Equal Affections Read Online Free PDF Page A

peered out at the vast stage rounding like a horizon to the dark clamor of the crowd. Someone signaled. She readied herself. One of Danny’s jobs was to make sure everyone in the band was in position, that there were no last-minute string breaks, that Jennifer, the sign language interpreter, had the songs in the right order and was perched already on her stool. And then, finally, the familiar chant from theimpatient audience: “Ap-ril, Ap-ril, Ap-ril.” She blushed a little; though she should have been used to it, she still seemed bemused, perhaps even perplexed by the scale of her worship. Finally the announcer’s voice: “Good evening, ladies and ladies.” Laughter. Faint applause. More chanting. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to keep you waiting anymore.” A final twitch at a string. A strand of hair brushed from her forehead. At that moment, always, Danny felt her cease to be aware of him. “And here is April Gold.” A roar like nothing else, like the ocean, sounded, and he knew that he could call and call, and it would be as if he were standing halfway across the world, and she’d never hear him. April smiled, thrilled by the sound of applause. She strode out. Flowers flew onto the stage, and she raised her arms up to catch them, raised her face to the shower of petals. She was someone else now, and once she opened her mouth to sing, no one would be able to resist her.
    At the bar, after the New Haven performance, April was swarmed by fans, all eager to touch her, to kiss her, to ask her to dance. There were hundreds of them, it seemed, and invisible in their maleness, Walter and Danny slipped out and went to a twenty-four-hour grocery store, where they bought chocolate chip cookies and Coca-Cola to take back to Walter’s room. It was a cold night, and the old pipes knocked, making a sound like children playing with drums. Outside the little room with its diamond-shaped windows they could hear the occasional loud revels of drunken football players on their way home from parties, as well as a conversation about diaphragms being conducted by some serious-voiced young women down the hall. “Morons,” Walter said, eating a chocolate chip cookie and settling himself into a tattered leather armchair. “Ingrates. Not an ounce of respect for other people’s sleep.” He had always been a good boy, much to his chagrin; in college, he explained, as he downed his Coca-Cola, he had wanted to be a writer, but his father had persuaded him to go to law school instead. As a result, he was full of a barely contained rage that seeped out at odd moments—a rage directed at himself, for not having followed his own instincts and become “some sort of artist,” but instead having taken the cowardly path of law school. He understood, it seemed, which was the easy, unadventurous choice, and yet he had known no way of stopping himself from making it. In his oxford shirt and polished loafers heexplained his self-loathing, and Danny nodded, pretending sympathy. Ironically, it was this good-boy side to Walter—the side of himself he himself despised—that Danny was falling in love with that evening, sitting across from him in that cold little room. His careful haircut, his neatly pared nails, the bleached underwear ironed and stacked on a shelf—all these things seemed to Danny the most erotic of details.
    After they made love, Danny crept down dark medieval halls, looking for the bathroom, and, finding it, peed among stones, echoes, bits of hallway conversation, gargoyles, and old, old grass. All so far from that run-down house on Eld Street, where April was sleeping then, with who knew who, or how many.
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    Danny never left New Haven. The tour moved on north without him—to Middletown, Providence, finally Boston. It was midterm, and he made sure there was coffee for Walter when he got back from the library. Eventually, when it became