Thad paused in the hall, considering this. Turning back to us with a cheery grin, he noted, “Jason has had that bad cold for quite a few days now. If it gets any worse, he may not be able to play the lead in tomorrow night’s premiere. How cool would that be?”
And he blasted upstairs for the ritual cleansing of his instrument.
Friday, August 3
BECAUSE NEIL’S ARCHITECTURE OFFICE is located midway between the Register and our favorite local restaurant, the First Avenue Grill, I frequently take a noontime stroll along Dumont’s main street, stopping to meet him so we can enjoy lunch together. On Friday, though, he was booked for a long midday meeting out at Quatro Press, the town’s largest industry, which was founded by my late uncle, Thad’s grandfather, Edwin Quatrain. Because I now sit on Quatro’s board of directors, and because the thriving printing plant seems in continual need of expansion, I had no trouble securing for Neil a contract to assist in these matters on a retainer. Though the work has no glamour, Neil takes satisfaction in doing it well. What’s more, the money is good—a “bread-and-butter account,” he calls it—and the retainer has added considerable security to the iffy period of establishing his practice here.
That Friday, I walked alone to the Grill in my shirtsleeves; it was too hot for a jacket, so I had left my sport coat at the office. I tugged the knot of my tie and unbuttoned my collar, allowing an extra quarter inch of breathing room. Folded under one arm were that day’s front sections of both the Chicago Journal and the New York Times—since I’d be alone at table, I’d use the time to catch up on the Register’s “competition.”
Ducking into the shade of the Grill’s storefront awning and opening the door, I felt a rush of air-conditioning welcome me like a hug. Stepping inside the simple but handsome dining room, I paused to button my collar and adjust my tie.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Manning,” said the hostess. “So nice to see you, as always. Your table’s ready, of course.”
“Thank you, Nancy.” Though I’d eaten here nearly every day (some evenings too) since arriving in Dumont, and though the same woman had always greeted me and seated me, I realized that I knew little about her. I knew, for instance, that her name was Nancy Sanderson, that she owned the Grill, and that she had a special love for food, concocting the daily specials, which were always worth trying. Despite this culinary passion, she had a lean build that made her seem tall, but in fact her always perfect hairdo topped out no higher than my eyes. She was older than I, perhaps in her later fifties. Unlike the rest of the staff (most of them buxom Wisconsin women, all uniformed in crisp whites, like nurses of yore), Nancy dressed smartly, but with little pretense of high fashion; that day, she wore a sensible, summery knee-length green skirt with a matching jacket. I had no idea whether she was a Mrs. or a Miss, as the ring on her finger was of ambiguous design. This lack of basic information was due, no doubt, to her reserved manner. Not that she was stiff or cold—in fact she was highly cordial—but the correctness of her bearing and the formality of her inflections kept personal matters at a distance.
Walking me to my usual corner table between the fireplace and the front window overlooking First Avenue, she said, “You might enjoy today’s special, a mock chicken Caesar, nice and crisp, perfect for such a hot day.”
Sitting, I set my newspapers on the far side of the table and draped the large linen napkin over my lap. “Sounds promising. What’s ‘mock’ about it?”
“I made it with succulent strips of chicken mushrooms, lightly sautéed with wine and shallots, which are then added to the traditional Caesar salad, prepared with freshly coddled egg.” With a gentle smile and a slight bow of her head, she added, “If you’ll forgive my immodesty, it’s quite delicious.”
Timidly, I returned her smile. “Chicken mushrooms?”
“I forgot”—she paused for a quiet laugh (which carried a hint of condescension, I felt)—“you’re not from here, are you, Mr. Manning? You weren’t brought up with the traditions of mushrooming that are part of our local heritage. The wooded countryside does indeed seem to yield a special bounty here, and generations of Dumonters have delighted in the hunt’s pleasant roving.”
Since she’d gotten off track, I asked again, “Chicken mushrooms?”
“That’s their common name, of course. They’re also known as sulphur shelf, or more correctly, Laetiporus sulphureus. Strikingly beautiful, orange-tinted, they grow in overlapping clusters, or ‘shelves,’ along logs or tree trunks. They fruit most abundantly right now, in the deep of summer. I harvested these myself, just this morning. The texture and flavor are remarkably similar to chicken.”
