Eye Contact (21 page)

“So,” says Neil, returning to the newspaper, flipping a page, “you guys drive safely, comfort Roxanne—and stay out of trouble.” He notices a new ad, another full-pager placed by Victor Uttley, heralding Professor Zarnik’s momentous discovery.

“Don’t worry,” David tells Neil, hefting both his own bag and Manning’s. “I’ll take good care of Mark.”

Grinning out of control, Manning wags his fingers at Neil, a wordless parting gesture. Then he opens the door for David, following him into the hallway and down an elevator to the garage.

Within minutes, the car with the two reporters swoops up the ramp to the expressway that will take them out of the city, heading north. Manning assumed they would have the road to themselves this early, so he’s surprised to discover that the traffic is heavy.

It’s another muggy day, and even at this hour, heat rises in waves from the pavement. David has dressed for the weather, wearing baggy black pleated shorts and a blue polo shirt. Manning also wears a polo shirt (his is yellow) with a comfortable old pair of chinos. They look like they might be on their way to a golf game.

With windows shut tight, the inside of the car is quiet and comfortable, easily cooled by the powerful engine, without the droning racket of gushing air that is typical of smaller cars. As the vehicle merges into the fast lane, quickly achieving highway speed, Manning and David sink deeper into their seats, responding to the force of acceleration. The unexpected journey, planned less than twelve hours ago, has truly begun. It feels good to get away. Manning’s grip on the wheel relaxes.

David tells him, “It’s going to be a long drive, Mark. Any time you want me to take the controls, just say the word.”

“I’ll let you know,” says Manning, though he has no intention of turning over the wheel.

There’s a pause. “So,” David says, “what’s all this about Roxanne?”

“All I know is what I told you on the phone last night. She’s up there on vacation with her boss, Carl Creighton, who happens to be her current love interest, and he’s been called away overnight. She’s got the idea that this has something to do with Zarnik. I assume she has no idea that I found a dossier on Carl among Cliff Nolan’s dirt files. In any event, she said she was scared, and she insisted on talking to me—
up there
—so off we go. You’re my chaperon, by the way.”

David is skeptical. “I thought I was your assistant.”

“Never mind.” Manning laughs. “It’s a long story, a family matter.” Which reminds Manning—“Is your uncle enjoying his visit?”

“Hector mostly enjoys grousing, but I know he’s having a great time. I’m glad Claire is here with him. She’s the one person who refuses to take him seriously.”

“Good for her. Has she found the city to her liking?”

David turns in his seat to face Manning. “Where there’s theater, Claire is happy. She’s wasted no time checking out the local scene, dropping in on rehearsals as well as attending performances. She likes what she’s found here.”

Manning looks over at David. “Miracles never cease—a New Yorker discovers the heartland.”

They ride in silence for a while. David stifles a yawn.

Manning asks him, “Didn’t sleep well last night?”

“I did, actually—thanks for putting me up. I’m just off-schedule, not much of a morning person. Way too much clubbing lately.”

“Feel free to snooze.”

“Thanks.” David experiments with the controls on the side of his seat, adjusting it till he is almost fully reclined. He sighs contentedly, spreading his legs—an enticing sight that momentarily diverts Manning’s eyes from the road.

Several minutes pass, and Manning realizes that he too feels drowsy. The car is too quiet. He asks David, “Mind if I play something?”

“Sweet.”

There are CDs loaded in the trunk, but Manning is tired of them—somehow they never get changed. So he switches on the radio. His favorite station is stored on button number one. The car fills with the sprightly strains of an early Beethoven piece. Name that tune, Manning tells himself—a challenge he’s imposed upon himself since high school. It’s the first piano concerto. Last movement. Piece of cake. He asks David, “Too loud?”

The kid laughs. “That’ll put me to
sleep.
”

A clock radio clicks on, blaring the final cadence of the Beethoven. “Good morning, friends.” The radio’s volume has been set far too high. An announcer shouts from the bedside table, “It’s seven o’clock in Chicago. Sorry to report, we’re in for another hot day, but cooler weather is due before the opening of this weekend’s festivities. …”

Beneath a heap of disheveled bedding, Victor Uttley groans. The sheets thrash. A leg appears. Then a lanky arm. Fingers grope for the radio. They find the dial.

