Arena Stage Ch. 04

"We could go over the notes for script changes from today's rehearsal, Sean," Handelsman said.

I went into a panic. As far as I knew, there wasn't much of a rehearsal. I'd been on time, but the rehearsal had already started—and it stopped shortly after I'd come back from retrieving some papers from this office for Handelsman. I didn't have any notes to go over.

"Huh, notes?" I asked to stall. "Shouldn't Mr. Masters be here if you want to go over the notes?" Maybe since I wasn't around, Mr. Masters had made some notes, I thought—and hoped.

"Why should Creigh be here, Sean?" Handelsman asked. "I understand you are the one who actually rewrites the scripts at night."

Oh god, I thought. Gil had told him. Dammit.

"Mr. Handelsman—" I started to say. But I couldn't think of anything to say.

"And I understand that Creigh has been fucking my Gil," Handelsman said.

"What? I don't know how that . . . I don't know—"

"We have a basic problem, here, Sean," Handelsman said. He was smiling at me—assessing me. "There's something pretty newsworthy—that Creigh Masters's plays haven't been Creigh Masters's plays for some time, at least since his popularity has resurged. And there's something of more personal concern to me. I haven't been getting enough because Creigh Masters has been poking my lover. Now how do you think those two things fit together, Sean? And what do you think we could do to smooth that over?"

"I don't know . . . I—" He was moving entirely too fast for me.

"I understand you are devoted to Creigh Masters, Sean. Is that true?"

"Yes," I said in a low voice. I couldn't look at him now. I was pressed to the opposite wall, looking at my feet.

"And you'd do anything to save Creigh Masters's reputation, wouldn't you, Sean?"

"Yes," I said, although I took a little longer to answer this time.

"You know I've fancied you since that first day you came into the meeting in the dance studio," Handelsman said. His voice was thick now, hoarse and low.

"Mr. Handelsman . . ."

"Would you be comfortable with me taking your clothes off for you, Sean, or would you like to do that yourself?"

Handelsman fucked me while sitting on the edge of the chaise lounge at the back of his office. I sat on his cock facing away from him, and staring at what we were doing in the mirror above the dressing table he was using as a desk—until I couldn't take the shame anymore. Then I just let my head hang and counted the squares in the linoleum on the floor.

He wasn't particularly big, and he took me slowly. He had his arms wrapped around my torso and one hand playing with my nipples and the other pumping my cock off, while, at his direction, I rose and fell on his erection. He had his face buried in the hollow of my neck from the back and hummed me a lullaby as we fucked, first to my ejaculation, and then to his, filling out the bulb of a condom inside my channel.

All the time he was fucking me, he was murmuring how nice I was, how much he'd wanted me for weeks, and how alive I made him feel.

I was crying softly, not the least because this was the most affection I'd had in three years.

In the end, after we'd come, he turned my face to his and kissed the tears on my cheek and then my lips.

"That was nice, very nice," He whispered. "We will have to do this every day."

"Mr. Masters," I choked out. "I've pledged."

"Shush, little one," he murmured. "You are doing this for Mr. Masters. In time, though, I hope you will be doing this for us."

"But . . . but," I whispered. "What if he ever found out?"

Handelsman gave a low, dry laugh. "What makes you think he doesn't know? Why do you think he left you with me this afternoon."

I said nothing about my meeting with Handelsman when I returned late that afternoon to the 7th Street townhouse after the director had given me another lesson in director couching, laying me on my back on the chaise lounge with my legs open to him as he scooted his knees under my buttocks and fucked me slowly and as sensuously as I ever could have hoped that Mr. Masters would—and didn't.

Mr. Masters asked nothing about the long, private meeting either, which, I guess, was enough for me to be at least suspicious about what Mr. Masters knew of Handelsman's intent.

"Come see if you can make heads or tails of these bills, Sean," he called out to me from the desk in the living room as I entered the townhouse.

I was somewhat taken aback, because I handled all the bills. I wasn't even aware he knew where I kept them.

I sighed and walked over to the desk. "I've been meaning to talk to you about those, Mr. Masters. But you've been so . . . busy of recent evenings."

"Well, we're all alone tonight," he said, and he smiled up at me. It was his "I want serviced" smile.

I gave him a confused look.

"Gil isn't here tonight," he said. "I've told him not to come over tonight. It's just the two of us. You can sleep upstairs again tonight."

A sense of relief flooded into me. I hated facing him after what I'd down with Handelsman, even if I'd done it to protect him. But maybe the thing with Gil was over; maybe we could get back to normalcy now.

"The bills," I said. "What they mean is that we'll have to really cut back—at least until a check comes through on the Defiance production. And maybe . . . maybe it's time to start thinking about the next script. I . . . I have something written, if you'd like to take a look at it."

He ignored my offer of another script and continued on another track of his own. "You know I'm sure Miloslav would like you for the dance troupe for this production." He'd said it quietly, as if he was testing the waters, as if he hadn't really let that elephant out into the room.

"Are you saying—?" I was flabbergasted, floored. Mr. Masters knew what Miloslav Cersenka demanded of his dancers. And he'd been adamant about my staying away from the dance. I was doubly floored. But the casual way he was suggesting I give myself to Cersenka after all he'd demanded about exclusiveness—added to the possibility that he had given me to Handelsman as well. Well, I was speechless. At least for the moment.

"I'm saying we need money, and the dancing troupe will be paid well. And I know you've been practicing for the possibility of returning. I'm saying you could help pay the bills if you wanted to."

He even knew I'd been practicing. I staggered to a chair and sat down. But he was standing up as I sat down.

"Come, let's go upstairs," he said. And he held his hand out to me. "I've told Gil to go to the boat tonight. I want you tonight."

Mr. Masters's fucking was rough and dominating in contrast to the lovemaking of Handelsman earlier that afternoon. And his dick was massive in both length and thickness in relationship to Handelsman. He covered me with his heavy body and was thrusting into me, insistently, before I was quite ready for him. My cries and groans aroused him even more, and he devoured me with his body, with his personal need. It was all about him. And I responded in kind, melding to it being all about him. Listening for his moan or his sigh or for a simple "yes" from him. Opening to him, surrendering my all, moving my hips to the rhythm of him long after I was well past exhaustion. Giving him whatever he wanted.

Long about the time the sun was only then setting outside the plate-glass window overlooking the envelope-sized back garden, Mr. Masters, both of us having ejaculated, held me close in his arms, his cock deep inside me, recovering, him already having promised that what we'd done so far was just a preliminary. And me believing him, having been here before.

In that brief interlude between fucks, where I was panting heavily and knew I'd be feeling his cock stir again inside me well before I was ready to resume taking him, he leaned his lips in to my ear and whispered, in a low, hoarse voice, "And, so, does Lenny Handelsman fuck you as good as I do?"