In answer, she clenched the talons of one paw once around his jugular in a friendly way, then curled up in the crook of his neck and began purring contentedly. They stayed that way for several minutes as Dídac tried to refind the threads of his dream. He’d been lying on a beach somewhere—Sydney, perhaps? Australia. His eyes shot open. Kim Delatour. Rehearsal.Merda!What on earth was the time? Trying not to dislodge Dragon—who responded to the minor earth tremor just by digging her claws deeper into his neck—he reached out to his mobile on the night stand: 8:45. OK, doable, not great. Definitely not great. What time was the read-through? Ten? Why so early? It’d be that tight-ass visiting director, insisting on rise-and-shine, early-morningpunctiliousness. Didn’t he understand that during the sweltering season between May and September, nobody south of the Pyrenees ever actually got up before ten, let alone showing up for work? You did whatever business you had to do in the cool of the evening, or at night. Morning hours were for sleeping, brunch at the very most. He sensed this was going to be a long month.
Carefully easing Dragon off his neck and onto the pillow, he sat up. She was put out, but quickly snuggled into the warm hollow he'd left behind. And in the sitting up, a hangover reared its head. Oh no, that wasn’t part of his plan. What had he done last night? Flashes of memory began floating up into his consciousness, like parts of a murder victim you thought you’d weighted down properly and left at the bottom of the deep blue sea that then start bobbing up again when you least expected them. In fact, if he was honest, last night had merely been the continuation of the previous one.
Stripping off the tee shirt and shorts he’d slept in, he padded towards the shower, stopping to press the switch on the percolator en route. He felt like death, so he stood for several minutes under the hot stream, letting it revive him. So let’s go back to the beginning. It had been Sant Joan on Saturday. The streaming hot water pummeling into his temples felt like bliss. He and Laia had met for a couple of drinks at the theater bar. Everybody was buzzing aboutThe Swancoming to Teatre Romea. It had only premiered in five cities worldwide, but big ones —Melbourne, Sydney, Tokyo, London, and New York—and they were getting it here in Barcelona, before Madrid had even had a look-in. Not only that: He, Dídac, was to play the lead.
He squirted some of the sandalwood shower gel he’d brought back from the Dubai tour into his hand and began to lather up his body. Soaping up his cock and balls, slipping a hand down into his ass crackto sudse away all the night’s sweat, he had a thought: Didn’t they say a wank was supposed to be a good cure for a hangover? No, it must be past nine already and he was cutting it way too fine already.
So, Kim Delatour. The image of that big blond hulk swinging the door wide, a blushingly short, fuchsia-pink hotel robe barely covering his vitals, was one that would go with him to his grave. The four of them had laughed themselves hysterical afterwards. What on earth—or who—had the guy been expecting? Kinky, or what! To tell the truth, the robe had looked damn sexy. Dídac had been dead nervous at meeting him. Kim Delatour: His fame marched on before him. A modern-day Peter Brook or Orson Welles. Somewhere between the first and third cava at the theater, the idea had been hatched—had it been he or Laia?—that they should break the ice by taking the newly arrived director out on the town. Then Elena and Joana had arrived and piled onto the idea enthusiastically, until Laia—against her better judgment, she reckoned—had passed Dídac the hotel’s number. As assistant to the theater manager, Laia was a walking contact book. Once the message had been left with the hotel, in Dídac’s most gallant delivery, their nerves had got the better of them. What had they been thinking! It called for another bottle of bubbly, and they settled down to drink a little too eagerly.
By the time they left the theater, they were all rolling drunk and the idea had started to seem a good one again. At his hotel, a cute young receptionist with a sexy Andalusian accent had told them that Mr. Delatour had said they could pass up to his room. So it was a shock to find the great Kim Delatour, virtually naked but for his bathrobe, groggy-eyed with sleep and not at all keen on coming out to party with them. The pink of his attire did at least show off his blond locks toadvantage, including the small curling hairs on his chest visible through the V of his robe, and on his surprisingly muscular thighs.
Dídac had at first been quite obsequious with nerves. And then rapidly offended as only a drunk person can become at Delatour’s rudeness. The last straw had been Delatour insisting on him using only his surname, and thatMisterbusiness. Would the whole five weeks of their rehearsal period be conducted at such arm’s-length formality?
The coffee machine started whistling and Dídac remembered he should have left by now. Shutting off the water, he wrapped a towel around himself and ran to save his coffee.
Sitting in a taxi, Dídac tried to recall where the rest of his night—and the ensuing day—had taken him. From the hotel, Laia, Elena, Joana, and he had taken a taxi up to Avinguda Tibidabo at the top of the city. There, lounging on the terrace of Club Celestial, they had watched the city of Barcelona do itself proud with firework displays so extravagant you wouldn’t come close to seeing anything similar anywhere in the world. Strangely, he caught himself feeling sad that that arrogant prick of a director could not be watching this with them. Was it just remorse for the way their first meeting had turned out? He had bet so much on that first meeting. God, the man was his teenage idol! That night, drunk and unaccountably maudlin, he had vowed to make a better impression on Monday at the play’s first read-through.
