Chapter 9
The second time Will Wright met Patrick Lake, his body parts were all exactly where they belonged. Will was perched behind the counter in Gilroy’s, reading a reprint of Maurice from 1987, when the actor walked in. Even more so than at the gay bar the other night, seeing Patrick here, in his bookshop, caught Will completely off guard, like looking up and seeing the moon in the middle of the day.
Holy shit, he thought, he’s even more gorgeous in daylight. The sun seemed to bounce off his short sandy hair as Patrick removed his cap and sunglasses, and Will couldn’t detect so much as a pore on his clean-shaven, inconsiderately handsome face.
April was currently out buying sandwiches for lunch. She was going to be furious.
“Hello there,” said Will. “Welcome.”
Patrick smiled, revealing a dimple to the left of his mouth, a single concession to asymmetry. Did Patrick recognize him, he wondered?
“Hi,” he said. “I’m hoping you can help me.” He placed his hands on the counter and leaned forward slightly, as if about to confide something private to Will. Will, for his part, couldn’t help but notice the sheer size of the hands laid flat on the wood, their eyes at exactly the same level now that Will wasn’t looming over him in heels. Patrick’s eyes were the palest blue he’d ever seen.
“I’m looking for a comic book,” Patrick said.
“Oh. Hmm. We’re really more in the business of, you know, book books,” Will replied. “But there’s a Forbidden Planet just up the street—”
“What I’m after is pretty rare. Not the kind of thing I could just pick up in a comic book store. And you guys specialize in rare, right?”
“That we do,” Will affirmed, wondering if this rich, almost certainly entitled celebrity was about to become his latest nightmare customer. “And we do, occasionally, deal with old magazines and comics,” he admitted. “Why don’t you tell me a few more specifics.”
“It’s the twelfth and final installment of the first run of The Adventures of Captain Kismet,” Patrick replied. “It was supposed to be published in the May 1950 issue of Wonder Magazine. But there’s all kinds of confusion on whether it actually ran or not.”
“Doing some additional character research?” Will asked.
Patrick smiled again, no doubt used to strangers being familiar with the ins and outs of his working life. “Exactly.” He retrieved his phone from his pocket, scrolling through what appeared to be a list of details in his Notes app. “It’s sometimes known as the Omega Issue,” he added, reading aloud now, “and features the first defeat of the villain Omega Man.”
Will had been so preoccupied with wondering if he should mention, Oh, hey, by the way, I’m the bloke in a dress from the other night, that it took a moment to register what Patrick had said.
“The Omega Issue,” he repeated.
“That’s right,” said Patrick. “Do you have it?”
Will scanned the countertop, moving his copy of Maurice and riffling through the various loose sheets of paper, before remembering he had binned the Post-it bearing exactly those words. Patrick had called ahead and left a message, then dropped by in person when he received no reply. Somebody more naive than Will, a romantic perhaps, might have interpreted this as a sign that events, circumstances, fate, were conspiring to bring the two of them together.
Will knew better.
“That is pretty rare, if I remember correctly,” he said. “Let me just check anyway…”
He entered the details Patrick had given him into the database that he had spent several painstaking weeks digitizing for Yvonne, ninety-nine percent sure by now that Patrick didn’t know he was Grace Anatomy. Will might not have been serving flawless female illusion with his sinewy arms and unshaven legs, but the transformative powers of a wig and half-decent beat were not to be underestimated.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said as he typed, “but don’t actors usually do their research earlier on?”
Patrick shrugged with one shoulder, which only served to draw Will’s attention to how broad those shoulders were, and once again how tightly his T-shirt hugged his biceps. Will’s own arms, of which he was quite proud on an average day, were toned but lacked the sheer size of this guy’s. And he certainly didn’t have anything remotely resembling that barrel chest. All the better to squeeze into a sequined gown.
Still, Will liked to think he had a better-than-average relationship with his own body. Until somebody who looked like this walked into his shop, because self-esteem had as many laws of relativity as physics; everything existed in comparison to everything else. A vein in Patrick’s arm pulsed, and Will felt a familiar pang of desire tinged with envy, or maybe it was the other way around. Do I want you? Do I want to be you? How might it feel to walk down the street as you? How safe does it feel in your body?
