How Long Has This Been Going On (63 page)

"You wanted me out, my dear. This is out."

"Danny," said Tom, "it's no call to be upset about something that isn't even likely to happen."

"Yet who can say?" William put in, mock-horrified. "Yes, the familiar story."

"Danny," said Walt, "I will leave Claude with you as a pledge that I will come back. Because I would never abandon Claude."

"Would you really leave him with me?" asked Danny.

"You wait here," said Walt, leaving the kitchen.

Judith broke the pause that followed, telling William, "I hope you're satisfied."

"Oh, yes.
Yes.
Are you, who brought me? Did I perform as hoped?"

Judith gave him a black look, as Win said, "Now, come on, Danny," because Walt's friend was weeping.

"I don't have so many people I can rely on," said Danny, wiping his eyes.

"Mecca," said William. "Story. Gays are moving."

* * *

Tom and Walt docked at the St. Francis Hotel and cabbed right to Chris's in Cow Hollow.

"Oh, golly!" they all said, hugging and kissing. And "Look at Walt!," and "Look at Chris!"

"So when do I see this palace you're buying?" said Tom. "And how come you're not scurrying around the theatre if your opening's tonight?"

"Oh, we've been previewing for a week. It's all frozen now, trim and ready to run even if I say it as shouldn't. A bit moderne, a bit stoned, a bit traditional. The Bertram wears tights and a cape. Did I warn you that my style is early-middle eclectic? But the cast is lovely and the music's Gregorian rock, so we should have, at the least, a
succès de
controversy. And the Ironwords and I are taking you to the house tomorrow afternoon. Is six okay?"

"Anything's okay," said Tom, touching her as if touch were a charm by which each of them could forget all that he and she knew and start all over.

Walt, examining Chris's record collection, said, "You have four different recordings of
Carousel."

"It's my favorite thing on earth."

"Is that because it says that people die but true love lasts forever?"

"I... Maybe. I thought I just liked the music." To Tom, behind Walt's back, she mouthed, "How'd he get so smart?"

"Listen," said Tom. "Do we get a tour of this town or are we on our own?"

"This particular girl is going right flat on her back in a nap before the grand event, so the Ironwords will squire you around. You'll like them—although why does anyone say that? Because how do I know what you like? Especially as Philip's really rather stiff; but Neville's a doll, nothing like her name, and they have a just-barely-teenage son who makes you want to go out and have..." Chris stopped. "Well. Anyway, he's Lonnie. Thirteen and just the finest young man. Clean-cut and tolerant, which I find increasingly rare among heterosexual males." She looked at Tom. "Except you?"

"I'm not... well... heterosexual."

"Ah, that's my Tom."

"I'm not, either," said Walt. "Not even sometimes."

The Ironwords arrived. They were all heterosexual, although—like many a San Franciscan—they were intimately acquainted with gay life, partly through their gay friends but also through the simple day-to-day of a city swelling with a gay population. As Chris had warned, Philip (never Phil) Ironword said little and asked less. He drove. His wife, Neville, led the tour, pointing out places of interest (such as the precise spot on Sacramento where she saw over a hundred hippies in a conga line during the Summer of Love), Lonnie affably amending his mother's very personalized spiel with notes on the more traditional sites—Chinatown, Coit Tower, the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial, Mission Dolores, Nob Hill, the Haight.

Walt asked many questions. Tom was mostly silent, enjoying the ride but distracted by the realization that he would likely meet up with Luke that night at the theatre. Well, that's the history meter ticking out its jukebox romance, isn't it? That's fate. You're going to get it, one way or another. Chris has not mentioned Luke to Tom yet. But the guy lives here. He's Chris's friend. He won't miss her opening.

The Ironwords dropped Tom and Walt off at their hotel after the tour, promising to pick them up for the show.

"The theatre's just a few blocks away, but first nights are wonderful mob scenes," said Neville. "
Real
mob. We'll pick you up at seven-thirty. Right here? Outside?"

