Alone Together

The Promise of a Child's Faith

Okay kids, hang on to your hats, because this chapter covers a LOT of ground. Most of it advances already existing story-lines, but in ways that hopefully are interesting and also a bit surprising. There is some new stylistic stuff too, since you know I'm all about not just the story, but how it's told too. For those who continue to faithfully write, I thank you all very much. For those people out there reading who have not yet written, or not written in a while, drop me a line if you want. But even if you don't, that's okay - so long as you're still reading, and still enjoying, that's all that really matters. Finally, for those who are just a little bit curious about when we're getting back to James and Aaron at the mailbox, it will be (drum-roll please) chapter 40. And because the next chapter shouldn't be very long, you won't have much longer to wait (although hopefully the wait has been worth it). If you'd like to write, I'd appreciate it. The email is denis141@hotmail.com.

DEDICATION: I'm not sure why this never occurred to me before, but I want to dedicate this chapter to the real-life Lance Bass and JC Chasez. In my story I try to depict them (especially Lance) as I imagine they'd be if in love with each other, and living the life I describe.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know NSYNC (except in my imagination), and this story is, as a result, purely imaginary. It is also a story about two men in love, which means it sometimes also includes sex, so if this not your thing, or if you aren't old enough, you should stop reading now.

ALONE/TOGETHER

CHAPTER 38: FAR, AND AWAY: Part Seven: The Promise of a Child's Faith.

Be patient that I address you in a poem,

there is no other

fit medium. The mind

lives there. It is uncertain,

can trick us and leave us agonized. But for resources

what can equal it?

There is nothing. We should be lost

without its wings to

fly off upon.

-- To Daphne and Virginia, William Carlos Williams

"The writer by nature of his profession is a dreamer and a conscious dreamer. He must imagine, and imagination takes humility, love and great courage. How can you create a character without love and the struggle that goes with love?"

~ Carson McCullers

"The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure--fearlessness and achievement."

~Joseph Campbell

If someone had tried to write a story about everything that happened in the year and nine months that lead up to the premiere of STAR WARS: A Gathering Storm, the writer would have had a difficult time deciding about what to write, about what to include and what to leave out, about what to emphasize and what to mention in passing only, or perhaps not mention at all. The writer would've been forced to survey and sift and sort and select from countless details, like a person about to move from a home with hundreds of rooms into a tiny two room apartment. But staring at the blank and eerie glow of a computer screen, our writer might face more than his insecurity, his anxiety, his fear, he might face the source of it all, the hardest part, the part that makes a writer struggle most, and fearful most: deciding whether to tell the story at all, whether to risk the effort required to make a story real enough to be believed, or real enough so the reader wants to believe, or needs to believe, so it is not just a story written (words on a page), but a story read, and a story lived, and maybe not forgotten, like it would never be forgotten by the people who had lived it (when it wasn't a story, but real).

How would you tell a story like that, wanting to remain true to the lives that lived it, and made it real, knowing that in telling it so much would have to be left out, so many details omitted, some accidentally, some not, and that even if you chose each word with the greatest care, with an eye only toward trying to get it right, if even then you knew that the story would fail in some important way to show what really happened, and what was really felt or thought, could you find the will to write it anyway, to proceed in the face of near-certain failure, and tell the story still - is it because the writer must, or is it because a story such as this simply demands to be told?

Take this for example: how would you tell the strange and funny story of a song, a simple song, sung by two men in love, a duet done almost as a lark, as a semi-private gift to each other, a song on an album not even yet released, that gets somehow picked up by an unknown user of a file-sharing program who was searching the internet looking for an old Pet Shop Boys song, a user who happened to search the MY MUSIC folder on the computer owned by a young man named James, the best friend of the son of the two men who recorded this song. Would you try to describe the surprise on this unknown person's face, the surprise of listening to a song he (or she) had never heard before, except maybe as a Pet Shop Boys song, and how the surprise gave way to a sweet kind of wonderment, a wonderment that would lead this person to post the song on a message board, adding the subject line: NEW 'NSYNC SONG???

