“Sure.” Tommy backed out of the driveway.
They did not speak for a few minutes. Then Reeder said,” “You’re not a bad driver, at that. Ever done any racing?”
“Never had a chance. When I was a kid, there was a lot of dragging on the streets, but that always seemed a damn silly game. Anyhow, I never had a car of my own. When I was overseas, I went up to Le Mans to watch a race, but I’m not much to sit around and watch things. Anyhow, I knew I wasn’t in that class.”
“Me neither. I’ve thought sometimes I’d like to get behind the wheel of one of those Grand Prix one-seaters, but I know my limits. I did ride with Tony Rogers as a passenger twice in the Mille Miglia. though.”
“I wouldn’t think that would be much better than watching.”
“Goes to show you don’t know much about it. It’s the only way you can get into a race if you’re not a driver, and believe me, nobody’s going to want you in his car if you don’t know just exactly what you’re doing there. You have to put every pound of your weight right where it will do the most good for your driver.” He chuckled. “Come to think of it, the way Tony checked me out before the race was not too different from the way Matt checked me over before he let me up on the flying rig the other day! I guess an expert is an expert, whatever his art is.”
“Art?”
“Oh, sure. Racing is an art, like any other. You need talent, and skill, and special training, like ballet. Or flying. Or even playing the fiddle, I guess. And after all that, you need that little something extra. I quit ballet because I didn’t have that little something extra. I’d never have been more than just competent as a dancer, and competent isn’t good enough in ballet.”
Tommy thought about that as he steered the car onto the freeway and accelerated to merge with the traffic. “Matt said something like that once.”
“Tom, what’s wrong with Matt?”
Had Reeder sensed it, too? “That row he had with Johnny? That doesn’t mean anything. He and Johnny fight all the time about some trick or other.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Bart. “I mean, what’s wrong with him? Tom, I’ve known him ten, twelve years. I used to see him dancing and think, That kid’s got something very special. You think I can’t tell?”
For a moment loyalty held Tommy silent. Then the older man could hear the desperate concern in his voice as he said, “Bart, I just don’t know. It’s like a light’s gone out. I don’t know what to make of it, and it scares hell out of me.” Hearing his voice shake, Tommy shut up cold. “Which one of these exits do I take?”
“Third after this one.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. “Want to tell me about it, Tom? I’ve known him a long time and—as you probably guessed—I used to be pretty fond of him. Still am, really. I could probably understand better than most people, too.”
Tommy swung into the exit, almost intolerably tempted. Reeder was an older man, himself homosexual, an old friend of Mario’s and capable of understanding at least something of their common concerns. And it had been so long since there had been anyone to whom he could talk freely.
Tommy thought, Angelo would have been perfect. But I can’t talk to Angelo, not about this. He stopped the car in front of the house Reeder indicated. “Like I told you, it’s like a light’s gone out. Maybe it’s just because he can’t get back to doing the triple.”
“I was right about you two, wasn’t I? You’re lovers.”
In all the years, Tommy had never heard it put like that, very simply, with complete acceptance. He suddenly felt he could begin to cry from sheer relief. “Yeah. Since I was a kid.”
“That’s a long time for a couple to stay together.”
“Is it? Maybe. I guess I don’t know all that much about how it is with other people.” He had never, Tommy thought, really cared to know. Hesitating, searching for words, he told Reeder how he had searched, how he had found Mario, gaunt, withdrawn, a shadow of his old self. “It was good, for a while. Only while we’ve been rehearsing this show he’s been going down and down. I’d have thought maybe he was getting sick of flying, only you heard what he said to Johnny today. If just talking about flying can do that for him . . . I’m wondering if what I did—oh, God, Bart, I feel guilty because it’s like I beat all the life out of him.”
“I don’t quite know what you mean,” Bart said guardedly. “Is either of you”—he hesitated—“involved—in sadism?” At Tommy’s look of bewilderment he elucidated carefully: “Does either of you—have to get hurt to—to get your kicks? Do you go in for—for whipping each other, tying each other up, that kind of thing?”
