Barefoot In The City Of Broken Dreams Part 17

We climbed over the boulders and onto another beach beyond. It wasn't quite a cove - the curve was more gentle than that, but the cliff face continued down along the sand. The beach itself was cut off from roads and houses by that cliff, making it seem sheltered and protected, isolated even. As far as I could tell, short of climbing down the cliffs or coming in by boat, there was no way into this little half-cove other than the way we'd just come.

A couple hundred yards down the beach, Kevin stopped.

"Do you know where we are?" he asked me.

I turned all the way around, but I didn't have a clue. "A beach in Malibu?"

"Technically, Point Dume. But take another look." He pointed to the cliff face again. "There." Then he pointed down the beach in front of us. "And there."

I looked where he was pointing, but nothing seemed familiar.

I shook my head at him.

Suddenly Kevin collapsed into sand at the edge of the surf, as if in despair. "Oh, my G.o.d. I'm back. I'm home. All the time, it was Earth. We finally really did it."

At first I didn't understand what was happening, what Kevin was doing. Then I realized: he was giving me his best Charlton Heston overacting. It was the final line from the original Planet of the Apes (a movie I loved, something Kevin knew).

"You maniacs!" Kevin wailed, still quoting the movie. "You blew it up! Ah, d.a.m.n you! G.o.d d.a.m.n you all to h.e.l.l!"

I looked back at those cliffs, at the beach in front of me, finally clueing in. "This is where they filmed that final scene. But it's different..."

Kevin stood up again, brushed himself off. "Well, obviously there's no Statue of Liberty. And it's been, like, fifty years since they shot the movie."

Was it really possible? Kevin knew something about movies I didn't? Something about Los Angeles movie locations?

He pointed to the cliff face. "That's also the site of Tony Stark's mansion in Iron Man."

I gave Kevin my first official smile since the day before. "You looked all this up? For me?"

"I wanted to say I'm sorry about last night. For what I said about Mr. Brander. I was being a dud."

Now I felt stupid. I'd overreacted. Kevin hadn't said anything wrong. He was just concerned about me. And he was right: Mr. Brander, the whole situation with him, some things were weird.

"You don't have anything to apologize for," I said. "I'm the one who should be apologizing."

"Still."

I thought for a second. "One thing. If you really thought you had something to apologize for, how come you didn't actually get in the surf like Charlton Heston does in the movie?"

"Well, I didn't wanna get wet," Kevin said. "I mean, come on, I don't love you that much."

I laughed out loud. We were back to teasing each other, and things were good again. It really was fun - not only seeing this beach, being in the exact spot where they filmed the best movie ending of all time, but also being here with Kevin, having him do this for me, because he knew how much I'd like it.

"Thanks," I said, pulling him close, kissing him.

On our walk back to the car, I saw two other people quote Charlton Heston's speech from the end of Planet of the Apes (one guy actually in the surf).

Once we got to the car, I said, "We're totally good, and you didn't do anything you needed to apologize for anyway. But..."

Kevin smiled. "What?"

"Well, if you want to build up even more bonus points to spend on future fights, we could stop at Malibu State Park on the way home."

"We could, could we?" he said, laughing. "Why?"

"Because that's where they filmed the rest of the first Planet of the Apes movies. And also a whole bunch of other stuff, like Logan's Run and all the Tarzan movies." I'd looked all this up on my phone just then.

"Is there anything to see?" he asked.

"The actual movie sets are all long gone - they blew them up, G.o.d d.a.m.n them all to h.e.l.l! - but you can make out the mountain that stands in the background of Ape Village."

Kevin laughed. "So that'll get me in good, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Completely!"

"Well," he said, like he was the dad and I was the ten-year-old boy, "then I guess we'll just have to stop."

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the following week, Otto was filming all five episodes of his web series, and I volunteered to help. We used Otto's actual bedroom and bathroom at the Hive for "Otto's" bedroom and bathroom. Exterior locations were all done in the streets and a park near the house, and Otto called in some favors and got permission to film at a nearby grocery store, a couple of office buildings, and a coffee shop.

Otto and his housemates and friends played all the roles, and another couple of his friends acted as the director and script supervisor. I wasn't offended that Otto hadn't asked me to play any of the parts (except a non-speaking background extra now and then), because I'm a terrible actor. I also didn't know goat s.h.i.t about filmmaking, so I ended up as a "production a.s.sistant," which is basically someone who does all the grunt work that everyone else is too busy or important to do: holding lights, carrying equipment, and cleaning up the two-liter bottle of Pepsi when some idiot leaves it on the floor, open, and then some other idiot comes along and accidentally kicks it into the office hallway.

