Chapter Four
In your hands, if I want to be.
Laurie sat across the table from his manager and thought hard about
it. He wasn’t sure at all. “Damage control,” Arnold was still
muttering. Sasha had come to sit at Laurie’s elbow, reminding him
of long afternoons spent in their classroom in the garret of Sir
William’s house. When Laurie had been a student, and Sasha a secret
prince...
“I’ve got an idea,” Laurie said suddenly. “For damage control.
I don’t want Allie to retract anything she said, so why
don’t we say
something?” Arnold looked up from the paper, surprised that his
protégé had come up with anything so practical. “Why don’t we give
out some kind of press release, saying that I’m not only gay but in
a committed relationship?”
Arnold’s
face fell. “How do you imagine that would help? They already know
you’re...” He hesitated, the word catching in his throat.
“Gay.”
“Not really. You’ve never really let me make it clear. So they
speculate, and whichever story they write—I’m gay, I’m
straight—it’s a scandal. If I just stand up there and tell the
truth, at least they won’t be trying to dig up something they think
I want to hide.”
“Laurence, you’re missing the point. The papers won’t care if
you’re in a relationship, and...” And
neither do I, Arnold wanted to add, but
sensed how foolish that would be at this time and place, Fitzroy
flashing sapphire at him from those expressive eyes and the
Romanian boy there beside him, composed and hard to read but
staunch as bedrock. “And the point is that you can’t afford to
become the type of actor who interests these damn tabloids in the
first place. Not a celeb,” he clarified, squeezing the
label with contempt off his tongue. “I don’t even know how this
happened. With respect, you’re obscure in pop-culture terms.
Boring, as far as the Star
is concerned. No offence.”
“None taken.” Laurie bit back a smile. “You’re right. This
reporter had a personal grudge, that’s all. I called him a few
names at a Pride march.”
“Well, this is what I mean.” Folding his hands on the table,
Arnold leaned forward. “Listen. No Pride marches, no name-calling,
no pissing off the gutter press. And no brave statements about our
sexuality either. Once we’re out, we’re out, and to be brutally
honest, we don’t want to make a feature of that.”
Laurie tried not to recoil. Something in Arnold’s final
that had stung him like a
whip. He hadn’t encountered anything like it since leaving home.
Sasha’s knee pressed his beneath the table, and Laurie, suddenly
wary of any concealment, took his lover’s warm hand in plain sight
on top of it. “Why the hell not?”
“I’ve seen it happen a dozen times, even with the best actors.
You can get typecast. We don’t want you playing Charles and
Sebastian for the rest of your life.”
Laurie shifted restlessly. Sasha let go his hand before Laurie
knew for himself that he wanted to be on his feet, in motion,
pacing away from the outburst he could feel building in his chest.
Between Arnold, Alison, Bertram, burnt pans and Sasha’s bad dreams,
he was just about ready to jump out of his skin. “It might be
beyond even my gifts,” he said lightly, slipping around behind Arnold’s back
and rattling coffee cups, “to play Charles and Sebastian at the
same time.” But his own words threw down the gauntlet. For Sasha’s
amusement—the brown eyes were on him, way too concerned—he assumed
a pose of thoughtful, deeply repressed English passion by the sink.
Then he unhooked Clara’s set of keys from the rack, clutched the
little teddy bear she used as a key ring, and became dissolute and
fragile. “Hmm. Or maybe I can.”
“Laurence, I don’t know what you’re doing back there, but stop.
This is serious. The theatrical establishment isn’t imaginative.
I’m not about to have you trapped forever in Brideshead—or musical
adventures from the sexy youth of Oscar Wilde...”
“Oscar?” Laurie shook his hair a little. A side parting
appeared. His sculptured features took on a certain sensual weight.
By this time Sasha was fighting to keep a straight face, so Laurie
laid off, satisfied. “Look, Arnie. I don’t even want to come out as
gay, not particularly. Everybody knows anyway, and it’s not the
point.” He slipped lithely round to the other side of the table and
hitched himself onto it, squeezing Sasha’s shoulder. “I want to
come out as off the market. Married. Then everybody will know where
they stand, and there’ll be no more fuss.”
“Married,” Arnold repeated. “To...”
“To Sasha, of course.” Laurie grinned at his lover, who was
watching him open-mouthed, his eyes a dilated blank. “Well,
sweetheart? Isn’t it about time?”
“It is not the
time!” Arnie thumped a fist down so hard that the cups leapt in
their saucers. “Laurence Fitzroy, you hired me as your manager. If
you won’t heed my advice in that role, I can’t take responsibility
for... Good holy Christ, is that letter from Ralf
Evans?”
“Sir Ralf,” Laurie responded, his
effort at comic reproof a fragile one. Sasha was still watching
him, and Laurie knew he’d crossed a line, though of what nature he
wasn’t yet sure. “A little respect, Arnie. Please.”
“But this is offering you the part of Romeo.”
“That’s right.”
“At the Barbican? Romeo and Juliet?”
“Just Romeo on this occasion. Sir Ralf’s not
unreasonable.”
Arnold
spread the letter out. His expression was an extraordinary blend of
chagrin and hungry delight. “I didn’t put you up for this
audition.”
“Course not. It’s way out of my league.” Laurie shrugged. “I
only went along for a laugh. I didn’t think I’d get past
security.”
“But you got it. You’re going to be Sir Ralf Evans’ Romeo.”
“If I accept, yes.”
Arnold exhaled. He folded forward over the table, breath still
leaving him in a long, whooshing sigh. To Laurie’s alarm, he began
to bang his forehead off the woodwork. “If
you accept,” he echoed, looking up at
length, his face a shade of puce not normally attained by human
skin. “If you...
