“Come on,” he whispered, “it’s okay, Mario. Anything you want. Just—just show me what to do, tell me what you want.”
He heard Mario swallow hard, and was not sure whether it was a laugh or a sob. “Okay, kid. But take it easy—it’s not a dance where you have to learn the steps just so. Just lie here quiet a minute, close to me. Just let me hold you like this a minute . . . .”
He could still feel the tension and fear in Mario, and it made him afraid in spite of himself, as if braced for some ordeal. And because of this he did not realize for a long time just how gentle Mario had been with him then, how carefully and gently he had eased him over ignorance and fright at new and unexpected sensations. His own growing excitement terrified him again, but it was lost in the rising, overwhelming pleasure. The way in which by waves the two gave way to one another made him think, confusedly, without awareness, of the long swing into space from the bars, dizzy and terrified, with the very fear a part of the excitement, excitement almost to pain . . . . And then, at the very moment when he could bear no more, the ecstatic, triumphant moment of meshing, blending, the abrupt shock of it, gripping, safe in his hands, which were somehow there at the exact moment when another split second would have meant unconsciousness, death, and they were safe, swinging together . . . . And now excitement could rise again, and triumph . . . their hands clasped as they swung, like bodies convulsed in spasmodic pleasure—and in that moment of awareness he knew what he was never to be able to put into words: why for so long he had envied Angelo, this thing that was between the two of them as they worked endlessly for perfection on the triple, what had been missing for so long as Mario had taught him to fly . . . and then he lost that insight again, for years. The lightning was still coming and going, and it seemed, as he opened his eyes, that it was like an echo, a reflection of his own trembling, of the exploding deathly terror and pleasure that was slowly subsiding into a memory. He sensed, without conscious thought, how all that terrible tension in Mario had subsided, now that Mario lay spent and peaceful across his body, breathing heavily, his face resting on Tommy’s stomach. And it was Tommy who gathered him up close, and pulled the blanket over them both and whispered, “Can I say something?”
“Sure.” Mario gave his arm a tiny squeeze.
Tommy whispered, almost inaudibly, “Love you.” And then he was afraid again. He had broken the unspoken rule, the hidden commitment; you couldn’t say it like that.
But restraint was gone now. Mario turned and pressed his mouth to the soft bare shoulder and said in a low clear voice, not a whisper at all, “Tom, listen to me. I’ve wanted men, but, may God strike me dead right now, I never thought I could love anybody like this. I never loved anyone except Liss, and that’s different. But I love you, Tommy, I do love you—I love you so much I could die. I’m a rotten bastard, Tommy, but I love you.”
He hid his face in Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy felt him crying, shaking softly with sobs. But Tommy, who had been close to tears himself in that deathly moment of terror and triumph, did not offer any unwelcome protest. It seemed perfectly natural to him that Mario should cry, and that he should hold him there, with no comfort except his arms hugging him tight. He let him lie there and cry, and felt his shoulder wet with Mario’s tears, and gently wiped them away, his last conscious act before he floated into sleep.
~o0o~
. . . Mario was shaking him, hard.
“Tom,” he whispered urgently, “Tom, get up—quickly! Go back to your own bed! That damn bolt didn’t hold!”
Tommy muttered sleepy protest and did not move. Mario’s fingers bit cruelly into his arm. “Damn it, wake up!”
Galvanized awake, Tommy let Mario push him over into his own bed. He was aware that he was naked and pulled up the sheet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mario kick his pajamas under the edge of the bed. Hardly a moment later a narrow crack of light widened from the folding door from the kitchen of the trailer.
“Matt?” Angelo muttered. “You kids all right?”
“Mmmrnm,” Mario mumbled, pretending sleep.
Tommy did not dare to stir. Angelo said in a whisper, “I thought the storm might have waked you kids up; the pole right outside the trailer was hit by lightning. I guess Tommy slept through it?”
“Yeah, I guess. Get the goddamn light out of my eyes!” Mario said thickly.
Angelo muttered, “So okay, okay,” and the crack of light went dark.
