Chapter Four

Christian met Griffin in the lobby the next morning, and the two of them took a taxi to the theater. Griffin was quiet, preoccupied with thoughts of the night before. He stared out the window as Chicago went by, and Christian sat in sullen silence.

The theater was a grand dame of a building, with an ornately carved stone façade and a grand staircase that looked like it should have been a film set. Griffin looked around the lobby, taking in the old-time grandeur and elegance.

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” he observed.

Christian smiled. “No, they don’t. This is one of the most beautiful theaters I’ve ever had the privilege of working in.” He gestured toward a door marked Staff Only.  “Come this way.”

He followed his young companion through the door and found himself in a corridor flanked by offices. The artistic director’s office stood alone on the left, and on the right were smaller offices for the other front office staff that were required to keep something like the Actors’ Club running smoothly. Playbills and posters from productions past vied with cast photographs for pride of place on the walls, which were nearly completely covered with the theater’s memorabilia.

Christian took him past the offices and around a corner, where the hall led to workshops and rehearsal spaces. Griffin could hear the distant murmur of voices in the costume shop, and he wondered if Levi was there. There was no time to check. He followed Christian to the last rehearsal room on the left, where a series of tables and chairs had been erected. Pitchers of water and plastic glasses stood at the ready, and printed copies of the script sat before each seat.

“Read-through starts in ten minutes,” Christian told him. “Everybody’s on the way in.”

The majority of the cast was already assembled, and they all looked up at him with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. He put on his friendliest smile.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m Griffin.”

One of the actors, an older man who was already wearing a Roman haircut, smirked. “We know. And so do all of the young ladies already standing outside the stage door.”

He grimaced. “Sorry about that. They’re not bad people, just really enthusiastic.”

Introductions were made all around the table, with real names and character names being given. He shook hands with every one of them, trying to conceal his nerves.

Liz Davies stepped into the room, and she stood aside to allow Sir Edward Treadwell to sweep into view like a king without an entourage. The cast stood almost as one and applauded his entrance. Griffin, who was unfamiliar with the sort of thing, was the last to begin to clap, something that was noticed by the distinguished Englishman. He sat in his appointed seat and rested his hands on the table top.

“Friends,” Sir Edward said, “I am pleased to make your acquaintances. Most of you I know from reputation, or from occasions when I’ve been privileged to see your work. You, however, Mr. Lawrence… I am unfamiliar with the things you do.”

Griffin rankled at the subtle dig in the man’s words and tone, but he kept his smile in place. “It’s a television series. It’s been a long time, but I do have experience with stage work, as well.”

“With the Bard of Avon?”

“I’ve played Hamlet, MacDuff, and Mercutio, among others,” he answered calmly. “I spent a lot of time performing in Shakespearean plays while I was at the Performing Arts Academy.”

Sir Edward sniffed. “A scholarship student, I assume?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I attended on a full ride scholarship that was awarded as a result of an audition.” He tilted his head and looked at the older man. “I hope that meets with your approval.”

“Whether I approve or not shall depend entirely upon your ability in this play. I will not have my performance undermined by an amateurish glory hound who’s here purely as a publicity stunt.”

Stunned silence fell over the room, and the other actors stared at Sir Edward, or at Griffin, or at Liz Davies, who looked like she wanted to sink through the floor and disappear.

“With all due respect, sir, your presence could be considered as much of a stunt,” Griffin responded. “Everyone knows that you haven’t acted in much for the last ten years, and when you have appeared, you’ve played Sir Edward Treadwell more than you’ve played any of the roles you’ve been given. I’m sure there will be a lot of people coming to this play to see if you still have any talent left, or if it’s all been drowned in your ego.”

Sir Edward’s face turned red, and he began to stand. Liz hurried forward. “Gentlemen, I understand that tempers are a bit short and nerves are high at the beginning of this process. Please try to be civil and give one another a chance. Neither of you would have been invited – none of you would have been invited – if we weren’t confident that you had the talent and the skill to bring this work to life.” She looked at Sir Edward, then back at Griffin. “Please. We need everyone here.”

The tension was stifling. The entire cast was uncomfortable, and Griffin could see that Sir Edward had no intention of being the first to bend. He took a deep breath and decided to be the bigger man.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. He modulated his voice to sound contrite without groveling. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I truly do respect you as an artist and a human being. I hope that we can put this behind us.”

Sir Edward drew himself up and stared hard at Griffin, the corners of his mouth turning down. Finally, he said, “Your apology will be accepted, my dear boy, if it should come to pass that you can really act. Until then, I consider us at an impasse.”

Liz looked at Griffin with a plea in her eyes. He gave her his best smile and said, “Well, that’s what this read-through is for, right?”

The English actor chuckled, but without humor. “We shall see.”

