When the Stars Come Out (29 page)

rolling him partially back toward him.

“Is something the matter?” he asked.

Bart stared away, not immediately answering.

“Bart, if there’s a problem, we should talk about it.”

“There’s no problem,” he said finally. “Everything is fine.”

Noah didn’t accept his words. “There
is
a problem. You’ve been pulling away from me for a few days, and I think we should talk

about it.”

With a sigh and a shrug, Bart turned and looked at Noah, then

began speaking softly. “Sorry. I’ve just been . . . well, I’ve been having a hard time wrapping my head around the things you were say-

ing the other day.”

“What things?”

“About long-term, monogamous relationships.”

Oh, Noah thought, regretting his comments, even though he

meant them.

“Here’s the thing,” said Bart, idly rubbing his hand back and forth across his taut, naked stomach. “At the risk of repeating myself again and again and again, that’s what I want.”

“Long-term monogamy?”

“Exactly. I want what Quinn and Jimmy have. I want to be them

in thirty, forty, fifty years. Not . . . not alone.”

“Is the thought of being alone what scares you?”

“I think I’d be fine, and if that’s how things end up, that’s how

things end up. But if they don’t have to be that way—if I can share decades of my life with someone else—that’s the ideal. That’s what I really want.”

“I don’t know,” said Noah, sitting up in the bed, still covered waist-down with the blanket. “I don’t know if gay men are wired that way.”

“Uh, Noah? We’re staying in a house with two gay men who seem

to be wired
exactly
that way.”

“Are you sure?”

Now Bart sat up. “What do you mean?”

“Thirty-some-odd years together, and you’re telling me they’ve

never made accommodations?” Bart shook his head. “No three-

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193

ways? No boyfriends on the side? No sex in the parks? Bathhouses?

What about this flirtation Quinn had with Rock Hudson? Are you

sure they never did the nasty when Jimmy wasn’t looking?”

Bart’s face looked pained. “Why do you have to tear everyone

down to your level?”

Noah retreated slightly, realizing that he was going too far, and

reached to place a hand reassuringly on Bart’s back. “Listen, I’m

not saying that they haven’t been monogamous. I’m just saying—”

Bart stopped him and pulled away from Noah’s hand, leaving it

in midair behind him. “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“What?!” Noah was genuinely mystified.

“Us. It’s not going to work. We want different things.” He sprang

from the bed, leaving Noah behind, mind reeling.

“Bart, I’m not sure what I said, but . . . but . . .”

Bart strode across the bedroom, and, sliding open a dresser

drawer, took out a pair of olive cargo short shorts, which he pro-

ceeded to put on.

“Bart, what are you doing?”

“I think it would be for the best if I slept in the guest room,” he said, as he pulled a T-shirt over his head. “We can talk tomorrow.”

The conversation was over. Noah knew that he would not be

able to talk himself out of this one . . . not tonight. He watched in frustrated silence as Bart let himself out of the bedroom.

And neither of them slept more than a few hours that night.

Bart’s headstrong attitude, not to mention his defensiveness

about Quinn and Jimmy, had stunned Noah. The next morning, as

he lay bleary-eyed and alone in Bart’s bed, lazily waiting for the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window to revive him, he

tried to comprehend what, exactly, he had done or said to anger

him so. He had merely done what he always did: he spoke his mind.

Okay, Bart wanted to be in a monogamous relationship for the

rest of his life. While statistically unlikely, for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, it was possible. It had not happened in Noah’s

family, true, but it had happened before in history. And it was

nice—sweet, really—that Bart wanted that. But it wasn’t Noah’s

fault that he had pointed out the truth.

And the adamant defense of Quinn’s and Jimmy’s fidelity could

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only be because they represented the personification of Bart’s

ideal. While it was true that he was closer to the men than Noah,

Bart had no real way to know what had happened over the lifetime

they had spent together. Especially since Bart had not even been

born when they met.