I’d heard the same thing said of rattlesnake, but I assumed Nancy would not appreciate this observation, so I refrained from sharing it. “That sounds wonderful, but I think I’ll take a look at the menu first.”
“Certainly. I’ll send Berta over to take your order in a few minutes. Shall I bring some Lillet while you consider your choice?” She was referring to a pleasant French aperitif stocked at the request of the Register’s retired publisher, Barret Logan, also a Grill regular. Since I’d bought his newspaper and taken over his standing lunch reservation, it seemed appropriate to adopt his “usual” as well.
But the hot weather made me wary of alcohol, so I answered, “Thank you, Nancy, not today. Just iced tea, please.”
As she bobbed her head and slipped away, I made a show of opening my menu for careful perusal, but I knew the offerings so well that I didn’t need to read them—I’d have the steak salad and, depending on what was fresh that day, perhaps some berries for dessert.
Setting the menu aside, I reached for the Chicago Journal, pushed my chair back a few inches, and began reading the folded paper, resting it against the table’s edge. Skimming the headline story—another Cook County ghost-payroll scandal—I was momentarily drawn into the world of big-city politics that had once consumed my interests but now seemed so remote. With a silent chuckle of surprise, I turned the page, realizing that I didn’t miss my old reporting career at all, not even its high profile or busy pace. There were other rewards to enjoy—right here in Dumont—such as the day-to-day pleasures of an ordinary life with Neil, such as the wonders of watching Thad mature into early manhood.
“It was Thad Quatrain,” said a nearby voice, breathy and secretive.
My head jerked up from the paper. Had I really heard Thad’s name, or had I merely imagined the name popping from my thoughts?
“My God,” said another lowered voice, another woman, barely able to quell her excitement. “You mean they fought? They actually fought?”
“They were rolling on the floor together,” the other assured her, “knocking over furniture. Thad threatened Jason. The whole rehearsal came to a standstill. Denny Diggins could barely maintain order.”
Unfolding the paper and raising it, I turned, peeking around the edge of my makeshift camouflage. At an adjacent table, two middle-aged ladies lunched, their noses inches apart, each of them pinching icy shrimp tails, gnawed to the husk, plucked from a shared shrimp cocktail. I recognized neither woman, neither the source nor the listener, and from the confused and faulty account of Wednesday’s rehearsal, it was apparent that neither of them had been there. This was mere gossip, secondhand at best, embellished and mutated in the retelling.
“Well,” said the listener with a low chortle, “it’s not surprising. The rivalry between those two boys is practically legendary.”
“Everyone knows,” agreed the source, pausing to suck her tail before plunking it onto a saucer already piled high with shrimp debris. Picking a fleck of husk from her lips, she added, “Joyce’s story just confirms it.”
Aha. She had heard something from Joyce Winkler, whom I had met Wednesday night—the costume lady who had juggled her work schedule at the hospital lab in order to do some bonding with her daughter Nicole. The two women at the Grill, I assumed, were other high-schoolers’ moms, and news of the “boy toy” incident was now working its way through the gab circ
uit. I doubted that Joyce had related the incident with the imprecision of the current recounting, and in fact, I couldn’t really blame her for passing it along—I’d built a successful career as a reporter doing essentially the same thing. The difference, of course, was that my own “gossip” was always in writing, and what’s more, I was fully accountable for the accuracy of my stories.
“The bottom line,” said the source, dabbing her mouth, leaving a smear of liver-colored lipstick on her napkin, “was that Thad actually threatened to kill Jason. Everyone heard it. In my book”—she sat erect, folding the napkin and placing it on the table—“that goes well beyond the bounds of healthy, normal teenage rivalry.”
Even with no breaking news on Friday, it was a busy day at the Register, with the typical rush to lock up Sunday’s extra sections. Adding to this routine tension was a sense of opening-night jitters, absorbed from life with Thad during his year of growing theatrical involvement. As the afternoon wore on, I found myself repeatedly checking my watch, counting down the hours till curtain. I also found myself replaying the troublesome conversation I’d overheard at lunch.
