The Price Of Dick (32 page)

Alex
and I spread the real estate brochures over my bed so we could leisurely peruse them and highlight the ones we thought were worth checking out. He made homemade vegetable pitas. My miserable past life was paying for my promising new future. We’d be house hunting in the next few days.

“
To Karma!” Alex said, raising his glass of seltzer to toast me. “Good things happen to good people.”

I had my own toast.
One that wouldn’t say anything negative. Alex didn’t like to hear negative words. So I said, "To Dick. I wish for him everything he so richly deserves!”

I thought he
’d fall on the floor with his convulsive laughter. He doubled over and spit up soda on his T-shirt. Finally recovered, he raised his glass to finalize the toast. “To Dick. To what he so richly deserves!”

On our fifth day of bustling around the city and the suburbs looking at potential homes, we found a wonderfully large,
open concept loft in the heart of downtown. It had been built in a newly refurbished former plastic bottle manufacturing warehouse. It had the clean lines of an industrial feel to it but also a bit of rustic appeal; a lot of exposed natural brick and original wood floors had been resurfaced and polished. It had a space at the far end nearest the three bedrooms that was ideal for the studio. There was so much room in the place Alex said we could roller skate through it like a rink. We agreed we both liked it. His opinion meant everything. I wanted him to share it with me. The price was reasonable, it wouldn’t eat up my entire advance and would leave me some financial play for inexpensive furnishings. So I sat down with the realtor.

I looked forward to starting my new life with my new man. He was my lifesaver, my friend and more.

I began working on the screenplay as Alex and I waited to hear if we’d be new homeowners.

That
Friday I took another call from Cain Martin. There was a meeting I needed to attend at his office. He even told me how to dress. In a suit. Thankfully, Alex’s dad had one I could borrow. I hadn’t owned one in years. Martin told me to have my boxing gloves ready. That meant only one thing: a confrontation. I’d hoped Alex could accompany me but the weekends were his biggest moneymaking days at the gym. This was my battle anyway. I’d handle it alone...with my attorney.

I walked into the law office. The secretary met me promptly and ushered me to the same conference room where I
’d met the film people. She opened the door for me. The room was empty except for Cain Martin, Dick’s mother, Dick himself, in the very suit he’d bought in anticipation of his promotion, and a man who would be introduced to me as their legal counsel, Emeril Santini. I had three pairs of eyes focusing their icy stares on me.

Martin politely guided me to a seat next to his at the head of the table, the position of negotiating power. I knew it. I knew Dick knew it. By his mother
’s withering stare upon the two of us, she knew it, and had already wished us both to hell for it.

She was impatient.
“This is a waste of our most precious time,” she said harshly. It sounded like she meant the ‘royal we’ meaning herself, not inclusive of her son and legal counsel. “Dick has already supported this low-life’s ass long enough. He won’t be getting anything more from him. His free ride is over. I don’t know why you bothered to pull me in on this trivial matter.”

Emeril
Santini attempted to ease himself into the conversation to temper the sharpness of her words, but she physically put a hand against him and forced him back down into his chair. He looked nonplussed, but remained silent.

“
We expect him to pack his belongings and get out of my son’s house ASAP, or we will have law enforcement physically remove him from the premises, and dump his garbage on the curb where it belongs.”

Martin said nothing for the longest time. He was leaning back in his chair listening to her as if she were explaining the best streets to take to get across town. He had no reaction. His fingertips were tracing the edges of a mysterious,
unlabeled manila folder on the table in front of him. When it sounded like she had ended her tirade, he finally asked, “How’s your campaign going, Ms. Fitch?”

The left field question took everyone by surprise, including myself.

The look of confusion on her face was priceless. “What? My campaign? What does that have to do with anything? Are you as big a moron as your client?”

“
Mr. Johnstone is a best-selling author of a highly acclaimed novel and a world renowned photographer,” Martin parried. It almost seemed like he was baiting her with his odd, off-the-wall statements. I certainly wasn’t following his reasoning.

“
Gay propaganda and gay filth. He’s a curse in the eyes of God. The Lord destroyed his kind with fire and brimstone at Sodom. He’s a special brand of sewage in the eyes of the righteous.”

“
I’m well acquainted with your stand against the LGBT community Ms. Fitch. You don’t have to give us your stump speech here today.”

“
LGBT rights!” she spat the words out like they’d dirtied her tongue. “Nothing but homosexuals wanting the world to say it’s okay for them to promote their perversions to the innocent.” She turned her blazing eyes back to me. “You can talk all you want, J.J. Johnstone. I’ve tolerated your presence all these years and been the definition of a lady. The very sight of you always turned my stomach. Having you in my house was like opening the door to a cockroach and asking him to my table. To be finally rid of your infestation brings joy to my heart.” Her head cocked so she could aim a finger at me and glare over it. “I’m the one who told Dick to throw you out in the road where you belong.” She grabbed her purse and rose from her chair as if to leave. "Now, if you don’t mind, I have a wholesome Christian ranch wedding to plan for my youngest son.”

“
Sit down Fitch.” Martin’s voice rose above the din of her chatter and stunned us all. "Mr. Johnstone is here as a courtesy to you. You’ll be thanking him momentarily.”

“
Pardon me, Mr. Cain, but I don’t think that will be the case,” she spat at my attorney.

“
Sit down. We’re not finished.” His voice was loud and threatening this time.

The woman fell back into her chair
, surprised by the forcefulness of his tone.

Using just his index finger he spun the folder in front of him around and slid it in front of the perplexed woman.

