Late in the Season (19 page)

“Why do you say that?”

“You look as though you’re glowing.”

She restrained her excitement, and said, “Something wonderful happened to me. Terrifying at first. Even a little terrifying right now. But wonderful!”

His kind dark eyes looked at her without surprise.

“Would you like to share it with me?” he asked. Who but Jonathan would ask such a heavenly question, she asked herself; certainly not Bill Tierney, who would mutter, “That’s nice,” or something else equally inane.

“Yes! But…” How could she share it with him? A part of it—the most unknowable part of it, the X-factor, was Jonathan himself. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “I don’t know where to begin. Do you mind if I don’t share it with you?”

“If it’s that private, no problem.” He got up and took the grocery bag from her, bringing it into the kitchen where he began laying her purchases out on the counter. “How about a cup of tea and a game of Scrabble?” he asked.

“You really don’t mind?” she asked. She had to know.

“You’ll tell me when you’re ready.” Then, looking at the groceries, “God, what a huge container of milk. And you mean to say you really drink it like that? Straight? Without coffee or brandy or anything in it?” He shuddered in mock disgust, and she had to laugh.

“I have to warn you,” she said, as he got out the Scrabble board, “I cheat.”

“Oh! Not another one!” he said, then seemed to have been struck by a thought. He became suddenly silent, even clouded over.

He’d thought of Daniel, Stevie knew: Daniel cheated at Scrabble too. Hell! The lovely filigree of their being together was coming apart for him too.

He was walking down the street in a foreign city, an old city. It was daylight, but he was unsure of the hour. The light was so strange—so bright and yet without glare—he couldn’t tell whether it was late morning or just before sunset. Whatever time it was, it bathed the surrounding buildings in an odd light, as though they were being illuminated for a film to be shot. Colonnades to his left seemed endlessly repetitive. A tall building of some sort with a crenellated roof visible loomed on his other side. The paving stones under his feet were unusually large, lightly pitted, pale gray; gutters—like half pipes set into their surface—ran along them: real gutters. It was a very old city. When he finally reached the end of the two long buildings, he was in a large, empty plaza. He realized he must be in some Italian city—Florence or Siena. There was a lovely little Romanesque-style church to one side; and in the middle of the plaza, a statue on a tall pedestal. Perseus? Suddenly he heard a telephone ringing. He looked all around him in the plaza, thinking he was near a phone kiosk, but there was none—no other structures but the apse of the church and the statue—David?—on the pedestal. Could it be ringing from where he’d emerged? From behind those colonnades? Or, perhaps, ahead of him, inside the church? It was somehow extremely important that he reach the phone and answer it, desperately important. But there was no one on the street to ask where it was. He began running, first through the colonnades, then, when these only showed him an endless gray brick wall, across the street to the tall building, which had many doors. All of them were locked. Finally he dashed back into the plaza, and toward the church. He flung open the huge, cast bronze, carefully balanced doors, and rushed inside. Except for a flock of geese waddling across the dark, musty, tiled floor, and the distorted light filtering down through oddly colored high windows, he could see nothing inside. He edged back out again, into the plaza. The phone had suddenly stopped ringing, and he cursed himself for being unable to reach it. Then he heard her voice—and he knew it was Fiammetta calling him. There she was, at the other end of the plaza; she’d just come over a curved footbridge—were they in Venice suddenly?—running toward him. She wore a Nile green gown, embroidered with pearls at her throat and wrists, the sleeves slashed to explode out bunches of white satin. Her hair was the gold of an antique coin, fashionably plucked so her wide, lovely brow was higher than it ought to be. She charged right into his arms, shaking him…shaking him…

He woke up. Stevie was on the bed, almost astride him, shaking him awake.

“It’s Dan,” she said. “He’s on the phone. From London.”

“Dan?” He sat up suddenly, awakened totally. “What time is it?”

It was barely midnight. He’d only been asleep a half hour.

