The small but elegant white marble and gleaming bra.s.s lobby of Orchestra Hall was packed with its well-dressed and well-heeled subscribers, fat-cat patrons, and a few interlopers, like me and Brennan, who just came to hear the music.
That was the problem with orchestras and operas, Uncle Alex would often remark. They were patronized and supported by landed gentry-types who gave their money and presence easily, but little of their real appreciation. They went to these performances to go, to be seen, rather than because they really liked Bruckner"s symphonies or a Verdi operas. I supposed Unc would know, because the same orchestra crowd of "culture vultures", as he derisively called them behind their crusty backs, were the ones who dominated the art gallery scene that kept the Uncle unit in funds.
I saw what he was talking about.
We worked our way through the crowd and d.a.m.n nearly choked on the grotesque melange of cologne, perfume, hair spray, cigarette smoke, and garish and highly visible jewelry worn by women that all the makeup in the world couldn"t salvage. Not once did I overhear anyone remarking on that night"s upcoming performance, or discussing either Soviet cla.s.sical music in general or Shostakovich in particular.
I would even have been happy to hear somebody complaining about the modernity of the night"s program, something else that irritated Unc about the average orchestral customer"s sensibilities, the conceit that any cla.s.sical music written in the 20th Century was necessarily modern. I mean, is a Marilyn Monroe film or a Benny Goodman record modern?
I felt bad for Brennan the minute I saw the crowd was largely made up of the sort of tight-lipped, grey-suited rich (and almost rich) folk that so often made him and his parents out to be little more than low-end white trash. He wore my black tweed suit, one of Dad"s expensive silk ties, and his own pair of black cowboy boots, which he polished just for the occasion. I thought he looked great, if a little unnatural in the suit and tie. He was the only guy in the lobby with long hair.
I made do with my favorite of Dad"s suits, a maroon double-breast with silver pin stripes, which made me look like a young Capone protege.
"Do you see your teacher anywhere?"
"No. He said he"d be here, though."
I glared at anyone I caught staring at Brennan and his long hair with a disapproving look on their face. There was some goof who kept staring at both of us, however, with a little smile on his face. He had bright blond spiked hair and a black moustache and pointed goatee, and wore little granny gla.s.ses on his thin and shifty face. As he approached us through the happily oblivious and chattering crowd, I noticed his silky jacket, which looked like an old Beatles outfit.
"My name is Basilio." He handed both of us a stylish business card. "Forgive the way I was staring, but I do a lot of work for magazines in Europe, and I"d like to do some business with you. Both of you have a great look."
"What kind of work," Brennan asked? He seemed bemused by the whole thing. I sensed something about the Eurogeek that I couldn"t quite place, something I didn"t like.
"Photography." No. It couldn"t be. "I have a studio up near Wrigley Field." Christ, I knew there was something about him I didn"t like! "Give me a call and we set something up. I might plug you into some good money, maybe."
I could see Brennan was interested, and looked that much more so when the magic word "money" was used. This Basilio person was certainly interested in him.
"Little friend!"
Nicolasha stepped beside me to warmly squeeze my shoulders. He touched Basilio" thin leather tie with his free hand, and smiled at Brennan, who nodded his head respectfully to the music teacher he had heard a lot about as the minibus wound its way into the city earlier that evening.
"Have you all met?"
"Well, Nicky, I was just introducing myself to the young men." Nicky? "You must be the star writing student." His eyes appraised me closely, and made me feel uncomfortable, despite Nicolasha"s hand, which remained on my shoulder. "I hear you have shot at an Ivy League school."
I shrugged. Brennan, however, looked like someone who had just been slapped in the face, but was determined not to show any reaction to the rest of the world. I knew that look!
"He has to go someplace with plenty of rain and snow," Nicolasha said, "a place where Russian music is at home. Besides, no real writer can bear the sun until they have become famous and alcoholic!"
Brennan and Nicolasha and Mister Photographer laughed, but I didn"t.
"And what about you...?"
"Brennan. Brennan DeVere."
"Ah. Brennan. I like that name." Brennan was embarra.s.sed, but enjoyed the attention, all the same. "What are your plans for college?"
My friend"s fl.u.s.ter became acute and apparent. Over pizza the other night, I discovered Brennan was self-conscious about the subject of college, afraid that he wouldn"t be able to attend a good college unless it was on an athletic scholarship of some sort, something he felt cheapened by. While he tried to coming up with a decent answer, Nicolasha cleared his throat diplomatically and gestured to the crowd, which had begun moving to their seats.
"We can talk after the performance." Brennan and I both nodded toward Nicolasha.
"Maybe dinner," the strange photographer added.
I shot a final glare at Basilio before leading Brennan up the winding staircase toward the box seats.
