Bad Angels

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘On the down-low, right?’ he asked. ‘That’s what you mean. Chantelle out on stage with you wiggling her tits around, me in the wings sucking you off when you get home.’

  Wayne winced in distress.

  ‘That sounds ’orrible,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Yeah, you did,’ Andy said sadly. ‘You really did.’

  Wayne hung his head.

  ‘I can’t come out,’ he said haltingly. ‘My family – my mates

  – the things they say about gay guys—’

  ‘Those aren’t your mates,’ Andy corrected him. ‘Not if they don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘It’s really ’ard in footie,’ Wayne said miserably. ‘The racist shit people still say when the cameras aren’t on them, you wouldn’t believe. And you should ’ear what they say about gays, too.’

  ‘There’s more and more sports figures coming out now,’ Andy said encouragingly.

  ‘Not in football,’ Wayne said grimly.

  Andy sighed.

  ‘You’d have so much support from the gay community,’ he said. ‘And you’re so famous, it would be the most amazing thing! You know – you’re so bloody good at your job, Wayne. You’re a total star. What could they do to you?’

  Wayne looked away.

  ‘The gay community won’t be there when fans are yelling “poof” at me, will they?’ he said.

  Andy stroked Wayne’s shoulder; it felt as hard as stone now, every muscle in Wayne’s body tensed.

  ‘You are a poof ,’ he said. ‘Me too. It’s only an insult if you let it be one. Like my best girlfriend, she doesn’t get offended if someone calls her a bitch – she goes, “Yeah, I am one, so what?” She’s brilliant, you’d love her.’

  ‘Oh, Andy—’ Wayne’s face crumpled in complete distress; tears squeezed from his eyes, dampening his short red lashes. ‘You make it sound so easy...’

  Andy pulled him into his arms, cuddling up next to him.

  ‘I don’t think I’m brave enough,’ Wayne sobbed. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be brave enough. And you won’t be with me if I’m not, will you?’

  Andy, his mouth pressed against Wayne’s forehead, realised that he was crying too.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I really want to, but I can’t. It would be so great, I’d love to be with you and run things and travel and everything, I think you’re amazing – but I can’t go back in the closet for anyone. I can’t hide who I am, not even for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry I asked,’ Wayne said, crying all out now. ‘I shouldn’t ’ave asked—’

  ‘No – no, it was lovely – I wish I could, but I can’t, I just can’t—’

  Andy was sobbing just as hard as Wayne. The best, most magical sex of his life had transmuted into something even better, a real chance at love, and as soon as it had been dangled in front of him, he had had to turn it down. But I can’t do anything else, he knew. I don’t have a choice, I really don’t.

  There wasn’t anything left to say. It was a stalemate that neither of them could resolve. So they held onto each other, and cried their hearts out instead.

  Jon

  Man, that was really sad , Jon thought as he crawled out from underneath the sheet hanging over the staircase. That was Brokeback Mountain. Jesus, it was like watching a film that knows how to grab you by the balls and hold on tight. First it was really hot, and then it broke your heart.

  Jon stood up, stretching, looking at the sofa; they’d wiped it clean before they left, but the dents they’d made in the leather were still visible. He had to admit that the sounds of them doing it had been more than a little arousing; he’d got a hard-on listening to them fucking. That’s why guys are homophobic, he realised. They’re scared of getting turned on watching gay guys doing it.

  He shrugged, grinning at the idea. Who cares? he thought cheerfully. You’d have to be made of stone not to get an erection listening to that.

  Andy and Wayne had torn into the apartment at such speed that it was all Jon could do to roll under the staircase, hide under the sheltering sheets. And then they’d dressed and gone out slowly, sadly, in almost complete silence, the opposite of their happy, passionate entrance.

  Seems a real shame, Jon thought. He remembered Andy and Wayne from Grigor Khalovsky’s Christmas dinner, two nice, healthy, cheerful young men. They like each other, they turn each other on, they want to be together, or at least give it a shot; who the hell are they hurting?