“Good God, no!” Tommy blurted. “I never heard of anything like that! That’s not what I mean. It’s—well, whenever he used to get real down, he’d take it out on me by picking a fight over nothing, and wind up beating me up. And—and—it didn’t even make him feel any better; it just made him tear himself up worse. So a few days ago he started to pick a fight over nothing, and I—I got sore and beat the stuffing out of him. I’m stronger than he is now. I don’t know, but maybe my turning things around like that, maybe he couldn’t take it, maybe—maybe he didn’t know it, maybe it was something like—like you said—Bart, did I do the wrong thing? If he needed to beat me up—”
Bart shook his head slowly. “I know what a nervy bastard he is. You certainly couldn’t be expected to hold still for being beaten up every time he had some kind of a nerve storm. If he got a kick out of doing it, you’d have known.”
“I keep wondering,” Tommy said shakily, “maybe now I’m grown up—I know there are some men just go for kids. I keep wondering if finding out that I’m grown up turned him off me—if now that I’m a man, and not a boy, he doesn’t want me anymore. Only we’re partners, Bart. The other stuff, if he wanted to get himself another boy—oh, hell, sure I’d care, I love the guy, but I could get along. I just want to see him all right again, see him the way he was. The way he ought to be. I love him,” he said helplessly, swallowed, and fell silent.
“I can see that.” Bart’s voice was gentle. “It doesn’t happen all that often to guys like us.”
“I don’t want to leave him. If I wasn’t there, it would be just the family. And they drive him nuts. He’d walk out again, and God knows where he’d wind up this time. He was in jail in some god-awful place down on the Mexican border. He won’t talk about it, but it must have been pretty awful. I don’t know why in hell I’m telling you all this—there’s nothing you can do about it, either!”
Bart put his hand gently over Tommy’s. “All you can do is just what you’re doing now.”
“Only I’m not doing anything now,” Tommy said, “and that’s what kills me.”
“Oh, yes, you are,” Reeder said. “You’re there, and he can trust you. And if he makes it at all, that’s going to be why he makes it, whether he knows it or not. You stick with him, Tom.” He glanced at the house. “You want to come in for a drink?”
Tommy hesitated, and Bart said, “No. Not this time. In the shape you’re in, you wouldn’t appreciate it, and—and maybe you better not leave him alone too long. If he’s full of codeine and whiskey he’s probably all right, but maybe you ought to be there when he wakes up—”
“Bart, what are you trying to say?”
Reeder’s mouth was a tight line. “I’m not trying to scare you. But the suicide rate—for us—is about twenty times what it is for—for ordinary people. When I see somebody looking the way Matt did this afternoon, I get twitchy about it. He doesn’t have a gun, does he? Does he take sleeping pills?”
“Christ, no—I never even knew him to take aspirin before.”
“And I know he doesn’t drink. Okay, but it wouldn’t hurt you to stick kind of close to him for a few days.” He laughed and released Tommy’s hand. “And if I asked you in I’d probably try to make you,” he added with the light-heartedness Tommy now knew to be a mask assumed at will, “and right now you wouldn’t get much of a kick out of it. You’d better
get back to him.”
Tommy switched on the ignition again. “Thanks, Bart. I feel better, just talking about it.”
“I know. There have been times I’d have given my ears, just for somebody to talk to,” Reeder said, sober again. “We all need it. It’s why so many of us hang around the bars. Tom, here, let me give you my number. It’s unlisted, but you call me any time.” He drew Tommy close, briefly, in a gentle hug. “I’ll see you Thursday,. okay?” He opened the door and got out. Then he came around the car to Tommy’s side, stopped by the open window, and took Tommy’s face between his hands.
“You’re a lovely boy,” he said. “When things are better with you, we’ll talk about this again. All right?” He leaned in the window and deliberately kissed Tommy on the mouth, then let him go and walked away up the driveway.
CHAPTER 8
The television spectacular, Flight Dreams, was to be broadcast live from the winter quarters of the Starr Circus just before Easter. Ten days beforehand Johnny called them all together.
