Even so, after this many years, even though Corey had to be different in a thousand ways, all Keith could see were the ways in which Corey was the same. The way his body moved when he walked, the way his feet rolled slightly out to the side, the way his shoulders always pitched slightly to the left. Keith remembered more things that he’ddone with Corey than with any of the friends he’d made as an adult. It was the days spent on groaning, smelly tour buses and in messy hotel rooms that he could still see the most clearly, the guys locked in to protect them from the hordes outside. They had been pretty well looked after for famous children, which meant that they had usually been alone with each other, a nearly decade-long sleepover, and Corey had been their collective little brother. So he’d gotten farted on the most and teased for not knowing what a blow job was, so what? So Shawn had hit him a few times. So Scotty had too. He was still the most talented one, despite everything, and no self-sabotage could take that away. Keith didn’t know where to put everything he felt about Corey—being around him made Keith feel sad and jealous and angry all at once, and that made talking hard, like there were six people living inside his body and each of them fighting over who got to control his mouth.
“How’s your cabin?” Keith asked. They wouldn’t have been friends now or at any point in the last decades—Keith couldn’t imagine where their lives would have overlapped if not at the beginning. Keith took a breath and reminded himself of something Dr. Robert told him—if Corey didn’t need them at all, he wouldn’t be there. Corey wasn’t in charge of how Keith felt about himself. That was what they’d been working on, and sometimes Keith even believed it, but standing right in front of Corey, it was harder to remember. By coming on the cruise, Keith was helping Scotty pay his rent, he was helping Terrence not bleed to death from his divorce, he was helping Shawn build pizzerias, he was helping Corey pay publicists and acting coaches and paparazzi to show up outside the gym. They were all worth more money together, that was the truth. Whether the money was worth it, Keith was still trying to figure that out.
“We have to get a nicer boat,” Corey started. “I always forget what a fucking dump this is. It’s like a Marriott on the ocean.”
“Talk to Bobby, who knows,” Keith said. His cheeks felt hot. They rounded the corner to the common room with the pool. He wanted to push Corey off the ship and watch him vanish into the foam, but then he felt bad for feeling that way too.
“Here we are,” Corey said. “Thanks, Mom.” He winked at Keith and then fist-bumped Scotty, who was hovering in the greenroom doorway, half a chicken wing sticking out of his mouth. Corey slid by him without looking back.
“You look tired,” Scotty said, pulling the chicken wing out from between his teeth. “See your brother?”
Keith shook his head. “Thanks. And no.”
Scotty shrugged. “I have a great cream for your eye bags, if you want some.”
Keith touched his face. “Sure, I guess so.”
Scotty nodded quickly, excited now, and scurried back to his room, waving the chicken bones. “Be right back!” There was always something about Keith for someone to fix.
9
Thursday, 7:43 p.m.
Deck 3
Backstage at the Broadway Theater was the same as at most landlocked theaters, only smaller. The stage had a proscenium and a full, heavy curtain and all the ropes and levers and lights that one might possibly need. Sarah had done theater tech in high school, and so a part of her did still thrill at being backstage in a proper theater as opposed to a sticky-floored rock club. The Quiz Show was the heaviest lift for the production team because it was always first and involved props and audience participation. Sarah and her team picked people in advance—a couple of first-time cruisers, some all-timers, some old, some young. Diversity was important because otherwise people complained. The women would be called up one at a time once they brought the guys out. Everyone was waiting backstage, huddled together stage left, though Shawn and Scotty had found enough floor space to have a brief push-up competition, which Shawn would win because he always won. Sarah herself could do a decent number of push-ups, and she’d been forced to count off against Shawn more than once, her arms rubbery and sore for days. She was pretty sure that’s why they kept her around.
Tyler hovered behind Sarah’s shoulder, texting on his phone. He giggled, and Sarah glared at him, but it was unsatisfying to glare at someone who wasn’t looking at you.
“Tyler,” Sarah said, thinking of a task as it came out of her mouth. “Go make sure all the props are ready on the other side of the theater.” She pointed, and he hurried to tuck his phone back in his pocket and follow her finger.
A woman who did the weather at a local station in Miami was hosting, which meant she had to battle Shawn for control of the quiz. “Sending the weather girl out,” Sarah said into her headset and then nodded at said weather girl, who looked terrified in her white denim flares. She strode out onto the stage, and the Talkers screamed. There was so much screaming at the beginning, though it did dissipate over the course of the cruise. It was never entirely gone, of course, that would have been a disaster, but at a certain point, most Talkers came around to the fact that these men were going to be there the next day, and the day after, and that maybe they didn’t have to lose their voices. At this point, the guests had only seen the guys at the sail-away party, which wasn’t much, about an hour of smiling and waving. This was the first time the guys would speak into microphones, actually utter complete sentences—freshsentences,candidsentences, things that the Talkers could hold on to forever, things that had just been saidstraight to them. Sarah waited until the crowd quieted down, and the weather girl turned to her from the stage, expectant. She had a stack of note cards in her hand with everything she needed to say, but she and the Talkers held their breath, waiting for what came next. No one was there for a weather girl.