  Sport was tough, though. He could see that. Try to come out in the NFL, it wouldn’t be pretty. It’d take a brave man to stand up and say he was gay in that kind of macho environment. But he understood Andy, too, saying that he didn’t want to hide who he was. He was funny, too. That line of his – ‘If you can take a big black cock up your arse, you can say the word “gay”’ – had actually made Jon snort with laughter; he’d clapped his hand over his nose to stifle it and made the sheets rustle for a moment.

  Poor guys. It’s hard enough to find love. When you do, you should be able to grab it with both hands and not look back—

  He was rolling back his shoulders, linking his hands behind his back, as he walked to the door to take up position at the peephole once more. But as the word ‘love’ ran through his mind, he stilled for a moment, staring straight ahead, as he saw Aniela’s face in front of him as clearly as if it were being projected on a gigantic screen.

  Dammit to hell and back, he thought. I love her, don’t I?

  This is real trouble. I’m in deep enough already. If I want to play this smart, I should get out now. Before I go even deeper and get stuck.

  I should get the hell out of here and never look back.

  December 30th

  Melody

  ‘Melody? They’ll see you now,’ the director’s assistant said, sticking her head around the door.

  Standing up, Melody looked down at the polystyrene cup of tea in her hand. She hadn’t really wanted it, had just got it from the battered old drinks machine as an excuse to stand up and walk across the room, and it had been so disgusting that she couldn’t take more than a few sips: now she didn’t know what to do with it. If she threw it in the bin, the nasty brown liquid would run through the liner and make a horrible mess for the cleaners. But if she left it out, it would just stand there all day, and the cleaners would have to deal with it anyway...

  Going over to the machine, she tilted the cup, pouring the tea into the drip tray, throwing the empty cup into the bin before following the assistant, who was looking visibly impatient. But as their careers started to take off, James and Melody had made a pact with themselves that they’d try not to act like the entitled stars they’d seen behave like imperious spoiled children, making ridiculous demands of everyone around them. And it was even more important not to act like a diva now that she was trying to convince everyone in the London theatre world that she was back from LA and more serious than ever about her stage career.

  It hadn’t worked on the assistant, though, who sneered at Melody as she nodded at the door to the rehearsal room. And it didn’t work on Cate Bennett, the National Theatre producer, either. Women tended to be not very friendly to Melody, or at least not until she’d won them round by proving that she wouldn’t flirt with their boyfriends, or rattle on complacently about how fat she felt in the expectation of being contradicted. Also, the trouble with having had the plastic surgery was that it had made a lot of other women bitterly resentful of Melody’s taking what they considered an unfair advantage. Melody could understand that. Buying bigger lips and bigger breasts, turning yourself into a male fantasy version of yourself, wasn’t exactly feminist.

  And as she saw that Cate, sitting behind a trestle table in the rehearsal room, was barely acknowledging her entrance, let alone getting up to greet her, Melody’s heart sank.

  She’s already taken against me. I can tell.

  Martin Cavendish, the director, jumped up, exclaiming: ‘Melody, darling! Lovely to see you!’

  He
was coming round to take Melody’s hands, smile down at her; swiftly, Melody reached up to peck him on each cheek, so that he wouldn’t try to kiss her and smear the layers and layers of light foundation and cover-up that she had spent a full hour patting on delicately with her fingertips. She had added mascara, the faintest trace of black eye pencil, and a quick gloss of Lancôme Juicy Tube, nothing else: this was for Cate’s benefit, to demonstrate that Melody wasn’t some vain, make-up-plastered starlet.

  ‘Hi, Cate, it’s lovely to see you again,’ she said sincerely, leaning across the table to proffer her hand to the producer.

  Show respect and deference to the older women. The men don’t care about it as long as you flirt with them – gay and straight, they’re just the same in that. But the few women in power have worked much harder than the men to get where they are, and if you forget that, they’ll slap you down so hard and fast you’ll be reeling for days.

  ‘Thank you both so much for agreeing to see me,’ she said, sitting down on the straight-backed chair in front of the table as Martin resumed his own seat. ‘I’m really grateful.’

  ‘Thank your agent,’ Cate said curtly. ‘He called in a lot of favours.’

