Prodigal Sons Read online

  Mark thanked Ron for his time and asked him to call him at his brother’s house if he heard anything. Ron said he would and wished him luck. Ron’s expression was a mask of neutrality. He had done all he could do.

  Rachel escorted him out.

  Alone again with her in the elevator, he said, “Rachel, did you know my brother?”

  She smiled, almost a wince.

  He took a breath. “How well?”

  She stared at the floor, her face turning red.

  The doors opened onto the lobby. She went out with him and said, “Let’s take a quick walk.”

  Outside had turned into a California dream of a day, a perfect unspoiled blue sky. They strolled through a set depicting a city street.

  “When was the last time you saw my brother?”

  She stopped in front of a fake pizza place. A neon sign read, “Pizza by the slice.” It was just a facade, the building was four feet deep.

  “Look, I didn’t want any trouble. A bunch of us were all out down in the South Bay.”

  “When?”

  “I’ve always kind of had a thing for your brother.”

  He raised his eyebrows. Waited.

  “Sunday morning. I went to take a shower. He was gone when I got out. I haven’t seen him since.”

  It occurred to Mark that he might not like his brother when this was all over. Something he would not have thought possible, or at least not likely. Perhaps there was more wrong with Matthew than Mark wanted to admit.

  “Where do you live, Rachel?”

  “West Hollywood.”

  Mark checked the list of names and numbers from Lucy. A lot of Hollywood addresses.

  He called his brother’s friend, Taz, and discovered that he’d seen Matthew having a cup of coffee and a cigarette Sunday morning at Fred 62, a breakfast place in Los Feliz.

  “Yeah, he was sitting outside because he didn’t have any shoes,” Taz remembered.

  Speaking of shoes, their friend Shoe had given Matthew a ride to the Professor’s to watch the Super Bowl. Shoe confirmed this, said Matthew was there when he left after the game.

  “Sooner or later,” Shoe told him, “you’ll have to talk to the Professor.”

  Shortly after, Mark sat in the living room of the Professor’s hotel suite on Sunset Boulevard. If the Argyle Hotel was a falcon, the Professor’s room would have looked out of its left eye at the Sunset Strip. The color scheme was black and white and gray except for the artwork on the walls. The Professor informed Mark that he had put all of the hotel’s black and white photographs into one of the closets and replaced them with his vintage collection of Grateful Dead posters.

  Mark tried to imagine himself living his brother’s life. They were thirteen months apart, almost Irish twins. Mark was the straight-laced, straight-arrow, straight-talking Flanagan boy. Matthew rarely listened to a thing anyone ever told him. Don’t get married too soon, stay in the family business, you’ll never make it in LA. All had been proven wrong, until now.

  “So the golden boy has turned black sheep?” The Professor was doing something at the bar involving orange juice. “Mimosa?” He popped open a bottle of champagne.

  Mark had to admit he could use a drink. The Professor handed him a glass. Mark wasn’t sure how to address the Professor. Lucy didn’t know his real name. The Professor wore an Argyle Hotel robe over a bathing suit. Apparently he’d been swimming laps in the pool. Mark glimpsed a thin chest and torso, loose and flabby skin, like the skin of overripe fruit. A bloated face, framed by a long nest of dirty blonde curls, looked half amused and half asleep. Lazy eyes above a lazy smile.

  “So let’s see, the last time I saw Matthew…” He scratched his unshaven face between sips. “What day is it today?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Right. I saw him on Super Bowl Sunday. Yesterday?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “If you say so.”

  Mark sighed. Three thousand miles had taken him from Connecticut to another planet. He didn’t know what to make of the specimen in front of him. This wasn’t an earthling, but the Professor did seem to be the last one to have seen his brother.

  “So what happened?”

  “I hosted a little Super Bowl party here. Just friends and students.”

  “Students?”

  “Yeah, my students. I teach high school English down in Hawthorne.”

  “Nice.”

  “Quite right. Matthew was definitely here. I just can’t remember when he left.”

