With Sarah at the t-courts, I hole up for the afternoon in the air-conditioned luxury of the Xanadu Lounge. It's pretty dead except for a few suits and this old goat a stool down yapping loudly into his cell phone like it was a tin cup on a string. Sarah, the woman who invited me here to Palm Beach, slapped me last night. At a fund-raiser in front of fifty people, she slapped my face and told me to wash my hands before she slapped me again. In bed that night she calmly explained that I had picked my nose in the buffet line. She gets irritable with me at cocktail parties because I can't play golf, tennis or the stock market or even pretend that I do. As the winter season comes to a close, my pickle becomes crystal clear; one of those damned if you do, vice-versa scenarios. If my novelty wears off, I'm back to square one come spring. How much longer I can take her abuse and provide service with a smile is another story.

Since skipping New York with her last month, I've learned a lot about why this 54 year-old millionairess has been single since husband two, the hair-treatment tycoon, moved to Bali with his business partner's daughter. An obsessive compulsive, she works alongside a small army of Haitians who invade twice a week to scrub, polish and vacuum all twenty-nine rooms of her winter digs. At parties she says if cleanliness is next to Godliness, then she's got the freedom to be as naughty as she likes. She told me her mother was a severe asthmatic and even the faintest trace of dust in the house would trigger an attack and her father, a big-shot colonel, use to give the whole house the white glove test after Sarah cleaned. She never told me what the punishment was if she failed the test, but I've got a feeling it was more than a pre-dinner bed time. Sarah is big-time into punishment. I can attest to that.

As a model, I always considered myself tops in the hygiene department until I met her. Dirty fingernails at the table earn a crack across the knuckles with the flat side of a bread knife. But how can I complain when she pays for my mani- and pedicures? She watches me shower. God knows I try to make like it's an erotica thing, but there's nothing sexy about a woman perched on the toilet barking out orders for where to loofa. Her cat, Lamont, is shaved hairless, a skittish pink ghost painfully aware of its own ridiculousness. Looking at it makes me weepy. I'm ashamed to admit she paid me to undergo electrolysis when we arrived last month. Putting up with the nonsense is part of the fantasy I fulfill with any of the women I've lived with. There was a time when I enjoyed it, excelled in it even; whether it was the kinky sex stuff or just being someone to vent all that anger from all those shitty boyfriends and husbands and fathers on. I'm getting too old to be that someone, but where else do I have to go?

I can't help but eavesdrop on the old bat next to me, spouting off about Tom Cruise this and million bucks that; a real operator glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. Poofs like him grow like coconuts around Palm Beach. Finally he tucks the phone into the breast pocket of his horrid plaid sports coat and swivels his stool towards me: I know you, don't I?

I shrug and pick my teeth with a swizzle stick. I draw the line at fruits no matter how rich.

"Are you on television?" he asks. Normally I'd say get some new material, but he's the first person I've talked to all afternoon and I'm bored, so I tell him about a commercial I was in for some ambulance chaser in Queens. I played an amnesia victim which the director had joked was ironic because I had so much trouble remembering my four lines. The guy offers to buy me a drink, but I buy him one instead. I don't like getting stuck having my ear chewed off by some guy just cause he bought me a drink and besides it's on Sarah's tab. We introduce ourselves and his name sounds kinda familiar.

"You from New York? You're a designer right? You're somebody? Who are you?" I ask, well aware of how fruity I sound.

"I just told you." He chuckles.

"Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick. Kubrick. You're a movie maker. Planet of the Apes. I know you."

He rolls his eyes and says he doesn't want to get into it like I'm some shithead.

"Hey, I know plenty of big shots in New York. I get tables at Balthazaar's and I've partied at Heidi Klum's. So spare me the attitude."

"Of course my good man. It's just that I rarely travel beyond my Herftordshire estate and when I do, I don't want to, as they say, talk shop."