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote fifteen symphonies, an unusual but powerful and important body of work that made him the premiere symphonic artist of the twentieth century. While a few of these works were written as Soviet political vehicles, rather than purely aesthetic compositions, the overall quality of this canon is hard to overstate. Any listener with a shred of interest in the symphonic form can discern in these an enormity of style, line, and sensibility that far surpa.s.ses the idle carping of critics, who can"t see Shostakovich as anything more than a noteworthy composer of the Soviet Union. But what do critics know, anyhow?
We sat alone in our small corner box, overlooking the bright and clean stage where the Chicago Symphony players got comfortable and adjusted their instruments. The applause for the first violin was polite. The applause for the conductor, Sir Georg Solti, was vigorous. He was well on the way to making our CSO compet.i.tive with the very best orchestras in the world. The old Magyar alone was worth the price of admission.
Brennan pretended to whisper something in my ear when he in fact kissed me as the auditorium silenced itself and Sir Georg raised the baton to beckon the triangle to sound, the flute to blow, and the ba.s.s to play, beginning this oddly enigmatic symphony.
I did a Charlie Chaplin and mimicked a silly person moving bits of their body in a strange rhythm to the trumpet solo of the second subject, almost making Brennan burst out in laughter.
The quotations of William Tell brought both of us to act like we were riding horses. We could feel the icy vibrations from our neighbors, all but willing us to sit still and stop enjoying ourselves.
I personally think Shostakovich would have enjoyed the bizarre facial expressions and devilish physical gestures me and Brennan exchanged, trying to make the other one laugh out loud first, even though, if either one of us actually had guffawed like we wanted to, Sir Georg himself would have stormed up there to beat us into submission.
The pause between movements at a live concert has always been a point of hilarity for me, what with a couple of hundred people suddenly being switched "on" to cough, hack, wheeze, groan, sniffle, and sneeze, only to be switched "off" by the fearsome conductor, a few scant seconds later. We ran through quite a repertoire of coughing wheezes and hacking sneezes before we stopped and were plunged into the driving elegiacs and inner sadness of the second movement Adagio.
Brennan listened intently, but kept turning to his side, watching my face harden and then withdraw from the crowd as the violin solo filled the white sh.e.l.l of the concert hall. I was a.s.saulted with faces, Mom and Dad"s faces, the different faces I had seen on both of them throughout our last Christmas Eve. The funeral march made me look away from the orchestra and close my eyes. I wouldn"t let Brennan slip his hand inside of mine until I began to cry silently, despite my every effort not to, and took his hand in both of mine, crying the faces out of my sight.
I wondered what Nicolasha was thinking of, hearing the same notes.
The third movement Scherzo came and went through my shaken mind. It was as seemingly random and dissonant as The Age of Gold introductory and dance allegra, but had such superior depth I decided I needed to listen to it many more times before I even began to understand what Shostakovich was getting at.
I became convinced that Basilio character was the person who took the naked photographs of Nicolasha. It made me dislike him even more than I already did.
It was funny to watch and feel Brennan take his turn at drifting off into the murky depths of his own thoughts as the richly individual fourth movement Adagio-Allegretto played on. Unlike me, he spared himself the indignity of public tears, but seemed to welcome and appreciate it when I wrapped the palm of my hand over the back of his warm neck and squeezed gently a couple of times.
The final applause was thunderous. I was gratified to see Brennan yell out a few "Bravos!" for the band.
Before we left the box for good, Brennan took a good, hard look at the interior of the hall, memorizing it for future reference. "No telling when I"ll be back here, especially in seats like these."
"I"m glad you liked it." I fiddled with Brennan"s tie.
He nodded with satisfaction. "I feel pretty wild, hearing music like that. Thank you."
Brennan Albert "Thank You" DeVere.
Thank you for coming over. Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for having me over. Thank you for calling. Thank you for a wonderful time. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for letting me be your friend. Thank you for staying up all night to have jungle s.e.x with me.
(He never said that.) We left Orchestra Hall without seeing Nicky the Music Teacher or Basilio, his faithful Euro companion. If Brennan was disappointed, I couldn"t tell. I wasn"t. We sang loudly along with The Moody Blues on the chilly ride back to the gulag of suburbia.
I switched my bedroom stereo to Dad"s jazz station, turning the volume low enough for us to hear, but quiet enough for us to sleep, when we eventually got around to doing so.
I was getting used to the sensation of sliding between the cool sheets and under the heavy quilt on my bed, and then to be met by another warm and naked body, which would surround it with mine. You"ve no idea how much pain seemed to slip away with each second spent like that.
"How come you changed the channel?"
"Don"t you like jazz?" A rich Duke Ellington indigo played softly in the background.
"I haven"t heard a whole lot of it, but sure I like this. Very cool, like a black-and-white picture of a rainy city at night, you know?"
"Dad loved this station." Brennan reflexively kissed me on the forehead, like I might forget he was there in bed with me. "I guess I"m cla.s.sical music"ed out."