  Mark sighed. Forty-eight hours ago, he hadn’t even known the Professor existed. It was a simpler time.

  “Matthew could keep all those balls in the air. Wife, work, drinking. He could have his cake and eat it too. Part of me wanted him to do it forever. Part of me wanted to pull him under. It was easy to envy him. How he kept coming up, landing on his feet. A cat with nine lives. He still will, I think. Land on his feet. Everybody likes a comeback story.”

  As the Professor was seized by a coughing fit, Mark left, shaking his head.

  Already in Hollywood, he decided to check in with their lesbian cousin, Ruby.

  She had gone to Brown, then transferred to UCLA and never left Los Angeles. According to Matthew, she was heavily into the experimental theater scene in LA. Mark wasn’t sure what kind of experimenting went on in those theaters. He was sure he didn’t want to find out.

  Ruby was a year older than Mark. She’d busted out of the closet back in college. Not that it was a great shock to anyone other than her mother. Ruby was the only lesbian Mark knew in real life. He was uncomfortable around her, especially when the conversation turned to her girlfriends. Usually there was way too much detail. It gave Mark the heeby jeebies and he was pretty sure that was Ruby’s intention. This in addition to her intimidating intellect—she had graduated top of her class at UCLA—left them little to talk about.

  But she wasn’t a bad candidate for someone who would take Matthew’s side in this whole mess. Ruby didn’t strike Mark as a staunch advocate for marriage or middle class existence in general. It was possible she might think that Matthew was escaping the bourgeois shackles he had chained himself with. Or she might not know dick. Mark grinned at his unintentional joke. Matthew would’ve liked it. He was fond of word play.

  After quite a bit of confusion, (“Let me get this straight. You’re in town but Matthew’s not?”) Ruby told Mark to meet her at the Formosa Café on Santa Monica Boulevard. A gay hangout, no doubt. She would meet him after work.

  The Formosa Café wasn’t much to look at from the outside. A little one-story dive with a deck on top. Mark parked and went in through the front door. The inside was even less to look at, narrow and long. Longer than he realized from the outside. It was dim and quiet. The darkness ate up the noise from the scattered conversation at the bar.

  Ruby was two-thirds of the way down the bar smoking a cigarette and talking to the bartender. There were four other people at the bar. Everyone but Ruby turned toward Mark and he felt very self-conscious as he walked over.

  “Hey,” she said to his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

  “Hey.”

  She turned when he sat next to her. He couldn’t really say if she looked good or bad. She looked like Ruby, the chubby lesbian, but she seemed comfortable. He took a look around. The booths were made of red leather. Movie star eight by tens lined the walls. Ruby wore jeans, a white oxford shirt, and a red jacket with a GMC logo on the chest. She blew a condescending ring of smoke in his direction. He felt out of place and wondered vaguely if this was how Ruby had felt all the time growing up.

  The bartender looked at him. “What’ll you have?”

  “He’ll have a mai tai.” Ruby grinned.

  Mark just nodded. He was too off balance to assert himself.

  “A mai tai?” he whispered to her.

  “It’s his specialty.” She exchanged smiles with the bartender, a scraggly dyed blonde twenty-something who looked like he’d just rolled out of be
d, although the amount of gel in his hair clearly indicated he’d spent a lot of time and effort perfecting the look. “It comes with a complimentary umbrella.” She twirled an orange toothpick umbrella in her fingers and took a sip of her mai tai.

  “When in Rome.” He had no idea what was in a mai tai although he had seen the bartender pour some rum into the glass.

  “So what are you doing out here, Mark? You’re a long way from home.”

  The bartender added the umbrella and a cherry and placed the drink in front of him.

  Filling her in on what he knew, Ruby’s eyes grew wider and her smile disappeared.

  “Holy fuck.”

  Mark took a sip of the mai tai. It tasted like fruit flavored shit.

  The bartender raised his eyes.

  Mark gritted his teeth and smiled. “Nice.”

  Ruby and the bartender laughed. He didn’t know what to do, took another sip. Still bad. The bartender moved away.

