She leads me onto the set, into the kitchen.
“Love, what the hell is this?” I hiss.
She whips her head around. “I’m Harmony,” she says. “You’re Oren, right?”
Ah. Ah. “Yes,” I say. Love gestures for me to sit on the table. I do. “I’m Oren.”
“What do you think?” And she planned for me. She left a bowl of strawberries on the table. She holds my eyes. She picks up a berry. She bites. “I’m still hungry.”
I warn her. “This is a hot set.”
“I know,” she says.
“We’re not supposed to touch anything.”
“I know,” she says. “But I can’t help it anymore.”
My phone is buzzing and this isn’t supposed to happen. I’m supposed to kill Milo and he’s texting and he probably woke Love up accidentally, banging shit around. And I don’t like this. Love’s barely spoken to me all month and she knows how I feel about the blowjob scene and she thinks she can just fuck her way out of anything. And no.
“Love,” I say. “What is this?”
“I’m just having fun.”
“No,” I say. “What is going on with you and Milo? And don’t say nothing.”
Love puts her hands on mine. “Well,” she says. She bites her lip. Her hands are shaking. “The truth is . . .” My hands are shaking. She presses. “Milo and I hooked up at Chateau that morning, that day that you and I met.”
It is worse than I thought and better than I thought. It is a lesson in instincts. I knew he was my enemy from day one. I knew it. He showed up at Chateau that night and he wanted me gone and he must have felt blindsided. One minute he’s fucking Love, the next everyone is gushing over The Professor.
“Did you shower after?”
“Did I shower?”
“That first day,” I say. “When we met. At Soho House.”
“Of course,” she says.
“Did you bring me to Chateau to get rid of him?”
“No,” she says. Then: “Yes.” She looks down. “Is that terrible? But I also really liked you. I mean that was early.”
Love says I’m right about everything. Milo is trying to get her back and she has been uncomfortable but she isn’t mad at him. “He’s one of my best friends,” she says. “I mean, we always go back to each other and I beat myself up, why don’t I love him like that? He is not a bad guy, Joe. I have led him on. I feel awful.”
Love hugs me and she is naked underneath her nightie. She puts her hands on my shoulders and moves me to the Restoration Hardware table. She unbuttons my pants. She pulls them down. She kneels like she’s supposed to in Boots and Puppies and I am harder than I’ve ever been. When she takes me in her mouth for the first time, it’s like being inside her vagina, her pink brain, her bloodstream. I think of God again, that section up in heaven where they build bodies to match and I knew that her vagina was for me and now I know her mouth was made for me too.
As I get close, I open my eyes for just one second and Milo is there at the edge of the set, staring. I wonder how much he overheard. Everything, I hope.
I close my eyes again, and I hear a car start. Milo is going to Indoor Coachella alone and maybe I don’t have to kill him. Everything is different now. I’m not jealous. I’m logical. The mouse left the house on his own and we won’t have any problems again.
I come.
34
THE next day, we wake up in a new world. We kiss and Love e-mails Milo to say she won’t do the blowjob. She admits that she’s relieved. I win. Milo does too. He’s alive and he says Beck was great and that he respects Love’s decision as an actress.
Love goes down to set and when I get out of the shower, I have a new text from Forty: Old Sport! Tell Love u gotta go to town, books or something. Big news. Ask for the Deuce suite at the desk. Ritz. Pronto.
I drive over there and I’ve never seen so much cocaine in my life. There are mountains of it on every surface of this ornate suite and I worry about the police invading but Forty says to relax.
The suite is enormous and it seems that rich people go to Palm Springs to be in big, empty rooms with shiny lamps. Everything is black and white and electric green. Green pillows abound, like the one RIP Beck used to hump in her shoebox apartment, window open. It’s that kind of layout where you’re inside and outside at once. We have our own private patio.
“What am I doing here?” I ask. “What’s up?”
“Having a drink!” Forty says, and he hands me a flute of champagne and he’s wearing pink and yellow jams and an open hooded bathrobe.
“Did you want to talk about the scripts?” I ask. His agent was supposed to be sending them out, but there hasn’t been any news, any action.
Forty motions for me to sit by two half-naked hookers. “Go on,” he says. “Nobody’s telling on anybody.”
Instead I sit in a wicker chair with electric green pillows. “I’m fine, thanks.”
Forty laughs. He wants to shoot the shit about Boots and Puppies. He thinks it could get into Sundance but he doesn’t see it getting a theatrical release. He thinks Barry Stein isn’t what he used to be and he thinks Milo should have hired an actor instead of taking the part.
“Was Jake Gyllenhaal really interested?” I ask, because it feels like this is an honest zone, a sacred space, the opposite of a set where the movie is God.
“Fuck, no!” he says. “That’s just Milo stroking his dick and calling it a hand job. Jake isn’t into that kind of shit. I don’t even think he read it.”
“Wow,” I say. “Does Love know?”
Forty shakes his head. “It’s a boatload of hell, getting a movie made, especially one like B and P. You gotta believe your own bullshit, ya know? It’s like when you go to Promises and it’s the last day and you’ve been there for three weeks and they’re like ‘Do you feel ready to go?’ And you say yes because you were there! You fucking did it. You tried. What the hell are you gonna say? ‘No, gimme an eight ball’?”
He laughs and watches a hooker dance to no music. “When did you go to Promises?” I ask.
But Forty doesn’t answer. He puts out his cigarette. “Earlier today, I had Ariana eat out Shelly while I fucked Shelly in the ass.”
These are things I don’t want to know. “Hey,” I say. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
He hoovers more cocaine. “What did I want to what?”
“Why am I here?”
“The million-dollar question,” he effuses. “Why are we here? Why? Personally, I think Satan sent me here to fucking fuck shit up. The way God sent Love to love shit up.”
“Forty,” I say. “Maybe you want some weed?”
He points at the hookers. He tells me again about things he got them to do and he might be lying about all of it. I decide I will not feel sorry for myself as Forty raves on about his sexual exploits. Everyone has something. Some people have a difficult child and some people have a sick child and some people have a limp and some people have an impossible mother and there is nobody on earth who has nothing. I have a mug of my DNA in a house in Rhode Island. And this is what Love has: a brother. A nightmare. A coked-up maniac who is now jumping on his bed like a ten-year-old, telling me about a birthday party he and Love had as kids.
Forty jumps off the bed and falls into the credenza and bangs his head. He’s too fucked up to feel it and he’s on his feet again. “So are you psyched or are you psyched?”
“Forty,” I say. “I think you better sit down.”
“No,” he says. “I think you better sit down.”
“I am sitting.”
“Fuck, yes, you better sit,” he rails. He claps. “And fuck you, Barry Stein.” He does more coke. “You know, he’s just gonna look fucking stupid.”