Day 8

Danny walked back to his original seat and was soon joined by Jeremy, who was excitedly debating whether to try out for Romeo or Mercutio. He nattered on for several minutes before noticing that Danny was sitting glum and silent with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Which do you think I should try out for?" Jeremy asked, cocking his head to one side.

"That would depend," Danny smiled at him, the adorably cocked head lifting his spirits, "on whether you want to kill me or be killed by me."

"How so?"

"Please don't tell anybody about this," Danny whispered confidentially, "But Mr. Oland wants me to play Tybalt. And if I don't, my Aunt Claudia might renege on her promise to pay for the costumes."

"But that's great!" Jeremy enthused, "I wish I had an aunt who would guarantee me a role."

"Your talent guarantees you a role, Jeremy," Danny told him earnestly, "But everyone knows I couldn't act my way out of a wet paper bag, and that I'll be playing Tybalt because I'm a Vandervere."

"Wet paper bag," Jeremy snickered at the phrase, "But I can coach you, nobody will care that you got the role because of your name, once you show them you really can act."

"We'll be coaching each-other, then," Danny smiled fondly at Jeremy and stroked the back of his hand, "I'm to teach Mercutio and Romeo how to fence for the sword-fight scenes."

"That'll be fun," Jeremy said with a certain lack of enthusiasm; he was not an athlete and found strenuous physical activity boring, "So, which role do you think I should audition for?"

"You'd be wonderful in either," Danny said thoughtfully, "but I think I'd rather see you as Mercutio. He's not onstage as much, but he's so different from your own personality; Romeo wouldn't be enough of a stretch. And you'd have to kiss Felicia, which I don't think you'd like."

"Is she that bad of a kisser?" Jeremy looked alarmed.

"No, she's a fantastic kisser. She might turn you straight, and then what would I do?" Danny poked him playfully under the ribs where he was ticklish.

"Stop, someone will see!" he whispered, giggling.

"So what if they see?" Danny was often mystified by Jeremy's unwillingness to be public about their relationship. But Danny was a Vandervere, and had never been teased or bullied by a classmate in his entire life, so had little understanding of the risk most gay kids run by being obvious in high school.

"People! People!" Mr. Oland drew the club's attention again, this time to lead them in a discussion of lighting techniques, giving them examples of different moods, different colors for different actors, and how to use the lightboard. Though the actors would prefer to just act, and the crew would prefer to just deal with the stage, Mr. Oland believed that any denizen of the theatre should know about every aspect of a dramatic production: actors must know about stagecraft and crew should know how to act. Danny of course preferred the technical lectures, and was always embarrassed when he had to take part in dramatic exercises and improvisations; Jeremy found the discussion of lights pointless and tuned out, spending the whole hour thinking over what Danny had told him about playing Mercutio.

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As usual after drama club, Jeremy and Danny spent the afternoon together, ostensibly to study but mostly just to be together for a little while without their peers watching them. Jeremy's parents were very strict about their son's time and didn't like for him to go out after school; if it was anybody less than Danny Vandervere asking permission for Jeremy to stay out late on a Thursday afternoon, they would have refused -- but one doesn't refuse a Vandervere. So awed were they by a Vandervere taking interest in their son, they probably would have even approved of them dating.

Vandervere High School sits on the edge of the old town, at the intersection of three main roads: Pine Street, which bisects the old town through the square; Lake Road, which leads not very surprisingly to Lake Augusta, a manmade body of water created by damming the Augusta River for electricity, which was surrounded by recreational facilities and a resort hotel, and on the western shore of which Danny's family home stood; and Watertown Road, which led to the Vandervere Mills' springwater bottling plant and a subdivision of homes that had been built in the eighties to accomodate the new plant's employees.

