Reign (58 page)

Dennis slept late and spent most of the day in his suite at the Kirkland Hotel. He worked out in the exercise room, along with Quentin and Dex, and afterward the three of them went back to Dennis's suite, where they had a drink and reminisced.

"I don't mind telling you, Dennis," Quentin said, setting his
Campari
on the coffee table, "I was a little hesitant about working for you back in '81."

"My reputation preceded me?"

"Yes — your reputation for gay-bashing."

"You talking about
Dennis
?" said Dex in disbelief.

"I don't know what you mean,
Quent
," Dennis said.

Quentin laughed. "Oh, that reputation wasn't universal, and it probably wasn't well-deserved. I just heard the Ricky
Scaratucci
story."

"Ricky
Scaratucci
. . .”Dennis repeated, and after a moment his face lit with understanding. "Oh God, the guy in the original company!" He laughed and covered his face in embarrassment.

Quentin nodded. "He came on to you and you slugged him?"

"Yes, yes, it wasn't really a slug, more of a little jab to the midsection. But I didn't slug him because he was gay, or even because he came on to me, I slugged him because he was a
sonovabitch
who was busting my balls every chance he got. He was one of those bastards who really wanted to see me flop."

"Jealous," Dex said.

Dennis nodded. "He'd been working in shows for twenty years and never got any further than the chorus. Then here I came along and got the lead without paying my dues, and he . . . didn't like that. So he tried to make my life as miserable as possible, all in the guise of 'jokes.' Sand in my cold cream jar, Coke in my street shoes, sly, witty little things your everyday sadist enjoys." He took a sip of Perrier. "Then one day — right back there in the Venetian Theatre dressing room — I was getting out of my costume, just had on a shirt and my jock, and he grabbed my ass. I don't mean just a pinch, I mean he grabbed it, almost pornographically. I jumped a mile. I was already furious, and when I saw who it was I just . . . let him have it. He collapsed like a gas bag, fell down and hit his head on the side of the sink. He was probably out five minutes, while everybody ran around and tried to get doctors."

"And what did you do all this while?" Quentin asked with the self-aplomb of one who knew.

"I was pretty nasty. I think my exact words were, 'Let him fucking die.'“

“That's what I heard," said Quentin.

"Truth to tell, I was terrified I had really hurt him. I was more scared than angry. The gruffness was a put-on. He came out of it, thank God, with no permanent damage done." Dennis laughed. "Hell, even if I would have killed him, all they would have had to do was examine his fingernails to see that it was justifiable homicide."

"Still," Quentin said, "it earned you a reputation. And it put me off."

"Until you learned that I was a pussycat?"

"Until I learned that you were just a normal person, with fears and concerns like anyone else, and not really the Emperor Frederick."

"He's a part of you, though," Dex said.

"As any character is a part of a good actor," Quentin added.

Dennis only smiled, and changed the subject. "You're too sensitive to gay-bashing to begin with,
Quent
. I think you'd have gotten over that by now."

Quentin looked down at the coffee table and picked up his drink. "Early scars cut deep, my friend. It's not the easiest thing in the world to be."

"That's true," Dex said. "I was gay once, I know."

"You asshole!" Quentin laughed, and Dennis joined in, sharing the knowledge of Dex
Colangelo's
sexuality. "Dex, you don't have a homosexual bone in your body.”

“That's because I never bend over when you're around."

They laughed again, old friends who could tease each other and come away unscathed. Quentin felt comfortable and at peace, certain that the good feelings would last into the night, that the performance would be everything that he had hoped.

The intense work of the past few weeks had been good for him. He had been able to forget, at least for most of the time, the plague that was feeding upon his friends and haunting his dreams. AIDS was the worst thing ever to strike the gay community, and Quentin's negative test results did nothing to ease the pain of his friends' and former lovers' loss. Though he had had an exclusive partner for the last three years, and they were careful to use condoms for anal intercourse (a procedure Quentin had practiced ever since a tour of
The Student Prince
, when nearly every man in the company had come down with hepatitis, closing the show), Quentin still lived in fear of the disease, and was dismayed by the social stigma that followed after it like vultures after a plague.

There had been a glorious time in the seventies when it was fun to be gay, when the health concerns of herpes, syphilis, and gonorrhea were thought of as heterosexual problems. One of his friends had sadly joked of those days that the only problem gays had was what to wear with rust. But now, what with the problems the "Gay Plague," as it was infuriatingly known, had caused, along with what Quentin viewed as the politically motivated swing back to so-called family values, it seemed to him that gays had become second class citizens again. In spite of the Rock Hudson inspired gala fund raisers, the massive quilts, the calls by government officials for more AIDS research funding, Quentin felt he and his brothers were feared at best, hated at worst by the public at large.

He had truly felt that hatred a few months before, when he and Ken, his lover, were walking hand in hand in the village and were passed by four young men who they had seen before in the area. As they walked by, one of the men cupped his genitals and called out, "Hey, faggots,
eat
me!" to which his friends responded by laughing as though it was the wittiest remark any of them had ever heard, and continued up the street, laughing. It was the first time in years that Quentin had been mocked in that way. But it was not that in itself that disturbed him as much as his hearing one of them say, "Eat me . . . they gonna get eaten, man, by that AIDS . . .” and the others laugh in reply.

And the thought had gone through his mind with the heat and savagery of the virus itself.
They want me dead. They want all of us dead
.

