DISCLAIMER: Although the characters in the following story are named after members of popular boy bands, they are purely fictional creations. The story is not intended to suggest anything about the sexuality of their real-life namesakes.
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THE DINNER PARTY by Keating101
The boys were already on their second round of drinks when Ronan and Stephen arrived. The party was to celebrate Ronan's successful tour of the U.S. He had been away for more than a year to promote himself as the most important Irish vocalist of his generation, in the end managing an increase in his share of the profits, appearing in a number of television talk shows, and signing a contract with an American studio to record an album. All in all, it had not been an unlucrative venture. Stephen, his partner, naturally went with him. "Such a lovely team you make," the boys had remarked. "Inseparable."
"At last, the celebrant!" It was Shane who made the announcement, his nose already a bit red. "Fashionably late as ever." He gave Ronan and Stephen each a smack on the lips.
Ronan made a general apology and soon found himself the center of attention, as Stephen went to the table to get him a drink. Duncan wanted to know if Ronan had got him that set of Betty Crocker cookbooks which he had asked for. "You can't go wrong on those," he had told Ronan. "They're so precise. Why, Betty Crocker even tells you how many times to whip a batter. Now as for the Cordon Bleu series . . .."
Nicky quite matter-of-factly asked him how much money he had made, at which query, Mark, ever fastidious about form, exclaimed, "Such vulgarity! Such vulgarity, Nicky! I won't have it. "
"But this isn't your party!"
"Neither is it yours."
Ronan didn't seem to mind and was about to reply, when Shane announced that dinner is served, and the boys went to their places at the table. Shane sat at the head, and Ronan took the seat to his right. Beside him sat Stephen.
The dinner commenced, and it seemed that Shane had outdone himself. The china was new and the glasses--crystal, he insisted--were sparkling. "I polished the silver myself," he declared. "Look how bright they are." The boys assented in a general murmur, although Stephen noticed a slight tarnish on his spoon's handle. "And Duncan," Shane added, "made us some cheesecake for dessert as well as the pate and the galantine, into which, I suggest, let us now sink our teeth."
As they ate, Stephen surveyed the group. They were all there: Duncan, ever dreaming of becoming a chef but still not getting that scholarship to the Culinary Institute; his lover Anthony, still in university after shifting to yet another course ("I hate Maths! I just can't hack it. Anyway, it's only another year . . .."); Mark, his eyebrows especially arched tonight, still telling Nicky about which fork to use first and letting out a gasp when Nicky picked up, on purpose it seemed to Stephen, the wrong one; Shane, ever the ebullient host, showing a bit more brow now than he did the last time they had met at his house. He wasn't sure, Shane said, if it was the shampoo, at which supposition Nicky remarked that it was probably just age.
"Do mind your manners, Nicky," remonstrated Mark.
Shane just chuckled and guzzled another glass of wine.
Then, at the far end of the table, there were Mikey and Keith, still hunting for jobs after their motorbike business had failed. "We still have a few thousand in the bank, and Keith says that the brothers Lachey were going to recommend us. What did Drew Lachey say, Keith? Their store in France needs new managers . . .."
Stephen noticed that a place was empty.
" . . . And did you have a pleasant flight?" It was Duncan.
"Yes, we did," replied Ronan. The question had been addressed to Stephen, but lately Ronan had been answering for the both of them, and Stephen had given up even paying attention when he's asked a question. In New York, waiters, cab drivers, hotel staff--it was Ronan who talked to them, and they addressed only him. "We're ordering two slices of cheesecake, aren't we, Stephen?" "We have to be at 1155 Fifth Avenue by six, please." "We want our luggage down, please." Ronan had taken to use the word "we" very freely. At least, Stephen thought, it spared him from having to be polite. Once in a while, though, he wished Ronan would let him answer for himself.
That trip to the Disney store, for instance. He had found the Woody doll he wanted. It was the last one on the shelf. They were already at the counter when Ronan noticed a slight tear on Woody's plaid shirt where the shoulder joined the arm.
