The Editor

by Steven Rowley

I used to like that I had someone to share Jackie with, but now I want it to stop. I want her to be mine and mine alone. I’m annoyed at her for not liking Durang, taking Mark at his word. Is she above him somehow? She prefers Williams and Ibsen and more serious work?

  The stage door bursts open and Daniel appears, scanning for me in the crowd. He’s holding a program that he’s nervously, but expertly, rolled into a tight cigar; he could hold a seminar for factory workers in Havana.

  “You coming, babe? I’m holding a seat down front.”

  “Yeah.” I turn back to Mark and motion in the direction of the door to indicate I should go.

  “Enjoy the show,” Mark says, putting his hand on my shoulder and squeezing. It’s not unlike something a friend might do, but he also does it for show, to puff his chest in front of Daniel, to lay some small claim on me. It makes me feel valued, despite myself, but also like the wreck that I am.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Who was that in front of the theater?”

  At the end of the night Daniel and I are lying in bed, exhausted from both the excitement of an opening night and the afterparty for the cast and crew that was held at Marie’s Crisis.

  In my head I answer him, but out loud apparently not, because he produces a stuffed Snoopy doll and asks his question again, this time through the dog. “Who was that you were talking to in front of the theater? Ruff ruff.”

  “That was Mark, Jackie’s assistant.” It’s both uncomfortable and titillating to say his name aloud in our bed—even to a stuffed animal.

  “Oh.”

  “Where did you . . . ?” I point to Snoopy.

  “The cast gave it to me. It’s like Charlotte’s.”

  “No, I gathered that.” In the play, the character of Charlotte, a therapist, delivers bad advice, often unfortunately derived from the play Equus, through a stuffed Snoopy doll.

  “Did you invite him?” And then the real question: “Did you invite Jackie?” Daniel rolls onto his side, eagerly propping himself up on his elbow.

  “No. It was coincidence. He was there with friends.” I run my fingers through Daniel’s chest hair.

  “Could you? Invite Jackie? I mean, think of the publicity.” Daniel nods enthusiastically.

  It’s the first time someone has asked me for a favor because of my association with her. “I don’t know. I wish I could. I wish she would see it. But I don’t know.” I’d have no idea how to ask her without sounding like I’m using her as bait for the pride of photographers that stalk her. For the mention in Liz Smith’s column or a paragraph on Page Six. “Besides. Durang’s not really her thing.”

  Daniel rolls his eyes. There’s no way in hell I could know such a thing. “So what did you think of the play?”

  “What did I . . . ? Didn’t I tell you?” I realize I’m not currently my best self, but am I that self-absorbed that I didn’t congratulate my own boyfriend on the premiere of his play?

  “Yes, you did. Backstage and at the bar while people were gathered around the piano, singing numbers from Jesus Christ Superstar. You had to yell into my ear.”

  “Godspell. ‘Day by Day’ is from Godspell.” I smile, thinking how proud Exclamation Point would be of me if he were here to catch this correction.

  “Oh, wow, I must be exhausted.” Daniel covers his face, feigning embarrassment. “But what did you really think? Now that we’re alone.”

  I turn to look him in the eye. “It was great. Really, truly great. I wouldn’t bullshit you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I thought the guy who played Bruce was . . . Well, he was good . . .”

  “Miscast, right?”

  “Just not who I pictured in the role.”

  Daniel groans. “I know. He’s a friend of the producer and put up some of the money.”

  “It’s just he’s more of a Bob. You’ve got two Bobs and a Prudence.”

  Daniel laughs. “Very different play. I begged him to take the role of Bob. But no dice.”

  “You would be a better Bruce! But listen, no one is going to care. You should be proud.” We’re naked, inches apart. Telling Daniel he should be proud makes me realize I’m proud of him too. I look at his face, the same face that once made me swoon; I know I’ve been taking him for granted. He’s always around, in the house—like a sleeve of Ritz Crackers, perhaps—but suddenly I have an overwhelming hunger for snacking.

  “There were some first-night blips. Some of the pacing. That sound cue. But we’ll improve. The show just needs to tighten.”

  “Just take it day by day.” I do a little of the hand choreography that goes with the song, but not too much.

  Daniel laughs and he moves his leg and it brushes against my erection. The feeling, electric. He makes a face, surprised—Where did that come from?—before rubbing his hand over it again in admiration.

  “There was a couple outside the theater tonight. An older gay couple. In their seventies, maybe. One of them had scoliosis. He fussed with the other man’s scarf.”

  Daniel seems confused. “This is . . . dirty talk?”

  I push his shoulder, but he grabs my dick to steady himself. “Don’t touch me,” I say, but when he pulls his hand away I immediately guide it back. We both laugh.

  “They were cute. They squabbled, but you could tell they really loved one another.”

  “Prudence invited them. I guess one of them was a colorful theater reviewer from the early days of New York magazine. Something like that.” He gesticulates information going in one ear and out the other, but it looks a little like a gesture for blowing his brains out. “What about them?” Daniel asks.

  “Do you think that will be us someday?”

  “Is your dirty talk going to improve?”

  “I’m serious.”

