Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter
Twenty-Three
Danny’s father had lied about a lot of things.
That Central Park was filled with muggers, that Times Square was a place you could buy heroin and not discount theater tickets, that guns were hidden in every trench coat pocket and needles hidden in every coin-return slot, that every bum was only there to take your money and didn’t know a single George Gershwin standard.
New York, Danny had learned in the past six months, wasn’t the scary, godless place of his father’s urban legends. His father had lied about it all.
Except for the Port Authority Bus Terminal late on a Saturday night.
Danny shivered on the steps beneath the terminal awning, hugging his backpack close, watching men shoot up under the streetlamps and women with thigh-high boots squat between parked cars, waiting for a customer.
When Danny ran away from his home on Port Richmond Avenue, he’d used the only quarter in his pocket at the pay phone on the corner. There was only one person he could think of to call and only one place he could think of to go.
Where is he? Danny thought, the black tar worry spreading through his body. What if he doesn’t show? Why should he after everything Danny had done?
“Tough guy?” a voice said from behind him, sparking the cinder in his chest into the tiniest of flames.
Danny turned to find Christian wearing a big puffy parka, carrying two quilts and a Conway shopping bag filled with pillows.
“Whoa, you look like shit,” Christian said. If his expression was anything to go by, that was an understatement. “What the hell happened?”
Danny opened his mouth to answer, but his throat tightened.
How could he explain a ghost or an avalanche and where would he even begin?
The flower bouquet? The magazine? The cast party?
The ache of missing someone who was standing right there?
He tried to force a word—any word—to break through, but instead his breath hitched.
And then it came, sudden and raw, a sob that tore through him, crashing through the walls he’d spent an entire year building. Danny covered his face with his hands, shaking, the tears spilling out faster than he could stop them.
Christian said nothing, just stepped forward, closing the space between them, and wrapped his arms around Danny, pulling him in tight.
But these were more than just arms. They were wings.
Christian held him close, like a boy who’d never been held, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Danny Victorio felt safe.
When the tears finally slowed, when he could finally catch his breath, the words Danny finally managed to say were perhaps the four most simple.
“Thank you” and “I’m sorry.”
Christian’s wings spread apart, tucking themselves behind his shoulders for safekeeping. He smiled his chipped-tooth smile and handed Danny the bag of pillows and a quilt to wrap around his shivering shoulders.
“You really wanna do this?” he asked.
“Yes,” Danny replied without hesitation, wiping the snot and tears from his face. “Please?”
“Oh-kay,” Christian said, shaking his head. “You really couldn’t wait ’til April when it’s warmer?”
As luck would have it, their destination was only a block away from the bus terminal.
They turned down Forty-First Street, past boarded-up windows and graffitied scaffolding and black garbage bags piled high like dirty snowmen.
And that was when he saw it—the lime-painted walls and the sign bordered in a hundred incandescent bulbs, appearing on the horizon in a single blaze of glory.
The title—so simple, just four little letters.
And like other four-letter words, it made Danny’s heart sing.
The Nederlander Theater.
The Rent marquee.
There was already a line hugging the wall of the building, dotted with sleeping bags and blankets and the occasional camping tent.
This wasn’t a homeless encampment, even though walking a block in either direction, it wouldn’t be hard to find one.
The people waiting there weren’t down on their luck; rather they considered themselves among the luckiest in the world.
Most were about the same age as Christian and Danny, maybe a little older, all talking and laughing and sharing stories—which song was their favorite, whose autographs they had gotten.
How many times was too many times to see a Broadway show? Answer: The number didn’t exist.
Danny and Christian took their place at the end of the line next to a trio of girls pouring out coffee from a big chrome thermos.
“Do you want some cardboard to sit on?” the one with the hot pink bangs asked, holding out a folded box. “The sidewalk gets really cold at night if you just sit on the ground.”
“Oh, thanks,” Danny said, taking the flattened Chiquita banana box from her and laying it on the concrete.
They set up their nest of pillows and blankets beneath the lightbulb awning. They leaned against the lime-green walls where previous line dwellers had scrawled autographs and notes in permanent marker—“No day but today,” “VIVA LA VIE BOHEME,” “Jake Wuz Here,” “Marry me, Anthony Rapp!”
“You got here just in time,” another one of the girls piped up, this one wearing a white Rent hoodie and a pom-pom hat. “The line’s always the longest on Saturday nights and they only have rush tickets for the first two rows.”
Danny pulled the quilt up over their laps, making sure Christian was tucked in snugly.
“Can I just say,” the third girl chirped, bundled up tight in a ski jacket, “that you two are just so cute. Are you a couple?”
“No—” Christian began, but Danny cut him off.
“Not yet,” he replied. “Maybe someday. If I don’t fuck things up.”
Danny put his arm around Christian’s shoulder, pulling him close, letting his mop of hair snuggle into the crook of his neck.
There was a lot of ground for them to cover that night as they waited to buy their pair of twenty-dollar tickets. Danny had so many questions for Christian.
Would his parents let him crash on his floor until he figured things out? Probably. He’d call them first thing in the morning.
Was he ever gonna forgive him for being such a shitty friend, a shitty person?
Of course, but if he ever tried that bullshit again, he’d be out on his ass.
Could he promise that they’d never get sick?
No one could promise that, but there was always protection and a center on Fourteenth Street where they could get tested, together, if they were ever ready for that.
And Christian, in turn, had questions for Danny.
Had he slept with Nina that night at the cast party?
No, though he had really scared her, which was so much worse.
Did he truly not remember what happened at the Limelight?
Of course he remembered. He thought about it every second of every day.
What Rent song was he most looking forward to hearing?
Any song where he got to hold Christian’s hand.
“Hey, look!” a voice shouted from the line, pointing up to the sky where a scattering of white flakes caught the amber glow of the marquee.
“It’s beginning to snow,” Danny said, holding Christian a little closer every second.
“You know,” Christian said, smiling coyly, “I think there’s a lyric in Rent about this.”
“Hey, you’re right,” Danny said, laughing. “Wanna sing it to me?”
“Nah. How ’bout you sing it to me, tough guy.”
“I think”—Danny grinned—“it goes something like this…”
Danny reached around and guided Christian’s waist so that their knees were touching, just like they had that day at the Imperial Theater.
Danny’s hands glided up Christian’s shoulders, tracing lightning on his skin ’til his fingers found soft landing in the crook of his jaw.
Then, just as the lyrics told him, “Kiss me, it’s beginning to snow,” Danny did.
Danny’s lips parted softly with a warm gasp of air, and this time, he didn’t need a rehearsal.
He knew every move. Christian’s tongue felt warm and gentle with a faint aroma of orange Tic Tacs.
And when Danny reached back and pushed his fingers through the soft triangles of Christian’s hair, he remembered how on that first day they’d met, he’d wanted to reach out and mess them up, never knowing that one day he’d actually get to.
And for the first time since the turn of the century, when it was just being built; since the century before, when the cobblestones of Broadway were first laid; since the century before, when Manhattan was still a wilderness; Times Square fell completely silent—the swishing of sleeping bags, the laughter of friends, the honking of horns, the screeching of bus tires, the buzz of neon billboards, the thumping of nightclubs, the rumbling of the passing 7 train—all of them completely silent as Danny Victorio kissed Christian Geronimo, memorizing every taste, every touch, every breath, every millimeter of chipped tooth.