Then I will say no more. Give our love to Victor
Will do OXO
Dmitri didn’t answer that, even though he wanted to, because he knew sending back his own ‘OXO’ would be too much for Andy, and everything else he wanted to say would be even further over the line. There were, at times, disadvantages to his lifetime habit of iron control. One of those was that his friends expected it of him. At least he could be open with Patrick. Though he rarely was. And at the moment, that seemed intolerable, so he sent a text to his husband: Have been in touch with Andy. There are things I wished to say to him that he cannot hear right now. And there are things to say to you, Patrick, my dear love, things I do not say to you as often as I should. I love you. You are the light of my life. You have made everything right in my world since the day we met. I would give my life for yours without hesitation. I love you. He pressed ‘send’ because he could barely see to type anymore, and set the phone down.
He pressed his hands to his eyes for a moment, sniffed, swallowed, and took a deep breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d written those three words in English. Couldn’t remember if he ever had. French had been the default, because on their very first night together he’d spoken in French and Patrick understood him. It had become their language of love. But he should have been saying these things in all their languages. Another deep breath, then he went to get some coffee. It was too early for more vodka.
Patrick didn’t see the text for a couple of hours, because he had some truly epic tax-related fuckery to untangle for a new corporate client. He had an afternoon coffee date with his friend and colleague Paul, who knocked on his half-closed door a few minutes before their agreed time. “Come in.”
“Hi Patrick.” Paul blinked. “Are you all right?”
Patrick blew his nose. “I’m, eh. Spent the last few minutes crying over this text Dmitri sent me. Our friend was shot last night, he’s going to be okay, but it’s a mess and we were both feeling a little shaky about it this morning. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for these idiots.” He made a gesture encompassing all the paperwork on his desk. “Anyway, I sent back a thing. I’m ready to go if you are.”
Paul was giving him an ‘are you crazy’ look, half amusement and half sympathy. “We saw that on the news. It was such a relief to hear Mr. Garcia would be all right. But Patrick, you and Dmitri have been their friends for years. Don’t you think you should go home?”
Patrick stopped in the act of standing up, made eye contact, and said, “You know, you’re right.” He completed the maneuver, picked up his phone, laughed at himself. “I will probably not get back to the office today.”
“I hope not. We’ll have coffee tomorrow.” Paul walked him out.
Patrick didn’t text his husband on the way home. He was walking – he still did that four days out of five, because being sixty-three meant ‘keep activity or lose quality of life,’ and he liked their quality of life – which was just as well because he kept rehearsing all the things he wanted to say. If he’d been doing that while driving, he’d probably regret it. He let himself into their house, took off his shoes in the entry, dropped his suit jacket and tie somewhere else, and went looking for Dmitri.
He was in their den. Not on the couch, or on the floor stretching, but in the reading chair by the window. Not reading, but looking out to the backyard. He turned his head when Patrick walked quietly in. “Oh.”
“Oh, he says.” Patrick went over there and kissed him. “I love you so much.”
“I love you too.” A few minutes later, Patrick was on Dmitri’s lap and they’d stopped kissing long enough to talk. “You came home early.”
“Paul walked in for our coffee date and I was still crying about your text. He told me to go home.” He stroked back Dmitri’s hair, now receding from the temples and graying. It had been mink-brown when they met. So many years, he thought. “Imagine what the past fifteen years would have been like if we’d never met.” Dmitri made a sound of revulsion. “I know, exactly. On the walk home I was trying to think what to say to you. After that beautiful message.”
“Yours was beautiful as well.” Dmitri ran his fingers through Patrick’s silver hair. As full and temperamental as ever, a gorgeous frame for that sweet face, those laughing eyes. “You are beautiful.”
Patrick kissed him again. “I’m probably putting your leg to sleep. I’m not going back to the office today. Let’s open a bottle of something and toast to another fifteen years.”
“At least.” Dmitri patted his hip. Patrick stood up, gave him a hand, and then didn’t go anywhere. Simply stood there with his arms around Dmitri, relaxing into that solid, comforting embrace. Dmitri spoke into his hair. “I thought, what if. About Andy.”
