The Importance of Being Kevin

by Steven Harper

  I ran through the cool dimness of backstage and found everyone in a clump onstage. Iris and her (twin?) brother Wayne were there too.

  So was Peter. He was standing to one side with his hands in his back pockets. He saw me come in, but he didn’t move, and he didn’t say anything. I wondered why, and then I remembered—no one knew we were seeing each other. If we still were.

  Standing a little away from Peter was an old guy—white hair, glasses—in a blue suit with a crisp white shirt. I had no idea who he was.

  Everyone turned to look when I joined them. I swallowed and gave Iris a little wave.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “I was just saying,” Iris said as she pushed her glasses onto the top of her head, “that Les’s death was a major shock to everyone. It’s difficult and nothing anyone ever expects to deal with, even adults. A lot of you have questions, but before we go on, Peter wanted to speak.”

  “I know everyone is freaked out about what happened yesterday,” Peter said, and the sound of his voice made my knees shake. “I mean, you saw me get arrested and stuff, and I want everyone to know that I didn’t do it. I did not kill Les. My attorney, Mr. Dean”—he pointed to the old guy—“says I shouldn’t say more than that, but I don’t want everyone to think I’m some kind of killer. The police have a bunch of circumstantial evidence, and that’s why they arrested me, but I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “You brought your lawyer to rehearsal?” said Krista Benson—Gwendolen in the play.

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “I’m Jeffery Dean, part of Mr. Morse’s defense team. We’ve decided it would be best if Mr. Morse had an attorney on hand at all times. Just in case something comes up.”

  None of us knew how to respond to that—who the heck has a lawyer following them around?—so we ignored it.

  “So you’re really a Morse?” Meg asked.

  Peter took his hands out of his back pockets. “Yeah. Can we pretend I’m not? When I’m here I just want to be Peter the actor, not Peter the Morse.”

  “You said your last name was Finn,” accused Melissa.

  “That’s my middle name,” he said in an echo of the conversation we’d had earlier. “I use it when I don’t want it to look like I’m cashing in on family connections.”

  “You think your family can get you off?” said Thad. He was two years younger than me, the youngest guy in the show. Thad was staring at Peter pretty hard, and I couldn’t tell why. “You have a lot of lawyers because you’re rich, right?”

  “Thad,” Iris said in a warning tone.

  “No, it’s okay.” Peter ran a hand through his hair in a way I liked a lot. “Yeah, my family is rich, and we’ve got a whole team of lawyers on the case. They bailed me out of jail this morning.”

  I staggered a little. “You spent the night in jail?” I blurted. That was the opposite of what Dad said.

  “Yeah.” Peter glanced at Mr. Dean, who nodded. “They couldn’t hold a bail hearing until this morning, no matter how much pressure my family put on the court.” He sighed and avoided looking at me. “I really didn’t kill Les.”

  “All the evidence the police have gathered is purely circumstantial,” Mr. Dean said.

  “Peter said that,” Meg pointed out.

  “How did he die?” Melissa asked.

  Peter shrugged uncomfortably, and Mr. Dean spoke. “According to the police report, there were bruises around Mr. Madigan’s throat. He was probably choked to death. There is no hard evidence that Mr. Morse was responsible.”

  A murmur went through the cast. I thought about Les’s face growing red and then blue as he choked under someone’s strong hands.

  “What’s this mean for the show?” Joe asked. His face was unreadable.

  Iris held up a hand. “I talked this over with Wayne and with Pete—with Mr. Dean. Peter is under suspicion, but nothing’s been proven. Our system of justice says innocent until proven guilty, so we’re assuming Peter is innocent. I’ve decided not to recast the role.”

  A murmur went through the rest of the cast. I played statue. Okay, this was great. It meant Iris thought he hadn’t done it either. And it meant Peter and I would still be in the play together.

  Yeah. It meant that Peter and I would still be in the play together.

