Maybe we’re reading each other’s minds or something, way, it works like we are.
Again and again it worked, through the foot catch, the back double, the two-and-a-half. Then Tommy was conscious of the tremendous stress of their three-way awareness during the flying pass, Stella leaving his hands and Mario coming into them, an awareness that worked on split seconds too slow to cue what his hands and brain were doing. Mario, he sensed, was warmed and relaxed, confident, trusting.
It works. He knows it, too. This is what we’ve been working up to all these years, and he knows it now.
Now. Before he began to get tired, before he began to think too much, or worry about it. Now, in this first flood of confidence.
“All right, Matt,” he called, swinging upright for a moment, “throw me a triple.”
Even at this distance he caught the quick, startled look, felt the jolting surge of adrenaline within himself—Oh, God, am I rushing it?—and Mario’s momentary hesitation.
“Lucky, I’m not sure—”
“I am. Come on, Matt. Now. Quit stalling.”
This is what I didn’t know before. The flyer is the star, sure, but the catcher is the boss, the anchorman. Mario always needed somebody he’d take orders from. That’s why I had to prove I was stronger than he was.
“Come on, Matt. You know you can do it. I’m right here, waiting.”
He didn’t wait to see if Mario had done as he said. He lowered himself, head down, and began the high, hard swing, pushing himself to the limits of what the trapeze would take. Outer limits of possibility . . . Thoughts skimmed across his mind and vanished without trace. In a curious inverted image he could see Mario swinging out, arching his body, arrowing—high, hard, and straight. He felt himself tightening his shoulders, arching his chest, flexing his thighs to accelerate his own swing. As Mario swung back, swooping away, he felt himself shift position to slow his own swing very slightly, and once again the two trapezes arched fast and hard toward one another, and Mario went up, higher, passing him, upward and upward. He could not see Mario as they swung back, but still the clockwork rhythm of the swing was with him. As the catch bar reached its furthest point of backswing, he caught his breath, thrusting his hands out at the ready for the rush forward . . . . This is it. He arched his back, knowing without seeing that Mario was off the bar and turning. From somewhere, blurring shadows at the rushing edge of vision, Tommy saw him turn, again . . . and again . . . and again. And then the looming, spinning body snapped out and straightened, and wrist slipped, locked on wrist, slid slightly and locked again as the backswing of the catch trap absorbed some of the momentum. He felt the tremendous strain on wrists, shoulders, arms . . . felt Mario instinctively flexing to take some of the strain. Tommy, soaked in sweat, knew he was breathing again, and now he had time to be afraid.
He whispered hoarsely to Mario, swinging just below him, “Okay?”
Mario’s voice, harsh, too fiercely concentrated for relief or exultation, “Okay . . . watch out!” He let go, dropped into the net, rolling up as he fell, landing with a perfect bounce, and even in that moment alert enough to call up to Stella, “It’s all right, okay—”
Even before Mario bounded to his feet, Tommy dived down beside him in the net.
“What happened? You all right?”
“Sure,” said Mario, automatically steadying him with one hand, not aware he was doing it. “I’m fine—just forgot what a hell of a strain that is on my bad wrist. When I was doing it all the time, I used to keep it wrapped up, remember? I got out of the habit while I was laying off.” And then, suddenly, the smile broke from his eyes and spread all over his face.
“Hey,” he whispered, incredulous, “I did it, Lucky! I really got it back again!”
Tommy wanted to laugh and cry at once. He did neither. His voice was matter-of-fact. “Sure. I knew you would.”
Stella was already on the floor as they climbed out of the net. She flung her arms exuberantly about Mario. “You did it, you did it! Oh, Matt, I’m so glad! I’m so glad I could cry!”
He dropped a light kiss on her forehead. “Well, don’t do it on me,” he said, laughing, “I’m soaking wet already. Whew! I’d damn near forgotten what that was like! Looks like the Flying Santellis are back in business!”
“This calls for a celebration!” Stella cried. “Let me go up and tell Lucia!” And she was off, her light feet flying up the stairs.