“I had to get it,” she said apologetically. “Even out there it was keeping me awake. It just rang and rang, then started ringing again. I’m sorry, Jonathan. If I’d thought it was Dan… I thought it must be someone else. Some emergency or something.”

He held her close.

“It’s all right. I’ll take it. Try to get some sleep.”

He’d awakened as thoroughly as though there were a burglar in the house, or a murdering intruder. He jumped out of bed, rolling her over him, and pulled on a pair of shorts. Daniel hadn’t called this morning: hadn’t called since Jonathan had hung up on him. Well, he would have to be dealt with sometime. Why not now?

“Try to go to sleep,” he said, closing the bedroom door behind him.

“Jonathan?” she called.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Then: “I was going to ask you not to fight. Please?”

“I won’t,” he said.

“Liar!”

“Am I that transparent to you?”

She had to think about that. “Not really,” she admitted.

“Go to sleep!”

“I’ll try,” she said, unconvinced.

He went to the phone in the living room, picked it up, heard nothing on the other end, and wondered if they’d lost the connection. He extracted a cigarette from the package on the table and lighted it.

“Jonathan? You there?” Daniel’s voice sounded odd.

Here goes, Jonathan thought. “Hi, Dan.” Breezily. “What’s with the phone call? Trouble?”

“Who was that who answered the phone?” Dan asked, equally airily. So that was how it was going to be played.

“The Locke girl. Stevie. You remember her. From across the way. Lady Bracknell’s ward.” Said as easily as though they were talking about someone not seen in months.

“So…?” Dan inquired, as though over a Campari cocktail on the Via Veneto.

“She came out here to be away from her parents. She’s going through a few crises. Undergoing pressures.”

“I see. Crises. Pressures.”

“That’s right. You know the usual postadolescent stuff. Whether to finish college or go to work. Whether to become independent or not. Kid stuff.” He puffed on the cigarette theatrically.

Without missing a beat, or changing an inflection in his voice, Dan asked, “How long have you been sleeping with her?”

A nice turn. Bravo! Jonathan thought.

“About a week. No. Not quite.” Let’s be civilized, his tone said.

“Not quite a week?” Slightly surprised—so the crumpets don’t come with the tea today. Only scones. That kind of question. “Well, that must have made her forget her little crises. Unless,” urbanely added, “it created a new one.”

“I don’t think so,” Jonathan said, letting the smoke drift out of his mouth, à la Ronald Colman in God knew what awful movie. “Of course, I can’t really claim to have helped her any.”

“I’m certain you did. You’re always so good with the little human touches.”

This farce of cynicism and hypocrisy was beginning to pall on Jonathan. It wasn’t getting them anywhere. They knew they could play it for hours if they chose: they were well enough matched for it. Why bother? He’d leave the phone for a minute on some pretext. Dan would naturally assume he was going to Stevie, and reporting their talk to her. When he picked up the receiver again, Daniel would be furious. Then it would really begin.

“Hold on a second, will you, Dan?” he said, left the phone without waiting for an answer, and went to the window wall, one panel of which he moved aside so only the screen remained.

Dew spangled the screen’s mesh already. Farther away a green meteorite dove through the night sky toward the horizon, exploding in a tiny emerald and white puff. It was chilly out. He’d better put on a shirt.

When he got back to the phone it was silent. He thought he heard a sob. Oh, no! That wasn’t what he wanted on a transatlantic call. Concerned, he asked. “Daniel? You there? What’s going on?”

Daniel’s answer was calm, collected, showing Jonathan he’d been wrong about the sob. “Here? Nothing wrong. A little postadolescent crisis, perhaps. Perhaps a little realization that I’ve been awake until five thirty in the morning, Greenwich time, worrying about my lover in New York who’s been acting a little bit unlike himself, while he’s busily screwing some young girl. Aside from that, nothing. Nothing important, certainly.”

