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Jones turned out to be Method but Conrad supposed that was to be expected, or at least tolerated. One had to expect that sort of thing, when one slept with actors. It was just vaguely annoying, on account of his character, Augie, being stridently heterosexual.
“You did write me that way, after all,” was what Jones said, in an infuriatingly calm monotone, and Conrad had to admit that Yes, he had. One mostly wrote stridently heterosexual protagonists in those days. One wanted to stay employed, after all. In different circumstances Conrad might have made this point, but he wasn’t really listening because he was pulling Jones forward by the collar — Jones happened to be looking positively dashing in a disheveled, fatherly kind of way. That damned camera around his neck. Red dust on his shirt. Conrad got a hand in the fabric and pulled.
Well of course Jones resisted, and said But I’m a married man, Conrad. Which was a source of some confusion until Conrad had finally gathered that Jones was in character, the bloody tease. Some argument on the subject, of course; Jones victorious.
“You’re a widower,” had been Conrad’s argument.
“A very recent widower,” Jones’s retort. “Allow me a period of grieving.” He looked affronted.
Jesus fucking Christ, Conrad said, or something equally blasphemous. More words on the subject followed, most of them of the four letter variety, although none of them advancing of the plot. Jones was determined. Biggest role of my career, he said. I want to do it right.
Conrad supposed he should have been flattered. He might have been, if he hadn’t been naked — he had expected a livelier afternoon. He hadn’t known that Jones subscribed to the Method acting philosophy, nor that rehearsals had begun in earnest. Even the camera slung around Jones’s neck had only suggested a quaint and vaguely romantic allusion to an earlier tryst. But he had misread the gesture; Jones was Acting. He was a Widower, and he was Straight, and he was Not Interested in sex with Conrad.
Conrad reluctantly dressed, and they passed the afternoon together anyway — speaking mainly about politics, and the latest news out of Russia, and the possibility of life beyond Earth.
Jones did break character once. He said, at some point, Oh fuck. And then had to leave. It might have been after Conrad slipped a hand past the khaki waistband of his pants — or possibly soon after — Conrad had lost track, in the heat of the thing.
—
The affair had been clandestine. One wanted to remain employed. It was an affair conducted in faraway houses, under false names in back-street hotels, in closets and behind doors. Long periods where they didn’t see each other, and then whole weeks holed up together, alone. Conrad writing and Jones reading — sleeping in the same bed — fucking. Keeping the windows shut and the curtains drawn. It got hot.
When somebody picked up the play they went out to celebrate. Brought a couple of the girls to keep it looking above board. Conrad bought a bottle of the 1940 Chateau Pichon and Jones tried to pretend he liked it better than the cheap stuff. He was a good actor, but Conrad knew his face too well, even then.
“You don’t have to like it,” Conrad laughed. “Give it to her—” One of the girls looking at the glass hungrily.
“I’m not a sophisticate,” Jones said sadly, passing it off.
“I don’t want you to be,” Conrad said, and squeezed his knee under the table. But the wine was fucking phenomenal.
They bar-hopped, picking up more people as they went — theater types that Jones knew in town, writers that Conrad could cajole out of their apartments. The mood was ebullient and wild, wilder as the night wore on, and more and more loose, as well — Conrad’s arm resting around Jones’s shoulders for longer, their heads closer.
Mercedes Ford joined them at the Rose, where they were all of them already pleasantly drunk. The place was full, bursting at the seams, but Mercedes always managed to part a crowd, Moses-like. Conrad watched her come in, and thought: there’s my Midge. When she smiled at him across the room, it was like she already knew what he was going to ask.
Jones was holding court. Million-watt smile and a voice like velvet. Conrad loved him so much. He was so happy, and he was fucking drunk, and he already loved this man so much that it frightened him, kept him awake at night.
“Careful,” Mercedes said sotto voce, from behind him. She slipped an arm through Conrad’s, sliding into place at his left, tits pressing into his arm. Conrad glanced at her, then followed her eyes. There was a policeman at the bar; Conrad took his arm off Jones’s shoulders.
One wanted to remain employed. One wanted to stay out of prison.
—
The play was really very good, although Conrad never said it himself, only wheedled it out of every critic and producer he happened to meet. He was proud of it, but he also liked watching it; he had found in the past that these two things did not have to be true at the same time. He liked watching the characters fall into place over the first thirty minutes, and he still loved the surprise of the alien. He loved hearing the audience gasp. Once, somebody fainted.