"No, Stephen doesn't want that," he told the sales clerk.
Stephen protested that he didn't mind--a little needlework, what of it? But Ronan insisted. "You give him a new one, lady, or we're not buying anything."
"That's the last one, sir."
"Are you sure? I don't want to buy Steo anything broken."
"We can give you a discount . . . " It was the store manager, who had overheard Ronan.
"Let me pay for this, Ro."
"A new one or nothing."
"Ten percent off, sir."
"A new one . . ."
"Twenty?"
"Do let me pay. I don't mind . . ."
But Ronan had taken the doll from Stephen and put it back on the shelf. "My friend deserves nothing defective," he said, and marched out of the store.
" . . . And are these New York executives the swindlers that they all seem to be? You said they wanted forty percent?" Mikey seemed very interested in the financial side of the deal.
"Forty-five at first," said Ronan, chewing on a piece of chicken. "But I put my foot down, I did. I wanted sixty. I'm the artist, after all."
"What did you say?"
"Just that. I told Louis I wanted the split sixty-forty or we call the thing off."
"And how did he take it? Louis always wants to be in control, doesn't he?"
"Louis a bugger," muttered Nicky.
"What language, Nicky!" Mark had dropped his fork.
"Oh, don't act so shocked. You're a bugger yourself."
"Well, I never--"
"Of course, Mark's a bugger," interposed Anthony. "We all are, aren't we?" He nudged closer to Duncan beside him, put an arm around Duncan's broad shoulders, and gave him a peck. Duncan blushed. Nicky grinned, and Mark seemed about to say something, but Shane coughed.
"I say, Duncan. The pate tastes great," he said. "Don't you think so, Ronan? I bet they didn't serve you pate this good at your meetings in New York."
"Oh, it's an old recipe," Duncan said, gently pushing Anthony away. Anthony winked at Nicky.
"They didn't serve me pate at all."
"Cheesecake, then?" Shane had said it with a smile and obviously meant it as a joke against New Yorkers.
"Just the New York variety--thick and solid and heavy. Real cheesecake. The cheesecake we get here is all fluffy and . . . (Shane had shot Ronan a look and quickly directed his gaze at Duncan.) Anyway, Louis at first didn't want to hear it. He kept insisting that I get fifty-five. I won't have it, I told him. After flying all the way here at my own expense, to get fifty-five was out of the question. Mr. Plunket wouldn't like it, he told me. Bullocks to Mr. Plunket, I told him. Mr. Plunket may own half the record company, but I don't work for him, not yet. There's nothing in the contract that says he calls the shots. If he wants me to work for me--I told Louis to tell the bastard, if he wants to work for me, then he should do what I ask him. After all I've been through, I told Louis, I wasn't going to stand for that. But that wasn't all. What was worse, Plunket also instructed Louis to tell me not to sing my own material. Not to sing my own material! I lost my top after that. I told him to shut up and listen to me, because I certainly wasn't going to let--"
"Oh, so you wrote a new song?" Shane had dropped the question casually.
"Yes, I wrote it during the flight, and--hold on," said Ronan feeling the pocket of his jacket. "Ah, I have the score right here." He fished out a crumpled sheet of paper and put it back in his pocket. "So anyway, I told Plunket--"
"Good, so you'll sing a bit of it for us tonight, won't you?" suggested Shane, ignoring the rest of what Ronan had wanted to say. "Duncan can play."
"Sing! Sing!" the boys chorused. At that, Shane looked relieved and took another sip of wine. Now his ears were also getting a little red.
"After dinner."
"You mean, after you've flossed," said Nicky smiling wickedly. "You don't want to damage your new set of choppers, do you?"
Ronan grinned, and showed two rows of perfectly even teeth. He had had his teeth straightened before he left for the U.S. He and Stephen had spent a good ten thousand Irish pounds for the procedure. Stephen had asked him what it was for, when his teeth were okay--they weren't perfectly straight but they were working fine.
