When the Stars Come Out (19 page)

old, but he could still lie, shave five or six years off his age and get away with it. His broad shoulders, so unlike Jimmy’s own lithe

dancer’s frame, slumped just slightly in the heat. Jimmy remem-

bered the glance they had exchanged hours earlier on the set—the

glance that seemed to say that they were the only ones in on the inside joke—and wondered if this masculine, handsome man could

possibly be
. . .

No
.
Impossible
! Even the other male dancers—all but two of them as gay as gay could be; and the other two gay by association, going along to get along—even in all those catty hours on the set and in the dressing room, no one had ever thought to suggest that Quinn

Scott could
possibly
be gay.

And yet
. . .

And yet there was that glance on the set. And now here he was,

standing under the sweltering sun in a parking lot far from any

place he should have been found, asking Jimmy for a review of his

song-and-dance performance.

It was
. . .
confusing. Not necessarily in a bad way, just in an unexpected way. And Jimmy didn’t quite know what was supposed to

happen next.

“Can
. . .
uh, can I give you a lift to your car?” Jimmy asked, as he slid his key into the lock. “It’s too hot to walk all the way back to the lot.”

Quinn smiled. “Thanks. But I’ll just call a cab.” When Jimmy

raised an eyebrow he added, “Kitty already left with the driver. She has a party tonight and wanted to get ready.”

“You aren’t going to the party?”

He shrugged. “The key to our successful m-m-marriage”— Jimmy

took note of the stutter—“is that we give each other room to breathe.”

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R o b B y r n e s

Jimmy nodded, as if Quinn had spoken some great wisdom. He

pulled the door open and said, “Well, then, let me give you a lift home
. . .
”

The car, as he expected, was an oven. He rolled down his win-

dow, then leaned over the front seat and pulled up the lock to the passenger side door before scrambling back out of the car. Quinn

followed Jimmy’s lead, opening the door and rolling down his win-

dow, then retreating from the hot interior.

They stood outside in the waning sun, waiting for the seats to

cool to a tolerable level, and Quinn offered Jimmy a cigarette and his lighter. Wordlessly, Jimmy nodded his appreciation, took one,

and lit up.

“Damn, it’s hot,” said Quinn, finally breaking the silence.

“Sure is.”

There was another awkward pause, during which both men

struggled to come up with a topic of conversation.

“So
. . .
how do you like being a dancer?”

Jimmy smiled, and did a quick grapevine, despite the early eve-

ning sun that still beat down on the parking lot. “It’s what I do,” he said. “Well, for now. Some day . . .”

“Some day
what
?”

Jimmy hesitated, but decided to plunge right in. “Some day I’d

like to do some acting, too.”

There was an overlay of sarcasm in Quinn’s chuckle. “You want

to be a fuckin’
actor
? Sure about that?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let me tell you something, Jim.”

“Jimmy. Someone else in SAG is already a ‘Jim.’ ”

“Okay, then, let me tell you something,
Jimmy
. Acting is bullshit, and trust me on this: I know. I do it twenty-four hours a day. Stick with dancing.” For the first time in their entire conversation Quinn looked directly at him. “You have the moves, you know.”

Jimmy shivered, and
that
certainly wasn’t from the temperature.

He tossed his cigarette to the ground, grinding it into the asphalt with a heel, and said, “The car should be bearable now. Let’s get

going.”

While Quinn took his time getting into the passenger seat, Jimmy

checked himself in the mirror. There were still the slightest traces of makeup at the edges of his mouth, melting in the heat, which he W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

127

patted away with a tissue. Other than that, he was the same attractive twenty-six-year-old he had seen in the bathroom mirror that

morning. If Quinn Scott really
was
gay—as simultaneously plausible and implausible as that seemed—he would, if nothing else,

have some nice scenery for the ride home.

Finally, Quinn slid in next to him in the front seat. Jimmy turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared a bit too loudly to life.