"Can do," said Tom.

As the car pulled away, Walt told Tom, "Lonnie's nice and you were quiet."

Tom put his arm around Walt's shoulder, knowing and unconcerned at once. Fuck 'em. This is my young cousin and I own him and love him and if you can't handle it... "I'm thinking," Tom told Walt, "about Luke."

Upstairs in the room, Walt expressed a life's dream of seeing what hotel room service was really like, so the two ate in, Walt poring over his volume of
What To See in San Francisco,
with insistent consultation of the enclosed map. Showered and changed, the two met the Ironwords downstairs and drove to the theatre, Tom's stomach going loop-the-loop while Walt and Lonnie discussed the movie
Carrie.

"I didn't like it," Neville said, when the boys took a pause. "It had too many villains."

"Yeah, but, Mom, the good people more than evened it out," Lonnie explained. "The good guys are stronger than the bad guys."

"I suppose," said Neville.

"Yeah," said Lonnie. "The witch always melts."

"In movies," said Philip. "And here we are."

"Wow," said Walt, looking out the window. "This is my first premiere."

Philip drove off to park as the four others went inside, Tom both looking and trying not to look for Luke. As costume designer for the show, Neville knew a lot of the first-nighters, and it took quite a while to work down the aisle to the seats. So they had scarcely settled in before the houselights went down and the curtain shot up on a view of the household of the Countess of Rousillon in full ceremony, the men clad in mesh tunics and black leather pants and the women in black prom dresses.

Deep in thought, Tom saw little of the show. He was preparing a diary entry in his head, something synoptic, to take him from his youth to now, an autobiography of feelings. He knew this much: that everything that happens in your life depends on the company you keep. Wrong company, wrong life. He knew this, too: that whether anyone in Gotburg liked it or not, Walt had not been sent to Tom to be cured. Walt had been sent to cure.

Tom was still in his thoughts as the lights came up for intermission and the others rose to stretch their legs.

"I see Luke," Walt whispered to Tom.

"Where?"

Walt pointed him out, way down front in the middle of a row, alone, standing, waiting for the people ahead of him to move so he could come up the aisle. He would pass right next to Tom and Walt.

"He looks wonderful," Walt whispered.

He looked, in fact, like a man who had been enjoying life to fulfillment yet was retaining something of value to look forward to: a man with achievements behind and hope before him.

"Your boy friend, after all this time," Walt whispered, as he and Tom stared at Luke's slow yet steady progress toward them.

"A little risqué, what?" said Neville to Tom. "But that's Chris, and it's why she's popular here. Everything in San Francisco is a little bit... Tom, you look white."

Tom nodded.

"Are you... What's wrong?"

Walt said, "The past is coming at us."

"It's... well, an old friend who I haven't..."

Neville looked around. "Where?"

Walt pointed.

Lonnie, next to Neville, leaned over and said, "You guys waiting for a bus, or something?"

Following Tom's and Walt's eyes, Neville scanned the aisle. Luke was about fifteen feet ahead of them, moving with the traffic, minding his business, unaware.

"Well, who is it?" asked Neville. "Not Luke? Do you... Or didn't Chris
say
that you three grew up together? Silly me, then. But how long... Oh."

With pardon and excuse me, two couples from the middle of their row edged past them into the aisle. Luke was almost within arm's reach now, Tom, Walt, and Neville watching and waiting.

Tom's heart was drumming. "We haven't spoken in ten years," he murmured to Neville.

"Good gravy."

"Hello, Luke," Walt piped up. "Remember me?"

It took Luke a few seconds to place Walt. Breaking into an incredulous smile, he reached out to shake Walt's hand, then—involuntarily but inevitably—Luke quickly turned to see what force of nature had invited this piece of his sorrowfully inconclusive past into his amiable present, and there was Tom.

Tom nodded.

For a long moment, Luke stood blinking at Tom. Then Luke nodded, too.

"Oh!" Walt cried.
"Now I remember the message!"

