The Role Players Read online

  “The sofa’s a sleeper,” Chris said. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s really pretty comfortable. We needed a den, and there just wasn’t room for another full bed. I’ll pull it out for you later.”

  Jonathan, who had been taking it all in, said, “I’ve slept on a lot of couches,” he said, “but never one that made into a bed. This’ll be great!”

  Chris opened the door to a small, empty closet with lots of hangers. “I hope this will be big enough for your things.” We assured him it would, and he excused himself to go off to start coffee while we unpacked.

  As we walked into the kitchen…well, actually the kitchen was really too small to be practical for three people, so we mostly stood in the doorway…the front door opened and Max came in.

  “I love New York,” he said, shaking his head, “but I’d never have a car here!”

  We joined Max at the teak dining room table in the dining area at the kitchen end of the living room, and Chris came out with a tray with four mugs of coffee, an open carton of half-and-half, a bowl of sugar packets, and a couple of spoons.

  “What?” I asked. “Not the good china?”

  “This is the good china, at least for family, which includes you. I thought you might be insulted if we started treating you like guests.”

  He had a point.

  Max looked back and forth between Jonathan and me. “I see married life seems to agree with both of you,” he said. He looked at Jonathan appreciatively. “You, especially. What happened to that skinny kid we saw just a couple months ago?”

  I guess I hadn’t really realized it, seeing Jonathan every day as I did. But Max was right. Jonathan had filled out very nicely.

  Jonathan blushed. “Well, when you haul trees and bushes and fifty-pound bags of mulch around all day…”

  “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep it up!”

  We drank our coffee and small talked about things that had been going on in our lives that we hadn’t covered in phone calls and letters. Max wanted to hear about the cases I’d been working on since their visit and I sketched in a couple of my more interesting ones. The conversation eventually got around to the play.

  “Sorry to hear about one of the leads dying,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Max sighed, sitting back in his chair. “A couple cops stopped by today just as we were getting ready to leave for the airport, and I told them what I could, which wasn’t much. I gather they’re pretty much convinced it was just a robbery gone wrong. But Rod’s death was a real blow. He was a recognizable name; he would have pulled in a lot of business.”

  “You think the play won’t draw enough business on its own?” I asked, a little surprised that Max’s concern seemed to be more for the success of the show than for the poor guy’s death.

  Apparently realizing what he’d said, Max did a quick backpedal. “Sorry,” he said with a small smile. “I’m sure the play will do just fine. At least I hope so. It’s just that Rod was, well, he was kind of…”

  “I think ‘slut’ is the word you’re looking for,” with a very strange smile aimed directly at Max.

  “Well, ‘slut’ might be a little strong,” Max said, “but…”

  Chris looked quickly from Jonathan to me. “Sorry,” he said brightly. “Just a little of the jealous lover cropping up in me, I guess.”

  Jonathan and I looked at one another, not quite sure what to say, since neither of us had a clue as to what Chris was referring to.

  Chris smiled sweetly at Max and said, “Tell them, Lamb Chop.”

  Max shuddered and gave Chris a quick grin. “I hate it when you call me that!”

  Chris returned the grin. “I know. So tell them before they think we’re on our way to divorce court.”

  Max gave another deep sigh. “Chris walked into the bathroom at rehearsal one night and saw Rod reaching out to grope me at the urinals. It’s not like I’d been standing there for hours just hoping he’d come in and make a pass.”

  “I know,” Chris said. “Rod had the hots for Max from day one. The minute I saw him follow Max into the bathroom that night I knew what he had in mind.”

  “Rod had the hots for everybody from day one,” Max amended. “You, too, if memory serves. Like the Sunday afternoon he showed up here when he thought I was at an A.A. meeting?”

  Chris’s grin grew. “Yeah, that was kind of awkward, wasn’t it? But I’m sure it was just an innocent drop-by visit.” He leaned toward Jonathan and said in a stage whisper, “Actually I gave him the wrong time by accident.”

  “Uh huh,” Max said.