"In this business," he once told Stephen, as he smiled before a mirror, "you always have to look good. You don't have to be good, but you have to look good. You want them to like me, don't you?"
"Of course," Stephen replied. It was almost a matter of rote to answer "Of course" whenever Ronan asked for his opinion.
But inside Stephen was beginning to wonder why Ronan had to overhaul himself to be liked. Ronan had been sporting a new "look": new wardrobe, new hair, even a new body--all at their expense, of course. The company wasn't going to pay a cent for his U.S. experiment. "Work those arms. We can just put padding for the shoulders," Stephen once overheard Louis telling Ronan. "Why does one have to change how one looks to be liked?" Stephen asked himself. He re-framed the question: "Is being liked so important that one has to become someone else? Why can't one just be who one is? Why can't one pursue what one wants without having to . . .." Somehow, the questions irritated him--there was a sting about them, and he wasn't sure where it was aimed--and eventually, he chose to brush it aside. Meanwhile, Ronan continued practicing his smile. He was looking for his best angle and making sure that the evenness of his teeth showed.
" . . . Would you care for more dip, Stephen?" It was Duncan about to hand him the saucer of chili peppers and crushed garlic in olive oil.
"Oh no," Ronan interjected. "Stephen can't take too much of that. It upsets his ulcers."
The boys expressed surprise. They didn't know that he had acquired ulcers.
"He must have gotten it from being so tense with you," Mikey said with a laugh. Keith elbowed him. "Imagine the hassle . . ."
"Sorry, Stephen," said Ronan, scooping a spoonful of the sauce onto his own plate. "You have to give up the spice."
The boys gave Stephen a look of mock disappointment. Stephen smiled feebly.
"Well, Steve, now that the tour is over," Shane asked him, "are you planning to go back to work again?"
"I suppose if Mr. Adams wants to take Stephen back . . ."
Stephen let Ronan perorate about his prospects for gainful employment, keeping his own doubts to himself. He had been working at an art gallery, the famous A1. He was so good at mounting exhibitions and marketing them that the gallery had a deluge of requests from artists to exhibit their works there, including the Backstreet Boys. "Postmodern neo-surrealists," the group of five boys described themselves. They were already very famous across the continent when Stephen was working at the gallery, and their fame was starting to cross over to the other side of the Atlantic. When Stephen and Ronan were in New York, they saw an exhibition of boys' collages at the MOMA. The eccentric Texas billionaire Robbie Williams bought a truckload of their paintings for his ranch.
Mr. Ben Adams, the director of the A1 Gallery, was going to recommend Stephen to the Board to be the next in line when he retired, when Stephen handed him a resignation letter. Ronan had asked Stephen to be with him at the tour. "It'd be terribly lonely without you, Steo," he had said. Stephen half-suspected, however, that Ronan was anxious of leaving him alone for that long a time, a year and three months. He had sometimes felt that Ronan was being too possessive of him. Once Ronan even accused him of dating one of the boys behind his back. Stephen explained that he had merely chanced upon Lee at the pastry shop and had thought it only proper to have a snack with him since they were at a pastry shop anyway. "He was always so reserved," Stephen told Ronan, "I figured what's the harm in trying to draw him out . . .."
Stephen realized it was Lee he missed at the dinner.
"Where's Lee?" he asked.
The boys, who had been talking, were suddenly quiet. They looked at one another.
Ronan seemed just as puzzled. "Yes, where is Lee?"
Shane finally broke the silence: "Surely you've heard?" He was smiling nervously.
"Heard what?"
"Didn't you get our mail?"
"It must have gotten lost," Ronan replied. "We received letters all right, but I don't recall reading any one about Lee."
"You didn't write us back about it, so we thought . . ."
"What happened to Lee?"
"Lee's gone away," Shane said.
"Gone where?"
"We don't know where really, or why," added Duncan.
"One day he just packed his things and left," explained Shane. "Not a word from him since. It was very upsetting, you can imagine. After all, he'd been our friend for quite some time. He stopped answering our calls, declined all our invitations, and then one day we discovered that he had gone away."