It was more work than I expected, like helping someone pack and move three days in a row. But Otto was my friend, and I was (mostly) happy to help.

Eventually, it was Wednesday night. Everyone else was gone, back to their own houses, their own rooms, but I'd stayed behind to help Otto clean up the last of the mess (the first time those rooms at the Hive had ever been cleaned, I think).

"I think that went really well," he said, meaning the whole shoot.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "The stuff I saw? It looked really, really good. It was fun watching you."

"What's strange is that I'm playing myself, but I still think of him as an actual character. Not me, you know?"

I laughed. "I guess it sort of is a character. It isn't really you." I looked around his bedroom, where we happened to be right then: we were cleaned up at last. "Well, I should go. The good news is that by working so long, I think I missed the traffic."

He smiled. "Thanks for your help. Really. All my other friends? They'll do anything to get in front of a camera, any camera, so it's not like they're doing me that big a favor. But you - you're not getting anything out of this. You're just here to help. And, I mean, I'm sorry about the Pepsi."

"It was fun," I said. "I learned a lot."

I stepped closer and hugged him. That close, I could smell him. I'd hugged him since I moved to Los Angeles, but it had always been on the street or in spicy ethnic restaurants. I'd never been able to smell him, not the way I could now. He was a complicated mixture of smells, but ultimately something clean and fun, like Play-Dough.

I pulled back, but not that far. My face was only inches from his face. I could still smell him. Suddenly I was aware that the door to his bedroom was closed.

Otto and I stared at each other.

I looked at his face. His scar had long since become invisible to me again, and I wasn't seeing it now either. I was just seeing "Otto" - the tousle of his hair, the sly cut of his lips, those great, brown-burgundy eyes. I liked Otto as a teenager, maybe even truly loved him, but as great as he'd been then, he was so much more than that now: a supportive friend, a dedicated actor, a surprisingly good writer, someone who'd been able to pull this whole web series together in just a matter of weeks. Otto was someone who knew who he was, what he wanted, and that was always attractive.

As we looked at each other, I saw something else too. Lately, I'd been imagining all kinds of things: seeing the past lives of the people who had lived in my apartment, hearing the ghost of Cole Gordon. Now I got a glimpse into another dimension - a different timeline, I guess.

Otto and I are a couple. We met at summer camp when we were both sixteen years old, and we never broke up. We have somehow made it work, seeing each other on weekends and spending whole weeks together in the summers. I'd always loved movies, but for once I am spending time with someone who loves them the same way I do, with a pa.s.sion bordering on obsessive. Just the mere act of being with someone so like me in this respect is opening boxes inside myself - boxes within boxes within boxes.

I wasn't just seeing into this other timeline. It was like the two timelines were somehow converging, joining together like the two sides of a long ribbon, once pulled apart, but now meeting face to face. I was somehow living in both timelines at once.

Otto and I ended up going to college together - I'd moved down to Los Angeles at the end of my soph.o.m.ore year to be with him, to go to UCLA. We'd both discovered our vocations in the arts - his desire to be an actor, mine to be a screenwriter - and we lived in this crazy town together all through school and after, chasing our dreams, doing exactly what we were meant to do.

Our lips were so close together, just inches apart. But neither of us moved. I could feel the warm gusts of air from his nose on my cheek, smell his sweet breath.

Today had occurred almost exactly as I remembered it. Otto had filmed the third day of his web series, and I'd helped him, and now we were finishing cleaning up together afterward. But I'm not about to leave, to go home to Kevin, because Kevin doesn't exist in this timeline, at least not in Los Angeles. He is back in Seattle, still living with his ex-boyfriend Colin. In this timeline, it is Otto I love, Otto I have always loved. I can see it in Otto's eyes too: that I am the one he shares his pa.s.sion with.

I could see it in Otto's eyes for real. I wasn't the only one seeing into this other timeline, experiencing these feelings.

In this new timeline, Otto and I have kissed recently, many times. And now, at the end of a hard day's work, we are about to kiss again. We are both tired, exhausted actually, but the kiss will energize us, especially as it grows more pa.s.sionate. s.e.x with Otto, I know, is like gunpowder, like a powder keg: once it starts burning, it takes on a life of its own, burning brighter, hotter, until it explodes. The Hive is our house, the place where we live together, and this is our bedroom, our bed. Midway into the kiss, Otto will take my hand, pull me toward the bed, and we will undress - not a sly seduction, or the eager fumblings of a couple that hasn't had s.e.x together since high school. Instead, it will be the casual shucking of clothes that comes after years together, a familiarity that is perhaps too easy, but also so comfortable. Our bodies, so used to each other now, will fall onto the sheets of our futon, and we will make love the way we have so many times before.

