“Why? He’s a nice boy!”
“Maybe…maybe not. She hasn’t had much experience with a fast-track type like that.”
“She hasn’t had any experience. I like Cog.”
“I remember you growled at me one morning, ‘What kind of a name is Lang?’ So what kind of a name is Cog?”
Nevada snorted. “He made that up. The cog in the wheel. That’s what his father always made him feel like! Oh, I know that feeling. Cog and I have a lot in common.”
“I didn’t realize you knew him.”
“I don’t know him, but I know we’re alike. I read an interview with him in Rolling Stone. It could have been me talking, twenty years ago!”
“So that makes him a good choice for Huguette?”
“What does that mean?” he growled.
“Nothing,” I said. I could see the lights of Roundelay. Firecrackers exploded like machine guns.
We walked along without talking for a while, Plato dancing ahead of us, the other chows running scared with their tails between their legs.
“Things are different today,” Nevada said. “When we went on the road, all we needed was some penicillin and a little black book. The young fellows today pack laptops, mobile phones, modems; they’re real little businessmen.”
“Yeah,” I said sarcastically.
“You want to argue the point with me, is that it?”
“I wasn’t thinking about the difference in equipment on the road,” I said. But I wondered what the hell I was trying to prove, why I didn’t just shut up and let him think what he wanted to about Wheeler.
Nevada said, “You do want to argue it with me. All right, come up to Roundelay and we’ll discuss it.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Stand up for your opinions!” he said. “You throw some out and then back away! You have trouble standing up for yourself, don’t you?”
“Maybe sometimes,” I said. “But that isn’t why I can’t come to Roundelay.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because Alex is going to call at eleven thirty,” I said. “It’s eleven ten.”
“Just as well, Penner,” he said, as we took the path leading up to the house. “I never should have started calling you Penner. You name something, and the next thing you know, you’ve invited it into your house.”
I laughed. “Maybe you should just call me F. I could be the sixth rottweiler.”
“You’re not fierce enough!” he said. “Plato? Aristotle? Socrates! Come!”
I found my shoes where I’d left them, then headed away while he dealt with the chows.
TWENTY-SIX
“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO believe who’s playing Cherie,” Alex said. “Nola Leary!”
“Who’s she?”
“Remember the one in Picnic who said she couldn’t get excited about kissing an actor who’d rather kiss another male than a female?”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes…and she’s the director’s pet.”
“But didn’t she know they were casting you?”
“When I got there, she did.”
“How’s she reacting?”
“We all went off to see the fireworks. So far so good. They were so relieved to get anyone at the last minute, I guess she’s resigned to having me play Bo. For now, anyway.”
We talked about my birthday party, the horoscope, his room, others in the cast, everything but Huguette. He didn’t mention her and I didn’t.
The moment I heard his voice, any leftover confusion I had from the night before went. I just wanted to be with him. Feel him close, and smell the patchouli.
“Alex? Listen. I’m working some extra hours for McCaffery tomorrow. I think I could get next weekend off. I could fly up Friday.”
“That’ll cost you plenty, Lang!”
“I’ve been working for Nevada, too. I have money saved. It’ll be worth it if I can just spend a little time with you.”
“I’m dying to see you, Lang, but not yet.”
“Why?”
“I just explained why. This is a very small town. It’d be hard to get off by ourselves. We’re all in the same boardinghouse, one room right next to the other, and no place to go after the show but one beer joint…. I don’t have a car, either.”
“I see.”
“Do you see? I’m going to look around and maybe find another place. I don’t know what’s available.”
“Damn! I was hoping we could be together, Alex!”
“Don’t,” he said. “How do you think I feel? Everyone up here is straight as a ruler!”
“That never bothered you before.”
“How come it doesn’t bother you? You wouldn’t even come backstage in New York. What’s happened to you suddenly?”
“I miss you.”
“I know. I’ll think of something. Call you tomorrow.”
“I love you,” I said.
He said, “You usually don’t say that before I do. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, hmmm?”
“Yes,” I said, and I hoped it was true.
TWENTY-SEVEN
EXCEPT FOR GLIMPSES OF her in the distance, I didn’t see Huguette for a week.
Then one morning, when I was repairing the fence around the pool, she called me up to the porch.
“Have lunch with us,” she said.
“Okay. Thanks.”
I didn’t have to ask what band was playing over the speakers. I’d been hearing nothing but The Failures coming from Roundelay all week, whenever Huguette was there.
They’d broken records at Sob Story, sold out every night, six hundred dinners in three days, never mind what the bar took in.
Days I’d see the white Porsche coming and going from Roundelay, often with her beside him. On The Failures’ opening night she sat in front at his table. From the kitchen I watched him dedicate his first song to her: Sting’s old one, “Every Breath You Take.”
Now they were gone, playing a gig in New Jersey.
Huguette had on a long, yellow Failures T-shirt, a version of the one I’d seen on Lenny Allen, with the white circle and the single word zero, THE FAILURES stamped across the back. Her black shorts barely showed. She was barefoot and tan.
I sat down and pulled my trouser pants out of my socks, which I kept up to protect myself from ticks when I worked around the fields.
I couldn’t look at her too closely. All the feelings I’d been pushing away for seven days came flooding back.
She said, “Look what he gave me, Lang!”
It was a small, gold identification bracelet.
“He had something engraved on the back,”
