Chet Williamson - Reign

And now here they were, Abe and his two helpers, the night before the performance, with everyone else gone home, cleaning up the backstage area, emptying the wastebaskets, cleaning the toilets, picking up the tissues thick with cold cream. Abe had seen several actors removing their makeup with the tissues, and thought it seemed like wiping off your face, an image that made him distinctly uncomfortable, as did the mirrors on both sides of the dressing rooms, mirrors that he feared to glance into as he cleaned up the mess, thinking that somewhere in those long rows that stretched to infinity, there was Harry Ruhl and the Blue Darling and the Big Swede and Mad Mary, and if he looked down those rows of reflections long enough, they would slowly stick out their heads, and their bodies would follow, and they would walk impossibly down those rows toward him, and if he turned his head the other way they would still be there in the other mirror, and there would be no escape, nowhere he could look where he would not see them.

"Shit," he murmured. "Oh, shit…” He gazed into the mirrors as if willing them to cast forth their shadowy occupants, but saw nothing. He finished his cleaning, said good night to his helpers, then put on his jacket and went out the stage door. As it closed behind him, he stopped, turned around, and looked up at the massive stone wall looming over him.

"What are you waiting for, Harry?" he asked the theatre, asked the night. "What are you waiting for? Judgment day?"

Scene 9

Friday, the day of the performance, began bright and clear, but slowly darkened outside as well as in as it became a logistical nightmare for Ann Deems and her temporary staff. Flights were delayed, throwing off the limousine schedule and necessitating the launch of more of the ungainly but luxurious vehicles. Several well-heeled investor/attendees showed up at their hotels with additional guests, who had not only to be found lodging, but seating where there were no seats available. Fortunately the last minute cancellations balanced the newcomers, who were only too happy to invest the required five thousand dollars per ticket.

Attending the performance had become a badge of honor among both the cognoscenti and the sensation seekers, and once the word had spread that tickets were available, they were sold out in less than a week. Many of the investors in Craddock, having been the first to be informed, were the first to buy tickets and thus invest in the following show. Many new investors were added, and over one hundred seats were sold to media representatives, among them all of the major tabloids. Even Larry Peach of the Weekly Probe would be there. His paper's headlines this week included, "CURTAIN UP ON NIGHTMARE!" and proceeded to review in as gory detail as was known the series of recent deaths at the theatre, along with the suggestion that there would be more to come, and if it did, their reporter would be on the spot for the next decapitation.

Dennis slept late and spent most of the day in his suite at the Kirkland Hotel. He worked out in the exercise room, along with Quentin and Dex, and afterward the three of them went back to Dennis's suite, where they had a drink and reminisced.

"I don't mind telling you, Dennis," Quentin said, setting his Campari on the coffee table, "I was a little hesitant about working for you back in '81."

"My reputation preceded me?"

"Yes – your reputation for gay-bashing."

"You talking about Dennis?" said Dex in disbelief.

"I don't know what you mean, Quent," Dennis said.

Quentin laughed. "Oh, that reputation wasn't universal, and it probably wasn't well-deserved. I just heard the Ricky Scaratucci story."

"Ricky Scaratucci…”Dennis repeated, and after a moment his face lit with understanding. "Oh God, the guy in the original company!" He laughed and covered his face in embarrassment.

Quentin nodded. "He came on to you and you slugged him?"

"Yes, yes, it wasn't really a slug, more of a little jab to the midsection. But I didn't slug him because he was gay, or even because he came on to me, I slugged him because he was a sonovabitch who was busting my balls every chance he got. He was one of those bastards who really wanted to see me flop."

"Jealous," Dex said.

Dennis nodded. "He'd been working in shows for twenty years and never got any further than the chorus. Then here I came along and got the lead without paying my dues, and he… didn't like that. So he tried to make my life as miserable as possible, all in the guise of 'jokes.' Sand in my cold cream jar, Coke in my street shoes, sly, witty little things your everyday sadist enjoys." He took a sip of Perrier. "Then one day – right back there in the Venetian Theatre dressing room – I was getting out of my costume, just had on a shirt and my jock, and he grabbed my ass. I don't mean just a pinch, I mean he grabbed it, almost pornographically. I jumped a mile. I was already furious, and when I saw who it was I just… let him have it. He collapsed like a gas bag, fell down and hit his head on the side of the sink. He was probably out five minutes, while everybody ran around and tried to get doctors."

"And what did you do all this while?" Quentin asked with the self-aplomb of one who knew.

"I was pretty nasty. I think my exact words were, 'Let him fucking die.'“

“That's what I heard," said Quentin.

"Truth to tell, I was terrified I had really hurt him. I was more scared than angry. The gruffness was a put-on. He came out of it, thank God, with no permanent damage done." Dennis laughed. "Hell, even if I would have killed him, all they would have had to do was examine his fingernails to see that it was justifiable homicide."

"Still," Quentin said, "it earned you a reputation. And it put me off."

"Until you learned that I was a pussycat?"

"Until I learned that you were just a normal person, with fears and concerns like anyone else, and not really the Emperor Frederick."

"He's a part of you, though," Dex said.

"As any character is a part of a good actor," Quentin added.

Dennis only smiled, and changed the subject. "You're too sensitive to gay-bashing to begin with, Quent. I think you'd have gotten over that by now."

Quentin looked down at the coffee table and picked up his drink. "Early scars cut deep, my friend. It's not the easiest thing in the world to be."

"That's true," Dex said. "I was gay once, I know."

"You asshole!" Quentin laughed, and Dennis joined in, sharing the knowledge of Dex Colangelo's sexuality. "Dex, you don't have a homosexual bone in your body.”

“That's because I never bend over when you're around."

They laughed again, old friends who could tease each other and come away unscathed. Quentin felt comfortable and at peace, certain that the good feelings would last into the night, that the performance would be everything that he had hoped.

The intense work of the past few weeks had been good for him. He had been able to forget, at least for most of the time, the plague that was feeding upon his friends and haunting his dreams. AIDS was the worst thing ever to strike the gay community, and Quentin's negative test results did nothing to ease the pain of his friends' and former lovers' loss. Though he had had an exclusive partner for the last three years, and they were careful to use condoms for anal intercourse (a procedure Quentin had practiced ever since a tour of The Student Prince, when nearly every man in the company had come down with hepatitis, closing the show), Quentin still lived in fear of the disease, and was dismayed by the social stigma that followed after it like vultures after a plague.

There had been a glorious time in the seventies when it was fun to be gay, when the health concerns of herpes, syphilis, and gonorrhea were thought of as heterosexual problems. One of his friends had sadly joked of those days that the only problem gays had was what to wear with rust. But now, what with the problems the "Gay Plague," as it was infuriatingly known, had caused, along with what Quentin viewed as the politically motivated swing back to so-called family values, it seemed to him that gays had become second class citizens again. In spite of the Rock Hudson inspired gala fund raisers, the massive quilts, the calls by government officials for more AIDS research funding, Quentin felt he and his brothers were feared at best, hated at worst by the public at large.