The Final Curtain

by Victor J. Banis

The bar sat a half block off Broadway. It was the proverbial hole in the wall—a restaurant, ostensibly, but the three or four booths along the back wall were never occupied except for the occasional rat that could be seen foraging, and discouraged anyone from looking at a menu.

That stopped no one from coming there or from drinking. It was packed every night with the cream of young actors and struggling wannabes, gay and gay-willing. Legend had it that it was here that Michael Idole had met the producer who made of him, in quick succession, bedmate and the biggest stage star of the decade. Whether there was any truth to the tale or not, I wouldn't want to guess, but enough people believed it to flock here every night.

I was not an actor, I was a writer, but I liked the theater well enough, and pretty actors too. I had an idea that if I hung around long enough, sooner or later I'd pick up a really good story and in the meantime, I was occasionally rewarded with pick ups of other sorts. They were looking for producers, but like the jackal who decides in the morning he will have a camel for lunch, and seeing his shadow at noon decides a rabbit will do, there was always one who decided, as the shadows of night shrank before the light of dawn, that a writer would do.

They were all of them beauties, too, you hardly saw anyone in the place who was not—except one. He sat alone, every night, at the far end of the bar. He spoke to no one. He seemed to have no money to pay for drinks, and his appearance certainly supported that idea. Most nights, though, Harry, the bartender bought him one or two, sometimes more. Bourbon, neat, I noticed. I wondered why Harry bothered. Of course, in a bar of this sort, you bought the occasional drink for one or the other of the best looking young men who lined the bar, to keep them there—bait for the others, like me. The recluse in the corner, though, seemed more likely to discourage business than add to it. No one spoke to him. No one came near him, except Harry with that occasional drink.

Finally, one night, curious, I asked Harry about him.

"Nick? Pathetic, isn't he?" he replied. "Would you believe, it wasn't so long ago that he was the most beautiful boy in the place, everybody wanted him, and he was the one everyone agreed was destined for real stardom."

I looked from him to the life-battered man in the corner. "What on earth happened?" I asked. Harry shrugged. My writer's curiosity was aroused. "Would he talk to me, do you think?"

He shrugged again and walked to the end of the bar and said something to the man sitting there. I saw them both glance in my direction, the derelict's eyes sizing me up for a long moment before he said something and nodded. Harry came back to where I was standing.

"I told him you wanted to buy him a drink," he said.

I hesitated, but by now I was genuinely intrigued. I strolled to the end of the bar and sat down beside the recluse.

"You're a writer, Harry tells me," he said, without so much as a glance in my direction. His voice was tremulous. It seemed to come from some secret place deep within.

"Yes," I said, "For Broadway Baby. Ever read it?"

"I've seen it," he said, unimpressed. He picked up the empty glass in front of him and turned it around in his fingers. I signaled to Harry for a refill. It came, and he took a decorous sip from it. Usually, he drained a glass in one or two long swallows. I was encouraged.

"You're looking for a story." He made it a statement rather than a question.

"Yes. To be honest."

"'And I'm afraid of dying when I sleep alone.'"

It took me a moment to catch on. "Baudelaire?" I asked.

"Mallarmé. But it should have been Baudelaire." He did look at me then, and smiled, but the smile was mocking, sardonic. "I will tell you a story, if you like," he said. "But you won't use it."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that," I said.

He only continued to smile at me in that dismissive way. He was silent for so long, I thought after all he had changed his mind. Then, finally, looking away from me and into the depths of his glass, he began to talk. His voice was low, not much more than a whisper, so that I had to lean toward him to catch his words. Up close like that, he smelled of infrequent baths and unbrushed teeth and clothes worn too long. His scratchy voice was flat, with no inflection, as if he were reading a playlist….

* * * * *

"I went on tour with one of those repertory companies that scour the hinterlands," he said. "My agent thought it would give me valuable experience and build up my resume. I did Earnest, and Tom in Menagerie, and I alternated Mercutio and Romeo. Frankly, I wasn't awfully good at Shakespeare—that damned blank verse—but I looked nothing less than glorious in tights. The others acted rings around me, but I was the one who got the ovations.

"It went well. I've heard actors complain about doing those tours, but I didn't mind it. I was doing what I loved, and I got lots of applause and with each city, the reviews got better. I clipped them, and sent them to my agent. Already, when she telephoned, she talked of producers who were eager for me to get back, about parts that I was going to read for. It looked like I was on my way.