  “Didn’t Dick tell me Rod and the guy who wrote the play were lovers?” Jonathan asked.

  Chris and Max nodded in unison. “Yep,” Chris said, “which just adds to the general merriment.”

  “How so?”

  “Well,” Max explained, “Gene Morrison, the playwright, got his start here in New York, but then got lured away by Hollywood to write for the movies. That’s where he met Rod. I don’t know if you remember him; he went by the name of Rod Pearce? He played the soldier who got killed by that other soldier he made a pass at in…uh…”

  “War and Destiny,” I said. “Jesus, I thought I was the only one who remembers that movie. He really was a walking wet dream!”

  Jonathan smiled. “Tell me! On nights when my brother Samuel was away, I used to lie there in bed and think of Rod Pearce and…uh….” He blushed furiously and looked at the table.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” Max, Chris, and I exchanged smiles.

  “Anyway,” Max continued, “Rod had a short-term contract with one of the studios, but War and Destiny was the closest he ever came to making it big. He was a little too openly gay and refused to play the starlet-dating games the studio insisted on, so his contract wasn’t renewed. He met Gene at a party just before his contract expired, and he recognized a good thing when he saw it. Gene is a great guy, but like a lot of writers, he’s basically pretty insecure and really, really quiet until you get to know him. So here we have a quiet, shy Gene meeting Rod-the-never-shy hunk, and the rest is history.

  “Gene hadn’t written a new stage play in nearly ten years, and he thought…or Rod convinced him…that writing one for Rod would be a way to help Rod’s career and get Gene back to doing what he loved best…theater.”

  “Did Mr. Morrison know Rod was playing around on him?” Jonathan asked.

  Chris got up from the table to get more coffee, pausing behind Max to run one hand casually down under the front of Max’s shirt. Max reached up and held it through the fabric. It was a totally spontaneous gesture on both their parts, but it fairly well erased any possible thought of divorce court.

  “I don’t know how he couldn’t have known,” Chris said. “But from what we can tell, he really loved Rod, and he wrote Impartial Observer for him.”

  “Gee,” Jonathan said, sighing, “what a shame for Mr. Morrison.” He paused, then said, “What’s the play about?”

  “It’s an allegory about society’s increasing loss of humanity and where the world is headed. Neither of the two primary leads…Rod being the primary primary, of course…has a name. It’s that kind of play.”

  “So it doesn’t have a happy ending then?” Jonathan, who loves happy endings, said, trying to hide his disappointment.

  Chris, who had reentered the room with a fresh pot of coffee, grinned. “Well, let’s just say it isn’t a musical. But it’s a pretty powerful show.”

  *

  Max had to be at rehearsal by seven o’clock, so we agreed to a very early dinner at a gay restaurant just down the block from the theater, which was itself within walking distance of the apartment. It was a nice, comfortable place that reminded me vaguely of our favorite restaurant, Napoleon, back home. But, of course, the fact that this was not back home lent it an air of mystery and intrigue. The food was excellent, although the portions were a little small for Jonathan’s appetite, though he didn’t say so. Max had to leave before dessert, but insisted we stay. When
the waiter arrived with the dessert tray, Jonathan couldn’t decide between the Bavarian Torte and the cherry cheesecake, so I told him to order one and I’d order the other. Chris opted for the French Apple pie. I made sure I only took a couple of bites of mine…it was delicious, but I was in one of my noble moods…before insisting I was full and that Jonathan finish it for me.

  “You’re sure?” he asked, politely, but reaching for the plate even as he spoke.

  Chris looked at me quickly and grinned, but didn’t say anything.

  *

  After dinner, Chris took us on a walking tour of the Village. We passed the theater, which, though it had no formal marquee, wasn’t hard to miss: the entire front of the building was painted a bright purple and a large painted sign stretching across the width of the front of the building said simply, The Whitman Theater Group. Flanking the glass double entry doors were large posters announcing “Impartial Observer, a new play by Gene Morrison.” Jonathan immediately spotted and pointed to the smaller-font credits, which included: “Set Design by Chris Wolff.” He turned to Chris, beaming.