"Buddy, I don't care if you're Cecil B. DeMille, if you're trying to pick me up, try your luck with the next dude. This island's chock full of em. If you want to keep it kosher, we can chat."

"I'll try to restrain myself," he says.

Despite his protests, we start blabbing about his flicks right off the bat. I tell him about seeing 2001 when I was a kid with my baby-sitter, this drop-dead-gorgeous teenager called Karma. She never wore bras and my mom usually paid her in dime bags to watch me. I loved her madly. The whole theater was high as kites with everyone laying down in the aisles for the psychedelic third act and Karma let me hold her hand. I remember later that day we went to her friend's place and I watched Road Runner cartoons while the three girls got high and drank screwdrivers. They decided to have a kissing contest. They sat me up on the washing machine as the judge. I was in heaven. Afterwards, they could have asked me to go out and shoot the president and I would have gladly complied.

"I named Karma the winner of course. I felt more passion in that sloppy cigarette- breath kiss than anything I've felt with the last dozen women I've been with," I tell him. "Combined."

Kubrick nods earnestly in commiseration and whips a mini- tape recorder from his jacket pocket and speaks into it very solemnly: "Note to Self: Capture the innocent lust of male youth on film." He winks. "Dedicate to Billy."

He never did Planet of the Apes. I admit I hated that Clockwork Orange shit. My mother and one of her boyfriends dragged me along to see it. I was terrified and couldn't stop squirming around in my seat. The boyfriend kept asking my mother to send me outside, but she kept saying I'd get into trouble. "Normal little boys love the movies, but no not Billy. Can't you be a normal little boy for one afternoon?" she kept saying. I can't stand watching any kind of torture. I couldn't stomach that one with Jack Nicholson either. Unlike New York assholes, Kubrick takes it in stride instead of making me feel unsophisticated. The mini-tape recorder makes another appearance: Note to Stan: Ixnay on the torture and blood for new chum, Billy.

Kubrick tells me about the movie he's working on which he describes as being about fucking and getting fucked and fucking some more. It stars Tom Cruise and his sexy Australian wife. Kubrick says he's in Palm Beach scoping out mansion locations for the film. I tell him about Sarah's set-up, which gets me started on that whole subject. I go into how she picked me up back in Manhattan when I was working between modeling gigs as a salesman at Gucci. She was looking for something for her brother. I was just his size or would be if he took better care of himself, she said. Five minutes later I was giving her a one man fashion show in the dressing room. Customers lined up outside until finally the manager stormed into the dressing room. Sarah told him I should get a raise, but he threw me out instead. Three days later I left a note for the Upper East Side divorcee I was living with saying I had to see my mother on her deathbed and Sarah and I flew first class to Florida. In my defense, the divorcee had made it clear that she was in the process of ironing matters out with her husband, the congressman, and that I was to get lost A.S.A.P, but keep my weekends open.

"A genuine playboy." Kubrick is beaming. "You're living the life of Riley."

"You'd think so." I fill in some of the less glamorous details about Sarah: the showering, the beatings, the foot massages and the slapping incident. It's not the worst I've put up with from a woman either. Not by a nautical mile.

"And what did you do after she slapped you?" he asks.

"Went to the bathroom to wash my hands."

"Sweet Christ?! Just because you're living off this woman does that mean you have to take her abuse?"

"That's exactly what it means."

"Why don't you leave her?"

"I can't"

"But you already said she's getting fed-up with you."

"She needs someone. Besides, I've got no place to go. "

"What the hell kind of playboy are you?"

  "I'm a 40 year-old playboy as of yesterday. See this blazer and these pink fucking pants," I say motioning to my get-up. "She bought them for me. Dressed me up like a doll. That's me. From woman to woman, I become what they want me to be. For a while it usually feels right, like they know what's best and finally I feel like, hey, it's really me looking at myself shaving in the mirror. Making them happy makes me happy. Sometimes very much so. Occasionally love enters the equation. But it's all temporary. With time they're no longer able to rationalize what they're using me for and it turns to shit. I'm not in the position to call the shots. They go off to Fiji or someplace and I'm left broke and alone. Which wouldn't be so bad if---"

"If --?"

