Alice insisted that Walt meet David before the party. To this end, she instructed Walt to wait for her outside the Theater Department office before her Directing class started. David would be there as he was in the scene she was presenting. Walt didn’t understand the urgency. Alice had invited both of them to the dinner party she was giving. Walt was content to wait till then to meet David, but he found it hard to hold off against Alice when she had her mind set on something.
They were standing by the bulletin boards when a buff, hairy man approached. Without introducing him Alice said, “Now David, what did I tell you? Don’t you think Walt would be perfect as your brother in that scene we talked about?”
“I must say I’m flattered that Alice thinks I look like I could play your brother now that I’ve met you.” The buff man looked at Walt with a giddy over-interested smile that made Walt uncomfortable. “How do you do, Walt? I’ve heard so much about you. I’m David.”
Walt didn’t see a resemblance. David was big, bearded, well-built, leonine if not handsome. He exuded physical sexuality. Walt saw himself as tall, thin with an intelligent handsomeness that was often undermined by his gentle, anxious ways. “Oh God,” thought Walt. “I better look out for this one.”
Alice said, “I’ve got to get to class. Sklar will fail me if I’m late again. You wait here until our scene is up. When is Sandra coming?” Sandra was David’s scene partner.
“You said we were up at 4:30; she said she’d be here by 4:15.”
“I hope she’s not late.”
“Go to class.”
After Alice left, Walt asked, “What scene? She’s said nothing to me about doing a scene.”
“She has this idea that we should play brothers. Let her tell you. Who knows if it will even happen? Are you coming to the little shit’s dinner party?” David said this humorously, affectionately, pleased with his nickname.
Walt couldn’t help but smile even though he was not sure he approved. Walt didn’t talk like that. He assumed David called Alice “the little shit” because she was short, overweight and bossy. Confusingly she had a breathy, ethereal quality that was dissonant with her officiousness.
Walt said, “It’s a command appearance so, yes, I suppose I’ll be there. You?”
“Same. Here’s Sandra. We have to run lines. Sandra, this is Walt. Walt, Sandra. Walt is a friend of Alice’s. See you at the ‘do’.” And he and Sandra huddled to run lines sotto voce outside the studio where the Directing class was held.
Now whenever Walt thought about the upcoming dinner, he thought of it as “the little shit’s party.” His use of the phrase was much less affectionate than David’s. Walt had misgivings about the party. Walt was prone to having misgivings. It was his first response to most events in his life, but he felt he had justifications in this case. Alice seemed intent on bringing Walt and David together even though she told him that she was afraid that if the two met, they would become lovers and she would lose them both. Lose them how? Walt wondered. He suspected she had told David the same thing. He felt he was expected to fall in love with David because she had, and if he didn’t, that Alice would take it as a rebuke to her instincts. And yet she kept pushing the brother resemblance as if she hoped the specter of incest would be a deterrent to their getting together.
The party was at Alice’s basement apartment near the school. Walt was the second to arrive. An old friend of Alice’s named Harry was already there. David arrived shortly after Walt. He leaned over to kiss Alice on the cheek.
“David!” exclaimed Alice. “I can’t believe you’re here. I really didn’t know whether you would show up or not.”
“Do you have a reputation for not showing up at parties?” Walt smiled over the brim of his goblet of wine.
“No, but Alice thinks I take airs about which parties I go to.”
“That’s not true. You told me you never go out, and I am really complimented that you took time away from your precious studies to come here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of my director especially when I feel so awkward doing a scene for the first time in God knows how long.”
“David, you have to stop that,” said Alice, throwing her robust little body against David’s and squeezing her pudgy arms around him so that his own arms were forced against his sides and he was left trapped, stooping over trying to hold onto the bottle of wine in his right hand. Alice kissed him on the cheek and then held her cheek against his for a few moments. David, left staring at Walt, said “Hi, Walt.”
Walt said, “Alice tells me you’re very good in the scene.” It was one of his compulsions to contradict any profession of insecurity by another person and assure him of his worth, but he wondered, in these circumstances, if it would be misinterpreted as flirting. Since his brief meeting with David in the school hallway, his misgivings had partially morphed into anticipation. Walt wondered if Alice’s gambit of introducing them before the party was working the way she planned.
David said, “Coming from an actor with a reputation like yours, I must say that I am flattered.”
Walt blushed and thought “He’s definitely flirting.” Walt wasn’t sure he had any reputation as an actor. “How did the scene go?”
“Sklar wants us to bring it back. Again.”
Alice said, “Now come on, you two. I told you both that you could only come to the party if you didn’t spend all your time paying attention to each other. You’re supposed to pay attention to me.” With that she left them to go the galley kitchen at the other end of the studio to check on dinner.
