Chapel of Ease (10 page)

Ray continued to stare after her, ignoring the people who instantly re-swarmed him. I pushed my way through and said in his ear, “You need a break?”

He turned and I saw tears in his eyes. They hadn't been there before, despite the emotions of the evening. He nodded, so I took his elbow and guided him to the door that led to the roof. We ran up the stairs like children sneaking out of school, and when we emerged into the open, it was like bursting out of some prison. The city lights seemed to twinkle in celebration of our triumph, and the traffic noise was like a comforting lullaby.

Ray dug out a joint and lit it. He offered me a drag, and I took one to be polite. He inhaled deeply, as if doing it for both himself and Bill Clinton. He kept glancing up at the buildings around us, almost as if he expected something to come swooping out of the night sky. It was hot and humid, and he sighed as he leaned against the brick wall of the stairwell exit.

“Hell of a press night,” I said. “They loved it.”

“They did,” he agreed.

“Well, everyone except your friend.”

He smiled, in that same sad way the girl had done earlier. “She's not my friend. She's from back home.”

“In Tennessee?”

“Yep. Apparently it's not so long a flight as I thought.”

“You didn't know she was coming?”

“No.” He rubbed his temple and frowned, and I immediately remembered Neil's warning. But it seemed to pass. “She was the last person I expected to see, honestly.”

“Kind of flattering that she came all this way.”

He inhaled deeply again, and let the smoke settle in his lungs for a long time before letting it out. His voice tight, he said, “Distance isn't so big a barrier as it used to be.”

“What were you two talking about?”

He chuckled, but with the cool, calm fatalism of a man before the firing squad. “How much trouble I was in for telling the story of Byrda and Shad to people like you.”

“Gay actors?” I deadpanned.

“No, anyone who's not a Tufa.”

“But didn't this happen a long time ago? Like,
centuries
ago?”

“Yeah. But time doesn't work the same for everybody.”

The way the night breeze blew his hair, and the light played across his face, restoked the fire of my unrequited love. I wanted to hold him, to give him someone strong to hang on to so he didn't have to be. But instead I just said, “I'm sorry. That must be disappointing.”

He shrugged. “You ever disappoint your family?”

“Some of them. When I came out, especially.”

“Yeah.” He took another long hit off the joint. “Well, the problem with my family is that it's probably a lot bigger than yours. Everybody from my hometown is related if you go back far enough. That means everybody thinks they have a say in what you do. Sometimes so much of a say that they come all this way just to tell you.”

“Is she gone, then?”

Again he looked up. “I think so.” Then he rubbed his temples hard and closed his eyes. “Well, I better get back in there. Neil will get mad at me if I don't filter off some of the glad-handers.”

“The reviews should be great. I bet we sell out the run.”

“Maybe. Guess we'll see.” Then he took my arm. “Hey, can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure.”

“If anything happens to me, make sure you're there for Emily.”

“What's going to happen?” I said, trying to sound jaunty.

“I don't know, it's just … women who fall in love with Tufa men have a very hard time if we go away. It's my fault, I should've been more careful. And I know how that sounds, believe me, but if something does happen to me, Emily will be … very distraught. And lost. And she'll say some crazy things. Just be kind to her and don't make fun of her.”

“Yeah, I will,” I agreed, taken a bit by surprise.

He ground out the roach against the board we stood on and strode back toward the entrance, with sagging shoulders as if he'd gotten the worst news in the world. I caught myself looking up as well, but saw only the night sky, a muddy haze of light reflected by the heavy humidity.

 

8

I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was my phone on the nightstand. The screen was lit up, which meant I had messages.

The exertions of the show, the celebratory well-wishing afterwards, the tokes off Ray's joint, and the half a bottle of wine I'd consumed all conspired to knock me out. Joaquim had surprised me by waiting for me outside my door, although he was asleep when I got there. He'd pinned a note to his chest that said in big letters,
NOT HOMELESS. WAITING FOR MATT. DON'T CALL THE COPS.
We were both so wiped out that we went to sleep without fooling around. By the time I noticed my phone, it was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning.

