When the Stars Come Out (15 page)

Noah put his hands over his ears.

“Who’s having sex?”

They all turned to see Max, clad in a navy blue bathrobe and

matching slippers, his pale blue pajamas peeking out from under

the robe, standing in the entrance to the dining room.

Noah took his hands away from his ears. “Uh
. . .
Tricia?”

“Not lately,” said his father. “And not for a few more weeks or so.

You don’t want to kill me, do you?”

“No,” said Noah, who was feeling very small. “Right now, I only

want to kill myself.”

Max wagged a finger at him. “Not in the apartment. You still ex-

pect everyone to clean up after you?”

Remembering the clothes and towels on the floor of the guest

room, Noah and Tricia glanced at each other.

“No,” said Noah, the lump in his throat returning. “Of course

not.”

Still standing, Max nodded to Bart and introduced himself. “I’m

Noah’s father, Max.”

“P-p-p-pleased to meet you,” stammered Bart. “I’m Bart.”

“Oh, Bart! As in ‘Oh, Bart, that feels fantastic!’ You’re that Bart?”

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R o b B y r n e s

Bart closed his eyes and wished himself back to Southampton.

He was disappointed when he opened them and he was still in the

Abrahams’s apartment, looking into the face of the now-cackling

family patriarch.

“Just joking with you, Bart. Hey, could you pass me that coffee?”

“No coffee,” said Tricia.

“You want me to fall asleep and drown in the shower? What is it

with everyone trying to kill me so soon after my little incident?” He sat. “All right, then
. . .
juice?”

She nodded. “You can have juice.”

“Thank heaven for small favors.” Max turned again to Noah and

Bart. “So what are you kids up to today?”

“No plans,” said Noah. “Well, not for me, that is. Bart has to

drive back to the Hamptons.”

“I see.” Max was silent for a moment, waiting while Tricia poured

and delivered his orange juice. He knew he could have done the

task himself, but he liked indulging himself with his convalescence.

“And what do you do, Bart?”

“Personal assistant.”

“Bigger than that,” added Noah. “He’s personal assistant to Quinn

Scott.”

Simultaneously, Max and Tricia spoke up, Max mentioning

Philly Cop
and Tricia mentioning
The Brothers-in-Law
. Then they looked at each other, puzzled by the other’s reference.

Bart smiled, finally feeling some small level of comfort. “I work

for the
Philly Cop
Quinn Scott. The actor in
The Brothers-in-Law
is his son, Quinn Jr.”

“Never heard of him,” said both Max and Tricia, each of them

referring to the other Quinn Scott.

“Funny story,” said Max, finally settling into his chair. “My for-

mer wife was pregnant with Noah here when his last movie was re-

leased. What was it called
. . . When Stars Shine
? Something like that?”

“
When the Stars Come Out
.”

“That’s it. After the movie, we went to dinner, and that’s the first time Noah kicked.”

“And he hasn’t stopped since,” added Noah.

Max shook his head. “No, he hasn’t.”

Bart excused himself to use the bathroom, and seconds after he

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walked out of the dining room Max turned to his son and said, “He

seems like a nice young man.”

“Thanks. Yes he is.”

“Sorry if I embarrassed him.”

“What about embarrassing
me
?”

“You, you can handle the embarrassment. In fact, you should have

more embarrassment in your life.” He took another sip of juice.

“So is this a serious thing?”

Watch it
, Noah told himself; there was a minefield in his father’s question. To say yes was to give his father—and Tricia, for that matter—free rein to turn it into a full-blown relationship. But to say no was to admit that he had dragged someone he barely knew back to

their apartment for sex. And, dinner or no dinner, what looked

like a trick looked like a trick.

“We’ll see,” said Noah, agreeable but vague. “We’re feeling things out.”

Max’s eyebrows wiggled. “So we heard last night.”

Noah’s only response was an exaggerated sigh.