‘‘I’m not going to say I’m sorry.’’

“Heaven forbid!” The first outburst. Then, calmer, “Sorry, babe. The strain, you know. The distance and all.” Then, “Are you in love with her?”

Jonathan’s answer was a long pause that Daniel himself interrupted.

“Let me rephrase the question to make it easier for you to answer. Are you leaving me for her?”

“Look, Daniel…”

“Are you?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like then?”

“Not what you think.”

“I’m thinking nothing at all. I’m completely without prejudice or precedents. I’m just hearing it for the first time, remember?”

“Your imagination is running wild,” Jonathan said calmly.

“Well, perhaps that’s so. So why don’t
you
tell
me.”

“I don’t know,” was all he could come up with after a long pause.

“You don’t know? Well,
I
know,” Daniel said. “And I know that you’re not leaving me without a fight. Face-to-face. Hand-to-hand combat, baby. So you’d better get working on those weights you’ve been neglecting—fast. Because you’re going to be needing all the strength you can muster up by nightfall.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about how I’m going to come shit in your little love nest.”

“You’re crazy. You’d leave London, the film, the BBC?”

“The film? Fuck the film. How important can a film be when I have the opportunity to play Bette Davis and Clint Eastwood all in one in my own little drama?”

He was raving now, getting out of hand.

“Dan, you’re upset.”

“You’d better believe it.”

“You’ll feel better in the morning,” Jonathan said.

“It
is
the morning here. A damp, dirty, rainy morning. I’ve been awake all night over you, wondering what terrible thing I’ve done to make you so testy, so unhappy, and now you sock me the news that I have some adolescent cooze for a replacement, and
I’m
the one that’s crazy? The solitude must have gotten to you, just as I thought it would. You’re acting like three-quarters of the fag-psycho ward at Payne-Whitney. Get her out of the house by the time I arrive or I swear, I’ll put her through the blender, limb by limb!”

Jonathan was so startled by the line of attack, he almost laughed.

“I think you’re jealous,” he said.

Daniel ignored it. “Let’s get off the phone so I can start calling British Airways.”

“Don’t be silly. You can’t come here.”

“Why not? It’s half my house too. I paid the entire down payment, if you’ll recall.”

“Be rational, Daniel. You’ll be fired from the film, word will get out immediately. You’ll be called irresponsible. You’ll be sued for endangering production. You’ll never get work again. Your career will be washed up, now, at the very moment when it’s finally going somewhere.”

Calmly, “You’re right. All the more reason to make her into purée of teenager and to beat the shit out of you when I get there. ’Bye.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re acting like a Forty-second Street Puerto Rican transvestite.”

“What are you acting like? Cary Grant? For chrissakes, Jonathan, you’re obviously completely flipped out and need help desperately. I’ll tell the producer you’ve gone bonkers. Everyone understands that.”

Jonathan was no longer amused. “Well, do whatever you want to. Come here or stay there. I don’t care. But know this: I’m not flipped out. The solitude hasn’t gotten to me. I’m not schizoid from too much creative work. I’m quite sane, Daniel. And you’re going to have to accept this as a sane decision. And it has nothing to do with getting some kind of twisted revenge on you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t think it’s that at all,” Daniel said.

“Good. Because it isn’t. I don’t know what it is really either. But I’m developing as a composer. And I’ve got to expand, to see things in other ways, to experiment. You’re the one who always says, ‘Change or Die.’ Well, maybe that’s what’s happening to me. Maybe being gay
is
just a stage in one’s development, as Freud thought. Or maybe we’re capable of loving men and women equally well, equally validly. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, Dan. You can’t deny me the chance to change my life, can you? What right do you have to deny it? You’re the one who always says ‘Your first responsibility is to yourself.’ God knows, you follow that philosophy. So, that’s what I’m doing now, finding out what those responsibilities really are. What I really want. Who I really am. What my true commitments are.”