After a minute Tommy felt Mario reach for his hand in the darkness, across the narrow space between their beds. But he did not move. He was wide awake now, and vaguely resentful that Mario should be so prompt and adept at hiding such a perfect, magical thing. His reason told him that it was necessary, that Mario had done the only thing he could do, but he was only fifteen, and he did his thinking, still, with his emotions.
Mario slid out of bed and knelt beside him.
“Tommy—”
“Go on back to bed. Angelo might come in again.”
Mario put his head down and kissed him on the temple. “Ragazzo, piccino—figlio, fanciullo mio . . .” he pleaded.
Tommy, understanding only that the words were endearments, said sulkily, “What?”
“I’m so sorry, Lucky. Oh, damn them all, we’re going to have to be so careful it scares hell out of me. You think I wanted to do that to you?”
Tommy put his head against Mario’s bare shoulder. “I wish I could sleep with you.”
“Tommy, honest, I’m scared to let you. Angelo will be coming in so early to wake us up. I wish we could, too. Maybe sometime.” He sat with his arm around him for several minutes, then printed a final kiss on his cheek and slipped back into his own bed. And Tommy, filled with the ache of love, still felt that faint, depleted, afterache that was not disappointment, not disillusion, but a sadness which even under the most perfect conditions of love is hard to avoid, and under these conditions almost unavoidable.
CHAPTER 15
When he woke it was faintly, fitfully sunlight. Mario was sound asleep, his back to Tommy. His blanket and sheet were kicked off, his pajama pants twisted around his calves and ankles, and his shoulders, so darkly tanned they hardly seemed naked, hunched down into a private cocoon of sleep. Tommy remembered something Mario had said once: “When you’re asleep you look like a little kid.” But Mario, sleeping, was a man, much older, alien, invulnerable without the boyish grin or the unsureness of his waking personality. It was hard to reconcile the distant, invulnerable self-sufficiency of Mario’s turned-away shoulders with the way he had clung to Tommy and cried himself to sleep. Even while Tommy stretched out, pleasantly aware of an almost luxurious relaxation in his body, he felt a little sad, a little puzzled.
He heard steps outside; then at the back of the trailer Angelo coughed. There were creaks, and he heard Angelo talking with the rigging man at the kitchen door. Tommy pulled his blanket back, skinned into his trousers and shoes, and met Angelo in the kitchen. Leaving Mario and Papa Tony asleep in the trailer, they went out across the drenched lot to inspect the rigs.
Angelo looked sleepy. He was still unshaven. He had a heavy beard and thin skin, and to avoid shaving twice a day he never shaved until just before the afternoon show. It was a habit that did not fit with the Santelli emphasis on immaculate grooming, and it exasperated Papa Tony into periodic fits, although, pinned down, he conceded its good sense. But Angelo whistled softly, cheerfully as they crossed the muddy field. The roustabouts were already setting the ring walls, swearing at the mud.
Tommy asked, “Good movie last night?”
Angelo gave him a drowsy grin. “Kid, tell you something. You go to a movie with a girl, if you can tell afterward whether it was a good movie or not, you’ve got to be under twelve, over seventy, or queer as a three dollar bill.”
Tommy laughed uneasily. “I’ll remember that.”
They got busy then, supervising the erection of end poles, checking the tension of wires and ropes attending to the millions of details which co
uld not be left to outsiders because not only the success of the performance, but their very lives, depended on the perfect security of every screw and brace. When they came back to the trailer, Mario had coffee ready and Papa Tony had found a local bakery and brought back a sack of fresh rolls. Tommy shed his muddy boots and slid into a seat.
“Hey,” he said, “all the rig men were talking. You know there was a tornado right near here last night?”
Mario gave Tommy a quick secret grin. “I kind of thought so.”
Papa Tony was buttering a roll lavishly. “Remember how terrified Elissa always was during thunderstorms, Matt? She would get up and crawl into bed with her mother, or you, or anyone who. was near . . . .”
Tommy snickered and Mario said hastily, “Hand me the coffeepot, Tom.” As Tommy stretched to comply, Mario gave him a quick, savage kick on the ankle.
