by Aiden Bates
He and Vinny are separated onto parallel paths again. For the next few months, Vinny is on film promotion duty as the trailer is released and the thing is edited and shown tentatively to select audiences. He won’t actually have to meet up with Frankie until the final cut of the movie is made, until then he mostly has to meet up with reporters and photographers. Lance, on the other hand, has his own news to spread.
The agent takes him on. His script goes into negotiation. Once sold, Lance calls his Mama to tell her the good news, and then tell her the tricky news: there’s another kid coming around, apparently that mishap when Frankie walked in sealed the deal. Ma and Pa Hershkowitz will be kept informed and then asked for help again. At least this time Lance ought to be able to host them, with the money he has from selling a script. He’ll have to write a few hundred more of those things to support this baby-making deal, that’s for sure.
Lance holds off on telling Vinny. He’s stressed enough worrying about seeing Frankie again, and he doesn’t know that Lance can tell what’s happened—it’s not like he has a period or a test to take, but he does know how he felt the last time and there’s no mistaking it. He’s waiting to see how this one times out with the movie, wondering if he won’t be auditioning for his own movie with the kid in there, and then having to use an ironic prosthetic after all for filming because pre-production takes so long, but he gets lucky with that. The cast for one movie falls apart, and Lance’s script gets slotted to take its place on the lot just so they’re not leaving any empty space around. They can even keep most of the crew on, it’s going to be an easy movie to make, not a bunch of stunts and locals and green screens or anything, just Lance pulling faces over a big round belly: done. He tells Ma and Pa to move from their trailer to his, tells the director they’ve got this family deal with the baby brother, his parents need to be here and don’t worry they’re theater people, happy to help or pop in as extras whenever they’re needed. The director says that super, double triple hilarious (he likes to say double triple a lot—Lance doesn’t know where he got it from and doesn’t ask), and says his parents can play the adoptive couple in the movie that are in behind the joke of the baby not being some crazy man’s fantasy, but real. It’s all pretty meta, Lance loves it. The only thing he has to do is bring Vinny on board.
Vinny got his role as the suave best buddy on Lance’s insistence alone. Lance knows it’s the right call (the director thinks Vinny’s too good-looking to be funny; Lance insists that he’s got the touch for comedy and knows what he’s talking about), but it makes for some early static. Vinny knows he’s not really wanted when he arrives on set to start work on this picture (he’ll take a weekend or two to go to the premiere of Jet-Fueled Sharks, and Lance will film his solo scenes then), and that fucks with his confidence a bit, just like it makes the director a little grumbly with him; it’s a bad vibe. But Lance believes in miracles—just look at what’s worked out for them all—as unlikely as it is, they’re all hiding in plain sight and with perfect timing. Why be a gloomy Gus when you’re so clearly charmed like this? Why not name the new kid Gus? That’s a cute name. That’s how Lance sees this whole shebang.
But he knows what’s bothering Vinny, and why Vinny can’t embrace a good thing. Vinny thinks this is Lance’s good luck, not his; he feels like a hanger-on all of a sudden when just a few weeks ago he thought he was going to get reeled into Los Angeles and set up on his own set where he calls half the decisions, but it’s Lance who has all that, and Vinny who has a secret he’s not comfortable hiding. Lance’s secret is way bigger (and starts to show, and Lance starts to blame that damn craft services table for being so delicious it’s making him fat—the joke being that it ain’t ever that delicious, but still he’s getting pudgy, yuk yuk). Vinny’s secrets eat him up.
Ma Hershkowitz tries to help with that, starts treating Vinny like one more son, why not? She’s already got one Paulie she pretends to claim as her own son, what’s one more. Lance gets a warm, cozy feeling whenever he walks into his trailer and sees them sitting together, usually with baby Paul in Pa Paul’s lap getting tickled and hugged. Vinny’s mind is dark but his body’s happy. There’s a joy reflex in him that will probably go a long way to helping him if he could just get out of its way.
