The World On A String

Hudgens is going to screw him for this, but Jack knows which way the wind is blowing. The kid's wired. Jack lights his cheap cigarette and watches the lick of flame reflected in those glassy eyes. Wound up, scared and keeping a lid on it. Jack shouldn't do this, he really shouldn't bother -- what's one more washout, more or less? Intercepting Reynolds won't save him. Let him throw away his life if he wants.

So he's AC/DC. He should have learned to hide it better. Lots of Hollywood types go both ways. Better luck next time. The kid's scared but he's smiling, really smiling, and it's so pathetic it sends pain rocketing through Jack like a burn from a cigarette -- he really wouldn't look too bad on TV. Maybe Jack's seen that face at the movies already and forgotten it.

The guy's AC/DC, he goes for little blonde girls like Tammy Jordan and gray-haired old guys like Ellis Loew. He knows about Fleur de Lis. He knows about Patchett.

"Let's get out of here."

"I can't."

"Come on. We're going for a drive."

*

Lights from the road, flashes bright as day, glimmering like an oil slick as the other cars retreat. Jack begins to say, you know what you're getting into with Sid Hudgens, don't you? but Matt's already halfway in his lap with busy hands and wary sad eyes flashing like headlights and all that comes out is a lame, "You know--"

Reynolds must be some operator; Vincennes' fly is down before he even realizes it and the ghostly pass of a hand is enough of a shock that he almost takes his foot off the brake.

What he's getting into with Sid Hudgens is debt. Every connection and hook-up and lead will tether him in place. Every time he takes money. Every time he's getting a little further away from respectable life -- his folks were coming out to LA, or they were before he got busted, isn't that what the kid said? With Jack hauling him out into the street by the arm. He doesn't even know it's Jack who ruined his life.

But he already knows that, if Sid wants him to fuck the district attorney. And then Christ knows what he did to get all the way to Hollywood.

He's half-hard already, just from the clean fresh proximity of him and the heat of his leg against Jack's own, the fumbling certainty of his hand. Reynolds smells like chewing gum and a little like bourbon. Jack can taste it on the air, that close.

"I'll do whatever you want," Matt says against the corner of Vincennes' mouth.

Vincennes wills himself to look forward and not to yield. Not to bristle with suppressed anger and fuck things up even more for the both of them. Of course that's what this looks like. Of course that's what the kid expects. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know where to do it.

"It's not like that. I just want to drive."

"All right," Matt says, withdrawing. "All right, then let's drive."

He's ruining a good thing for him. Every moment Jack spends raking over in his mind what's the right thing to say to a fresh-faced corn-fed fairy faggot who deserves better than a sequence of motel rooms is a moment Matt Reynolds could leverage to get back on top again. He doesn't know there's no way back up -- Badge of Honor isn't going to touch a corn-fed hophead who's graced the pages of Hush Hush in his skivvies. He's not Brett Chase's type, and something about his cagey eagerness suggests he wouldn't be much good behind the camera either. It's hard to picture him cobbling together sets or rigging up the lights.

They pull over to park in a place where the sightlines won't be crystal-clear for anyone who might recognize them -- fat chance, Jack's got one of those faces even show business types strain to recognize -- and Jack half-expects, half-wants Reynolds to start in on it again. But the lights from inside the restaurant are warm and inviting, signs of life. It's like the end of a bad date where the girl's had too much to drink and thrown up on your blazer. Jack feels pity. Maybe pity is the right thing to feel.

Ply the kid with black coffee and apple pie, until Reynolds looks less ready to burst into tears -- put a man in that position and what won't he do?

*

Reynolds takes him back to an apartment building distinguished by a strong smell of rat poison and a woman behind the counter who doesn't look up when they go by -- this is where he's living now, and it could be worse, they could have not bothered with the rat poison at all.

"I don't know how this goes," he says, fumbling one of Jack's cigarettes with that out-of-towner deer-in-the-headlights look on his face again.

"You don't have to do anything. Just sit down. Take your coat off."

He's reluctant to part with it, but there's no hangers in the closet, not even a metal bar to hook one on. People hang themselves in hotel rooms like these. People have died here.