"Then we came to one of those smallish Midwestern cities. I won't tell you where. I was the opening night Romeo. The locals packed the house. By the time I got back to my dressing room, it was filled with flowers and if I had permitted, it would have been even more filled with admirers.

"There were standing rules, however, no visitors in the dressing rooms. To be honest, I was content with that. As much as I loved the adulation, I had no real interest in doing anything about it. I lived, then, for my acting, for the theater. That was my sex, my romance, the only lover I wanted. Who could compete with that faceless mass in the dark, hanging on my every word, my every gesture? I made love to them, and was satisfied.

"Sometimes, though, the rule had to be bent, and I was not particularly annoyed when my director, Casper , knocked and, opening the door, said, 'I've brought someone to meet you.'

As it turned out, she was the head of the local theater guild, the one responsible for booking companies into the theater—and, of course, we were always especially nice to her ilk. No one wanted to bite the hand that fed us.

"Mrs. Harrington—that was not her real name, you understand—was a large, effusive woman, overflowing with self-importance. You know the type. She represented the local high-society, and was at great pains to insure that you knew it.

"'Mister Casper tells me tomorrow is your night off,' she said when she had expressed her admiration for my performance. 'Perhaps you would do us the honor of dining with my son and I? We'd be ever so thrilled. Gaylord, darling, where are you?'"

"I was on the verge of declining, the words were already on my tongue, when her son appeared in the doorway, and I was, quite simply, struck dumb.

"To say that he was beautiful would be the grossest of understatements, but it was a rare, an ethereal beauty, like one of those hot-house blossoms that begins to wilt in your hand the moment you have plucked it.

"His complexion was so pale it was translucent, as if lighted from within. His eyes were preternaturally large in that white face, his lips berry stained, the dark curls that tumbled over his brow obsidian. I could easily imagine that he had posed for one of Donatello's angels.

"I heard myself say, as if from a great distance, 'I should be delighted…'

* * * * *

"It was the home of a prosperous burgher, who had departed this world some years before and left a widow and a son 'in the most delicate of health,' as she explained it. 'Dear Gaylord wanted to be an actor himself, but he could not have endured the work of it, the stress.'

"We ate, not in the immense and over-furnished dining room, but in what she rather pretentiously called 'the supper room,' just the three of us at a table only large enough to accommodate us and the excess of china and crystal, and covered with a fringed cloth that draped to the floor. One of those hideous electric chandeliers cast a dirty yellow light over everything and a steam radiator cracked arthritic joints. The air was crowded with the smell of the overcooked pork and boiled cabbage we ate.

"I could not have been more enchanted. I had passed the time since our brief meeting in my dressing room thinking of nothing but that ghostly young man who now sat next to me, saying little, smiling occasionally and glancing at me from under lashes that any demoiselle might envy.

"I had never known such desire for anyone. I can't explain it. I, so long content with near celibacy, was possessed, devoured by my passion. It was all that I could do to keep my emotions under control and engage in polite conversation with his mother. Gaylord said little, and answered whatever was spoken directly to him in faint monosyllables.

"All of a sudden, I felt something graze my knee under the concealing cloth, and a moment later a hand, the mere fingertips, really, slid lightly up the inside of my thigh.

"I gasped aloud and looked involuntarily in his direction, but he was looking at neither of us, his expression distant, as if instead of that vulgar room he gazed upon jeweled isles.

"'Is something wrong?' she asked me.

"'No, no,' I said hastily. 'Forgive me, I just recalled something I forgot to do. Please, go on—you were saying?'

"I let my own hand drop under the cloth, but no sooner had my fingers touched his than the intruders were withdrawn. After that, I could scarcely concentrate on keeping the conversation alive, and I have no memory of whether I tasted the food at all.

"Only one thing penetrated this stupor into which I had fallen. As the table was being cleared and coffee served by a thick, sullen woman who was apparently cook and housekeeper, my hostess said to me, 'But, really, that hotel is such an embarrassment. Why don't you come stay here with us for the duration of your visit? We have far more room than we need, and I am sure Gaylord would be glad for the company, wouldn't you, my darling?'"

"'Yes,' he said, in little more than a sigh. That single word pierced my heart. I was in love, smitten beyond reason. I could no more have refused the invitation than flown to the moon.

