Laurieturned on him.He was half naked, breathless, but suddenly eightfeet tall.He looked down from this height on Brett, on theassistants, on Nicole Delgado, elbowing her way forward in ascarlet sheet, her face avid, suddenly ugly.“Shut up, all of you.Be quiet and stay still.”
Theyobeyed him.Laurie didn’t know why and didn’t care.Even Brett’sunstoppable mouth was silenced.That would do.Laurie gave histracksuit bottoms a hitch to keep them in place, folded his armsacross his chest and slowly went into the lounge.
Baileywas curled up neatly on one of the white leather sofas.In a lastgesture of obedience to Brett, he had been to makeup on time afterall, and was dressed and ready for his next scene.He was washed,combed and perfect, tidier than Laurie had ever seen him, exceptfor the needle in his arm.
He hadvomited.The stain of it was like a cry thrown out across the palecarpet’s purity, more eloquent than blood.It stank.The shell ofthe creature called Laurie Fitzroy would have recoiled in disgust,and not all the roles, the heroes and villains he’d absorbed in hislife could have stopped him.The only difference was that Lauriehad lived with and loved a good man.He knew what Sasha woulddo.
He kneltat Bailey’s side.Sasha had insisted, when they had started takingholidays off the beaten track, that they both learned first aid,and first Laurie checked Bailey’s wrists and throat for a pulse.Gently he drew down his jaw, far enough to be sure that whateverwas killing him was in his veins, not choking him.He gesturedblindly to the blurred row of faces until someone steppedforward—not Brett, of course; not Nicole Delgado, but one of thelean-muscled cameramen.“Help me lift him down.Lie him flat.Hassomebody called 911?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody call 911!” Laurie took holdof Bailey’s shoulders.The cameraman hoisted him under the kneesand together they eased him down awkwardly onto the floor.Thecameraman’s face was kind.With a glance he offered to take on theCPR, but Laurie had to do it—this one thing.He cleared the tracesof vomit from Bailey’s mouth with his bare hand.
Lauriebreathed for him.He compressed his frail chest, bony beneath itscostume shirt, and then he breathed for him again.He did thisuntil sirens began to wail in the distance, and he was quitecertain that Bailey was dead beneath his hands.Then he gatheredthe wasted body up into his arms, hid his face and wept.
Chapter Twenty
It waslate when Sasha's phone rang, the last glow almost gone from thesky.He picked up, said his lover's name, and then justlistened.
Strange, that a satellite could take up into itself and thenconvey such a silence.Curled up in the window seat, the arch thatlooked out over the pool and the burnished hills, Sasha cradled thephone to his ear.He didn't watch a lot of TV, just Laurie'sfavourite shows and the political news channels he needed for hiswork.It had been Mrs Alvarez's shriek of anguish that had broughthim running.She liked the set on in the kitchen while she cooked,and NBC had interrupted a game show with the breaking news.She wasa staid, stolid lady, not obviously one to grieve for a teen actor.Sasha had made her sit down and, when she had stoppedrepeatingpobre muchacho, pobremuchacho, drink a glass of icedwater.
Poor boy.Laurie hadn't said muchabout Bailey either, but Sasha had gathered that the kid had beenthe only one to show him any kindness.Laurie had never come upagainst death until Sir William's heart attack two years before,and he'd shoved that to a frantic good-riddance distance and keptit there.Sasha listened to the silence again.He was certainLaurie was still on the line—coldly terrified that he wasn'ttalking.He smoothed the fear out of his voice.“You liked Bailey,didn't you?He was your friend.”
An odd sound came down the line.It was one broken-offsyllable.Sasha, who had known and loved this man from first sight,as if there had always been a Laurie-shaped emptiness inside him,read the noise clearly.Oh, not enough ofa friend.I couldn't help him.
Sashatook the phone from his ear for a moment, trying to think.He'dwanted Laurie to fight off this demon on his own terms, but he wasgrowing afraid that it was too late.“They said on the news thatone of his fellow actors found him, tried to revive him.I thinkthat was you.So now you're distraught, and you've had a lot todrink, or...a lot of something.”He paused, long enough for hopesof an angry denial to fade.“All right.Are you safe?”
Anothersound.Faint but affirmative, rocked by a sob.Sasha nodded,caressed the mobile handset with his thumb as if Laurie could feelit.“You're on the set?People around you?Not hanging upside downfrom a cactus in the desert somewhere?”He waited.He hadn't raiseda laugh, but the inbreath and short moan would do.“I want you tolisten.Some people can drink and get stoned.It's fun for them, orit's anaesthetic when they're hurt, and...it's not a big deal.You're not one of those people, Laurie.”
Adistinct sob this time.Sasha would have backed off if he could.“If I don't say this now I never will.Your dad was an alcoholic,and I love Marielle but I know there isn't a prescription pill inthis world she wouldn’t try.You can have a few drinks when you'reout with me—I think you can, anyway—but anything more than that,anything else...Not you, ves'tacha.You can't touch that stuff.You can't touch it.”
Theycould sit shoulder to shoulder in a twilit silence for hours, heand Laurie.Sasha closed his eyes.He pretended that the warm stonehe was leaning on was flesh.Not another sound came down the line,not so much as a breath, but he knew that somewhere under desertstars—right here, if he imagined it strongly enough—Laurie hadheard him.“Okay,” he said softly, when almost five minutes of warmnight breeze and cicada-chirr had washed over his skin.“Okay,listening again?Tomorrow, when you're stone-cold sober, you get inyour car, drive to the airport and come home.Or I can come toyou.”
The linecrackled.“No.Stay there.Stay there.Stay there.”
Sashabit back a cry.What the hell was this monomania of Laurie's, thatcould squeeze words out of him when even love and death had triedand failed?“Stop it.Just stop this.”His voice shook.“Thereisn't a flight I can get till tomorrow afternoon.But if I don'thear from you—if you don't come...”
“No.You stay there.I don't want you.”
The linewent dead.
Sashadrew up his knees to his chest.After a moment he put the phonedown.He misjudged the edge of the window ledge and the handsetclattered to the floor, its casing flying open, battery leapingout.He looked it it—three useless bits on the floor, easilyrejoined, restored to purpose.
He letthem be.He leaned his brow on the window's arch, which was juststone again now.A huge moon had risen, fat and full.Itsalchemical light turned the buildings around him to gold, thepool's dark water to a shifting liquid bronze.There by thepoolside stood Mateo—sculpted in moonlight, hands in his pockets,immortal and ordinary as day.He was looking up at Sasha's window.Mateo smiled, and uncertainly raised one hand.
***
“You had it all, back in England, didn't you?”
Laurielooked up.That was an effort, with a big numb rock lyingdeadweight in his skull, and he wasn't interested in the question.He did wonder who was asking it, though.Possibilities suggestedthemselves.Not Sasha.Sasha was a cut-off line, a silence whenLaurie had tried to call him back.He let the phone go.Briefly itsscreen lit up the darkness behind Bailey's trailer.A fence ofpolice tape was pegged into the sand all around: Laurie had crawledunder it awkwardly, bottle in hand, to get here.Now there wassomeone else.Not Sasha.
NotBailey, obviously.
Lauriewas being a bad host.“What did I have?”he asked obligingly,playing for time while he struggled to fit a name to the voice.“Would you like a drink, by the way?”
“What have you got?”
Laurieheld the bottle out to the stranger, who had come to sit beside himon the ground.“Tequila.Bailey said I should help myself from hisfridge.”