Not everybody liked it. “I don’t understand this play,” he heard a skinny wisp of a socialite say at one show, twenty minutes after the intermission. Her date leaned over and said “It’s modern art, darling. We’re not meant to understand it.” Conrad, sitting directly behind them, rolled his eyes. People wanted everything spoon-fed to them these days. He’d thought he was being generous; it wasn’t exactly Beckett.
Jones was excellent. Perhaps there was something to Method acting after all. He always commanded a room; on stage, he commanded a theater. Conrad loved watching this. He loved watching Jones move to the front of the stage with that slow, ponderous walk of true ownership. He loved watching the audience watch him, track his movements, follow his eyeline. He loved watching people want him.
He did not love watching Jones flirt with Mercedes.
—
They’d got Schubert Green to direct — a get, somebody had told him. Green was an arrogant ass, but good at his job. Bad with women, he’d heard. Conrad didn’t know what that meant exactly, except that Jones had implied Green would be pulling overnights at the theater sometimes, when his wife didn’t want him at home.
He’d leaned on them to cast Jones but he didn’t have to lean too hard. Jones auditioned well, like he already had for Conrad. (Without the sex.)
They already wanted to cast Mercedes, he never said a word. He’d known she’d be perfect. He’d watched them build out his script, character by character, and Jones had started reading his own words back to him in the shower, learning his lines. Conrad’s heart was singing the whole time. His words, in Jones's mouth.
—
One night, a couple of weeks into the run, he slipped into Jones’s dressing room just before curtain.
“Thought I’d find you here,” he said from Jones’s chair when Jones himself came in.
Jones raised an eyebrow. “In my dressing room,” he remarked, and slid the camera off his neck. “A brilliant deduction.”
“You were marvelous, darling.”
Jones smiled. “Thank you. You made it easy.”
“Missed your cue in the second act, though.”
“No,” Jones said. “It’s better that way. That moment needs a beat.”
“Darling — if it needed a beat, I would have written.” He left a beat, for dramatic effect. “A beat.”
“Mr. Earp. It needed the beat. I gave it — “ Jones held his gaze. Dragged the pause out long and sultry. “A beat.”
It was Conrad’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Is this your idea of flirting, Hall? Rewriting my script?”
Jones turned away. “I’m a married man, sir.”
“Oh Jesus — “ Conrad groaned, closing his eyes and throwing his arms up in frustration. “You’re widowed.” Then he reconsidered. “You’re not even widowed! Augie is widowed! Jones — be yourself, for God’s sake. I’m dying.”
“You’re barking around the wrong bush, sir,” Jones said. He was wiping his face, removing the worst of the stage makeup.
“Tree,” Conrad corrected. “And it’s the right tree, and I’m barking up it. For heaven’s sake, I climbed you like a tree three weeks ago! And I’d like to do it again, if you don’t mind. Sooner rather than later.”
“That didn’t make any sense, sir.” Jones hadn’t looked at him since he’d turned away, but he did break character very slightly now. “You wrote him straight, Conrad. I need to play him right — I want to do him justice. He's an excellent character.”
“Well, I didn’t realize — “ Conrad suddenly had a thought. “But I didn’t write him straight.”
Jones finally looked up, meeting his eye in the mirror. “What?”
Conrad straightened in Jones’s chair. “I didn’t write him straight. He isn’t straight.”
Jones turned and squinted back at him. “But I was married,” he said slowly. “To a woman,” he clarified, as if it wouldn’t be illegal to do otherwise.
“Yes,” Conrad agreed, standing up. “Sure, you were married.” He moved closer. “And you loved her, too.”
Jones nodded, watching him. “And I’m attracted to Midge,” he said. But he said it like he was willing to be dissuaded.
“Sure,” Conrad said, nodding. “No, sure. You’re attracted to Midge. She's a beautiful lady.” Jones was still watching him, eyes narrow and keen. “All the same,” he said, and reached out, touching the very top button of Jones’s shirt. That red dirt, smudged across the collar. He brushed some off, feeling it gritty on his fingertips. “All the same,” he repeated, more softly.
Jones leaned in, almost imperceptibly. But he leaned in. When he said, “So, I’m not straight?” he asked it too quietly to be anything but a murmur.
“No,” Conrad said. Beat. “You're bisexual.” Then he smiled, because Jones already was.
“You know,” Jones said thoughtfully, his gaze hungry and intent. “I thought he might be.” Jones put his thumb on Conrad’s bottom lip, very gently. “And who am I to argue with a script.”