It’s never fun to sit alone with your thoughts for hours, if those thoughts are unhappy ones. That said, sitting alone with them in the comfort of an airplane’s first class cabin is a hell of a lot better than pondering them in coach.

Colin tried to focus on the script in front of him. He needed to get into the character of Martin Crampton, a shark of a lawyer who represented the Bad Guy in the latest Jeff Breeze legal/action thriller. He needed to take the brief character description given when Martin comes on screen (30s, feral, brilliant, the scope of his ill-gotten gains evident in his suit, watch and haircut) and transform that into an actual person. He needed to give this guy something behind the aggression besides a Snidely Whiplash type of villainy.

But he couldn’t keep his focus, at least not for long. His mind kept hounding him, nagging him, reminding him how badly he’d embarrassed himself the other day. He never should have asked Hamilton about his personal history…

No, scratch that. He never should have invited Hamilton back to his…

No, he never should have taken Hamilton up on the invitation to meet in the park. He should have…

I should have kept him inside my perfect little fantasy world, he thought with a bitterness and self-loathing that shocked him. And never tried to see the Man Behind the Curtain.

He had asked for too much, he saw now. He and Hamilton had a “gentleman’s agreement,” the sort of thing one didn’t need to spell out. Hamilton wasn’t his friend, certainly not his lover. He was a service provider. The service he was providing was to get Colin deflowered (done), and then to become sexually experienced (working on it) so that he could go out in the world like a fucking normal person and get a boyfriend (hah).

The offer of the movie part had come the day after the awkward encounter in his apartment. Clarice had called him a lather of excitement.

“Get your bags packed, you’re going to LA,” she said, with her usual flair for the dramatic.

“Oh, am I?”

“Remember that audition with Elaine Taylor? For the radio show host?”

“Yeah.”

“She remembers you, too. Listen, she’s casting director on Hung Jury, and they just lost one of their actors to meningitis. And his role starts filming in two days. Are you up for it?”

“Hell yeah,” Colin said, exhilarated.

His ready acceptance of the challenge wasn’t because “New Colin,” the more self-confident guy, was suddenly ready to work in a big movie with Jeff Breeze. If he did well, it would be a credit that would officially take him to a new level in his career, especially stepping into it with no prep time. Of course, if he fucked it up, so long Hollywood and hello again voiceover-only acting.

Even New Colin was more than a bit freaked out at that level of pressure. But Colin’s first reaction wasn’t even about the movie, or his career, or the risk. No, he had one overwhelmingly relieving thought.

This is the perfect opportunity to cancel my date with Hamilton this week!

He needed more time, to get over the awful awkward scene he kept reliving, and he knew he needed to redraw his own internal boundaries with Hamilton before the two of them talked about it.

He called the agency, and explained the situation to Sunita. Sort of – he just said he was “called away” and couldn’t make it. He didn’t want to tell her, and thus Hamilton, about his acting coup.

Maybe because you don’t believe it yourself, he thought. You’ll get there and it will all be a horrible mistake and you’ll be totally embarrassed that you told everyone you were going to be a movie star…

“No problem at all, Mr. O’Neill,” she said smoothly. “Are we still on for the following week?”

Colin paused. “Um, yeah. But. I know this is not the way it’s done, but I…”

“We’ll do anything we can to accommodate you, Mr. O’Neill.”

“Then would you call me Colin, please? I feel old when you call me mister.”

She laughed gently. “Of course, Colin.”

“Thanks.” He took a breath. “It was kind of an odd encounter between us last week. I overstepped the boundaries a bit and… I guess I need to overstep them again now, to un- overstep what I did last time.”

“You feel the need to talk to Hamilton about that, but you don’t want to wait until you meet in person again?”

“Yeah,” he said, relieved. “I just want… I just want next time to be normal, and only getting this out of the way now can do that.”

“Of course. Don’t worry about it. This sort of thing happens often, you know. It’s like…” He could hear her hesitate, weighing her words. “It’s like any other therapeutic relationship. You can get attached to the therapist, transferring feelings you couldn’t have for a father, or a brother, or a lover. You make a connection with someone who really gets you, and you want it to be… more.”

“Yeah… Yeah.” He felt less like a fool now. A bit.

“So it’s not something you need to discuss with Hamilton. I can tell you that there’s no discomfort on his end, and that he’s looking forward to seeing you again.”

“Oh.” It had never occurred to him that Hamilton would discuss his clients with Sunita. Duh, right? He chided himself. Of course he would.

“Great, thank you.”

“No problem. We’ll see you next week.”

* * *

So that took care of that, he thought, pushing the button to stretch out in his comfy seat. But “that” which was taken care of was only the conversation he didn’t have to have about last time. It didn’t change the fact that he had… feelings for Hamilton.

Was Sunita right? Was it just “transference,” was he just mistakenly falling in love with his therapist? Would he get over it with the proper attitude?