The guys got introduced in the same order every time. In their youth, there might have been more jockeying, more bruised egos, but nowadays, the lineup was clear, and they all seemed pretty clearheaded about it. Terrence was the least popular, objectively the strangest, withhis ponytail and long, skinny legs. Scotty was the second least popular, not only because he was gay, though Sarah could have offered a treatise on how Scotty’s forced concealment of his sexuality as a youth and young man forced him to retreat, which in turn led to his lack of popularity, but just because she had studied queer theory in college didn’t mean that it was up to her. That was when things got trickier. Keith was third, Corey was fourth, then Shawn went last, which made sense, because Shawn immediately took over hosting duties from whatever poor sap had been roped into doing it.
Sarah nodded at the weather girl, who glanced down at her first note card and began to introduce Terrence. He pulled his ponytail tight and slapped his hands together. Sarah hated Terrence. One of the best things about the Boy Talk ship was its lack of men. As the person in charge of the safety and well-keeping of nearly three thousand women, a lack of men objectively made her job easier. Terrence was, for Sarah’s money, the creepiest dude on the ship, which was good, because everyone knew who he was, and his wife was there, so the odds of him getting into trouble were small.
“May the best boys win,” he said, winked, and headed onto the stage.
Sarah beckoned to Scotty, who hopped up from the floor and high-fived her with a dirty palm. Keith shifted from foot to foot, waiting for his turn. Corey was on his phone with one earbud in, and Sarah heard him say, “Listen, listen, I have to go.” He tipped his face down as whoever he was talking to said goodbye, giving himself a temporary double chin. Even that looked good on him. Shawn did two more push-ups and slowly stood up, clapping Sarah and Corey on the shoulders and giving a tight squeeze. A sulfuric smell wafted through the air, and Scotty shrugged, apologetic.
“Go on, Scotty,” Sarah said. He trotted out, waving with bothhands. The crowd roared politely and then quieted quickly, ready for more. Shawn reached over and plucked some fluff off Keith’s T-shirt. He was always picking. “Go on, Keith,” Sarah said. Keith smiled at her and walked out. The Talkers screamed louder, which made Sarah happy—they loved him too.
Sarah turned to Corey. “Ready?”
He jogged in place like a boxer. “Born ready.”
“Go on, Corey,” Sarah said. She had lists in her head of what each man liked and disliked, the questions they hated, the ways in which they did or did not want to be perceived by the fans. Corey liked green tea and fresh fruit and vodka in his cabin. He used the ship gym at dawn, before any of the Talkers were awake, curling his body on the sit-up machine like a slightly dangerous, hunky shrimp. Corey licked his lips and sauntered onto the stage, and Sarah could hear it—everyone in the crowd was on their feet.
Shawn crossed his arms over his chest, then pointed toward the sound. “You don’t get that when you’re a movie star. You don’t get that. You can’t hear people watch your movies. You don’t get to see their faces. I’d bet you a million dollars, when he jerks off, that is what he’s thinking about.” Shawn rolled his eyes. “Sorry. I was there when he lost his virginity, you know? That shit imprints on you.”
“It’s okay,” Sarah said, though what did that mean? That was gross. Not that she could really judge. She had once told Shawn, on the last night of a previous cruise, that his wife had been her first childhood crush and was how she discovered that she was attracted to women, to which he’d replied, grinning, “Me too!” His wife, Stacy Cooper, had played an old-timey pioneer girl on a long-running television show, and Sarah could close her eyes and picture little Stacy and her pet dog running away across the prairie, her blond hair streaming behind her, her white bloomers and dirty leather boots visible as she held up thebottom of her calico dress. Shawn and Stacy had met again as divorced adults at an ’80s fan convention in Hartford, Connecticut, which sounded dingy but also made sense. Who else could understand what it felt like to have strangers project their love onto you? Even Sarah was guilty of it and had blushed when she met Stacy for the first time, thinking about those bloomers.
The screams had settled down, which meant it was time for Shawn. He saluted Sarah and then marched to the entrance, hand still at his forehead, his eyes hidden by dark sunglasses. Shawn vanished onto the front of the stage, and the screams got loud again, so loud that Sarah knew he had already pulled up his shirt to show the crowd his abdominal muscles. From where she was standing, Sarah could only see the weather girl, eyes wide, clearly understanding how little control she had over the whole enterprise. In that way, maybe it was just like reporting the weather.
Sarah’s walkie-talkie crackled. DJ Pancake was having trouble with his setup on the lido deck—they were missing some important cord.
“Tyler,” Sarah said into her walkie. “Go help Pancake.” His response crackled back, and then Sarah took a few steps closer to the stage and peered past the curtain. The fans who’d been chosen were giddy, dancing and mugging for the guys and each other. It was working, it was all working. Sarah turned around to walk away and saw the bearded guy, Jonathan, hovering by the door back out to the front of the house. His hair was in a ponytail, his beard too, like a father who’d been playing dress-up with a young child and had just submitted to their will. He was staring into his phone intently, tapping away with his thumbs. Sarah had encountered men like that before—hippie on the outside, cold, hard businessman on the inside. It meant big things, or bad things, depending on one’s point of view on capitalism. Jonathan looked up at Tyler as the kid hurried past him, raising an eyebrow. Tyler hoisted up his enormous pants slightly as he crossed thethreshold of the theater, like Cinderella running out of the ball. There was nothing good about this boy, nothing.