When Bart returned, his hair had been dampened and pushed

back down into something not looking quite so obviously like bed

head. He didn’t sit, but instead placed his hands on the back of his chair and said, “It was nice meeting everyone, but I’d better get on the road.”

Noah stood. “I’ll walk you to the door.”

Bart and the rest of the Abraham family said their good-byes,

and Noah escorted Bart out.

“So,” Bart said, when they were alone in the hallway, “am I going

to see you again?”

“Yes. Of course.” Noah was still not fully convinced, but the words came easily. “I’ve got your number; you’ve got mine. So, uh
. . .
just call me. Or
I’ll
call
you
.”

Noah tried to read Bart’s smile. It seemed forced; moreover, his

eyes betrayed a lack of faith.

“I mean it, Bart,” he said emphatically. “We’ll be in touch.”

“Okay.”

Bart leaned into Noah, embracing him.

And for the first time that morning, Noah realized that he
was
going to call Bart. Maybe a relationship was crazy, but, as Bart had 100

R o b B y r n e s

asked, why not take a chance on
something?
And if a phone call wasn’t exactly a full-blown relationship, at least it was connection. Who knew where it could lead?

And in any event, no one had ever claimed that any of this would

be easy.

Chapter 4

I have always been drawn to confident people. And I hate

bullshitters. That pretty much sums up my philosophy of life.

As an actor, I’ve experienced a lot of bullshit. It comes with

the profession. But after getting cheated out of money with a

song and a dance on my first couple of movies, I decided to take

financial matters into my own hands, and I never looked back
. . .

A
fter Bart was gone, Noah walked back into the dining room and flopped down on a chair across the table from his father.

“Nice boy,” again said Max, who was trying to eat a piece of dry

toast and wishing with all his slightly damaged heart that it was

slathered with melted butter. “Then again, since my wife appar-

ently set you up, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“I have no secrets around this place, do I?”

“Apparently not. So tell me . . .” Max stuffed one small piece of

the dry bread in his mouth and tried to swallow. “Tell me the truth.

Are you going to see him again?”

“I told you I was.”

“Your eyes said something else. And that boy, that Bart, he saw it, too.” He chewed for a moment. “I mean, it’s fine with me if it was a one-night stand, although I hope you don’t make a practice of

bringing those men into this house.”

“It wasn’t like that,” said Noah. “I just
. . .
well, I’ve been trying to figure out what I should do. I live in D.C., he’s out in the Hamptons
. . .

it’s a complex situation. He wants to try dating, but . . .” As Noah fell into silence, his father hiked an eyebrow. “I know, I know, it’s too soon to act like boyfriends. Dinner and sex doesn’t . . .” Noah

stopped. “Did I just start to say that?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

He blushed slightly. “Sorry. But you’ll be happy to hear that I’m

at least going to call him. And then we’ll see what happens.”

Max nodded, still trying to swallow.

“I like Bart,” said Tricia. “You make a cute couple.”

“Yeah, but
. . .
the distance.”

She ran a hand through her bangs. “Noah, sometimes I think

you’ll grab at any excuse to be alone.”

Max, still swallowing, again nodded his agreement.

“If it wasn’t the physical distance,” she said, without giving Noah a chance to respond, “it would be something else. For someone who’s so outgoing, I’m surprised how closed-off you can be when it comes to men.”

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“I
said
I was going to call,” he said, and realized he was whining.

“Yes, well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” She looked at her husband and asked, “Max, are you all right? Do you want some water?”

With a great effort, the muscles in Max’s throat finally pulled the food through his esophagus. He shoved the plate with the rest the

dry toast away and said, “I’m fine.
Now
, I’m fine.” He turned his attention back to Noah. “Do you even remember
Philly Cop
?”

“From the reruns
. . .
uh, syndication, I guess. It would have gone off the air around the time I was born, right?”

“Around the time Quinn Scott made that
Stars Are Coming Out

movie.”

“What did you think of it?”

“Eh.”

“I don’t remember it, either,” said Tricia. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.”