***

Levi swore beneath his breath when the sewing machine needle snapped for the third time that hour. He was distracted and it was making him careless. The mending job he was doing on the proscenium curtain should have been a ten-minute task, and here he was, forty minutes later, still wrestling with reattaching the lining to the red velvet.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the events at Starlight. He was embarrassed that he had gone to the bar, ashamed that he had responded so wantonly to sexual advances from a supposed stranger and disturbed more than he wanted to admit that he had been intimate with Griffin again after all this time. At what point did Griffin know that it was him? At what point did Griffin, who was in control while they were out in the light of the club, decide that he wanted to have sex with Levi without telling him who he was? He felt stupidly betrayed, and while a tiny part of him tried to say that he was an adult man with needs and it was all right to do what he did, his predominant sense of conscience was deeply disappointed in him.

He forced himself to pay attention and got the curtain repaired without breaking another needle. He needed to talk to Griffin, but he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t even certain that his former lover would want to talk to him. The only thing that he was sure of was that he had made a complete mess of things, and that he had all summer to endure the fallout.

He should have left when he learned that Griffin was being invited to the summer cast. He should have just taken a sabbatical, or maybe he should have gone home to Brooklyn to see his parents and his grandmother. It had been a long time since he’d set foot in a synagogue, but maybe that’s what he needed now. He’d spent so long running from his conservative Orthodox Jewish upbringing that he had forgotten the moral lessons he’d been taught. If he’d stayed in touch with his faith, he reasoned desperately, he never would have found himself on his knees, sucking off a stranger who turned out to be far too familiar.

He folded the curtains and put them in a basket to be washed by his summer intern, then sat down and put his head in his hand. He was spinning his mental wheels, and he knew it. He just had to get a grip. He was certain that for Griffin, having anonymous trysts in the back of bars was just what he did on slow Tuesdays. He was a beauty, and he knew it. Griffin had always been sexually ravenous. He was probably the biggest slut on the West Coast.

Now, that’s unfair, he chided himself. Just because having sex is embarrassing to me, that doesn’t mean that there’s actually anything wrong with it… except that it’s a good way to meet a serial killer or something. You never know who’s at those places.

He sighed and shook his head at his own inner dialogue.

Yeah. You might run into TV stars.

He wanted to see Griffin in the daylight. He wanted to prove to himself that his former lover was aging, that he had crow’s feet and that his beautiful smile was still a little higher on the left than on the right. He wanted to see him and find all of the little flaws that made him still human instead of some bronze celluloid god. It was spiteful, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.

He took a deep breath and started laying out foam armor to make sure he could dress all of the Roman soldiers in the play. As he stacked like pieces together, he reflected on the argument that had ended them so many years ago. He’d been in the wrong then. They both had been. Neither of them had apologized, and he wasn’t going to be the first, even though the part he’d played was arguably the larger.

Levi shook his head and gave himself a swift mental kick in the figurative rear end. This over-thinking the situation was accomplishing nothing. There was only one thing to do, and it was the one thing that terrified him the most. He had to talk to Griffin.

***

The play’s director finally joined them an hour late, strolling in as if it was his right to keep them waiting.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said, fanning himself with a copy of the script. “I’m Eliot Moultry, the director emeritus of the Actors’ Club.”

As if any of us don’t know who you are, Griffin thought to himself.

Moultry walked into the center of the horseshoe the actors had made of their tables, scanning the paper nametags that announced both part and player. Sir Edward, of course, was seated in the center of it all, occupying the center table almost all by himself. The actors playing Brutus and Cassius flanked him, an arrangement that would be risky if the play was real. Moultry went to Sir Edward and offered his hand. The actor took his time accepting it.

“Sir Edward,” Moultry said effusively, “I cannot tell you what an honor it is to have you here among us this season. You would not believe how pleased I was to learn that you had accepted our invitation.”

“Actually, I would.” A nervous chuckle spread around the room, which Sir Edward ignored. “I’ve seen one of your previous productions, Mr. Moultry. Your directorial approach to Ibsen was one I had never seen before.”

Moultry puffed. “Why, thank you.”

“I’m not surprised that the production failed.”

Griffin laughed. “Wow. You have a way of winning friends, don’t you, Sir Edward?”

The older actor glared at him with a jaundiced eye. “I meant only that the general public are seldom prepared for true innovation. The direction was ahead of its time.”

“The powers that be who underwrite the season have impressed upon me the need to have a more traditional approach to this play,” Moultry confessed, “but I might still have some surprises up my sleeve.”

Sir Edward glanced at Griffin. “I do hope that certain elements of your casting are the extent of the nastier surprises you have in store.”

The director looked at Griffin, too, and there was something unpleasant in his eyes. “Mr. Lawrence is a fine actor, and he brings a certain je ne sais quoi to this production.”

“Dollars, in the form of television fanatics,” Sir Edward opined.