  Ruby grinned at him like a little girl. The girl she’d been before things got complicated. “He couldn’t mix a Jack and Coke let alone a mai tai,” she said.

  “Why did you order one for me?”

  “You can’t say you went to the Formosa Café and had a beer. When in Rome.”

  Mark nodded as though this cleared something up.

  “So where the hell is he?”

  “I was kind of hoping you might have an idea.”

  “Me? Really?”

  Mark nodded, embarrassed. “Ruby, I don’t know where the fuck he is. You sure you haven’t heard from him?”

  “I’m sorry Mark. I really am. I mean I’m no great supporter of traditional values but,” she took a sip, “they were probably the happiest couple I knew. Happiest straight couple anyway.”

  “Do you know a lot of happy gay couples?”

  “Not a lot.”

  He sighed and finished his mai tai.

  “Matthew’s a big fan of this place,” Ruby said.

  Mark looked around, trying to see the appeal for his brother. Matthew probably knew the names of every face lining the wall and every movie or TV series they had ever starred in. Matthew and Luke were bursting with stores of useless knowledge.

  “You think he was doing any writing?” Mark asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “Don’t you write some?”

  She let out a breath. “Some. Writing’s all Matthew ever wanted to do. I can take it or leave it.”

  A tiny waitress carried plates of food to a dim table.

  “How’s the food?”

  “Not as good as your mai tai.”

  Mark chuckled. He threw some cash on the bar and asked her to call him at Matthew’s house if she heard anything. The movie stars watched him leave with dead eyes.

  MATTHEW 4

  BONUS TIME

  A short film by Matthew Flanagan

  FADE IN

  MATTHEW FLANAGAN’S head is pressed up against a wall. His eyes are closed. We hear only the constant chirping of slot machines. Pull back to reveal MATTHEW passed out in a bathroom stall.

  CUT TO:

  INT. MEN’S ROOM

  MATTHEW steps out of the stall and wobbles to the sink, woozy. Imaginary waves rock the floor. He turns the water on.

  A VALET stands at the edge of the counter near the door. With a flourish, he picks up a hand towel and waits for MATTHEW to finish.

  MATTHEW holds himself up with his left hand on the counter and uses his right hand to apply water to his face and hair.

  The only SOUND is the ringing of slots and the occasional raucous payoff.

  The VALET stands in the corner expressionless, holding the towel. Grooming products are spread out on the counter next to him. Hairspray, mints, aftershave…

  MATTHEW’S reflection is not doing the same things as he is. The REFLECTION stands leaning with both hands on the counter and stares at MATTHEW who avoids his accusing eyes. Finally MATTHEW looks up and meets the eyes of his reflection who now mirrors his actions. They nod at each other.

  Finally MATTHEW takes the towel from the VALET and dries his face. The VALET spreads out his palm to the rest of the cleaning products. MATTHEW grabs a toothbrush and toothpaste.

  CUT TO:

  MATTHEW brushes his teeth.

  CUT TO:

  MATTHEW combs his hair.

  CUT TO:

  MATTHEW slaps some aftershave onto his unshaven cheeks.

  MATTHEW’S REFLECTION watches all of this with folded arms.

  CUT TO:

  MATTHEW looks at his reflection which reflects him again. He looks halfway civilized.

  MATTHEW says something to the VALET but it is drowned by the casino noises. The VALET winks and gives MATTHEW a thumbs up. MATTHEW nods and drops a hundred-dollar bill into the VALET’S tip bucket. The VALET salutes MATTHEW as he heads toward the door.

  ENTER MAN running through the door looking like he is going to vomit. The MAN rushes into a stall.

  The VALET picks up another towel, snaps it and waits while the slots pay somebody somewhere.

  CUT TO:

  INT. CASINO—SOMETIME

  MATTHEW steps out of the men’s room, takes a deep breath and smiles.

  CASINO NOISES are louder. Sprinkle in CROWD NOISES.

  A WAITRESS in a low-cut dress comes by with a tray full of drinks.

