When the Stars Come Out (24 page)

Thank you, too, for sharing the magic of
When the Stars Come Out
with me. The two of you are an inspiration, and I congratulate
you for keeping the love alive over all the years. While I’m naturally
disappointed that you won’t let me share your story with the world,
I’m thrilled that I, at least, have had the opportunity to witness long-term happiness and mutual support. If not the world’s role models,
you are mine.

I look forward to our next meeting. And be nice to Bart!

With love,

Noah Abraham

160

R o b B y r n e s

Two days later, Quinn opened the card after carrying the day’s

mail into the kitchen.

“Look at this,” he said to Jimmy, handing over the card. “The

kid’s pushy, but at least he has manners.”

Jimmy read the card. “Role models. He really thinks of us as role

models.” Unconvinced as Jimmy had been by Noah’s pitch, once

the idea had been implanted into his head and he mulled it over

for a few days, he had to admit—to himself, at least—that the thought held a certain appeal.

His partner, on the other hand, remained unconvinced.

“Must not get out much,” said Quinn, as he began hobbling away

toward the dining room.

“You know,” said Jimmy, slowly following him, “maybe it’s worth

hearing him out. Maybe we
do
have a story that the world would want to hear.”

“And maybe the kid is fucked in the head.” Quinn stopped and

turned slightly, the soreness in his hip preventing a full pivot. “We’re nothing anymore. Remember that. We have a nice, quiet life, and

we should appreciate that, because we’ve got it better than a lot of people.”

Jimmy looked at the card again. “So you’re afraid that a book

would . . . roil the waters?”

Quinn shrugged. “It would probably change things, and I can’t

see how it would change them for the better.”

“Let me ask you a question.” Jimmy closed the card and used it

to gently fan his face. “Is this at all about your ex-wife?”

Quinn’s gray eyes bore a hole in Jimmy’s skull, belying his words.

“Of course not. That marriage was a lifetime ago. We haven’t had

any contact since Nixon was president. In his first term, at that. She doesn’t carry any weight here.”

Quinn semiturned back to his original position and began walk-

ing toward the living room. Jimmy followed at a respectable dis-

tance.

“Because here’s the thing. We do have a nice, low-key life, but

you know as well as I do that you’re bored. This book would give

you something to do. Something
different
.”

“Bah.”

“And so what if the world learns that the Philly Cop is gay?

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

161

Everyone out here—everyone we deal with on a regular basis—they

all know. So what if a few anonymous fans out there get a surprise?

Maybe that will be good for them. Maybe they’ll start realizing that gay people can be anywhere, and can do anything . . . including

playing tough cops on TV.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

When they were both in the living room and Quinn was taking

his place in the recliner, Jimmy, still standing, added, “Are you sure this doesn’t have to do with Kitty?”

“Katherine is part of another life I once had.”

“Or Q. J.?”

“Same thing. He belongs to his mother, not me. We’ve only ex-

changed Christmas and birthday cards for the past fifteen years.”

“Uh-huh.” With that Jimmy left the room, leaving Quinn to scram-

ble out of the recliner unassisted if he wanted to follow him. Which he did.

“What do you mean by ‘uh-huh’?!” he demanded. When Jimmy

wouldn’t stop he added, “Don’t you walk away from me with an ‘uh-

huh’! I told you this has nothing to do with them, and it doesn’t!”

Jimmy paused midway through the dining room and grasped

the back of a chair.

“Okay,” he said. “It has nothing to do with them.”

“Not a thing.”

“You just don’t want to write a book . . .”

“Oh, Christ.” Quinn leaned back against the dining room wall.

Damn, his hip hurt
. Trying to maintain his calm he said, “I just don’t see why I should rock the boat. That’s all. It has nothing to do with Katherine, and nothing to do with my son. It has everything—
everything
—to do with the fact that we have a nice life and I can’t think of one good reason to do it. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh.” Jimmy let go of the chair and started back to the

kitchen.

“
That’s all
!”

“Uh-huh.”

Still leaning against the wall, Quinn called after him. “I want a

drink. Is it noon yet?”

“Maybe,” came the distant reply.

“Bitch,” he muttered under his breath.

162

R o b B y r n e s

Jimmy’s head, just vanished into the kitchen, popped out again

from around the doorway molding. “I heard that. You’re too deaf

to talk to yourself.”

Quinn hated the slow fade his body had started undergoing a

decade earlier. Or was it two decades? The memory was another

thing that tended to fade a bit. But he hated it even more when

Jimmy reminded him of it. Almost a decade younger and always in

better physical shape, Jimmy’s body had thus far been spared many

of the quotidian indignities of aging.

He just hated . . . the idea of mortality. Yes, that was it. His hip hurt—his
second
hip, at that—and his hearing was slowly failing. He was a mere human, and he would die someday.

Which is the thought process that brought on his epiphany.

He had become an actor in part because he wanted to leave

something of himself behind. Ever since he had stepped onto that

high-school stage and got his first taste of applause, he saw acting as a way to leave a permanent imprint that he had existed. Now there

were his movies, of course, but they were only the first act of Quinn Scott’s life. Shouldn’t he leave the rest of himself behind, too?

Maybe that damn Noah had an idea worth pursuing. Maybe that

was the way he could leave the rest of his life behind . . . and

Jimmy’s, too. Maybe the foolish idea wasn’t so foolish after all.

“When you see Bart,” he said, “tell him that I’ll
consider
discussing this thing with Noah, and he should invite him back for a weekend.”

Jimmy smiled. He didn’t know it, but he was thinking exactly

what Quinn was thinking.

“In that case,” said Jimmy, “it’s noon. I’ll make you a cocktail.”

Noah arrived by bus late the following Friday. Bart picked him

up at the Southampton stop and, as they drove to Quinn’s house,

said, “I don’t know what the turn-around is all about, but now he

seems interested.”