The shrimp woman had a point: though she was fuzzy on the details and circumstances surrounding the “boy toy” incident, perhaps I should have been more alarmed by Thad’s threat. Granted, he was merely paraphrasing a line from a play, its context obvious to all present. And granted, he did this to defuse a volatile situation, sloughing off bigotry with humor. Still, Thad was young, and perhaps he needed to hear—specifically, from me—that death threats, however lamely intended or seemingly justified, should be considered off-limits in the resolution of future disputes.
So when I arrived home from the office, I offered to drive Thad to the theater that evening, even though, some months earlier, I’d bought him a seventeenth-birthday car (an efficient Japanese compact, nothing too flashy, but it was new and it was red, giving him sufficient peer status to get his mind off the “car thing” and the “job thing,” allowing him to focus on school). He could easily have transported himself to and from the theater that night, as he had done all summer, but I knew he’d gladly accept my offer because, oddly, riding in my car together had come to represent the cement of our relationship, our mutual trust.
Earlier, when Thad’s mother had died (traumatizing enough) and he had found himself placed under my guardianship (all the more traumatizing, as he had never even met an openly gay person), he had referred to me, on the day we met, as a “fucking fag.” This, needless to say, had created something of a chasm between us, one that neither of us felt inclined to bridge. Ultimately, it was my car, a big black Bavarian V-8, that broke the ice. Though he didn’t think much of me or of my imagined bedtime proclivities, Thad couldn’t help being impressed by my car, which apparently raised me, in his eyes, just above the threshold of total degeneracy. He let me drive him to lunch one day, and things began to soften—we had our first civil, mature conversation. Later, to his astonishment, I offered to lend him the car for some outing he’d planned with friends, and to my astonishment, he brought it back in one piece, on time, with profuse thanks. To this day, I don’t think twice about handing him the keys. All he has to do is ask.
So when I asked if I could drive him to the theater on opening night, he didn’t think twice before answering, “Sure, Mark, thanks. Curtain’s at eight, but I have a six-thirty call.”
Around six-twenty, we hopped into the car, and I backed out of the driveway onto Prairie Street. Glancing over, I asked, “You have…everything?”
Through a quizzical smile, he asked, “Like what?”
I shrugged. “Script? Costume? Makeup?” He’d brought nothing.
He explained, “The script is memorized. Everything else is at the theater.”
“Just checking.” I reached over and mussed his hair. “Good luck to—” I stopped myself. “Break a leg tonight. You’ll be great, I’m sure. Neil and I are really proud of you. We’ll be counting the minutes till eight—can’t wait.” I turned onto Park Street, heading toward downtown.
“Actually,” he said with a laugh, “I hope you two are bored tonight. I mean, you’ve already seen the show, at Wednesday’s dress rehearsal. That was a perfect run-through. Hope it’s just as good tonight.”
“It’s different, though,” I insisted, “with a real audience—the collective anticipation, the adrenaline, the mutual feedback.”
He caught my gaze for a moment. His smile was flat-out beautiful. “And that’s what makes the magic.”
We rode in silence for a block or two, passing the park on our right, its waxy foliage still radiant in the hot evening sun. I was thinking about what Thad had said—not only the magic, but Wednesday’s rehearsal. He’d opened the door to the very topic I meant to broach.
“Everything’s okay with you and Jason, right? That spat at dress rehearsal—it won’t affect the performance, will it?”
“Nah,” he said, a bit too blithely, “we have our differences, and I’ll be glad when he’s back at Unity High and I’m back at Central—and I’ll never forgive him for the way he treated you and Neil—but we’ll pull together for the good of the show. Like they say, ‘the play’s the thing.’ ”
I quizzed, “Who said that?”
“Shakespeare. Hamlet.”
“Which act and scene?”
Thad crossed his arms and gave me a get-real stare. “Don’t press your luck, Mark.” After a pause, he added, “So, inform me, which act and scene?”