The men didn’t speak as the car backed out of its space, then was

maneuvered forward through the lot.

“So where am I going?” Jimmy asked, after they passed through

the gate and he idled at the exit to the street, not knowing if he was making a left or right.

“Uh . . .”

Jimmy looked at Quinn and was surprised to see that the actor

seemed nervous.

“Do I make a left here? Right?”

It turned out that they were making a right. That
was
the direction back to Jimmy’s apartment, after all.

“I want to know your story, Quinn Scott.”

He smiled. “I don’t have a story.”

Jimmy rolled away, pulling the sheets off Quinn’s surprisingly

smooth chest. For some reason—probably Quinn’s hypermasculin-

ity—Jimmy had expected a lot of hair; instead, his broad, muscled

chest was as bare as Jimmy’s own.

“Where are you going?” asked Quinn, pulling back on the crisp

white sheets.

“Getting a cigarette. Want one?”

“Sure.”

When Jimmy turned back to him, he was holding an ashtray, two

cigarettes, and a Zippo. He set the ashtray—a piece of ceramic de-

signed to look like a pond, complete with a tiny frog perched on

the edge—between them on the bed, handed Quinn a cigarette,

and lit it before lighting his own. After exhaling a plume of smoke, he looked at Quinn and said, “So you’re not going to tell me your

story?”

“I told you. There is no story.”

“Do you do this often?”

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R o b B y r n e s

Quinn smiled shyly. “Uh
. . .
believe it or not, this was my first time.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Jimmy, inhaling again. “Tell me an-

other one, handsome.”

“No, it’s true,” said Quinn, sitting up and letting the sheet slide until it bunched in his lap. Jimmy looked again at his smooth upper body, pectoral muscles dancing in the glare of a streetlight filtered through cheap aluminum blinds. He saw the orange tip of Quinn’s

cigarette flare and waited for him to continue after he exhaled.

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Okay, let me get this straight: you have
never
—never
ever
—had sex with a man before.”

“Nope.”

“Cross your heart and swear on your mother’s grave.”

“Never.”

“I don’t believe you.” Jimmy stubbed out his cigarette in the ce-

ramic pond. “If this was your first time, then how did you get so

good?”

“I didn’t say I’ve never had sex before,” said Quinn, as he extin-

guished his own cigarette. “Just not with a man.”

“But . . .”

“It’s all pretty much the same,” Quinn added.

“It is certainly
not
the same! In case you didn’t notice, that was
not
a vagina you just fucked!” Jimmy grabbed the ashtray from between them and set it on the nightstand, then slid over until he was pressed against Quinn’s warm body. “You can tell me. Was it when

you were in the army? A military academy? Uh
. . .
a seminary?”

Quinn laughed. “I’ve never been in any of those.”

Jimmy sighed theatrically. “Please don’t tell me that you learned

to do that with your wife . . .”

Again came the laugh. “Oh, hell no! She’d castrate me if I even

suggested it.” Quinn reached over and began stroking Jimmy’s taut

stomach, feeling the soft trail of hair rising up from his groin in his fingers. “Maybe I’m just a natural.”

Maybe, thought Jimmy. He still wasn’t fully convinced, but

Quinn’s apparent aversion to some things Jimmy took for granted

made a bit of sense in that context. Most men, for instance, couldn’t keep their mouths off his rather large member, but Quinn, well
. . .

he
could
.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

129

But
damn
, could he take care of everything else.

“Okay,” said Jimmy, finally willing to concede the point. “So if

I’m your first, do I get some kind of reward?”

“Uh . . .” Quinn pulled away. It was just a few inches, but it felt like miles to Jimmy. “We probably should have talked about this

earlier, but
. . .
uh
. . .
I trust you’re discreet.”

“You mean, you trust I’m not going to fuck up your marriage to

Kitty, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he confessed. “And this will
. . .
stay between us, right?”

