Today's Blind Items - Thirteen, Part 2 - A Dancing Boy Story

About a week after the meeting with my agent, I came home from school to find my mother in the kitchen, baking cookies as she often did.

I want you to know that your agent called me while you were at school.

He did?

He told me about the movie (which I hadn’t mentioned yet to them - you probably wouldn’t have either with everything else that had been going on). I know you don’t always think I’ve been supportive of the acting, but I want you to know that your father and I are both very proud of you. He’s going to be very excited when he gets home.

Thanks, I said.

I understand that you’re going to be meeting with one of the men behind it on Saturday.

I was silent.

I just want you to know that I’m giving you permission to stay out as late as you need to that night. 

Thanks, I mumbled.

Your agent said they’d be sending a car to pick you up and take you home. Your father and I will probably be in bed by the time you get back, but you can tell us about it in the morning. Just remember to turn the outside lights off when you get back, and make sure the cats are inside.

I will, I said.

It wasn’t a car, of course - it was a limousine, well stocked with booze. I filled my backpack with the little airplane bottles of vodka, whiskey, and gin - many of them were flavored (ie to tempt the kids) - and polished one or two off on the way to Beverly Hills. I listened to a couple of tapes - part of Thriller, and part of 1984 - but I wasn’t really paying attention. I was, you understand, completely terrified. 

When the driver stopped for gas in the valley, I thought of getting out and running. But where was I going to go? And what would I tell my parents?

At one point the driver lowered the inside window and told me I was the fourth boy he had driven to this address in the last month. (One of them, he said, was this then young actor you will definitely know. He may be a part of the dancing boy cast, and it is likely I will identify him at some point - but only with his permission.) Do these people have a son or something?

I don’t know, I said. 

I’m sorry to tell you this, he said, but when I dropped one of the boys off and was cleaning out the car, the seat was wet. I thought he’d maybe spilled a coke or something, but it wasn’t that - it was blood.

I said nothing.

I’m going to give you the number for the car phone, okay? If there’s anything you need - if you need to go home early - just call me from inside the house, and I’ll come to the door.

Thank you, I said.

The driver was right though - there was a son, and a daughter, as well as a wife, and servants, and I know that because all of them were there at the time. They wouldn’t see any of it, but that wasn't the only way to know what was happening.

The agency had given me written instructions for the night. I was to go around the side of the house and enter through the servant’s entrance - apparently now I was “the help.” I was to wait on the bench there until I was summoned. I only realized after getting buzzed in that the door locked back…from the outside.

When I got inside there was another boy my age - not on the bench, you understand, but pacing. I’d seen him around the agency before, but I didn’t know him. I can tell you one thing he was in - a certain weekend morning show, not animated, for kids. It was a "company" show.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this, he said.

I nodded, looking down at the floor.

What do you think they’re going to do to us? he said.

I shook my head, and handed him the driver’s number.

Keep it for yourself, he said.

Thanks, I said.

And that’s when he threw up in the potted palm in the hall. A short time later the butler came - at least I think he was that (I’d only ever seen them on tv) - and told this boy it was his turn. As he was led away he looked back at me, already crying.

And maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later the screaming started, so loud and full of terror there was no way anyone in that house could not hear it. 

(To be continued.)