  “Let’s rehearse!” Iris boomed. “Peter, Charlene, and Joe, onstage, please. The rest of you, Wayne needs your help painting scenery backstage.”

  Wayne took us to the scene shop behind the rear curtains and set us to work on flats, which are made of canvas stretched over huge wood frames, like giant paintings. When they’re painted, they can look like wood paneling or stone walls or whatever you want—from a distance. Up close they’re fakey-fake. Wayne lumbered around the flats and paint buckets like a shovel-bearded forklift, giving us directions and correcting us when we did something wrong. I lost myself in painting a wall—let my brain go off the hook while my body moved without me. Eventually I realized the others were talking.

  “Kinda weird, Peter being in the play still.” That was Meg. She was squatting over another flat, running a roller of gray paint over it. “I mean, he’s super rich, right? Does that mean he bought the judge?”

  “Who cares?” Raymond Nestorovich filled a paint pan. He played Merriman, another butler, and had about five lines. “Les Madigan was an asshole. If someone I know had to die, I’d choose him.”

  “How come?” Meg asked.

  For a second it looked like Thad was going to say something, but then he hardened his mouth, and Raymond said, “Ask Melissa.”

  “No, seriously—tell me,” Meg said.

  By then I was barely pretending to paint. I was listening with everything I had. Even my hair was listening.

  “He deals,” Raymond said with a glance at Melissa. “Way I heard it, he gave some shit to Melissa’s sister, and when he got her high, he was gonna rape her or something. Melissa stopped him.”

  “Kicked him in the nuts,” Melissa said with a nod.

  “I have returned sooner than I expected. Dr. Chasuble, I hope you are well?” Peter said as Jack from the stage.

  Now I saw that Thad was looking at Meg really close, like a puppy looking at an open gate, and I got it. Thad had a thing for Meg. Jesus. He was two years younger than her. No way he had a chance. I knew how he felt, though. Peter was three years older than me. I just lucked out.

  Joe as Dr. Chasuble said, “Your brother Earnest is dead?”

  “Quite dead,” Jack replied.

  “What a lesson for him!” said Charlene as Miss Prism. “I trust he will profit by it.”

  My breath came up short again—that stuff Les had said. Peter was way over eighteen, and I was a minor. The cops couldn’t even question me without Dad being there. How much trouble would I get in if they found out? Dad hadn’t said anything, but I’d just told him I was gay, and he probably wasn’t thinking about that. Shit, I hadn’t been thinking about it. Even with Les dead, I could still get in trouble.

  I realized I was painting with a dry roller, and I dipped it again. I’d heard all this from Melissa before, but I didn’t know Thad and Raymond knew it. What else was going on?

  “Les is—was—a creep,” Thad said. “Even if Peter killed him—big if—he shouldn’t go to jail for it.”

  “Poor Earnest!” Jack said. “He had many faults, but it is a sad, sad blow.”

  “Very sad indeed. Were you with him at the end?” Dr. Chasuble asked.

  “No,” Jack replied.

  I had a lot to figure out. If more people hated Les than just me, did that make it okay that Peter had killed him? I worked my roller furiously back and forth. I had already decided Peter had done it, but Peter said he hadn’t. Well, he had to say that, didn’t he? I mean, I only pleaded guilty because the cops had caught me red-handed and I didn’t have any choice.

  Miss Prism said, “As a man sows, so shall he reap.”

  “I heard the cops can’t find his cell phone,” Meg said. “They need it because
they’re hoping it has clues or something.”

  “His cell phone?” Thad said in a voice so quiet I could barely hear, and I was listening hard. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “My uncle is a cop, and I heard him talking about it,” Meg told him. “They’re gonna get his phone records too.”

  “Will that tell them anything?” Raymond said. “Like, if he texted his killer or something?”

  She shook her head. “The phone company doesn’t keep text messages or voicemail. But they can tell who he called and who called him. Or texted.”

  “Then half of us are in trouble,” Thad said. “He texted all of us when the play started to tell us about rehearsals.”

