Adam
ADAM
“ I haven’t seen him yet,” I tell Paul, projecting in the direction of my phone.
I already had it precariously propped up in the center console for directions when my agent rang to check in. In my eagerness to complain, I nearly swerved off the road accepting his call and setting it to speaker.
“What do you mean you haven’t seen Roland yet? You slept in his house last night!”
“That’s the thing, Paul. He won’t come out of his room. He’s only talking to me through his Alexa. And now I’m bringing him— us? —back In-N-Out Burger. Oh, and did I mention I’m driving his Mercedes?”
This car probably costs as much as my entire fee for this book. The milkshakes jostle in the cupholders as I take another winding turn down the mountain highway. I draped my jacket over the leather passenger seat before setting down the In-N-Out bags, and I carefully reach over to roll them up now so that the food stays warm. I think I got the order right; I’m pretty sure Roland wanted the fries “animal style,” too, which apparently means they come covered in grilled onions and a mysterious pink sauce.
“You’re having In-N-Out?” Paul asks, and I can almost hear him slobbering on the other end of the line. “Jess is making sweet potato tacos for dinner again tonight. How do I explain to her that humans need protein to live?”
That’s his reaction? He sent me across the country for a job that might not really be a job and he’s excited about my lunch? I must confess, though, that the double-doubles looked mouth-watering. I was tempted to eat mine in the parking lot. Instead, I settled for sneaking a few of the stray fries that had fallen to the bottom of the bag. Even if he is right about this regional chain, Paul’s not getting off the hook that easily.
“Paul, do you hear what I’m saying?!” I shout. “Roland Rogers won’t even meet me face-to-face. Are you sure he even wants a book written? He hasn’t mentioned it once . I asked him if we could start today and he said ‘sure.’”
“Tell me you got a double-double. I would kill for a double-double right now.”
“PAUL!”
I take another turn, whipping past a barn, and decide I’m going a little too fast. Was that a llama I just passed? As nervous as I am about driving the Benz, I can already see how wealth changes people. Put an inch of steel between you and the rest of the world, and it’s easy to feel separated from all the dirt and grime. Give me a few days in this thing and I’d be an asshole for sure. I might even debase my ghostwriter by sending him to run errands.
When he responds, Paul sounds appropriately conciliatory. It’s taken him long enough. “OK, well, if he sent you to fetch food, Adam, that means he’s planning to eat with you, right? He’s not going to ask you to leave it outside the door or something.”
“Honestly, Paul, he might!”
I wouldn’t put it past Roland, which baffles me. The man is an actor. You’d think he’d at least be able to simulate some emotional vulnerability. And yet he can’t come share his story with the writer he flew out so urgently? The only two parts of this experience I was eagerly anticipating were looking at Roland Rogers and getting paid, and he’s delaying both.
“It’ll be fine, Adam. This is part of the process. You’ve got to build his trust.”
“I can’t spend days doing that, Paul,” I tell him. “I literally can’t afford it.”
I shouldn’t have to remind him so often that I’m a working writer. There’s no trust fund allowing me to hop from retreat to retreat, leisurely whittling away some five-hundred-page literary masterpiece about sad Brooklynites. I have to get paid—and he knows it. We have a relationship that is by definition transactional but that doesn’t mean it was never personal. He was so green when we did my first book; we both were. It felt like we were two rebels on the outside, a gay firebrand and a fresh-faced agent storming the industry castle with a big battering ram. It was a bold move to bet on a book with Sodomite in the title in 2010, and I was grateful that Paul had taken the chance. We got the sales, but only Paul got the stability, and then we weren’t comrades in the struggle anymore. The world moved on from gay marriage, and Paul moved on from me.
“Listen, Adam, I know you’re frustrated,” he tells me, his tone softening. “But you’ve got to remember this is a tough thing Roland is doing. A big thing. People in fucking Finland know his name. That’s got to be nerve-racking. Give him a day to come out of hiding.”
He’s trying to level with me but he hasn’t earned the right. Why is he acting like Roland Rogers is his client? I’m his client. This is tougher for me than it is for the millionaire.
“I’m here to work, Paul, not to coax a cat out from under the bed,” I say, adjusting the AC. It’s either anger or the heat, but my face is getting flushed.
Paul is unbothered. “Don’t you remember how big a deal this was for you?” he asks. “You were outed a couple years before Sodomite , but still, that was your debut to the world. You were branding yourself forever. Roland’s doing that on a much bigger scale.”
The comparison is maddening. Roland is at the peak of his career, choosing to come out to the world when it’s convenient for him. He’ll lose nothing. It’s hard to feel sorry for a guy who owns a piece of California coastline the size of a state park.
“Paul, he has four hundred million dollars,” I tell him. “I don’t think homophobia can hurt you anymore at that point.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line, and for a moment I get to feel like I stumped him. My net worth factoid was the victory stroke. Surely Paul will apologize any moment now.
The GPS on my phone says I’m about ten minutes away from Roland’s house, but otherwise I have no sense of where I am. The rolling hills, the faded green brush, and the sagging power lines all repeat on an endless loop that I have to trust will eventually give way to the sea.
“I get it. He has a lot more money than us lowly mortals,” Paul says, his tone even, just barely on the right side of condescending. “But that doesn’t mean this isn’t scary for him. Try to remember that, Adam. You’re going to have to inhabit his voice, which means you have to accept his fears, whether or not you think they’re justified. You might not be invested in what Roland Rogers means to the world, but he most certainly is. Failing that, just remember he holds the purse strings.”
The fact that Paul can still speak to me with the unvarnished honesty of an old friend only stings more because I haven’t heard it in so long. I hate when he’s right, but his life of ease hasn’t completely clouded his ability to make a good point. I don’t have to think that Roland Rogers is a courageous beacon of truth to treat him like one.
“Well, he’s no Harvey Milk,” I tell Paul, “but I can try to make him brave. If he comes out of his fucking bedroom.”
“If there’s anyone who can do that, it’s you, Adam,” Paul says, and even over the phone, I can tell the glib mask has gone back on. He’s probably off to go play racquetball or whatever leisurely urbanite activity he’s chosen this afternoon. “You’re a bold one, you know? Not everyone can do what you did.”
I smile, against my better judgment. Would it have been that hard for my agent to talk me up from the beginning of the call? “Now who’s the one getting coaxed?”
“Hey, a little persuasion is part of my job.” Paul laughs. “Just like you getting Roland to talk is part of yours. Right now, you’re as much a cat herder as you are a writer.”
“What fun,” I deadpan, rounding another curve, admiring how smoothly the Benz rides on a road that has seen better days. “Can you coax a cat with a cheeseburger?”
“If there’s one thing I learned from using the internet in the 2010s,” Paul says, “it’s that yes, you can.”