That night he had dreamed of their faces, white, hard, and cruel. And the faces of those ignorant, unthinking, and evil men grew larger and larger until their mouths were a foot across, snapping at him with sharp teeth, and he ran, but the heads rolled after him, and he knew they were not heads of men at all, but the cells of the virus, and once one pair of those sharp teeth had him, he would fall, and they would be on him, and he would be a dead man, having to watch while those ugly mouths ate him alive, leaving his own head for last, so that his eyes would watch and his mind would know and his nerves would feel everything as they slowly devoured him.

Ken shook him into a partial wakefulness, and Quentin, eyes pressed closed, sweated and sobbed and clutched at his lover, wanting to banish the nightmare vision, but hesitant to leave the reality of his dream for the true reality of waking, which could, he thought in the warped logic of dream, be even worse. It was not until Ken whispered over and over again, "
Shhh
, just a dream, come on, wake up, just a dream . . .” that Quentin forced his eyes open and saw the familiar glow of the city's lights at the windows. The dream had stayed with him ever since, the dream and the stupid laughter that had caused it.

So he had been grateful for the show, glad to immerse himself in his old friend Dennis Hamilton's real problems instead of his own fantasized ones. It had helped him to drive his phobia into the back of his mind. Like his mother had said, the best way to forget your own problems is to help other people. And God knows Dennis had needed help.

He had been absolutely dreadful in New York. More than simply embarrassing, his performance had been humiliating, nothing but rote memorization, and even that was done poorly, with Dennis dropping lines right and left, leaving the other principals nothing to do but trip on them. It had taken an outburst to make Dennis come to his senses, and Quentin was proud of the way he had handled it. True, it was John Steinberg's idea, but it had taken Quentin (who fancied himself still a decent actor) to bring it off. And true also, he had been shouted at by Dennis in front of the entire company, but he was sure they understood why he had driven Dennis to it. They had seen the remarkable change the outburst had caused.

It had turned the hesitant and sickly actor into the Emperor once again. It had restored the majesty not only to the character but to the man. In just a few short days, Dennis seemed to regain weight, his color had become ruddily healthy, and his voice filled the theatre as surely as his acting did the heart.

And tonight, with the audience, Dennis could only be better. Quentin had never seen a performer respond to an audience as much as Dennis Hamilton did.

Yes
, he thought as he picked up his drink and drew his attention back to Dex and Dennis,
tonight would be a performance to remember
.

~ * ~

The limos started to arrive after seven-thirty, when all the company was safely within the theatre. The ticket takers had been cautioned to look for counterfeit tickets, and found several, although one holder of a counterfeit was actually seated before the ruse was discovered. The seat happened to belong to
Cissy
Morrison, who, when the usher showed her to an already occupied seat, raised such a fuss that tickets were compared and the man's was found to be wanting embossing. He turned out to be a reporter for one of the shabbier tabloids whose editors had not felt the five thousand dollar investment was worthwhile.

A few people complained about the metal detectors they had to pass through after their tickets were taken, but most went through with good will, even Dan Munro, who first showed his I.D. and then checked his service revolver with the guards. "Just like Dodge City," he told Patty. "Check your guns when you come into town."

An exception to the general cooperation was Willard Prescott, who had produced the film,
Sweet Jesus
, two years earlier, and had lived in fear of his life ever since a Christian militant organization had sent him a decapitated skunk in the mail, packaged in an Omaha Steaks box. Ever since that day, Prescott had carried a small .32 caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. He did not, however, have a permit for the county of which Kirkland was a part, and the security guards, who had been warned of the possibility of someone smuggling a firearm into the theatre, patted and then threw Prescott down, removing his weapon while he howled in protest. It took John Steinberg's irked intervention to get Prescott released, although his pistol was unloaded and kept by the guards.

The other smuggler was Larry Peach of the
Probe
, who tried to carry in a small camera under his sport coat. He set up a howl greater than Prescott's, about freedom of the press and the rights of the public to be informed, but the guards were adamant, even more so when the squabble drew the doubly annoyed John Steinberg back to their sides.

"These bastards won't give me my camera," said Peach.

"When you receive your playbill," Steinberg said smoothly, "you'll find that the taking of photographs is strictly prohibited."

"Not when it's
news
, pal — or when it turns
out
to be news, and I got every indication that that's what just might happen tonight. You don't let a reporter photograph news, that's censorship, that's restraint of free trade!"

"And that's enough," Steinberg said, taking a checkbook from the pocket of his dinner jacket and writing in it with a gold fountain pen.

"What are you doing?" Peach asked, still restrained by the security guards.

Steinberg signed with a flourish, tore out a check, and stuffed it into Peach's breast pocket. "That is a check from The New American Musical Theatre Project for five thousand dollars. You are a nuisance, and are hereby ejected from the premises,
but
with a full refund. See the gentleman out, please."

"
Hey!
" Peach screamed as the guards half pushed, half dragged him to the doors. "You can't do this! Hey!" He saw a familiar face in the crowd. "Geraldo! Hey,
lookit
this, man! Freedom of the press! You believe this! . . . Hey, Geraldo, where you
goin
'
? . . . Hey, man, this is a
story
! . . .
Yo
!
Oprah!
"

~ * ~

The security people guarding the stage door were even more vigilant than those in the front of the house. Every member of the company had been patted down for weapons, and every dance bag thoroughly checked. No one complained, as they had all been informed beforehand of the procedures. "It's for your own safety," Curt had told them, "and the safety of everyone in the theatre." He had been about to say,
and no one has a thing to worry about
, but couldn't get the words out honestly, so left them unsaid.

Curt was worried, in spite of himself. He had been to the bathroom every twenty minutes, knowing that the pressure in his bladder was due to nerves, but that knowledge did nothing to relieve it. It had all gone too easy in the last week.