“They’ve only had four years together. That would have been awful. I don’t know how he could possibly ever recover. I wouldn’t.”
“Nor I.” Another kiss. “Come, my love. A toast to our next fifteen years. And to theirs.”
They didn’t see Andy and Victor until the Friday after the Emmy awards. They’d been in touch, of course, and had only missed the post-awards party by chance. They parked in back, checked in with the security guard, and walked across the backyard to the duplex. Patrick said, out of nowhere, “I still can’t believe they even went to the fucking awards.” Dmitri laughed under his breath.
The door opened before they got there. “Hi. Good to see you. Thanks for coming tonight.” Andy stood back to let them in. Neither of them commented on his unrested appearance. They were here for dinner, and to reassure themselves as to Victor. He was relaxed, in a way that spoke of industrial-strength painkillers. His energy level was low, and his stamina was clearly minimal. Aside from that, and the sling immobilizing his right arm, he looked well.
However, Patrick was now worried about Andy. He seemed his usual self: friendly, funny, and not the human flamethrower. But it felt brittle, forced, as if he wasn’t breathing properly. He ate, but mechanically, and not enough. Patrick exchanged a glance with Dmitri halfway through dinner, and saw that he noticed too.
Dmitri was the one who suggested they bring the evening to an early close. Then, with an air of ceremony, he handed over a gift, producing it from the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Oh hey,” Victor said. “Is that the one Kevin did for the movie?” A miniature portrait of Victor, in character as Carlos Gardel, that had been used as part of the practical miniature ballroom photographed to create a digital set.
“Paul brought it in,” Patrick said. “He and Kevin thought you would like to have it.”
“Thanks,” Victor and Andy said together. Victor laid the little painting on the table and touched it gently, smiling. Andy brushed his fingers over the back of Victor’s neck. Patrick and Dmitri glanced at each other, exchanging some kind of signal.
“You should rest,” Dmitri said to Victor, in a tone that mingled concern and admonition.
Patrick said, “Andy, didn’t you have something to show me out in the home studio?”
Andy, who’d said nothing of the sort, looked startled for a moment. He locked eyes with Patrick and some telepathic thing happened. “Right,” he said after a second.
“I will see Victor upstairs,” said Dmitri. “You go.” Patrick assisted in the Victor-standing operation, watching to see that he was moving all right as Dmitri waited by the staircase. Then he turned to Andy, and without another word they went outside.
They crossed the yard, still without speaking. Andy lifted a hand to the security guard, unlocked the door to his home studio, and led the way up the stairs. Patrick made sure the door was closed and locked behind them. Once they were in that quiet room he said, “Are you seeing a counselor?”
“Oh, we are. We talk about security, and PTSD, and rage. Mostly mine. Also anxiety, mostly mine. We go together,” he added, as if to clarify. “He has to start back on that ever-fucking TV show next week, I’m called the week after, there’s no time.” He bit off the last word
before it could break.
Patrick pulled the task chair away from the desk. “Sit.” He perched on the desk as Andy complied. “Why are you going back? I mean, at all, but so soon?”
“So they can write us off. It’s very hush-hush. We’ve both had enough, but the rewrites were easier if they could work us in from the start.”
“If you say so.” Patrick regarded his friend for a moment. “Tell me what happened.”
Andy sighed. It was a combination of reluctance and resignation. “It wasn’t one of our homophobic haters. It was a gay kid from Miami who had basically the opposite life experience from mine and thought killing me would make him feel better about it.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Yeah. So we were coming home from doing Corden. It was a little after nine. The team stopped out front as usual, which by the way it’s always the back from now on, and we were going up the walk. Stan was up ahead, doing his scan the perimeter thing, and he said Gun. The next thing I knew Victor was knocking me off my feet. There were three shots.”
“Three?”
“The guy shot twice. Stan got one round off before Jamil tackled him.”
Patrick wanted to ask about the other bullet, but one thing he knew for sure was that only one had gone through Victor. He dismissed it as irrelevant. “Then what.”
