3

Sixth and West Washington Place—Shoard Downs

Our new building was an Italianate wonder made of stern, green brick, which had been built smack-dab in the middle of the last century and boasted higher ceilings and more windows than I ever could have dreamed.

The apartment afforded two bedrooms with a fairly large kitchen and a handsome study. The only things I brought along with me were my own clothes and cosmetics crammed into a few suitcases, the gilt mirror, my orange telephone with a new place of honor in the kitchen, and the bottle of Wild Turkey poured out over all this good fortune lately to its halfway mark. Wesley’s furniture, far more curated and less ramshackle than mine, made up the most of our space.

A fine view of Sixth Avenue scrolled out below us, and we looked directly into the building across it, but neither of us minded. We got good light, just as Edie promised, and we’d be spending most of the daylight hours catching up on sleep or out rehearsing anyway.

Wesley and I finished hauling boxes upstairs by mid-afternoon. All of the windows were open to the airy, temperate weather. Every place worth its salt needs a nickname, he’d said with a proud grin, working at the cork of a bottle Edie had delivered earlier. I’m calling it Shoard Downs.

We sat beside each other on Wesley’s old steamer trunk and passed the bottle between us as a welcome gift and congratulation at once—just yesterday afternoon, Ezra had posted the cast list for our next production:

MACBETH, Thane of Glamis—Wesley Shoard.

LADY MACBETH—Margaret Wolf.

The future ahead bloomed with potential. To see my name alongside that role was nothing short of surreal.

Wesley surveyed the morning’s handiwork, the slogging up and down of our belongings through the stairwell, as I picked idly at the edge of a faded pinup sticker advertising Miami—the trunk had traveled with him to and from Oxford, Maine, California, scads of other places I could only imagine.

“Well,” Wesley said briskly, “I’d call this a very good day indeed.”

He passed me the bottle with a wholly satisfied smile I couldn’t help but return.

“You and I,” I said, accepting the wine and swiping a slouching lock of hair back from my forehead, “have different definitions of ‘good.’ ”

I took a swig. Wesley watched me fondly.

“I thought that mover was going to have a conniption when you took that box from him,” he said.

I scoffed. “It was dishware, and he was going to hoist it upside down. You would think common sense was a little more common.”

I gave him the bottle again. He examined the label. “This is the sort of vintage we should really be savoring from a glass.”

With a broad gesture at the rest of the room, our lives now joined as one into a madness of boxes and scattered furniture, I turned to and fro as though soliciting direction. “If you want to look for the glasses, be my guest.”

Wesley grinned. He took another pull from the neck.

The sounds of this part of town eddied in through the windows, still very much the unique mutter of the West Village, but a less-manic patter than what used to chatter through the street-level porthole in my old apartment. It felt as though I could finally draw a full breath, where light pushed in with the express purpose of buoying my spirits into the day.

I could be happy here. We could be happy here.

It was Sunday. I had never taken an extra day off before. The afternoon before me seemed endless.

“You have a standing appointment this evening, don’t you?” I asked Wesley, not looking directly at him. He chuckled.

“You know my schedule better than I do.”

“I only figured.”

Wesley made a pleased sound, sipping again. He nudged my trouser leg with the butt of the bottle. “You figured right, but—you know.”

When I looked over at him, he had his elbows propped on his knees and was staring at his shoes. He’d worn an old shirt today to allow for the sweat of effort, his cuffs rolled to his elbows and his collar open. His hair had come loose from its usual order, curling gently about his ears with sweat.

“I don’t have to keep on with them, if you don’t want me to,” Wesley said, not stilted but certainly not barreling forward with confidence. He held the bottle out to me like an afterthought. “My…appointments.”

“Wesley, if you think—”

“I can cut back,” he said quickly, as though the courage to say anything would leave him if he let me speak. He rubbed the corner of the wine label with his fingernail. “If you’d rather me stay here for a while, to—settle in, or, whatever you need, Jack. I can just…be yours.”

He looked away from me, but he reached between us on the trunk and took my hand. When he squeezed my fingers, I returned the gesture and sat patiently until he glanced up at me. I held my free hand out for the bottle and drank a wide glug.