Tommy said hastily, “I got spanked once for crawlin’ into a cupboard during a storm when I was about four. I went to sleep there, and Mother had the whole backyard out hunting for me—she thought I got lost or kidnapped or something. Weren’t you scared of thunderstorms when you were a kid, Mario?”
“Just between us, I was the one who got scared and Liss used to come in and comfort me. Only she used to tell Angelo she was the one who was scared because she didn’t want him to know what a big baby I was, and nobody blames a girl for getting scared.”
“Yah, you rascal,” Angelo said affectionately. “A boy fifteen’s got no business being afraid of storms. Or getting in bed with his big sister. You get that big, you ought to find another girl to keep you warm.”
“Angelo, basta!” Papa Tony snapped at him, and followed it with a flood of Italian. Tommy could not understand much of it, but he had known for a long time that Papa Tony detested suggestive talk and that he sometimes used Tommy’s presence—or, at home, that of the younger children—to stop it whenever it got started.
Angelo said good-naturedly, “Well, Papa, at his age he’s probably figured it out for himself, and if he hasn’t I guess he’s hopeless, anyway.” He stuffed a final bite of roll into his mouth and went off whistling to put on his practice clothes.
During the morning run-through, Tommy felt a little anxious. After last night, how could he touch his friend impersonally, without betraying all the new knowledge in him? Or even, would Mario suddenly turn on him again? But habit carried him through the first few minutes, while he arrived at the curiously disillusioning, but also curiously steadying knowledge which is the first aftershock of sexual adulthood: that even the most intense sexual experiences leave absolutely no visible traces. Mario’s body was exactly the same strong, friendly, impersonal partner it always had been. And Mario was in perfect form; he soared from bar to bar with that perfect precision, that absolute split-second thereness, which for lack of any more accurate description was called timing. It was more than just knowing when to move; it was what made the difference between a competent performer and a star.
Tommy realized, briefly and happily, how proud he had always been of his one real talent, for moving through their duo routine as if he were Mario’s identical shadow, or as if the same clockwork signal moved them both in perfect congruence. He said to himself, We move as if we had only one heartbeat. He was still too ingenuous to think of repeating it later.
Later, watching Mario and Angelo work together on a tricky pass, he realized it again. They’ve got it, even more than Mario and I do—so damn perfect, like they were one person in two bodies. Filled with a sudden surge of confidence, Mario called out to Angelo, “Think you can hold me on a triple this morning?”
Angelo called back, “Sure. What are you waiting for?”
Mario tensed himself, and Tommy, watching, passing him the bar, looking across at Angelo already picking up his own swing, thought, Right now, Angelo’s the only person in his world. Watching, his own muscles cramping as his consciousness went outward with Mario on that accelerated swing, the thought barely skimmed his mind, like a cloud briefly shadowing the sun, I wish I was catching him on that . . . I wonder if I ever could . . . . and then it was all wiped away again into total preoccupation with Mario, coming loose, turning . . . again . . . again . . . . Tommy felt the shock almost in his own body as hands and wrists struck, meshed, slid to full stretch . . . .
Behind him Papa Tony said matter-of-factly, “He’s got it again. I knew it was just a matter of time.” He called across to Mario, “Now, when will you do it again in the act?”
Angelo answered for him. “When he gets good and ready, hey, Matt?” And Tommy felt a surge of affection that was almost love for Angelo, too. He thought, almost fiercely, Good for you, Angelo—don’t you let anybody push him!
~o0o~
But if his first morning-after was kind, and without disillusion, there were harder moments. Out of that bitter experience of which he never spoke, Mario took entirely on himself the responsibility for policing their secret, and Tommy found himself meekly accepting the iron regulation of time and place, and loyally stifling his own pronounced opinions on the subject. But he resented it. He couldn’t help it.
By an agreement no less strong because it was never put into words, they knew that what had happened was a bond which would be, must be renewed again and again, a commitment never spoken but doubly strong for its very secrecy. But it was not easy for them to find privacy and time alone. It was not easy for anyone.