“Then I was on my back and Victor was on me and he wasn’t moving.” A tremor in the voice. Andy inhaled slowly, audibly. “Stan and Jamil were yelling to each other, and Victor wasn’t moving. I said something, somehow I wasn’t actually screaming, and he turned his head, and I said are you hit. I saw blood, I touched it. He said he was okay. I was like, the fuck you are. Then I could feel the blood, it was pouring onto me. Oh God.” He sucked in a breath, closed his eyes for a second. Patrick didn’t say anything, but he reached over and put his hand on Andy’s shoulder. Andy scooted the task chair closer and leaned against Patrick’s leg. “He said he loved me. Asked me to kiss him. I could tell he was scared. I was fucking terrified. I kissed him, and a few seconds later Stan was there doing the first aid thing. The ambulance was on its way, there was nothing to do but wait. I sat there holding Victor’s hand and watched him get paler. Watched it get harder for him to breathe. Vicky came out and she was how she is, you know. What do you need. Who can I mutilate.” Patrick huffed out a laugh. Andy almost smiled. “We hadn’t eaten. She packed up some food for me. Some vodka. By the time she brought it out, they had Victor hooked up to all kinds of shit in the ambulance and they were taking my vitals. He was going into shock. If the response had taken five minutes longer, he might have died.” He bent over and rested his head on Patrick’s thigh. Patrick could feel how hard he was working to control his breath. He put his hand in Andy’s hair. “Aren’t I coping awfully well?” The famous voice was muffled.
“I think maybe you need to stop coping for a few minutes,” Patrick said gently. He slid off the desk. As soon as he was on his feet, Andy had his arms around Patrick’s waist and his face pressed into his midsection. Patrick simply stood there with his hands stroking through his friend’s hair, listening to him fighting the tears, wishing he could just let go. Does he ever? he wondered, tears in his own eyes.
“I had a little meltdown in the hospital,” Andy said, without moving, as if answering that unspoken question. “When he woke up. It was about five in the morning. I asked him what in the hell he thought he was doing launching at me like that. He said, he saw where Stan was looking and he could tell the gun was aimed at me. Couldn’t have it. We said some stuff. We were both crying. I hate to cry.” He sniffed, swallowed, breathed through his mouth a few times, and sat back. “Thank you. Ever since then it’s been rage and alcohol and coping. I can’t melt down again. He needs me to be easy. There’s a lot to manage. I can’t do this in front of Vicky and Sharon. I have to maintain.”
“When you get a minute, you need to do this with your counselor. You need to go through it as many times as it takes, and get to that moment of Victor waking up. You’ll believe it eventually. He’s alive. He lived. You both lived, thank God. He’s playing it down, isn’t he.”
“He totally is.” Andy sniffed again, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, sighed. “He’s like, I’ve been hurt worse. And that’s actually true, but that does not keep me from waking up five times a night to confirm he’s still alive.”
“Jesus, when the fuck was he hurt worse than that?” Patrick sat on the desk again.
“When he was a teenager. Back in Mexico. It’s not a thing he talks about.”
Patrick thought except with you, understanding this to mean ‘don’t tell anybody, not even Dmitri,’ and that Andy was only saying it because he needed someone else to be a witness to Victor’s life. He nodded. “What happened?”
“Knifed outside a club. The guy he was with was killed. That’s when he went to live with his dad in Escondido, when he got out of the hospital. His mom still lived in Puerto Vallarta.”
That was as much as Patrick needed to know about Victor’s history. Those few words said so much. “How much of a pain in the ass is he?”
Andy almost laughed. “Unbelievable. I guess you know all about that, with Dmitri.”
“Yeah. He’s another tough guy. ‘The Black Knights always triumph.’ How many times has Victor said it’s only a flesh wound?”
“None at all, actually, possibly because I said don’t you dare. Two broken bones. The x-ray was a nightmare.” He was leaning against Patrick’s leg again. “I talked to Dana on Tuesday, on the phone. Talked about what we’re doing next. All about the job. Didn’t discuss what happened. I maintained really well. I called her while Mr. Movie Star was actually taking a meeting. Couldn’t talk him out of it.”