  Daniel pouts, mimicking my tantrum but not quite mocking it. “I’m serious too.”

  “My parents aren’t together. Your parents are, but they don’t really speak. And it’s not like there’s a lot of role models in the gay community either.”

  “Why do you worry so much about forever?”

  “Why do you not?”

  He sighs. “Because there is only here and now.”

  It’s not the time to goad Daniel about his belief that long-term monogamy is a myth, but it’s a scab that I can’t help picking at. “What am I, a dog? People don’t live like that.”

  “And so they spend all their time worrying about the future. Or chasing the past.”

  That last bit feels like a dig at me. I lie back and look at the ceiling. Late at night, agitated, unable to fall asleep, I have wondered if something in me is genetically coded. That alongside the DNA for my blue eyes and my big feet is something that is forever going to make me feel restless and unsettled in life. I’m the product of an affair; what if my attraction to Mark—to someone else—was . . . preordained? That maybe because of my questionable past, it’s impossible for me to ever be truly present. What if I’m actually attracted to drama and chaos?

  The air-conditioning unit in the window makes the thumping noise it does, like a heartbeat, then stops.

  “You have a responsibility to share things with me,” Daniel says.

  “Share what things?”

  “Whatever it is that keeps you awake at night.” I look at Daniel and he continues, “You think I don’t know you’re not sleeping?”

  The mood ruined, I turn off the light, hoping it will make me invisible. I feel a blast of cool air from the window unit and I keep my eyes open until they adjust and the room turns from black to blue. It’s quiet for so long I wonder if Daniel has fallen asleep. When he speaks, my leg flinches in that way it does when sleep comes with the sensation of falling.

  “You made your search all about the book.”

  I make a face so that he knows that I’m offende
d, even though it’s dark. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You turned in your manuscript and everyone was happy, so you stopped.”

  “Stopped what.”

  Daniel hesitates. “Reconciling.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is about Frank, isn’t it?”

  I push the covers back so that cold air can wash over me. I don’t really know how to answer that, other than to say yes, but I’m not in the mood to be agreeable. “No, because that would be the past and there is only here and now.” I shouldn’t be mocking him, but sometimes I can’t help it.

  “Forget it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not even listening to me.”

  “You’re not listening to yourself!”

  “Good night, James.” Daniel rolls over to face the far wall.

  This tension is not what I want. I sit, agitated, in the dark until I decide to try another approach. I snuggle in to him and whisper, “Tell me again.”

  Daniel swats me away like an annoying housefly, so I shake him again and he sighs. “Frank himself is the past, yes, but has a remarkable hold on the present.”

  “How so?”

  “Your mother’s in the present. There’s an obvious example.”

  “So?”

  “Talk to her. Work this out.”

  I press my palms against my eyes and grind them until I see vibrant, red static. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

  “Okay, then.” He settles into his pillow.

  “C’mon, I’m trying.”

  “No, you’re not!” Daniel bolts upright with surprising force. “You want to find Frank? You’ve known all along where you can find him.” I don’t immediately respond, so Daniel grabs my chin and pulls my head toward his. I can just make out the whites of his eyes as they pierce the darkness, and the way he holds my face is surprisingly erotic.

  “Yeah, I know.” I kick Daniel gently under the sheets, and eventually he lets go of my chin and then envelops me, pinning me to the mattress, and despite the heat and the anger and his body temperature, I don’t want him to let go. I get hard again.

  “That could be us someday. Those men,” he says, kissing my neck; the weight of his body presses mine into the bed, cracking my back in such a perfect way, it should be part of some spa service.

  I sputter a last protest. “Yeah, but will they, was my original ques—”

  “You’re ruining my opening night, you know.”

  “I just . . .” He grinds on my body. “I don’t mean to . . .”

  “Ruining . . .”

  I pull him tightly to me and squeeze my arms around him. “Do you . . .”

  He bites my ear. “My opening . . .”

  “Ow,” I say, even though I don’t want him to stop.

  ◆ THIRTY ◆

  I hold the phone receiver up to the light, inspecting it for fingerprints and odd bits of earwax, the unpleasant relics of other, easier conversations, before polishing the phone with my T-shirt because: a) it’s disgusting, and b) I’m unable to actually dial. I notice there’s a copy of the Post on the coffee table, but we don’t get the Post, so I don’t know when or how it got there. I flip through the pages. An elementary school in the Bronx is being closed for asbestos removal. A professor from Hunter College has been charged for possession of child pornography. A man was almost run over by the F train, but some good Brooklynites pulled him to safety just in the nick of time. People can be heroes.

  People can also be cowards.

  The phone shouts at me the angry signal it makes when left off the hook (GUTLESS! GUTLESS! GUTLESS!), so I place it unsteadily back in the cradle and again wipe it clean of fingerprints, as if I had just committed a crime.

