New York City was a miracle sometimes. Jeremy was early for rehearsal the next day, and he decided to get some coffee and enjoy the warm weather; it was one of the first truly warm days of the season. He walked up to Bryant Park, passing two huge concrete planters full of bright red and pink tulips and bright yellow daffodils. Bryant Park was mobbed, the green tables and folding chairs provided by the parks department nearly all occupied, but Jeremy found an empty seat near the fountain and sipped his coffee as he watched the people walking by.
On the other side of the fountain from where Jeremy sat, workers were setting up a stage, probably for the lunchtime Broadway performances. Just after college, Jeremy had poured coffee at a cafe a few blocks away, and would sneak over every Thursday to see the performances. Usually, the casts from each of the big shows that season would do one number, and the sponsors would pack three or four numbers into an hour. It was the best way to see Broadway when you had no money for tickets. He still got chills from the memory of seeing Patti LuPone sing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy on that very stage.
And now he’d be the one doing one of those numbers. Assuming the show didn’t flop.
The sky was clear and blue, and sunlight bounced off the parade of yellow cabs driving up 42nd Street, past the park, toward Times Square. Although Jeremy, like every New Yorker, made a habit of complaining about how much he hated Times Square—and the whole spectacle of it felt like too much most of the time, with the pedestrian plaza crammed with slow-moving tourists or people trying to get discounted tickets at the TKTS booth or office workers who likely hated that they had to move through this sea of madness every day—part of him was still charmed by it all. He’d come to the city with his parents or friends a fair amount as a kid, and after Evita, he’d seen a half dozen shows in the span of two years, constantly squirreling away money so he could see something else.
Nothing was ever as magic as the opening chords played by an orchestra, or the first steps an actor took onto the stage at the beginning of a show, or the way even the most flimsy and simple of sets could come alive as the actors sang their hearts out. Jeremy could remember sitting in the car with his parents as they drove from New Jersey, down the West Side Highway from the George Washington Bridge, and he’d press his nose against the glass to see the high-rise apartment buildings near the river, and he’d wish to himself that he could live in one of those one day, as he became a part of the greatest thing he had ever known. Broadway. New York City. Wonderful town. The place all your dreams came true.
Of course, the reality was that struggling actors only made enough money to live in tiny apartments in the outer boroughs—those Upper West Side high-rises were so far out of the realm of possibility that Jeremy had stopped aspiring to them—and the city wasn’t nearly as magical as he’d imagined. Even the neighborhood he’d lived in with Ryan was so recently gentrified that many of the bodegas and liquor stores still had bulletproof glass around the counters. The sidewalks were broken, the subway rarely ran on anything like a regular schedule, and everywhere he went smelled like baking, decaying garbage in the summer.
And yet Jeremy still wouldn’t have it any other way. This whole spring had been intense, from the emotional low of not getting the part he most wanted, to reconciling with being the runner-up and then getting the part anyway. It didn’t matter that the producers hadn’t wanted Jeremy originally; the part was his now. And this show—it was his dream. And now Max, too? Jeremy touched his lips, then dropped his hand so he wouldn’t look like a total weirdo, but he’d been thinking about those kisses since they happened. Those creeping feelings of attraction to Max had coalesced into something really special; kissing Max had been amazing. He wanted to do it again, and then some. He didn’t totally trust what had happened yet, but if this was the start of a new chapter for him and Max, he was eager to see where their story went. Thinking about it now sent giddy thrills through him.
Everything was coming up Jeremy, as Ethel Merman—or Patti LuPone—might have sang.
Jeremy finished his coffee, stood, and tossed the empty cup at a trashcan near the corner of the park. He took a deep breath before crossing 42nd Street and heading toward the studio. Since he still had a little time to kill, he took a detour to look at the theater where See the Light would soon be debuting. The theater itself was festooned with scaffolding, still deep in its renovation. But the digital marquee that hung over the sidewalk displayed the logo from the show and a stripe across the bottom read: A new musical about growing up, coming out, and living out loud. Coming soon!
It was still entirely possible that See the Light would flop. That the out of town preview reviews would be so negative that the organization that owned the theater would pull their offer and put on another show on stage. Advanced ticket sales could be so low they’d only do a few performances in the theater before it closed. Stranger things had happened in Broadway’s long history.
But Jeremy felt good about this show. He felt it in his gut. The logo for the show was suddenly animated on the digital marquee, in front of a bright blue sky and a rainbow. Jeremy hoped the title didn’t read too religious, but the rainbow imagery seemed to imply an LGBTQ story. The theater across the street had a rather explicit poster on the box office window, showing two apparently naked men about to kiss, as part of the advertising for a new play.
Broadway was not necessarily a reflection of life how it was, but more a projection of life as it could be. New plays and musicals now tended to be aspirational: an idealized world of bright colors and joyful music, an inclusive world that accepted and celebrated everyone. Shows like Hamilton proved you could show American stories with diverse casts and still find wild success. Jeremy had wanted to be a part of this world for so long.
And he would be. His arrival on the Broadway stage, something he’d wanted since he’d been that thirteen-year-old with his nose pressed against the rear window of his parents’ old sedan, was imminent. Having Max at his side, just as he had when they’d seen Evita together, made it all even better.
He hummed “Rose’s Turn” the whole way to the studio for rehearsal.
Max spent the day after he kissed Jeremy in a lab at NYU’s Brooklyn campus, supervising the production of some latex mask samples. He’d made a plaster cast of the actor’s face the previous day so that he could noodle around with some goblin makeup ideas. It was an old-school technique, but it would work until they had the masks for the show made for real.