"It doesn"t matter. Anything they"d play would sound s.h.i.tty compared to what we heard tonight. By the way - "
"No. Don"t say it."
"Say what?"
"Thank you. You don"t have to thank me for everything. I don"t want you to."
Brennan laughed quietly. "Why not? It"s polite."
"It"s insecure. I don"t want you to be thanking me every five minutes. If I"m giving you something or doing something with you, it"s because I want to. If you want or need something, well..." I felt an enormously soothing, warm flash across my body that made me tingle. "I want or need to give it to you, not because I want to hear you say thank you, but..." Brennan felt the flash, too, and pulled us closer together. "You don"t have to keep saying thank you."
We were silent for a few minutes, both struggling to ignore the urge to reach below our waists for the other. That"s why we were upstairs in my frigid bedroom, instead of on the floor, in front of the fireplace.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"No."
Brennan ignored me. "You want or need to give something to me, not so I"ll say thank you for the umpteenth time today, but...?"
"But?" I could picture Brennan"s face getting all lemony with being needled. It turned me on, too. All of a sudden, I wanted to go downstairs and start up the fireplace. d.a.m.n it!
"Well? You said it. But...?"
I exhaled noisily. I was genuinely tired. I hadn"t slept in twenty hours, but I then recalled how it used to feel when I slept alone. Sleep could wait.
I sat up and slipped my arm around Brennan"s shoulders and draped the other across his chest and held his face with my hand, like we were posing for the movie poster of "Gone with the Wind". I slid a leg in between his and lowered my face closer to Brennan"s. I could see him smiling in the dark.
"The point of being friends is filling in some want or need in each other, whatever those happen to be. And I want to, for you. With you. And from you. Not because I want you to say thank you, or because I want to have s.e.x with you - "
"Or because you want to make love to me?" His voice was almost as quiet as the Thelonious Monk solo tinkling in the dark beside us.
"No. Not that, either."
"Did we have s.e.x, or make love?"
"Does it matter?" His fingers tightened on my arms. "OK, it feels like making love, to me. As if Id know."
"Me, too."
"Shut up, Brennan." He pulled his head up and kissed me on the lips. "I do it because I love you, and I want and need you to love me back."
"I do." He kissed me again. "I love you."
A chill crossed through my consciousness, recalling Felix saying he loved me, before he ran off; thinking about Nicolasha, how afraid he was to say the same thing; remembering Mom and Dad, how they used to say it all the time, and how little it was said between any of us for...too long. How it would never be said again.
Nonetheless, the chill was momentary. The moist warmth of Brennan"s thin lips rolling along mine broke my thoughts, and I eagerly let them, until his lips drew close to my ear. I could feel him giggling in his closed mouth.
"Why do you love me?" Brennan"s playful words came to me in ticklish puffs of air, but dropped like mortar fire. It took a long time for him to realize I wasn"t responding to his kisses.
My lost words fertilized the garden-variety fear inside me. "I"m alone, without you."
Brennan"s hands took my face and felt the wetness along the edge of my eyes and my shaking lips. "You"re not alone."
"I am..."
"No."
"My G.o.d..." My voice went to pieces. "Alone!" Some kind of scream began to retch outward before it was stopped dead by Brennan"s mouth, sealing itself over mine. His fingers closed my wet eyes, keeping me from another selfish cry and keeping us locked together.
Somebody, presumably in a heaven someplace, sent us to a merciful sleep on the same tear-dampened pillow.
Bits of the sun managed their way through the corners of the storm clouds, which could not decide if they would come together and have at it, or just drift off toward another city in need of wintering.
I finished my REM-interrupting pee and stared out of the bathroom"s icy rectangle window as the toilet flushed. I didn"t hear Brennan open the bathroom door behind me, but, without a start, I smiled when his hands reached around my waist.
We stood wordlessly in the dark and held and touched and rubbed and licked and sucked and pushed and pulled and pumped and drained each other senseless.
"I have another question."
"Brennan, shut up until the sun comes up."
He ignored me again. "Does love last forever?"
"How would I know?"
"You"re the smart one."
"Christ, Brennan, I"m no smarter than you or anyone else. I just remember everything I read." And feel. And think. My voice tensed up and rose. "Do you have any idea how that separates me from others, like you and the guys, or the other inmates in my cla.s.ses?"
"I"m sorry," he whispered. "You are smarter, though, or more talented, maybe both, to judge by your poetry. I"ve read some, you know."
I rolled over from my back to my side, facing my friend in the fading darkness of the bedroom. I could distinguish a Stan Getz ballad somewhere in the background. "Thats funny, but I dont remember ever showing you any."
"Before the symphony, when you took your shower without me." I figured we"d miss the symphony, if I hadn"t gone in by myself. "I hope you"re not mad."