The facts were these: Quinn Scott and Jimmy Beloit, like Bart

Gustafson and Noah Abraham, were human. And humans make mis-

takes. And gay male humans, especially, make mistakes. Culturally

and biologically, in fact, it was almost impossible that Quinn and Jimmy had never made a mistake. For God’s sake, they came of age

during the pre-AIDS era, when anonymous sex and bathhouses

were the rule, not the exception.

No
, Noah thought,
I was just being honest
. Just telling the truth.

Bart could want what he wanted, but he shouldn’t be surprised if

he didn’t get it. And he especially shouldn’t hold up two older, apparently monogamous, gay men as his model, without knowing

how they acted and what they felt before banishment and bad hips

intruded on their lives.

Wisely, once Noah settled everything in his head and agreed

with himself that he had been right all along, he decided to keep

his mouth shut. Clearly, Bart was not predisposed to accept his

logic. This would be one of those situations where an apology was

in order.

Which is how Noah found himself in the guest room several

minutes later. Bart, as he had expected, was already wide awake

and, once again, staring at the ceiling.

“Good morning,” said Noah, as he let himself into the room

after a quick, light knock on the door.

Bart looked at him neutrally. “Morning.”

“Sleep all right?”

Bart shrugged. His chest, bare above the sheet, rippled slightly.

“Uh . . . so how about that talk?”

Bart shrugged again.

Noah glanced at the floor, forced a smile, and looked back at

Bart. “I’ve been sort of an asshole,” he said, trying for as conciliatory a tone as possible. “And I apologize. I mean, I know how you

feel about this, and, well . . . I agree. Uh . . . I agree that it’s a great ideal, I mean.”

Bart frowned. “But you don’t think it’s possible to have a long-

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195

term, monogamous relationship, do you? Which is a problem for

us, I think.”

“Does it have to be? Can’t we just work toward it?”

“Not if you’ve already made your mind up that it can’t work.”

Noah heaved a heavy sigh and sat on the edge of the bed. “Can

we try?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” said Bart, shaking his head. “I’ve . . . I’ve . . .”

He stopped trying to come up with an answer and looked directly

at Noah, knowing he had to say something he really didn’t want to

confess. “Listen, over the past few weeks, I’ve started to fall hard.

And I never intended to, I just did. Ever since . . . remember that day we saw each other on Sixth Avenue? Near Radio City? And then

later at the bar?”

“Of course.”

“That was the day when I started thinking seriously about you.

Even before I asked you to dinner, I was thinking about you. And

do you remember the day when I was going to suggest that we be-

come boyfriends, but you finished my thoughts for me?”

“Sure.”

“That was the day I decided that you were the one. You’re every-

thing I’ve been looking for, Noah. Everything. And I let myself feel more than I should have.”

Noah reached out to touch him, and this time his hand was not

rejected.

“So this is mostly my fault,” Bart continued, placing his own hand over Noah’s, which now rested on his thigh. “I let myself get too far ahead, and . . . well, I know what I want, and I decided that you were the one who would give it to me. So it’s not your fault that we’re in this situation. It just . . . it is what it is.”

“So now what?” asked Noah.

“I don’t know. I’ve said what I’ve had to say, and . . .” He laughed.

“Maybe more than what I had to say. But I guess it’s best to get it all out there. At least we both know where we stand right now.”

“Can we try to work this out?” Noah leaned close to Bart’s face.

“Let’s try,” said Bart, kissing Noah gently and wishing it were so much easier. And hoping that one of them would come to see the

light.

*

*

*

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The timing was up to Jimmy. Returning from the gym two days

later—where Bart had signed up Noah for a guest membership,

reasoning that now that they were all but living together there was no reason to leave him home on training days—the younger men

knew that the plan was about to unfold shortly after they walked

into the house. They dropped their bags in the hall off the garage, walked into the kitchen, and immediately spotted the open box

slapped with UPS labels on the counter.

“Looks like the back-ordered DVD has arrived,” Bart said dryly,

grabbing two bottles of water from the refrigerator and handing

one to Noah.