  Except me, because I didn’t have a cell phone. I should have been relieved, but for some reason, the news only made me more nervous.

  After a while, Iris called me onstage for a scene with Peter as Jack, the same scene Peter and I had done together at the audition. Mr. Dean was watching from the audience. When I entered with my script, Peter was standing at the other end of the ragged couch we were using until we got the real furniture, and Jesus, it seemed as though all the lights were shining on only him. His eyes were greener than all the leaves in a forest. I remembered how just yesterday afternoon we’d been lying on his bed and I’d kissed him hard with my hands sliding up his shirt. He caught my eye and then looked away and rumpled up his black hair, looking sexy as a rock star. My shoes were melting into the floor, and I thought my script might burst into flames.

  “We’ve done this scene before, but I’m not happy with it, so I want to change it around,” Iris said. “Algy, when you enter, you notice Jack is upset, so cross straight to him while you deliver the line.”

  Hoo boy. I edged toward Peter—Jack. “Didn’t it go off all right, old boy? You don’t—”

  “No,” Iris interrupted. “You need to get there faster. Go straight downstage and clap him on the shoulder when you get there. Start again.”

  Peter shot me a look that had the whole world in it, and my heart about split in half. I reentered and crossed downstage toward the audience. “Didn’t it go off all right, old boy? You don’t mean to say Gwendolen refused you?”

  I reached Jack, who was looking out a window, or where a window would eventually be, and hesitantly touched his shoulder. He was wearing only a thin T-shirt, and his muscles were hot and tense on my palm. A little jolt went through me. That weird coppery taste came back, and for a moment, I was lying on Peter’s bed with him again. For a second I couldn’t speak. Peter flicked a glance at me with those green eyes, and I swallowed. To distract myself, I looked down at my script, even though I had these lines memorized.

  “I know it is a way she has,” I said. “She is always refusing people. I think it is most ill-natured of her.”

  “Oh,” Peter-as-Jack said, and the vibration of his voice thrilled like thunder down my arm and into my chest—and lower. “Gwendolen is as right as a trivet. As far as she is concerned, we are engaged.”

  “Hold it,” Iris interrupted again. “This is the problem we had before. Earnest is probably the earliest bromance in English literature, but the Brits from this time are more standoffish with each other. Algy, you love your best friend here, but take your hand off his shoulder. And save the husky register for your love scenes with Cecily.”

  Fuck. I flushed and backed up. “Sorry.”

  “Rehearsal is for experimentation,” Iris said. “Try something else. And, go.”

  I set my jaw. Algy wasn’t in love with Jack. Algy wasn’t me. Algy came from a rich family where his biggest problem was whether or not to have salmon for supper. That actually sounded supernova awesome right now. I could forget about Peter, forget about the shitty trailer, forget about Les. I summoned up the Algy shell, spun it around myself. My posture straightened, my head went up, and an ironic half smile crossed my face—not quite a sneer, but it could become a deadly one if I wanted. Algy had been through a lot of shit, and sometimes he used sarcasm to cover up how he really felt. I went for that.

  “Didn’t it go off all right, old boy?” I said with snarky sympathy and thwapped Jack on the shoulder. “You don’t mean to say Gwendolen refused you? I know it is a way she has. She is always refusing people. I think it is most ill-natured of her.”

  “Perfect!” Iris shouted. “Keep going.”

  A look of surprise crossed Peter/Jack’s face, but he recovered. “Oh, Gwendolen is as right as a trivet. As far as she is concerned, we are engaged. Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a gorgon.” He paused, and I raised my eyebrows. Gwen’s mother—Lady Bracknell—was my aunt. “I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn’t talk about your own aunt in that way before you.”

  I snorted. “My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.” I crushed the last word.

  This time Jack didn’t hesitate. “Oh, that is nonsense!”

  “It isn’t!” The anger tiger was pacing inside me—the real me.

  Jack turned back to the nonexistent window, though it wasn’t in the script. “Well, I won’t argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.”