“Haven’t a clue.” And we shared a laugh. As it waned, I told him, “Not to get ‘heavy,’ Thad, but that whole confrontation is still sort of bothering me. It was all Jason’s fault—I understand that—the kid’s a jerk, period. And believe me, you handled it with great maturity by letting the whole thing fizzle and not escalate. But still, you did make a threat, and taken out of context—”
“Mark,” Thad interrupted me, placing his fingertips on my arm as I drove, “I know. It was dumb. It was not cool. I was mad, and I wasn’t thinking straight. It seemed clever, so it popped out. I’ll apologize to Jason in the green room tonight—in front of everybody.”
My mood instantly lightened. Since we were both so clearly in sync on this issue, I allowed myself to violate the exact principle I meant to preach: “Kill him with kindness, eh?” Har har.
Thad flumped back in his seat, laughing loudly, slapping both knees. I myself indulged in a low chortle as I turned onto First Avenue, the downtown’s main street.
The Dumont Playhouse was located only a few blocks from the Register’s offices. The theater was always touted by the Players Guild as “historic,” and indeed, it was nearly a hundred years old, but the place had something of a checkered past. It was originally built as a vaudeville house, with a wide stage, lofty fly space, and some eight hundred seats—easily the largest auditorium in a small town that was growing fast in the heart of paper-mill country. With the advent of talkies and the death of vaudeville, the playhouse was converted to a movie theater, its stage walled over with a screen. Then, in the seventies, when smaller theaters became the trend, the handsome old theater was chopped down its middle, creating two smaller auditoriums with awkwardly angled rows of seats facing half-screens. Finally, when the first “multiplex” opened on the edge of town, the venerable old playhouse closed its doors, presumably for good.
It had sat empty for a couple of years, beginning to deteriorate, when a struggling community-theater group, the Dumont Players Guild, discovered the lure of historic preservation, purchasing the hulk of a building for a song and securing the troupe’s first permanent home. Half of the screen was removed, exposing the stage in one of the auditoriums, which alone could seat the group’s expected patrons. The other auditorium was used for storage and workspace, the Moorish-themed lobby was spiffed up, and the Dumont Playhouse again opened its doors. The Players soon learned, though, that their new home was no bargain, its upkeep and restoration draining meager coffers all too quickly. But they hung with it, securing pri
vate grants and public sympathy as they strove to save the theater—and in doing so, they lent a note of luster and tenacity to the once-fading downtown.
On that Friday night, though the sun would not set for another hour or two, the original ornate marquee outside the playhouse was already ablaze with its chaser lights, announcing the new production that would soon grace the theater’s old stage (or at least half of it). The sight of the bright, frenetic sign, though gaudy and dated, actually brought a lump to my throat, and I sensed that it had the same effect on Thad as he stared at it. Driving past, I placed a hand behind his head and gave his neck a squeeze, a silent good-luck wish, a tactile message that I appreciated the commitment he’d made to help bring the theater to life that night.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “Stage door?”
He nodded.
I pulled around the block to the rear of the theater, where a small parking lot accommodated cast and crew. A number of cars had already arrived, and people were milling about—strange, I thought, given the heat. The stage door was shimmed open, and I could glimpse confused activity within. Thad’s brows furrowed with wonder as I pulled into the lot and parked. Denny Diggins pranced out from backstage, joining the hubbub, fluttering from group to group, asking questions. Both Thad and I got out of the car as Denny approached us. Before he could speak, my reporter’s instincts took over, and I asked, “What’s wrong?”
He threw his hands in the air. “Jason’s not here.”
I glanced at Thad. Thad glanced at his watch. He told Denny, “It’s just six-thirty. He’s not late yet. There’s plenty of time.”
Denny wagged his head, palms pressed to his cheeks. “No,” he explained through a pucker of frustration, “there’s not plenty of time. We don’t know where he is.” Denny dropped one hand from his face, raising the other to hold his forehead, as if staving off a migraine. “I’ve been concerned about his cold, naturally. I spoke to him yesterday, and he said he wasn’t feeling any better. So I told him to get plenty of rest, then tried checking on him this afternoon, but couldn’t reach him. I’ve phoned again and again, but can’t get past his machine. Something’s wrong.”
Boy Toy Page 5