"If--I guess if I could just get up in the morning and know, ya know, know who I really was. Who I am, I mean, " I say surprised at my own drunken dramatics.

"Ah-ha. Herein lies the rub." Kubrick motions for another round of Kettle One martinis.

"I know every asshole who ever turned forty asks this question. But I mean it literally. I don't have a real home. People still call me Billy. I've lived all over the country, even in London and Amsterdam. Supposedly I am a man of the world, but I can't name any capitals and don't know diddley about wine. I've never owned a dog, bought property, been married, fought a war, mowed a lawn."

"All overrated." Kubrick slurps his martini.  "Peter Sellers once said he'd played so many different characters he didn't know who he was. We were three weeks into Strangelove when he came to my trailer and said he couldn't play all four principal parts. The British officer, the paraplegic doctor, the President--fine. But he just couldn't do the redneck pilot. Naturally, I insisted and slapped him around a bit until he got hysterical. Peter always got hysterical. That's when he told me that. I looked him dead in the eye and said: lucky you."

"You're saying I'm lucky?"

"Bingo. See Slim Pickens was phenomenal as the pilot and Peter was kicking himself because he let his sense of self come first. Ask Dickie Gere; the Buddhists consider that lack of self the highest form of spiritual transcendence, of Zen-like enlightenment!"  Kubrick bangs the bar emphatically. "Any Tom can get married, fight a war and own a goldfish. You’ve found your niche. Leave the bullshit to the philosophers in ivory towers and run with it. Take everything you are now, multiply it times one hundred and live your life. Enjoy the ride by letting go of the wheel."

"That's the opposite of any advice I've ever gotten off a shrink at a party."

"I'm lucky enough to have made thirteen films, seven of which are considered masterpieces, to remind me who I'm supposed to be. Why waste your time looking for the method to the madness? My whole life I detested vodka. Now I can't get my creative juices flowing without it. Go figure. It's all highly Kubrickian."

"Kubrickian?"

"It's a term Pauline Kael coined when she was panning Barry Lyndon. It wasn't meant as a compliment, but I took it as one. Defeat into victory, my boy."

We cheers to that. I'm flattered this genius is so interested in me. He makes perfect sense. Kubrick orders another round in a lispy voice, with his wrists limp and we laugh like a couple of frat boys over me thinking he was a fruit. I'm feeling pretty good until I notice the time. Shit, Sarah's having guests over for cocktails. I was supposed to be home an hour ago to tidy up, mix the drinks, meet and greet. I invite Kubrick.

Cruising across the island in the MG, Kubrick briefs me on my new state of transcendence: no more Burton to her Virginia Woolf, he says. Out of a small leather bag he has taken a battered football helmet and wears it proudly. He warns me to be careful on the turns.

"I'm enjoying the ride by letting go of the wheel!" I yell, driving no-hands. Kubrick clenches his eyes shut.

It's the usual cocktail crowd; Janice and Sam; the elderly lesbian neighbors, Jackie the leech, a few of the DuPont girls, Gino the shipping magnate, Frank Basco the soda king and his girlfriend with the sloppy face job and her spiritual advisor. Sarah's busy wiping up smudges and laying down coasters. They're in the living room, gathered around Jackie playing the piano. The lights from the outside pool dance along the ceiling and chandeliers. When we stumble in, everyone stops--just like in the movies.

"Bravo. My diamond in the rough is gracing us with his presence. A rough day at the bar, my dear. Honestly, Billy we've had to make our own drinks." Sarah rattles her empty tumbler. "Billy use to bartend at a strip club in Nevada." Sarah loves to make mention of the off-color aspects of my resume.

