The Stars That Tremble (6 page)

“That’s good. So what’s left to do?”

Mike picked his clipboard up off the counter and glanced at it. “The tile for the backsplash is due in tomorrow. Then I just have to finish putting the hardware on the cabinets and some other small touches. We should be finished by the end of the week.”

Mike’s itchiness was probably due in part to Mrs. Hutchinson hovering, just like she had through the whole project, as though she didn’t trust Mike and his team to finish renovating her kitchen without setting the whole building on fire. But Mike was good at this and he knew it; there was a reason he was able to charge what he did to the well-heeled Manhattan aristocrats who tended to hire him.

Sandy appeared at the apartment’s main doorway, which was Mike’s cue to pack it up.

“I think we’re going to wind down for the day,” he told Mrs. Hutchinson. “Call me when the tile is delivered, and we’ll wrap up then, okay?”

Mrs. Hutchinson nodded jerkily, but was pleasant enough as she saw them out of the apartment.

Mike couldn’t shake the itchy feeling as he and Sandy rode the elevator down to the first floor.

“You okay?” Sandy asked.

“Yeah.” Although that was an obvious lie, and the way Sandy furrowed his brow indicated he knew it too. Still, Mike thought of a possible solution to his unease. “Hey. Let me see if I can talk Emma into staying the night at a friend’s Friday. We should go out.”

Sandy narrowed his eyes. “Go… out?”

“Uh-huh. Maybe to the Tides?”

“You want to go dancing?” The elevator door opened and Sandy followed Mike out. “Okay, okay. I surrender, alien overlords. You’ve clearly abducted Mike and replaced him with a robot, but I’m too smart to fall for your trap.”

“Come on, Sandy. We should go. We never go out.”

“Because you never want to.”

“Now I do.”

“Sure, okay. But what about your opera singer?”

Just thinking about Gio brought that itchy feeling back fourfold. Mike wiped sweat from his brow and said, “I told you, we put things on hold until the workshop ends.”

“And when is that?”

“In four more weeks.”

Sandy nodded. “Okay, I see what’s happening.”

“What’s happening?”

Sandy motioned toward Columbus and they started to walk. “You’re horny. You want the opera guy, but you can’t have him. It’s making you crazy, so you want to go out, have a few drinks, flirt with a few cute boys, and get your dance on to work out some of your frustration.”

Mike didn’t say anything. There was no point arguing against the truth.

“All right, big guy,” Sandy said. “We’ll go out on Friday. We’ll go dancing at the Tides if that’s what you really want. But I think you should invite this opera guy too.”

“What?” Sandy was right; Mike had been hoping for an outlet. He wanted to go dance and maybe make out with a handsome stranger on the dance floor and scratch this itch that had him practically crawling out of his skin. Why was Sandy complicating that? “Did I not just explain to you that he wants to put the whole thing on hold?”

“I’m not saying fuck him. I’m saying invite him to come out dancing with us. It’s a friendly thing. See if he’s really worth making yourself this insane.” Sandy stopped at the corner and turned back to Mike. “Although, damn, four weeks? Who gives a shit? Why bother waiting?”

“It’s unethical. He’s Emma’s teacher.”

“He’s also someone with enough clout that no one will fire him.” Sandy starting counting on his fingers. “It’s a class that doesn’t have a grade, so a parent sleeping with him can’t influence anything. And you are two consenting adults. I don’t see the problem.”

Mike was surprised. He stared at Sandy. “That was shockingly logical. Are you sure you’re not the one who got abducted?”

“You want to go out. You want to get to know this guy. Kill two birds with one stone. Or don’t, but stop whining to me about the situation.” Sandy pointed to the coffee shop on the corner. “Buy me a cuppa joe.”

“It’s not enough that I pay your salary?”

“Nope.” Sandy grinned. “I want a froufrou espresso drink too, with lots of sugar. And a scone.”

“I’ll buy you a coffee, but don’t push it.”

While they waited in line at the coffee shop, Sandy’s phone chimed. He pulled it out. “Oh, hey, it’s a text from James.”

