Angelo said, with a contemptuous smile, “The only queer ever laid a hand on me lost three teeth, you better believe!”
“Well, there you are.” Mario shrugged. “Tom was plenty old enough to tell me to go to hell, and he’d have done it, too, if he felt like it. Tom and I are partners. As for the rest of it, Angelo, I don’t see how it’s any of your goddamn business.”
“It’s everybody’s business! Tom is just a kid—”
“Listen. Angelo, the hell with that,” Tommy interrupted. “You’re talking like it was all Matt’s fault, like I had nothing to do with it. Nothing happened that I didn’t want to happen.” He swallowed hard, remembering words he had flung at Mario in his childish despair: If I’m old enough to risk my goddamn neck with you on the flying rig, I’m old enough to know who I want to sleep with. “If you proposition a woman and she turns you down, do you rape her, or something? I knew what I was doing—”
Angelo squeezed up his face in distress and disgust. “Don’t, for God’s sake, go into details!”
“You were the one brought it up,” said Tommy, taking an angry step toward Angelo. He saw, with detached astonishment, that the older man actually flinched away. He did not know how enormous he looked, wide-shouldered, angry, looming over Angelo in fury, but for the first time in his life, it was really borne in on him. He was stronger than most people; he was stronger than Mario, and he was stronger than Angelo, who had always seemed to him immense, adult, invulnerable.
Angelo picked up the china ashtray and sat turning it in his hands. He said, “Matt, this is a decent home. With kids in it.”
“It always has been, as far back as I can remember. And now one of the kids is mine. So what?”
“I saw you and Tommy. In the practice room—”
Mario laughed weakly. “Oh, Angelo, you idiot! Is that what all this uproar is about? Of all the things—look, all us kids used to kiss each other. Didn’t you see Johnny grab me the other day, when he came in? God Almighty, Angelo, how many times have you and I—”
Angelo’s face twisted. “I think you better not remind me of that right now!”
“But, damn it, Angelo, that’s just the point! I’m no different than I ever was. I’m the same person you’ve known since—well, ever since I was born!”
Angelo shook his head, with a little denying gesture. Tommy was remembering a time when Angelo, without self-consciousness, had picked him up and carried him like a child out of a doctor’s office, under circumstances where Mario, aware and guilty, would not even give him an arm to lean on. And Angelo had kissed him, half a dozen times, in public. Which Mario had never done. They had always been so careful, so circumspect.
We’ve been so damn good at lying. For so long.
Angelo said, shaking his head again in distress, “I wish you wouldn’t make this harder for me, Matt. You’re going to have to give me your word there’ll be nothing of that kind under this roof, or I’ll have to ask Tommy to find another place to live.”
Tommy said, “Hey, look—” but Mario took an angry step toward Angelo.
“What do you mean—my word? If you mean, not to let Clay catch us in bed together, or not to make passes at the kids down in the practice room, that’s a damned insult, and you’d better take it back before I ram your teeth down your dirty throat! There’s just exactly as much chance of that as there is of you taking Tessa along to watch next time you visit a whorehouse down on the strip! As for our private lives, what the hell do you expect? You want us to take separate rooms, or something?”
Angelo turned, looked quickly away again. It was perfectly obvious there was only one bed in the room they had shared for so long. He said, not knowing where to look, “Well, that would be a good start.”
“Are you crazy? Are you going to lock us in our rooms and patrol the halls every night? Or do you mean you want us to go out and hunt up a dark alley somewhere?”
Angelo’s neck seemed too big for his collar, and his face was congested and dark. “Do we have to go into that? You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. I can’t figure out whether you’re stupid, or vicious, or just naїve. Why not just be glad Tommy and I are old enough and smart enough to be discreet about it, and leave it at that?” Angelo made a grimace of distaste, but Mario gave him no time to speak.
“It’s time you got a few facts straight, Angelo. Fact one. If Tommy goes, I go. That’s flat. He’s my partner. If you’re going to kick him out, kick me out, too, and forget my existence. And you can have the job of explaining to Johnny and Stella—and to the rest of the family—that the Flying Santellis are dead again and you killed them off, like you damn near did the last time!”
