Mason leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. Body language experts tell us that’s a clear sign of a person guarding himself against giving anything away. A defensive attitude I was determined to break through.
“Ask away,” Mason said. “I’m an open book.”
His posture said the opposite.
21
“I’m worried someone might have hurt Brent,” I said. “Or kidnapped him. An obsessive fan or something. Do you have a problem with that kind of thing? Do your models ever get threatened? Or stalked?”
“These boys tend to thrive on attention, not be scared of it.” Mason hugged himself tighter.
“Really? That’s hard to believe. There are a lot of sickos out there. What about, I don’t know, some religious nut who thinks your models are leading the world into sin?”
“Oh, we get letters from time to time. As a company. Nothing serious, though. A few quotes from the Bible, threats of eternal damnation. But nothing that concerns me.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Mason waved his hands. “Look around. Do you see any guards? Security cameras? Panic buttons? Trust me, I have no desire to be martyred for my work. If I thought we were under serious threat, I’d take whatever precautions I deemed necessary. No, the few people who bother to complain seem harmless enough.”
“And the models? Have they never felt threatened?”
Mason rubbed his hand over his mouth and left it there. Another body tell-this one indicating a lie. “Not that I remember,” he said.
I realized he evaded the question the first time I asked it, too.
“Think back,” I said. “I promise I won’t say anything. I understand if word gets out that someone is stalking your models, it isn’t going to help your casting calls. But if there’s a possibility that Brent was stalked by one of his fans…”
Mason laughed. Uncrossed his arms and sat relaxed in his chair. “Fans? Believe me, Brent’s fans were too busy watching his films to be bothered with stalking. Besides,” he said, with a nasty little laugh, “there’s only so much harm you can do with one hand. The only person who ever stalked Brent-”
“Ahem,” Pierce interrupted. Just like that. As if it were two words. “A hem.”
“Thank you,” Mason said to him. “You’re right. I am giving our young Mr. Connor a lot of information for his one question.”
Mason ran his eyes over my body. “Time to hold up your end of the deal, sunshine. Think you could lose that shirt for me?”
“I think,” I said icily, sickened by how cavalierly Mason took all this, “if you cared about Brent at all, you wouldn’t be playing this game with me.”
“Well,” Mason sighed, “we’re all entitled to our opinions. But I’m afraid you’re just too appealing to allow off this set without showing some skin. Take it as a compliment. Besides, it’s just your shirt, Kevin. You show more than that at the beach. Don’t be such a little prude.”
“Brent’s life could depend on this,” I said, regretting how melodramatic my words sounded even as they left my mouth.
“All the more reason why I can’t understand your reluctance to show a little skin. It’s just your chest, for god’s sake. Are you saying Brent’s life isn’t worth the shirt off your back?”
What a son of a bitch this guy was.
“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth.
“And get back into that character you were doing. That was marvelous.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
I’d arrived at SwordFight dressed to play the kind of young man who’d find himself auditioning for a porn studio. A plain white Hanes T-shirt, faded Levi’s, athletic socks, and white Keds. An anonymous outfit that could have come from anywhere. Nothing top-label or flashy. The jeans and sneakers were distressed in a way that suggested I might be a bit down on my luck.
But it was the custom accessories I wore underneath that I was counting on to get me out of this mess.
“What,” Mason asked, looking horrified but trying not to sound too appalled, “is that?”
He pointed to my chest, where a long, red, ugly, and jagged scar ran from just above my left nipple to an inch above my naval.
“Oh, this?” I asked surprised, as if it was something I was so used to that I’d forgotten about it. “It’s a scar.”
“Yes,” Mason snapped, “I can see it’s a scar. What is it doing there?”
I had to suppress a laugh at Mason’s indignation. He’d been expecting smooth perfection. The resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster did not amuse him.
“Last year, I started getting dizzy spells,” I told him. “Lightheadedness, shortness of breath. I thought it was nothing. That I wasn’t getting enough sleep or something.
“Then one day at the gym, I just passed out. They took me to the hospital. Turns out I had a congenital heart condition no one had ever noticed. I needed a valve replaced. I was in surgery for eight hours.
“This,” I said, pointing to the disfiguring gash that bisected my torso, “is my souvenir. Hey, better than being dead, right?”
From the expression on Mason’s face, it wasn’t clear he agreed.
The whole story was made up. As was the scar.
After I’d hung up on Pierce earlier today, I knew I was in trouble. There was no way I was going to get to talk to Mason without appearing in an audition video. While I had no intention of actually jacking off on camera for him, I was going to have to show something. At the same time, I had to make sure what I showed was something he wouldn’t be able to use.
Then I remembered my mother’s crackpot proposal to use our makeup staff to age me for our visit to the adoption clinic. While the purpose of her idea was wacky, pulling it off wouldn’t be impossible. In fact, I had just the man for the job.
As one of the first senior staff hired for Sophie’s Voice, I did a lot of the initial interviewing of prospective employees. One of my earliest hires was Steven Austen.
A show like ours, with multiple guests on every episode, needs a few people on hand doing makeup and hair. Steven’s background for the position wasn’t typical. Yeah, he had the basics down and had gone to cosmetology school. He was one of the few straight guys I knew who’d done so.
But for the past few years he’d been employed in the film industry, doing mostly special effects work. A lot of his experience was on horror movies. I thought that sounded about right for working with my mother.
Steven had been successful in Hollywood, but the work was sporadic. He had developed a reputation for his work on slasher films. He created wounds and mutilations so convincing that his participation on a project pretty much guaranteed an R rating.
When Steven’s wife had their second baby, she convinced him he needed more steady employment. Movie work paid well, but he often went months between jobs. He was grateful when I hired him, and I knew he liked working on our show, but he also missed using his more specialized skills.
I didn’t need Steven to age me. Mason and I had already met-if I showed up looking twenty years older, he’d know right away I was up to something.
But I could use Steven to ugly me up a little. Or, maybe even a lot.
I called him into my office and told him what I needed. I didn’t give him all the details. I fibbed, telling him I was playing a trick on my boyfriend. Would he help me?
Steven was thrilled with the opportunity to whip out his prosthetics and liquid latex. “If you want to look