“I told you, Alice, that I’m not interested in having a relationship with anyone right now – male or female,” David called out to her back and winked at Walt.
“I also know that you haven’t gone to parties before tonight either. Besides, I didn’t believe you when you said that.”
Walt: Now Alice, that’s very nice choosing what to believe when people tell you the truth. Was she always like this, Harry?
Harry: Well –
Alice: You can be so naïve sometimes, Walt. We do it all the time. Even you do it all the time.
David: Anyway, I thought you said you were honored to have me here.
Alice: I don’t want you here if you’re going to spend all of your time with Walt.
Walt blushed again and took some of his drink. He sensed that Alice wanted to have her fears contradicted and that he was being tested by being left with David at the other end of the apartment. Harry hovered around Alice wherever she went and was currently standing uselessly by the stove. Walt said to David but so that Alice might hear, “I think Alice invited us because she wanted us all to pay homage to her. She likes to be the center of attention and so she arranged this court of three suitors.”
Walt and David sat on the couch sipping wine and chatting quietly. Alice asked Harry to play the spinet in the middle of the apartment while she finished making dinner. Walt found out that David was in his mid-30s, had been in the army, had been married, was divorced, had moved to Manhattan with his first boyfriend who had then broken up with him. David cut hair for a living. Walt conceded to himself that David was attractive if not his type though he did not acknowledge having a type. David seemed open and earnest and taken with him. Walt didn’t know what to do.
After dinner, Alice said, “I think we should play the truth game.”
Walt said, “Since when has truth become a game?” The game sounded ominous to Walt, and he hoped to derail it with ridicule.
David trying to be diplomatic said, “What’s the truth game, Alice?”
“You turn out all the lights and light a candle. Then you sit around the candle, and everyone touches everyone, and you keep contact with each other while everyone says something that’s true about themselves.”
“Oh, like Heavy Show-and-Tell in acting class.”
“Walt, there are a lot of things going on tonight that have been going on for a while, and I think we should get them out into the open.”
“Who goes first, Alice?” Walt asked insinuatingly.
“That’s not important, Walt. It doesn’t matter who goes first. Whoever feels like talking first. Why do you always have to make a joke of everything?”
“I don’t have to answer that till we turn out the lights and light the candle. Right? I’m sorry, Alice. I’ll cooperate.”
“But Walt has a point. Why do we have to turn out the lights to tell the truth, Alice?” This was David.
“Because it’s easier that way. If we could be honest in the light, we would have been. That’s why it’s necessary to turn it into a game – to bring things to a head in an artificial way.”
“But what if people don’t want the truth to come out? I mean, shouldn’t it surface when they’re ready?”
“Really, David, I thought you were the one who was all for honesty.”
“I think Alice is right. If the truth is going to separate us, then it’s better we learn now before we go on with each other any further and cause each other more pain.”
“You know, Walt, you’re mighty maudlin when you’re drunk.”
“And you’re pretty poetic when you’re pissed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mighty maudlin’ makes a menial alliteration.”
“Oh, you’re all impossible. The point is that you’re supposed to tell the truth you want to tell, not something that makes you want to go out and slit your wrists.”
“Now who’s maudlin? Okay, I’ll cooperate. Where do we sit?”
“I think we should sit where we are and touch each other in some way.”
Walt and David were already on the couch. He put his arm around David’s waist as it seemed the least incriminating gesture.
Alice said, “All right. I’ll go first. I want to say that I am attracted to all three of you in different ways. I am a virgin. I have very sexual feelings, but I don’t think I’m ready enough to act on them. Especially not before I lose 50 pounds.”
“Okay, Alice. But you’ve said all this before. At least, to me you have.” Walt was beginning to think that Alice wanted him and David to get together as placeholders until she was ready to choose between them.
“Walt, that’s not the point.”
“Okay, okay. I want to say that I have been attracted to you, too, Alice. I have thought of sleeping with you. But I am very insecure about it. I need encouragement from you. And I don’t think you can give that to me now. I am also attracted to David. And what I am afraid of there is that I will go to bed with him before I am sure that I want to go to bed with him.”
David said, “I love you as a friend, Alice. I am very attracted to Walt. I appreciate what you said, Walt, about not wanting to go to bed with me before you’re sure. I’m still getting over a breakup with my first male lover and I don’t want to go through anything like that again.”
Harry said, “I’ve always felt close to you, Alice. I just met David and Walt tonight so I don’t have anything to say about them.”
Walt had come to the party with misgivings about how to act toward David. He left the party with misgivings about his misgivings. Having misgivings about his misgivings was as close as Walt could get to knowing what he wanted to do. And he was ready to do something.