Reign (11 page)

"I've been better." The response was flat, without a trace of humor.

"Hello, Robin," Quentin said in greeting. "Nice to see you again, only not under these circumstances."

"Hello, Quentin," she said, and kissed his cheek.

"We'd better go in," Dex said briskly and with a quick smile, as though a game of tennis and not a funeral was awaiting them. "It's almost time."

"Hey hey!"

They all turned at the voice behind them, and were startled by the brilliance of an electronic flash exploding in their eyes. "Okay, one more," the voice cautioned, and the flash spat again. A heavyset man in a trench coat walked up to Dennis and stuck out a meaty hand. "Larry Peach, Mr. Hamilton.
The Probe
."

A sick look came over Dennis's face, and he leaned away from Peach. Quentin had seen the latest
Weekly Probe
with its shrieking headline, "Emperor Calls Subject to Death!" and the subheading, "`Off With His Head!'" He caught a trace of garlic on Peach's breath.

"Wondering if you got any comment on this kid's death —"

John Steinberg pushed his way between Peach and Dennis. "Mr. Hamilton has nothing to say to —"

"Why don't you let
him
tell me that, pal. Hey, Mr. Hamilton, did you really call the kid out and —"

Once again Steinberg interrupted. "Mr. Hamilton has
nothing
to say. Now we have a funeral to go to."

"Well, fine, I'll go too," Peach said, a condescending grin on his
pouchy
face. "Maybe you'll feel like talking inside the church."

"Look," Steinberg said reasonably, "I'll tell you what. I'm John Steinberg —”

“I know who you are. His manager."

"That's right. And his spokesman. And if you just stay out of the church and don't cause a scene, I'll give you an exclusive story when I come out.”

“Oh yeah?"

"Yes. I promise. Just wait here, and we'll come out the back. But there's no point in making this a circus. If I see you try to get inside that church, no story."

"Okay," Peach said. "I'm a professional, all I want is a story. I'll be nice to you, you be nice to me."

"That's right."

"But exclusive. No talking to the
Times
or the
Post
or those other guys first.”

“Of course not. For you alone."

Peach backed up and made a mock bow. "Be my guests. I'll be here when you come out."

"Of that I have no doubt," Steinberg said, and guided Dennis toward the church door. Robin and Donna Franklin followed. Quentin and Dex took up the rear, and Dex whispered, "My God, he looks
awful
," as they went through the door.

Quentin nodded in agreement. In a way, Quentin had always, even when they had become close friends, felt a fearful respect toward Dennis, but the tottering figure going down the narrow hall before him now inspired no fear, only pity. What, he wondered, had become of the Dennis Hamilton he had known, the Dennis who had barked "
Scheiskopf
!
” at those who earned his displeasure, the Dennis Hamilton who was always so sure of himself and his talent and his decisions? That Dennis Hamilton had enraged him at times, but it was preferable by far to this season's model.

The small party filially made its way to the narthex, took computer-printed programs from the chipper assistants of the funeral director, and entered the sanctuary. It was imposing, Quentin thought. He'd never seen a stage set as ponderously overwhelming. Dark wood and gray stone predominated, but neither wood nor stone were as deeply imbued with puritanical solemnity as the face of the middle-aged man in the first row, who turned as the Hamilton party came in and sat down in pews at the rear. The man watched Dennis's face intently until the woman seated next to him put a hand on his shoulder, and he turned back toward the casket.

Tommy's father
, Quentin thought.
Poor bastard
. Losing an only child was bad enough, but to have it splashed all over the tabloids made it worse. A ten-day wonder, but those ten days could be hell to get through.

The service seemed to go on forever. A dour-faced minister droned tirelessly away, and Quentin shut his ears to it. He had heard it altogether too many times in the past few years, had seen the caskets of too many friends on too many biers. He wondered glumly how many more he would attend before being the guest star himself.

At last the music and the scripture and the message of comfort were over, the minister intoned his last amen, and the congregation stood. As in a wedding, the front row exited first, and as Tommy
Werton's
father passed the pew that Quentin, Dex, and the Hamilton party sat in, he glared with undisguised hatred at Dennis, who seemed not to notice, lost in his thoughts. When the time came, they stood, and shuffled along with the rest of the crowd into the narthex, where they found Mr.
Werton
and the woman who had been sitting beside him, and another man the same age.

"Tommy's aunt and uncle," Robin whispered to Quentin and Dex. "His mother's dead."

The murmured sympathies grew louder as they approached the triumvirate of grief. Robin took the offered hands and spoke the words, and then Dennis was nodding to the aunt, the uncle, and finally, Mr.
Werton
, to whom he put out his hand tentatively, as if afraid of having it grasped and twisted. He need not have worried. Mr.
Werton's
hand, clenched in a fist, remained at his side. He was a small man, but the way his mouth twisted in a scowl made him look far larger, more menacing.

"I won't take your hand," he said. Quentin could see that the man was actually trembling, and for a moment he was afraid that the fist would come up and strike Dennis.

Dennis stood there, his hand halfway up, his mouth partly open as if he was about to say something, but then thought better of it. The hand fell back to his side, and he turned and moved on. Steinberg was next in line, and he grasped
Werton's
hand and held on to it. "I was there," he said gently. "And Mr. Hamilton had nothing to do with your son's death."

The little man opened his mouth to speak, but Steinberg plunged on. "He liked Tommy very much, Mr.
Werton
. We all did, and we share your grief."

Werton
jerked his hand away, and when he spoke, his words bit sharply. "Damn theatre. Never wanted him in it. Wouldn't get a real job, always went from show to show. No way to live."