I reached across Joaquim and picked it up. There were dozens of messages and tweets. The most recent one, still displayed, said, “I'm so sorry.”

My heart sank; were the reviews
that
bad?

I turned on the ringer, and almost immediately “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” by Gene Pitney—Emily Valance's ringtone—blared out at me. Joaquim moaned and pulled my pillow over his head. I got out of bed as I answered. “Hey, Emily.”

“Where have you been?” she said, her voice both angry and distraught, with the emphasis on the latter.

“Sleeping. I turned my ringer off. I'm exhausted. Why, what's wrong?” My first thought was that, if the reviews had been hatchet jobs, we were all out of work.

“You don't know?”

“No, I don't know. What is it?”

“Ray's dead.”

If this were a movie, it would be one of those shots like in
Jaws
or
Vertigo,
when the camera zoomed in as it dollied back, conveying the protagonist's sudden disorientation. “What? Ray's
what
?”

“He's dead.” She drew out the word, giving it greater weight and meaning. It wasn't simply an announcement; it was a shifting of the world, her world,
my
world.

All I could think to say was, “What happened?”

“He went to sleep and just … died. I couldn't wake him up. He was cold, and stiff. I called 911, and they said he'd been dead for a couple of hours.” She dissolved into sobs, and all I could do was stare at the phone in my hand while it cried at me.

I promised Emily I'd go there as soon as I got showered and dressed; then I checked the other messages. Most were from the cast, a couple from theater reporters I knew casually, and a half dozen from Neil. He was the only one I called back.

“Matt,” he said with such evident relief that I wondered what exactly he thought I could do. “I've been trying to reach you all morning.”

“I turned off my ringer. I wanted to sleep in.”

“Are you sitting down?”

“Ray's girlfriend called me already.”

“It's awful. He went home, lay down, and died. Just like that.”

“Was it a tumor?”

“Fuck if I know, although that seems like a pretty good bet, doesn't it?”

“Yeah.” I remembered the way he'd rubbed his temples on the roof. My God, had I missed a crucial sign? If I'd called 911 then, would he still be alive? Was this all
my
fault? “I guess they'll do an autopsy, and we'll know.”

“It doesn't really matter, does it?”

“No, I guess it doesn't.”

“Listen, we're calling the cast together this afternoon for some announcements. Three o'clock.”

My stomach dropped even further. “Are we closing?”

“Have you read the reviews?”

“No. Are they terrible?”

He laughed, with real amusement. “Matt, we're the best thing since sunshine. Marion Davies didn't get reviews like this when Hearst owned the papers. No way we're closing down. But we can't just act like nothing's happened, either.”

“No, I guess not.”

“And would you mind asking Ray's girlfriend, Erica—”

“Emily.”

“Oh, that's right, Emily. Would you mind calling her and inviting her to come, too? I plan to let everyone say a little about what Ray meant to them, and it might do her good to hear it.”

“Sure.”

“And don't talk to the press; we'll take care of that. Everyone else in the show is already tweeting about it, so there's no point in asking you not to, but just try not to say anything about the future of the show.”

“Okay.”

“And, Matt? I know you and Ray had gotten close. I'm really sorry.”

“I'm sorry, too.”

I continued to stare at my phone after he hung up, as if it might spit out details that I craved but didn't dare ask. When it rang again I jumped, then turned it off and opened my laptop. I searched for reviews of the show.

A MAGICAL MOUNTAIN EVENING
was both the headline and the overall theme. “Like being right there in the Smokies,” one critic gushed, as if he'd ever been south of Baltimore. “Songs that will pierce your heart while they make your feet tap,” said another, a quote I hoped ended up on the CD cover.

Damn, Rayford,
I thought.
Your timing is exquisite.