But what was the point of “getting over it”? Wasn’t the point that Hamilton was everything he wanted, that being with him was so fantastic because of the intensity of his attraction?

A as an artist, he knew that the only way to deal with some shit is to just not think about it for a while: to delegate it to your subconscious while your conscious mind was fully occupied with something else. The conscious mind chases its tail sometimes, just kicking up dust as it runs around in circles, never solving anything.

He took the consolation of another warm cookie from the stewardess, and wiped the gooey chocolate off his hands with a warm washcloth. This is a nice life, he thought. Flying first class, where at least you can think. God, in coach you’d just be trying to block out all the screaming children, or the idiots cackling at the Adam Sandler in-flight movie.

Colin was a lucky man, he reminded himself. Oh, boo hoo, you can afford to pay thousands of dollars to learn how to have gay sex. You can afford a “therapist” who bills like a Wall Street lawyer. You can receive a coach class ticket from the studio and say, Fuck that bitches I’m upgrading my own damn self.

He smiled and returned to his script. He silently mouthed Martin Crampton’s dialogue as he read.

“You’re going to have an uphill battle against me, Tyler Stryker. I’ve got skills in my legal arsenal you’ll never see coming.”

“What I do may be wrong, Senator, but it works. That’s why you hired me.”

“Tyler, Tyler, you’re so earnest. You think it makes the jury like you, but it does just the opposite. That clenched jaw of yours, it just makes you look like you have a chip on your shoulder. Like you’re still proving something to Daddy. Are you, Tyler? Is Daddy still standing behind you, judging you?”

He was on the second page when he froze, as if hit by a bolt of lightning. The tingles went from the top of his head down his body, all the hairs on his skin as alert as prairie dogs to a sharp sound.

Without realizing it, as he spoke the lines in his head, he’d adopted the persona of Hamilton Dillon.

Of course. Martin Crampton was the bad guy, but he didn’t have to look like the bad guy. In fact, if he looked like the good guy, that made him even more powerful. He didn’t have to sneer and snarl. He could put on that… Boulder Dam-level megawatt charm, and all would fall before him.

Suddenly the character was real. A person and not a caricature. Flesh and blood, and all the scarier because Colin would make the audience like him. An actor’s greatest accomplishment is to pull a Hannibal Lecter, a Walter White – to make you root, at least part of you, for the villain.

All the time that his hungry emotional brain had been worshipping Hamilton, all the time his hungry body had been offering all of itself to Hamilton, his cool, cruel actor’s brain had studied him, had been fabricating a copy of him.

And here it was. He went to the bathroom, to read the lines in the mirror. He’d need to make adjustments, he’d need to practice late into the evening (not too late, Makeup would kill him if he showed up with eye bags), but he could do it. He could channel Hamilton.

He looked at himself in the mirror, stunned at his own dazzling smile, his own cocked eyebrow, the glint of intelligence and mischief in his own eyes.

“Hamilton fuckin’ Dillon. You magnificent bastard.”

* * *

“Jeff is furious,” Marlene the makeup lady whispered in his ear on his second day.

“Really?” It was never good news for the vibe on a set when the movie star was furious.

“Yeah. At you.”

“Me! Why?”

She rolled her eyes. “Because you’re stealing his scenes. You’re making his character look like a petulant child.”

That’s because Jeff is a petulant child, he wanted to blurt. But you never knew, especially on a Jeff Breeze set, who among the rest of the crew was a fellow member of the Church of Automatology and would rat you out in a second.

“Colin,” he heard Cleo Lane say behind him. “Do you have a moment?”

Of course he did, since she was the director. Marlene made herself scarce without being asked, and Cleo took a seat in the makeup chair next to Colin’s.

“I’m really sorry if I’ve upset Jeff…” he began.

She raised a hand. “Jeff will live. He’s making $20 million up front on this movie, with points, and it could be a total piece of shit and it’ll still rake in plenty in China.”

She handed him new pages. “We’re beefing your role up a bit. Sorry for the short notice, but the studio head is on some fucking cleansing retreat in the Himalayas, no cell service, and I want to shoot these pages before Jeff can get him on the phone and raise hell.”

Colin flipped through the pages. None of them, wisely on Cleo’s part, were with Jeff, but they included a scene with Martin and the real villain, his client. And it was great stuff.

“Wow. Thanks.”

“We just love what you’re doing with the character. Especially coming into it so fast.”

“I… I know charmers like Martin. They’re not as bad as he is, but…”

She smiled. “It’s Hollywood, hon. We all know the type. But you… You really fleshed him out.”

Cleo got up. “Marlene, you can come out of hiding now.” She winked at Colin and left.

Blushing, Marlene waited until Cleo was gone to come out of hiding.

“Holy crap, dude. Congratulations.”

Colin smiled, stunned. This was a breakthrough role for him now. If he did as well as he’d been doing, Hollywood would be his oyster.