Will averted his eyes, turning his attention back to the screen in front of him.
“Sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t look like we have what you’re looking for.”
“Darn,” Patrick muttered, and Will was taken aback by how adorable it sounded, because even in America, who said “darn” anymore?
“Well, thank you for trying,” Patrick said, turning to leave.
“Wait!” God, Will, are you that starved for male attention? I mean, sure, this man is the kind of stunning that would all but guarantee him a gruesome fate in Greek mythology. But you need to get a grip.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I can ask around, if you like? I know a couple of collectors and dealers who might be able to help. And my colleague April lives for tracking down this kind of thing. Maybe she’ll have a lead. Although your best bet is probably—”
“EBay, I know. Trust me, I’ve been trawling like crazy.”
“If we do find what we’re looking for, approaching sellers privately is also likely to end up being quite expensive.”
“That won’t be a problem” was the reply. “And hey, listen. I really appreciate you offering to help. Here’s my number.” Patrick grabbed a pen from a jar next to the till and jotted down his information. “Give me a call if you find anything. Thanks again.” He put his hat and shades back on, the uniform of a celebrity incognito. “I’m Patrick, by the way.”
Will laughed. “I know.”
“And your name is…?” Patrick asked.
“Will.” He cleared his throat. “Will Wright.”
“Nice to meet you, Will.” And he flashed that smile again, causing a bubble of air to halt in Will’s throat.
This, he thought, will be how I die.
It wasn’t until Patrick was gone, seeming to take at least half the air in the room with him, and Will had vigorously cleared his throat, that he looked down and realized this handsome stranger had written on the closest thing to hand. Meaning he had just defaced a copy of Maurice that would now be coming out of Will’s pay.
At least it wasn’t a first edition.
He was contemplating another sojourn in the screaming cupboard when the bell rang again: It was April. She approached the counter with care, a smoothie in each hand, brown paper bag clutched carefully between her forearm and left boob like she was nursing an infant, but her eyes blazed.
“You will not believe who I just saw,” she said breathlessly.
Will laughed. So much for the hat and sunglasses.
“I could take a very good guess,” he said.
“Shut up. He was here? Patrick Lake was here?” April set their lunch down on the counter and slapped Will on the arm. “And I missed it because you insisted it was my turn to go out for food?”
“You wanted to get your steps in.”
“As if Patrick Lake was in Gilroy’s,” April said. “What was he doing here? Oh! Did he come in to thank you for helping during that whole debacle on Friday?”
“No,” said Will. “I don’t actually think he knew that was me.”
“And you didn’t tell him?”
Will dodged the question.
“He’s the one who rang about the Omega Issue,” he told her, knowing it would pique her interest. “I said it could be a tall order, but that we’d ask around for him. I thought maybe it might be a project that’s perfect for the expertise of someone who is, let’s say, not me?”
The fire returned to April’s eyes.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Oh my god. Patrick Lake, our client. Patrick Lake, my client.” She tore the sandwich bags open with abandon. “What is going on in Birmingham right now?”
“I know, right?” said Will, grinning along with her but also turning over April’s unanswered question in his mind. Why hadn’t he told Patrick who he was, that they’d already met? He wasn’t sure exactly, only that it had something to do with the flushed red cheeks of the man he’d met that first night, and the unguarded way Patrick had looked right at him. The more he dwelled on it—and dwell on it he did—the more it seemed to Will that he’d got a glimpse of something that night, too. A version of Patrick Lake that few people in the world ever saw.
It was silly, he knew, but for all the swooning he’d felt when Patrick walked into Gilroy’s like a cowboy from an old advert, Will thought he preferred that initial red-faced, clumsy grin. So he wouldn’t embarrass the man by bringing it up. He would file it away like he had with so many other fleeting glances and secret crushes over the years, and that way he would be able to keep the moment separate and safe, all to himself.