"Tommy's aunt and uncle," Robin whispered to Quentin and Dex. "His mother's dead."
The murmured sympathies grew louder as they approached the triumvirate of grief. Robin took the offered hands and spoke the words, and then Dennis was nodding to the aunt, the uncle, and finally, Mr. Werton, to whom he put out his hand tentatively, as if afraid of having it grasped and twisted. He need not have worried. Mr. Werton's hand, clenched in a fist, remained at his side. He was a small man, but the way his mouth twisted in a scowl made him look far larger, more menacing.
"I won't take your hand," he said. Quentin could see that the man was actually trembling, and for a moment he was afraid that the fist would come up and strike Dennis.
Dennis stood there, his hand halfway up, his mouth partly open as if he was about to say something, but then thought better of it. The hand fell back to his side, and he turned and moved on. Steinberg was next in line, and he grasped Werton's hand and held on to it. "I was there," he said gently. "And Mr. Hamilton had nothing to do with your son's death."
The little man opened his mouth to speak, but Steinberg plunged on. "He liked Tommy very much, Mr. Werton. We all did, and we share your grief."
Werton jerked his hand away, and when he spoke, his words bit sharply. "Damn theatre. Never wanted him in it. Wouldn't get a real job, always went from show to show. No way to live."
The way the man's face changed terrified Quentin with its suddenness. From vicious anger it went immediately to powerless sorrow. The features melted like hot wax, and tears ran down Werton's cheeks. Steinberg moved away, knowing, as did Quentin, that words could do nothing in the face of such deep and irrational grief. Dex passed the party with a sad smile, and Quentin followed, a sotto voce "very sorry" the best he could muster.
He found the others in a cloakroom off to the side. Dennis was leaning against the wall, and the others were gathered around him. He was paler than before, and droplets of sweat were perched on his high, aristocratic forehead. What in God's name has happened to him, Quentin thought again. Werton had been a fool, a narrow-minded man who probably hated the theatre because of the supposedly loose morals that had been associated with it ever since Shakespeare. Five years before, Dennis would have eaten Werton alive, bereft of a son or not, and spit out the bones.
Quentin recalled one afternoon when the Private Empire revival had been rehearsing at the Broadway Arts Studio. After lunch, Dennis and some of the chorus members had been rehearsing a number when a monster of a man in his forties burst into the room, bellowing, "Where's Danny!"
Danny was a kid from Cleveland, and Empire was his first Broadway show. Everybody liked him, but only a few, Quentin and Dennis among them, knew about the problems he had had with his father that had made him leave home a year before.
The father had beaten the boy severely, a fact attested to by a red, round scar on his forearm, burned there by his father's cigarette.
"Where the hell is he?" the man roared again. The stage manager began to tell him he would have to leave, but an upraised palm changed his mind. "There doesn't have to be no trouble. You just tell me where Danny is."
That was when Dennis left the ensemble, which had by now frozen, and, carrying a thin cane he was using as a prop saber, walked over to the man. "I'm afraid Danny's on his lunch break right now. Would you like to leave a message?"
"I'm not leavin' any fuckin' message – I want my boy!"
"You're his father?" Dennis asked, lightly swinging the cane.
"That's right."
"And what do you want with him?"
"Take him home. He goes off here to New York to be a dancer," – the word dripped contempt – "and now he's queerin' around."
"How old is Danny?"
The man had to think for a moment before he answered. "He's just nineteen.”
“Well, in that case, whether he uses his anus for withdrawals or deposits is up to him, isn't it?"
The air in the studio had grown so thick Quentin could barely breathe as he watched Danny's father seem to grow another foot in height and another yard in girth. The man threw a fist the size of a paint can, but Dennis dodged easily and whipped the cane upward so that it slashed Danny's father between his treelike legs. He let out one sharp scream, fell to the floor, and instantly vomited food and beer all over the worn boards of the studio.
When he had finished, he opened his eyes to find the point of Dennis's cane prodding the hollow of his throat, and Dennis standing over him. "Now listen to me, you scheiskopf," he said. "If you want to see your son, you do it at his place or on the street, not in my re hear sal." He stressed each syllable with a poke of the cane that made the man gag. "Now you go out to the front desk, and you ask the lady there where you might find a mop and bucket. Then you come back, and without making a sound you clean up this mess you just made. And when you're done, don't you ever come in this studio again. Do you understand me? "
Danny's father nodded, undoubtedly fearful that a negative response would cause Dennis to send the wooden point of the cane as far into his throat as possible. To the amazement of Quentin and everyone else in the studio, the man came back to clean up his vomit. Dennis, seemingly intent on his rehearsal, did not look at the man once. When Danny returned from lunch and was told that his father had been there, he asked to be dismissed for the day. He was at rehearsal the next day, however, and never mentioned his father again.
Quentin thought that although Dennis was concerned with the way Danny's father had treated the boy, what had angered him more was that his rehearsal had been interrupted and he had been treated rudely by a boor, and those were things that he would not suffer. How unlike the Dennis Hamilton who today, scarcely a decade later, turned pale at a harsh word, an ignorant snub.
They were moving now, down the halls, down the stairs, through the basement to the back door. When they walked outside, Larry Peach was waiting for them, smiling. "Nice service?" he said.
"Very nice," John Steinberg answered, then turned to the others. "Please, get in the car, everyone. I won't be long."
Quentin and Dex opened the doors for Robin, Dennis, and Donna, then watched while Steinberg conspiratorially drew Peach aside. They could just overhear what the two men said.
"An exclusive," Steinberg told Peach. "For your ears and those of your readers alone."
"Yeah, yeah, fine. So what is it?"
"This past weekend," Steinberg said, an arm around Peach's shoulder, "I received substantiated proof that…” Here he looked around, as if to make certain no unwelcome listeners were present. “. .. that your mother has been lasciviously fornicating with all the indigent Haitian boat people she can wrap her labia around."
He patted an unbelieving Peach on the shoulder and hopped into the car astonishingly fast. "Have a nice day!" he called as he started the engine and drove down the alley.
"You fuck…" Larry Peach said softly, while Dex and Quentin started to giggle. "You fuck!" Peach yelled, throwing his note pad after the fleeing BMW.
It was the first time Quentin had laughed in a week. It was the first time he had forgotten about death.
Scene 6
Donna Franklin's day had been grim until the woman came in applying for the new job. At that point it seemed to lighten somehow. God knew it had started out badly enough. Although two weeks had passed since the accident, it was still on everyone's mind, and long faces were the order of the day. As if that weren't enough, she had had a scene with Abe Kipp again. Abe Creep was what she called him, but only in front of Sid.