“Want to?” Kim sat up and took Dídac’s face between his hands. “You bet I want to. I haven’t wanted to do anything else but what we’ve just done ever since I saw you…”
“What, the night we met? You were furious…”
“Yeah, but… I still saw you, how gorgeous you are. And I was like… I still wanted you,” Kim smiled, “even though I knew… thought you were bad news. I still wanted you. I want you even more now.”
“That’s brilliant,” Dídac smiled, looking suddenly like a little boy, unsure of himself, but at the same time managing to look like the cat that got the cream. “Because I really want you too.”
20
Dídac got into rehearsal at nine-thirty that morning feeling like he was floating on air. Leaving Kim the night before had been one of the hardest things he had ever done. They both could not stop touching each other, embracing and kissing. Delaying his departure and craving just a few minutes more in each other’s arms meant that they stayed another hour together—until it really was too late for a school night. Finally, it was Dídac who broke off, telling them both off for their lack of professionalism. With a last lingering kiss, he got out the door and found himself walking down the hotel corridor toward that rickety elevator.
In the street, walking home through the balmy summer evening, he wondered at what had just happened. Had he and Kim Delatour really just had sex? Was it a dream? Had he imagined the kindness and warmth in Kim’s normally icy gaze as he had been fucking him? He lifted the opening of his shirt collar and sniffed. The pungent aromas that floated up had originated not just from his own body but Kim’s too. He could smell the man’s particular enticing scent imprinted on his skin. It wasthere, so it really must have taken place. Did this mean… What did it mean? Did it mean anything? How would they interact tomorrow? How would he sleep? He felt an urgent longing to be holding Kim in his arms, to sleep cocooned within his embrace. Tomorrow’s rehearsal felt an entire tortured year away.
At home, Dragon berated him, reminding him in no uncertain terms that her dinner was a good two hours late, mewling plaintively. Even though she had dry food there to nibble on throughout the day, they both enjoyed the ritual of her dinnertime, when he opened a can of wet food of the brand she liked. Dídac had refused a shower at Kim’s hotel, wanting to smell his lover in his clothes and on his body for as long as he could. Whenever he made some abrupt movement, a tiny hint of Kim’s sweat, or cologne, or some other, raunchier, more pungent smell would waft into his nostrils. As he ripped the top of the can, a heady odor of prawn and tuna cut through Kim’s multifaceted layers, driving Dragon to hysterics. So Dídac deposited the contents on a saucer, which he placed on the kitchen floor beside her water bowl, before retiring to the sofa, where he lay back and delighted in sniffing the various parts of his clothes and body for further hints of Kim.
Once more he scrolled through the night in his mind, reliving their meeting up at the Carmel Bunkers, the restaurant, and of course, the hotel. It had been a perfect night. His dick got hard again as he recalled how the director had turned out to be every bit as arrogant and controlling as he had believed when he hated him. But being in his hands, controlled like putty, was exciting. Now, counting the hours, minutes, and seconds until he could be back in that situation was excruciating. What would rehearsal be like tomorrow? Would Laia guess? Just a few days before, he’d been bitching about the director’s arrogance and hubris bitterly, believing he was about to be axed from the show. What wouldshe make of this turnaround? He’d have to be discreet and professional. More to the point, how would he and Kim be able to focus on the work, acting normally before the other actors?
A vestigial hint of tuna and prawn alerted him a split second before Dragon’s claws landed on his forehead. She loved sneaking up on him like that, jumping up from the back of the sofa, especially after she’d just eaten. Her claws didn’t dig in, barely pricking his skin, bloated and content as she was from her food. She stepped onto his head and down onto his shoulder, taking her time to catalog all the fascinating new smells her servant had brought back with him into the apartment. Then she settled on his chest, in the crook of his arm, and began to purr loudly, as she let her dinner digest. By luck, Dídac’s script, laying on the coffee table, was barely within arm’s reach, as he no longer had Dragon’s permission to move until further notice. So, he turned to his part, determined to be fully prepared at rehearsal tomorrow. As he flipped the page, a trace of Kim’s body odor returned to his nostrils, and he resolved not to shower until the next morning, so that he might enjoy the director’s presence for a few hours longer.
Dídac was the first one into the rehearsal room. Changing alone, he took the opportunity to strip off his underwear and struggle into his dancer’s belt before slipping on his leotard. He hadn’t worn it since drama school, but the tightly elastic jockstrap-type belt shaped all his bits into that classic dancer’s bulge, and was proof against even the most raging erection. He didn’t want to have to deal with another embarrassment as had happened the other day.