"When the time came to drive me back to my hotel, she said, 'I'll just get my purse,' and left us alone, for the first time that evening.

"This was the moment for which I had waited, and I leapt to my feet, convinced that I would have those carmine lips pressed to mine, but even as I came about the table, he moved away from it, and into the foyer, and took an enormous pink peony from a bowl of them at the foot of the stairs, and buried his face in it's exuberant petals.

"I hesitated, waiting for some signal from him, but it did not come, and after all too few moments, I heard his mother's footsteps descending the stairs.

"He glanced at me then, fleetingly, and smiled an impish smile. It only made me love him more.

* * * * *

"I moved in the following day. To my disappointment, I saw little of Gaylord that afternoon. It seemed that, with his precious health, he spent much of his time languishing in his room.

"They were coming to the theater that evening though, and when I got there and learned that my fellow Romeo had taken ill and that, instead of my scheduled Mercutio, I would play Romeo once again, I took it as a sign. If I was ever to win the heart of this wraith with whom I had fallen in love, surely it was in the part which, physically at least, suited me better than any other. I made up my mind that I would be dazzling.

"And I was. Never had I played the part with such fervor, such brio. The lines, over which I had sometimes stumbled in the past, sang from my lips, the stage was my realm, my very being quivered with the emotions that I expressed—and always, I was aware of that special audience of one sitting within the shadows of the patron's box. It was for him, and him alone, that I performed, and when I was done, I felt that his heart must certainly now be mine.

"They did not come to the dressing room, but she sent her driver to say they would wait for me in the car.

"It was Casper who came. 'Well,' he said, 'What was that all about, pray tell?'

"'I can't explain it,' I said, smearing my face free of makeup and laughing with the lingering excitement of the performance I had just given. 'I was inspired, is all.'

"'You were dreadful,' he said. 'I haven't seen so much ham outside of a deli in my whole life.'

"'Are you insane?' I demanded of his reflection in the mirror. 'The audience went wild. I've never gotten such ovations.'

"'You wouldn't have gotten them in New York , that's for sure,' he said dourly. 'The critics would have torn you to shreds.'

"I dismissed him with a shrug. I was too elated, and in too much of a hurry, to waste time and energy quarreling with him. I knew well enough what I had done, and for whom.

"There was a light supper waiting for us. We sat in the same little room. There was a salad of overcooked vegetables and some kind of boiled dish, I hardly know what. I sat in a dither, waiting for the hand I was sure would once more reach for me. When it did not come, I scooted myself a bit closer to him, and leaned my leg as far in his direction as I could without toppling sideways from my chair.

"No fondling hand came, but just when I was nearly engulfed in despair, I felt a toe touch my ankle. The little devil had removed his slippers and began to stroke my calf seductively with a bare foot.

"I can't tell you with what impatience I waited for that meal to end, and we had no sooner sipped a cup of coffee when, feigning a yawn, I announced that I was truly exhausted from the evening's performance—'it was brilliant,' she told me breathlessly—and would like very much to retire.

"'By all means,' she said agreeably. 'It's past Gaylord's bedtime, in any case. The dear thing must have his sleep.'

"The room that had been given me was across the hall and down one from that in which he slept. I saw him vanish into his, watching in vain for some sign, some signal. I had only a few nights here in this town. A mere gap in time to consummate our love. He knew that. I could only hope that he did not mean for us to waste any of those precious hours.

"I lay in my bed in the dark, thrashing and tossing about, starting up at every sound, convinced that he would in due time steal across the short distance that separated us and make good on the promises those errant fingers and toes had made.

"There was a tall clock that stood in the downstairs hall, a hideous thing carved of oak and inlaid with mother of pearl. I heard it strike midnight and then one. When it announced the hour of two, I got up from my bed with an aggravated sigh, opened my door without a sound, and crept across the hall to his.

"It was locked. I could hardly knock. His mother was no more than two rooms away, and would certainly hear. I tapped lightly, and then again, as loudly as I dared. There was no reply. I stood for the longest while, my ear to the wooden panel, my heart pounding, sure that any moment his door would swing open and he would throw himself into my arms.

"At last, overwhelmed with despair, I went back to my own bed. I lay staring up at the patterns the moonlight made on the ceiling. Beside me, the empty pillow looked swollen with impatience.

"It was morning before I slept, fitfully.