“If you think I expect you to table yourself,” I said, “then you’re even more of a martyr than your repertoire lets on.”

Wesley sniffed a chuckle and searched my face. “Yeah?”

“Of course. This,” I insisted, gesturing between us, “is whatever we want it to be.”

He stared at my knuckles meshed against his. Tugging at me gently, Wesley lifted the back of my hand to his mouth and kissed it. “What do you want it to be?” he asked there.

I took another drink and swiped the side of my fist across my mouth. “All I need it to be is happy. If continuing to see your friends is what makes you happy, then I want you to keep doing that. Just promise me you’ll be careful. No more Andrews.”

“No more Andrews,” Wesley said gently. I passed him the bottle and watched him take a swig—his mouth, his jaw, the firm line of his throat.

Curiosity took me. “How does it work?”

“How does what work?”

“Your friends. The…”

Wesley raised his eyebrows. “The trade? You’ve never asked before.”

“Never quite wondered, but now I’m much closer to it. So.”

Vaguely amused, Wesley looked up at the vaulted ceiling and thought for a moment. “It’s…different,” he said, “but also similar. In some ways.”

“Similar how?”

Wesley grinned, wide and unafraid. “Do you really want the details?”

I nodded.

He explained it to me, dry and perfunctory, with the demonstration of a few practiced gestures for the particulars.

I squinted. “That’s all?”

Wesley laughed. “What do you mean, ‘that’s all’? It’s sodomy, people have been arrested for it.”

Despite the taboo, he seemed smug; proud of his own muster.

I made a doubtful grunt. “Just sounds like taking the alley entrance instead of the front door to me.”

Wesley laughed again, and he overbalanced before tipping off the trunk. He dragged me down after him by the ankle, and I followed with a hand out to make sure the bottle wouldn’t topple—although there was hardly any left to spill.

I sprawled out where I landed and smiled up at the ceiling.

“We are, perhaps, drunk,” Wesley announced as he splayed on his back as well. Hot pride filled me in a rush. I had done that. I had put contentment there in his heart, lodged like an arrowhead.

I sat up beside him with my knees curled under me and gazed at him, long and prone and mine. “I’m awfully pleased with us,” I said.

Wesley rolled his head to face me. Along the soft inner skin of his lips, the wine had stained a very gentle purple. “We’re on our way, Jack.”

I smiled to myself and rested a hand flat on his diaphragm, rising and falling gently with each breath. He was warm. We sat in silence for another protracted spell.

“Do you think I can do it?” I asked gently.

“Do what?”

“Be Lady Macbeth.”

“Of course you can. You’re going to be phenomenal.”

Restless, I began to flex and relax my fingers against the fabric of Wesley’s shirt. “I have so much…expectation built up in me around it, I don’t know.”

“Well,” Wesley hummed, “even coming from the same person, every role becomes new before it’s done.”

“Is that it?” I fussed blindly with one of his shirt buttons, pushing it out of and back into its loop. “They always take such hold of me. It’s like the character kicks Margaret out of the chair and lives inside me for the duration of a production.” I nodded at our boxes. “And some unpack their stuff, stick around more thoroughly than others.”

“What about Jack?”

“What about what?”

“Do they kick Jack out alongside Margaret?”

I smirked. “Jack owns the place. Especially when he’s happy. He’s got the best taste.”

Wesley chuckled, his belly jumping softly under my hand like the very current of joy. I bit my lip and felt a flare of possession.

Nothing of his nature changed the fact I was genuinely attracted to him. Anyone would be. I wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if I wasn’t, which was shallow at best and downright selfish at worst.

“You’re a wonderful actor,” Wesley said, and it was such a private assertion that I believed him. I looked over his face and found it softened with drink, laid bare with affection.

Much of the same must have shone in my eyes. Wesley reached down and ran his thumb up and down the inside of my wrist. Neither of us spoke for some time. If he felt any of the old ridges from my anxious scratching with the soft passage of his touch, he said nothing about it.

“I suppose we should consummate this venture one of these days,” Wesley said plainly. My heart lurched in my chest.

“Do you want to?” I stammered. “I mean. Can you?”

Wesley gave me a wry look. “You said it yourself, it’s just a different tack. Of course I can.”