“Matt, that isn’t fair—”
“Fair, hell,” Mario said, and Tommy saw that he was working himself up into one of his old-time rages. “How fair are you being to me and Tommy? Or do you figure that just because we’re queers we don’t have to be treated fair, like human beings? Fact two. Legally, I own a third of this house.”
“Kid, nobody’s arguing—”
“You were. You were talking about kicking my partner out of my house. The house was tied up so it couldn’t be sold during Nonna’s lifetime, I know, but she’s dead, God rest her, and that’s that. So it’s time you stopped to think what you’re doing. The way I understand it, you and Papa and Joe all went equal shares on this house back in the nineteen thirties. And in his will, Papa left his share to me, or didn’t you know? Because he knew I’d always look after Lucia. Liss was married, and Johnny—he thought then he couldn’t trust Johnny. So I own a third of this house. I don’t think I could buy you all out for cash, but considering I own a third of the place, I could probably get it financed. I’ll do it if I have to. Or do you want to raise the cash and buy me out?”
Tommy, silent till now because he was too appalled to speak, finally found his voice.
“No, Matt. No, Angelo. That isn’t necessary—I can find a place to live—”
“Not without me. This isn’t personal, Tom. This is a business matter. We’re partners, and the house, the flying rig—if Angelo can force me out of the house, he could probably force me not to use the family name, and that’s my means of livelihood. Hell, even in bankruptcy court you can’t take away a man’s means of livelihood!”
Angelo said heavily, “Matt, if I called your bluff—”
“Goddamn it, Angelo, if you think I’m bluffing, I’ll have a lawyer here tomorrow morning, and a real estate agent to appraise the house! If you and Joe want to get together and buy me out, I won’t make trouble, but you’d have to tell Lucia why the house that’s held five generations of Santellis suddenly isn’t big enough to hold her son and his partner—”
“Don’t!” Angelo said painfully, and broke into Italian. “Dio! Do you think the family means nothing to me, boy? Everything that I have done—” He swallowed hard, tightened his mouth, and deliberately returned to English. “We always said, everyone in a family act is family. I got no right to order you out, and even if I did, I wouldn’t break up the home. It’s been Lucia’s home all her life, and she’s all the sister I’ve got. But what do you expect of me, Matt? To say I approve of this—this—” He ran out of words again.
“I don’t expect a damn thing, Angelo,” Mario said. “Look, if you’re just finding out about Tom and me, only now, doesn’t that tell you something? At least you can be sure we’re not going to get into the gossip columns and make some kind of scandal!”
Angelo looked at Tommy as if he were seeing him for the first time. After a perceptible pause he said, “Just how long has this been going on, Tom? No, Matt, shut up—I asked him, not you.”
I got us into this. And now we’ve both got to live with it. At last he said, “Since the first season I worked in the act, regular, with Lambeth. The year I was fifteen.”
Angelo stood as if rooted to the floor. “Gesu e Maria . . . I would not have believed it of you . . . .”
Tommy thought, That’s a lo
t of crap. He’s been pussyfooting around, trying to find it out, for years. He said aloud, “So now you know, Angelo. If I didn’t tell you before, damn it, it’s not because I was ashamed of it! It’s because I figured it would bother you. And it did.”
After a long time Angelo said with a heavy shrug, “Ebbene . . . okay, okay. You’re both grown up now. I wash my hands . . . .” He started with faltering steps toward the door. Then he turned and walked back, past Tommy, going straight to Mario. He took Mario’s shoulders between his hands.
“No, boy,” he said in Italian, “it is not possible for me—I am a Christian, a Catholic, I cannot pass by on the other side and pretend—you are the son of my only sister, my godson—” Abruptly he switched to English. “I got a responsibility. Matt, this is a mortal sin—you know that, don’t you? I—I don’t know what to say to you. If I bring Father Bazzini down here, will you talk to him? Just talk to him?”
Mario said something in Italian about what Father Bazzini could do—it was too idiomatic for Tommy to follow—then broke off. Angelo looked as if Mario had struck him in the face.