The business of Broadway was an entirely different thing than it had been in previous decades. You couldn’t be a scrappy nobody and get a show on a big stage. Large media companies produced shows with absurd budgets. Every new show had to be more spectacular than the last, incorporating new kinds of effects, in order to compete with every other kind of entertainment there was in New York.
Max and Jeremy had been kids when Times Square’s renaissance happened. By the time they’d hit high school, the theater district had been cleaned up—and become exponentially more expensive—but their parents let them take the bus into the city on the weekends to rush as many shows as they could. Max became a connoisseur of the ticket lottery, making it his job to know which theaters gave out tickets at which times, which theaters would sell a couple of theater obsessed teenagers standing-room tickets at popular shows, and which theaters they were basically guaranteed tickets if they got in line early enough.
Max and Jeremy had spent summer mornings waiting in the Shakespeare in the Park line at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, many afternoons at the TKTS booth in Times Square, and they saw as much theater as they could with their allowance and later part-time job money. Max loved every minute of it, both because he enjoyed the shows, but also because he loved watching Jeremy react to the shows. And even after they saw Phantom or The Lion King for what felt like the fiftieth time, there was adventure in figuring out how to best score tickets to something, same day. Even now, Max still entered digital lotteries and felt that same thrill of victory on the rare occasions he won. And usually, he invited Jeremy to tag along, just like the old days.
But his time for seeing shows was far less than it had been.
He probably couldn’t have afforded to go to the shows he worked on now. A huge media conglomerate, the sort of company that usually funded big budget Hollywood blockbusters, was the major investor behind Sword of Dawn, and once Max’s makeup plans were approved, he had the potential for a huge budget to make whatever his imagination could cook up. He was excited about it, because he never got opportunities like this. He was used to shoestring budgets for makeup, but this was on an entirely different level.
A show like this would do amazing things for Max’s reputation, and he wanted to be the go-to makeup guy on Broadway. But also, this job would be just plain fun.
Still, as he was waiting for the mask samples to set, he couldn’t help but think about Jeremy.
Years and years they’d been a duo, it seemed, but nothing had ever gotten sexual or romantic between them until last night. Max had never allowed it, but in this case, Jeremy had been the aggressor. Jeremy had said he liked kissing Max. He seemed to want something to happen between them. It was exactly what Max wanted.
Or was it? Max worried he’d built things up so far in his head that there’d be no way for reality to live up to his image of what could be. The relationship was still lopsided, and Max hadn’t confessed the true intensity of his feelings. There were so many ways this could go wrong, and they’d all been playing through Max’s head all day. Jeremy had just broken up with Ryan, he could be on the rebound. He could be going for Max because he was close by, or he’d gotten caught up in the moment of reading his lines. Max could go home tonight just to hear Jeremy say it was all a mistake and he wanted things to go back to the way they were. Max was terrified all of this would blow up in his face.
And yet.
If Jeremy came home that night and asked Max to be with him, Max wouldn’t be able to say no. If Jeremy touched him or kissed him again, he’d probably melt.
And Max was very tempted to invite Jeremy to his bed that night. No more uncomfortable sofa; here’s a fine mattress you can sleep on in exchange for loving me, even if just for one night.
Max needed a taste. He needed to know that perfect moments were possible. He wasn’t sure he and Jeremy had a real future, but if they could have something now, Max wanted to reach out and try it.
Daphne wandered over. “Are we painting these?”
“I figured we could airbrush them once they’re on the actors. That way we can blend everything properly. These are really from here up.” Max held his hand under his nose. “For the goblins, I was thinking we could paint their skin kind of a booger green color.”
Daphne wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting...and apt. Okay. You have the right paint?”
“I got a bunch of samples back at the studio. If the Sword of Dawn producers like my color choices, I’ll order more.”
“How are the elf ears coming?”
“Those are almost ready, too. We’ll make some molds for the points, but otherwise each set of ears will have to be customized to the actors. We’ll make them fit particular ears and then match the color to skin tone. The lab tech tells me we can add colors directly to the latex if we want, but the process is a little temperamental, so we can either make those custom each time or make generic ones and then paint them to match skin tone.”
“So, to sum up, you could have Black elves.”
“Right, exactly.”
Daphne nodded. “Cool. I’ll go check on those.” Before she walked out of the room, she said, “I saw your notes for See the Light. Who are you putting on that?”
Max mentally kicked himself for forgetting he still had to make a decision on that. All things being equal, this was an easy decision; Max would work on the more challenging, higher profile show and delegate his staff to work on the easier job. He’d worked with Regina Morris and See the Light’s costume design team to come up with an overall makeup look, and he had sketches and notes that could be easily translated into a look book that showed the makeup for each character. He trusted Daphne to get the makeup right.
But all things were not equal. See the Light was Jeremy’s show. The opportunity to work with him, especially under the current circumstances, could be thrilling, and he wanted to support Jeremy. Part of him thought he should work on that show for that reason, even though the smarter professional decision would be to work on Sword of Dawn. And because both shows were premiering within weeks of each other, doing both was not an option.
“Still deciding,” he said.
When Daphne was gone again, Max closed his eyes and saw only in his mind’s eye. His phone vibrated in his pants pocket, pulling him out of his reverie, so he took the phone from his pocket. It was a text from Anthony.
Max smiled to himself. Hadn’t he done exactly what Anthony thought he should do?
Still, all he did was reply to Anthony’s question, asking for suggestions for makeup brands that would sell him neon eyeliner. He didn’t want to say anything to Anthony about Jeremy yet, partly for fear of jinxing it, but partly because he didn’t believe it was real yet.
Maybe soon he’d know for sure.