I took a quick shower, then called Emily and told her about Neil's offer. She sounded numb, but she agreed to go with me.

As I rode the elevator down, it hit me all at once: Ray was
dead.
That smile, that goofy, stooped walk, that amazing musicianship, all were
gone.
Alone in that tiny metal box, I cried.

And I hated myself for my next thought, but there was no holding it back:
Now we'll never know what's buried in the chapel of ease.

*   *   *

I pushed the buzzer outside Emily's building in Hell's Kitchen and said, “Hey, it's me.” She let me in without a word.

When I got to her floor, the door was already open. Emily stood in the kitchen in a black dress that would've been sexy in almost any other context. As it was, she looked gaunt and willowy, like a twig in the winter.

She hugged me as soon as she saw me. “I'm not crying,” she said, as much to herself as to me. “I'm not.”

“It's okay if you need to.”

“No. I've got to make it through this without collapsing. Neil might want to hire me someday, and I don't want his most vivid memory of me to be sobbing with snot running down my face.”

I remembered my pledge to Ray to look after Emily; whatever his reason for making me promise it, I was now bound to my word. At least he seemed to be wrong about her, because she wasn't falling apart. “Do you have anything you can take?”

She shook her head. “I'll manage it, thanks.”

I looked around her slightly rumpled apartment. An overnight bag was open on the couch. “So you were at Ray's place last night?”

She nodded. “We were waiting for the reviews to show up online, and he went to lie down. I came to bed about an hour later, after reading the first couple. They were raves, I couldn't wait to share it with him.” She hiccuped a little, but maintained control. “Do you think he knows? I mean, wherever he is?”

I wanted to be comforting, but I didn't have it in me. “I don't know, Emily.”

“Well, I'm going to assume he does. And that he's proud. He's got a right to be, doesn't he?”

“He does. Are you ready?”

“No, but I've never let that stop me.”

Emily turned heads the whole way to the theater. I kept looking for the black-haired woman I'd spoken to after the show, but I don't know what I would've done if I'd seen her; my nagging, unshakable sense that she had something to do with Ray's death wouldn't go away. But that was crazy, right? Ray had been sick, and with Emily the whole time.

When we were about a block from the Armitage, a voice behind us said, “Excuse me. Muh-Mister Johansson?”

We stopped and turned. The dreadlocked girl stood demurely there, head down, her shoulders shaking. “I j-just wanted to say … how sorry I am to hear about … Ray Parrish. I know he was your friend, and—”

“Who the hell
are
you?” I asked, my temper going from zero to sixty almost at once. “Why the fuck have you been following Ray around?”

She burst into tears. “I'm so sorry, I am, I didn't mean any harm, I wasn't doing anything, I never spoke to him, just like she told me—”

“Like
who
told you?”

People stopped around us to watch the scene.

“I'm so sorry,” she said again, almost a wail. Then she turned and ran off. In moments she was lost in the crowd.

“Who was that?” Emily asked, eyes wide with surprise.

“Ray's stalker,” I said.

“Ray had a stalker?”

“Yeah.” The urge to chase her down was overwhelming, but my main duty at the moment was to Emily, and to the cast of the show.

“He never told me about it,” she said numbly. “Never mentioned a word.”

“He probably didn't want to worry you.” Then I took her hand and we resumed our walk.

Some of the cast waited outside, smoking and looking despondent. We nodded and muttered hellos as we entered. The lobby was empty, and I heard murmuring inside the auditorium.

Emily stopped. “Oh my God. There's a lot of people here.”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know why, but I didn't think of that. I'm the girlfriend, they'll all be watching me, to see if their stories make me cry. Won't they?”

That was Emily: the center of the universe even when it wasn't her funeral. If she'd been malicious about it, I would've hated her, but I knew there was a fair bet she was right. We were a bunch of actors, after all.

“We can leave if you want,” I said.

She stood up straight, put her shoulders back, and said, “No. Ray deserves this to be about him, not me. Right?”