I sniffed. “I thought I smelled something electrical.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll get things patched together. We’ll survive the two-weekend run.” He turned to bound up the aisle toward the balcony, then paused, telling us, “Break a leg in act two, Thad. Good to see you again, Neil. And great to meet you, Mark.”
We echoed his friendly sentiments, and he was gone—eaten, it seemed, by the shadows of the old theater. “Nice guy,” I told the others. It was an offhand comment, conversational filler, not intended to carry any subtext, but as I said it, his wedding ring glinted in my mind’s eye.
“Mr. Gelden’s the best,” Thad agreed, rising from the table with a pile of finished programs. “All the kids in Fungus Amongus really like him. And he’s worked harder on
Teen Play
than most of the cast.” Thad jogged the stack of programs on the table, then crouched to place them in a corrugated box.
Neil told me, “Cynthia has suggested more than once that the four of us should get together—a double date.”
I laughed. “Fine with me.”
“Wow,” said Thad, jerking his head toward the brightly lit apron of the stage, “you’d never know Tommy in that getup.” Joyce and Denny fussed with the kid’s costume, which made him look like a hermit, an ancient troll, replete with a wig and beard in the style of a scruffy Jesus. Thad was right—Tommy’s costume totally disguised the boy within.
Confused, I said, “Denny called
Teen Play
a ‘contemporary drama.’ What’s up with Tommy? He looks like an extra from some Bible epic.”
Showing me a program, pointing to a line near the bottom of the cast, Thad explained, “Tommy Morales plays the Old Man, a bit part in act two. He pops into a scene that’s sort of a dream, speaks a few words of wisdom, then vanishes.”
“Oh.” I didn’t get it.
Thad continued, “Tommy is also the understudy for Dawson, the role I’m rehearsing tonight. Since Jason and I are double-cast as both Ryan
and
Dawson, either of us could take over the leading role of Ryan if the other couldn’t go on for some reason. Tommy would then step into the role of Dawson.”
“Ahhh.” Now I did get it. “That’s why Tommy had his nose buried in the script—the Old Man doesn’t take much study, but Dawson does.”
“Right. He’s learning Dawson’s lines. And if he ever needs to
play
Dawson, he can still play the Old Man as well because the two characters are never onstage together. No one would recognize Tommy beneath that beard anyway.”
With a grunt of approval, I told Thad, “I’m impressed. Denny has all the bases covered.” Laughing, I added with comic foreboding, “Should disaster strike.”
I have always scoffed at superstition, but there are doubtless those who will chide me for tempting fate with my glib tone. (In retrospect, I concede that my smug humor may have been brash, for tragedy did indeed prove to be looming. Still, I am reasonably certain that the impending calamity was rooted not in my offhand cockiness, but in the premeditated scheming of a killer.)
“Mica,” said Thad brightly to a girl who strolled past, in front of the stage, “I didn’t know you were here tonight.”
She stopped, turning to eye Thad with a blank expression that barely acknowledged his existence. Her features were pretty, if hard. Her fingernails (the word
talons
sprang to mind) were lacquered black. Her gleaming black hair was long and straight, chopped severely above a pert butt clad in a stretchy, black miniskirt that pushed the envelope of modesty—though modesty was clearly a concept that had never crossed her radar. She was of course pencil-thin. She told Thad dryly, “I didn’t think to report my presence. If you
really
need to know, I’m just keeping an eye on baby brother.” She smiled so faintly, it must have hurt.
Neil whispered in my ear, “I think that’s Mica Thrush, Jason’s older sister.”
“What a fright,” I whispered back. She and Thad were talking about something; she was asking how long the rehearsal would last.
With a low chortle Neil said, “Jason and Mica—typical spoiled rich kids.”
“Hey,” I reminded him, “Thad Quatrain is a ‘rich kid.’ ” By now, Jason had noticed his sister in the auditorium and, from the stage, joined the conversation with Thad and her.
“Yes,” Neil conceded, “but Thad’s hardly ‘typical.’ ”
“Of
course
not,” I agreed, mocking blind parental pride. “He’s
ours
.”
Exactly what happened next is not clear to me, as I was still gabbing with Neil, but at some point I became aware that Thad’s conversation with Jason had grown agitated, even heated. Other people’s chatter was quelled by this, and everyone in the theater, cast and crew alike, turned to listen.