"I knew you looked familiar Billy," Gino says for a laugh.

"Is that Dan Marino?" Sarah motions to Kubrick, struggling in the foyer to get his helmet off. I give him a hand and he finally frees himself, stumbling back and stepping on Lamont's tail, causing it to dart off. He plasters back his greasy strands of white hair and goes around the room, pumping hands.

Sarah's giving me a dirty look until the name Stan Kubrick begins to resonate with the guests. Then she kisses me on the cheek, congratulating me on my ability to always "stumble into the most marvelous of characters."

"Billy has a nose for meeting the most interesting people," she announces to the crowd. "I guess that's how we met."

They're on him like flies on shit and Kubrick entrances them just like he did me.

"I'd always heard you were quite the recluse," Jackie says.

"Oh come now Jackie. Don't believe all that PR poppycock you read in the funny papers. Do I look like a hermit to you?" he asks seriously, dropping his hands to his sides and standing straight up for them to examine him if they dare.

They all rush to concur that he most certainly does not. 

"Besides I always crawl out of my hovel for one of Billy and Sarah's parties," Kubrick says laughing.

As is the norm, I'm delegated to the sidelines, mixing the drinks and serving as occasional punchline to Sarah's jokes. I chat a little with the busty Irish girl serving the hors d'oeuvres, until Sarah spots me and sends me on a wild goose chase to find Lamont. I stand my ground a minute, but she just glares back, waiting for the chance to cut me down. I obey rather than be humiliated in front of Kubrick.

Stumbling through the house with a bottle of Jack Daniels, I can hear Kubrick's Jack Nicholson impression echoing down the marble halls. Sarah is cackling the loudest. By the time I finally find the cat, the bottle is almost drained. The animal's balled up in the back corner of Sarah's walk-in closet. A closet bigger than my last apartment in Manhattan. Lamont creeps into my arms hesitantly and I look at the two of us reflected in the dozens of mirror doors. The cat's like a baby, all tender pink flesh trembling like Jell-O in my arms.  I pinball drunkenly down the halls, the two of us meowing together. Kubrick is manning the piano with Sarah leaning towards him, her blouse giving him a full frontal.

"I was about to organize a search party, Billy" Sarah says. "Go ahead and make our new friend and me another round."

Kubrick and I lock eyes momentarily. He glances away, embarrassed for me. I must act instantly, before I give myself time to think.

"I'm sorry Lamont," I say to the cat before chucking it full speed across the room at Sarah. Lamont smashes into the side of her head, paws wildly at her hair for several seconds before dropping to the tile floor and fleeing out of the room. Like a top set spinning, Sarah stumbles across the room, hair in face, knocking over drinks until Frank's girlfriend's spiritual advisor catches her. The DuPont girls and Jackie are all over me, asking me what hell I think I'm doing throwing cats around. I push by them and out to the patio, past the pool and cabanas and down to the inter-coastal waterway. I can hear Kubrick playing Memories as I drop down on the grass, underneath the stars. Out for the count.

I come to on the back lawn, soaked by sprinklers and blinded by sunlight, a Hispanic lawn worker helping me to my feet and into the house. Lucretia and the girls are there and the house is alive with vacuum cleaners and dust pans, chemical potions and sprays. In the master bedroom, Sarah has her hair pinned back and is stripping the sheets. She starts swearing at me without even looking up.

"You're mentally fucking ill," she yells at me, wrestling the bedding off the mattress. "And you're going to pay for that outburst last night. I've never been so humiliated. If Lamont had been injured I'd have you incarcerated. As it is the poor thing's been hiding in the dumb waiter all morning."

"I'm sorry." I do feel bad about the cat, but secretly wish I'd been holding an anvil.

"If you think I like it when you're a naughty boy, Billy, you are sorely mistaken. First off you're going to write apology notes to Kubrick and all my friends."

"Where's Kubrick?"