“My fans aren’t cultural Philistines,” Griffin defended. “You’d be surprised. Most of them are college-educated young women who have a lot of interest in and understanding of the theater.”

The older actor turned away. “I will believe that when I see it.”

Moultry pulled a tall stool into the center of the horseshoe shape made by the tables, and he crossed his legs and arms. The director’s spindly arms and legs were dressed all in black, close-fitting knits, and his white hair was an unruly, fuzzy shock that made Griffin think of cotton-top tamarinds, which he had seen at the San Diego Zoo. He stifled the image of Moultry as a primate and turned his attention to the read-through.

They went through the entire play, reading their lines from the page. Most of them, it was clear, had already been working on their parts, or had played these parts before. Some of the actors in the room were regulars at the Actors’ Club, the basic corps of the production company. The rest, those men who played the conspirators and the women who played Portia and Calpurnia, were invitees like Griffin and Sir Edward, albeit with less elevated profiles. They were all practiced hands at the difficult intricacies of Shakespeare’s words and the iambic pentametric rhythm, and Griffin could see a very strong ensemble coming together before his eyes.

For his part, he had already learned most of his lines, and he was able to give Antony’s funeral oration entirely from memory. By the time he finished, all eyes were on him, including Sir Edward’s, and he might have been flattering himself, but he thought he saw a creeping admiration in the older man’s eyes.

It took them three hours, give or take, just to read the piece. Moultry spent another hour giving notes and explaining his vision for the play, which involved a minimalist approach. Griffin had seen something similar done with Macbeth and a touring company of Romeo and Juliet that had swung through Vancouver when he’d been filming on location one year. It was hardly groundbreaking, but it was a dependable workhorse of a vision, and it would suit the classic play fairly well.

He just hoped it wouldn’t be boring.

Moultry thanked the actors for their time and swept out of the room, leaving Liz to address them all.

“We’re going to have a stage fighting workshop tomorrow,” she told them, “and by the end of the day, you all have to be measured for your costumes. I think most of you have already paid your visits to the costume shop, but Mr. Lawrence and Sir Edward, I think, have yet to do so.”

Sir Edward stood and collected his walking stick and coat. “I was measured this morning, Ms. Davies.”

She smiled. “Ah! Excellent. You’re the consummate professional, sir.”

He nodded to her. “I pride myself on it, madam.”

Griffin said, “I just flew in yesterday, so this is my first trip to the theater itself. Could you direct me to the costume shop?”

“Of course. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you there.”

Liz led the way out into the corridor, and Griffin trailed along in her wake.

The costume shop was exactly where Griffin already knew it was, and he knew he’d been disingenuous when he’d asked for directions. Partly it was to make it seem that he hadn’t been eager to go there since the moment he’d entered the building, and partly it was because he didn’t want to go alone, just in case Levi was unhappy to see him. Because, of course, he’d be unhappy to see him.

The door to the costume shop was open, and Levi was leaning over a cutting table when they arrived, carefully guiding his scissors through a piece of heavy muslin that looked like the start of a toga. Griffin had a lustful moment of looking at his former lover’s beautifully shaped behind, but Liz ruined it all by clearing her throat.

“Ahem.”

Levi straightened and turned. His expression was guarded, and he held the scissors in front of himself as if they were a weapon… or a shield. “Hello,” he said, his voice sounding remarkably calm for all that Griffin could recognize the tension in his eyes.

“Levi Rudd, costume designer and wardrobe manager extraordinaire, I’d like to introduce you to Griffin Lawrence, star of Hunters and The Liability.”

The costumer grimaced. “The Liability? Awful movie.”

He smiled, pleased beyond reason that Levi had seen his film. “I agree. It was an indie movie that I did as a favor for a friend.”

“With friends like that, your career doesn’t need enemies,” Levi said.

Liz looked astonished. “Mr. Rudd! That’s rude!”

Griffin laughed. “It’s okay. Levi and I have known each other for years. We attended the Performing Arts Academy together.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I had no idea you were acquainted. Well, that’s marvelous!” She clasped her birdlike hands at her waist. “Levi, if you would, please take Mr. Lawrence’s measurements while he’s here.”

“Please,” the actor said, “Mr. Lawrence is my father. Call me Griffin.”

The artistic director beamed at him. “Griffin,” she echoed. “My pleasure. Then you must call me Liz.”

“Thank you.”

He smiled placidly as Liz said something that neither of them paid the least attention to, and then she left the room. Once she was gone, Levi put the scissors aside. He pulled a tape measure out of a pocket of his jeans.

“Let’s get this over with.”