* * * * *

"And so it went, my entire stay in that bourgeois house. I tried, the following evening, to express my displeasure, and when again I felt his bare foot at my ankle, I moved my leg away. He did not pursue it and after a time, chagrined, I moved it back, and once again he began to toy with me.

"That was all he did, however. My bed remained unbroached. His door remained locked. My dreams unlived.

"My performances suffered. They got worse with each night. I saw the other actors look their puzzlement at me, and the ovations I was used to getting grew less and less enthusiastic. The last night—this time I was Mercutio—there was even a solitary "boo" when I came out for my bow. I was beyond caring. I could think of nothing but that foot that caressed me so clandestinely—and all the rest that I had been denied.

"And then, on my last night in their house, he finally came. I was suffering on the vast desert of my bed when I heard the door open and saw, in the dim glow from the hallway, a slim figure slip through it. His robe fell to the floor with a whisper of silk, and in a moment he was beside me.

"The embrace with which I seized him, the ardor of that first, too long awaited kiss, were beyond description. He separated from me with a little laugh, his breath as sweet as honeydew.

"'We must be gentle,' he said, lying naked beside me. I hovered above him, drinking him in with my eyes. In the moonlight that shined through the window he was whiter than the sheet upon which we lay. He might have been a ghost. Indeed, I thought for one insane moment that perhaps he was only a conjure of my imagination.

"But, no, when I grabbed him to me, he was real, that body so icy in appearance was feverishly warm.

"I had no mind for gentleness, though. My passion, too long denied, consumed me—and, I confess, there was without doubt a measure of anger in it, at my frustration. I would have my way now with him, at last, and frailty be damned, and when he would have protested, I smothered his complaint with kisses. He was mine now, at last I was to be recompensed for my agony. He gave one great sigh, a moan, really, and lay silent and utterly passive while I savaged him.

"It was mercifully brief—mercifully for him, at any rate. It seemed no more than a minute before the act was complete. I sighed my satisfaction, tousled his dark curls playfully with my fingers and stole to the bathroom.

"I could not risk showering. The plumbing in that old house was too noisy. I washed from the sink, and smiled at myself in the mirror, at my triumph. I would make amends to him for my rough treatment, however. My initial ardor satisfied, I would show him what a tender lover I could be. This would be a night he would ever remember.

"When I came back into my room, I saw that he had not moved. He lay, legs splayed, one arm tossed above his head as if reaching for the heavens.

"'Are you angry with me?' I asked in a low voice, crossing to the bed. 'Don't be. I shall make it up to you, I promise.'

He did not reply, and when I slipped onto the bed beside him, I found that his flesh had grown cool.

"Alarmed, I whispered his name. I took him in my arms, and put my head on his chest, and then I felt his wrist for a pulse, and his throat. None. Nothing.

I leapt from the bed and turned on the lamp, and saw at once that he was dead. My heart stopped in my chest, and my legs threatened to fail me. I darted to the door, throwing it open—and caught myself about to call for his mother.

She and I had breakfast alone in the mornings. Gaylord ate in his room and I did not usually see him before I left for the theater. If I aroused the household now, there would certainly be an investigation. Questions would necessarily be asked by the authorities, and it would not be difficult to answer some of them.

"After a long moment's thought, I got his robe from the floor and wrapped it about him, and gathered him in my arms. I had not realized how small he was. He felt no more substantial than a feather. I carried him across to his own room, tucked him gently into bed, pulled satin sheets up under his alabaster chin, draped the robe across the back of a chair—and crept back to my own room.

"I would have fled then and there, but to have done so would have aroused suspicion and led to inquiries. I could not regain my bed, however, could not bear even to look at it. I got up and dressed, and sat in the chair by the window. A storm threatened and the autumn dawn came reluctantly, the sky bruised and yellow gray.

"I cannot imagine now how I got through the breakfast with his mother. I know that we chatted, and I managed to seem quite at ease, while all the while my heart pounded and the breath clotted in my throat. I could think of nothing but that pale thing growing cold in the bedroom upstairs. At last, it was time for her car to drive me back to the theater, where I would join the rest of the troupe.

"'Tell Gaylord I said goodbye, and thank him for his hospitality,' were the last words I said to her."

* * * * *

"It was the greatest performance of my life," Nick said to me, looking full at me for the first time since he had begun his story—a story, he had been entirely right, that I could never use.

"And the last," he added. He tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass upon the bar with a loud thunk.

"Make it a double," he said.