Page 7 of Jack of All Trades

“Gay for pay, my brother. Gay for pay.”

After Jack deposited the number and address into Garvey’s phone, Garvey went into the bathroom, and Jack was left to shake his head, laughing. So much for thinking he could get a legit job somewhere.

If Garvey couldn’t live on what it paid, he wouldn’t be able to, either.

He met Joshua Kerns at the cheapest hotel in town, the L’Hotel Valeur. It was a scuzzy place, and Joshua could afford much better, but when he fucked, he liked it cheap in every way. Including the surroundings.

The place creeped Jack out something fierce, though. There were over-the-top frightening clown paintings all over the walls. The entire time he was at the L’Hotel Valeur, he kept his eyes on the stained and out-of-date carpeting.

Joshua texted him the room number, not that he needed to. It was always room twelve. Always that dirty room with the dresser positioned perfectly to reflect the bed and what was happening there.

The way Jack got through it was to see it in the most positive of lights. It was sex, after all. He didn’t hate sex, not by any stretch. In fact, he’d been thinking about sex a lot more the last couple days. The surprise was that he was almost looking forward to being with Joshua. That was a first.

In the hall, he knocked on the door to room twelve and waited. He heard the footsteps approach, and the door was flung open. Joshua stood grinning from ear to ear. “There he is.”

He said that every time, like he was speaking to someone. Putting on his best smile, Jack stepped into the room, avoiding the clown pictures like the plague. “Joshua, how are you?”

“Better now. I’m telling you, those producers on the show are making me insane.”

It always started the same. Joshua brought him into the room, told him about his week, like he’d kept every minute pent up until he spoke to Jack. The thing was, Jack found it strange. Joshua had a wife and three kids. Jack often wondered if he ever told his wife about his day, or his grown kids.

Joshua had a full head of white hair, puffy white hair that sat three inches above his heavily lined forehead. He wasn’t horrible to look at, perhaps, but Jack still felt it was wrong each time they were together. Not just wrong, as in Joshua was married, and it was a financial exchange. Jack felt, with all his clients, that he was meant for something else. That he was meant for someone else.

Talking himself out of those thoughts was easy on the surface. Down deep, however, was this gnawing need to find that person who was his, all his, and that he belonged to.

“The scripts alone need work, but the producers are always on the side of the writers unless the writers want more pay, you know. It’s all a terrible circle.”

For once, something Joshua said intrigued Jack and he asked, “The writers…do you know all of them?”

“Huh? Oh, sure, most, anyway. It’s important for big directors to know the best writers.”

He had already started to undress, and he was down to his baggie boxers, black socks, and those funny suspenders that kept his socks in place. His leather shoes were placed neatly underhis side of the bed, pants folded along the crease and placed perfectly over the back of the desk chair. For liking things dirty, he couldn’t go so far as to let his expensive clothing touch the floor for longer than it took to get them off.

Jack broached, “Do you know…I mean, he said he writes scripts, but…Maltin Graves?”

Hearing the name made Joshua lose his smile. “Graves? You know him?”

“I’m working for him,” he said, then realized Joshua didn’t think Jack did anything besides hooking. “Fixing his roof, I mean.”

“Right,” he sighed in relief. “Forgot you do…labor too.”

“Well, do you know him?”

A quick jerk of his head that Jack took for a nod came before he went to the bed and sat on it. “Strange duck, that one. He only works at home and insists on bringing the scripts in himself, but he won’t stay for changes in the script if we need to change something. We’re forever having to call him. Some days, I’d like to turn him into a lamppost and break the lightbulb.”

Jack laughed at that. “You’re not alone.”

He joined Joshua on the bed, glad he’d left his pants on because the bedspread was always sticky and disgusting. “He’s old, that one. Older than most witches get. I’ve heard rumors he’s something like…oh, over two hundred years old.”

Jack gaped at him. “Two hundred? Are you sure?”

“Oh, rumors fly in this city, you know. He doesn’t look to be over, I don’t know, thirty-five, but he has been around a lot longer than that. He wrote the script for a movie that debuted in the nineties. That would have made him a small child.”

Leaning over and resting his elbows on his thighs, Jack let that sink in for a moment. “Two hundred.”

“And, well, he’s a recluse, mostly. That makes sense from his age being, well, elevated like that. I’ve heard it myself, him calling himself a half-breed.”

“Half-breed? Like what?”

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