Jason now rose from where he was sitting and stepped to the edge of the stage, stuffing his handkerchief in his jeans. He paused, looked Thad in the eye, and told him through a sarcastic smirk, “I see you brought your two daddies tonight. Are they proud of their boy toy?”
His words had the predictable effect—all present were stunned silent. The sheer bigotry of Jason’s attack, delivered with such bald arrogance, was meant not only to degrade Neil and me, but worse, to question the nature of our relationship to Thad and, in doing so, to hurt and humiliate him. As intended, Jason’s words did hurt Thad. I could see it in the boy’s face, in the way his body seemed instantly drained of energy, of life.
I wanted to rush to Thad’s defense, but anything I might have said would be perceived as a defense of
myself.
Oddly, I felt no urge to mount a counterattack against Jason’s adolescent homophobia. Rather, it was his mean-spirited bravado, his jock-boy swagger, that tempted me to forgo eloquence and simply slap the shit out of him.
Weighing all this, I felt paralyzed, wondering why the hell Denny Diggins didn’t do something, or at least
say
something. After all, he was in charge here—he had the authority and responsibility to maintain a semblance of decorum among his troupe. But silence reigned.
Finally, when someone did speak, it was Thad. The color had returned to his face, and I was delighted to read the intent in his grin. He had wisely decided to brush off Jason’s attack by trivializing it, as it deserved. He would respond to the words of an ignorant bully by bullying back, but with humor. Paraphrasing the closing words of act one, Thad said, “Keep it up, Jason, and you may not live till opening night. Remember, I’ll be waiting in the wings.”
A ripple of laughter and a chorus of
ooh’s
drifted through the theater, lightening the tension.
But Jason wouldn’t let it rest. “
Ooh
,” he said, picking up on the feigned fear voiced by the others and tossing it back at them. “I’m quakin’, Thad. I’m shakin’ in my boots.” In a girlish voice, he asked the heavens, “However will I sleep tonight?” Then, focusing again on Thad, he said, “That’s a pretty lame threat, coming from
you
, boy toy.”
This elicited another round of
ooh’s
from the crowd.
But it was Kwynn Wyman, Thad’s friend who’d been yakking onstage with Jason during the break, who spoke next. She sauntered downstage next to him, paused, and in the hot glare of the floodlights, snorted loudly, smelling him. She said, “That’s a pretty lame comment, coming from
you
, Jason—considering that cheap perfume you’re wearing.”
Others nearby waved their hands and held their noses, confirming that it was Jason who’d overdone it with the aftershave that night. And Kwynn’s description of it was dead-on—the flowery scent was anything but manly. Jason’s sister, Mica, dropped her steely composure and was the first to burst into laughter, quickly followed by others. Neil and I allowed ourselves a hearty chuckle, but Thad restrained himself, choosing instead to bead Jason with a quietly amused, unflinching stare of victory.
“Now, people, people!” scolded Denny, at last coming to life, rapping his hands. “Enough of this ‘teen play.’ We’ve got
work
to do, people! Places, everyone. Act two.” He turned, calling up to the control booth, “Frank? One minute till blackout.”
The cast rushed to take their positions onstage. The crew disappeared behind the scenes. Denny returned to his director’s table in the fifth row. Neil and I chose seats near the middle of the auditorium. As the houselights began a slow fade, I mused about the petty skirmish we’d just witnessed—Jason’s slur, Thad’s threat, Kwynn’s comeback. They all seemed so…well, so
juvenile,
so inconsequential.
(Or so I thought. I hadn’t a clue that little Tommy Morales would soon be called upon to save the show.)
F
OLLOWING A NIGHT OF
rain, the next day dawned hot and muggy. Sunrise consisted of a searing whiteness that slid upward through a blinding haze.
The house on Prairie Street, built for my uncle Edwin’s family in the years before air-conditioning was common, was designed to combat the dog days with broad, overhanging eaves shading long rows of shallow windows. A year ago, during my first summer in the house, I learned that while these features were deemed ingenious a half century ago, they didn’t begin to match the comfort-pumping power of several thousand BTUs. So the lovely old home was invisibly modernized with a high-efficiency air conditioner that I was assured “could frost a church.” An expensive retrofit of concealed ducts now blew bone-chilling relief from the high corners of every room. The house was sealed tight on that torrid August morn, and though birds greeted the day from surrounding treetops, I wasn’t even tempted to crack a window and hear their song. So much for fresh air.
