When the Stars Come Out (23 page)

me to the screening room?”

As they rose from the dining room table, Noah whispered to

Bart. “The screening room?”

“Downstairs. Don’t get too excited. It’s not exactly the Ziegfeld

Theater down there.”

The four men, accompanied by Camille, descended the dimly lit

staircase off the kitchen until they reached the screening room, a small hideaway across the hall from the foot of the stairs. While

Quinn strode into the darkness, Jimmy fumbled until he found the

light switch. Moments later the room came to life.

“So is this going to be painful?” asked Noah, whispering to Bart.

“How painful can it be? You get to see Quinn Scott sing and

dance.”

“Oh dear . . .”

Noah turned and saw Jimmy in a tiny closed-off space at the

back of the screening room, rifling through a box of videotapes.

“Can I give you a hand?”

“No,” said Jimmy, as he carefully pulled a tape from the box. “I

found what I was looking for.”

Noah stared at the box. “Video? That’s sort of . . . low tech, isn’t it?”

Jimmy stole a glance at Quinn. Seeing that he wasn’t paying at-

tention, he laughed and said, “We’re just civilians these days, hon.

Any hope we had of furnishing this place with high-tech gadgets

and professional film equipment disappeared back around 1970.”

He motioned around him at the small space in which he stood.

“For instance, we call this the projection room, but that’s tongue in cheek. It’s really just a closet rigged with a VHS and DVD feed to the screen.”

“Well, shouldn’t you at least have these on DVD? I mean, tape is

outdated. It disintegrates.”

152

R o b B y r n e s

Jimmy held up the box. Kitty Randolph and, in the background,

Quinn Scott—both eternally young as the stars of
When the Stars
Come Out—
smiled back from the cover.

“I know this will come as a shock, but they decided to put
All
About Eve
out on DVD before
Stars
. Go figure.” He paused, then thought to add, “That’s why Bart is kind enough to check the new

release schedule every time he’s back in civilization. And Bart and I check the Internet, and every other resource we can think of,

whenever we have a chance.”

“Oh, well . . . I guess that makes sense.”

Jimmy leaned close to Noah’s ear. “There
is
some good news,”

he said. “A ‘Kitty Randolph Collection’ is being released on DVD in a few weeks, and I’m not sure about this, because they haven’t announced all the titles, but there’s a chance
Stars
will be one of the movies in the set. Which would be perfect, because it will be just in time for Quinn’s birthday.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” said Noah.

“Appreciate it.”

From the front row of the eight-seat theater that passed as his

screening room, they heard Quinn holler. “Are you going to run

the fucking movie? Or should I just go to bed?”

“Go to bed, old man,” Jimmy muttered, but, responding for the

benefit of Quinn, he yelled back, “Two seconds!”

“Go grab a seat,” said Jimmy, shooing Noah out of the small

room. Less than a minute later, the FBI antipiracy warning came

on the screen as Jimmy hustled into the room, dimming the lights

before he took a seat next to Quinn.

Music swelled and the bright opening credits began. Each

screen title—beginning with the studio credit, then moving on to

the lead actors and, finally, the name of the movie—appeared in a

comic-style font before dissolving into twinkling stars. The theme continued through the end of the credits, when the deep blue

background slowly turned lighter, and the camera pulled back to

show that the blue had segued into a cloudless sky over San Francisco.

The camera angle dipped, and the bay came into view in the dis-

tance. It continued its descent until the camera was pointed down

one of the city’s hills at a lone figure walking up the center of the street.

Kitty Randolph.

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153

And she was singing, because that’s what sunny, happy, chipper,

innocent Kitty Randolph did on the screen in 1970.

It’s a day,

That’s meant for living,

And so I say,

That’s what I’ll do;

My new home,

My San Francisco!

I’ll make a pledge

To do my living with you!

Noah rolled his eyes, and Bart nudged him. They looked away

from the screen and saw that Quinn and Jimmy were rapt, despite

the insipid song and, oh, the little fact that the woman on the

videotape had tried to destroy them.

Over the next two hours, fresh-to-the-big-city Kitty got a job at an ad agency, began flirting with the executive in the office next to hers—played by Quinn, of course—and battled sex discrimination.

When Quinn accidentally got credit for one of her ideas, as well as the subsequent promotion, she scrunched up her nose and got

huffily angry, but never hinted that she’d file suit or quit. This character had obviously not been off the farm long enough to have

heard of Gloria Steinem.

Quinn’s character, a laid-back ladies’ man named ‘Nick Butler’—

eventually fell in love with Kitty’s “Ann Fredericks,” and, in time, made everything right when he discovered that she deserved his

promotion . . . much to the blustery, sexist dismay of Gale Gordon as the advertising firm’s president. And finally—their lives back the way they were supposed to be, with all resentment and jealousy

banished and the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge shimmering

against a dark, starry night—Quinn took Kitty in his arms while a

diorama of passersby froze in their tracks.

“Ann,” he said from the screen. “I think I love you.”

“Is that the best you can do?” she asked. “Because I
know
I love you!”

He smiled. “I do love you, Ann. Will you be Mrs. Nick Butler?”

With that, he pulled a ring box from his jacket. She took it and

opened it, then melted into his arms. And she sang.

154

R o b B y r n e s

When the evening falls, my dear,

And when my dream time calls, my dear,

You’ll be with me,

Of that, no doubt,

I’ll see your face when the stars come out.

Behind Quinn, the passersby in the street tableaux began danc-

ing. Noah squinted and . . . yes, that was definitely Jimmy Beloit. It was a long, long time ago, and he was still in his youthful, boyish twenties, but that was definitely Jimmy who was taking the young

woman in the blue dress in his arms and dancing just behind and

to the right of the rather stiff, but not embarrassingly so, Quinn Scott.

