“Please forgive me, Dídac. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m in a position of professional responsibility. That was totally out of order.”
“No, no… It’s OK.”
Just then they heard voices on the stairs. Dídac spun around and ran toward the corner where he had left his clothes. Crouching down, he pretended to look for something in his bag while he adjusted himself. Kim turned away from the door as Dana, Carme, Felipa, and Domènec all trooped in together, probably having met for coffee together in the bar below. Dana, young, blond, a brilliant actor but never known for her diplomacy, immediately sniffed the air:
“Wow, this place smells like some work has been going on!”
She gave a huge theatrical wink. Though she was presumably just making a joke with no knowledge of what Kim and Dídac had actually been doing, little did she know how right she was.
Kim laughed, checked quickly to make sure his erection had gone down, and turned toward the new arrivals:
“Dídac and I were warming up. We started improvising and got a bit carried away!”
Sometimes throwing the truth at people as a joke means it’s the last thing they’ll believe.
“Dídac,” Felipa called out, “I wanted to tell you at the press conference just how beautiful that speech of yours was, but you’d left so quickly.”
“Thanks, Feli.” Dídac stood up and came toward them, now holding his script conveniently at waist level, covering his groin.
“Did you really see Kim’s production way back then?” Felipa went on.
“Hey, it wasn’t that long ago,” Kim laughed. “You make me sound ancient!”
“It was ten years ago,” Dídac said. “I was fifteen. Mr. Delatour was twenty-five. And yes, Boomerang was absolutely sensational.”
Now the whole atmosphere in the rehearsal room had changed and lightened. Dani and Kiko had just appeared, and the puppeteers hadn’t been called today, so everybody was now present. All the actors, men and women together, were shedding their street clothes and pulling on track pants, leotards and raggedy tee-shirts—the perennial theatrical rehearsal uniform. Kim decided to take advantage of the moment to change the dynamic:
“And everybody: No more Mr. Delatour, please. Just call me Kim. OK, ten minutes of individual warm-up and then we’ll come together as a group.”
As he went to fetch his notes, he crossed paths and gazes with Dídac. Their look was prolonged and meaningful. But Kim couldn’t read its significance, or even think about that now. He had to run the rehearsal. And then Laia entered, with a couple of urgent matters she had to sort with the office before he got settled into rehearsal, and he gave her his full attention.
11
Kim was sitting on the terrace of his room. Luckily the hotel building cast it in shade after about two p.m. Otherwise, it would have been quite useless as a place to sit during the day, the heat was so intense. Through the balcony railings—stylized fig trees worked in wrought iron—the Mediterranean was a flat sheet of sun-kissed blue stretching away to the horizon, seen through the shimmer of the heat haze rising off Barcelona.
His head was exploding with the events of that morning. Here in Barcelona he was alone, and needed to speak to someone. But who? Laia and he were hardly more than a professional relationship, yet she was the closest thing approaching a friend he had in this city. But she was Dídac’s friend. Talking to her would be seen as making an indirect approach to Dídac and he didn’t want that. For the sake of the production and his professional ethics, he needed to steer clear of the younger actor for the remainder of the rehearsal period. Once the show had premiered, he could set his sights on the next city, Manchester.They said it was an amazing place, very welcoming and friendly, with a happening gay scene.
But the thought of avoiding Dídac from now until then, maintaining contact only as strictly necessary within the production, tore at his heart. When he had apologized for being so terribly unprofessional, the young actor looked like he had slapped him in the face. The following rehearsal had been tough, both of them trying to be professional, putting all their energies into their interactions with the other cast members and avoiding each other as much as they possibly could. But it hadn’t been easy. He was the director and Dídac the lead—they needed to work together. What a fool he’d been! In that one unguarded moment, he’d jeopardized the whole production.
Almost without thinking, his fingers searched out a contact on his phone. His finger paused over theRingbutton. What time would it be? Four o’clock here, that would make it… midnight in Melbourne. Too late? Probably not. His finger hitRing.
“Hey, stranger! How goes it?”
Tony’s grinning face filled the screen.
“Hi gorgeous, not too late?”
Tony laughed his infectious laugh, making Kim smile and glow inside.
“Midnight? Late for me? Come on, fella, you know me a little better than that.”
“Yeah. God, it’s good to hear your voice… and see you.”
“So how’s it going over there? You look like you’re on some sort of terrace?”
“My hotel.”
Kim did a twirl with his phone, so that Tony could see the wide sweep of the Mediterranean, the thick carpet of Barcelona’s urban sprawl, the hotel building and the hills to either side.
