He didn’t reply, just reached for another sandwich, and Kit studied him. “What does Jude think?”
“He thinks I’m going to end up performing in a Kander and Ebb revue on a cruise ship to Alaska,” he admitted.
Kit snorted. “Somewhere between how Jude thinks and how you think is how you need to think, Willem,” he said. “After everything we’ve built together,” he added, mournfully.
He sighed, too. The first time Jude had met Kit, almost fifteen years ago, he’d turned to Willem afterward and said, smiling, “He’s your Andy.” And over the years, he had come to realize how true this was. Not only did Kit and Andy actually, creepily know each other — they were in the same class, and had lived in the same dorm their freshman year — but they both liked to present themselves as, to some extent, Willem’s and Jude’s creators. They were their defenders and their guardians, but they also tried, at every opportunity, to determine the shape and form of their lives.
“I thought you’d be a little more supportive of this, Kit,” he said, sadly.
“Why? Because I’m gay? Being a gay agent is far different than being a gay actor of your stature, Willem,” said Kit. He grunted. “Well, at least someone’s going to be happy about this. Noel”—the director of Duets —“will be fucking thrilled. This is going to be great publicity for his little project. I hope you like doing gay movies, Willem, because that’s what you might end up doing for the rest of your life .”
“I don’t really think of Duets as a gay movie,” he said, and then, before Kit could roll his eyes and start lecturing him again, “and if that’s how it ends up, that’s fine.” He told Kit what he had told Jude: “I’ll always have work; don’t worry.”
(“But what if your film work dries up?” Jude had asked.
“Then I’ll do plays. Or I’ll work in Europe: I’ve always wanted to do more work in Sweden. Jude, I promise you, I will always, always work.”
Jude had been silent, then. They had been lying in bed; it had been late. “Willem, I really won’t mind — not at all — if you want to keep this quiet,” he said.
“But I don’t want to,” he said. He didn’t. He didn’t have the energy for it, the sense of planning for it, the endurance for it. He knew a couple of other actors — older, much more commercial than he — who actually were gay and yet were married to women, and he saw how hollow, how fabricated, their lives were. He didn’t want that life for himself: he didn’t want to step off the set and still feel he was in character. When he was home, he wanted to feel he was truly at home.
“I’m just afraid you’re going to resent me,” Jude admitted, his voice low.
“I’ll never resent you,” he promised him.)
Now, he listened to Kit’s gloomy predictions for another hour, and then, finally, when it was clear that Willem wouldn’t change his mind, Kit seemed to change his. “Willem, it’ll be fine,” he said, determinedly, as if Willem had been the one who was concerned all along. “If anyone can do this, you can. We’re going to make this work for you. It’s going to be fine.” Kit tilted his head, looking at him. “Are you guys going to get married?”
“Jesus, Kit,” he said, “you were just trying to break us up.”
“No, I wasn’t, Willem. I wasn’t. I was just trying to get you to keep your mouth shut, that’s all.” He sighed again, but resignedly this time. “I hope Jude appreciates the sacrifice you’re making for him.”
“It’s not a sacrifice,” he protested, and Kit cut his eyes at him. “Not now,” he said, “but it may be.”
Jude came home early that night. “How’d it go?” he asked Willem, looking closely at him.
“Fine,” he said, staunchly. “It went fine.”
“Willem—” Jude began, and he stopped him.
“Jude,” he said, “it’s done. It’s going to be fine, I swear to you.”
Kit’s office managed to keep the story quiet for two weeks, and by the time the first article was published, he and Jude were on a plane to Hong Kong to see Charlie Ma, Jude’s old roommate from Hereford Street, and from there to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. He tried not to check his messages while he was on vacation, but Kit had gotten a call from a writer at New York magazine, and so he knew there would be a story. He was in Hanoi when the piece was published: Kit forwarded it to him without comment, and he skimmed it, quickly, when Jude was in the bathroom. “Ragnarsson is on vacation and was unavailable for comment, but his representative confirmed the actor’s relationship with Jude St. Francis, a highly regarded and prominent litigator with the powerhouse firm of Rosen Pritchard and Klein and a close friend since they were roommates their freshman year of college,” he read, and “Ragnarsson is the highest-profile actor by far to ever willingly declare himself in a gay relationship,” followed, obituary-like, with a recapping of his films and various quotes from various agents and publicists congratulating him on his bravery while simultaneously predicting the almost-certain diminishment of his career, and nice quotes from actors and directors he knew promising his revelation wouldn’t change a thing, and a concluding quote from an unnamed studio executive who said that his strength had never been as a romantic lead anyway, and so he’d probably be fine. At the end of the story, there was a link to a picture of him with Jude at the opening of Richard’s show at the Whitney in September.
When Jude came out, he handed him the phone and watched him read the article as well. “Oh, Willem,” he said, and then, later, looking stricken, “My name’s in here,” and for the first time, it occurred to him that Jude may have wanted him to keep quiet as much for his own privacy as for Willem’s.
“Don’t you think you should ask Jude first if I can confirm his identity?” Kit had asked him when they were deciding what he’d say to the reporter on Willem’s behalf.
“No, it’s fine,” he’d said. “He won’t mind.”
Kit had been quiet. “He might, Willem.”
But he really hadn’t thought he would. Now, though, he wondered if he had been arrogant. What , he asked himself, just because you’re okay with it, you thought he would be, too?
“Willem, I’m sorry,” Jude said, and although he knew that he should reassure Jude, who was probably feeling guilty, and apologize to him as well, he wasn’t in the mood for it, not then.
“I’m going for a run,” he announced, and although he wasn’t looking at him, he could feel Jude nod.
It was so early that outside, the city was still quiet and still cool, the air a dirtied white, with only a few cars gliding down the streets. The hotel was near the old French opera house, which he ran around, and then back to the hotel and toward the colonial-era district, past vendors squatted near large, flat, woven-bamboo baskets piled with tiny, bright green limes, and stacks of cut herbs that smelled of lemon and roses and peppercorns. As the streets grew threadlike, he slowed to a walk, and turned down an alley that was crowded with stall after stall of small, improvised restaurants, just a woman standing behind a kettle roiling with soup or oil, and four or five plastic stools on which customers sat, eating quickly before hurrying back to the mouth of the alley, where they got on their bikes and pedaled away. He stopped at the far end of the alley, waiting to let a man cycle past him, the basket strapped to the back of his seat loaded with spears of baguettes, their hot, steamed-milk fragrance filling his nostrils, and then headed down another alley, this one busy with vendors crouched over more bundles of herbs, and black hills of mangosteens, and metal trays of silvery-pink fish, so fresh that he could hear them gulping, could see their eyes rolling desperately back in their sockets. Above him, necklaces of cages were strung like lanterns, each containing a vibrant, chirping bird. He had a little cash with him, and he bought Jude one of the herb bouquets; it looked like rosemary but smelled pleasantly soapy, and although he didn’t know what it was, he thought Jude might.
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