Chapter Three
There
was a strange man in the kitchen. Being quite used to this, Sasha
leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and watched,
smiling.
Just shy
of six feet tall, deep blue eyes. Hair of Gallic darkness, like
Marielle’s and Clara’s. A body beginning to fill out into its adult
shape, inclined to the skinny side if it didn’t get worked hard
enough to lay muscle onto its long bones. Sasha’s own Laurie, of
course.
With
everything shifted very subtly out of place. If Sasha didn’t know
better—if he’d walked through here as a stranger and been asked to
describe the man he’d seen—he might have sworn that a short,
slim-built blond was making breakfast. Nothing was happening at
quite normal speed. An omelette pan whisked out of the cupboard and
seemed to suspend itself in mid-air while the stranger whipped
round to the gas hob. The air blurred, and the stranger crossed the
room to the fridge in a dance-step that made Sasha want to laugh,
applaud and weep at the same time. Eggs appeared, three of them,
either in the stranger’s hands or mystically suspended in the weird
vibe of energy around him. The oil in the pan wasn’t quite ready
yet, so he casually tossed one egg into the air. Caught it in his
fingertips with a tender dexterity that wouldn’t have woken a chick
inside, threw the next and the next and began to juggle them. “What
wouldst thou have of me?” he enquired, except that—somehow—the
voice wasn’t his, and seemed to have come by a twist of acoustics
from the far side of the room.
The
stranger answered himself thoughtfully, not missing one beat with
his eggs. “Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine
lives...” He backed up casually towards the counter. A reckless,
taunting grin began to light his face. “...that I mean to make bold
withal, and as you shall use me hereafter, drybeat the rest of the
eight.”
The eggs
were gone. No—Sasha had time to note that they were safely on the
counter top, lined up in a row. A knife whistled out of the wooden
block. The stranger turned the air to fractured mist again and was
suddenly poised in front of Sasha, blade in hand. “Come, sir, your
passado!”
Sasha
raised a palm. “I’ll... pass on the passado, if that’s okay,” he
said unsteadily. The tip of the long butcher’s knife was hovering
an inch from his skin. “Who are you being?”
Laurie
frowned. Tybalt and the hot streets faded away. “Doomed youth of
Verona. Mercutio, of course.”
“Be my Laurie for me.”
Sasha had never asked such a thing before. The shock of it
slackened Laurie’s fist around the knife. He laid it on the table
behind him. His roles, his transformations, never took him
away from Sasha. Nothing
ever could. Sasha understood that, didn’t he?
But
Mercutio wasn’t Laurie. Didn’t see with Laurie’s eyes—had only
taken in the handsome sight of Sash on a weekend morning, fresh
from the shower, in a pair of faded jeans and the cashmere sweater
Laurie had given him long ago. Mercutio hadn’t noticed that the
calm, amused brown gaze was shadowed. That there were hollows under
his eyes—that his veneer was poorly concealing a punch-drunk
exhaustion. “God,” Laurie said softly, stepping forward to wrap him
in his arms. “You had a hell of a night.”
“Gave you one too,” Sasha responded, his voice hoarse with a
scream he couldn’t remember but could still hear racketing round in
his brain. He squeezed the fabric of Laurie’s shirt, glad to feel
beneath it strong deep-sprung ribs, not Mercutio’s narrow little
frame. Over Laurie’s shoulder he saw letters lying open on the
table top. “I gather you got your part.”
“Never mind me and my parts. Sash, your next appointment with
Doc Matthews...”
“The one we were going to cancel?”
“That’s the one.”
Sasha
closed his eyes. “I guess we’re keeping it, aren’t we?”
“Maybe we’d best. I know you’re fine during the day, but...” He
paused, listening. “Oh, fuck! The pan!”
The oil
had just caught light. Crackling and an acrid stink filled the
kitchen. Ancient lessons acquired from the Fitzroy family cook’s
well-worn Mrs Beeton flashed through Laurie’s head—he’d been going
through a phase of reading anything that came to hand, and Gibson’s
basement kitchen had been a refuge to him. “Wet towel!” he gasped,
diving for the drawer. “Asbestos blanket. No, wait—is that for an
oil fire, or—”
Sasha
shouldered him aside. He pulled the tab off the handle of their
compact, state-of the art kitchen fire extinguisher, took aim and
neatly sprayed the burning pan with foam.
“Shit,” Laurie commented mournfully, when the fizzing and
popping had died down enough for the sound of birdsong to seep
through the windows. “That was my best omelette pan.”
“Well, do us both a favour next time and make
toast.”
***
Their
weekend morning resumed. With both the kitchen windows open wide to
disperse the haze of smoke, peace settled quickly, a city silence
Sasha loved. Their flat was on the second floor, and traffic noise
and human voices came to him filtered by height and distance.
