"And in breaking news, we've just been told that Peter Dragon, well-known producer, is dead. Details are sketchy, but --" The blonde newsreader pressed a fingertip to her ear and looked off into the distance. "A heart attack, Joel? I see." She smiled steadily out of the screen. "A heart attack on the set of his latest movie, 'Beverly Hills Gun Club'. Dragon will be remembered as the man who brought the viewing public 'Slow Torture' a movie some say should rank with 'Titanic' as the biggest disaster --"

Cole muted the TV and tossed the remote down amongst a litter of press cuttings.

Peter, that golden-haired boy, all filthy-sweet mouth and shaking hands, fighting and clinging and clawing his way to a climax as Cole knelt between his legs, his mouth busy, grateful for the truth behind Peter's lie that had let him do this.

Dead.

It wasn't a shock as much as emptiness, a lost possibility, because if he was honest, he'd sometimes thought maybe, one day…

Oh, well. (Oh, Peter).

Cole shuffled the reviews into a stack, tidying his desk automatically, and dropped them in the trash. They were good ones; he only kept the ones that made him wince, a form of self-flagellation his agent -- his former agent -- had deplored.

Good or bad, he owed them all to Peter who had sent him here to start again, a world away from Hollywood.

A world away from him.

Tinsel-glitter, all those years had been, but that moment with Peter had been real enough.

Even if he'd half-expected Peter to tell him to do it again, with his good side to the camera.

Cole started to chuckle, the deep, rich laughter that rang out through a hushed theater every evening and at a Saturday matinee, and brought the curtain down on Act Two.

He didn't cry until Peter's smiling face appeared on screen with two dates under it, birth and death, replaced a second or two later by a story about a dog who liked to hang glide.

The dog got ten seconds more airtime than Peter; he'd have fucking hated that.




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