Their first few scenes go well. Another layer of the trick is Lance saying his father’s got secret prosthetic skills, so go ahead and film the belly all you want, director, you won’t see the seams. He also says his father’s a big crazy purest who has to grow the fake belly in stages so the pre- and post-baby scenes will need to come later, “after the gestation.” Pa Hershkowitz starts saying gestation a lot; it makes people ask fewer questions. Lance thinks everything’s on its way, from okay to good to better to awesome, to the moon and back! Until Vinny’s got to go to Sundance and sit with Frankie again through their big debut movie. Then the back luck comes rolling back in.
Lance and Ma Hershkowitz both hug Vinny and then watch him go off to the premiere. They get a phone call when it’s over, but all that tells them is when Vinny’s flight back gets in. Vinny comes home with a few early reviews, good reviews, and at least one rave, and he listens patiently in the trailer as the Hershkowitz Family Variety Hour does a dramatic reading of each and every one.
“The towering subject matter,” that means you stand up really tall like you’re a tower. “The play of light,” that means grabbing two lamps and pretending that they’re playing tennis or something. “The smolder of Vince Roman on the screen,” that means turning on one of the burners on the stove and pointing between it and Vinny and saying, “I see no difference, do you concur? You do? Very good.” Vinny smiles at all this but he doesn’t laugh. Ma and Pa decide to take baby Paulie on an evening stroll to give them some alone time. Clearly something’s up; though they haven’t told the parents about the Frankie fiasco, they can tell there’s something between them that’s out of balance.
When the door closes, Lance starts talking.
“How’d it go with Frankie?” he asks.
“Not good,” Vinny says, “but also not bad in the way we expected.”
Lance sits down on the floor at Vinny’s knee and waits to be told the story, like a kid getting read a picture book. He sets his hand on Vinny’s knee expecting Vinny to hold it, but he doesn’t.
“We had to shake hands and smile and pose a few times before we finally got a minute alone. I didn’t know what to say, was about to throw myself on the ground and just hope for mercy, and then he said something. He asked me something. He said, ‘Vinny, do you love him?’ He was asking about you.”
Lance has gathered that. He starting to wonder why Vinny isn’t holding his hand even more, suddenly.
“I said I did, and I thought it would really upset him, like maybe he was convinced that it was just a fuck, that I’d fuck anything standing still and consenting and that’s all there was to it, but love was a different animal altogether. But that’s not what his problem was, baby. He turned to me and he said, ‘I thought I felt something between us, was I wrong? Or can you just not turn off the charm or what?’”
Now Lance takes his hand off of Vinny’s knee and asks a question of his own.
“How far did that go, Paul. I know you like Frankie, I knew the moment you started telling me about him, but we both thought he didn’t like you that way, so what did you do when you found out he does.”
“I didn’t do anything, baby, I swear. I didn’t do anything. But Frankie, he did something, he leaned over—we were on this big stupid couch in the sitting room of this suite-like hotel room where we’d just had a photo shoot. The couch curves in the middle and he’s on one end and I’m on the other, and so he reaches over and he grabs me by the tie…”
Oh no, Lance thinks. He knows Vinny well enough to know that Vinny would love that, someone tough enough to push him around a little bit, and Lance is not that guy at all, he’s totally submissive. Lance also knows Frankie probably didn’t grab his tie just to straighten it.
> “He kissed me,” Vinny says. “I didn’t kiss him, he kissed me, but…I didn’t stop him either.”
Lance sighs. This sucks. This is nothing good, and when he goes to get up he can’t even do it on his own with dignity, he needs Vinny’s help for support because the belly’s getting heavy and he wants to be careful not to wrench his back being too quick about things. He starts to pace and starts to imagine what happened, and it’s not a fun thing to do. What might have been fun is Frankie finding out about them as a couple and wanting to join in for some fun, the guy really is cute as a button. Wouldn’t that have been a much better story to hear? Baby you’ll never believe who wants a three-way with us, how do you feel about that? Want to try it? But that’s not at all what this is, this is no fun for anyone.
“What…okay, how long was this kiss?”
“It wasn’t that long, baby.”
“Tongue?”
“A little bit, yeah,” Vinny says.
“Did you close your eyes?”
Vinny pauses before answering this one, but he’s here to tell the truth, and he does it. “I did.”