Max smiled and picked up his knife, intending to plunge it into

butter the minute he could get Tricia out of the room for twenty

seconds. “Quinn Scott as the toughest cop in Philadelphia. Every

week, racing across rooftops to catch the bad guys.” The butter

knife in his hand was like a baton in the hands of a conductor, following the unseen Philly Cop as he leapt from roof to roof in pur-

suit of the Bad Guy of the Week. “As a lawyer, I can tell you that it was totally unrealistic. But it wasn’t bad television, so why quibble?”

Noah laughed. “And who would ever believe that the toughest

cop in Philadelphia was gay.”

Silence. Until the knife so expertly wielded by Max hit the table

and clattered off his other silverware.

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” Noah said. “Quinn Scott is gay.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Noah looked in the general direction of the front door. If Bart

knew that he was already sharing the carefully protected secret,

he’d be appalled. “His personal assistant would know, wouldn’t

he?”

Max thought about that. “Quinn Scott is gay?”

“But he has a son,” offered Tricia.

Noah countered her comment with, “Because no gay man has

ever reproduced.”

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“He was married to Kitty Randolph,” said Max, feeling suddenly

argumentative. For some reason, he could accept that his own son

was gay, but he couldn’t accept that Quinn Scott—
Quinn Scott
—was gay. “I mean
. . .
Kitty Randolph!”

“Yes, he was married to Kitty Randolph. And they had a son,

Quinn Jr. And then Quinn Sr. fell in love with another man, and

they lived happily ever after.” He thought about that for a moment before appending, “Well, at least as far as I know.”

Max shook his head, trying to process the gossipy tidbit. He hadn’t thought about Quinn Scott in
. . .
decades? He may not have even been cognizant that the actor was still alive. But it didn’t matter; this Quinn Scott revelation had thrown him for a loop.

Maybe, he thought, the difference between the actor and his son

was this: Noah was artistic, and sensitive, and perhaps not the most masculine man in any given room. Quinn Scott, though, well there

was a man that every man wanted to be. Hearing that Quinn Scott

was gay was like hearing that
Randolph
Scott was gay! The very thought of it was simply ridiculous!

But Max couldn’t say anything like that, of course, because he

would never embarrass his son in that manner and he would never,

ever admit that he indulged himself with stereotypes. Instead, he

looked Noah in the eye from his vantage point across the table and said:

“The story of Quinn Scott. Now
that
is a book I’d want to read.”

The story of Quinn Scott. Now that is a book I’d want to read.

For the rest of the day, Noah heard his father’s words in his

head. The thought of a Quinn Scott book hadn’t occurred to him

when he was with Bart. Now it was the only thing that occurred to

him. He didn’t know why that was. The only thing he knew about

Quinn Scott was that he really didn’t know enough about him to

have an opinion.

Fortunately, there was always the Internet.

Later that morning, Noah went to the home office—actually, a

paper-cluttered alcove in the second, unused guest bedroom—and

booted up his father’s computer.

He did it in relative secrecy. While he told Tricia that he wanted W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

105

to go online to do some research, he didn’t want her—and he es-

pecially didn’t want his father—to know that he wanted to research that shadowy memory of his youth: Quinn Scott.

First, though, he started with a search through various Web sites

on the name “Bart Gustafson,” not an uncommon step in the world

of dating in the computer age. He found a high-school swimmer in

Minnesota, a slot-car enthusiast in Palo Alto, and
. . .
that was it.
His
Bart Gustafson didn’t seem to exist on the Internet. Satisfied with Bart’s relative anonymity, Noah began typing the name “Quinn Scott”

into Google, Yahoo!, and every other search engine he could find.

And Quinn Scott
did
exist.

His solid—if abruptly discontinued—career included not only

Philly Cop
, but a number of nondescript movies pumped out between 1958 and 1970
. . .
1970 coinciding with the release of his last movie,
When The Stars Come Out,
and the official end of his marriage to Kitty Randolph.