“He looked a little borderline tonight.”
“He’s pretty good till about three in the afternoon, then he crashes. He got through the awards on adrenaline. But we didn’t want to go any longer without seeing you guys. Where were you on Emmys night?”
“We were out in Glendale. A thing with my brother’s family. We weren’t even watching. When we got that text we were like, what in the actual fuck, they went to the ceremony?” Andy snorted. “I mean, we’re delighted that he won, obviously. But still.”
“He said he wanted to go in a moment when I was so mad I wasn’t rational. Then he wouldn’t let me back out of it. He was like, I can walk, goddammit. I can walk and talk, and I want to do that, because fuck these motherfuckers.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Patrick really did. They’d lived with constant threat ever since Andy joined the cast of ‘L.A. Vice’ as Victor’s love interest. They’d broken new ground for broadcast television, with every kind of physical expression of the relationship that the show’s male-female couples had. “How are you feeling now.”
“Thanks for this. I feel better. I needed to tell someone what happened.” He tipped his head back and sighed, eyes closed. Then he looked back at Patrick. “We aren’t talking about it yet. We’re on the surface.”
“I suppose you’re not taking anything to help you sleep.” Andy made a pfft noise. Patrick shook his head, and slid off the desk again. “I wouldn’t either. Want to go back over to the house?” Andy nodded, and stood up. He didn’t head for the stairs right away. Instead he stepped into Patrick’s arms. Patrick held him for another few quiet minutes, longer than he’d expected, but then he hadn’t expected Andy to actually cry. Not after all that. His head was on Patrick’s shoulder, and Patrick’s hand was in his hair again. When he got his breath under control and stood away, he finally looked calm. Patrick held him by the ribs, frowned, and said, “Eat. Go back in the house and eat properly. You don’t want me to send Rory over here.”
“God, no, okay.” Andy went over to the sink and splashed some water on his face. Toweled off and turned around, blowing out a breath. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Come on.” They returned to the house, where they found the dinner things tidied away and Dmitri reading on the couch. An
dy and Victor’s dog Molly had her head on his lap.
“This is excellent dog,” he said, setting down the Hollywood Reporter.
“Molly is the best dog in the history of dogs,” Andy said. “Sorry to leave you for so long.”
“Is nothing. Victor complained of stiff hips. I show him exercise he can do at bathroom counter. When shoulder blade heals, make him stretch properly.” Dmitri had a soft word for Molly, who licked his face and then hopped down off the couch, going over to Andy. Dmitri stood, studying his host. “You are well?”
“I’m fine. It was so good to see you both.” After a round of handshakes and hugs, Patrick and Dmitri took their leave. They didn’t say anything until they were in the car headed home.
Then Dmitri said, “You helped him.”
“He needed permission to break down for a few minutes. He’s had everything in a box.” Patrick glanced sideways at his husband. “I have a little experience with that. And you’ve given me the other thing a couple of times.” There had been his friend early on, and his mother. Dmitri patted his thigh. Patrick used the rest of the short drive to recount what Andy had said about the actual shooting. “In a way it’s even worse than what happened to Ray,” he said as they went into the house. “Because it was intentional. That driver went to jail, right?” Dmitri nodded. “Good. What’s the latest from Julia?”
“She is teaching at theater school,” Dmitri said. “Living with her father. She does not ask about the studio.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” They got ready for bed. Patrick was tired after that episode with Andy, and Dmitri saw it. There was a good-night kiss, and then a shoulder massage. Patrick dozed off with Dmitri’s arm across his back.
November 2018
Anya and Hiro were making their Rising Star Latin debut at the California Star Ball. They’d made the cut to the semifinal, and now they were taking the floor for the final round. The competitors were announced this time. There was an avalanche of noise from the Shall We Dance tables and the risers behind them when the announcer said, “Couple number three fifty-six, from Los Angeles, Hiro Miyazaki and Anya Ivanova!” They took the floor like the champions everyone knew they would be.
Change Partners (The L.A. Stories) Page 24