  “You’re famous!” he decreed. “This is terrific! You must be really proud!”

  Chris shrugged and gave him a small smile. “Well, let’s wait until you see the play before jumping to any conclusions.”

  The small lobby behind the glass doors was dark, lit only dimly by a light behind the ticket window. There was no evidence of the rehearsal going on inside. Chris moved on, and I had to grab Jonathan’s arm to pull him away from the poster.

  “Isn’t this great?” Jonathan said to me in a stage whisper.

  I grinned at him. “Yeah,” I said, “it is.” And we hurried to catch up with Chris.

  I’d been to the Village a couple of times before, but it was really nice to be with a native, as Chris now considered himself to be. He pointed out the homes of several famous people—writers and actors and artists, and both Jonathan and I were duly impressed, though Jonathan didn’t even bother to hide it. He insisted we’d have to remember every location and come back in the daylight so he could take pictures to show the gang back home.

  We did a casual walk-through of Washington Square, which I guess I’d forgotten was not wall-to-wall gay, though it wasn’t hard to spot a goodly number of fellow travelers.

  We stopped at a couple of bars along the way and, all in all, had one great time.

  “This play thing must really take up a lot of your and Max’s time,” Jonathan said as we sat in one of the bars. He picked the cherry out of my Manhattan and tapped it on his napkin to eliminate any trace of alcohol, then dangled it by its stem like a goldfish by its tail and lowered it into his mouth, putting the stem carefully on the napkin.

  Chris sighed. “Yeah, it turned out that way. Not so much my time, now that the sets are done, but for Max. He has to be there for every single rehearsal and that cuts way into the time we have for our regular life. He was single when he did it before, and it’s been awhile so I think he’d forgotten how much time it would take. We’ve talked about it, and I think maybe this will be the last time he’ll do stage-managing for a while.”

  “How did you like set designing?” I asked.

  “A piece of cake, actually. I partnered with the costume designer, too, since the set and costumes are so closely related. The set didn’t require all that much design; the whole set is black. Just black. The only props are chairs…plain wood-backed chairs painted medium grey, a medium-grey table, and a large light fixture…basically just a cube suspended by one corner, hanging down from center stage. All the costumes are in shades of brown, grey, and white. The hardest thing for me was the backdrops for the hydraulic platform…” he paused and grinned. “Well, you’ll see it for yourselves. Just be ready to use a lot of your own imagination.”

  Jonathan, who had been taking it all in, wide-eyed, said, “It sounds great! I can’t wait to see it.”

  “You can come to rehearsal Monday night, if you’d like. Tuesday you’ve got tickets for Cats,” he said casually, glancing at Jonathan for his reaction.

  “Really?” Jonathan asked, as if he thought Chris was just teasing him. “I thought they were sold out for years! That’s fantastic! We’re really going to go?” he said, looking at me for confirmation. Then his expression changed to mild concern. “What did you mean, we? Aren’t you and Max coming with us?”

  Chris gave him a slightly embarrassed smile. “We saw it just before rehearsals started. I didn’t mention it because I knew you wanted to see it. And we’d had the tickets ordered even before we came out to visit you.”

  “But then how…” Jonathan began, but Chris stepped in with the answer before Jonathan had finished the question.

  “Tait Duncan, who pretty much is The Whitman Theater Group, pulled a few strings for Max when we knew for sure you were coming. You’ll be sitting close enough to the stage that you can almost reach out and pull the characters’ tails…and there are a couple guys in the cast whose tails I’d love to pull!” He grinned, then looking at me, quickly added, “If I wasn’t a happily married man.”

  Uh huh.

  *

  We returned to the apartment a little after ten o’clock and were sitting in the living room talking when Max came in around 10:30. With a nod to Jonathan and me, he walked directly over to Chris and bent over to give him a peck on the forehead.

  “Rough one?” Chris asked as Max stood up and, placing his hands on his hips, did a backstretch.

  “What’s happening to me?” he asked. “I used to be a kid!”