  The apartment is hot. I get up and head to the bathroom to splash water on my face. The light is brighter than I remember; did Daniel change a bulb? I look at myself in the mirror, leaning in across the sink to get the most honest view. My eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep; even my skin looks tired. I turn my face to each side, and then back and forth again. I worry that a lack of symmetry makes me look untrustworthy, duplicitous. One sideburn is fuller than the other. When and why did sideburns come back? I take the scissors from the medicine cabinet and trim a few wayward hairs. When I replace them I see a jar of firming face mask Daniel and I had purchased once at a Duane Reade late at night, thinking it would help wash away the unpleasantness of a friend’s painfully dreadful dinner party. I don’t even remember if we ever used it. The face mask. The jar is collecting dust.

  I wander back to the phone, then back to the bathroom. I forget to turn sideways to pass the bookshelf in the hall and knock a few paperbacks—including Hugo’s Les Misérables—onto the floor. “Sonofa—” I start, but am cut off by my own laughter that comes from the fleeting (and ridiculous) thought that only France’s wretched poor have suffered as much as I have.

  In the bathroom I reach for the jar of blue clay and open it. Sure enough, it’s untouched. I stare at it. I want to scoop some out, but I also don’t want to disturb its unmarred veneer. Eventually I take off my shirt and study my chest in the mirror, the pale skin, the jutting clavicle, the few moles my doctor assures me are nothing. I dip two fingers into the mud; it feels clammy. I take a dollop and swipe it across my forehead, then repeat the motion and smear two lines under my eyes. I make more marks until I look like an overly painted extra from The Last of the Mohicans, then wash my hands and return the lid to the jar. I feel empowered. Not only have I decorated my body for battle, I’ve also taken charge of my skin care.

  When I return to the phone it is still judging me, taunting me, daring me. But I am a warrior now, so I pick it out of the cradle, holding it firmly in my hand. I study the buttons momentarily, then quickly press the numbers before it can hurl further insults at me. Jackie’s voice in my ear—You should never stop trying.

  The phone rings four times before my mother answers.

  “Hello,” I challenge, before she can even say anything. Announcing myself first is a victory; it shows that I am unafraid.

  My mother does not say anything. I can hear the faint shuffling of some activity.

  “It’s been a while.” Am I going to have to do all the talking?

  Pause. “Yes, it has.”

  “I’ve been angry,” I say, as if admitting defeat. Even though I know that if anger was the right emotion to point my characters in a new direction, it can only serve us too.

  “I imagine.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “I’m calling to . . .” I stop there to catch my breath and listen for more activity. “What are you doing?”

  “Folding towels. Domino is helping.”

  I don’t need to be there to see the dog on the bed, curled up in warm, clean laundry. That’s Domino “helping.” The folding goes on for another half-minute.

  “You sure have a lot of towels.” The woman lives alone. How many towels can there be to launder? Or were they not even dirty? Does she just occasionally take them out of the linen closet to wash and refold them to make sure they don’t collect dust and that all the seams are even? In either case, she doesn’t respond.

  “I’m calling with an invitation,” I continue. An invitation that’s an olive branch of sorts. But of course I don’t say that. Daniel’s right. The place to find Frank is in the heart of the one person who maybe loved him last. The one place I’ve avoided looking.

  “Oh?”

  I have her attention.

  “I’m having a party. Or, a party is being had for me.”

  “What kind of party?” My mother sounds rightfully skeptical. Leaving it at that, it does sound like one of those sitcom devices where a character stages a made-up event to assemble two other characters in desperate need of reconciliation.
r />   I open my mouth to say more, but the mud on my face is drying, tightening, and it becomes harder to move the muscles in my face. I feel like the Tin Man rapidly rusting, desperately calling out to Dorothy “Oil, oy-al, oi-yaa-l.”

  “A book party. A party for the book. It’s being published in a few weeks.” I watch as a flake of dried beauty mask falls tenderly into my lap. I stare at it in a state of bafflement at first, like I should lift it with tweezers, a fragile piece of gold foil to be studied under a microscope. How perfect—I’m blathering on so long my face is literally crumbling. “I know the book is a bit of a sore topic, but I’d like for you to be there.”

  “Do you want Oogle?” For a second I think my mother is having a stroke.

  “Do I want . . . what?”

  “Oogle.”

  Oogle is the name of an oversized stuffed sewer rat–looking thing—monster, I guess—that my father brought home one Halloween when we were kids. He told us Oogle had magical powers; my siblings were old enough to know better, but I was a believer. I was kind to Oogle, afraid to incur his wrath. He didn’t look at all dangerous, perhaps a little misunderstood. But as a kid, you can’t leave these things to chance. At the time we acquired him he was as big as I was—bigger, if you counted his yellow hat.

  I haven’t thought about him in years. “You still have Oogle?”

  “In the attic. But I’m not keeping him any longer. Naomi says he probably has mold, and he frightens Kenny’s kids.”

  “I live in a tiny apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. I can’t take Oogle. That wouldn’t make any sense. Can we finish talking about the party?”

  My mask is now fully dry. I touch my cheek and my skin feels brittle, the muscles underneath losing their elasticity. This must be what aging feels like. Rapid aging. It’s torturous, the idea of Oogle tossed in a trash heap, one more member of our family thoughtlessly discarded. It’s not his fault we all grew up; if he were truly magical he would have kept us all young and safe forever.

  “Fine, I’ll take him.”

  “When is it?”

  My mother and I speak over each other. This is hopelessly awkward.