Laurence. Darling boy. Make your press release. Marry your
boyfriend—at St Paul’s if you want—I’ll ring the fucking bells
myself. Do any fucking thing you want to do, but take... this...
part.”
Laurie
sat with folded arms, his attention fixed on Sasha. “You know
what?” he said quietly after a moment. “There’s been more drama in
this kitchen this morning than the Queen’s and the Barbican put
together. Arnold, don’t you have somewhere else you need to
be?”
“What? Oh!” Arnold sprang to his feet. “Yes, of course. You
want to be alone, to talk about... hell, I don’t know. Wedding
favours. Guest lists. I’m out of here. Gone.”
***
Laurie
returned cautiously to the kitchen. He’d locked the outer door
against further traffic. His palms were damp, his chest tight.
Sasha was there where he had left him. The Sunday morning world was
the same, and yet Laurie knew that if he’d done anything to hurt or
displease him, the sunlight and the birdsong would fall into
shadows and dust. He leaned against the wall: said, experimentally,
“I do believe I might fire Arnie Hamlin.”
Sasha
looked up. They seldom fought, he and Laurie. Sasha had lived for
too long on the streets to be precious about interior decor,
restaurant choices, any of the things their friends would squabble
over, and to pick a fight with Laurie—Sasha had never tried, but
he’d seen others do it—was like attempting to provoke a
good-humoured chameleon. As for their serious issues, these had
been resolved amid bloodshed and gunfire two years before. They had
simply lived together. Their peace and mutual devotion had made
them the wonder of those same quarrelsome friends. Theirs was an
age for restlessness, playing the field, wild oats. “Don’t do
that.” Sasha cleared his throat, which seemed to have got clogged
with London summer dust, or pollen from the plane trees outside.
“At least—do whatever’s right, but not because of any effect you
think he might have had on me.”
“Didn’t he have one? I’ve been trying to ignore the fact, but
he’s a homophobe.” Laurie looked back over the scene. “Fire him? I
should’ve slung him out the window.”
“You’d have had to pick him up first. By the time you’d found a
fork-lift truck, the spontaneity would’ve been gone.”
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m angry. How dare he talk about us—our
relationship—like that?”
“I don’t care how he talks about it. I care about how
you do.” Sasha got up.
The movement was as quiet as his words, but still Laurie’s blood
ran cold. “Don’t throw it around like that again. Not about us
getting married.”
“Fuck.” Laurie pressed his fingers to his lips. “I didn’t mean
anything by it, Sash.”
“Does that make it better? If you were joking—”
“I wasn’t. I wouldn’t.”
“Well, if you were serious, that’s the last way I’d ever want
to hear about it. Okay?”
Shame
broke over Laurie in a cold wave. He replied in a whisper, tears
rising. “Okay.”
Sasha almost knocked the table over in the rush to get to him.
Laurie sprang forward from his refuge by the wall and they met in a
bone-bruising clutch. Laurie knew enough Romani now to understand
that he was being called every kind of sweet beloved idiot in the
world, and if he could have talked he would have returned that to
Sasha, or the beloved part anyway, the soft, rough ves’tacha that melted the pain out
from around his heart, slackened his joints and made him want to
weep like a kid. But his mouth had got him into enough trouble
already. He pressed it to the side of Sasha’s neck, passionately
grateful when Sash too fell silent, words breaking up into frantic
kisses.
It was
Sunday. Both could yield to the impulse to take this rare conflict
and wear it away in the bedroom. Sasha detached himself after a
moment, smiling weakly. “Wait a minute. Arnie gives me the cold
sweats—I think I need another shower.”
Laurie watched him go. The kitchen was reverberant with the
people and passions that had swept through it that morning.
Distractedly he began to gather up the debris of newspapers and
post. The Star—Arnie’s copy and the one pushed through his door by whichever
kindly wellwisher it had been—he consigned to the recycling bin,
wishing he could chuck it on a fire. The Guardian he would keep, to clip out
Clara’s review and read it in more detail.
Reviews. There was the page Sasha had been reading from.
Laurie knew better than to look, but a pleasing scatter of
superlatives gleamed up at him, and he scanned the article. There
was another, shorter one beneath it—the Opposition View the paper
occasionally ran, when someone in the public eye was garnering more
than his fair share of praise and approval.
Laurie had never anticipated being sufficiently popular to
qualify. It took him a long moment to realise that the three brief
paragraphs referred to him. Fitzroy
continues to cast his inexplicable spell over the West End.
Inexplicable to this critic, at any rate, who last night sat
through yet another forced, overwrought performance by the
hothoused darling of...
“Laurie?
He
flipped the paper closed. There in the doorway was Sasha. The
shadows of the hall did not conceal that he was naked. He had been
such a frail, skinny lad when Laurie had first known him, and never
would carry much weight. He was healthy now, though. His skin was
the same warm brown that had entranced Laurie from his first sight
of it, the colour of wet sand in sun. His cock was erect, his
nipples taut, and he was dusky, damson-shaded in these places, as
if the blood under the fine tissues there was richer than wine.
“Laurie. Come back to bed with me.”
Laurie tore his shirt off over his head. Wardrobe assistants
loved him: no-one got more deftly out of one costume ready for the
next. He unfastened his belt, stripped off his jeans, lithely
kicking out of them between long strides across the kitchen floor
to reach his lover. The briefs went next, unhooked with a thumb,
pulled down and tossed over his shoulder. Sasha broke into joyously
scandalised laughter and caught him, tangling with him, capturing
their stiff shafts between their bodies. “Do I take it that’s
a yes,
then?”
“Yes. For God’s sake, yes. And let’s never open the door to
anybody else ever again.”