“Paulie, you know we’re going to have to do something about this, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’ve got to figure out what you actually want, Paul. Who you want, and how you want to live. You can’t have everything every which way, Paulie. Fucking…prioritize, pally. You gotta prioritize.”
“I know the kids are important,” he says.
“Good for you,” Lance says. He’s pissed now, not even heartbroken at all, he’s surprised to find, because this isn’t the day Vinny comes to him saying, Frankie and I are in love, we’re running away together to marry and sing in Vegas, it’s over. Vinny’s not saying anything like that to anybody, he doesn’t know his heart from his head with all this. “The babies are already people, they’re already part of our family, we’re family, pally, but we don’t have to be more than that. If you don’t get it together, we’re going to be like brothers, you know? Just funny cousins cracking jokes at the reunion.”
“What reunion? I mean, you’re the only family I’ve got, you and yours. I may never see my parents again, they won’t come visit me and I certainly won’t go back, uninvited, to see them. They act like they’re finally rid of me and it’s a good riddance too.”
“You’re more like them than you know, Paulie, you’re getting pretty close to doing the exact same thing.”
Vinny gets teary-eyed at this, but Lance knows he doesn’t want to cry about it right now. Lance takes a deep breath and pats his partner on both shoulders, picks him up a bit. “Go to your trailer. Go to bed. Get up tomorrow and pretend like you’re feeling fine and funny, because that’s our job until the filming’s over. You can leave when your scenes are done, you don’t have to stick around. Go somewhere else and figure out where you belong. Don’t come back to me until you know how you come, as a lover or a friend or a partner or a cousin. If you want to see the kids, and you better, call my mother, she’ll help work it out. If this one’s a boy I’m naming it Gus, and if it’s a girl I know it’s stupid but I want to name her Paulina, so we’ll just see how it goes. Someone will tell you who the kid is when it arrives, but since you weren’t there for the last one…” Vinny moans softly at being reminded of that, but Lance waves away the emotion. “I’ve got this part of it handled. Mind your own business.” It would sound harsh to someone else, but Vinny knows what Lance means. Take care of your business first, and do it well enough that you don’t keep falling down. Mind your duties.
Vinny nods and steps towards the door, but before he goes he pulls Lance into a tight hug. Whatever happens with this break, whatever Vinny figures out, Lance knows the guy loves him. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t feel that upset when Vinny leaves. The love won’t go anywhere, it’s real and it’s here to stay, the question is only what kind of love is it, how will it ultimately be expressed.
These combination acts, they can’t all be Siegfried and Roy, some people are Martin and Lewis; some partnerships don’t endure through a show-blow, they crack up and are never seen together on or off stage again until they’re eighty or something, and on their way out of life. What if that’s who Vinny and Lance are? What if this isn’t the break that glues them back together but the break that keeps them separate? It’s hard to know. Lance has never lived in a 9-5 workday situation, his parents lived together and worked together and the work blends with their life so much that they never get a break from any of it, but it works for them—they’re together and hustling and performing and happy. But there’s a good chance they’re the exception to the rule—that everyone else is very careful never to shit where they eat, so to speak; they don’t date where they work and keep their professional life separate from their personal life, which they keep private. Lance doesn’t know the line between the two any more than Vinny can hardly tell the difference between a friend and a lover; they make quite a pair of chuckleheads together. Lance hopes that they’re the opposites-attract kind, like magnets. He hopes they’re the yin and yang, so different that they’re complimentary, and not just a square peg and a round hole, so to speak again.
Ma and Pa Hershkowitz come back into the trailer now, poking around, sniffing for trouble. Lance takes the baby from them because he needs a hug, and the baby’s into hugs. He tells his parents point-blank: “Vinny and I are on a break. I don’t know what it means. We’re not off but we’re not on either. He still loves the babies, so that’s not it, but he doesn’t really know how he loves me, so…” Lance looks down at little Junior and notices a world-weary sort of cast to his eyes. “I don’t know much either,” Lance admits. His parents shift into helper mode right away, cleaning and organizing and doing chores while they offer advice, and Lance watches them move around each other, every act in tandem or sync, never a bump or a miscalculation.