“Come on, Matt, get your sweater on; you’re drenched with sweat,” he said brusquely, and went into the change room, picking up a towel.
After a moment he heard Mario behind him. Then Mario came up and put his hands on Tommy’s shoulders and turned him around. Their eyes were almost on a level. “Tom, do you think I can just let it go like this? You don’t think I knew what you were doing?”
“Look—Matt—” He fumbled for the words that would justify what he had done. He had taken the step that had made the triple itself almost an anticlimax. But he didn’t have the words to say it. He would never have the words.
Mario, looking at him, knew it, and suddenly he put his arms around Tommy, and as he had never done since they had first been lovers, kissed him hard on the mouth. He said, his voice breaking, “I love you, Tommy,” and went quickly out of the room and up the stairs.
~o0o~
This auspicious day had a rough tomorrow. In the early afternoon, Stella had to see the Mother Superior of Tessa’s convent school, where Suzy would enter kindergarten that fall. Mario and Tommy had to practice alone, and it turned out to be one of those days when everything went wrong. While climbing the ladder, somehow Mario knocked his bad wrist on the pedestal with such force that he stood clinging to the ladder for several minutes, white with pain, before he could continue. The need to favor the wrist threw him off balance for two or three tries. Finally he went down and strapped it up more tightly, after which things went a little better. But he missed his first try at the triple, insisted on trying it again, and went into the net wrong, managing somehow to strike his face against his own kneecap. He had been knocked so nearly senseless from the blow that he lay dazed in the net, bringing Tommy down in sudden panic, afraid he was seriously hurt. Tommy had to fetch ammonia from the change room to revive him, but a careful appraisal of injuries revealed only a nosebleed and an eye already darkening.
“We’d better call it a day.” Tommy fetched ice from the kitchen, wrapped it in a towel, and held it to Mario’s swollen face. “Sure your nose isn’t broken?”
“No, I could feel that. I’ve got a blood vessel or something that lets loose every time I give it a knock. I used to have the most god-awful nosebleeds when I was a kid.” He put away the ice-filled towel and laughed. “I remember the last time I did this. We were with Lambeth then, and you knocked me right out of the trap. Remember?”
“Sure.” On a sudden impulse of tenderness, Tommy bent and kissed him. Mario reached out and pulled Tommy against him. They stayed like that for a minute or two, remembering a dozen shared falls, moments of closeness. Then Mario laughed and pushed an ice cube down Tommy’s neck and they started scuffling and punching each other like teenagers. Suddenly Mario stopped and stood quiet for a minute.
“Tom. Did you hear anything, like a door opening and closing, a couple minutes ago?”
“I didn’t hear anything.” Tommy glanced at his watch. “Angelo wouldn’t be home yet, and the kids are in school. I don’t think—could it have been a prowler or something?”
Mario’s face was very grave. “That’s not what I’m thinking about. I don’t suppose anybody could have seen anything, or would think anything about it if they did, but—oh, well.”
But Tommy was troubled as he went up to change his clothes. Mario had gone to the kitchen for more ice. Tommy was buttoning up his shirt when the doorknob rattled. Thinking it was Mario, he went to unlock it.
“What’s the big idea?” Angelo demanded through the closed door. “We never lock doors in this house!”
“Y
ou never knock on them, either,” Tommy said amiably, “and I have a kind of crude objection to Lucia or Tess catching me in my shirttail.”
“Where’s Matt?”
“Downstairs, putting some more ice on his face.”
“I saw you putting ice on it in the change room,” Angelo said. “How did it happen?”
“He went into the net wrong and knocked his head on his knee. Nosebleed, and he’s going to have one beaut of a shiner.”
Tommy motioned Angelo to the one chair, and sat on the end of the bed, kicking a pair of discarded tights under the edge of the bed frame. “Cigarette?”
“I’ll smoke my own, thanks. Those things you and Matt like, they taste too much like cough drops.” Angelo grinned uneasily at him. “Remember the day when I offered you a cigarette and you gave me a lecture on all the reasons athletes shouldn’t smoke?”
Tommy laughed with him. “God, what a rotten little prig I must have been in those days.”