“… ALREADY EIGHTY-NINE DEGREES AT O’HARE …”

Wrong way. The fingers race to counterspin the dial.

“… humidity’s a sticky ninety-six percent …”

Uttley’s head peers out from under a pillow, surveying the room, squinting at the window, confirming that Tuesday has dawned. He tosses back the covers, sits up in bed, swings his feet to the floor, plants his elbows on his knees, winces at the contact with his Rollerblading injury, and holds his head in his hands. His willowy naked body is hairless and smooth, devoid of muscle tone.

In an ashtray on the nightstand rests his silver cigarette holder. He stands, picks up the holder, loads it with one of the long imported cigarettes he bought yesterday, lights it, and inhales his first drag of the morning. With his free hand splayed on his hip, the other poised before his mouth, he savors the tobacco that has kept him so lean—that, and the fact that his dead-end career as an actor has until recently necessitated the lifestyle of a starving artist. That’s all changed, though, since the mayoral appointment. He’s now a cultural liaison, whatever that is, and he’s begun to enjoy some of the rewards of patronage. His pale body has even begun to sprout the curve of a belly, as though he may one day, months later, give birth to a volleyball. Victor Uttley smiles. Blue smoke whorls from the cracks of his ecru teeth.

He limps from the bedroom into the living room, headed for the kitchen. He’s lived in his new apartment for only a few weeks. Owing to his new position, it was time to move up, so he took the cue literally and signed a lease on these high-rise quarters. It’s a decent address, and he’s on the top floor, but the view isn’t much, dominated by another building across the street. The decorating is still sparse, and what old furniture he has is strictly thrift-shop. Leaning against a wall, not yet hung, are framed mementos—playbills, clippings, reviews—of his few acting triumphs. There’s a consensus that he’s able and talented enough onstage, but his height works against him. He was jilted a dozen years ago by a high-school sweetheart for the same reason; her head barely reached his shoulders.

In the kitchen, he fusses with a new machine, unboxed only yesterday, determined to enjoy a cup of real cappuccino. But he hasn’t read the instructions (badly translated from Italian into ten other languages, including Japanese), and the gizmo won’t froth. Uttley is growing frustrated—and a tad fearful that the damn thing might explode. The hell with it. He slams the cast-metal filter full of grounds into the sink, flicks his ashes into the drain, and draws a pot of water for his trusty Mr. Coffee.

While it brews, he traipses to the front door and cracks it open. Yes, the newspapers have arrived. He looks into the hall in both directions, opens the door wider, squats, and reaches over the threshold, wagging his butt. Got ’em. He shuts the door.

He places both papers—the
Journal
and its competitor, the tabloid
Post
—squarely, side by side, on the kitchen table. The front pages are predictable: hot-weather photos (kids opening hydrants, flesh on the beach), festival planning, Christian fundamentalists cooking up another protest. Uttley farts. He’s not interested in news. He’s looking for ads. He reaches, ready to riffle for them, but stops. This is important, a moment to relish. He’s being too hasty. He ought to at least put something
on.

He hobbles into the bedroom and flounces back wearing a luxurious dressing gown—not a plain old bathrobe, but a full-length dressing gown with wide quilted lapels. It’s frayed here and there, stained as well, but it’s gorgeous, it’s … him.

Uttley turns the first page of the
Journal.
Then the next, and the next. He keeps flipping pages till he sees it, the latest in his series of full-color tributes to Chicago’s hero of the hour. He leans close to scrutinize the tiny line of type at the bottom of the ad, making sure everything is spelled right. With a satisfied smile, he sets the
Journal
aside and sets to work on the
Post.
It doesn’t take him long to find the second Zarnik ad. God, they’re good. These will be framed, he decides. They will join the other scraps of newsprint on his wall of fame.

It’s all too exciting. Uttley is wired, and he hasn’t even had his coffee yet. He grabs the phone—a vintage baby-blue Princess with lighted rotary dial. He checks the time—there’s a Kit-Cat Klock, rhinestone-studded, basic black, swiping its tail against the kitchen wall. Barely a quarter past seven. Too early? Nah. He looks up a number, dials, then waits while the other phone rings. Twice. Three times. “Actors …” he mutters. An answering machine clicks in, and Victor hangs up.