“We’re all idiots in the game of love, my love,” Mom says. “Just stone-dumb idiots and there’s nothing else to it, just try not to hurt or get hurt, that’s all you can do, and of course there’s no guarantees.”
“Your mother still hasn’t married me, you know that, son? We’re common law married because we won’t stop shacking up together in states that recognize it, but I asked and asked and it’s like she’s still on the fence every time. I still try about once a year, no go.”
“I’m not on any damn fence,” Mom says, “I just think marriage isn’t what we have, honey. We’re a team, not a marriage.”
“We’re an act, not a marriage,” Dad agrees, but rolls his eyes when Mom turns away, which she scolds him for doing because she knows he did it.
“A duo, not a marriage,” Lance says to the baby. And quieter than that: “We’re a family, not a marriage. You tell your other Dad that, okay? Maybe he’ll know how to listen to you better. Better learn how to talk pretty quick, though, maybe hurry up with that. Or don’t talk, you can be the family mime, whatever works, just get the point across, okay?”
The baby goggles up at him. He’s just about got the hang of standing and stepping, he’s still got that mess of hair, all personality there, but he seems like a quiet little dude. Not just because he’s not talking yet, but because of what kind of person he’s starting to feel like, he’ll take after Vinny with that stuff. Quiet, guarded, but hopefully not so much so that he ends up back in a situation like this one, when it’s his choice to make.
“We’re a sideshow, not a marriage,” Lance says to the baby and to the room. His parents start chortling at that, and even Lance starts to smile. It’s a pretty good line, and Lance smiles even bigger when it occurs to him that he and Vinny will probably use it in the act some time.
15. Show Business
The first thing Vinny finds out after he clears his scenes on Lance’s movie and moves in with Frankie is that Frankie knows the exact difference between a friend and a lover, and he only wants Vinny to be his friend. It turns out that kiss was something else, just Frankie wanting to have Vinny’s
full attention, which is pretty weird, but Vinny still loves the guy. Momma’s boy Frankie is just so used to being admired, when he found out Vinny had more passion for someone else, it practically wounded him. He thought without Vinny being attracted to him, maybe he wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore. It’s nice to know that Vinny’s not the only suave-seeming goombah around—Frankie’s got a pretty pathological need for success and admiration too! It makes the question of who’s responsible for a dirty dish in their shared space a pretty impossible stand-off, but outside of that they get along perfectly well. In fact, Vinny becomes the brother an only child like Frankie always wanted, giving him advice on how to be attractive to girls; just because Vinny never takes up on those opportunities doesn’t mean he’s above exploiting them in other ways. It’s good for his reputation to be seen around Los Angeles with beautiful women, it’s good for Frankie’s too if he can walk the line and stay gentlemanly about it. That’s certainly an easier prospect for him when a rejection with his own date just means trying his luck with Vinny’s, and it’s rare the guy ever gets shot down twice in a row. They have a pretty neat bachelor pad going very quickly. Vinny’s almost happy with the single life. Almost.
That kiss with Frankie, which they now never speak of or acknowledge and would both deny quite comfortably in a court of law, wasn’t an impulse to stray. Vinny knows that for sure, because if an insatiable need for a variety of sex partners was at the bottom of his insecurities, he’d be bed-hopping just as much as Frankie is, but that’s not his problem. As far as Vinny can figure it, it’s a matter of choosing the vulnerability of love or the safety of being alone. When he’s with Lance it’s easier to care more about them instead of just himself, which feels like the dumbest thing in the world. He’s got to look out for Number One, that’s been his whole driving philosophy for his whole life. That’s the only rule he follows because it’s given him everything he has right now, everything he’s ever wanted. If he had ever cared about anyone more than himself, put any relationship above his opportunities in life, he’d still be in Steubenville and Lance would be a stranger to him. But having met Lance, and wanting to know him forever…how is it possible to do both at the same time? How can he make sure he’s always got an escape hatch if he needs one while loving Lance enough to make sure he has the exact same thing, the freedom to do whatever he wants?