Chapter 6
Chapter Six
When they stopped for a hot dog at a cart, Luka admitted, “I’m not a fan of Greek food.”
He was so relieved. “Me either. I mean…it’s…okay…”
Luka laughed a little as they took their hot dogs and started back toward the Waldorf. After they’d both taken bites, Luka let out a moan that made Benson think of sex, but he stuffed that down into his guts and changed the subject. “Where did you grow up?”
“Small town in Connecticut.”
“Small city in Colorado here.”
“Colorado. I bet it’s pretty there.”
“It is. Maybe I’ll take you sometime.”
Luka chuckled darkly. “Oh yeah?”
“Why not?”
“It’s not that I don’t think you would, it’s just…”
No blame could be had for the guy. Benson remembered feeling the same way.
Anyone that was interested in him at all was so for some untoward reasoning.
“Luka, you don’t owe me a thing. I’d never leverage trips or the play or anything on condition of your getting naked for me.
I’m not that kind of guy. Maybe I haven’t been rich long enough. ”
That made him laugh. Seeing a smile at all, well, Benson could tell Luka wasn’t used to smiling.
That meant something to Benson. Having had a rough childhood, he remembered all the reasons he had to be jaded. Things never went his way. It was only through the hardest of will and gripping at every rung of the ladder that always seemed to be coated with oil…
“You got into one of the best colleges in the country, and you graduated with honors. You’re now on track to becoming famous, and dare I say? Rich?”
Luka nodded, and his jaw set hard. “I will be rich.”
“I said the same. The only people more determined to make a lot of money than people who grew up in abject poverty are the ones already rich. I’ve met…I’ve met some people who were just dripping with greed, and I didn’t understand it. They already had more money than they could possibly have.”
“It’s to keep others from getting it. It’s a game. The one with the most money wins, and if everyone else loses, if they starve and lose their homes, it is their own fault for not being ruthless enough. It’s why I’ve decided to be ruthless, but…”
“It’s not so easy. My assistant, she’s ruthless for me. I hate it. But I’ll admit I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have if I didn’t surround myself with those that weren’t easily won over, like I am.”
Luka stopped and took the last bite of his hot dog, tossing the wrapper into the trash. “Yeah. Maybe I need one of those.”
“I’ll lend you mine.”
“People say I need an agent.”
Benson was surprised he didn’t have one. “I’m sure it would help you.”
“Another confession. I hate…I hate…”
“Acting. I know. I read it on you. You’re acting so you can make the money you need to do what you truly want. And that is?”
“Writing. I want to write books and scripts and hide away in some cabin, just…making up worlds.”
“More that we have in common.”
“You want to write?”
After Benson tossed his own empty wrapper, he nodded. “In a way. I wanted to make games. Elaborate games with endless maps that a character could explore for months. Lots of little missions, big ones. I want people to get lost in the beauty of my worlds.”
Luka was staring, and that made him nervous. But when Luka smiled, he was lost totally. All the ways he’d dreamed of making others feel in his fantasy worlds, that was how he felt looking at that simple gesture.
“You could have plucked that right out of my mind.”
“Poor kids. We dream of worlds, I think, to escape the ones where we were stuck.”
Luka’s hand slipped into his suddenly, and he jerked his chin toward the Waldorf. “Let’s get back before they wonder what happened to us.”
“The scandal.”
“I’ve never been part of a scandal. Might be fun.”
“Might be,” Benson said, laughing.
They walked along the sidewalk, no more words between them as people rushed by, barely noticing them, but Benson felt like he was the one on a stage, and all the lights were on him.
He felt like a star, and maybe that wasn’t his dream, but Luka…
he could become the one dream that Benson would give up all the others for.
So beautiful, his profile as he watched the city around them, was one of nobility. If Benson didn’t know about Luka’s past, he’d think that for sure he was a rich man from Britain or France.
His hair glimmered in the lights of the city; his skin looked fresh and didn’t have even a tiny blemish. Not only did Luka work on his craft, but he worked on his appearance as well. Trim, hair perfectly cut and styled, and everything about him felt like he didn’t do a thing except work.
When they got back to the Waldorf, the elevator was surprisingly empty when they got in to head up to their floor.
The thoughts came to him like a magnet in his mind, of all the movies he’d seen where randy couples entered an elevator and let themselves go wild, ripping off their clothes as they sloppily kissed.