“I’m sorry, Angelo. No. Tell the Father to save his time and energy. I’m not a repentant sinner. I don’t think I’m a sinner at all.”
“So this is why you didn’t go to confession at Easter—”
“Right. I know your damn church says it’s a mortal sin. But it would be a mortal sin to say I have a firm purpose of amendment, because I don’t. I tried that once, and you know where it landed me.”
“Matt, you know this would kill Lucia—”
“What Lu doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt her. Unless you think you have to save your immortal soul by telling her.”
Angelo made a gesture of horror. “How could I tell such a thing to a woman, my sister? But how Lucia will feel when she knows you are out of grace with the Church—”
“If she doesn’t know that, she’s dumber than I give her credit for. I divorced Sue-Lynn, didn’t I?” His face was set.
Angelo said at last, “Ebbene—I will say no more. I wash my hands of you.” He gave them a clinical glance of disgust. “I am only glad that Papa did not live to see this day. He loved you both, and it would break his heart—”
Suddenly Tommy was angry again, with a surging rage. “You haven’t got a grain of decency, have you, Angelo? What the hell makes you think he didn’t know?”
“I know how my father—”
“You don’t know shit,” Tommy flung at him, in such a rage that he could gladly have broken Angelo’s neck. “Papa Tony knew, all right! I don’t know if he approved or not, he never said, but he could have put a stop to it any time he wanted to, just by not taking up my contract again—and anyway, he could have stopped us from sharing a room, any time!”
“I don’t believe you!”
Mario swung around, his face working, his eyes full of tears. “No, you’d rather believe we’re both low enough to lie about it! You dare throw Papa Tony up to me, you damned pious bastard? You go preaching us a sermon, I’ll preach you one—about the man who is without sin casting the first stone. Where do you get off talking about breaking Papa Tony’s heart? I’d have died rather than hurt him,” he said, tears running down his face, unheeded. “You think you loved him a damn bit more than I did? He was a hundred times the man you are, Angelo—” His voice broke. “Get the hell out of here, or I’ll kick you down the stairs, you rotten hypocrite! And if you ever mention Papa’s name to me again in that tone of voice, I’ll kill you—I’ll kill you with my bare hands! Now, you get the hell out of here! Get out!”
Angelo fumbled with the doorknob, but the door was locked. Tommy got up and unlocked it and Angelo went out without a backward glance. Tommy locked the door behind him. Mario had slumped on the bed, convulsed with that terrible sobbing, as if his slender body would break with the violence of his grief. Tommy turned away, unwilling to watch him weep. He knew that he himself had hoped against hope for the miracle. He had loved and admired Angelo so much; he had hoped that Angelo, knowing, would understand, would look on them with unchanged eyes.
Tommy thought he had lost all his illusions long ago, but as he stood with his hand on the locked door, he felt another one crack and topple. Angelo was not superhuman, after all. He was a bigot, an intolerant fanatic who could be stupidly cruel about anything that ran up against his prejudices.
It was a bad and bitter end to a good friendship, and he knew it was the end. He had never known how deep the warmth of Angelo’s affection went until he felt it being withdrawn, and felt as if the roots were being drawn out all the way from his toenails. Mario was still crumpled on the bed, convulsed. Tommy went and sat beside him, knowing that he had just begun to feel the pain.
“I could have stood anything,” Mario said thickly, “if he hadn’t said that about Papa Tony. Oh, damn, my nose is bleeding again—I’m bleeding all over the damn sheet. Lucia will have a fit.”
“Take this. Put your head back,” Tommy said. “I’ll go get you some more ice.”
But Mario held him, gripping his hand hard. “I said it a long time ago. Make ourselves so good a team nobody will want to separate us, no matter what. And now we’ve done it, getting the triple back . . . I thought I’d never feel so right again. For it to come right now, right now when we got it back! It’s like he could put up with anything, until we had that. Tom, is he really jealous? Jealous enough to want to destroy us if he can’t be part of what we are?”