He has another idea. Picking through a pile of office work he dumped on the counter last night, he plucks a message slip, returns to the table, snaps up the Princess, and dials. The other phone rings once. Someone answers, “City room.”

“I was phoning Mark Manning.” Uttley has no idea whether the reporter would be at his desk so early—journalists keep odd hours—but he thought he’d give it a shot.

“He hasn’t arrived yet. Is there someone else who can help you, or would you like to have his voice mail?”

“Voice mail, please.”

There’s a click, then Manning’s recorded message, then the beep.

Uttley says into the phone, “Good morning, Mr. Manning—
Mark
—this is Victor Uttley with the mayor’s office, returning your call. First off, a big thank-you to you and Neil for Saturday’s party—it was fabulous, and the digs are to-die. Second, I stopped by to see you yesterday because we really need to talk, relating to Zarnik. Seems we’re doomed to play phone tag. What else, alas, can I say? Except, of course, you’re ‘it.’ Ta, now.”

In a roadside shop near the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan, a couple of hundred miles north of Chicago, Mark Manning and David Bosch are taking a break from their long drive. Manning is surprised to see cherries displayed among the produce, since they’re not usually ripe till mid-July. Tasting one, he confirms that they’re still sour, but he takes a quart anyway—a trip to the peninsula would be incomplete without cherries. He sets the box on the checkout counter, where a grandfatherly clerk stands ready to compute the “damages.”

With the approach of the holiday, many people have chosen to book their summer vacation this week, which will be extended by a day. So there’s steady traffic on the highway in both directions, and the shop is busy this morning, swamped with motorists from Door County, the peninsula of touristy-but-still-quaint villages that juts northward like a craggy thumb between Green Bay and the lake.

David mingles easily with the younger clientele, engaged in an enthusiastic commentary on the variety of fudge. Saran-wrapped bricks of the homemade confection are piled in wooden barrels that bear hand-lettered labels:
Walnut, Macadamia, Chunky Cherry, Double Chocolate, White Chocolate,
and so on. David is torn, but opts for the plain variety,
Classic Country Kitchen,
choosing a one-pound block of it from the barrel. Manning extends a hand, telling David, “I’ll get it.”

David gives Manning the fudge. “Thanks, Mark.”

Manning hefts it in his palm. With a skeptical expression, he looks first at the fudge, then at David, whose body he studies with a gaze that travels from head to toe, returning to make contact with David’s eyes. Manning says, “Given your obvious investment in time at the gym, I’d think
this
stuff would be a no-no.”

“Sugar won’t kill me, or you,” says David. “It’s all the other crap—preservatives and additives—that can really screw you. An occasional calorie-bomb isn’t lethal, as long as you sweat it off later. But hey,” David aborts his nutrition lecture, clapping a hefty arm across Manning’s shoulder, “I hardly need to preach to
you
about diet. You’re as fit as they get.”

“For a doddering geezer,” Manning jokes, enjoying the flattery, fishing for more.

“Right,” says David, holding Manning’s shoulder at arm’s length, returning his up-and-down body check. “Some geezer.” Then he pulls Manning close for a side-to-side hug. It’s the kind of public jock-gesture at which David excels, totally at ease with this display of affection, in touch with his own physical nature.

Manning recognizes that David’s self-confidence, his gregarious manner, has been spawned by the attractiveness that was his luck of the draw from the gene pool. People want to be near him. Strangers readily offer a smile, hoping he will deign to return it. He has never had to think twice about approaching others with a question or a joke or a flirtation—they always respond, and he has never learned to fear rejection. Of
course
he exudes self-confidence, and that assurance has fed upon itself over the years, shaping a young man whose bodily charms have been honed by training and complemented by a quick intellect. He is truly a golden child, one in a million, whom the world will emulate, envy, and revere.

Why then, Manning wonders, has David been so reticent to deal more openly with his own sexuality? Can it be explained by a single factor so simple as a disapproving uncle? Surely not. Or is David now grappling with the same insecurities that Manning fought and conquered only two years ago? Manning has never known the open arms of the adoring world that David’s out-and-out beauty is heir to, but Manning has feared the exact same labels that David cannot fathom applied to himself. For the first time in his life, David is dealing with the fear of rejection, and for someone who has never,
ever
known that fear, the stakes are high indeed.