“I know, but—”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.” The admission sliced easily into the stillness. I swallowed, not looking away from him or even hazarding to blink. “I—yes.”

Wesley’s eyes flashed. Sparks drew beneath my skin.

“Then come here and let me look after you, Jack,” he murmured.

He pulled me down to him, or I followed—it was impossible to tell which of us moved first. We kissed, and it held the same simmering heat as every kiss we shared onstage—but this, here, was different. Newer, charged with fresh and forward purpose.

I clutched at the buckle of Wesley’s belt until he steered me to settle myself up onto his hips, to lean down and cling to his collar as we delved together into the strange depths of this new secret we shared.

“Same idea,” I gasped against his mouth when he went for the closure of my slacks, “but—have you—?”

“Yes, yes,” Wesley panted, his eyes squeezed shut as I felt him stir beneath me. “I’ve got you; come here.”

I shuddered when his left hand found me, gently hunting, and he hushed me as he brought his other hand against my back under the loose tails of my shirt to steady the angle of us. It had never been like this with Hollis—he had touched me like an ornery creature, like he was afraid that tenderness might have freed in me some idea of what I really deserved.

Here, by Wesley’s hand, came every measure of that kind and quiet awe with which I had long dreamed of being touched; as though in having fled my life unwittingly, it delivered itself to me now tenfold.

Our clumsy limbs knocked, near-missing with sorrys, oopses, here, let mes, as we breathed, gasped, and laughed into each other’s mouths. I shed my trousers and undershorts before working open Wesley’s fly and asking again, mostly to appease my own nerves, “Can I?”

I had my hand around him, which made his brows pull together with an ecstatic, ferocious need. I was mostly just marveling—I didn’t know it was possible for a man to function after half a bottle of wine. Perhaps Hollis was of even weaker stock than I had known.

“It’s your show, Jack,” Wesley panted, flexing his hands on my flanks and trembling sweetly the whole way.

The feeling was singular from this position, odd and marvelous and wholly unique. I had only felt the breach before from flat on my back or pressed forward into the sheets—or the carpet, if Hollis was impatient—but this wasn’t about Hollis. Hollis was long gone, a charred myth of what once was.

Wesley was here, and urgent, and vital, and mine, mine, mine.

As I found a soft hitching pace, I followed it like a pointing hound into a thicket of river reeds. Beyond the open windows, the city sang its familiar tune.

Wesley clung to me so dearly the flesh of my thighs dimpled under his spanning grip. When I covered his hands with my own, clinging right back, dragging the novel weight of my wedding band across his tendons, Wesley shivered; stilled; broke. He gasped, his head tipped back and his shoulders bowing gently against the floor, his eyes still firmly fixed shut.

I remained suspended in cotton-headed bliss, floating leagues beyond my own body as Wesley sagged and caught his breath. I let my own eyes fall closed and imagined what that might feel like, to put forth instead of consume—to be devoured instead of to devour.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice rough and awed.

Wesley gave a pale titter, his torso leaping softly beneath me. “You are quite welcome.”

He helped me maneuver off him, foal-legged, and I staggered into the bathroom.

Shut tight in privacy and still buzzing across the outline of my body, I cleaned up and rinsed my hands under the faucet—the novel luxury of an en suite toilet, with pipes that didn’t make a wheezing rattle like they had on Christopher Street.

I stared through my flushed and wide-eyed reflection. I’d been taking birth control pills from my rheumy physician for two weeks, figuring I would only ever keep up appearances by playacting the compliant wife with a husband who expected his dues. That was what a good wife did, after all: She kept up appearances.

I examined myself in the mirror, my flushed cheeks and my dilated pupils, and ran my fingertips along my lips. “Come, you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts,” I whispered. Frisson shot through me, sparkling down the length of my neck. I swallowed and drew my entire carriage up ever so slightly.

I had everything. I had the role, the apartment, the husband of my dreams. Nothing could break me.

“Unsex me here, and fill from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood. Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between th’ effect and it!”

I stepped closer to the mirror and stared hard at myself, into myself, drawn so close to the glass that it fogged softly with each breath and I could hardly make a difference of my features.