Everything froze. This was the exact moment where the two timelines met. Like the timeline itself, Otto and I were one. Could we go on being one? Could I jump from one timeline to the other? In that instant, I was certain it was possible. So what if the past of our new timeline got jumbled, if it wouldn't be exactly clear when we'd gotten together, where I'd gone to college, where I'd live these past few years. The point is, we could go on living together, sharing our lives, chasing our dreams.

We still didn't move. I realized that neither of us had moved for a long time, ten seconds or more, not even blinking.

Whatever you do, don't kiss the ex-boyfriend.

Maybe this was what the ghost of Cole Gordon had been trying to tell me that night in our apartment. Except at that point, he wouldn't have had any way of knowing about Otto. Even so, it was still good advice.

So I blinked. I said to Otto, "Well, I should probably get going."

"Oh, yeah!" he said, pulling back. "Definitely."

Just like that, the timelines were splitting apart again. The moment had broken. The connection we'd shared, our glimpse into that other timeline? It was gone now. What existed in that dimension didn't exist in this one, and now it never would.

But I was glad I'd shared that moment with Otto. He and I had loved each other once, but we were friends now, and that was a very good thing for both of us to know. In a way, it also felt like I'd finally truly moved on from the things Kevin had said after that dinner with Mr. Brander, like he and I were completely good again.

When I got home that night, Kevin was baking cookies, which meant the landlord had finally fixed the oven.

"Oh, my G.o.d, that smells so good!" I said. The first batch of cookies was already done, on a plate on the counter. "Snickerdoodles!"

"I looked up a recipe online," he said, smiling.

I had one. It was fantastic, warm and b.u.t.tery. (He'd overdone the cinnamon and underdone the sugar in the cinnamon-sugar coating, but I wasn't about to point that out.) "They're great!" I said, loving the fact that he'd baked them for me, and also the fact that he baked cookies at all. We teased each other about which one of us was the butchest, but Kevin had been right when he'd said that the s.e.xiest thing of all was a guy who didn't get hung up about how butch he was.

"How'd it go with the web series? You're finally done now, right?"

"Yeah," I said, and then I went on to tell him about the day's shoot. I didn't mention the moment I'd had with Otto in his bedroom, mostly because there really wasn't anything to mention. We hadn't kissed. We hadn't really even almost-kissed.

"I think I made a decision," I said.

"Yeah?" Kevin said.

"I'm going to email Fiona Lang."

"To see what she thinks of your screenplays?"

I nodded. "It's crazy. It's been, like, six weeks. And" - here I gave Kevin an apologetic look - "I can also ask her about the check from Mr. Brander."

There was a knock at the door.

Daniel, of course.

"Pero que chingados?" he said. I think he meant the cookies, that he thought they smelled good, but with him, who the h.e.l.l knows?

"What do you need?" I said, not particularly amused by having this c.o.c.ky kid intrude on my moment with Kevin.

"Your shower," he said.

"What?" I was confused.

"Our shower don't work." He was carrying a rolled-up beach towel, but I guess I a.s.sumed he was on his way to the pool.

I looked at Kevin, in the kitchen doorway again. Before Kevin could even shrug, Daniel was sauntering across the floor toward our bathroom. Part of me wanted to stop him, ask him more questions: "What's wrong with your shower?" And, "Does your sister know you're here?"

I was too late. Before I could speak, he disappeared into the bathroom, and I heard the shower start. (But - and this seemed important somehow - he hadn't closed the door all the way.) Steam billowed out the crack of that open door.

I stepped closer to Kevin. The door to the bathroom was open, and I didn't want Daniel overhearing us talking. But I didn't know what to say exactly. I mean, maybe Daniel really did need to use our shower.

Kevin's eyes met mine. He was thinking the same thing I was. Given the way Daniel had been acting around us, having him naked in our bathroom was not a good thing. But what could we do? He was already naked, and slick with water by now, probably soaping up his whole body.

Oy.

The point is, it's not like we could go in there and pull him out of the shower.

A minute or so later, the water stopped.

The door opened, and Daniel stepped out. He had his towel wrapped around his waist. His skin was still wet, sleek and glistening. More importantly, he was getting water all over our floor.

"Daniel!" I said. "Stop!"

"What?" he said, clueless, or pretending to be.

"You didn't even dry off."

"Oh. Lo siento."

The instant before he did it, I knew what he was going to do - that he was going to pull the towel off from around his waist and start drying off right in front of us.

Yup. He was standing there completely starkers.

He flopped the towel over his head and started drying his hair. It was a total tease, of course. He was giving us the chance to look at him without him knowing, so we could stare outright. Except he did know we were looking.

I'd like to say I turned my eyes away, but I didn't.