"He did keep going on about . . . about 'something more'," Duncan continued. "'There must be something more,' he kept muttering. He called me once--the one time he did call--he called me at two in the morning to say that. I didn't know what it meant. If you didn't know him, you'd think he was batty. He had always kept to himself, but I didn't know that something was the matter. He never told us, you know."
"When did this happen?" Ronan asked, interested at last about somebody else's welfare.
"Shortly after you lads left for the States."
"Oh yes," said Duncan. "Now I recall. He did drop by your flat, I suppose to say goodbye, but you had gone by then. He became very moody after that, and then the mystery."
"Curious," Ronan remarked.
"Yes, that's Lee all right. Curious."
"I've always thought Lee was a little off his rocker," Ronan remarked. Stephen looked at the empty seat.
"He is not . . . dead, is he?" Stephen asked, still gazing at the empty chair.
The boys seemed shocked at the suggestion.
"Oh, please don't be morbid," cried Mark.
"I'm sorry."
The boys were quiet for a while, and then Shane stood up. "Well, shall we have that cheesecake now? It's not the usual type. Who wants tea?"
Nicky demanded coffee, but Mark shushed him. "How can you even think of taking cheesecake with anything else but tea?" he said. Nicky rolled his eyes.
Duncan went to the kitchen to help Shane bring out the cake and tea. Every boy got a slice of it, with just a spoonful of blueberry flavored topping. But apparently, Duncan had used a little gelatin this time, and the cake wasn't as frothy as it should have been. Duncan sheepishly admitted as much. He had run out of cream cheese, he said, and it was too late to go to the grocery.
"Extenders, Duncan!" exclaimed Nicky in mock outrage. "Upon my word, I am appalled! How can you use anything else but cream cheese."
Mark coughed. Nicky's eyes landed on Anthony, who gave him a quick wink. Stephen suddenly remembered the tarnish on his silver.
The meal continued, and Stephen found himself making polite remarks now and then--"Yes, that's true." "No, I don't think so." "Another spot? Thank you." After a while, Shane stood up and silenced the group. "Hear, hear!" he declared. "I would like to propose a toast, but since I've been warned by our good friend Mark here that I'm already close to inarticulate inebriation, I recommend that we all raise a tea cup instead."
Shane let the general laughter die before he continued: "To our great artist-friend, the greatest, may I add, since John McCormack. May his songs live to illuminate the lives of his listeners; may he know success and bring back to our dear dirty Dublin the adulation the world owes her. (Well, didn't we save the Church from falling into the clutches of the Anglo-Saxon barbarians?) To Ronan!"
"To Ronan!" they cried and sipped their tea.
Ronan rose and thanked everyone.
"And now, I believe, we shall have that song."
Ronan brought out the crumpled score, and stood beside Duncan at the piano.
"It's called 'My Heart Will Go On.' It's a serenade to a dead lover. The persona . . ."
"Oh, just sing it," heckled Keith.
Ronan began, his voice a little hoarse and quavering from the extended hours at the studio:
Every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you. That is how I know you go on.
Far across the distance And spaces between us You have come to show you go on.
Near, far Wherever you are I believe that the heart does go on . . .
The song went on. Stephen had found it terribly trite when Ronan sang it to him in New York, but he didn't let Ronan know his real opinion. A masterpiece, he had declared to Stephen in their hotel room, and how dare Plunket ignore it. When the record sells, as it will, Plunket will know better than to . . ..
Stephen looked around him, saw the faces listening attentively--even Nicky had stopped fidgeting beside Anthony-and noticed the paint peeling off the wall behind the piano where Duncan sat playing intently. The song went on. ("Near, far, wherever you are"--was there ever a rhyme more dull? A lover's serenade to his dead love. And Ronan was singing with such passion--oh all rehearsed, of course. Sham. Now his eyes are shut. He is going to beat his chest. Fulsome emotion--and false, false.) Stephen felt a certain constriction in his chest, coughed, and suddenly declared that he wanted to go home.