  ‘I’m sure he had to,’ Melody agreed. ‘I get that you wouldn’t have been keen on me auditioning. I’d have felt just the same in your position.’

  ‘Well, that’s refreshingly honest!’ Martin said, picking up a pencil from the table and beginning to gnaw on it. Melody had worked with him before, and knew that he always fiddled with a pencil while he was working, so she didn’t take Martin’s absent-minded munching, nor the strange faces he pulled while doing it, as negative signs.

  There was no way, however, that she could interpret Cate Bennett’s next words as anything but negative.

  ‘So, Anthony said you’d had your face put back to normal,’ she commented. ‘Tits too? I can’t see under that baggy cardi you’re wearing, and Anthony was too much of a gentleman to mention your boobs.’

  Melody had dressed down, the classic actress-going-on-a-serious-audition outfit of jeans over suede ankle boots, a striped T-shirt and one of her light cashmere flowing wraps, which she had caught in around her hips with a wide leather belt. She stood up, undid the belt and shrugged the wrap from her shoulders; Martin spat the pencil out of his mouth with a mumble of inarticulate protest. The T-shirt wasn’t clinging, but it showed that Melody’s breasts, in a wire-free sports bra that didn’t irritate the scars where the implants had been removed, were demonstrably back to where they had been pre Wonder Woman and the ballooning D cups.

  ‘Had to ask,’ Cate said brusquely, as Melody folded the long draped wrap around her and rebuckled her belt. ‘I mean, you couldn’t be bouncing round the stage like a Page Three Girl.’ She sniffed with laughter. ‘You couldn’t have played Juliet with those tits you had done! What’s she supposed to be, thirteen!’

  Melody winced at the reference to Juliet, as Cate must have intended.

  ‘I made an awful mistake,’ she said firmly, biting the bullet. ‘I was an idiot and I let down everyone on that production. I would never, ever do that again.’

  ‘Well, that’s—’ Martin began, picking up the pencil and starting to puncture it with teeth marks again. But Cate interrupted:

  ‘Bloody right you won’t,’ she said. ‘Anyone who wanted to cast you again would be an idiot not to get you to sign a document agreeing to pay damages if you pull out at any stage.’

  ‘I’d sign anything you wanted me to,’ Melody said, looking her straight in the eyes. ‘I want this part so badly. I’m desperate to play Beatrice. I need this much more than you need me, and this is my dream role. I’m word-perfect already. I’ve been doing nothing but learning lines for the last week.’

  ‘And what about you and James?’ Cate pressed on. ‘We don’t want any offstage drama. This production will be down in Stratford for two months before we bring it to London. That’s a small town.’

  ‘Village, really,’ Martin chimed in through his mouthful of pencil. He removed it, picked a little bit of wood from his teeth with great delicacy and put the pencil behind his ear. ‘Just five streets and a river. Any fuss or muss gets magnified in Stratford.’ He looked directly at Melody. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  She nodded emphatically. Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace and home of the newly rebuilt Royal Shakespeare Theatre, was as small as Martin described it, at least for the actors; they lived and worked in the same tiny little geographical area, hung out in the same pub opposite the theatre – the Black Swan, known by the actors as the Dirty Duck. Martin was quite right: feuds, love affairs, romantic tangles, all became intensified in the time actors spent there.

  But she had prepared for this question too.

  ‘This happens all the time in our job,’ she said, looking from Martin to Cate. ‘We have to work with people who cheated on us, or we’re divorced from, or who upstaged us in the last show, or walk around naked in front of our boyfriends when they drop into the dressing room to see us. It’s the nature of the business. I can work with James without any problem at all, and he’s a professional too. I know he can work with me. We have brilliant chemistry,’ Melody added, segueing into a point she had been really keen to emphasise. ‘That won’t change. We’re really strong on stage together.’

  ‘Since I didn’t see your Juliet to his Romeo,’ Cate observed unpleasantly, ‘I’ll have to take your word for that.’

