How Long Has This Been Going On Read Free Page B

you been living on? Because the Kid's going to make out, see? He's going all the way up there, see? Top of the world, Ma! Exposure. Meeting the kingpins. Oozing to the heights in a limo where a chauffeur knows the protocols and you're getting hot for your date with Mr. Nougat.
    Unless, of course, you're no more than a night's lay in a Hollywood mansion. Grr, whirr, thank you, sir.
    Well, we'll see about that. I'll just have to be too memorable to be forgotten.
    The car docked in a circular driveway before an ornately designed but surprisingly compact house.
    Size isn't everything, the Kid told himself, as the chauffeur held the door for him and the Kid got his first good look at the guy.
    "Why didn't you tell me you were so tall?" the Kid asked. "What else have you got?"
    The chauffeur said nothing, didn't move. Behind them, a ray of light broke along the stonework of the drive; the Kid turned, and there, in the open doorway, stood Derek Archer in a dressing gown and, apparently, nothing else.
    "Mr. Nougat, I presume?" said the Kid, flirting with danger despite the starlet's warning about No irony. "Hard on the outside and soft in the center?"
    "Come in and shut up," Archer replied, drawing the Kid into the house with a hand on his collar as the car hummed off to the garage. "Quickly, now. No stalling."
    The Kid wants the adventure, but he does not like being ordered around, and he balks. He's not angry; he just stops moving.
    Suddenly, Archer changes his tone. "Please," he says. "I'm sorry I was so abrupt, really. But I have to move fast. Don't fight me."
    "Okay, Mr. Nougat, sir. Or can I call you 'Candy'?"
    "And please don't joke. Not till it's over."
    The Kid bowed.
    "Come."
    Archer led the Kid upstairs to a bedroom. "Take a shower first," he said. Gesturing toward the bathroom, he added, "Everything you need is there. Use it all. Take your time. Spoil yourself."
    He smiled at the Kid for the first time, a flash of the movies' Derek Archer, the endearingly fumbly good guy, well-intentioned but unsavvy. An American type.
    "Okay, now? Don't feel hurried or under any pressure. When you're finished, go through that door there. It connects to another room. I'll be waiting for you."
    Archer went to a closet and pulled out a blue-and-green tartan bathrobe of the kind worn mainly by adolescents in Pasadena.
    "It's so me," said the Kid.
    "Don't... joke. Please? Don't say anything at all. Take your time in the water, get all nice and clean, and come visit me in your robe. Make sure you wash your hair, too—and don't dry it. I like to see a young boy all fresh and sloppy at night, getting ready for bed."
    Fifty gleeful spoofs occurred in the Kid's head, but he kept his face straight and simply nodded.
    "Good," Derek Archer said, and he stood there, smiling again and gazing contentedly at the Kid for a bit. "I'll see you soon," he added, leaving through the connecting door.
    Huh, thought the Kid, with a double Huh for the bathroom, a boutique's worth of unnecessary accoutrements from "bath champagne" to "facial gel." Is this what keeps a young boy fresh and sloppy?, the Kid thought, stepping out of his clothes and exploring. Soap stamped out in cunning animal shapes? Cologne in bottles so elaborate they look like Sinbad's hookah? Nobody uses this stuff, so why is somebody manufacturing it?, he wondered. How would anybody even know where to buy it?
    Soaping up in the spray, the Kid started to put it together. Apparently, Derek Archer, America's up-and-coming romantic hero, has a thing for the teenage boy-next-door type. And he likes the picture of a raw kid blundering around in a faggy bathroom; it tells him how unspoiled I am. Yeah. Well, maybe I'm not too far off the type, he thought, getting a load of Kid in the biggest mirror he had ever seen in a private home, running along three sides of the room. Boy next door. Well, I look the part; I just don't want the insides. Can't use them.
    Dry and robed, the Kid took a last look, mussed