“Who is James?”

“The doctor.”

“I thought you weren’t dating him anymore.”

“No, I said we probably shouldn’t date. But when have you ever known me to act practically.”

“All right, carry on. Looks like they have blueberry or cinnamon scones.”

“Blueberry.” Sandy’s phone chimed again. “James is free on Friday. We should all go out together.”

“I’m not doing some silly double date thing with you.”

“So invite a couple of other guys and turn it into a social thing. Keep it casual.”

“Pretend it’s not a date.”

“Exactly. And then even if you don’t hook up, you get to spend time with him. Which is what you want, right?”

Mike saw Sandy’s logic but remained unconvinced.

M
IKE
didn’t plan to say anything the next afternoon when he went to pick up Emma at the workshop. He was worried, in fact, that things would be awkward now, that he should not have pushed his luck by kissing Gio and then leaving him on the sidewalk. Now things were going to be weird.

He hadn’t said anything to Emma and didn’t intend to. For one thing, his love life really wasn’t her business, no matter how often she asked about it and he voluntarily answered, and for another, she’d been in some kind of opera la-la land for the past two weeks and hadn’t talked about anything else.

But she was spending Friday night at Isobel’s where she could drive her best friend crazy with talk about
La Bohème
and Verdi and Maria Callas and whatever else she’d been going on about all week. Not that he begrudged her this interest and he understood why she was obsessing, but he felt ill-equipped to hold up his end of the conversation.

When he got out of the elevator and walked toward the studio, he could hear singing from down the hall. A harsh voice interrupted the singing, and then Gio’s voice rang out again. “Again. Try to sing on key this time, Greg.” The piano chimed a chord and then a male voice started singing something in a language Mike didn’t understand. Then the sweetest sound, like a bird or an angel, came into the duet. Mike paused just outside the door but glanced in. Emma was singing. He could hardly believe that was her.

“Emma, you’re a half step flat,” Gio shouted over the singing.

Emma adjusted, but then flubbed something badly enough that even Mike could tell she’d made a mistake. She cleared her throat.

“Again,” Gio said. “Greg, the G-sharp is this note.” Gio pushed a key on the piano repeatedly. “Hit it this time. And Emma, sing from the top of your head.” He quasi-sang that as he spoke, as well as he could sing with his broken voice, and he stood up straight and pointed to his head. “Now, sing on key.”

The kids sang again and sounded pretty good.

Gio glanced at his watch. “All right, that’s it for today. I want you all to go home and practice scales. Ee-ee-ah-ah-ah, okay? And learn the words to the pieces
before
class. Don’t waste my time trying to learn the song here.”

The kids in the class scattered. Mike hesitated at the doorway. Emma saw him and nodded. He figured he’d just wait and put Sandy’s stupid idea of a night out with Gio and his friends out of his mind. It was a stupid idea anyway. Who could even imagine what Gio would think of Mike’s friends. Sandy and Mike were cut from the same cloth, and Sandy could hold his own in a lot of strange social situations, so Mike thought that would be all right, but what if Gio met Dave or Angelo? The whole thing was a terrible idea.

Before he could duck away, while Emma talked with one of her classmates and very slowly put her sheet music into the folder that fit in her bag, Gio jogged over. “Mike. Hello.”

“Hi,” Mike said. He took a deep breath, trying not to overthink this and make it awkward.

“How are you?” Gio asked, leaning on the doorway.

“Uh, okay.” He glanced at Emma, still chatting away with some girl. And then the words just tumbled right out of Mike’s mouth. “You want to go out tomorrow night?” Shit.

Gio stared at Mike for a long moment without blinking. “I thought we weren’t—”

“Not, like, a date.” Mike took care to whisper so the kids wouldn’t overhear, although they all seemed too absorbed in whatever they were doing to pay attention to the adults. “Some friends are getting together. Usual Friday night thing. Thought you might want to tag along, but I get it if you don’t want to. No, you know what? Forget I said anything. No biggie, I’ll just call Emma and get out of your way.”

Gio smirked. “You’re cute when you’re nervous.” He glanced around him. “What would we be doing?”