"He stayed in the red bedroom. He took some Polaroids of the house, scouting it out as his new film location and left this morning with the DuPont girls. They were taking the boat to Nassau. Quite a coup for my little cocktail party. What a dynamic man. Too bad he makes such dreary movies."

"Did he tell you anything for me?"

"Besides expressing shock from your tantrum, don't you think we had better things to talk about than you?" She looks up at me for first time since I walked in the room.

"Christ, you're dripping all over the carpet, Billy," she says. "If only I'd known what a derelict you were when you seduced me in Manhattan. All I wanted was a little companionship. A tennis partner for the winter. Look what I ended up with. Get out of those wet clothes this instant."

I flop down on the bare mattresses, flip on the 54 incher and spin through the channels. Outraged, Sarah stands over me, clutching the bundle of bedding.

"You're wet for godsakes and you're not relaxing when you've got chores to do, Billy. I'm not just going to forget about your hissy-fit last night. You've been naughty and will be punished accordingly. Do you want me to get the belt now or later? We've got the Leukemia fund-raiser tonight. I hope your tux is pressed. Now or later, Billy, the belt. You're dripping Billy. Jesus Christ, you're fucking dripping!

Stanley Kubrick. The name stops her like a bitch slap and I flip back a channel. "The world famous director passed away in his sleep last night," the glamour puss on television says. The man shown in the pictures looking stoic behind the camera and pow-wowing with Kirk Douglas is plainly not our Kubrick. Besides the beards, they bare no resemblance at all. Sarah screams and I sit up. During the rest of the brief segment, Sarah repeats under who breath, who who, who. She is scratching all over. Hysterical, she picks up the phone, then puts it down again. Picks it up and puts it down. She glares at me suddenly.

"Who the hell was that?" she asks and slaps my face before I can shrug. "You brought some dirty, old, mad man, all dirty over here."

We are both crying, flipping the channels, looking at more stills of Kubrick. Not even close.

Sarah has the belt out and is lashing me with the buckle side while I slip around for cover on the bare mattresses. I wonder what went on between her and Kubrick last night. She collapses at the foot of the bed and orders me to call the police. I do. And her private physician. I do. And psychiatrist. I do. I feel dead too. My Buddhist transcendence, my multiplied me. I am all burned bridges and unanswered questions. My enlightenment from a genius was nonsense from a lunatic? thief? killer? She throws a handful of prescription bottles at me to refill at the pharmacy.

"You've really done it this time, Billy. You're going to be punished severely. You're going to be very sorry," she says before storming into the kitchen and telling Lucretia she needs her and the girls to scour the whole house all over again. When I hear her run the shower upstairs, I know she'll be in there most of the afternoon.

After the pharmacy I take the MG to the video store and rent all his movies, even the ones I know I can't watch. Sarah will have me under lock and key for a while. In picking 2001 off the shelf, a lanky pale vision in all leather reprimands me for hoarding all her favorite director's films.

"I cried when I heard this morning," she says.

"Me too."

Katrina is an LA casting director in town for her grandparent's fortieth wedding anniversary. We compromise about the movie and I follow her back to her grandparent's condominium. Like gargoyles, they're perched on the back balcony smoking Chesterfields and watching the shimmering traffic snake by. My clothes are still damp which I say is from a thundershower I got stuck in. Katrina picks a nifty blue running suit out of her grandfather's closet for me to wear.

"It's you," her grandfather says and she agrees. "You can have it."

We drink Bloody Marys and watch 2001. Except for the monkeys, it's boring. And during the film I think who's to say who's a genius. One Kubrick is dead, the other is in the Bahamas with a couple of millionairesses. I am here transcending the old skin and slipping into the new. Towards the end, I hold Katrina's hand like I did with Karma so many years ago. From the balcony, the grandparents invite me to their anniversary party tonight.

"You'd be great in commercials," Katrina says, refilling my drink. "Have you ever been to LA?

Somewhere Kubrick is smiling.