Noah put his hand on Bart’s thigh. “So did you miss me?”

“Of course. Not that you’ve been away too awfully long.” He

smiled out the front windshield and added, “And you’re the one

who didn’t want to date because you thought we’d never see each

other again.”

“I stand corrected,” said Noah. “Happily corrected.”

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

163

“You know . . .” Bart stopped himself.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

Bart’s eyes didn’t leave the road, and there was a nervous hesita-

tion in his voice. “It’s just that we’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks now. And if this works out with Quinn, you’ll probably be out here a lot more often, or I’ll be going with him to the city. And I was thinking it might be a good time to . . .”

Silence. Bart swallowed and kept his eyes on the road.

Noah waited for him to start talking again. It took twenty sec-

onds—twenty long seconds in which he might as well have not

been in the car—before Bart finally finished his thought. Sort of.

He swallowed again and said, “I know it’s only been a few weeks,

but I was thinking that . . . well, maybe it makes sense to . . .”

“Do you want to try to be boyfriends?” Noah asked, electing to

put Bart out of his misery.

Bart smiled, happy that he hadn’t had to do all the work. “Is that a bad thing?”

“No. I was thinking the same thing.”

He hadn’t really been thinking the same thing—not exactly—

but given a bit more time, he thought he would have. However,

since Bart had broached the subject, or at least
tried
to broach the subject, he made a snap decision. After all, Bart had been right

once before, when he asked him to dinner. Now they were unex-

pectedly spending a lot of time together, and—if the Quinn Scott

project broke his way—they would be almost full-time companions,

so Noah thought that he might as well make an honest man out of

Bart Gustafson. He was nice, and he was handsome, and he was

kind, and he looked hot when his cheeks were smeared with motor

oil, so why not?

As he drove, Bart felt incredible relief. Just a few weeks earlier he had left Manhattan convinced that Noah was never going to call

him, and now they were going to be an official couple. He had fully expected him—
his boyfriend
, Bart reminded himself—to recoil at the suggestion, and call it premature. But he most definitely hadn’t.

A laugh suddenly burst from Bart’s throat. “God, I just realized

that I haven’t had a boyfriend since I was twenty-two. Isn’t that

sad?”

164

R o b B y r n e s

“I’m glad I could come along before you turned into an old

maid.”

And they both kept smiling the entire drive back to the house.

Once his immediate glee over his new relationship status had

waned a bit, allowing him to focus on the immediate and impor-

tant matters at hand, Bart warned Noah that Quinn was still skeptical about the book idea. Which is why, over dinner that night,

Noah spent considerable time outlining his thoughts for Quinn

and Jimmy.

“I know this won’t be easy for you,” he said, when he concluded

his vision. “But, like I said before, you could become huge role

models.”

“That phrase keeps coming up,” said Jimmy. He was silently sup-

portive of the project, but wanted to make Noah work for it.

“Aren’t there enough role models out there?” He looked at Quinn

for support.

“Jimmy’s right,” he said gruffly. “I think we’re too damn old to

be role models.”

“There’s always room for more role models,” Noah told them.

“And you’re not that old. You’re, like, my father’s age.”

“Thank you,” Jimmy said dryly. “That’s something every vain gay

man wants to hear.”

Quinn took up the argument. “If you want to write about an

older role model, then why don’t you write about your father? I’m

sure you can find something inspirational.”

“My father?” Noah smiled. “He’s already inspired a
Saturday

Night Live
character, so anything I try to do is bound to come up short.”

“What?” said Bart. “You never told me that. Which character?”

“Famous Lawyer Abe Maxham.”

Jimmy gasped. “Your father is Max Abraham?”

“I’m afraid so.” Noah struggled to get the conversation back on

track. “As far as the role model thing goes, don’t worry about it.

The goal here isn’t to put you on the public speaking circuit. It’s to put your story out there, and then let each individual do with it

what he—or she—wants.”

While they considered his words, Noah directed his next com-

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

165

ments directly at Quinn. “Take Richard Chamberlain. When his

bio came out a few years ago, I’m sure it inspired a lot of people—

not just older folks, but young ones too—to embrace their sexual-

ity. To not be ashamed. And it taught a lot of others that gay people are everywhere. Even on their television screens.”

Quinn’s skepticism bubbled to the surface. “Are you comparing

me to Chamberlain?”

“Think about it. You were both television icons of the 1960s.

What better comparison is there? You could be thought of tomor-

row just like he is today: not only as a great actor, but also as someone who bravely told the world, ‘I am gay.’ Then we throw in a little gossip to spice it up and . . .”

“Ugh.” Quinn’s face wrinkled. “I
knew
you were going to gussy it up with dirt.”

“
Clean
dirt,” said Noah. “Not scandalous stuff. Just some snap-shots of gay life in Hollywood, circa the late ’60s and early ’70s.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” Quinn rose from the

dinner table. “I’m inclined to let my story be told, but there are a lot of considerations here.”

“Please,” said Noah, and he also rose from his chair. “Please
do
think about it. You’ve got to be comfortable with the project.”

“I’ll do my thinking in front of the television.” Quinn nodded to

Jimmy. “Care to join me?”

“In a minute. I want to clear the table.”

When Quinn was out of the room, Noah turned to Jimmy and

asked, “So what do you think?”

“About the project? Or about whether or not Quinn will cooper-

ate.”

“All of the above.”

“I think he’s almost there.” He stood and began collecting the

dirty dishes. “But ‘almost’ is not a yes. So good luck with it. On all counts.”

The next morning, Noah looked out the window onto an obvi-

ously warm and sunny day. Even though it was now October, the

temperatures were still not cooperating with the calendar. Not that anyone was complaining.