Epilogue
People always talk about the magic of theater—how a song lyric can feel like it was written just for you, or how music can carry you to places you never knew you needed to go.
But few ever talk about the magic that is spun in the moments before a performance begins, the audience settling in, flipping through their Playbills, no one knowing exactly what the next couple of hours have in store.
The Nederlander Theater, that Sunday afternoon, was host to the usual set—bankers and lawyers and wealthy Upper East Siders, but also teachers and nurses who’d saved up for a special occasion, and bachelors on a third date, hoping their splurge would be suitably impressive, and fellow actors, there to support friends or to dream of one day having their own turn, and college students who’d discovered a song on a mixtape from a guy they’d forgotten to call back, and teenagers who felt lost in the hallways of their school but felt right at home wearing a pair of headphones, and two boys sitting in the front row, holding hands out in the open like it was no big deal, like it hadn’t cost them everything.
All the people in the theater that day were strangers, folks Danny’d pass on a crowded subway platform and never think about twice.
But when the lights dimmed, they’d be bound by the same story, the same music, all sharing the same silent agreement—to dream, to escape.
The show would never be exactly the same as it was that afternoon.
There would be a flubbed line, or a slightly pitchy note, or a note that had never been sung better.
And there was magic in that, Danny thought.
A magic that knit them together for one brief moment before scattering them back to their lives, the city swallowing them up once again.
Danny and Christian sat there in the front row, their noses still cold from a night spent outdoors, close enough to the stage that they could reach out and touch the sacred boards where Mimi and Roger and Mark and Angel would soon stand.
“What’s gonna happen after curtain call?” Christian murmured. “When everyone puts on their coats and heads back home?”
“I don’t know,” Danny replied.
“My mom says you can stay for the week, but what then?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Any idea what you’re gonna do about your family?”
“No.”
Christian held Danny’s hand tight. “Aren’t you scared, tough guy?”
Danny never got a chance to answer. Just then, the houselights dimmed, and the front two rows erupted into full-throated cheers.
But Danny knew the answer to Christian’s question right away.
He’d spent a whole year struggling to be sure of anything, but this time, he was certain.
He wasn’t scared. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d ever been less afraid.
Danny looked down at his lap, stealing one last glance before the theater went completely dark—he had a Playbill in one hand and Christian Geronimo’s hand in his other.
He was right where he was supposed to be. His future was finally in his hands.
Written in Sharpie on the wall outside the Nederlander Theater:
Danny + Christian, 1996
“Give in to love, or live in fear”