It had been his own thought. You’d rather see us both in the gutter, Angelo, rather see us dead than flying, loving what we do and each other . . . . But was it true? He said, “I don’t know, Matt. Before God, I don’t know.”
“It’s all we’ve got now, Lucky.”
Tommy said bitterly, “I haven’t been so lucky for you, have I?”
Mario sat up and looked at him. His face was a ghastly mess, his eye darkening with bruises, his mouth and nose smeared with blood. “You’re all the luck I’ve got,” he said. “Maybe bad luck’s better than none.”
CHAPTER 13
Neither of them felt able to face the family dinner table. No amount of soap or water or ice could make Mario’s face even remotely presentable, and Tommy could tell that he was more distressed by the traces of tears than by the bruises. Tommy himself was not eager to face Lucia’s concern, Angelo’s hostility, the questions of everyone else. When he returned the ice trays to the kitchen, he told Lucia that they were going into the city for dinner and would not be back until late.
They ate at a roadside diner, and afterward drove around for a long time, unwilling to return. They did not talk about what was uppermost in their minds; they did not talk much at all. Tommy found a certain release in letting the speed of the car build up on the freeway. Mario, well aware of how he felt, did not protest, but at last he said, apologetically, “Look, kid, all we need is to be hauled up for speeding in traffic court,” and Tommy reluctantly slowed to the legal limit, the tension still unrelieved. In the end they went to the small dark bar where Bart had taken them that first day. Tommy had never overcome his distaste for the hangouts of the homosexual underground, and said so, but Mario retorted bitterly, “Where the hell else can we go?” It was true; there were almost no other places where he and Mario could go together without continual fear that some careless word, some absent-minded touch would betray them. And however discreet they might be, ordinary bars took it for granted that a man, or men, alone, were in search of congenial female company. Two men content with one another’s company were conspicuous.
Now even their home had been barred to them. Angelo would make it increasingly hard for them to mingle with the family on the old terms, and if they stayed by themselves, that was a source of suspicion and trouble, too. As they took seats at an isolated corner table, Mario said, “I’d like to get myself blind drunk,” and Tommy sensed the first menacing ripple of the old self-destroying rages and guilts. Would this be the safest answer after all, to let Mario blot out his ang
uish in oblivion? I could take care of him, make sure he didn’t get into trouble.
But that was too ready an answer, could all too easily become self-perpetuating. He was remembering Bart’s frightening statistics on suicide among homosexuals, statistics closely related to drinking and drugs.
“You going to let Angelo do that to you, too?”
“Hell, I guess not,” Mario conceded.
They sat sipping beer, slowly. After the first two, Mario, saying he would throw up if he drank any more of the damn stuff, switched to ginger ale. Tommy’s response was that he’d throw up after the first glass of that stuff. The bar, on a weekday evening, was not crowded; there were a few couples and a few single men, but none of these tried to attach themselves to Tommy and Mario. Coming back from the men’s room, Tommy noticed that Mario’s black eye was still enlarging and darkening. As he slid into the seat he said, “You look like one hell of a desperate character with that eye, Matt. A gangster or something.”
Mario’s smile was only a grimace, twisting his mouth. “‘They probably think you get your kicks out of beating me up.” A few weeks ago, Tommy would not have known what he meant. Now, with growing sophistication, he felt the scalding heat in his face and was glad for the darkness in the bar; he did not want Mario to see him blush. He sipped at his beer, randomly wondering. On two or three occasions, Mario had shown a random, reasonless cruelty which did, actually, seem to derive a kind of pleasure in inflicting—not pain, but humiliation. Mario was not a sadist, but Tommy wondered now, sometimes, if he might not have had some leanings in that direction, adding to his own spiraling guilt and depression. It wasn’t anything they could talk about, and he let it lie.
In the car on the way home, Mario said, “Look, we’ve got to talk about this, just a little. Angelo won’t do anything right away. I called his bluff on that—he won’t sell the house out from under me. But we can’t take it for granted he’s shot the only bolt he has. He’s not like Johnny, or Papa Tony. He holds grudges.”
The Catch Trap Page 73