Noah suddenly laughed, but it was lost in the screening room

under the swelling music. He found it funny to be watching Quinn

and Jimmy on the screen, roughly the same ages as he and Bart

were, not knowing the storm that would envelop their lives in mere months.
When the Stars Come Out
might not have been great cinema, but it was a great time capsule.

His eyes wandered from the screen for a few short seconds, dart-

ing back just in time to see it.

The Glance.

It really existed. If you never knew of its existence, you would

miss it. But if you knew, you could plainly see the decades ahead of the two men being played out in that split-second when their eyes

met, before they pulled away.

And despite his cynicism, despite the mediocrity of the movie

they were just finishing watching, Noah felt his eyes well up at the sight.

He was still tearing when the end credits began rolling. Jimmy’s

name—buried in the middle of the other dancers, just before the

crew credits began—flashed past, and then the formerly boyish

dancer was turning the lights back on.

Bart looked at Noah. “Are you okay?”

Noah tried to laugh off the tears. The contrast in emotions made

his head ache. “Yeah. Just . . . it was strange seeing them, so long ago.”

“Christ,” said Quinn, as he pushed past the younger men. “Turn

off the waterworks. It was only a movie.” He headed up the stairs.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

155

Returning from the projection room after turning off the VCR,

Jimmy had a tissue in his hand.

“Here,” he said, and Noah took it. Jimmy leaned against the aisle

chair across from Noah. “You saw The Glance?”

“I saw a lot of things,” Noah said, grateful to feel Bart’s arm

reach around his shoulder. “But, yes, I saw The Glance.”

“Well, first of all, don’t listen to that asshole husband of mine. I can guarantee you that in just a few minutes he’ll be locked in the bathroom, crying like a baby. He can be a bastard, but at least he’s a
sentimental
bastard.” Noah laughed. “And secondly, let it flow. It was a beautiful moment that led to the rest of our lives, and it’s pre-served forever on celluloid. That’s sort of special, and if it’s beautiful enough to make you cry a little bit, I think that’s great.”

Noah smiled, even though that made his head hurt even more.

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

Jimmy patted Noah, then Bart, on the shoulder. “I’m going to

bed. Thanks for joining us for movie night.”

They said their good nights. Then, when Jimmy was gone, Noah

turned to Bart.

“You know what else?”

Bart smiled knowingly. “I think I know. They were young once.

And now they’re not.” His hand squeezed Noah’s shoulder. “I

know, baby. I know.”

Chapter 7

The hardest part about being in a relationship with another

man was letting myself relax. Even though I was a relatively

young man, I was old school. I still am, in many ways. I grew up

believing that intimacies were for one man and one woman. A

man and another man? Unthinkable!

It took work, and a lot of patience on Jimmy’s part, to get me

past that emotional block. Thank God he was—and remains—a

persistent son of a bitch . . .

O
n Wednesday night, Noah boarded the jitney for his return trip home. The bus ride was uneventful until the final approach to

Manhattan, when the panorama of skyscrapers took his breath

away, as it always did. Even though he had grown up there and lived there for most of his thirty-four years, he still was in awe that all those people and all that glass and steel could sit on one tiny little island.

His father had retired for the evening, but Tricia was still up,

watching television in the living room that, after a short stay at Quinn Scott’s Hamptons house, seemed impossibly small. Noah dropped

his backpack in the foyer and popped his head in to say hello.

“So how did it go?” she asked. “Are you making progress with

him?”

Noah shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to hate me quite as much, but

he’s getting pretty adamant that he doesn’t want to do the book.”

“I’m sorry.” She gently pounded the couch pillow to her right.

“Have a seat and keep me company.”

He obeyed, sharing the couch with her.

“You never saw
When the Stars Come Out
, did you?” he asked, once he had made himself comfortable.

“No,” she said. “Or at least I don’t think so. I have to admit that a lot of those movies are sort of jumbled up in my head.”

“Me, too,” Noah confessed. “But we watched it last night. It was

the movie where Quinn met his boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“It just sounds strange for two old men to call themselves ‘boy-

friends.’ ‘Boyfriends’ sounds like such a
young
term.”

Noah thought about that. She was right, in a sense, but . . .

“So what did you call my father before you dated?”

“Oh, Lord.” She pursed her lips in a playful pout and pulled her

hair back. “Do you really want to know?”

“Uh . . .” Noah remembered his fear that Tricia could have once

been his father’s mistress. “Do I? Because I really don’t have to . . .”

“Mr. Big,” she said, and she wouldn’t meet Noah for eye contact.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

159

Which was fine, because Noah didn’t want to look her in the eyes

either, after that revelation.

“I didn’t have to know,” he said.

She continued despite his demurral. “Like in
Sex and the City
.

When I started dating your father, he seemed like this big, impressive dream . . . a man I could have never hoped to attract. So I took a cue from Carrie Bradshaw and started calling him Mr. Big.”

“Uh . . . okay.”

She paused, thought for a second, then blushed a bright red.

“Oh, God, you didn’t think I called him that because of his
penis
, did you?”

Now it was Noah’s turn to blush. And cringe. And try to disap-

pear into the cushions of the couch.

“Tricia, please don’t make me think about things like that.”

“Because that wasn’t why I called him Mr. Big. I mean, he
is,
but that wasn’t . . .”

“Please stop. Now.”

In the morning, the thought of his father’s penis mostly out of

his head, Noah ran out to the closest Hallmark store and bought a

card. When he was home, he retreated to the guest room and

neatly hand-wrote his message.

Dear Quinn & Jimmy:

I wanted to drop a line to thank you for your hospitality this past
weekend. My trips to Southampton are always a lot of fun, and getting to spend time with the two of you is a highlight.