Toby woke up in his room on West 104th Street. Sunlight spilled through the blinds, painting yellow stripes over the floor and futon and the sheet that covered the large nude body sprawled beside him: Sasha, the Russian. He lay on his back with the sheet pulled up to his belly button, an arm thrown over his crew cut, the cup of his armpit fizzy with blond fur. His red lips were drawn back from his big teeth in a joyful smile. It took Toby a moment to realize that Sasha was still asleep.
Most of the men that Toby slept with looked better dressed than naked. Not Sasha. He was beautiful naked. Usually Toby couldn’t wait to get out of bed the next morning, take a shower, and be “good” again. But not today. Sasha looked so humpy. Toby barely knew him—he didn’t even know his last name—but sex last night had been perfect, as hot and mutual and easy as the sex in dreams.
Toby wanted to stay in bed forever, but he needed to pee. He got up and pulled a pair of gym shorts over his cumbersome erection. His clothes were happily strewn over the floor with Sasha’s. They both wore Old Navy jeans and 2(x)ist briefs.
Out in the hall Toby saw nobody, but he heard the TV in the living room: a boring Sunday-morning news show. It still felt funny that their home was also their stage. They had given another performance last night, and it went well again, even after the craziness on Friday. But the gunshot wound and ambulance ride felt like weeks ago. It felt like weeks since he’d met Sasha too, but both events were only thirty-six hours old. There had been a reporter in the audience last night, but it wasn’t half as exciting as seeing Sasha in the front row. He had come to see Toby. Standing over the toilet, Toby couldn’t help sniffing his own shoulder and smelling another man’s brand of soap there.
He hurried back to his room, whipped off the shorts, and hopped under the sheet. He crawled against Sasha, laying an arm across his chest, a leg over his middle. He wanted to be here when Sasha woke up. He was amazed by how happy he felt, how joyful.
He heard the front door open and close. There were voices in the living room. Feet stamped over the floor.
A fist knocked on Toby’s door and the door flew open.
Allegra charged in, followed by Dwight and Melissa. “Look, look!” They shook a fat tabloid newspaper at him, the Sunday Post. “Do you believe this? Do you fucking believe this?”
They all crouched around the futon, paying no attention to the other body.
Across the middle of the front page was a washed-out color photo of a young man on his knees beside an old man on his back. They weren’t doing anything dirty. Toby couldn’t figure it out until he read the headline—“Everybody’s a Critic”—and the caption—“Actor gives first aid to gunned theater reviewer.”
“You’re famous!” cried Melissa.
“They talk about you!” said Allegra. “They talk about us!”
“We’re all gonna be famous!” said Dwight.
Toby propped himself up on an elbow and opened the paper. Inside was a story, two full pages with black-and-white photos: an old picture of Caleb looking stuffy; a police mug shot of Caleb’s mom, front view only, looking drunk; a fancy-dress photo of Kenneth Prager, the wounded man—he was theater reviewer for the Times?—and finally, Toby himself, an ugly old head shot—where did they find that?—of a skinny dork with a shaggy Brady Bunch haircut. There was no picture of Henry, which surprised Toby and pleased him.
He felt Sasha waking behind him, rolling over, and seeing the people around them. Sasha didn’t care. He scooted up behind Toby and embraced him from the back, locking both arms around Toby’s chest. “That is you?” he murmured at Toby’s shoulder.
Toby turned back to the front page.
“Look at the byline,” said Dwight. “Cameron Ditchley. He must have been the guy who took the picture.”
“See!” said Allegra. “They mention the play. They give the title and the address. We’re gonna go through the roof tonight.”
“It’s still a showcase,” said Melissa. “We can charge only fifteen bucks, right?”
“Oh fuck Equity,” said Allegra. “We’re not legal anyway. People are gonna pay through the nose to see our celebrity here. And that’s just the beginning. Everybody’s gonna talk about this for weeks.”
But Toby stopped listening. He lay among admiring friends, naked under his sheet, snug in the muscular life jacket of Sasha’s arms, Sasha’s boner nuzzled against his bottom—he was hard too—while he gazed at himself on the front page of the New York Post.
Could the world get any sweeter?