"F
INE, JOHNNY, IT'S your choice. You can stick with your script and have another of those evenings with the Jerrett Troy we know and enjoy, or you can let me direct your rewrite into a startling and worthy act of theatre. You choose," Chris concluded.

"You couldn't just stage the play," the Kid asked, "without becoming my Svengali?"

Chris shook her head.

"Say why."

"Because," she told him, "what you have now is a sketch. Sixty minutes of spoof on soap operas. And they'll clap, they'll laugh, and they'll forget it. If you develop the
backstage
of the soap, the way it caters to American hypocrisy yet, in strange ways, tries to reeducate it, and the way the real lives of the actors war with the roles they take on... well, you might make the audience think about the world, and that's what theatre should do to its audience."

The Kid sighed; but the Kid had, I have to say, written another of his parodies with music about nothing much. Chris was right; this one had potential.
The Truth of Our Lives Through the Guides of Our Light
featuredAuntie MacAssar, one of the Kid's cabaret avatars, as a suburban Ms. Fixit, derailing the haughty and bringing—really, slamming—young lovers together. There were the usual Jerrett Troy touches—Auntie's virginally lubricious tea with St. John Lord Ramsbottom, during which she pulled his zipper down, stuck a giant rubber dildo into his fly, then feigned horror as the other other tea ladies took notice. ("Sinjin Lawd Rayamsbotteum!" Auntie would proclaim, trapping the pretensions of an entire culture in a Name.) Or there was Auntie's duel for the title of Ultimate Hostess of Riverrun with Suspicia Pushmore, when both ladies attempt to ensnare that unanimously esteemed musician, Professor Fleshgobaldi, for their competing "evening soirees," and when Auntie counters one of Suspicia's sorties with a remote-operated whoopee cushion, deftly placed and replaced to haunt Suspicia no matter where she lights.

"Another thing," said Chris.

"Hell..."

"Well, if you want me to direct it, Johnny..."

He did. Chris had become not only one of San Francisco's most popular stage directors but an uncanny judge of material and a sound coach of actors.

"I don't like the use of old songs," Chris told the Kid. "What you've got here is a mini-musical. So
write
it. Get a composer and—"

"I've got a composer.
Maybe.
A young man is on his way over to—"

"Fine, now write the score with him. 'Someone to Watch Over Me' and 'Blue Room' are from another age. Johnny, this play is
new.
Don't hit-parade your public. Challenge them."

The Kid was silent, sulking. He hated being corrected. Still, this could be his chance at Major Work, evening-length, stimulating, innovative.

"How much nudity can I get away with?" the Kid asked.

"Mr. Troy?"

This was Walt, walking down the aisle of the theatre. "I'm Walt Uhlisson, we spoke on the phone about my doing the incidental music and so on for—"

"Well, well, well," murmured Chris.

"Young," the Kid rejoined. "They're always so
young
now."

"So I've brought some of my music to play, if you want to audition my—
Chris is here!"

"You
know
this?" the Kid asked Chris, as she and Walt shared a hug.

"We're from the same hometown," Chris explained. "Gotburg, Minnesota."

"Luke and Chris and my Cousin Tom were pretty much the social arbiters of the place," Walt added.

The Kid said, "Let's skip the reminiscing about Mooseturd and hear some music." As Walt moved to the piano, the Kid stopped him, a hand on his arm. "Tuneful," he said. "I want tuneful above all."

Walt plays. His stuff is stylish, a bit derivative but certainly tuneful. It reminds Chris of
The Boy Friend,
and that might be just what the show needs—"Heavy characters," she muses, "but a lighthearted score."

Finally, the Kid says,
"Good."
He takes Walt to lunch to talk about it. Walt listens well, smiles easily, and speaks with disarming, even battling, honesty. This is the Kid's third favorite kind of person. The first is the Hunk Who Whams and Slurps You All Night, the second the Big Macho Top Who's on His Back in Three Seconds.