Yet here he was, unprepared, on his way late to that first read-through, armed just with a hangover and sleep-swollen eyes, instead of arriving early, bright-eyed, set to leave a shining impression.The fault was his own. Up on Tibidabo, as dawn had neared, the three girls chose to share a taxi down the hill, but, claiming he wanted to walk for a while, Dídac had set off on his own. His footsteps led him down to an unobtrusive door on carrer Aragó. After buzzing, he was let into that perpetually twilit subterranean world, where in a small shabby locker room, he exchanged his clothes for a towel and flip-flops. For the next twelve hours (or was it longer?), he wandered through the dark, robed in his towel, sometimes naked, meeting other dim shapes, occasionally connecting for an embrace or more. All of these men were equally anonymous, barely identifiable in the dim half-light, and all looking for the same thing. This was the reason Dídac came here: It was one of the few spots where he could shed his stardom and slip into anonymity for a few brief hours.
It also made him ashamed. This wasn’t really what well-known actors should be getting up to, was it? The place was reassuringly dark, but Dídac knew it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out. Before each seedy escapade, he would tell himself this was the last time. There was too much danger of being outed, leading to a scandal and who knew what else. Sure, there were gay stars, but Catalan daytime TV knew him as their reliably straight and butch leading man. And it was that box office surety that had landed him this role. A scandal might ruin both his acting career and his life. But how could he control that want, the need that arose inside him almost uncontrollably? It was more than simply sex. It was a deep-seated longing to feel physical contact, be hugged, held as just another human being. When the feeling got too much, it became nigh impossible to resist.
To avoid it, he would throw himself into socializing, try to bury that void by drawing people around himself like a cloak. Not getting close to anyone, while using the superficial interaction as a mask to evadehis loneliness. But always under the surface would be that dark tide of passion that was slowly rising within him. If only there were someone with whom he had a special connection, to whom he was attracted sexually—knowing an emotional bond was too much to hope for—as so many guys (and girls) were attracted to him.
And last night, the walls of his tower had not just cracked, they’d come crashing down around him. To work with Kim Delatour had been a dream of his since he was fifteen. The man was a legend, Australia’s answer to Peter Brook or Jerzy Grotowski. He had been Dídac’s theatrical idol for all the years of his career, was in fact personally responsible for Dídac deciding to become an actor. He would trade all of his TV fame and the two films he had starred in for the chance to work with Kim Delatour, and in barely a couple of foolish drunken minutes, he had messed it all up.
Yesterday evening he had arrived back at his apartment shattered, drained physically, emotionally and sexually. Instead of feeling satiated, he just hated himself, his self-abhorrence permeating his entire being, from the depths of his soul to the haggard mask that looked back at him from the mirror. Then, rather than going straight to bed like a disciplined actor, he had uncorked the whiskey bottle. Just one shot, a last nip to try and wash that taste of shame out of his mouth, cleanse away the taste of the sex club. And also drown the evening’s earlier failure with Delatour that he was still feeling so keenly. He needed to focus his mind, prepare for the morning’s read-through. Dragon sat and watched him, keeping her distance from his drunken self. That had been the cue that had finally convinced him to drag himself off to bed with barely enough time to sleep before he would have to be up again.
The taxi drew up outside the theater and he checked his watch. Only a quarter of an hour late. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do.
3
Teatre Romea’s compact yet beautiful façade, a blend of neoclassical and eclectic nineteenth-century elements, was complemented by a modern glass marquee that attempted to announce the theater’s existence to a world which might otherwise have rushed on by without noticing. Squeezed in between two much larger buildings on Barcelona’s Hospital Street downtown, Kim had the feeling the building was keeping its elbows tensed so as not to be crushed by its bulkier neighbors. Inside, an elegant black and white marble floor in a checkerboard pattern offered cool relief from the heat outside, which even at 8:30 on Monday morning was making its presence felt.
The first person Kim saw when he entered was the tall, lanky copperhead, Laia. Good. The first task on his list was to invert the terrible impression he must have caused the other night.
“Hello, Mr. Delatour,” she gushed. “Welcome to Teatre Romea.”
“Hello, Laia, isn’t it? Please, call me Kim. Just let me say how sorry I am for my performance the other night. I was sleep-deprived, jet-lagged…”
“Not at all, Mr. Delatour, uh… Kim. It was totally our fault. We simply didn’t think! Of course, you must have been in a terrible way after such a long flight. I hope you’ve been able to get some rest?”
“Yes, thank you. Yesterday I had a lazy day, although I did walk around the city a little. I even had a paella on the Rambla.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “Well, you really mustn’t do that again. Most of those restaurants just take a packet out of the freezer and microwave it before serving it to you. We’ll take you to a decent place, where you’ll taste the authentic dish. None of that tourist rubbish.”
Kim felt humiliated. He shouldn’t have said a thing about his Barcelona explorations until he had a better grasp on the culture. Looking around the theater and hoping to change the subject, he said:
“To be honest, I’m surprised by how small this place is. Didn’t this building once house your national theater?”
“Yes, it has a narrow street entrance. But… follow me.”
She turned and walked deeper into the building, pushing aside a set of heavy burgundy plush curtains, and leading him into the theater proper. It was cavernous space, boasting three tiers of seating, all decorated in more of the burgundy velvet and golden ornaments.
“It’s named after the actor Julián Romea y Yanguas. As you say, this was the Catalan Government’s ‘national’ theater for many years before we built our current National Theater out at Plaça de les Glòries.”
He was impressed. The stage also looked nice and spacious.
“What does it hold, an audience of five hundred?”
