and he's not only not a star, he's working at a hotel and is maybe even some kind of junkie. In fact, I think this is a scene from a movie, in the original Fame. And didn't something like this happen to Rachel on Glee? (I'd stopped watching by then.) "So you're an actor too, huh?" Declan said to me. Now that he'd stepped closer, I realized he had bad breath. That figured.

"Me?" I said. I was still flattered that people sometimes thought this. "No. Screenwriter."

"Yeah?" His eyes brightened - or as bright as they probably ever got these days. "Working on anything now?"

"Kinda sorta," I said.

"Really? You casting yet?" He was smiling his yellow teeth at me when he said this, but it wasn't really a joke. He was actually asking me if I could maybe get him a role in my movie.

Who would you play? I thought. The grandfather? (I immediately felt bad for thinking this.) "Oh?" I said. "You still act?" I hadn't wanted to ask, but I admit I was curious.

"Oh, yeah." He motioned around the lobby. "This is just temporary."

His eyes latched onto me again, like a drowning man who'd found a life preserver. "We should, like, get together."

There was a time when the idea of getting together with Declan McConnell would have literally blown my mind (and I know what "literally" means, and I literally mean "literally"). But that's when he'd been young and cute and a rising star, not when he was a desperate old handyman with bad breath and a yellow s.h.i.+t-stain on his s.h.i.+rt. The idea of him hitting me up for work was almost too much.

Meeting Declan really was like meeting a ghost from the past. Anyway, he left a chill that was just that cold.

"Yeah," I said. "Maybe. But I'm meeting someone, so I should go, okay?"

He nodded, not quite getting my brush-off. "I'm done in a couple hours."

"Okay," I said, walking away. "See ya."

It was a little awkward, because I wasn't meeting anyone, and I couldn't leave the hotel yet either, not for another three hours. But I didn't linger in that lobby looking for any more celebrities. I spent the next three hours in a back corner of the hotel bar, trying hard to avoid Declan.

That night, there was a knock on our door.

"Daniel-" I said, opening it.

It wasn't Daniel. It was his older sister, Zoe.