After a minute Angelo said, “Tom, we were all glad when you decided to team up with Matt again. It’s marvelous, the way you’ve straightened him out. He was a wild kid, you know—got into trouble, was thrown out of college—”
Tommy clicked the mechanism of the lighter restlessly, but when it finally flared he leaned forward and blew out the tiny flame. “He told me all about it, Angelo.”
“I wonder”—Angelo frowned—“just how much he told you. And now you’re catching for him. Tom, how much have you tied up in this partnership, anyway?”
Tommy said flatly, “We share and share alike, just like we did when you were with us. I put my saved-up pay into the new rigging, but it works out about even, because he’s the big draw for an audience.”
“I don’t mean money, Tom. I mean, how much of yourself have you put into this? I’d hate to see you two get so dependent on each other—” He broke off, and Tommy, an unendurable memory recalled, knew that Angelo was walking on tiptoe around something he did not want to come out and say.
What did he see, anyhow? What was there that he could have seen? Nothing, absolutely nothing, yet Tommy felt like shouting in the man’s face, Damn it, Angelo, I know what you’re trying to find out, and the answer is yes, and to hell with you anyhow!
But his genuine love and respect for the other man held him silent. Finally he said, “Sure, we’re dependent on each other. A flyer and catcher always are.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
“No, and I don’t intend to. Listen, Angelo, I don’t want to be rude, but you’re not in the act anymore. You quit, you wanted it that way, and now you got your life and we got ours. Isn’t it kind of up to Matt and me how we run our act?”
“Fair enough,” Angelo said. “None of my damn business. But you used to be a pretty good flyer yourself, and now he’s got the star spot and he’s got you catching for him. I hate to see you sacrificing yourself—”
“Sacrificing, hell! I’m catcher for the best damn flyer around. Anything I do, it’s because I want to do it!”
“Confound it!” Angelo clenched his fist and struck the arm of the chair with it. “Why not come out and say it’s because—” He broke off, got up, and swung around, and for a moment Tommy thought Angelo would walk out of the room, unable to complete his sentence. Tommy knew what Angelo had started to say: because you love him. And if Angelo could understand that—with sudden, tentative hope, Tommy opened his mouth to speak, but Angelo turned to him again and said, “Look, I guess I ought to say this. I don’t know whether Matt ever told you or not. But—but knowing what I know about Matt, maybe I’m taking that the wrong way.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” Tommy said. He was surprised to find his voice so steady. “I wonder, too, Angelo. Knowing that, can you really understand why things are the way they are between Matt and me?”
“I been trying to tell myself I just didn’t understand, ragazzo.”
The old childish name lowered his defenses; Angelo had called them all that, indiscriminately, when they were boys. “Try and understand this, then. Matt and I—we need each other. Do I really have to say any more than that, Angelo? Can’t we leave it at that?”
Angelo colored to the roots of his dark hair. He put out his cigarette in a china ashtray shaped like the state of California, grinding it out painstakingly to cover his embarrassment. “I keep forgetting what a kid you are, Tom. Look, two grown men shouldn’t—”
Before his embarrassment Tommy felt scalding heat rise in his own face. “Angelo, for God’s sake, I did four years in the Army—you don’t have to explain the facts of life to me!”
“It’s a goddamn cinch somebody does,” Angelo retorted. “No, you listen, Tom. I know you had a hell of a crush on him when you were just a little kid. I thought you’d outgrow that stuff. Kids mostly do. I wasn’t so sure about Matt for a while, only then he found himself a nice girl, got married, had a kid. I wouldn’t believe it, I never believed all that smut Coe Wayland was spreading around—I told myself Coe Wayland was just a dirty-minded drunk with a grudge. Even after what I saw downstairs just now—”
What could he have seen? Nothing that could not be explained away. Tommy found he had forgotten to breathe and did. “Hell, that—we were just kidding around,” he said. He saw Angelo’s frown lighten and knew that Angelo would believe what he wanted to believe.
And things would go on as they had for years, based on a lie . . . . With an emotional revulsion so great that it turned him physically sick for a moment, he knew he could not stand here and lie again to Angelo.
