Justin

When Justin told Xaviera he was leaving, she immediately demanded to know if he intended to start his own business & compete with her, "Because I'll take you down," she threatens. Justin doesn't smile, but he's amused; on the whole, working for her has been has been not unpleasant. "I'm leaving the business," he explains, and she draws her claws back in, and purrs, friendly again, "You've outlasted a lot of the others, you're almost a legend around here." Justin agrees to fulfill his regular appointments before quitting, but refuses to take anymore after that.

As soon as Eleanor told him she wanted to move in together, Justin leapt into apartment hunting with fervor. Her new job is more demanding of her time than the last one, and she's too busy to go out looking at places with him, so Justin takes her digital camera while he checks out apartments. Every evening, after he feeds her & warms her out of the 'business persona' she dresses herself in each day before she leaves, he shows her the pictures of the places he's looked at that day. So far, nothing has met her standards, though everything so far has been better than how they're living now. But she wrinkles her nose at the computer screen & pouts, "The yard on that one is shabby," she says, gesturing at a sad bedraggled tree on the grounds of the place he checked out in Mar Vista: he knew he should have cropped that out.... Something about her face, her neck, her glowing white skin, something strikes Justin at that moment, and he pulls her hair back, his thumb pressing hard into her cheek as his fingers wrap around the back of her neck. "Don't move," he says as he reaches out for the camera with his right hand, and takes a picture. Then he slides his hand down over her shoulder, works her suit down until he's exposed one breast, which he grabs, again pressing with his thumb, into her soft skin. "Don't look at me, don't move," he says as her eyes meet the camera lens, and she looks away. Justin snaps another picture. She looks at him again hesitantly, "What are you going to do with those?" she asks as Justin pull her jacket back over her shoulder. "Look at you when you're not around," he answers simply, and smiles at her before he leans in to kiss her, gently, on the cheek, "because you're mine to look at."

There are people he sees regularly, people who see him as a staple they can count on every two weeks, every month. Xaviera is telling these clients before they see him that's it's going to be the last time, they'll have to choose someone else in the future. So every one of these last appointments is a parting scene, where Justin cannot play his part. There's no goodbye here, he thinks, I don't know you, or care about you; but they all think they know him, think they care about him, and want to touch him before they say goodbye. He doesn't want to be touched. "Listen, I know you can't talk about this," Sam, a bi-weekly appointment says to him with a conspiratorial wink, "But if you are going out on your own, or working somewhere else, I want to know." Justin shakes his head, "I'm leaving the business." Sam rolls his eyes, "Of course, of course," he laughs, "You would never undercut Xaviera like that," he says, handing Justin his business card with his cash. "But if you ever do go into 'private practice', give me a call." Justin barely glances at the card, meaning to drop it on the floor, but that one glance gives him a new piece of information. Sam is in real estate. He'd prefer not to get at all personal with any client, but this is for Eleanor..."Sam, you're in real estate...I'm looking for a place," he says, and tells Sam what he wants, tasteful, private, and with a really great kitchen. Sam makes a triangle with his fingers, tapping his lips as he listens. "You've got a sugardaddy now, that's what this is about," he says triumphantly, like he's figured it all out. Justin keeps his smile to himself, always amazed at how people will fill in any blanks you provide them with their own misinformation. "So to speak," Justin answers. People are so much easier to manipulate when you allow them to con themselves. Sam nods & smiles, pleased with himself. "You could actually be the answer to a little problem I'm having.." Sam then tells him a story about a couple, a designer & an architect, who have a house in Marina del Rey. The architect fell ill & died, and the distraught designer fled to Milan, where he says he means to stay. Unable to bear the thought of entering the house he & his beloved designed together again, he was preparing to have the house prepped for sale. Then he decided he couldn't bear to sell it, and dumped responsibility of renting it to Sam. "It's not even what I do," Sam sighs, "But how could I say no? And he's being such a bitch with the demands..no children in his precious kitchen, no dogs in his yard...blah blah blah. I don't spend this kind of time or energy on my paying clients..." The house Sam describes is clearly going to be a bit of a stretch on Eleanor's budget, but her expectations are that high. Justin can see Sam has reached a breaking point: he'll deal, bring down the price, just to get this social obligation behind him. He arranges to see the house as soon as possible.