Jimmy shook his head. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many

times I’ve heard those words in this town.” Closing that gap with

Quinn’s naked body he said, “Yes, Quinn, I will keep this as our little secret. Your wife won’t find out
. . .
other people won’t find out
. . .

I won’t be the man who drives your son into therapy for two de-

cades
. . .
I won’t even sell it to the tabloids. Even if I’m starving, I’ll be discreet.”

“Good,” said Quinn, although he was not quite convinced

enough to wash away his post-coital concern.

Jimmy kept Quinn’s little secret quite well. When, upon return-

ing to the set for a few more days of shooting at the demand of the perfectionist director, one of the other dancers made a remark

about Quinn’s tight ass, Jimmy obligingly told him, “You’d better

make sure that he doesn’t hear you, Mary, or he’ll break your legs.”

When someone else said that Quinn didn’t seem quite convincing

as Kitty’s love interest, Jimmy told him that he had no doubt of the red-hot passion in the Kitty Randolph-Quinn Scott bedroom, reminding them that only ten months earlier they had produced a

child. And when yet another dancer giggled at Quinn’s dancing,

Jimmy joined in the laughter, even though he had been coaching

Quinn twice a week, sometimes before and sometimes after their

lovemaking.

They fell into a fairly predictable routine, which continued even

after shooting ended and
When the Stars Come Out
wrapped. Every Tuesday and Thursday, precisely at 3:00 PM, which coincided with

Kitty’s biweekly appointment for her skin-care regimen, Quinn

would park two blocks away from Jimmy’s apartment down in

Venice. He would don sunglasses to avoid being recognized, al-

130

R o b B y r n e s

though at that hour of the day in Jimmy’s quiet neighborhood, it

was rare to encounter another pedestrian, let alone unwanted

recognition. Quinn would walk briskly—but not
too
briskly, which could attract attention—to Jimmy’s apartment, where they would

spend the next two hours having sex and practicing dance steps,

since—even after completing
Stars
—Quinn anticipated another musical in his future. Then they would shower and Quinn would

hurry back to his car in time to avoid the increased scrutiny that would come as the neighborhood’s rush-hour commuters returned

home.

Other than that, there was no communication. No phone calls,

no impromptu visits, no contact whatsoever.

Jimmy was disappointed in that. Young as he was, he had been

around long enough to know not to expect much when having a

clandestine gay affair with a married man. But there was something about Quinn that he found captivating. And as often as he told

himself that this thing with Quinn was nothing more than a casual

fling, he spent an equal amount of time wishing that it could be

something more. Something permanent, even.

He wished that Quinn would leave Kitty and be a trailblazer:

Hollywood’s first openly gay leading man. Hadn’t the closet doors

been bulging lately, and weren’t they about to burst open? In New

York, not even three months earlier, gays had stood up for them-

selves at Stonewall. So many actors were gay, many of them growing impatient with hiding in the shadows. It was only a matter of time.

Jimmy felt he could confidently predict that in the next handful of years, one leading man or another would step forward and not

only declare his homosexuality, but show that his career would not suffer, and that he could continue to play a romantic hero on the

silver screen.

Why shouldn’t Quinn Scott be that pioneer?

Jimmy, of course, knew better than to broach the subject with

Quinn. For now, Quinn was content to portray the character of

“Mr. Kitty Randolph,” and, in any event, all they really had was a twice-a-week arrangement.

Still, he could dream. And in the meantime he could also tutor,

noting with satisfaction that Quinn was making slow but steady

progress in both dancing and giving blow jobs.

W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T

131

*

*

*

If Jimmy had asked him, Quinn would have agreed that their life

together—as secretive as it was—had become a routine. It was a

routine he looked forward to; it was a routine he welcomed
. . .

but, in the end, the schedule had become agonizingly predictable.

He welcomed this new world that Jimmy had opened up to him.

It was more than the sex, which—great as it was—was only part of

what he felt with Jimmy. He felt, for the first time
. . .