West of Paradise by Gwen Davis

suicide. Old lovers never mentioned, strangely out of his life. The dancer he’d lived with for years. What had become of him? What was his name? Paulo. Paulo something-exotic.
    She went to the phone and called her researcher in New York and told him to get on it.
    *   *   *
    The young man at the wheel of the Volvo that had passed by Sarah’s house was breathtakingly beautiful even in profile, sitting down. That was how he’d first been seen when Norman Jessup found him, meditating on the beach in front of Jessup’s Malibu home. He’d had his eyes closed and his large, graceful hands placed on his kneecaps, exposed through the fabric of his deliberately worn-out jeans. He’d looked very much like a golden-lashed angel, maybe one carved out by Michelangelo, complete with radiant curls that circled his head like a white-yellow halo. When Jessup greeted him and he’d stood up to his full height, it was no longer one of the artist’s cherubs he resembled, but his statue of David. He was six foot three, an inch taller than Jessup himself, with a chest that seemed about to burst his shirt. Norman wished it would.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” the young man said. “I didn’t realize this was private property. I didn’t mean to trespass.”
    â€œI forgive you your trespasses,” Norman said. “What’s your name?”
    â€œTyler Hayden.”
    â€œNorman Jessup,” he said, extending his hand, waiting for the name to register on the kid. It seemed not to. He felt mildly annoyed. “You’re an actor, of course.”
    â€œNo,” Tyler said.
    â€œWhat do you do?”
    â€œStill trying to work that out,” Tyler said.
    â€œWould you like to come up to the house for a little lunch? I’ve invited some interesting people.”
    The interesting people were all men. They had seen the boy on the beach and sent Norman down to corral him. All of them thought they knew all the beauties in town, even from behind, or especially from behind, but none had seen this particular broad, tanned, muscular back before. Their numbers included Bunyan Reis, by his own appraisal the most interesting painter-writer since William Blake, but a better conversationalist. Gil Besoin was also in attendance. The producer of television comedies, he was considered funnier than anything he’d managed to get on the air. There was a gay black actor from New York, Hoover Coolidge Gray, long past his prime. But Norman liked to show he did not practice ageism any more than racism. There were also a few young numbers who didn’t have much to say, but that wasn’t why they were there. And into their midst came Tyler Hayden.
    â€œMy God,” Bunyan exclaimed, when he saw him. “Aphrodite rising from the sea. Penis on the half shell.”
    â€œI don’t think I can stay,” Tyler said.
    â€œControl yourself, Bunyan,” said Norman. “I apologize for Mr. Reis.”
    â€œApologize for yourself,” Bunyan said. “It was not I who was publicly disgraced, and in Santa Monica. They might at least have held the trial in Santa Barbara, where we could have gone horseback riding afterwards.”
    â€œAre you the writer Bunyan Reis?” Tyler said.
    â€œAnd the painter,” said Bunyan.
    â€œI’ve read everything you’ve written.”
    â€œWell then, you’re one up on me,” said Bunyan. “I just write it and let other people read it. Have to save the eyes, you know.” He had thinning white-silver hair, the same color as the beard he had recently grown in the event of a transplant, and silver eyes he coordinated with all his clothes. “I would like to paint you.” He narrowed his eyelids. “In oils.”
    â€œI thought you had given up painting,” Norman said.
    â€œI didn’t mean on canvas,” said Bunyan.
    â€œYou’ve got a lot of yellow,” Tyler told him.