All this 'leavetaking' bothers Justin. He's never had to go through a process before, informing people about his plans, making a final rounds...Justin has always just left a place when he was done there. He's never made any relationships that required a notification of termination, now he has 'friends', or at least, these housemates. Once he told them he was leaving, he could see it in their eyes, they were all still here because of him, because he feeds them & cleans up after them if he has to, and when he goes, they'll have no reason to stay themselves. Like he's taking the soul out of their house. It's more responsibility than Justin likes to bear, more closeness than is comfortable. Justin feels especially bad for Zach, who has trashed a few hot-plates trying to cook a frozen pizza in his time, who isn't at all aware of the amount of food he drops on the floor & never thinks to clean it. So when Zach tells him he needs a ride to the airport, Justin smiles. "Are you going to go get her, Zach?" he asks, relieved to be handing the the young man over to a girl who'll take care of him properly. Zach says he's going to go see the girl that ran away, but doesn't know about getting her...that kind of talk always undercuts your chances, and Justin tells Zach that. And then Zach tells him his story, about his Indian princess, the daughter of his mentor, untouchable virgin, how her parents want her to marry another, how she's fled away from them all. Justin doesn't understand why Zach hasn't followed her already, and why he thinks following her might be wrong, when it's so obviously the only thing to do, the only thing Justin would do. "What if the right thing to do is put yourself out of the way? Like when you abandoned the Collared...," Zach asks, his question popping out of nowhere like they often do. The Collared...Justin hasn't even had the word cross his mind since he left New York...he stares hard at Zach, scanning dim memories of a younger time, looking to see a younger Zach in that crowd, but it's not possible really, Zach was never in New York...so how the hell does Zach know about the Collared? "I saw a student film about your cult," Zach explains just before Justin asks. "Student film," Justin growls, regretting now allowing any record of himself to exist, especially now that he remembers some of the things he would get up to, when he was younger & couldn't always contain himself. Wherever they went, Alison was there, with her camera...she hated him, because her girlfriend worshipped him & invited him to stay in their apartment. And not just her girlfriend, the whole bunch of them, every one of her roommates got hooked on his performance at the club, gave him a place to stay for free, allowed him to indulge in casual expressions of violence. Justin can't remember their names or faces now, except for Alison, the 'non-believer', with her camera: she couldn't override the majority of her other roommates, and it came down to a battle of wills between them. She would question him on camera, like he were a politician she was investigating, a criminal she wanted to expose. He should have realized she meant to do something with all the footage she was shooting. But he had gotten too hooked, himself, on the power he had in that place, forgot he was not the persona he'd created for his performance, and actually played for that camera, answered her questions like he were a king or a mafia don, like he was the god that the Collared were calling him. And now Zach is telling him he saw a student film about his 'cult'..."Where did you see it?" Justin asks, "And what is this crap about a cult? They were a bunch of college kids that I stayed with for awhile when I was New York, I didn't tell them to form a club, give themselves a name..."

Justin waits while Zach ponders, like he's trying to remember the name of a video store...Justin hopes it's not as public as that, and can only wonder how it fell into Zach's hands. Justin never saw the film Alison made of all the shooting she used to do, in the club, in her apartment, out on the streets, and can only imagine what kind of story she told about him, hostile a she was to his presence & what he was doing to her friends. But it surely couldn't be the kind of thing people would pick up & watch for entertainment... Justin waits for Zach's answer, but Zach has clearly gotten himself lost in thought...so Justin taps him on the arm, & watches for awareness to light back into Zach's eyes, and asks "Are you going to tell me what film you saw?" hoping to get at least the name of the film so he can find it himself if he has to. Zach tells him he got it from the library at UCLA while he was there...which just blows Justin's mind. And he offers to give the tape to Justin. Which of course Justin accepts, he has to see this film for himself, know what was said about him. Obviously, since Zach moved into this house after having seen it, it couldn't have been so bad a representation...Justin shudders inwardly, thinking of all the years he's lived in this house, believing his life was private...but Zach has known all along. "How likely is it that people will see this, Zach?" Justin asks. Zach tells him only students researching 'this sort of thing' would be likely to run into it. What sort of 'thing' is he, Justin wonders, that students would be studying him? What could they possibly need to know about him that would be useful to lives? Zach asks him then why he left the Collared, and Justin begins growing annoyed. The Collared named themselves, attached themselves to him, but he never promised them anything, never said he would be there tomorrow just because he was there today...."I didn't leave them, I left New York, there's a huge difference. They let me stay in their place, and they took part in my performances at the clubs, anything else they concocted out of that had nothing to do with me. I never stay anywhere long, Zach. It was time to leave, so I left." "You've been L.A. a long time," are Zach's final words on the subject. "I have," Justin answers, still unable to count the years. But just the fact that it's more than one year, more than a handful of months, it's a very long time for Justin.

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