The way the man's face changed terrified Quentin with its suddenness. From vicious anger it went immediately to powerless sorrow. The features melted like hot wax, and tears ran down
Werton's
cheeks. Steinberg moved away, knowing, as did Quentin, that words could do nothing in the face of such deep and irrational grief. Dex passed the party with a sad smile, and Quentin followed, a
sotto voce
"very sorry" the best he could muster.

He found the others in a cloakroom off to the side. Dennis was leaning against the wall, and the others were gathered around him. He was paler than before, and droplets of sweat were perched on his high, aristocratic forehead.
What in God's name has happened to him
, Quentin thought again.
Werton
had been a fool, a narrow-minded man who probably hated the theatre because of the supposedly loose morals that had been associated with it ever since Shakespeare. Five years before, Dennis would have eaten
Werton
alive, bereft of a son or not, and spit out the bones.

Quentin recalled one afternoon when the
Private Empire
revival had been rehearsing at the Broadway Arts Studio. After lunch, Dennis and some of the chorus members had been rehearsing a number when a monster of a man in his forties burst into the room, bellowing, "Where's Danny!"

Danny was a kid from Cleveland, and
Empire
was his first Broadway show. Everybody liked him, but only a few, Quentin and Dennis among them, knew about the problems he had had with his father that had made him leave home a year before.

The father had beaten the boy severely, a fact attested to by a red, round scar on his forearm, burned there by his father's cigarette.

"Where the hell is he?" the man roared again. The stage manager began to tell him he would have to leave, but an upraised palm changed his mind. "There doesn't have to be no trouble. You just tell me where Danny is."

That was when Dennis left the ensemble, which had by now frozen, and, carrying a thin cane he was using as a prop saber, walked over to the man. "I'm afraid Danny's on his lunch break right now. Would you like to leave a message?"

"I'm not
leavin
' any fuckin' message — I want my boy!"

"You're his father?" Dennis asked, lightly swinging the cane.

"That's right."

"And what do you want with him?"

"Take him home. He goes off here to New York to be a
dancer
," — the word dripped contempt — "and now he's
queerin
' around."

"How old is Danny?"

The man had to think for a moment before he answered. "He's just nineteen.”

“Well, in that case, whether he uses his anus for withdrawals or deposits is up to him, isn't it?"

The air in the studio had grown so thick Quentin could barely breathe as he watched Danny's father seem to grow another foot in height and another yard in girth. The man threw a fist the size of a paint can, but Dennis dodged easily and whipped the cane upward so that it slashed Danny's father between his treelike legs. He let out one sharp scream, fell to the floor, and instantly vomited food and beer all over the worn boards of the studio.

When he had finished, he opened his eyes to find the point of Dennis's cane prodding the hollow of his throat, and Dennis standing over him. "Now listen to me, you
scheiskopf
," he said. "If you want to see your son, you do it at his place or on the street,
not
in
my
re
hear
sal." He stressed each syllable with a poke of the cane that made the man gag. "Now you go out to the front desk, and you ask the lady there where you might find a mop and bucket. Then you come back, and without making a sound you clean up this mess you just made. And when you're done, don't you ever come in this studio again.
Do you understand me?
"

Danny's father nodded, undoubtedly fearful that a negative response would cause Dennis to send the wooden point of the cane as far into his throat as possible. To the amazement of Quentin and everyone else in the studio, the man came back to clean up his vomit. Dennis, seemingly intent on his rehearsal, did not look at the man once. When Danny returned from lunch and was told that his father had been there, he asked to be dismissed for the day. He was at rehearsal the next day, however, and never mentioned his father again.

Quentin thought that although Dennis was concerned with the way Danny's father had treated the boy, what had angered him more was that his rehearsal had been interrupted and he had been treated rudely by a boor, and those were things that he would not suffer. How unlike the Dennis Hamilton who today, scarcely a decade later, turned pale at a harsh word, an ignorant snub.

They were moving now, down the halls, down the stairs, through the basement to the back door. When they walked outside, Larry Peach was waiting for them, smiling. "Nice service?" he said.

"Very nice," John Steinberg answered, then turned to the others. "Please, get in the car, everyone. I won't be long."

Quentin and Dex opened the doors for Robin, Dennis, and Donna, then watched while Steinberg conspiratorially drew Peach aside. They could just overhear what the two men said.

"An exclusive," Steinberg told Peach. "For your ears and those of your readers alone."

"Yeah, yeah, fine. So what is it?"

"This past weekend," Steinberg said, an arm around Peach's shoulder, "I received substantiated proof that . . .” Here he looked around, as if to make certain no unwelcome listeners were present. “. . . that your mother has been lasciviously fornicating with all the indigent Haitian boat people she can wrap her labia around."

He patted an unbelieving Peach on the shoulder and hopped into the car astonishingly fast. "Have a nice day!" he called as he started the engine and drove down the alley.

"You fuck . . ." Larry Peach said softly, while Dex and Quentin started to giggle. "You
fuck
!" Peach yelled, throwing his note pad after the fleeing BMW.

It was the first time Quentin had laughed in a week. It was the first time he had forgotten about death.

Donna Franklin's day had been grim until the woman came in applying for the new job. At that point it seemed to lighten somehow. God knew it had started out badly enough. Although two weeks had passed since the accident, it was still on everyone's mind, and long faces were the order of the day. As if that weren't enough, she had had a scene with Abe
Kipp
again. Abe
Creep
was what she called him, but only in front of Sid.

Donna, after her customary post-breakfast walk, had come in through the stage door that morning. She usually reentered the building through the lobby doors, but today she had to check the date of inspection on the backstage elevator. The door had been unlocked and the work lights on. Abe and Harry were down in the rows of seats, giving them their biweekly dusting, and she paused to listen to what Abe was saying.