“Looks like it.” Noah held the bottled water in one hand and

grabbed an energy bar with the other. “I wonder if we have time to shower.”

“Maybe shower. Certainly not sex.”

“Damn. And I was going to flex my new muscle for you.”

They picked up their bags and were walking to the stairs

when . . .

“GODDAMMIT!!”

“Think he’s in the screening room?” Noah asked, hearing

Quinn roar.

“No doubt.”

“Should we go down there?”

“GOD DAMN HER! THAT BITCH!!”

“I don’t know,” said Bart. “Your call.”

“Maybe we should wait.”

“Then again, Jimmy is alone with him.”

“I’LL KILL HER! I WILL BURY HER!!”

“I wouldn’t think that Jimmy is the one in danger,” said Noah.

“True. Then again, there could always be collateral damage.”

Noah sighed and dropped his gym bag on the kitchen floor.

“Okay, then. Let’s see what’s happening.”

Bart followed Noah’s lead and also dropped his bag, and then

the men—armed only with water and an energy bar—descended to

the screening room. As they approached it, Quinn bellowed again.

“MY LAWYER! GET MY LAWWYER! WHERE’S THAT FUCKING

BART?! BART!!!”

“You called?” said Bart, stepping into the screening room, where

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197

the red-faced Quinn stood, and Noah thought that “enraged” would

be the mildest adjective one could use to describe him.

“Where have you been?” Quinn demanded.

“The gym,” Bart answered, calm in the face of Quinn’s anger.

“What’s wrong?”

Jimmy appeared, wiping a tear from his eye and holding the

DVD. “She . . . she cut me out,” he said, choking on his words.

“Who?” asked Bart.

“THAT FUCKING BITCH!”
screamed Quinn, his voice again at

full volume.
“THAT . . . THAT . . .”

“Don’t say the C word,” cautioned Jimmy.

“THAT BITCH!”

“That’s better.”

“Which bitch?” asked Bart, aware that he was only going to be

able to carry the cluelessness so far. Already he worried that Noah might see that he could, when pressed, be quite a convincing actor in his own right.

“Kitty,” said Jimmy, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye as

Quinn struggled for words that weren’t the C word. “She cut out

our scene.”

“In
When the Stars Come Out
? The scene where you guys locked eyes?”

“That’s the one,” Jimmy said. “The Glance! It’s gone. I’ve been

erased from the DVD version. It’s like . . .” Jimmy worked up a

choked and only semiconvincing sob. “It’s like I never existed.”

“Oh, God,” said Bart, taking a step backward. “That’s horrible.”

Noah jumped in. “That’s the scene you showed us a few weeks

ago, right? The dance scene?”

“That’s it. And now, I’m gone.”

Bart creased his forehead. “I’ll get your lawyer on the phone right away, Quinn.”

“It won’t do any good,” said Jimmy, and the others looked at him

expectantly, waiting for an explanation, which was quickly pro-

vided. “You’re not used to this, Quinn. You were a star. But back when I was dancing, I was used to being cut out of the frame. Happened

all the time.”

“But you were there,” Quinn said. “You made it on the screen.

We have the videotape as proof.”

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Jimmy waved him away. “Look at all the films they’re rereleasing

these days. A lot of them have been recut. Director’s cuts or restora-tions or whatever. Every single one of those versions—every single one—has meant some poor extra was edited out, and another one

had his scene restored. It’s the nature of the beast.”

“But you weren’t edited out,” said Quinn. “Those scenes weren’t

recut. You were erased.”

Jimmy shrugged. “If you could even find a lawyer to take this

case, all Kitty has to do is say it was done for aesthetic reasons.

There was something distracting about my performance, or what-

ever. We have no rights here.”

Quinn thought about that. He knew that Jimmy was probably

stating the truth, but he hated it that Kitty was still winning, still erasing him and Jimmy from the screen, after all these decades.