  “That is exactly what things were originally made for.” I was still trying to get an argument out of him.

  “Upon my word, if I thought that, I’d shoot myself,” Jack muttered and then paused. I wanted to keep arguing, but the script didn’t have any lines for me, so I had to keep quiet. It bugged the hell out of me, and then for a moment, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to argue, or if Algy did. “You don’t think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you, Algy?”

  I hid inside Algy for the rest of rehearsal, and Iris said I was doing the best Algy she’d ever seen, even better than some actor she’d seen in New York. That made me feel good.

  “Get something to eat and be back onstage by seven for second rehearsal,” she said as everyone was getting ready to go. “Remember, early is on time—”

  “—and on time is late!” we shouted back at her, and she waved us out. I let go of Algy, and suddenly it was just me, with my ordinary brown hair and crappy tennis shoes.

  Peter caught up with me backstage as I was leaving, but to be honest, I wasn’t leaving very fast. Mr. Dean was coming up behind us, but Peter held up a hand as everyone else boiled out the back door, leaving us in the cool, dim hallway.

  “Give me some damn space,” Peter ordered. “Kevin isn’t a cop or a reporter.”

  Mr. Dean stayed back, out of earshot but within sight of us.

  “Can we talk a sec?” Peter pleaded in a low voice. “Please?”

  I ran my tongue around the inside of my cheek. “What?” The word came out flatter than I wanted it to.

  Peter reached out to touch my shoulder but then dropped his hand. “Are you mad at me?”

  I shrugged. For some reason it was hard to talk. Peter’s eyes were filled with emerald pain, but this close, he smelled so good, and I wanted him to hold me. But not in front of Mr. Dean. I just shrugged.

  “Kevin, I didn’t do it.” He glanced around like a nervous tiger. “I didn’t kill Les. Yeah, I beat him up, but when I left his apartment, he was totally alive. He wasn’t even unconscious.”

  “You said—” I began.

  “I know what I said,” Peter interrupted. “That was me being angry. I wouldn’t kill someone.”

  “Yeah?”

  Peter wet his lips. “I don’t want to talk about this here. Can you come over to my house? Please?”

  “I don’t—”

  Now he touched my arm, not caring what Mr. Dean might see. “Kev, please. I need you.”

  I couldn’t say yes, but I couldn’t say no either. Not with his warm hand on my arm. Instead I nodded. Peter sighed with relief and led me out to his car. Mr. Dean trailed behind.

  ACT II: SCENE I
II

  KEVIN

  MR. DEAN followed us in a separate car. Peter and I didn’t talk much on the drive to Peter’s huge house. At the gate, a bunch of cars and vans marked with TV logos marched in a line down the road. People holding microphones and big cameras stood around looking bored until they saw Peter’s car. Then they stampeded toward us. Peter swore and slapped a button. The gate slid open, and Peter made for it without slowing down.

  “Are you going to hit them?”

  “They’ll move,” Peter said. “Duck down and cover your face unless you want it on TV.”

  I dove to the floor. There were a few desperate knocks on the tinted windows, and then we must have cleared the crowd. I came up like a prairie dog scanning for danger.

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “I forgot to take the back way,” Peter said. “They’ve been there since the arrest. Leeches. Never talk to a reporter, Kev. They’ll twist what you say to make you look bad, and they never, ever take it back.”

  “Why?”

  “Bad news gets more viewers than good news and apologies.”

  Mr. Dean’s car came behind us, and we wandered down the long green drive to the Morse mongo house. Peter parked the Camaro at an angle near the front steps, and a guy in black sprinted out a side door to take it away. Peter hunched into himself and slouched up the stairs. I followed, feeling uncertain.

  Another guy in black snatched open the front door for us before we could touch it. Peter didn’t even look. I threw the guy a nod, but he stayed stiff as a coatrack, and I flushed a little. The anger tiger growled. Wasn’t I worth noticing?