When I emerged again into the naked apartment, I forwent dressing and remained in only my shirt and brassiere. I unlatched my suitcase and dug for the bottle of Wild Turkey.

Wesley had collected himself, mostly—his belt remained unfastened and his buttons open to his undershirt. He lit a cigarette. “This is the most fabulous apartment,” he said, still sprawled on his back. “I love it. Shoard Downs. We should take Edie out to that place by the park as thanks.”

I uncorked the bottle and took a sharp swig before holding it out to Wesley, standing over his loose-limbed ease.

He grinned up at me. “Another wedding gift?”

“From home. Home-home, Kentucky. I take a few sips whenever good stuff happens.”

Wesley peered at the bottle. His gaze softened. “There’s a lot left.”

I took another mouthful and peeled my lips briefly over my teeth for the burn. “Make me a deal.”

“Another?”

“A deal, not a vow.”

Wesley tipped his head back and exhaled a rarified piston into the air. “Shoot.”

“For as long as we’ve got together, give me reasons to drink it and you can help finish it.”

Wesley lifted the cigarette up to me and smiled. “Deal.”

I gave him the bottle and accepted his smoke. He sipped as I drew, and I laughed more freely than I could ever recall as he winced against the taste.

---

◆ ◆ ◆

We were learning the neighborhood and finding spots we could call ours—corner stores, the dry cleaner’s, various routes and paths through and around the landmarks that made up a day’s errands between rehearsals. I had a favorite coffee shop around the block, a lunch counter that knew us as regulars, and several nighttime joints that knew how to pour Edie’s drinks just the way she liked them the second she walked in the door. I had everything I ever could have asked for—and then, of course, the role.

Our Macbeth was going to be stunning. Wesley and I were made for it. Ezra’s feedback for us got less and less involved, and some days he would even forget to critique us. Had Wesley not also been there to witness it, I would have sworn I was hallucinating.

Nevertheless, anxiety plagued me. I couldn’t quit telling myself I was going to ruin it. My conviction was either too fierce, or not enough. I was either exactly manic enough in the Lady’s ambitious destruction, or completely overdoing it. Nobody was saying these things to me besides myself—and nothing anybody said otherwise convinced me. My mood changed like the tides, and with it my sense of peace.

Wesley did his best to keep me centered, but I could tell it wore on him. I hated feeling like a burden.

When he was out, I hunkered into the chaise with a drink and went over and over my lines. I held myself back from pacing—to pace at this stage of preparing would upset the careful placidity of the poetry. So I read and recited in near silence, on my own under the light of a single lamp.

The doorknob rattled well after midnight with the telltale fumble of Wesley juggling his keys on the other side of it. I looked up from my page but didn’t move to stand.

Wesley stumbled through the door, his hat off and tie undone, and shut it gently behind him. He was humming a tune to himself as he toed off his shoes, chuckling a little when he pitched forward, and I noticed when the hall lamp caught him that he had a small red mark on his neck just above his collar.

“Was it fun?” I asked.

Wesley jumped, one hand braced against the wall, and dissolved into a minor pleasure of relieved laughter when he saw me there.

“Christ, I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“I can’t sleep. How was the party?”

“Bona, bona, bonaroo,” Wesley sang as he strolled over in sock-feet. He pointed at the folio, grinning rakishly. “You’ve read this one already.”

“It’s a favorite.”

“You’re my favorite, Jack.” He was giving me a silly little smile when I looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.

I nodded at the mark on his neck. “Looks like you were someone’s favorite tonight.”

Wesley’s cheeks flushed a soft pink as he reached up to touch at his throat, as though he could still remember the feeling of whoever’s mouth had put it there. “He was…nice,” he determined. That was the most he ever revealed to me if I asked about them, whether his companions were nice or fine or perfectly kind, actually.

“I’m glad you had fun.” I shut the folio and stood up, and Wesley pulled me close.

“It’s all fun,” he said, sighing. “So bold and blue, cackling about this and that and who-she-do. But I like quiet, too. I like our home.”

Awkwardly slipping my arms up to reach around his shoulders, I returned the embrace briefly. “I’m glad,” I assured him, patting his back. He sniffed a laugh against my neck.