He couldn’t help his smile as the two in his mind turned into he and Luka, so he tried to hide it by ducking his head. It was of no use.
“Elevator sex scenes?”
He turned to him, shocked. “Am I that obvious?”
“No, but the red all over your face kind of snitched on you.”
He laughed and admitted, “Yeah, I bet.”
“Maybe we’ll visit an empty elevator when we know each other a little better.”
“I’m game.”
They went back to the party, and Monty was telling one of his infamous stories to a group of wide-eyed people that sadly believed everything he said. He went to the group as Luka went to get a drink. “What kind of bullshit are you telling them this time?”
“Benson! How rude of you to assume I’m not being totally above-board.”
“I’ve known you for a long time, my friend.”
Monty rolled his eyes as he laughed and the group dispersed, causing Monty to drag him off to a quiet corner. “Well?”
“I’m completely in love already. Well, maybe I haven’t fallen that far yet, but he’s amazing.”
Monty smiled knowingly. “Anything…happen?”
“We took a walk. That’s it.”
“Well, he’s glancing over here every chance he gets. Take him to that bedroom.”
“Monty, come on! We barely know each other.”
“One, that is not what you said in college. You were a whore. Two, I didn’t say you had to take him in there to fuck. It’s quiet in there, and you already paid for the décor.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Whore.”
“I hate you.”
Stopping to speak to a few others, he made his way slowly over to Luka, who was sitting alone again.
Of course, he was. Luka wanted to live a life in a cabin far from humanity, and Benson couldn’t blame him, though he liked people, generally. Someone who saw the world as being against them, well, Benson had had those thoughts.
He took Monty’s suggestion. He held his hand down to Luka once he got to the sofa, and Luka took it, glancing around them at the others. “Where are we going now?”
“I swear, it sounds terrible, but it’s just to get us away from the crowd.”
“Terrible? Worse than the elevator?”
Benson grinned, “Much.”
“Okay, but I can scream very loudly.”
“Don’t put that thought in my head,” Benson pled with a giggle.
He led him to the bedroom, and after heading through the double doors, Luka stared at the room like he couldn’t believe it was real. Benson quietly closed the doors and said, “It’s lovely, isn’t it? My decorator insisted on adding this room to the fun of the theme.”
The filmy fabrics and soft colors conjured the scent of the ocean near Mykonos. He’d walked along the crescent-shaped Ornos Beach a few years earlier with a wistful sense that he shouldn’t be walking it alone.
He now thought of Luka, Luka’s hand in his hand, barefooted as they walked the crescent in the twilight. The waves would languidly lap the sand, and the breezes would cool the heat of the day into a soft temperature that would send them to a beautiful bed. Like the one where Luka now sat.
“Have you been? To Greece, I mean.”
“I have a couple of times. It’s become one of my favorite destinations. Italy too, especially the Amalfi Coast. I eat a ton of lemon-inspired desserts there.”
“It sounds beautiful. Traveling at all sounds beautiful.”
He sat on the side of the bed, again not touching, but close to Luka. “It’s one thing I dreamed of when I thought about getting rich. I want to see and explore the world. The thing is, to get rich and stay rich, I’ve found leaves little time for exploration.”
“You’re not one of those rich men who build their own rockets to Mars?”
“No, and I won’t. I personally think that’s a terrible extravagance when there are people like us, the way we grew up. I spend my money, a lot of it, on scholarships, charitable events, and I’ve opened seven free clinics in neighborhoods that needed them.”
“And take trips.”
“And take trips, yes. That is my splurge for myself. Seeing things, I truly never thought I’d see.
The pyramids in Egypt, of course, but I believe those in Mexico are much more beautiful.
Walking through a jungle, only to come out to see this…
this massive mountain of a building, right there in the thick of the trees, it’s something that takes your breath. ”
“I’ve watched shows about them. There are hundreds.”
“Thousands, they think. They just need to comb through hundreds of years of jungle growth to find them all.”
Luka grew wistful. “To think, the people who built those didn’t have the things we humans have today.
They don’t have…I don’t know, like bulldozers and cranes, even so, they built those things.
It gives me hope I can do something grand.
Then I remember it takes money to make money, and I lose that hope. ”
“Luka, you have gotten this far without a lot of money. I didn’t have a cent, either, and believe me, when I went begging for money from investors, I felt like I might as well be sitting on the side of a road with a cardboard sign. The poorer you are, the harder it is to ask for help.”