mean you haven’t heard what happened to Donovan?”
I shook my head. Truth was, I didn’t care what happened to Donovan Hunt, even if everyone else seemed to live vicariously through him. Even at forty-five, Donovan remained the golden boy of the desert, a Peter Pan who refused to grow up, whose toys included a Jaguar; a Bentley; a private jet; homes in the desert, Maui, Highland Park (an exclusive suburb of Dallas), and Nantucket. Some of those homes Penelope Sue shared. Others she most decidedly did not.
“One of his boys beat him up,” Randall told me, almost mirthfully. “Stole a bunch of money and credit cards. Donovan had to go to the premiere of his latest picture wearing makeup and dark glasses to hide the bruises.” He gave me a look. “Or so I was told.” He snickered. “Guess they’re not all healed yet.”
Thad and Jimmy and a gaggle of others had hurried to embrace the newcomers, bestowing kisses and uttering exclamations of undying love. A few in the crowd around us had returned to their conversations, but most eyes remained fixed on the spectacle that was Penelope Sue and Donovan.
“Which boy did this dastardly deed?” I asked Randall.
“Not sure. I know it wasn’t the boy from New York.”
“Then it was the Mexican boy,” I said.
Randall shook his head. “Oh, no, not Victor. He’s a sweetie! He’d never do such a thing. I think this was a new boy, one that none of us had ever met.”
I sighed. I was tired of trying to keep track of Donovan’s boys. The topic bored me—or rather, I wanted it to bore me. But the truth was, I was dying to hear about Donovan being beaten up. In detail.
Randall didn’t have much to tell, however. “I just heard that he got beaten up right before the premiere, and he wouldn’t take off his sunglasses, even in the theater.”
“Now, boys,” Frank scolded us, easing in. “Don’t be so gleeful.”
“Gleeful?” I asked. “About Donovan getting beaten up? Us?”
“Say what you want about Donovan, but he’s made some good movies in the last couple of years,” Frank said. “He’s using that money he made in the eighties for good purpose now. Few studios would commit to making films like he does. I read a fantastic review of this latest one a few days ago in the Times. No matter what you think about him, Donovan really gets behind some worthwhile filmmakers.”
I grunted. I knew I was being unfair to Donovan. He really wasn’t so bad, and it was true that he was making some good, gay-positive films. I guess he’d made so much money from Bruce and Chuck that he had no idea what to spend it on. Once, years ago, he’d offered to spend it on me. He’d told me if I left Frank, he’d make me a star. He’d finance a movie that I could both star in and direct. It was quite the offer, and I believed he was serious. After all, he’d argued, Frank was going nowhere, but he, Donovan Hunt—one of the biggest independent producers in Hollywood—could do anything he wanted, including make a movie star out of a failed kid from East Hartford, Connecticut. I thought about it overnight, lying there beside Frank, listening to him snore. The next day I went to Donovan and said no thanks.
But our paths continued to cross, especially after Donovan married Penelope Sue and bought a huge estate in nearby Rancho Mirage. Frank and I got invited to every party he threw, with Randall often tagging along. And yet in all that time, his wife had barely spoken three words to me. Even now, I doubted she would recognize me on the street.
“Donovan’s last party was pretty fabulous, you have to admit that,” Randall was saying, both of us still watching him as he crossed the parlor with Penelope Sue to the bar. “I mean, come on, the champagne fountain. The prime rib. The bubble-butted waiters wearing aprons and nothing else…”
I turned on him sharply. “Don’t forget that was the party where you met Ike.”
That shut Randall up. He frowned and went off in search of Hassan.
Suddenly Thad Urquhart was at my elbow. “Danny,” he was saying, “I want to introduce you to two very important people.”
Before I had a chance to say anything, he had my forearm in a firm grip. I turned to Frank for help, but he just smiled and held up his hands. “Tell them I said hello,” he said, winking. “I’ve got to make a visit to the boys’ room.”
“Thanks a lot,” I grumbled as Thad tugged me toward the bar.
Penelope Sue was sipping a glass of white wine as we approached her. Donovan wasn’t drinking. Thad practically pushed me in front of them. “Darlings,” he said, “you have to meet my latest discovery, Danny For—”
He was quickly cut off by Donovan. “No need to sing the praises of Danny Fortunato to me, Thaddeus,” he said. “I’ve been singing them myself for more than a decade.” He bent forward to embrace me. “How are you, angel puss?”
“Just ducky,” I told him. “What’s with the glasses?”
“An eye infection,” he said blithely. “Penelope, have you ever seen Danny’s art? You need to commission a few pieces.”
She smiled. Nothing more. No extended hand, no hello. But I was treated to the sight of that thick, broadly painted pink lipstick curling upward. Not everyone got that much from Penelope Sue. Then she turned to greet someone else.
Donovan was moving away himself, another set of hands eager to touch his shoulder or his arm, hoping some of his wealth and privilege might rub off. But before he was gone completely, he turned back to me. “Danny,” he said, “you and Frank must come next week to Cinémas Palme d’Or. It’s the desert premiere of my movie, and there’s a party afterward at the Parker. You must come!”
I nodded. He smiled, blew a kiss, and was gone.
“So you know Donovan Hunt,” Thad said.
“An old friend,” I replied dryly.
His eyebrows lifted knowingly. “A small world, isn’t it?”
“When you’re gay, very small,” I said. “Not that I’m saying Donovan is gay…”
Thad laughed. “I’d imagine a boy as good-looking as you must have gotten to know quite a few people on your way up.”
It was my turn to laugh. “There’s one person I don’t know, Thad, and I was hoping maybe you could help me with that.”
“Of course,” he said. “Who do you want to meet next?”
“I’m not sure I want to meet him,” I said. “Maybe just know his name.”
Thad looked at me strangely.
“Your bartender,” I said.
A smile slowly stretched across his face. “Ah yes,” he said. “Kelly.”
“Kelly?”
Thad nodded. “A sweet boy but—”
“But what?”
He laughed. “No buts. He’s a sweet boy.”
Our eyes moved over to watch him behind the bar. He was shaking a martini, the muscles in his lean arms taut.
“I noticed him at happy hour last Friday night,” I said.
“Oh, you won’t anymore,” Thad told me, shaking his head. “He was fired. So he was quite appreciative when I hired him to bartend here tonight.”
“Why was he fired?”
Thad winked. “He tossed one drink too many into a customer’s face. You see, the boy has a bit of a temper.”
“And what did the customer do to get a drink in his face?”
“Who knows? But whatever it was, Kelly took offense.”
I looked back at the bartender. He was handing the martini over to a man who