“Something we left too long,” he said, “is how do we bill this thing? ‘John Gardner presents’—that’s how I sold the thing. How are we going to use your names?”
“I took it for granted it was going to be Flying Santellis.”
Johnny said, “Matt, any way you slice it, the regular circus is dead. It’s been dead for years, only people didn’t know it yet. People like Papa Tony—well, maybe it’s as well they didn’t live to see it.”
“Good God, Johnny,” Mario said, “I thought the Santelli tradition was one of the things you wanted!”
“I did,” Johnny said, “and I do, but I’m not going to keep on living in the nineteen thirties, either. We’re in a new age. The Atomic Age, maybe even the Space Age. Right now, if you want to, I’ll bet you five hundred bucks we get a man on the Moon, or maybe the Russians do, before the year two thousand.”
Mario chuckled. “If you weren’t my brother I’d take you up on that. Make some money for my old age.”
“Well, I’ll remind you, if we both live that long. But that’s a long way off. I thought I’d bill it this way: ‘John Gardner presents Stella Gardner, Matthew Gardner, Tommy Zane.’ If you want to argue over Stella getting top billing, you two can flip a coin. Okay?”
Mario shook his head. “My professional name is Mario Santelli. That’s the name I worked under with Starr’s, and for all your talk about the circus is dead—and I think it’s a damn lively corpse, myself—your television audience is going to be partly circus fans. A lot of them will be tuning in because they remember that name, and I’m going to stick with it.”
“Me, too,” Tommy said. “I called myself Tommy Santelli from the first time I went on with the act.”
Johnny pressed his lips tight together and said, “I could have expected that. Every damn time you say anything, Matt, Tommy pipes up like Little Sir Echo. Why in hell don’t you ever let him speak for himself?”
Mario opened his mouth to speak, but Tommy beat him to it.
“Knock it off, Johnny. Matt and I are partners—we’ve been doing duo routines since I was a kid. Maybe I’m superstitious about changing the name, but anyway, Matt and I, we’re the Flying Santellis, and that’s the way you bill us, take it or leave it. Right, Mario?”
“Damn right.”
Johnny slammed the table with his fist. “God damn it! The one thing I want is to get away from that old-country, family-circus image!”
“I wish Lucia could hear you say that,” Mario snapped angrily.
“I don’t give a damn—” Johnny began, then broke off, sighing. “I don’t want to hurt Lu. But times have changed. When she was flying—that was another world.”
“Sure. Lots of things have changed. We change, too. But why not keep the name, the tradition, the goodwill—all the good publicity the Santellis built up over fifty, sixty years? You’re in show business, Jock, you know what that’s worth.”
Johnny shrugged. “Have it your own way. ‘John Gardner presents Stella Gardner and the Flying Santellis’? That what you want?”
Stella, who had listened intently, spoke for the first time. “Johnny, I think Matt’s right. Keep your credit line, if you want to. But make it ‘John Gardner presents the Flying Santellis.’ That’s what it ought to be.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Stella!” Johnny exploded, but she silenced him with a quick gesture.
“Look, Johnny. When you brought me here, they took me right into the family. Papa Tony treated me just like he did Liss or Barbara. We’re not a lot of stars, Johnny. We’re a family. A family act. And I’m part of it.” She bit her lip and Tommy saw her mouth tremble.
Johnny looked at her in astonishment. Then, as if he had forgotten for a moment that Tommy and Mario were there, he took her hand in his and held it, hard. After a minute he raised it to his lips and kissed it. It was so intimate a gesture, somehow, that Tommy turned his eyes away, embarrassed.
“Does that mean so much to you, babe?”
Her voice was shaking so hard that for a moment Tommy thought she would burst into tears. “What else have I got, Johnny? If I’m not part of the family, what was it all for?”
“Baby. Baby.” Johnny put his arms around his wife and held her close. “If that’s what you want, that’s what you’re going to get. Okay, you guys, it’s the Flying Santellis, then. Because what Stella wants, Stella gets, as far as I’m concerned.” His voice, angry and belligerent, dared them to say one word.