  I moved closer to Jonathan to allow Max to join us on the couch, onto which he plopped down heavily. He turned to Jonathan with a weak grin. “Enjoy it while ya got it, kid,” he said. Then, looking at Chris, he added, “Does that answer your question?”

  Chris nodded. “Yep.”

  Max sighed. “We did a complete run-through with Cam—he’s Rod’s understudy—for the first time.”

  “Problems, I gather?” I asked.

  Giving me the same weak smile he’d given Jonathan, Max said, “Can we say ‘train wreck,’ boys and girls? It’s a small cast, and all the actors play two or three roles. When Cam stepped in to Rod’s part, that meant we had to get someone to take his parts, and…well there was one hell of a lot of shifting around. So as a result everyone was about a quarter octave off pitch…or would have been if this were a musical, but you get the idea. I have to give Cam credit, though; he knew every single one of Rod’s lines by heart. And Gene was there, like Banquo’s ghost, pacing back and forth behind the last row and not saying a word, which made everyone awkward as all hell, not knowing what to say to the guy, or if they should say anything at all. Tait went back and asked him why he didn’t just go home and get some rest, but Gene insisted that he just wanted to be there.”

  He sighed again, heavily. “Well, hopefully Monday will go better. It couldn’t get much worse and we open next Friday.” Turning to me, he said casually, “Oh, and Tait has invited us all over to his place tomorrow for lunch. He wants to meet you and Jonathan.”

  Gee, one of my mind-voices—the one in charge of skepticism—observed, I can’t possibly imagine why.

  “That was nice of him,” I said. “Especially considering everything he’s going through.”

  Jonathan nodded in agreement.

  Given the expression on Chris’s face, I gathered this invitation had not been of a long-standing duration.

  “Does Mr. Duncan know what I do for a living?” I asked.

  Max looked surprised. “Uh, yeah, I’m sure I mentioned it at some point. Shouldn’t I have?”

  I grinned. “No, that’s fine. I was just wondering if there might be any sort of connection between the invitation and the fact that his leading man just turned up dead.”

  Max furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Jeez, I don’t think so. The police are on it. Nobody’s heard anything more from them that I know. Tait seems to think that since Rod was found about a block from a sleazy bar in a
rough neighborhood, they’re turning their focus there. Apparently, there’ve been a couple murders associated with the bar in recent months. Anyway, I don’t specifically remember mentioning you were a P.I., though of course both Chris and I have talked about your visit several times, and Tait did pull a few strings to get the Cats tickets. But that was some time before Rod got himself killed.”

  Jonathan laid his hand on my knee. “Don’t mind Dick’s paranoia.” He smiled at me, then said, “You and Mr. Duncan must be pretty good friends.”

  Max and Chris exchanged a quick glance. There was a moment of silence, then Chris said, “Uh, well, our relationship is a lot more professional than personal. Tait travels with a pretty wealthy crowd. I’ve only been over there once before, for a cocktail party right after the play was cast, but…” He looked to Max, apparently not sure where he was going with his thought.

  Max stepped in. “Hey, I can call Tait in the morning and tell him we can’t make it. This is your vacation, after all, and I can tell him you’d already made plans for the day.”

  “No, no,” I said, putting my hand over Jonathan’s. “After his having gone out of his way to help get us tickets for Cats it would be pretty rude to ignore his invitation. Jonathan’s right; I’m just being paranoid. I sometimes have difficulty remembering that the world doesn’t revolve around finding ways to drag me into things that aren’t any of my business.”

  Chris grinned. “I kept telling you that for five years. But you never listened.”

  “Wise ass!” Max and I both said at the same time.

  Jonathan looked from Max to me, and back again. “Are you sure you two aren’t twins separated at birth?”

  Max gave Chris an embarrassed glance, then said, “I suspect one of the reasons he’s having us over is because the director has called a rehearsal for tomorrow at two o’clock. Tait knows how much we’ve been looking forward to your visit, and this is his way of making up for my not being able to be with you for most of the day.” He looked at Chris. “Sorry, Babe, I should have told you as soon as I got home.”