“Truly! I do! I’ve never really cared to call any place home, not ’til now.” He pulled back and lowered himself onto the chaise, laying out long with his jacket askew in his liquor-limbed ease. He always looked more delicate after coming home from one of his uptown parties. I wondered when, if ever, life might twist itself around to let him be this way always, unbound by his defenses.

“You’re a peach.” He sighed again, lolling his head to the side to peer at the wash of the nighttime avenue below. “I really, madly adore you. I don’t feel like I tell you that enough. Has anyone ever told you they love you?”

Standing over him, I petted a hand through Wesley’s hair, the pomade already worked most of the way out. “I’m glad you had fun.”

“I love you, Jack.”

I gave him a brief, wincing smile. “You’re punchy.”

Wesley grinned and hid his face in my hand, peeling open one eye to look sideways at me. “Trade sticks, huh?”

I set down my script on the end table and curled up against him, wriggling along Wesley’s side to wedge us both onto the slim cushion. Against his collar, I smelled a light cologne with a floral touch.

“He certainly smells nice,” I muttered. I watched a small, inward smile fade up on Wesley’s mouth.

“He was a ballet dancer.”

“A ballet dancer. Edie would be proud. Been in anything we’d have seen?”

“No, he’s new to the city. Young.”

I swatted Wesley gently on the shoulder. “I thought you liked them older.”

“Oh, I do. But everyone at So-And-So’s was already paired off—this poor chicken looked at me from over a drink, big eyes all nervous, and asked if I had a smoke. I couldn’t say no.”

“A knight in shining armor,” I cooed. Wesley rolled his eyes before shutting them and shifted his shoulders to pull me close.

“I think he was just knocking off the spell of it, you know how it goes; the nerves, that…dive into the deep water. Putting his head under for the first time.” Wesley paused to free a wide, jaw-round yawn. “I was more than happy to get him over the threshold.”

I regarded my husband and this careful way in which he cared. I didn’t know how it went, and that was the crux of it. But here was his kindness again: the sharing with me. I put my head to his shoulder and sank into the way his fingertips played lazily with the hair curling at my nape.

“What happened here?” Wesley cooed with blithe concern. I opened my eyes and managed not to flinch when I felt his fingertips on my inner arms, where I had scratched them faintly raw earlier that night. My stomach swooped.

“It’s fine. It’s a big role, I’m just anxious. Don’t worry about it.”

Wesley frowned at me, his eyes so vivid and shiny I could swear they would burn right through me if he stared for long enough.

“Is there anything wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong. I’m fine, Wes.” I pecked him lightly on the mouth. “I’m glad you had a nice night.”

I made to get up, but Wesley caught me gently around the waist when I swung my legs over the edge of the chaise. He stared shortly into nothing for a moment, putting words together at the back of his mind. “If you aren’t…happy,” he said, then stopped, drumming up the complete thought. “I don’t want you to fall on your sword for me any more than you already have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it—” Again, Wesley cut himself off. Whatever merrymaking he’d done had slowed down his quick wit to a sleepy crawl. He dragged his hand along my hip and let it rest on my thigh. “Distresses you. Clearly.”

He was looking sidelong at my arms.

I smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “It’s alright. I promise. It’s nothing new.”

Wesley scowled.

“It’s not your fault,” I said gently.

“Do you want to have sex?” Wesley asked, still hiding in my dressing gown.

“Not particularly, but I’ll lie here with you a little longer.”

“Alright.”

He gathered me up again to cozy along his side. I hugged close to him and counted the steady march of his breathing, borrowing his calm. I willed myself to quit imagining dangerous solutions to unformed thoughts.

“Wesley,” I murmured.

“Hm?” His voice was cloudy, narrow and drowsy.

“Do the roles ever steal you from yourself?”

“How’s that?”

“In the thick of it, do you ever…put yourself too far in them, and forget who you are?”

“What,” Wesley yawned, roving his nose against the side of my face, “like losing your place on the page?”

I stared at the ceiling in the dark, tracing the shadows with my eyes. “Never mind.”

I left him to his dreams. I hoped they were as kind to him as his parties, his friends, the glittering endurance of their impervious survival.

I hoped he would never know this uncanny feeling of mine well enough to name it.