He began his workout, pushing himself hard, aiming to clear his mind and focus only on the physical and vocal warming up of his body, trying to avoid thinking about Kim. But then, fifteen minutes later, the clatter of heavier male footsteps on the stairs sent all his concentrationflying. He turned toward the door, barely daring to breathe, only to be confronted with the figure of Kiko Martín in the doorway.
“Oh, hi!”
His disappointment must have shown on his face, even though he turned quickly away, and went back to his exercises.
“Sorry, it’s only me,” Kiko quipped. “Who were you expecting?”
“Ah… Dana and I were going to go over a couple of things,” he lied, before realizing he had trapped himself. When Dana arrived she wouldn’t know what he was talking about. “Rather, there was… I had something I was meaning to ask her.”
“She’ll be here in a minute. I saw her in the café as I was coming in.”
“OK, thanks. How’s it going? Are you getting to grips with the part?”
They chatted for a few minutes, Dídac desperate to change the subject, while keeping an eye on the door and thinking he would need to think up some plausible question to ask Dana when she came in.
“Are you wearing a… dancer’s belt?” Kiko suddenly asked.
“Uh, yeah, I prefer it when we’re doing a lot of movement,” Dídac lied.
“I haven’t worn one of those since drama school… I find them way too tight.”
Exactly, Dídac thought, so if I crack a fat when Kim walks in, maybe people won’t notice. After that there was silence for a few minutes, each of them focusing on their warm-up, until they heard footsteps on the stairs. Kim swept in with all the female actors surrounding him in an entourage, in animated discussion. You wouldn’t think he’d noticed anyone else in the room, but immediately his eyes sought out Dídac, swept over him like a lighthouse beam, drilled into his soul, even as he kept on with what he was saying, didn’t miss a beat in hisspeech—whatever they were talking about… differences in innovation between Australian and Catalan theater, Peter Brook’sThe Mahabharata, which the director had seen in an Adelaide quarry… he didn’t catch much else. Dídac stood quiet on one side of the rehearsal room. The first here, he was thoroughly warmed up now, ready to jump into whatever activity the director wanted to start with. It was Kim who seemed to be stalling. Had he not got his head down after Dídac had left and prepared the rehearsal? But no, the whole company came together into a circle.… There was a longish pause, a silence in which they focused their attention on the work they had before them that day, and then Kim began.
21
Dídac dawdled as long as he could after rehearsal. The truth was he felt a bit silly now, wearing his dancer’s belt, and wanted to strip out of it unobtrusively. But Carme and Felipa were engaged in telling Kim a long-winded yarn in their broken English about a production of Guimerà’sTerra Baixathey had toured to Germany, which even Dídac—native Catalan and having studied English since he was knee-high to a grasshopper—couldn’t really follow. The show had been an important one, as the classic Catalan play was what Hitler’s filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, had based herTieflandon, and so touring it to Germany a few years ago had been politically significant. But he pitied Kim, who wore a strained, fixed smile on his face as he listened, nodding sagely, trying to capture all the nuances of that story in the actresses’ broken English.
Rehearsal that day had been intense, though at no point was he in danger of cracking a fat as he had feared. Kim had seemed almost cold toward him, except in moments that Dídac caught him by surprise, gazing at him fixedly when he thought that Dídac was engaged in someother dramatic action. Showering this morning, washing off the last vestiges of the director’s smell, had felt almost like sacrilege. Nevertheless, Dídac had showered, shaved, deodoranted, coffee’d, dressed, and even got out the door, all in good time to reach the theater before anyone else. Finally, not wanting to strip naked before the other actors—even if they all pared down to their underwear in rehearsals on a daily basis—he slipped his street trousers on over the dancer’s belt. It felt tight, but he could take it off at home. So this was it? The girls seemed to be conspiring to take Kim out to lunch. Dídac could join them, but… could he last an entire lunch staring at Kim without touching him, playing the interested, urbane actor without screaming at him to rip his clothes off and fuck him over the restaurant table? Dídac stood there helplessly, knowing he maybe looked a little lost, trying to think what to do, how to extract a few personal seconds with the great director. But then Kim cut through it all:
“Dídac, can I get your help with a thing for a few minutes?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” he said, almost doing a slapstick double take. “How can I help?”
Laia gathered up her notes and bag.
“I’ll see you upstairs after lunch, Kim?” she asked professionally, her eyes sliding coolly over Dídac as she left. “Office, at four?”