Griffin stood with his legs apart and his arms comfortably akimbo, letting Levi measure his chest, neck and shoulders. He held his silence, even though every touch of his former lover’s fingers seemed to burn through him down to his soul. He looked at the elegance of Levi’s hands as he worked with his tape, and when he was measuring the length of Griffin’s arm from shoulder to wrist, he glanced up and caught the actor’s gaze. Griffin tried to smile but could only blush instead, something that was wildly unlike him. Levi immediately looked away.

“You won’t be needing any trousers, so I won’t have to get your inseam,” the costume designer said, scribbling numbers on a scratch pad. “You must be relieved.”

“Disappointed, actually.”

Levi gave him a harsh, warning look and came forward to measure his waist.  The nearness of him, his body heat and again the touch of his hands made Griffin feel warm inside, and he struggled to find the right words to say. It had never been his forte.

The tape went around his hips next, and Levi’s knuckle pressed lightly into his buttock while he took the measurement. Griffin literally bit his lip to keep from saying something stupid. Unfortunately, that something stupid came popping right out as soon as Levi knelt to measure his calves.

“Now this seems familiar.”

His former lover pulled away with a disgusted noise. “You are such a pig, Griffin.”

It was the first time that he’d said his name since their last fight, and as always, he loved the way is sounded when it fell from Levi’s lips.

“Sorry,” he apologized sincerely. “I’m not trying to be an idiot. You just make my brain go on neutral when you’re around.”

Levi shot him a look that was somewhere between accusation and hope. “You’re still a player.”

“I was never a player,” he objected. “Not with you.”

“Could have fooled me last night.”

“You were hardly the blushing virgin, yourself.”

Levi sighed and ran a hand over his face, something he only did when he was profoundly dismayed. “I know. Listen…that… I….”

“Not your usual?” he offered helpfully.

Again, he sighed. “No. Not even close.”

Griffin nodded. “Well, I’m glad you made an exception for me.”

“Yeah, you seemed like you really needed to get your rocks off.”

The words stung. “That’s not the only reason. When I saw it was you, I couldn’t resist.”

“You should have tried.”

“Why?”

Levi slapped his hand on his work desk. “Because we aren’t together anymore! You left me!”

The room rang with the raw emotion in his shout, and they stared at one another. Griffin felt his chest tighten. “That’s a lie,” he whispered. “You left me.”

He tossed his dark head. “I did nothing of the kind. You were the one who had to run out to California.”

“You were the one who decided not to come with me.”

“My career was in New York!”

“And mine was in L.A.” Griffin took half a step forward, then stopped. “If you’d come with me, you could have been working on feature films by now.”

He turned away. “I love the theater.”

“There are theaters in California.”

“Not like in New York.”

Griffin clenched his teeth. “If you’re so dedicated to New York, then how come you’re here in Chicago?”

He sounded hurt and resentful, just like he felt, and he saw no reason to conceal it. Levi looked down. “Because New York wasn’t dedicated to me.”

This time, he did step forward. “No. Maybe not. But I was. Tell me why you didn’t come with me, but tell me the truth this time.”

He could see Levi struggling with the emotions and the memories, and when he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet that Griffin almost couldn’t hear him.

“I was afraid.”

Griffin took a deep breath. Finally, some truth. “Of what?”

He didn’t look at him, but he kept talking, which was something of a miracle. He’d never been one to tell Griffin what he was thinking, never one to share what was going on inside.

“Of you. Of us.”

“Why would you be afraid of us?” he asked, daring to put his hand on Levi’s shoulder. To his relief and not a little surprise, he didn’t shake him off. “What we had was beautiful.”

“It was,” he agreed, his voice thick. He was holding back tears. “It was almost perfect.”

Griffin pulled him around to face him. “Look at me.” Levi shook his head. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, Levi turned his gaze back onto Griffin’s face. Those dark eyes were filled with tears that he was trying not to shed, and Griffin put his hands on Levi’s shoulders to hold him in place.

“Lee,” he whispered, “why would almost perfect ever be bad?”

He looked like he might pull away, but he stayed put, looking into Griffin’s face as if he were trying to will him to understand. “Because when something is so good, it goes away. I was afraid that if I left with you, I’d fall completely in love and I’d never be able to leave, and then it would all go downhill. I’d start to love you more than you loved me, and you’d be a star and you’d find someone better, and I couldn’t…”

He listened incredulously as Levi poured his heart out. They’d spent three years together, and this was the first time his erstwhile partner had ever really talked. Griffin shook his head. “There could never have been anybody better. If you’d have come with me, we’d still be together now, because I never found anybody who could have made me forget about you. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

This time, Levi did step back, rubbing at his eyes and turning away. Griffin started to reach for him again, but a knock on the door of the costume shop interrupted them at the worst possible moment.

“Is it too late to get measured?”

He turned around to face Michael Abner, the man who had been tapped to play Brutus. Behind him, he could hear Levi scurrying into the supply room.

“No,” Griffin said, his voice husky. “Not too late.”