Chapter Nine #4
burger, handing it to Laurie.
Laurie
thought he understood. They would have time, he thought. Time in
the future, when he had built a safe world for them. Sasha would
tell it all then. He reached forward and kissed him, making Sasha
groan in mock disgust and swipe with a serviette at the ketchup on
his mouth. Sasha asked him what role he’d landed, and Laurie, who
for all he loved him and was growing up in huge unsettling shocks,
was first and foremost an actor, with ego and benign self-obsession
to match, beamed in pride—here with Sasha, in the warmth, he could
take in his achievement for the first time—fell for the evasion,
and began to tell the story of his day.
* *
*
They lay
together in the single bed, entwined. They had begun the actions of
loving, and Laurie had so very nearly fallen asleep in the middle
of it that Sasha had commanded a postponement, laughing, drawing
the exhausted body close to his. Once Laurie had got over the
embarrassment of that, he had settled in Sasha’s embrace with an
almost overwhelming relief. The bed—ungenerous even for a
single—threatened to pitch him out with every move, but what he
wanted was to remain…to stay very still. From where he lay, he
could view his new world across the arm Sasha had wrapped around
his chest, a slender, lean-muscled horizon that rose and lightly
fell with his breathing.
He could
bear it, from here. The floodlights that lined the railway track
cast a pale luminescence into the room, filigreed by the bare tree
branches outside his window. The rumbling from the lines was almost
constant, but apart from the punctuating Doppler shrieks of the
express, it was a sound he could get used to, more akin to music
than machinery. Sometimes the overhead cables flashed, picking out
each fine hair on Sasha’s arm, bleaching his skin for an instant to
diamond white. Yes, he could bear it. “Sasha,” he murmured. “Move
in with me.”
He
thought for a few seconds that Sasha had fallen asleep, although
the rhythm of his breathing was shallow, still alert. Then he
stirred and lifted his head to look at Laurie, dark eyes uneasy.
“What?”
“Move in. Live with me.”
“Jesus, Laurie. Wait till I’m half-asleep, then…”
“Sorry. Did I stealth bomb you? I mean it, though, Sash. It’ll
solve…oh, it’ll solve all sorts of problems, won’t it? For you as
well as me.” Laurie heard the scrape of urgency in his own voice
and tried to back down. “I…I know I just got here.”
“Yeah, you did. Though”—Sasha paused, and Laurie wriggled
around so he could see the smile he had heard breaking in Sasha’s
voice—“though I like the nerve of the man who’d try to sublet his
sublet on the first night.”
“I wouldn’t be. Not technically. I…I wouldn’t want rent off
you. I’ve got a job. You could just—”
“I have a job too.”
The
smile was fading. Laurie, who for one instant thought he had put
his hand to this fruit he so badly wanted and pulled it straight
down off the tree, felt a pang of dismay. “I know,” he said. “But
I’m gonna be earning more, for a while. And it isn’t about that
anyway. I owe you everything. Please stay with me.”
“Laurie, wait. You want to find a safe place for your sister,
don’t you?”
Laurie
swallowed. He ran his fingers through Sasha’s hair, its luxuriant
warmth a contrast with the cheap nylon sheet they were lying on,
the chill of damp in the air. “Yes, but this isn’t it,” he
whispered. “I don’t know how I thought I could ever do that
anyway.”
“You couldn’t—not with an illegal living here.”
“That’s just what I don’t understand.” A voice inside Laurie’s
head told him to shut up, but fear was at work in him—and the
hopeless desire to make one thing fixed and certain in his shifting
world. “There was nothing legal in anything I did today, and look
how far I got. And you’re smarter than I am. I…I still don’t
understand why you don’t ask for asylum.”
“I told you. Things aren’t that simple for me.”
“What things?”
“I’ll tell you one day. You…you took my word for this
before.”
“I know, but—”
“Laurie.” It was soft and flat. Sasha’s hand spread out on
Laurie’s chest. His eyes had filled with pained shadows. He said,
very quietly, “Don’t push.”
The air left Laurie’s lungs. He held himself carefully still.
He could not speak: his shame was acute, and cold shock was
rippling through him. To incur even this much reproach from Sasha
was terrible to him, worse because he knew he’d deserved it. His
eyes stung, and he quickly closed them to hide the reaction. In the
burning dark, he heard Sasha whisper his name, voice rough with
remorse. He heard Sasha’s hoarse apology and wished he could speak
to tell him there was no need for it. He had been pushing, unable to accept
the miracle of Sasha here in his bed with him.