“Going for a run?” Neil had asked me earlier, when we’d kissed, thrown back the covers, and swung our feet to the floor, rising from opposite sides of the bed.
I hesitated. A run with Neil was never drudgery; the mere sight of him in motion was its own reward (ah, the joy of aerobics). He too got a certain charge from our mutual workouts in the park, which were frequently topped off at home by a more languid form of exercise. “Uh, the heat”—I waffled—“not today. Sorry, kiddo.”
A bit later, around seven-thirty, when I arrived downstairs for breakfast, having showered and dressed for a busy day at the
Register
, I was alone in the kitchen. Neil was still out running. Thad was still in bed; he would sleep till noon if undisturbed. Barb, our live-in housekeeper, hired a half year ago in late January, didn’t seem to be around either. Coffee was freshly made though—bubbles still floated on the surface near the top of the glass pot. Morning papers were set out with a platter of pastries and bagels.
I poured coffee into an outsize Chicago
Journal
mug (old habits die hard), sat at the table, and opened the
Register
, skimming the front page. There had been no overnight changes to the layout I’d approved at yesterday’s late-afternoon editorial meeting—the world, it seemed, was as quiet as the house.
“Christ, it’s hot already!” said Neil, rattling the back door open, then closing it behind him with a thud.
I grinned. “Told you so.” Raising my cup, I offered, “Hot coffee?”
He answered by throwing at me the white gym towel he carried, damp with his sweat. Bare-chested, he’d taken off his T-shirt before leaving the house, hanging it on a coat hook near the door. He now grabbed the shirt and started blotting himself with it. The indoor air felt suddenly icy against his wet skin—his nipples were erect.
“Here,” I said with a laugh, getting up, “let me swab you down. Keep the shirt dry—you’ll need it.”
We met in the middle of the room, where I took the T-shirt from his hands, set it on the counter, and began drying him with the towel. He could easily have done this himself, but he understood that I
wanted
to perform this duty—it was a labor of love. So he stood passively, watching without speaking as I worked my way down his body, starting with his hair, his neck, then his chest, where I paused to warm his nipples with my tongue. Had anyone walked into the room, we’d have presented a tableau at once erotic and ridiculous: he, the architect returned from a run, standing buffed, sweaty, and near naked in the kitchen, wearing only silvery nylon shorts, cracked white-leather cross-training shoes, skimpy ankle socks; and I, the freshly groomed publisher of a small-town newspaper, hunkering before him in a crisp white shirt, jaunty yellow-and-gray-striped tie, perfectly creased gabardine slacks, spit-polished cordovan oxfords.
Like a wet, fleshy tether, my tongue bridged the gap of this unlikely union, this spontaneous melding of animal and intellect. The taste of him shot past the essence of coffee that lingered in my mouth. On the surface of his skin, salt drawn from his body excited my senses and made me want more of him. Squatting lower, I reached behind him to mop his back, stopping at the waistband of his shorts. Then I dried his legs, working up from the ankles, again stopping at his shorts. Nuzzling his crotch with my chin, I felt the warm lump of his erection, moist against my face. Looking upward, glancing past the contours of his chest, I asked, “Where’s Barb?”
“It’s Thursday—farmers’ market this morning.” He traced both index fingers over the tops of my ears. “She was headed for the park while I was coming back.”
That would keep her busy for the few minutes I needed, so I pulled down his shorts and helped work them past his shoes. His penis bobbed blindly for me in the cool air, but I resisted the temptation to provide its warm target. Instead, I slid the towel between his legs and finished the job of drying him, first his testicles, then his butt. The course nap of the terry cloth aroused Neil all the more, so on an impulse, I drew the towel between his legs again, holding its opposite ends taut, in front and behind. Lifting, I began pulling the towel back and forth, sliding it first up his crack, then up past his testicles, again and again, as if flossing his groin.
At first Neil laughed. Then he moaned. Then he fell silent as he widened his stance, squeaking his treaded soles on the kitchen floor. Crouching a bit, he rocked his hips, countering the direction of the towel, riding out a fantasy that I could not envision but was happy to stimulate. He looked down at his penis, by now painfully engorged, then stared into my eyes, woozy and amazed, mutely begging me to finish what I had started.