  MATTHEW sneaks a Heineken from her tray and takes a sip. And another. He seems pleased.

  CUT TO:

  INT. BAR—COCKTAIL HOUR

  Add CLINKING GLASSES, DRINK SHAKER to background noise.

  The BAR is a high-ceilinged, thick-carpeted, tiffany-lamped affair.

  ENTER MATTHEW

  CUT TO:

  INT. ANOTHER BAR

  This BAR is dim and smoky, with a jukebox, lots of hairspray and tattoos, a pool table.

  ENTER MATTHEW

  CUT TO:

  INT. YET ANOTHER BAR

  This BAR is populated by big screen televisions, baseball caps and team jerseys.

  CUT TO:

  INT. TIFFANY-LAMPED BAR

  MATTHEW takes a seat at the crowded bar. He gets another Heineken. He takes a sip and turns around to survey the room.

  There are mirrors behind the bar and at either end, reflecting an infinite number of bars.

  MATTHEW squints, looking confused at his reflections. After a second, we see a series of shots: MATTHEW sitting in the other bars he walked into, and others we didn’t see. In one he is having a shot and a beer, in one a glass of wine, a martini, a whiskey on the rocks. Then we are back to just MATTHEW in the tiffany-lamped bar, shaking his head.

  Four ROWDY GIRLS at a table. A BLONDE looks over at MATTHEW. He winks at her.

  Add sound of GIGGLING GIRLS to the mix.

  CUT TO:

  INT. LIMO—NIGHT

  MATTHEW and the four GIRLS whoop it up in the back seat.

  MATTHEW and the BLONDE stand up in the sunroof. They hold glasses of champagne. The neon lights of the strip glimmer off the top of the limo. MATTHEW and the BLONDE toast and kiss.

  Then the glasses fly upward, as does the BLONDE’S hair as the car suddenly dives down. MATTHEW and the BLONDE scream and raise their hands. The lights of Vegas blur past and we are on a roller coaster.

  CUT TO:

  EXT. STRATOSPHERE CASINO—ROOFTOP

  A ROLLERCOASTER whips around tracks on the rooftop of the casino in the center of Vegas.

  CUT TO:

  INT. CASINO—NIGHT

  MATTHEW rolls at a craps table. Seven. The crowd around the table jumps up and down. The GIRLS are still with him. The BLONDE kisses his cheek. The CROUPIER rakes the dice back to MATTHEW.

  CUT TO:

  INT. LIMO—NIGHT

  The party has snowballed. Each GIRL now has a BOY with her.

  CUT TO:

  INT. STRIP CLUB—NIGHT

  Tits and ass shake on several stages. The BLONDE sits in MATTHEW’S lap and keeps covering her eyes and mouthing, “Oh my God!”

  CUT
TO:

  INT. HOTEL LOBBY—NIGHT

  MATTHEW and his fellow revelers burst into the lobby. CLERKS at the front desk raise eyebrows in their direction. Everyone notices them.

  INT. MATTHEW’S HOTEL ROOM—NIGHT

  Couples dance on beds. TOMMY is there. She smiles at MATTHEW, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  The background noises quiet as they speak.

  MATTHEW

  Hey stranger.

  TOMMY

  You’re looking better.

  MATTHEW

  I’m feeling better. Sin seems to agree with me.

  Casino sounds swallow up the rest of their conversation.

  The BLONDE is passed out in a chair. MATTHEW rolls his eyes at TOMMY. TOMMY rolls her eyes back.

  CUT TO:

  INT. HOTEL HALLWAY

  MATTHEW lets the door shut behind him and walks down the hallway.

  CUT TO:

  INT. CASINO

  MATTHEW observes the Casino. The sounds now correspond to what he is seeing. MATTHEW has a drunken half grin on his face and he is tapping one foot to the beat of something. He checks his watch probably more out of habit than anything else. He has nowhere to be. Who knows if he can even tell time at this point. A lipstick kiss decorates his cheek. He takes a step forward.