In spite of common misconceptions about the slipshod morality of itinerant show people, such a strenuous and mobile life, combined with rigorous daily routine, leaves little leisure for irregularities of conduct. There were some, of course, quietly tolerated because busy people don’t have time for meddling in other people’s affairs. Furthermore, it was generally recognized that equally busy other people had better things to do than worry about small niceties of convention. There was, for instance, the affair between Angelo and Margot Clane. Everybody knew about it, more or less, depending on how well they knew Angelo or Margot, and nobody really paid the slightest attention.
But this was really different, and both Mario and Tommy knew it. There were always together for work, practice, and care of costumes and riggings, but they were never really alone, and knew desperately that they had no real excuse for trying to be alone. They lived perpetually under the watchful eyes of Papa Tony, Angelo, Buck, and “the whole damned circus,” as Mario once snarled.
They both felt distressed, with an almost childlike idealism, at some of the shifts they had to find. A few minutes, nervously alert for footsteps, in the rigging truck with the door “accidentally” blocked shut, was their usual makeshift. Once they managed, again, to ride in the rigging truck between towns, but Mario said it would be dangerous to try it too often. An occasional, if risky, compromise was the Santelli trailer in the period between the afternoon and evening show, when sometimes Papa Tony and Angelo went to town to play pinball or shoot darts in a cafe for an hour or two. Since Mario had never made a habit of joining them, his failure to do so now did not attract any attention.
But usually their excuses were flimsy and their occasions furtive; they both hated it, but neither could avoid the compulsion.
Once, when circumstances had kept them for a whole week virtually drowning in other people, unable even to talk freely, they found a small and dirty bar in a south Arkansas town and went into the back room, just wanting to talk alone, but the barkeeper frowned and asked, “How old is the kid?”
“Fifteen,” said Mario just as sharply. “What’s the matter, I can’t get my kid brother a soda while I drink a beer, or am I supposed to leave him hanging around in the street?”
“You didn’t ought to bring him in here,” the man replied. He brought Mario a bottle of beer and Tommy a bottle of root beer without further argument, but Mario said in an undertone, “Let’s get out of here,” and they left their drinks half finished and went.
“What’s the matter with you, Mario?”
“He was on to us.”
&nb
sp; “Heck, I don’t think so. Some states got laws about serving kids in bars. Lots of places when I was a kid I could go in with Dad and Mother and get soda and eat peanuts while they had a drink, and other states they couldn’t bring me in at all.”
“They got other laws, too,” Mario muttered. “You think I couldn’t tell, the way he looked at us?”
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud! You got bats in the belfry about that You think anybody can look at you and just tell? You’re not swishy or anything, honest—nobody’s going to think anything— Besides, you like thinking you’re different, you get some kind of kick about thinking you’re something special, like people can tell by looking at you—”
“Come on, get in the car—don’t stand here tellin’ the world about it!” Mario opened the car door and slammed it shut. Tommy screamed; Mario had slammed the door full on his fingers. After that first involuntary shriek, he sat hunched over, shaking, his face contorted, holding on to his hand.
“Oh, God,” Mario whispered, almost crying. “Oh, God, Lucky, I didn’t—” Suddenly he exploded in anguished rage: “Can’t you keep your goddamn clumsy hands out of the way?”
Tommy leaned against the back of the seat, gripping his wrist with his uninjured hand as if he could somehow keep the terrible, crushing pain from traveling up his arm. He sat that way, sick to his stomach and trying desperately not to throw up, while Mario drove him to the small county hospital. He sat on the high table in the emergency room where the nurse left him, and Mario stood behind him, his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. Feeling the surge of sickness, Tommy leaned his head back against Mario, but Mario pushed him roughly away as the doctor came in.
Somehow he managed not to scream aloud when the doctor moved his hand, flexing each finger painfully. There were no broken bones, but the nail of the index finger was hanging by a thread and the knuckle was cut to the bone, white cartilage showing through the raw flesh.
The Catch Trap Page 27