“Like, he’s a doctoranda fitness trainer?” Tom said, trying to sidestep over to the makeup table.
“Not a doctor, no, he’s not captive to western pharmaceutical interests,” Boyd said earnestly. “He teaches your body to protect itself from toxins using natural feedback. Like, if you’re dehydrated and bloating, you use frog venom to restore the balance.” Boyd lifted his loose T-shirt up to display a trio of round, angry-looking welts like cigarette burns along his collarbone. “You do get frog face for like twenty-four hours after he applies the venom, but after that, all the water weight is—boom—gone.”
“Uhhh,” said Tom, looking around for someone to handle this imminent risk to the production’s headliner. Boyd was a nice man, really, but so naive and credulous that it was a wonderno celebrity cult had scooped him up yet, and Tom was in no position to provide a good example before he got his own life sorted out. “Ximena, Boyd’s burning himself with frog juice. Should he be doing that?”
“Oh, baby, no,” Ximena said, catching on to Tom’s imploring look and sweeping over to put her arm around Boyd’s massive shoulders. Ximena was tall, Tom’s height, with her black hair freshly styled into a spiky pixie cut and delicate gold hoops crowding her earlobes. “No frog venom. Have you tried drinking actual water? I’ll get you some.”
She pushed Boyd back toward the makeup artist, who sat him down to work on his foundation. Boyd’s skin wasn’t great—theater pancake would do that, but so would anabolic steroids, which he’d offered Tom before. If he wanted health advice, Tom’s position was that no role was worth shrinking his balls or puffing into “frog face.”
Ximena frowned and looked at her watch as they waited for Boyd to be made pretty.
“I was hoping to get out of here by eleven,” she complained. “Lú wanted to tour another school during her lunch hour.” Ximena’s wife Luísa was a partner at a fancy white-shoe law firm and the child of Broadway producers; the dirty secret of this industry was that people mostly managed to stay in it via someone else’s money.
“Preschool? Already?” Tom asked. Ximena wasn’t even due till May.
“Preschool. This town is insane,” Ximena said, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Lú was applying to day cares while my feet were still in stirrups at the fertility clinic.”
They both fidgeted impatiently through makeup, but at last the photographer came over to tell them where to stand for light check.
“Why am I in Boyd’s lap again?” Tom complained when he got his own assignment. It didn’t make thematic sense in the context of the already incoherent play, but this was the third photo call since the hurricane to explore the visual concept of “Tom and Boydloveto cuddle.”Vanity Fair Mexicohad draped Tom across Boyd’s naked, greased-up chest with instructions to simper when it had been Tom who’d hauledBoyd’slunatic ass out of a drainage ditch!
It was a bait and switch. Tom didn’t even appear until the second act, his onstage romance with Boyd was nothing but misdirection, and their offstage relationship was nothing like the fangirls imagined.
“Because our friends outside love the idea that you call him ‘Daddy,’ ” Ximena answered, nodding her chin at the crowd on the other side of the windows, although the question had been hypothetical at best.
“It’s part of our brand now,” Boyd agreed.
Tom was a little queasy at the idea that he was a part of Boyd’s brand, much less a part that masses of strangers found sexually titillating.
“We should switch things up,” Tom said. “Ximena’s the oldest. Get in her lap and I’ll stand behind you both.”
Ximena shot Tom a dirty look, but hey, their characters got married in the last scene, this was her cross to bear.
Boyd shook his head. “Daddyisn’t about age,” he rumbled in his bass voice.
“Daddyis a vibe,” Ximena agreed, crossing her legs and inspecting her manicure. “Get in his lap, baby bear.”
“I can do the daddy vibe,” Tom muttered darkly. If Rosie had arrived at his door looking for a guy who could swing a hammer, that was the vibe heneededto project. But nonetheless he took his assigned perch between Boyd’s spread knees, wrapping the other man’s arm around his waist and tilting his head to find his light. The girls outside went berserk, cheering and banging on the windows so hard Tom was afraid they’d break the glass. Boyd shot them a tolerant smile and patted Tom’s stomach consolingly.
“Hey, do you have some time to look at the script revisions? It looks like they want to take my character in a different direction, but I want to make sure I understand the deeper implications,” Boyd said as the photographer’s assistant took some test shots.
“Ooh, I’d love to,” Tom lied. He was sure there was nothing deep to be found. The story was bananapants fluff tied together with a few clever anachronisms. “But I’m actually heading out of town, and I probably won’t be back till rehearsals start.”
“Are you pursuing other artistic endeavors?” Boyd asked in his recitative way.
“No, my, ah, Rosie asked me to go spend some time with her out on Martha’s Vineyard. We’re going to replace the roof on her aunt’s B and B.” The idea of it was so new and precious that it felt like jinxing it to speak it out loud. But he couldn’t stop an uncertain, giddy smile from spreading across his face, much to the photographer’s dismay.
“Whoa, whoa,” said Ximena. “Your ex? She finally called you back?”
“Yep,” Tom confirmed, forcing himself to nonchalance and then, at the photographer’s gesture, a wide-eyed pout. No, this was really happening. He could tell the world. “We’re, well, I guess we’re going to see if we can work things out.”
“Wow,” said Ximena. “That’s pretty sudden, isn’t it?”
“Congratulations,” Boyd said, slapping him on the shoulder with his free hand. “That’s fantastic. Happy for you. Love to hear it.”
Ximena’s expression was more skeptical. “I thought you guys hadn’t spoken in years.”
“Not until last night. She just got my message, I guess? And she’s finally open to getting back together.”