A warm, anxious mouth brushed his. “Laurie. I wish I could tell you every
fucked-up thing that had happened in my life. But I can’t. Some of
it hurts too much, and the rest…”
Laurie
opened his eyes. He was wide-awake now. He shook his head, denying
to Sash the necessity. Laurie seized him as he leaned to kiss him
again, and they went at one another fiercely, hard enough to drive
off this new demon. It was just the frantic shove of cock to
cock—echo of their first encounter, in a bed as strange to Sasha as
this one now was to Laurie—but the fire leaped high, running hotter
for their moment’s discord.
The bed
began to creak rhythmically beneath them, forcing both to brief
laughter. Sasha shoved the one thin pillow behind the headboard to
prevent it from slamming. He twisted back down into the bed and
rolled under, dragging Laurie on top. Laurie felt the intoxicating
lift of Sasha’s thighs, embracing his hips and then his waist, and
suddenly understood how they could fuck like this. But that was for
another time, if God sent them one, and from now on he was making
no assumptions. Sasha was emitting choked cries, writhing up
against him. He clasped at Laurie’s backside, pulling him into
place. Laurie thought they would come over straightaway, but on new
instinct both of them held off, gasping and struggling, clinging to
the safe side of climax, where thought was impossible and the world
a dream.
* *
*
Laurie
began life in this real world. On the first morning, he had barely
taken his jacket off in the spotlit dark of the Empire before Mr.
Jacobs appeared at his side, expression anxious. “Well?” he said to
Laurie, trailing him down the aisle. “Mrs. J nearly had me
convinced last night that I’d hired a fluke who just happened to
have learned a few good lines. And, incidentally, rejected half of
northwest London’s real young acting talent.”
Laurie
came to a halt. He loved the smell of velvet and dust that filled
old playhouses like this. He thought of all the time he had spent,
breathing this natural atmosphere, the only one that really fed
him, hiding in the shadows. He wondered at the transfiguring force
of necessity. He turned to Mr. Jacobs, one eyebrow on the rise, not
at all minding his qualms. “Is that what you think?” he
said.
“Well, you did get a tiny bit of warning yesterday of where to
shine in.” Jacobs shrugged half-apologetically. “But suppose I were
to say to you now—oh, I don’t know—the ghost scene, for example,
or—”
“The ghost scene.” Laurie smiled. Already he could feel the
chill in the air, the shiver in the roots of his hair as Elsinore’s
bleak halls prepared to unveil their secret. He put out a courteous
hand, gesturing to Jacobs to sit down, then dodged through the
orchestra pit and vaulted up onto the stage. Mr. Barnes, retired
accountant, was leaning on a crate in the wings, drinking his
coffee and having a glance at the Guardian. Laurie seized him gently by
both shoulders. He was meant to be Claudius, but Horatio’s lines at
this point were short and memorable, and Laurie was willing to bet
he’d have a go. He swung the man out onto the stage, coffee mug and
all. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” he cried, pointing
to an empty space in the air with such utter conviction that Barnes
gave a genuine shudder. Laurie skipped and abridged through to the
end of Hamlet’s horrified observations on the ghost—reduced
Shakespeare again—and delivered Barnes his prompt line, clutching
him in terror, as if both their lives depended on it. “It beckons
you to go away with it,” Barnes gasped, pointing too, knees
buckling a little, “as if it some impartment did desire to you
alone!” He stopped and looked at Laurie, plainly pleased with
himself. “I didn’t know I knew that.”
“You probably know it all,” Laurie told him, grinning. “It’s
just a case of being passionate—or scared—enough to get it out.” He
glanced around to Jacobs and saw that half a dozen actors and a
lady with a mop had also arrived to stare in apprehension at the
apparition he’d called up. Jacobs gave him a small bow, which he
briefly returned. If they had been soldiers, Laurie thought, they
would have exchanged a salute, one to another. He released Mr.
Barnes and stood quietly. “What would you like me to
do?”
Jacobs set him to work for the next three days with those
whose personalities did not unfathomably hive off into separate
Shakespearean entities upon demand. Laurie knew how it felt, to be
frozen with terror in the wings, and, aware that his own gift for
learning dialogue was almost preternatural, was willing to pass
long hours on the prompter’s stool, showing his talented but
high-strung little Ophelia how best to string concept to concept,
line to line, to get herself through her scenes. Even such nobles
as Gertrude and Claudius—hairdressers and solicitors by day—were
not too proud to drop by for these lessons, and Mr. Jacobs watched
in wonder as his hard-worked troupe began to give him back so
nearly accurate a version of Hamlet
as to make him believe they might actually be
ready for their opening night.
Each