Bret sees Ryan visit Robert at Century Towers

Bret sees Ryan visit Robert at Century Towers after following Robert through Los Angeles and waiting outside the building. The encounter brings Bret’s concealed knowledge of Ryan’s attraction to Robert into conflict with what he can actually establish, while the return of a beige van associated with an earlier sighting turns his surveillance into a scene of uncertainty and mounting alarm.

The Trail to Century Towers

After school on a Monday afternoon, Bret leaves class first and waits in a Jaguar for Robert’s Porsche. When Robert drives by, Bret follows at a distance. Robert turns onto Beverly Glen rather than continuing toward the 405, then enters the driveway of a house on Benedict Canyon. Bret parks several houses away from the gate, where a crooked no-trespassing sign marks the property.

Bret watches the house for a time and sees a car idling outside the Reynolds residence for about five minutes. He then resumes his pursuit of Robert, keeping roughly a thousand feet behind as they travel along Santa Monica Boulevard and into Century City. Robert turns onto Avenue of the Stars and pulls into the Century Towers driveway. Carrying a black duffel bag, he hurries into the tower nearest Pico.

Ryan’s Arrival

On a Monday in October, Bret is still parked across from the Century Towers entrance when a familiar car arrives. At first he is slumped in the driver’s seat, absorbed in his own thoughts; then he recognizes a black Trans Am and becomes abruptly alert. The valet opens its door, and Ryan gets out wearing his Buckley uniform and letterman’s sweater. He asks the valet something, and the valet gestures toward the building Robert entered about thirty minutes earlier.

Bret does not see what Ryan does inside, or establish the purpose of the visit. What he witnesses is the sequence: Robert enters the tower, and Ryan arrives later and is directed to the same building. That gap leaves room for inference but not confirmation. Bret’s question is whether Robert and Ryan have become friends, a possibility he had not noticed before.

Private Knowledge and Jealousy

The sight unsettles Bret because Ryan had already confided his attraction to Robert during the weekend they spent together at Bret’s house on Mulholland. The two had talked about Robert in explicitly sexual terms, in a conversation that shifted from fantasy toward the possibility of forcing him. Bret therefore understands Ryan’s visit not as a neutral coincidence but through the charged context of what Ryan had said. Yet the visit itself does not prove that Robert reciprocates Ryan’s interest or that the two have formed a relationship.

Bret’s response is physical and immediate: he trembles, feels cold with shock, and struggles to make sense of what he has witnessed. Panic builds until he realizes he needs a bathroom and pulls away from the curb. His reaction exposes how much the encounter threatens him—not only because it may reveal a connection between Ryan and Robert, but because it joins his own intimate history with Ryan to the larger, unresolved question of Robert’s relationships.

The Van and the Uncertain Witness

As Bret makes a wide U-turn across Avenue of the Stars, he notices another familiar vehicle in the rearview mirror: the beige van that had followed him through Palm Springs on Saturday night. It glides past the Century Towers entrance. Bret watches it in the mirror so intently that he nearly runs a red light, then brakes suddenly.

The van flashes its lights twice. Bret reads the gesture as a possible acknowledgment that its occupants have seen him, but he also recognizes that he may have imagined its meaning. The van then turns around and heads back toward Pico Boulevard. Its appearance links the Century Towers surveillance to Bret’s earlier fear of being followed, without resolving who is in the van or why it is there. The scene thus ends with two observations that remain unverified: Ryan’s reason for visiting the tower and the van’s apparent signal. Bret has seen enough to feel implicated, but not enough to know what either sighting means.

Narrative Significance

The episode is structured around watching rather than access. Bret follows Robert, observes Ryan’s arrival, and tracks the van in a rearview mirror, but none of these vantage points gives him the explanation he wants. The black duffel bag, the valet’s gesture, Ryan’s school clothes, and the van’s two flashes are concrete details; their meanings remain unsettled. The scene makes Bret’s surveillance both a source of information and a trap, intensifying his jealousy and fear while preserving uncertainty about Robert, Ryan, and the watcher who may be following Bret.