by Cris Kane
I pulled up to the gate in my rusted-out Mazda and pushed the buzzer for
the intercom. When I didn't get an immediate answer, I double-checked
the address, never having been to this part of Beverly Hills before.
Finally, a deep voice crackled through the speaker. "Barry?"
"Uh, no, I'm Cameron. Barry couldn't make it today." My boss Barry
usually did this kind of customer service appointment for our elite
clients himself, so I was stunned when he asked if I could go instead
this time.
I could hear the guy at the other end mutter "Shit" to himself before saying, "Okay, Cameron, come on in."
I heard a buzz and the wide gate swung open, revealing a lush rolling
lawn sloping upward to a stunning modernist mansion. Whoever lived here
must be flabbergastingly rich. I parked in the driveway and walked to
the front door, feeling extremely underdressed in my hoodie, board
shorts and Vans slip-ons, until I saw the man of the house straddling
the front doorway wearing nothing but a pair of orange briefs.
I had lived in L.A. long enough to become pretty
blase about seeing famous people, but this was a major exception. Shane
London had been my first major celebrity crush. He was only a couple of
years older than me, but by the age of seventeen, he had already become a
huge star playing Trace McCoy, the teenage sleuth who could turn
invisible on the hit show, "Untraceable". As a short, scrawny geek in
rural Idaho, deathly afraid that my peers would discover that I was gay,
I would watch that show alone in my bedroom and nurse two impossible
fantasies: that I could be Shane London or that I could be invisible.
Shane could scarcely have been more visible as he waited for me at the
door. He stood over six feet tall, his well-defined muscles offering a
thorough anatomy lesson on his lanky, no-body-fat frame. His shaggy
brown hair was slicked back from a face that had only grown more
handsome as he hit his mid-twenties. He stared at me with the slight
smile of someone who was a bit less than bright or a bit more than
stoned.