Tommy’s own relief was tempered by something he recognized as purely selfish. As long as he and Mario were simply two members of a family act, it was highly unlikely that any hint of old scandal would touch them.
Bart Reeder came in that afternoon jubilant. “It’s official now, fellows,” he said. “My agent just signed me for the Parrish movie. They’re going to be doing some of the stock shots down at Starr’s winter quarters. Isn’t that where you people are doing the television thing?”
“Way down in the boondocks,” Johnny confirmed. “Out in Orange County.”
“Who cares?” Reeder said. “I’m just glad I don’t have to go on location down in Texas or someplace like that.”
“Me, too,” said Mario. “I’ve had it with Texas.”
“Is there going to be any kind of live audience for the television thing?” Bart asked. “Any chance I could get a seat?”
Johnny shrugged. “Sure. We’re going down a couple of days early to get our riggings set, have a day or two to rehearse on site, get used to the lights, and stuff. You could come down with us for the final rehearsal.”
“And if they see us a lot together,” Bart said, “they’re all the more likely to think Flying Santellis for the doubling in the Parrish movie.”
“Right,” Johnny said, “if Matt ever gets back the goddamn triple!”
Mario had promised Bart that he could try a cross to the catcher today. He put him into a mechanic, and sent Tommy over to catch for him, rather than summoning Johnny. Despite the help of the mechanic, Reeder missed, and fell heavily, the first five times he tried it, and Tommy found himself admiring the man’s courage. Flying had come so easily to Tommy that he had never really stopped to think what a dangerous business it was.
When they knocked off for a brief rest, Tommy asked him, “Why the hell are you doing this, Bart? They’re going to double it, for the movie.”
Bart said, lightly, “Vanity, perhaps. Don’t want to admit there’s something I can’t do.”
“That’s not a very good reason,” Tommy said.
“Maybe not,” Bart said, “but it’s all the reason I’ve got”
Mario, a towel around his shoulders, came and asked, “You want to try it again, Bart?”
Tommy said diffidently, “Look, maybe I’m lousing him up. Maybe Johnny—”
“No need,” Mario said. “You’re a better catcher than you think you are. You’ve got the timing. Like Stel. If she was twenty, thirty pounds heavier, she’d be the best catcher in the f
amily.”
Swinging head down, waiting for Mario, Tommy thought about that. Vaguely, out of the corner of his eye, shadows and blurs, he could vaguely see the swing of the other trapeze, Mario’s flexing body. Automatically, without thinking, he flexed his shoulder muscles, lengthening the swing a little. Stella was handling the ropes, but he didn’t see her, either. The flying shadow came out, blurred, then a moment of tension, simultaneously braced and relaxed—and then their wrists meshed, slid, held, and Mario was swinging with him. He felt the blood pounding in his ears.
I bet I could hold him on a triple . . . .
But as the thought crossed his mind he pushed it away again. For that you need a heavyweight catcher. I’m no Fortunati. And if he tries it and misses it again, he’s going to come apart.
~o0o~
Publicity was beginning to build up for the Flight Dreams show. A photographer came to the house to take pictures of their costumes for a movie fan magazine which was beginning to take occasional interest in television stars. Three days before the show, Johnny and Tommy disassembled their rigging and packed it into a truck rented for the occasion.
Tommy asked, “Want me to drive? I drove some trucks in the Army.”
Johnny shook his head. “No need. Driving trucks between shows for Freres and Stratton, I learned to like handling the big semis. It’ll be like old times for me and Stel, huh, babe?”
For Tommy, too, there was a hint of “old times” as he drove his car toward winter quarters of the Starr Circus. Only this time he was driving; because of his bad wrist, Mario seldom drove anymore when there was anyone around capable of handling a car.
The Starr Circus was to open in four weeks, in Madison Square Garden, and rehearsals should have been in full swing. The grounds seemed empty, though, with nothing to remind them of the opening except the posters plastered on every available surface.
“Where is everybody?” Tommy asked.
“Easter weekend,” Johnny answered. “How do you suppose the television people got permission to set this thing up here right in the middle of rehearsals?”
The Catch Trap Page 64