“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry if it bothers you, Angelo. But that’s the way it’s been with Matt and me for a long time. You once tried to get me to tell you why we split up. Well, we got on a blacklist. Wayland saw something and talked, and we knew it would hurt the act, hurt the family—that meant more than anything to Matt. Lionel Fortunati said he’d take a chance on Matt if we split up. Matt did the right thing, I guess, only it wasn’t the right thing at all; it nearly destroyed us both.” His voice had risen in his eagerness to make Angelo understand.
“All those years, knocking around on the bum . . . you don’t know what he went through, and I got no right to try and tell you. There’s things he didn’t tell me, things I don’t think he’d tell a priest in confession! When I found him in that filthy little mud show in Texas—oh, hell, I can’t talk about that. You can’t imagine.” He swallowed. “You just got through saying I’d straightened him out.”
Angelo shook his head, disbelieving. “At that price, I wish you hadn’t. He’s not worth it.”
Anger flowed through Tommy like a destroying tornado. He got to his feet, the bitterness pouring from him in a torrent.
“No, you’d rather see us both in the gutter, wouldn’t you? You’re jealous, damn you, Angelo—jealous because Matt and I have something you never had! For you, flying was something you did because you loved your father—you found out you couldn’t work without him, didn’t you? Just a week after he was killed you quit the act, right in the middle of the season, left the Flying Santellis stranded for Coe Wayland to make hash with! Just because you couldn’t stand to see Matt and me still working together, flying, and loving each other—”
Angelo was deathly pale. “Shut up,” he got out, strangled. “Shut up before I kill you—”
“Yes, for the love of God, both of you, shut up!” Mario said. There was no telling how long he had been there in the doorway, holding to the doorframe as if only his clenched knuckles kept him upright. He was still in the sweat-darkened tights, bare to the waist, a towel thrown loosely around his shoulders. His bruised eye gave his face a lopsided, clownish look. “I should think they could hear you down in Starr’s winter quarters!”
“I blame myself for this whole rotten mess,” Angelo said, turning on Mario. “For ever thinking you could be trusted with a kid, you—you contemptible freak, you rotten fairy!”
Mario came inside the room. “If we’re goin
g to be tossing around that kind of language, let’s not have the whole family for an audience,” he said. He shut the door and locked it. Angelo watched in silence.
“Now I see the point of the locks,” he said. “I guess I ought to admire your discretion. You’ve improved, if you can call it that, since the cops in San Francisco picked you up for molesting a kid sixteen years old.”
Mario’s swollen face twisted. “Just to keep the record straight, you might add that I had just passed my own seventeenth birthday when I committed that crime—quote, unquote.”
“You mean the last time you got caught at it.”
Mario put a hand to his bruised face and chuckled, and Angelo said, “Yeah. Real funny.”
“It wouldn’t be so funny, only I knew you’d get around to telling Tommy someday. So I made sure I told him myself, a good long time ago.”
“And he still wanted to be your little pal after that?”
“I think just maybe he could have learned something more from Papa Tony than how to rig a guy wire. Something called live and let live. And it’s a damn shame Papa never managed to teach it to you!”
“You leave Papa out of this,” Angelo exploded. “He was too tolerant for his own good! He should have let me beat you within an inch of your life, that time, like I was all set to do!”
Mario looked at him with a sad, embarrassed smile. “Do you really think that would have changed anything, Angelo?”
“It might have taught you there were things you just couldn’t get away with,” Angelo said. “And when I think that we trusted you with Tommy!”
“Now, damn it, Angelo—” Tommy began, but Mario motioned him to silence.
“No, Tom, this is my inning. Angelo, if you think I corrupted Tommy, nothing I’d say would change your mind. Though if fifteen years of living with his parents didn’t make Tommy heterosexual, I don’t know how a couple of seasons on the road with me could have turned him queer, just like that. And he spent four years in the Army, away from my so-called evil influence. Angelo, for God’s sake, use your head! If some man made a pass at you, would it turn you into a queer, just like that?”
The Catch Trap Page 72