  That was hard to take. I’ve already apologised to everyone, Melody thought savagely. I’ve told them I was an idiot, and that I’ll sign anything they want me to, and I’ve shown her that my boobs aren’t ridiculously big any more – that was an unfair dig—

  But it was an audition, and Melody was an actress, and her expression of enthusiasm and sincerity didn’t change one iota; she nodded seriously at Cate’s comment. She didn’t try to respond to it, though, which meant that it was left hanging in the air, sounding increasingly unpleasant. Martin shifted uncomfortably and put the pencil back in his mouth again.

  ‘I see you’re wearing make-up,’ Cate said, looking narrowly at Melody. ‘I assume that you’re covering up bruising from your plastic surgery.’

  Despite herself, Melody couldn’t help tightening her lips a little at this. It wasn’t just make-up; she’d rung a make-up artist friend of hers for advice, and he had suggested his strategy of last resort – using haemorrhoid cream to temporarily shrink the swelling on her face. Aniela, though grimacing at the idea, hadn’t thought that it would interfere with the healing of Melody’s surgery, and it had been surprisingly effective, bringing down the remaining puffiness, even on her lips. The foundation had been layered over the Preparation H once it had taken effect; she certainly wasn’t going to admit to the existence of the latter.

  ‘Just some cover-up,’ she said, managing not to drop her eyes. ‘The surgery’s been a total success. I wanted to put myself back exactly the way I was—’

  ‘Can you take off the make-up?’ Cate interrupted. ‘Let’s have a look at exactly what we’re dealing with here.’

  This Melody had not expected. She had prepared for a great deal that this audition could throw at her, but not the demand to wipe her face clean. She pressed back against the chair, desperate not to humiliate herself this way, to bare her fading bruises to Cate and Martin. Her brain raced, trying to think of a good excuse to say no.

  Just then, Martin chomped down on the pencil so vigorously that he broke off the rubber at the end. An expression of total surprise widened his eyes as he spat the rubber onto the table.

  ‘Ugh!’ he exclaimed. ‘That tasted vile!’

  ‘It’s a rubber, Martin,’ Cate said impatiently. ‘They always taste nasty.’

  ‘I need some water...’ Martin got up and ambled across the room to the water fountain. ‘Rinse my mouth out... ugh, so rubbery... ’

  He poured himself some water, sipped a little, and then nodded towards the door.

  ‘Melody, come
and read, won’t you?’ he said. ‘Or not even read, if you’re sure you’re off the book. I think we might as well have you run a scene or two. Cate? Coming to watch?’

  ‘But I wanted her to—’

  ‘Oh, this isn’t a film,’ Martin said vaguely. He was always most vague when he was making a very definite point, Melody remembered. ‘Is it? She looks fine now, doesn’t she? I mean, if she suddenly looks appalling in the stage lights, we’ll have a concern. So let’s go and see. Shall we?’

  He was holding the door open now, nodding at Melody; with huge gratitude at his rescue of her, she jumped up, grabbed her bag and coat, and crossed the room to where Martin was standing. Behind her, she heard Cate push her chair back. What have I done to her? Melody wondered as Cate followed. Why is she picking on me like this? Everything up to wiping off my make-up was fair enough: that was just nasty.

  But, determinedly, so that it didn’t interfere with the performance she was about to give, she dismissed it from her mind as they made their way along the narrow corridors of the theatre, down a rickety staircase, round a flat and onto the boards of the stage. It was lit up already; Melody dumped her stuff in the wings as Martin and Cate went down the side steps and into the stalls, taking up seats next to each other halfway down the centre aisle.

  ‘Right, Act Four, Scene One,’ Martin said, pulling out a very dog-eared paperback copy of Much Ado from his jacket pocket. ‘Hero’s collapsed, exeunt everyone but Beatrice and Benedick – can someone get James? I think he went to Costa—’

  ‘No, I’m back,’ called a voice from the back of the stalls, and the next second Melody saw her ex-boyfriend appear, walking down the aisle with his characteristic loose-limbed cricketer’s lope.

  ‘We’re lucky enough to have our Benedick reading in today,’ Martin said airily, as Melody, momentarily paralysed with shock, stared at James. ‘James, Melody says she’s off the book, and you are too, aren’t you? Fantastic! Look, I’m not going to say a word. Why don’t you two just go for it and I’ll give notes afterwards if I want you to run anything again...’