“I mean… physical human contact.”
“Right.” Laia sighed. “So… get a call boy? At least it’s private, he comes to your house…”
“Yeah, and then sells the exclusive to¡Hola!, which could actually be worse.”
“I mean why can’t you guys ever keep it in your pants!” she growled. “It’s always sex! And a scandal like this could sink this production. It could put all of us on the dole. Oh,” she stopped, realizing what she’d just said. “Sorry.”
Dídac was silent, just waved his hand to say it didn’t matter. He remained staring down at the glossy page. For a couple of minutes the only sound was the chugging coffee machine as Laia prepared them two espressos. But her mind was whirring, thinking about all the ramifications. In contrast, Dídac was thinking about Kim. He wanted to call him. But what would he say? Hi, this wonderful guy you’ve just met is actually a slut. His misadventures are smeared all over the cover of a daily tabloid.
Laia put two short strong espressos on the coffee table before them.
“What do I do, Lai?”
“Are you ashamed of what you did?”
“I… no, I… It’s what I needed to do at the time. I wasn’t in a relationship. I just needed to let off a bit of steam… No, I’m worried about everything that’s going to come now. But ashamed? No. Maybe I’ve been more discreet than out and proud. But I’m not ashamed of having sex with another man.”
Laia took a sip of coffee, put down her cup, and looked at him.
“Then you put your head up, and you go on. All sorts of flak is going to hit you now, so you just need to be strong and carry on. There is….” She looked down at her coffee for a moment as if deciding whether to take another sip or not. “There’s… I mean your TV fans… and the theater. What do you think they’ll say?”
“I don’t care about them. I mean I do, but… I’m more… I just don’t know what I’m going to say to Kim. Not about the sex—I was single, and totally within my rights to do what I did. I’m sure he’s done the same at times in his life. ButThe Swanis his baby. I just hope the scandal doesn’t affect… I don’t think he’d forgive me for that.”
24
When the door of the rehearsal room was opened at lunchtime, Kim spied Santi lurking outside. Santi wasn’t a lurker, but rather the sort that would head out to meet you, and cut you down before you knew what he was about—in short, a producer—so seeing him lurking like that gave Kim pause.
Rehearsal had been weird. Though it started off well enough, Felipa had been quiet, if not downright wooden in her scenes. Perhaps something was going on in her personal life. Who knew. So, he’d given her some directions to work on alone in her major monologue, and focussed on the younger posse of actors, including Dídac, improvising the crowd scenes and cameos they shared between them. Although Dídac played the lead, for much of the show he also formed part of the chorus of young actors, as they played friends and siblings in his village “gang”, often making entrances and exits together.
It had gone well enough until the coffee break. Then something had come over Dana and Carme too—they had also turned quiet—and the group stopped cohering. The young male actors, Dídac too, quicklysensed something in the women without knowing what it was. So the careful synergy Kim had built up in the cast in recent days was soon shot to blazes. It was as if the entireensembleconcept—an idea central to Kim’s theatrical vision—had faded from the actors’ minds, leaving his main actor Dídac alone, facing a ring of alienated strangers. It shocked Kim, especially since recently he’d felt that the essential chemistry they needed as a group had just begun to sparkle. He had begun to hope that they might, just might, all finally pull together to create a halfway-decent production. Though it would be close with the short time they had left. And then this, as if some sort of zombie malaise was starting to creep over the cast.
The only actor who seemed immune to it all was Domènec—as self-obsessed as ever. Likewise, the young puppeteer trio, used to improvising every day as an autonomous unit without much supervision, kept coming up with the goods with little or no input from Kim. Or so it seemed, every time he checked in. He planned to coordinate them with the rest of the cast only in the final couple of weeks, once the company began tentatively attempting full runs. For now, they kept working happily off to one side of the hall, isolated from the zombie plague engulfing their companions.
During the final part of the morning, Kim worked—fought might be a better description—with Domènec on his major scenes and his particular perspective, one that seemed to go against every instinct Kim had regarding this show that he had devised and written himself. Lastly—and if there were any way it could be first, for Kim it would be—Dídac remained hovering on the edge of his perception. Kim wanted to throw it all up in the air, send them all to hell, grab Dídac, and ravish him. That might give the group something to focus on. As a result, he studiously ignored the gorgeous man in rehearsal,not trusting his own capacity to remain aloof, instead addressing one of the other actors any time a question or doubt was raised. And so Dídac became gradually quieter, seeming to shrink into and become less sure of himself as the morning wore on. Kim hated himself, but seemed incapable of snapping them out of this destructive interaction. All in all, it was a weird, fraught morning.
So to find Santi lurking on the threshold was the last straw.
“What?” he snapped, against his better judgment, now knowing that Santi was a person on whose good side you stayed if you aspired to keep working in the theater—this or any other in Catalonia.
“Let’s go upstairs, Kim,” Santi said, not rising to the bait. “Some events have occurred that we need to discuss.”
“Yeah, OK, let me get my stuff.”
Kim turned to look, hoping for a word with Dídac, but he was gone. So was Laia. Just one of their lunch dates, maybe. He changed quickly, grabbed his bag, and headed out. Rather than simply heading upstairs before him, Santi was still waiting. Something was off. They said nothing to each other as they went upstairs and into Santi’s office.
A copy of¡Hola!, the Spanish version ofHello!, was lying on Santi’s desk. Unusual reading matter for a producer, though maybe not for anyone as usually bubbly as Santi. However, the producer was anything but effusive today.
“I can’t remember the page number—you’ll find it.”
Indeed, there was Dídac’s face—poorly lit in profile but still clearly recognizable—challenging him from the glossy cover.
“So… what? An interview?”
Kim flipped through until he came to the photo spread, the half-dozen or so grainy images taken at night.
“Really? This is what you’re worried about? Don’t his fans know he’s gay? Why are you confronting me with this?”
“No,” Santi said. “His fans don’t know he’s gay. He’s the young…galán… you know, a… heartthrob? of our most populartelenovela. Millions of women tune in every afternoon to watch him. If they react badly to this scandal, it could significantly affect our box office.”