"Coming to bed?" Ronan called from the room. He was already in bed, his reading light switched off. The only light came from the closet and the window.
Stephen stepped out of the closet. He had washed and taken a pill, but he still seemed a little pale.
"You hardly said a word at the dinner," continued Ronan.
"Tired . . . and dizzy. Must be jet lag."
"Why did you cut me in the middle of my song? Didn't you like it? I thought you liked it. It's a serenade, you know, to--"
"To a dead love. Yes, I know," Stephen said, as he walked to the bed and sat at the edge, facing the window. Then, after a pause: "You don't think he's dead, do you?"
Ronan was quiet, and then, in a voice almost a whisper, he remarked, "Ah, thinking of Lee."
"Yes," Stephen replied. He was looking out the window where some light shone in. Ronan sat up and massaged Stephen's back. His hands were a little cold.
"You'd best be going to bed, dear."
"I remember what he said," Stephen continued, in a voice rather abstracted. "That day at the shop, you remember, when we had bumped into each other. 'There must be something more,' he said, 'something more than the surface. When the paint peels off, what's there beneath? A wall one can't break through?' I thought he was just talking nonsense again. You know Lee. He has these moments when he gets all poetic--you remember that poem he wrote . . ."
"No."
"There's a line . . . 'Dying is what the living do. Dying is what the loving do.' That's a paradox, isn't it? But such nonsense, I thought then, just another one of Lee's poetic drivel."
Ronan did not answer, but after a while told Stephen to come to bed. "Best not to overtire yourself." He gave Stephen a peck on the cheek and lay himself down.
"In a while."
"Don't tire yourself to death."
Stephen walked to the window and looked out. It was the harvest moon he saw and around it was such a splash of stars. Which of them are alive? wondered Stephen, and which already a black hole but still giving out a glow, at least as they are viewed from the earth? You couldn't tell which was which just by looking. Stephen felt a breeze, and suddenly, he seemed again to see the paint peeling off the wall and the tarnish on the silver; remembered the tear on the doll's shirt; heard Ronan telling the lady at the store, "Nothing broken for Steo," and the boys exclaiming, "Such a perfect couple you are! Such a perfect couple!" He saw Shane's balding head, Shane smiling nervously, straining to keep everything in order but the paint was peeling off the wall and there's a spot on the silver; saw Ronan's rehearsed smile; remembered bits of Mikey and Keith's vapid laughter about the Lacheys and Mark's admonitions to Nicky about forks and knives and Shane's comments about the china and the crystal and the silver; saw Anthony and Nicky exchanging furtive glances while Duncan's fingers ran across the piano; heard Ronan singing in that goatish bleat of his, his eyes closed and his fist on his chest, and Lee crying, "There must be something more! There must be something more!" He saw the years and years past receding to one infinitesimal dot and the years and years ahead with Ronan, smiling a rehearsed smile and singing a serenade to a dead love, and he saying "Yes, of course, that's right, Ronan"; and he felt a chill cold like death coming over him, and over all he heard Lee crying, "There must be something more! There must be something more!" He felt the constriction in his chest again. He closed his eyes to calm himself, and when he opened them, they were wet and shone reflecting the moonlight.
Stephen turned away from the window and saw Ronan sleeping profoundly. He was almost completely motionless, buried in layers of white blankets, his skin white like marble where the moonlight touched it. Stephen kissed him on the cheek, walked to the closet, and started packing.
THE END
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CREDITS: * This piece of fan fiction was inspired by James Joyce's "The Dead." It lays absolutely no claim to being its worthy imitation. The author offers a thousand apologies and a thousand thanks to Mr. Joyce.
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"My Heart Will Go On" is written by James Horner and Will Jennings and was first recorded by Celine Dion.
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"Dying is what the living do" is quoted from the poem "Curiosity" by Alaister Reed.
Comments and questions are welcome. Please send them to keating101@yahoo.com.