7: Business Sense

My cell phone rang, but I didn’t recognize the number. “Adam Beller, Beller Beach,” I said. I’d chosen Beller Beach as the name for my business -- but I might have to rethink that, if I was going national.

“Mi amor. I’m thinking of you.” A voice purred, low and sensual. It sent shivers through my body, right to my groin.

I turned to Jean-Jacques and pointed wildly at the phone. He grabbed my arm and listened in. “Hey there, handsome,” I said.

“You sleep all right?” he asked.

“Mmm. I always do, after great sex.”

“I’ve been yawning all day,” he said. “If we keep seeing each other, I’m going to have to start taking vitamins.”

“Gee, I didn’t realize you were a senior citizen. I can fuck like that and then be ready for more the next day.”

Jean-Jacques squeezed my arm.

“I want to test that theory,” Javier said. “Dinner tonight?”

I almost agreed without thinking, but fortunately I caught myself. I couldn’t see him again so quickly. I needed a couple of days away from him to forget how amazing the sex was. “Can’t do it. I just got a big new contract, so Jean-Jacques and I have a lot of work to do. I have swim club practice at seven, and I’m running the Big Boys Blowout at Jaguarz Bar and Grill tonight.”

Javier was silent. Had I blown it with him? Maybe that was for the best. A guy who couldn’t keep up with my frenetic life wasn’t the guy for me. “Friday night, then?” he asked, after a moment. Some of the bravado had faded from his voice, and I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t interested.

“I can pencil you in. Although maybe in your case I should consider a magic marker.”

I heard a jackhammer going off on Javier’s end, as Jean-Jacques raised his eyebrows.

“It’s a date. Gotta get back to work.”

“Abrazos y besos,” I said. I’d learned that much Spanish over my time in Miami, having given hugs and kisses to an awful lot of Latinos.

“You could have skipped the swim club,” Jean-Jacques said. “It’s not like you need the exercise.”

My metabolism was a source of great envy to Jean-Jacques. He couldn’t believe it when I joined the Miami Beach Swim Club, because I could eat anything without ever gaining a pound. And it was true, I did have good genetic material, but I also enjoyed swimming, and even more, I loved hanging out in the locker room with buff naked guys.

“Got to keep him guessing,” I said. “Come on, we’ve got more work to do.”

Beller Beach didn’t have an office; we used the living room of my apartment on Meridian Avenue, overlooking Flamingo Park. I had a couple of laptop computers, a 4G internet connection, a land line connected to a fax, and two file cabinets with copies of every contract I’d ever signed.

We walked in, cranked up the air conditioning, and turned on the laptops. Jean-Jacques sprawled on the couch while I sat at the desk and pulled up my most recent contract with Vladi Vodka. I began drafting the scope of work -- exactly what Beller Beach would do, how we’d get paid, and so on.

My lawyer father impressed on me the need for good business sense. My older brother, Richard, works with him, and reviews every contract for me. Richard didn’t approve of my business with Vlad; he worried about Vlad’s possible connection the Russian mafia. And he had no idea that there were unwritten parts to my contracts with Vlad -- parts that included dicks and mouths and asses. My straight brother is very gay-friendly; when he comes to town he often hangs out with me at parties, and all my gay friends salivate over him. But we’ve never talked about what I do in bed, and I think that’s for the best.

Around five o’clock, Jean-Jacques and I started sampling the martinis Vlad had given me. They weren’t bad at all, and we were laughing a lot more than we should have been. I pulled up a calendar, and we laid out a basic schedule. “I think we need a day between LA and San Francisco to recover,” I said.

“Say we do a Friday night in San Fran, and then a tea dance Sunday afternoon in LA,” he said. “But we have to do Florida first, so we work out any problems on our home turf.”

We laid out the same schedule for New York and Fire Island, and then Boston and Provincetown, and a Saturday night in Chicago. Most of our regular business was in midweek events at clubs on Miami Beach; the bars were usually crowded enough on the weekends without us bringing in traffic. But for the martini launches, we thought we needed the weekend crowds to build word of mouth.

With the schedules done, I went back to the nuts and bolts of the contract. When I got to the performance clauses, I couldn’t help thinking about Javier Marisco. “You think maybe I was too short with him on the phone?” I asked.

Jean-Jacques looked up. “With Mr. Sexy Pants, you mean?”

“Yeah. I don’t want him to think I’m not interested. I don’t want to fall in love with him, but I wouldn’t mind more horizontal mambo.”

“Send him a picture. You’ve certainly got enough of them.”

I loved posing for photos. I was a cute kid, and my parents filled whole albums with me striking poses. One summer during college, I answered an open casting call for a catalog modeling job, on a dare from a boyfriend, and I got the gig, a swimwear shoot on a chilly beach in Rhode Island.

I was never a big model, because I couldn’t stand all the downtime, standing around at shoots waiting for the light, or makeup, or God knows what. I got a reputation as a pain in the ass, and the other models thought I was a brainiac because I didn’t give up college for modeling, which didn’t help either.

But despite the failure of my professional career, I had a big dick, a sweet ass, six-pack abs, and a killer smile, and I wanted to share it all with the world. Leslie had introduced me to Ricky Sullivan a few years before, a fine art photographer who specialized in artistic nudes. Since then, I’d become one of his favorite subjects, and I’d been featured in his last gallery exhibit.

Jean-Jacques and I were both tiddly by then, and the idea of sending Javier a naked picture of me made perfect sense to both of us. He came over to my laptop, and we picked out a couple of pictures to e-mail Javier. Before I could think better of it, I clicked Send and then started looking over Jean-Jacques’s list of gay clubs in our target cities. “Bearracuda,” he said, starting to giggle.

“Drunk and Horny,” I said. “Pecs. The Bunkhouse.” We made dirty jokes and lewd hand movements, and had ourselves a high old time. I tore myself away to go back to the contract, though, and by six o’clock I had a draft I could e-mail to my big brother.

Well, I call him that, because he’s older. But I’m actually bigger. About an inch taller and an inch longer, as a matter of fact. I know for certain because we had a drunken session a couple of years ago when we challenged each other to a measure-off.

I hit Send and forwarded my draft contract to Richard, and all I wanted to do was lounge around on the couch and make more jokes with Jean-Jacques. It had already been a hell of a day, from waking up in Javier’s bed to getting the monster of all contracts from Vlad.

It was tough to tear myself away for swim club practice, but a good cold dunking was just what I needed to cool my jets over Javier Marisco.