Mike was starting to worry for his own blood pressure. Yikes, why was this so hard? “Uh, well, usually we go to this Thai place on West Fifty-third. It’s not, like, the best Thai you’ve ever had, but it’s decent. Then we’ll go to the Tides. That’s a gay club on Forty-seventh. Have you ever been?”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

“It’s been around for a million years. It kind of attracts an older crowd. I like going there because I don’t feel like a dirty old man preying on the young guys, you know? They play good music on Fridays. We’ll dance.”

“Yes, all right. That sounds like fun. Text me the details. Do you have my phone number?”

Mike pulled his phone out. Gio dictated the number. Once that was settled, Mike said, “This is probably also not really ethical, like what we talked about, but it seems less scandalous than, well, you know. And this way I still get to see you.”

Gio smiled. “I look forward to it, then.”

A couple of the kids pushed past them on their way out of the studio. Emma walked up. “All right, Dad, let’s go.”

Mike wondered what he had just done as he walked with Emma toward the bus stop and listened to her ramble about whatever the issue had been with class that day.

“And it’s Greg’s fault because he’s always flat,” she was saying as they waited for the bus.

“Uh-huh.”

“Daddy, are you even listening?”

“I’m listening, kiddo.”

She glared at him like she didn’t believe it, but then went on ranting about the other kids in her class. Mike wanted to interrupt and tell her she was being a snob, but letting her talk gave him time to dwell on his thoughts about Gio.

W
HEN
Gio walked into the common room near the voice department’s offices, he spotted Dacia lounging on one of the ancient sofas, flipping through a choral score. Kevin, a grad student who worked as a department assistant three afternoons a week, was manning the dean’s secretary’s desk.

“Where’s Angela?” Gio asked Kevin.

“Out sick. Or her kid is out sick? I dunno, but someone’s got the flu.”

“Ah.” Gio sat next to Dacia on the sofa.

She smiled at him. “How was the workshop?”

“Today’s was difficult. Greg, he’s a little rough around the edges. Needs to develop better pitch or he’s not going anywhere.”

Dacia nodded and went back to examining the choral score. Gio glanced over her shoulder and recognized a section of it as being from a Handel oratorio he didn’t like much. He stayed quiet, though.

“Something on your mind?” she asked.

“Mike asked me to go dancing with him tomorrow night.”

Kevin guffawed. “Mike? You are dating a guy named Mike?”

“I thought you
weren’t
dating just yet,” said Dacia.

“That was the plan. It’s not even a date, though. He says it’s more hanging out with his friends.”

Dacia raised an eyebrow. “How old is this guy?”

“Thirty-seven.” Gio sighed. “That whole ‘hanging out with the dudes’ thing is something guys in their twenties do, right?”

“Is he even gay?” Kevin asked.

“We’re going dancing at a gay club. What do you think?”

Kevin laughed. “You? At a gay club?”

“Can we fire him?” Gio asked Dacia.

Dacia laughed. “Are you going to go?” she asked in Italian.

Gio glared at Kevin. In Italian, he said, “I told him I would. I’m not sure if I will blend in with this crowd, though. Mike is more… I don’t know. Rugged? He doesn’t know a lot about music or opera. What if we have nothing to talk about?”

“Has that been a problem so far?”

“I suppose not. But there’s also the other thing.”

“That he’s your student’s father?”

“Yes. You don’t think that’s unethical?”

“I suppose it is, but the workshop is ending soon, no?”

“You guys are no fun at all,” Kevin said. “You know I don’t speak Italian.”

Dacia threw an arm around Gio and gave him a brief hug. “It will be a new and interesting experience for you,” she said in English. “It might be nice to fall in love with someone who is not a performer for a change. Performers are so dramatic.”

“
Dio.
Who said anything about falling in love?”

Dacia stood. “You would not be having an existential crisis over a man you just wanted to fuck.”

As she walked away, Gio shouted, “I hate my friends.”

“
Noi ti amiamo
!” called out Dacia.

Gio rolled his eyes.