There was an electric streetcar system that ran along these roads, connecting the old town to the subdivisions and the mills and plants, built in the 30s and maintained as a free service by the Vandervere Trust; but Danny and Jeremy walked, since Pine Street was only a little over a mile long, and their destination was at the other end from the high school: the original Vandervere Mansion, a monstrous Gothic-and-gingerbread fantasia bristling with turrets and dormers, gables and cupolas and oriels, in which dwelt Miss Mathilda, Miss Myrtle, and Miss Maude Vandervere, collectively know as the Aunt Ems.

These three unmarried and slightly eccentric old ladies, the sisters of Danny's grandfather, were the only Vanderveres who actually loved Danny; they had taken him under their collective wing when he was twelve, overseeing his education as a "gentleman" by hiring extra tutors as well as music and dance instructors for him, teaching him etiquette and poise along with the more ceremonious social skills -- Danny was probably the only sixteen-year-old in the county, perhaps even the state, who could bone a fish at table, dance every dance at a cotillion, and play a skillful game of bridge.

Danny had been going to the Aunt Ems' every day after school since the sixth grade, and though he never slept there, he had his own room in the mansion. He always met the mannish eldest sister Aunt Mathilda at the Town Library on the square, where she served as head librarian and official town historian, and walked with her the rest of the way up Pine Street to the the younger two sisters, Myrtle and Maude, identical twins who still shared the same room at the age of eighty; high tea was then served in the shadow-cluttered music room by Oscar, a creaking butler so old he referred to himself as "colored."

After tea, Danny was taught piano and voice and dance under the eyes of the Aunt Ems, then retired with whatever academic tutor he was working under at the time to a dark-paneled study filled with the taxidermied remains of now-endangered or -extinct animals slain by his ancestors before the first World War; on Saturdays, he came into town with Mrs. Espinosa, his family's housekeeper, to do the marketing, and spent the rest of the day with the Aunt Ems learning directly from them about family history, table-setting, flower-arranging, appreciating opera, and the various philanthropic duties that fell to the rich in service of the poor.

Then at six o'clock, Oscar would drive Danny back to his parents' house in the Aunt Ems' bulbous old Cadillac limousine. Now that Danny had his own car, he drove himself on Saturday, and on weekdays Oscar drove him back to the high school; but the old man insisted on the ceremony of driving him, even though the school was essentially walking distance; he seemed to take pleasure opening and closing the car door for the boy and saying "Good evening, Master Marcus" with a formal bow when letting him out.

All of the Aunt Ems called him Marcus, which was in fact his name: Marcus Daniel Vandervere IV, though the rest of the family called him Marc-Daniel since the name Marcus had seemed too grandiose for a little boy, and he preferred to call himself Danny because he said the name Marc-Daniel sounded "like a Pekinese coughing"; but the second holder of Danny's name was the Aunt Ems' father, and in the grand tradition of elderly maiden ladies they worshipped and venerated their father, so they considered the name Marcus a compliment of the highest order.

Danny was devoted to the Aunt Ems, and they were the only feature of his day that he would not give up for his sexual pursuits. He did, however, start bringing friends with him on his after-school visits, and the Aunt Ems were not always enchanted with Danny's varied fuck-buddies; but they were especially fond of the pretty, gentle Jeremy, and Aunt Mathilda lit up when she saw him accompanying Danny into the library.

"Ah, Mr. Sinclair, how delightful," Aunt Mathilda said in her oddly brusque voice, which made even the frothiest pleasantries sound like the bark of a female drill-sergeant; she was dressed in one of her typical suits, the heathered blue herringbone jacket cut and draped exactly like a man's suit and worn with a white shirt and a silk necktie, but with a three-quarter-length skirt instead of pants; her shoes were similarly ambiguous, highly-polished masculine wingtips with a curvaceous two-inch heel. She wore her thick iron-gray hair parted on one side and brilliantined, but with a heavy bun of coiled braids nestled at the nape.

"Miss Vandervere," Jeremy responded gallantly, shaking her hand gently and bowing ever-so-slightly, as Danny had taught him.
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