Page 12 of His Cruelest Moves

seven

As the taxi approached Barcelona, Alex started giving the driver directions to his apartment in Sagrada Família.

“Why not stay with me?” Isard said. “I live alone and we’ll be closer to the shoot tomorrow. The driver will only have to make one pick-up.”

The next day’s filming was at a masia, or Catalan farmhouse, in the middle of Collserola, the range of hills that ringed Barcelona. Because there was no accessible public transport, the production company had arranged to ferry the cast there by car.

“Makes more sense both to me and to you guys,” the driver said. “You get to sleep in thirty minutes longer.”

Alex and Isard exchanged a look.

“I’ll make you up a separate bed,” Isard promised.

Alex raised an eyebrow, but what was he hoping for? So much for keeping their hands off each other. Since they’d got back in the taxi after their coffee—and after their kiss—the atmosphere had changed. They’d sat in the back, not talking, but touching, yeah. It was like a drowsy sort of somnolence came over them both. Neither of them wanted to get back onto the topics they’d broached in the café—too risky. So the compromise had been silence… and touching. Not sexual, just constant. As if some part of their flesh needed to be in sustained contact with the other’s at all times. Alex, seated to Isard’s left, his broad bicep resting across Isard’s torso, their right hands clasped, fingers interlocked. Isard started merely by rubbing his left leg sensually up against Alex’s right, but soon he’d slipped his foot from his sneaker and slid his socked foot up Alex’s shin and over his thigh, until his leg was resting on top, his foot curled behind Alex’s muscular calf. And as they succumbed to sleep on the long drive, their heads rested against each other, one in the hollow of the other’s neck, by turns. Entwined like that, they’d dozed in heavenly slumber for the rest of the journey down to Barcelona. Until, as the freeway traversed the Eastern Vallés valley, the driver had called back:

“Hey lovebirds, where’s the first drop-off? I need to choose a route.”

That was when Alex had come awake and started shooting off rapid-fire directions to his home in Sagrada Família and Isard had made his counter-invitation.

“OK, I’ll come,” Alex said.

Isard gave directions to an address in Pedralbes.

“But tell me, for a not-famous film star, how do you afford an address in Pedralbes?”

“It was a granny flat under my parents’ house—literally it was my iaia’s until she died. When Granny died, I claimed it. Since my sister’s away studying in the States, she had no say.”

How the other half lives, Alex thought.

“So what, like you pay rent to your parents?” Then he immediately regretted saying it. Who cared?

“They don’t need it. I do other things for them.”

“Sorry, none of my business.”

“Let’s just get home and sleep. I’m dead tired.”

They sat in silence as the car snaked through the snarl of freeway approaches before channeling them into the Ronda de Dalt, and then onto the quiet leafy streets of Pedralbes. The house at which the car eventually stopped was enclosed by a high masonry wall. As the driver pulled Isard’s suitcase and Alex’s backpack from the trunk, Alex surveyed what he could see over the top of the wall, what looked like an upper story in a modern A-frame style with large plate-glass windows facing toward the sea.

“OK, boys, pick you up here at seven a.m. sharp?” the driver asked.

They nodded and thanked him. As he got into his Barcelona taxi and drove off, Isard keyed a combination into the small postern gate beside the car entrance. It clicked open and he dragged his suitcase inside as an outside light clicked on. Alex followed. The wall enclosed a huge house surrounded by a few sparse yards of well-ordered garden. It was built in a modern, vaguely alpine style: three interconnecting volumes built of masonry walls and A-frame roofs supported on large timber beams. Large windows on every level would ensure copious light entered during the day. Now, approaching midnight, just a single bulb was burning in what looked like the central stairwell.

“My parents will be asleep, so we’ll go straight to mine.”

Alex said nothing as Isard led him around the left side of the house to a separate entrance. After a long minute while he searched through all his pockets, including turning out the contents of his man bag—Alex began to worry he’d have to go rummaging through his entire suitcase—Isard managed to find his keys, and let them into the basement flat.

Inside, they were in a spacious living room, with a kitchen off to the right, and large glass sliding doors giving onto the back garden to the left. In the center of the space, a white sofa in a sixties block style faced a large flat-screen TV on one wall, while original, mainly abstract art decorated the others. A bright orange rug covered the terracotta tile floor. To the left of the entrance, a staircase led up to the upper part of the house. Isard left his suitcase beside the sofa and turned to Alex.

“So, we really need to sleep if we’re going to be any good tomorrow,” he said.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed.

But they were already moving toward each other. Lips and bodies collided, and then they were kissing more passionately and more freely than they had in the freeway restroom, tongues and arms striving to explore every unknown part of the other, each inhaling the other’s presence in a bid to know everything, discover every facet of the other. Alex grabbed Isard and, enclosing him in his arms, hugged him tightly to him with a force that threatened to squeeze the breath from his more delicate partner. But Isard exhilarated in the feeling of being held tightly in Alex’s strong embrace.

Isard kissed from Alex’s lips to the smooth skin of his jaw, exploring down toward his throat with lips and tongue, exhilarating in the salty tang of his sweat. Pulling back, he dropped his hands to Alex’s waist, and tugged at his top. Alex raised his arms over his head as Isard pulled the top up and off over his head, throwing it to the floor. But when Alex went to lower his arms to Isard’s shoulders, Isard grabbed his right wrist, keeping his arm raised and sinking his face into the straight wiry hairs of Alex’s armpit. He inhaled deeply, and said:

“Thank God you’re not wearing any deodorant.”