The two of them can hole up where nobody will ever look. It'll buy them a little time. Jack knows how this maneuver works, and he knows how Matt must think it works -- how hopelessly naive it is to think he can screw his way out of the hole men like Vincennes have dug for him. You don't drop from contract player to honor farm refugee and make your way up again unless somebody really likes you. Nobody is looking out for this guy. Nobody.

Jack put him here, and that sickens him. He wrecked his career for $50 and the glow of a bad job well done, and Reynolds doesn't even know it. Yanking him out of whatever maneuver Hudgens is trying to pull is like wrecking his own career for free. Maybe they'll be even.

What would golden-boy Exley do? Not this.

Jack's been here before, in a few dozen functionally-interchangeable motel rooms, all cigarette-scorched and all lousy. They all smell the same. He crosses the carpet and lights up, slow and methodical. It buys him a moment to do a little mental math.

"So Sid was paying you to screw the D.A."

Reynolds goes stiffly shame-faced, edging back on the bed. "Something like that."

"How much? A hundred?"

Reynolds nods.

"He shouldn't have done that. I'm going to pay you $100 not to fuck D.A. Loew. How's that sound?"

Jack settles in beside him on the edge of the mattress, digging for his wallet. Matt's loafers scuff on the bad carpet.

"Back there. You go there often?"

Jack looks at him flatly, from under his eyelids. "Sometimes." Alone, mostly. One of those cruising spots he's never had to hit while he's on the clock, one of those isolated pockets of vice even Sid doesn't know about maybe -- he's never picked anybody up there, he doesn't do that any more, but it's reassuring to know he could. Reynolds takes the wallet from his hand and sets it on the uneven bedside table. "Listen, I'm not paying you to--"

That smile, less nervous, less tight. "Yeah, I know. This is extra."

Jack feels his own smile stiffen on his face, photogenically shallow.

"Come on. You're a good kid."

Jack's hand finds the middle of his back. His thumb traces a circle on the creased back of Reynolds' shirt.

"You don't know the first thing about me," Reynolds says, pleasantly. Like a line from a script. He takes the cigarette from Jack's mouth and kisses him square on the lips.

*

Nothing's going to happen to this guy when Jack's around. Somebody has to look out for guys like this. If he doesn't take that flashy shirt off, it's going to get creased. The buttons fumble loose as they keep at it, Jack's guilty-hungry but the motions of Reynolds' mouth make it seem easy, a fresh angle that hasn't been played before. Help him out of his shirt, show him a couple things the D.A. wouldn't do. Maybe they can both teach each other a thing or two.

Reynolds leans back, sighing like his heart's gonna break, and Jack eases up face to face -- metal springs grind and the bedspread crumples, the muscles in his thighs are taut against him as Matt slips a hand between his legs. Matt's hands in Jack's lap, freeing his erection. Matt's movie-star handsome, his hair in messy waves darkened with sweat -- he looks like somebody, somebody Jack can't put a name to, and he wants to kiss the familiarity away from that mouth.

Face to face, Matt's narrow-hipped under him and one of his lean legs presses up. He's too fast, in a hurry, and Vincennes tells him to slow down -- they're off the beaten path here, and it doesn't have to be a car crash, bodies slamming into each other. He holds Matt's wrists back over his head to stop him grabbing and the kid's whole body responds, a juddering turn.

Reynolds sinks back against the flattened pillow, slow. Sweet kid.

*

Matt's sprawled on the bed like a picture in a magazine, gone sleepy-eyed with pleasure, scented with smoke. Vincennes presses his mouth to his chest and feels the heartbeat there against his lips.

"We can figure something out. You can work for me now."

Reynolds shifts sleepily, though not without anxiety. His shin brushes against Jack's leg, one of the many places where their bodies overlap on the too-narrow mattress. "Look, I don't know who does what any more. I used to know a guy with the studio who'd sell me pot. I can tell you where to find him, but that's it."

"He with Fleur de Lis?"

"Maybe. Probably. Yeah. Maybe you know him already, I don't know."

Reynolds turns his head. Jack thinks about that little black business card, stamped in gold.

"That's just fine, Matt." Sid certainly knows where he gets his hookup, at any rate. He doesn't want to think about Sid now. Vincennes reaches over and rubs at Reynolds' freckled shoulder with his thumb. "Don't think about it."