Windows he could close if he wanted to, walls of his own...
Whatever contagion of exhibitionism he had caught from Laurie last
night, it was gone, leaving him wondering at himself. He really
would have let everything happen on the steps outside.
This
morning he was only too glad of his bright, safe interior. Across
the table, Laurie was sitting in a patch of sunlight, as if nature
had arranged for a spotlight to follow him home and watch him
butter his toast. Sasha’s heart filled with pleasure at the sight
of him. Could they manage not to leave the house again today? They
could catch up on lost sleep, make love in the shower. They had all
the groceries they needed. Monday was Sasha’s day off, and maybe he
could swing it so he didn’t have to leave his fortress at all
until...
Until
his appointment with Dr Matthews. Laurie glanced up as if Sasha’s
pulse of anxiety had travelled palpably through the sunlight to
reach him. Sasha gave him a smile, reached a foot out till their
bare toes made contact. Sasha didn’t mind the visits to the clinic
at all. Laurie always offered to wait outside while Olivia talked
with him, and Sasha always told him to stay. The fact was that his
presence or absence made no difference. Olivia was sincere and
benign, and about as much help as an aspirin for the plague. Sasha
went along to please Laurie, loving him for having sought out and
paid for what he believed was the best. Well, he was right—no-one
could do better. Sasha was happy to sit and chat for an hour,
carefully answering Olivia’s careful questions. When it came to his
nightmares, though, setting them out before this civilised woman
was impossible. Sasha gave her the edited version, the parts she
wanted to hear.
“The odd thing is,” Laurie said, reaching for the marmalade, “I
didn’t get the Mercutio part after all.”
Sasha
came back to surface. Laurie’s toes were stroking the sensitive
arch of his foot, and this statement didn’t seem to match the
happy, sensuous action. “What? Oh, I’m sorry, love, I know how
much—”
“Nope. They want me to be Romeo.”
Sasha
burst out laughing. He crumpled up Sir Ralf’s crested envelope and
chucked it at Laurie’s head. “Bastard. I was all ready to support
you through your disappointment.”
“I know.” Laurie did
know, and was briefly ashamed of having called up
that vast, loving spirit on a false alarm. “No need, though.
Anyway, I’m not worthy. Eat your toast.”
Sasha
got up. He went round the table, stood behind his chair and hugged
him. “I’m so proud of you.” He kissed one ear tip, making Laurie
shiver and rub against him like a cat. “But didn’t you audition for
Mercutio?”
“Yes, but their pick for Romeo was late. I might’ve done his
lines as well. Just to help out, you know.”
“How late was he, Laurence?”
Laurie
grinned seraphically. “Oh, a good thirty seconds. He said somebody
left a prop trolley wedged against his dressing-room
door.”
“You didn’t...”
“No!” Laurie flashed him an indignant glance. “I just act ’em
off the stage. If they can’t get there in the first place, that’s
their own problem.”
“Well, however you managed, it’s brilliant.
Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” Laurie said sincerely, and gave him a buttery
kiss. “But to be honest I’d rather have got the other role. Or
Tybalt—especially Tybalt. Or even Juliet. She’s a grand girl,
bigger balls than all the lads put together. Romeo’s a fool and a
bore.” He sighed, comically languid, and leaned his head back onto
Sasha’s shoulder. “Ah, typecast again!”
Sasha
snorted. “You clown. Listen, don’t do it if you don’t want. I bet
you could make them give you Mercutio—I mean, having met him and
all.”
“Met him?”
“I didn’t find Romeo juggling my breakfast this morning, did
I?”
“No. Romeo can’t make an omelette.”
“Nor can Mercutio, if you’ll forgive my saying so. Not without
setting fire to the eggs.”
Laurie
shook his head sadly, fanning away imaginary remnants of smoke.
“That gallant breakfast hath aspired the clouds. You know what I’d
really like to do? Look at this.”
He
pushed back the chair beside his and gently dumped Sasha into it.
Sasha went down willingly, quite used by now to such expert
manhandling, enjoying the sensation of being in his hands. He’d
seen Laurie catch men twice his weight in stage fights: that lean
frame concealed a formidable strength. “Look at what? This
leaflet?”
“Yes, this poor scrap being outshone by Sir Ralf’s heraldic
letterhead. It’s a request for me to do a benefit night. Tiny
little outfit called the Plain-an-Gwarry Players, off in wild West
Cornwall.”
“Plain-an-Gwarry?”
“Yeah. A kind of open-air theatre, hundreds of years old, or
the idea of it is. They’re trying to revive Celtic mystery plays.
This one’s up on a hilltop near the sea—some kind of hippy
eco-farm.”
Sasha
took the leaflet from him, ran a fingertip over the photos.