“What is this?” she asked, adjusting her jacket that had ridden up on her as she’d quickly re-taken her seat.

“
Mr. Johnstone, out of the generosity of his heart, has decided to allow you a convenient and less embarrassing way to withdraw yourself from your political campaign. And it will only cost your son exactly what he embezzled from Mr. Johnstone over their years as partners.” Martin shifted his gaze to Dick when he said this.

As she looked up from the file to him, her face was livid, cheeks huffing with indignation.
“What do you think you’re talking about? I’m not withdrawing from my campaign. I waited for years to do this. I’m going to help change things in this country. And my son will give nothing to this walking picture of perversion.”

Martin reached across and opened the file. I saw the stacks of photographs within. I recognized them. They were mine. The one on top was familiar. It was Dick in the shower fucking the blond surfer boy model from Florida. He was
balls deep into him, and enjoying it. I’d caught it at just the right angle so you could view the penetration, the splatter of cum running down the crack of the boy's ass.

Dick
’s mother’s jaw went slack. Her eyes darted over the photograph trying to find anything to tell her it was somehow not to be believed. There was nothing. She slumped downward into the chair like someone letting the air out of a balloon. Dick looked across and saw the photograph. Horror stretched every one of his features ludicrously wide. His skin went ashen. A small noise shot out of his mouth.

“
Those are lies, Mom. Don’t believe them. These aren’t real...they’re lies!” The panic had flared over him like a flash fire. He was shaking so hard I think I saw his hair vibrating.

Martin used the same singular index finger to slide that picture off the top of the pile and reveal another. It was a picture of my friend Mike sucking Dick
’s cock. It was more than evident the pictures were authentic and not retouched. The Dick in the chair in front of us looked helpless, hands flailing about with no direction. “If a picture is worth a thousand words, how about a thousand pictures?” the attorney asked in the same sultry tone.

“
Mom, it’s not what you think.”

“
Shut up!” she screamed at him. Her voice was so loud and deep I thought there might be a ventriloquist behind her throwing it. “You idiot. You good for nothing idiot.” Veins billowed full of blood beneath her frail skin. Her eyes were red-streaked with fury. This time it was directed at her own flesh and blood. “I’ve put up with your crap all my life, you little good for nothing, ungrateful coward. And now I try to do something with my life and here you are, fruit of my loins, a real godforsaken fruit to poison my life. To ruin everything. I wish I’d never given birth to you. We knew it. We knew when you were young you were one of them. I tried to point you in the right direction so you would grow out of it. But no. You had to go and ruin everything!”

Every word out of her mouth was like a bullet from a firing squad
into the core of Dick Fitch. He flinched uncontrollably at the sound of her voice. He was crying openly. The tears were real. He was truly afraid of her.

She flew back into the seat and covered her face with her hands. Her
lawyer sat motionless, scared of her himself.

In the middle of the new silence, Martin
’s voice sounded like a purr. “Mr. Johnstone didn’t want you to go into a campaign not knowing that your son was one of those the Lord destroyed at Sodom. That he was that special kind of sewage in the eyes of the righteous. He didn’t want you to carry that kind of baggage into the election season. Especially since we knew you were going to turn his lovely ranch wedding into a media event to kick-start some more campaign fundraising. That would have been an awful embarrassment to you and the prospective bride.” With that he glanced at Dick. “Your bride-to-be knows of your background, doesn’t she, Mr. Fitch? Or, were you going to tell her on the wedding night?”

From beneath the hands on her face she was still cursing her offspring.
“Your father and I put our house up as collateral for a loan to pay for this campaign. Do you know what you’ve just done to us?”

“
That is a shame,” Martin continued in the same soft, almost hypnotic tone. “I guess the worst deception someone can perpetrate is on their own family. That takes a whole different breed of predator. You, Mr. Fitch, seem to leave no exceptions. You’ve preyed on your family, your friends, your clients and the people you work with.”

Eleanor's
eyes were on me again. Her lips fought for words and lost the battle. She picked up her purse as she popped from her chair once again and headed for the door. Dick yelled after her, “Mom, you have to let me explain!”

She wouldn
’t even look back at him. Her head was down as she steamrolled through an exit. “You’re on your own. I don’t want to see you ever again!” The door whooshed closed behind her. Her legal counsel was close on her heels and then gone himself. Dick had fallen back into his chair, looking broken. His eyes were still skimming the photographs in the file on the table. The photos he thought he’d carefully, judiciously deleted in order to fulfill his complete ruination of my life. The thing that had brought us together had now torn him apart.

Martin tapped my shoulder to leave the room with him.
“You show yourself out, Mr. Fitch. You can keep the pictures as Mr. Johnstone’s gift to you. We’ll be working out a method for you to pay him back what you’ve stolen.” When we were beyond the door, the attorney smiled at me and said, “That’s how you write a happy ending. And I think that Jon Hamm should play my part.” He winked. “Just a suggestion.”

We moved into our new loft two weeks later.
Alex and I. I’d paid my price for the Dick fiasco. It was time to move in another direction with a man I loved. I had a screenplay to finish and a novel adaptation of it to write to fulfill my obligations that had paid for the new digs.

And I went and did it. I bought a ring. Yes, that kind of ring. I knew a good thing when it was in my grasp and I wasn
’t going to let it go. I wanted him in my life for always.

I proposed to him on bended knee with the dozen roses.
All the cornball stuff that suddenly seemed to make sense in a real way. I looked forward to planning the wedding, saying the words, making the commitment. All out in the open where happily ever afters were meant to be.

The End