David Handler - The Bright Silver Star

And Mitch heard a raised voice say: “You came alone?”

Mitch reached down and flicked on the microcassette recorder at his feet. It was a powerful little unit. When he’d tested it in his bathroom with the shower and faucet running full blast it could pick up his voice quite clearly from four feet away. “Of course I did,” he responded, hearing the quaver of fear in his own raised voice. “I said I’d be alone, didn’t I?”

“You said it was urgent, and that I should meet you up here. Why here?”

“Because this is your special place. You feel safe up here. I think I can see why. It’s comforting being surrounded by so much darkness and water. You’re totally free to be yourself-the self that you hide so well from everyone in the daylight.” He took a gulp from the bottle. “Want some peppermint schnapps?”

“I’ve never liked the stuff. Since when do you?”

“Oh, I don’t.”

“Then why’d you bring it?”

“As a tribute.”

“Does anyone else know we’re here, Mitch?”

“Not a soul.”

“Why are we?”

“Because we’re friends. I want to help you.”

“You said on the phone that you know. What do you know?”

Mitch reached for his flashlight and flicked it on, its beam illuminating the lean, taut face of Will Durslag. “I know that you loved Tito and you killed him. I know you loved Donna and killed her. But I don’t know why, Will. I need to know why.”

Will’s eyes turned to narrow, frightened slits. He looked like a wild, desperate animal crouched there in the torchlight.

Mitch flicked it off, plunging them back into the darkness. They’d been doing better there. “We talk about lots of things when we walk on the beach together. Can’t we talk about this?”

“Sure, Mitch,” Will finally said, his voice heavy with sadness. “Let’s do that. It’ll be good to talk about it. Maybe I won’t feel so scared.”

“I can’t imagine why you’re scared. You’ve got away with it all. There are no witnesses. And the only physical evidence is in your Franklin stove.”

“My Franklin stove…?”

“Sure, that’s why you made that fire in your parlor this morning. Not because of the chill, but because Donna’s blood got all over your clothes. Plus there were the towels you mopped up with. I’m thinking you must not have been wearing rubber-soled shoes when you killed her-rubber stinks out loud when it burns. You must have had on your leather flip-flops. I suppose you could have buried the stuff, but a fire made a lot of sense.” Mitch glanced over at him in the darkness. “What are you scared of, Will?”

“Myself. I’m not in control of me anymore. My God, I even killed my own wife. That’s generally considered to be pretty despicable behavior.”

“Generally.”

“Tell me, Mitch-how did you know?”

“You told me yourself.”

“I did?” Will shot back in surprise. “When?”

“On the beach the other morning, when I asked you about your croissant recipe. You mentioned you’d gotten it from your partner in, I think you said, Nag’s Head.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“When I asked you if you meant business partner you said no. But you didn’t clarify what you did mean. Just kind of left it hanging there.”

“So?…”

“So I work with words for a living, Will. Guys our age usually use the word ‘girlfriend’ when we’re discussing a significant romantic partner. Unless, that is, we’re going out of our way to be non-gender specific. Unless, that is-”

“Unless we’re gay,” Will said.

“I didn’t think much about it. Not until this morning, when you used the word again in connection with Donna. That’s when it dawned on me that you’re bisexual. And that you were the one getting it on with Tito-who, like you, had relations with both men and women.”

“No,” Will said emphatically. “You’re wrong on both counts.”

“Okay, tell me how.”

“For starters, we weren’t ‘getting it on.’ That suggests something quick and sweaty in the backseat of a parked car. It wasn’t like that, Mitch,” he insisted, his voice growing painfully earnest. “It was real love. I was ready to devote my life to him. Give up Donna. Give up everything. We were in love, Tito and me. And Tito wasn’t bisexual. He was one hundred percent bitch-his word, not mine. Oh, sure, he got married to Esme. And he could perform sexually with women, up to a point. He was one hell of an actor, after all. But his heart was never in it. Tito was gay from the time he was a barrio boy, Mitch. He kept telling me: You have no idea what it’s like to be a bitch in the barrio. The scorn you face, the contempt. He hated being gay. That’s why he became an actor-so he could become someoneelse, anyone else. That’s why he got high all of the time. And that’s why he was always trying out so many different women. He kept hoping that one of them would ‘cure’ him, as if what he had was a disease. God, he was so nineteenth century.”

Mitch sat hunched there on the damp granite, recalling that both Abby and Chrissie had pointed out how disappointing the lovemaking with Tito had been. Chrissie even told Des that the screen idol hadn’t been able to perform at all the final time they’d slept together.

“Tito was a tortured soul, Mitch. He couldn’t be himself. They wouldn’t let him be himself.”

“Who wouldn’t, Will?”

“The powers that be, that’s who. You of all people should know why.”

Mitch nodded his head. “You’re right, Will, I do. It’s the final frontier. And no one, but no one, has ever been able to cross it.”

There was a very short list of bankable Hollywood leading men- the $20-Million-Dollar Men they were known as, by current wage standards. Actors whose name above the title guaranteed a picture instant financing. There were seldom more than a half dozen such actors at any one time. Right now there were the two Toms, Cruise and Hanks, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro. And, until a few days ago, Tito Molina. These leading men all had very different qualities. But they all had one very important trait in common.

They were not gay. They were never gay.

There was no such thing as an openly gay Hollywood leading man. The mass audience simply would not accept him. If anything, gay actors had been driven even deeper into the closet than they had been in the Rock Hudson days, when everyone in the business knew but the public didn’t. There was too much tabloid money out there now. Too much ugly fascination in the stars’ private lives. Not to mention AIDS awareness. The merest whisper about a lingering respiratory infection or unexplained weight loss could completely shortcircuit an actor’s rise to stardom. Mitch had seen it happen.

“Will, how was it possible for him to keep his sexual identity a secret?”

“By marrying a great beauty,” Will replied. “By sleeping around with a million women. By never being happy one single day of his life.”

“You’re the first man he slept with since he got famous?”

“No, of course not. He had others. But he hadn’t been with a man since he married Esme. Mitch, he was deathly afraid of falling into the clutches of an opportunist. So he was always very careful to choose the right type.”

“Which was..?”

“The married type. Men with children and roots in the community. Men who had just as much interest in keeping it quiet as he had. Tito never, ever cruised the bars. Never picked up anyone. Never told anyone. Not his agent, not Chrissie-”

“What about Esme? Did she know?”

“Never. His marriage to her was the greatest acting performance of Tito’s life. Not that he hated her or anything. He genuinely liked Esme as a person. And they belonged together in a weird sort of way. They were both so confused and vulnerable. I mean, God, that poor girl is so screwed up after what Dodge did to her.”