Chapter 5
The call from Patrick’s manager came at 6:30 a.m. Simone was in Los Angeles, eight hours behind the UK, which meant she had watched the clock long into her evening to ensure he would be awake when she rang.
“I’m going to assume you know why I’m calling,” she said.
He did. He had been sitting up in bed since five, scrolling through pictures of himself onstage in the Village, grinning like an idiot as Tammy shoved a bottle of “room odorizer” under his nose. The images were mostly blurry, hurriedly captured on smartphones by drunk people, but not nearly enough to obscure what he was doing.
“I can explain,” he said.
“I’m sure it’s quite a story, and I’d love to hear it,” Simone replied, “but I’m rather busy at present guaranteeing your continued employment.”
“What?” Patrick frowned. It had been a little bit embarrassing, sure, but people more famous than him had been caught doing a lot worse.
“There is a morality clause in your contract,” Simone reminded him.
“There’s nothing immoral about a night out.”
“There is when it’s in a gay bar and you’re onstage holding hands with a Middle Eastern drag queen,” Simone countered, “which is how the studio heads see it. Not to mention sniffing amyl fucking nitrite.”
“Sri Lankan.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tammy,” Patrick said. “She’s not Middle Eastern, she’s from Sri Lanka.”
“Good for her. Now what we’re going to do is a short, simple statement to clear all of this up. A single line on your socials should suffice, we don’t want to make it a whole thing. Just tell the world that you accompanied the crew to a bar while you’re on location filming, things got out of hand, and you’re sorry and will aim to set a better example in future. And you can’t wait for everyone to see the movie. Can you manage that?”
Back in the heyday of Hollywood, Henry Willson had kept any number of unseemly rumors about his client, one Rock Hudson, from sticking. Simone’s dedication to keeping Patrick’s private life private—safeguarding their mutual livelihood in the process—could put old Henry to shame.
Patrick said nothing for a moment, embarrassment giving way to sullen rage. He was thirty-one years old. He thought back to Audra’s tirade the night before, about how ridiculous it was to be denied a haircut whenever you wanted. And it was. But Audra was different in at least one regard: a secret that only Patrick and Simone knew.
Audra was straight, and Patrick wasn’t.
Of course last night had felt good, had even felt worth risking everything he’d built in that moment. It was the first time in ages he’d acknowledged that side of himself, so no wonder he’d got carried away. But this was the agreement he and Simone had made when he became her client: come out and work in mid-tier TV for the rest of his career, or keep quiet and get everything he’d ever wanted.
Well. Almost everything.
They’d come too far now. The first Kismet had been a hit, but it was this movie everyone would judge him on. Can he do it again? Can he lead a franchise? This sequel was the gateway to the wider Wonderverse on the big screen, to his pick of scripts, maybe even to directing someday. There would come a time when Patrick could hang out in any bar he wanted, be beholden to nobody. But that day was a way off yet.
“Consider it done,” he told Simone.
“Send me a draft before you post it,” she said. “And it goes without saying, but…”
“I know.” Something inside Patrick tightened and ossified. “No more gay bars. Good night, Simone.”
Seemingly satisfied, Simone hung up, and Patrick collapsed onto his pillow. He would have liked nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep, but 6:30 a.m. meant a training session with Hector. He had to start getting ready now if he didn’t want to miss his call time.
When the knock at his hotel room door came ten minutes later, it wasn’t Hector laden with dumbbells and an alarmingly bright demeanor for so early in the morning, but instead a production assistant bearing a sheaf of new sides.
“More rewrites?” he asked. She looked terrified. “More rewrites. Cool. Thank you. Have a nice day!” he called after her as she fled down the corridor, having already delivered the new script to Audra, who stood in her doorway flapping the pages in the air.
“Can you believe this?” she called across the hall to him. “He can’t be serious.”
Lucas Grant, their new director, had been railroading the writing team into adding whole new sequences to “make it more dynamic” and “simplify the story,” a tall order considering this movie was intended to launch a cohesive new continuity of interconnected sequels and spin-offs. At this rate, Patrick reckoned the extant cut of Kismet 2 was already five hours long and in need of a good edit—or an intermission.
“It’s wild,” he said.
“Lunch later?” Audra asked. “Sources close to me say I’m hungover.”
“Sure,” Patrick murmured, only half looking at the pages in front of him as he reached for the door handle, “but we should probably do our homework first.” He gave her an absent-minded wave and turned back into his room, but not before hearing Audra sing, tunelessly yet still sweetly: “Last night a drag queen saved my life…”