Would you try to imagine how word of the song at first slowly spread, perhaps in chat-rooms, or face-to-face among friends, picking up speed with each successive download and re-posting, the song burned onto thousands of mini-disks and saved and swapped and posted and shared again, faster and more frequently, until at last the album that contains the song was released, an 'N Sync album called One More Time, except for that song, Nervously, was sung by JC and Lance alone. Would you try to describe the ensuing surprise of Nervously becoming the most downloaded song of the year, even though it was not released as a single, or at first played on radio, that is until the album started climbing the charts, selling more and more copies, going gold then platinum, and Lance and JC are convinced by their son to do a music video in which Aaron agreed to play the piano, with Neill Tennant sitting next to him playing too, the two of them side-by-side, and Lance and JC sing to each other while pictures of them in their youth, from the time they'd first fallen in love, flash behind them. Is that a story you'd try to tell?

Or would you tell the story of how Aaron pitched his Pony League baseball team to its first championship season. But maybe instead you'd tell the story of the two months during the summer he spent in Dublin, living with Colin Farrell while his parents traveled across Spain, spending a month in Barcelona, ten days in Sitges, and then driving through the Costa del Sol to Alhambra, Madrid, Salamanca, Zaragoza, and then back to Barcelona where, on their last day there, they climbed the narrow stairs circling up inside the tallest of the four main towers of Familia Sagrada, Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece. Would you describe the slow and harrowing climb, how JC held tight to Lance's hand, making their way slowly up the narrow well-worn stone stairs, pressed close to the interior wall, afraid to look down the tower's deep well, and how finally arriving at the top Lance looked out the cut-out window there, at the stunning panorama that was the vast view from there and said, turning back to JC, "Nothing is more beautiful to me than you."

Knowing you could end it here, with perhaps limning a description of the JC's reaction, how JC kissed Lance, wanting nothing more than to remain in the midst of this moment forever, embraced by it as securely as he was embraced by Lance, knowing that even here, at the highest point in this ancient city, with the scent of sea-salt filling his nose, the warmth of sun on the back of his neck, the touch of a breeze on his skin, and the taste of Lance's kiss on his lips, he might himself, JC himself, be unable to put into words what he felt, leaving it to you to imagine what he might think or feel or say - would you write a poem (for him) instead, or perhaps just borrow the line from a song that he loves, having him hear it in his head, like a kind of musical refrain underscoring what he felt,

I saw it in your eyes what I was looking for...

And JC would kiss him, and hold Lance in his arms, there high above the city, knowing that he belonged to Lance, because you belong to the one that loves you most, and Lance loved him most of all.

Or maybe this moment is too private, too intimate to share, this moment between JC and Lance at the Familia Sagrada, a monument to the family sacred, so maybe instead of sharing it, or telling of the trip that led up to it, with all of its spontaneous and unexpected detours, getting lost four or five times, and how it became a game for Lance to say "This looks like a nice place to stop for a break" and then they would pull to the side of the road and make love at first in the ridiculously small backseat of their rented car, and then later in secluded spots they'd find outside.

No instead you could tell the tale of a single day - it was a Monday, you might want to point out - the day that JC had led Lance to the Bario Gotic and showed him the room where he'd once lived, the room with worn-smooth stone floors, and the window that looked out across the cathedral square, the room from which on his last day in this grand ancient city JC had watched for a women who failed to appear in the square below, on her way to somewhere he did not know, but definitely on her way. And so unlike each and every morning before, JC had stood at the window, watching but not seeing her, and it was the seeming sadness of this not-seeing that had made JC feel more lonely than he'd ever felt before, and severed his link to a place where he had once thought he might want to stay, making him want once more to be together with Lance, and not alone.

You could tell the story of how Lance had said, hearing this tale, standing there in that small cold room with JC, that they should find out who she really was, and on that day she had not appeared. You could tell how on that day Lance and JC managed to track down the son of Senora Isabella Cavaziel, having found his name on the small For Rent sign posted in the lobby, he having inherited the building from his mother. You could describe the three of them sitting in the musty office where Senor Miguel Cavaziel tallied the receipts from the various small enterprises that were his life's work, and his sole distraction from a painful rheumatic condition that no doctor had ever satisfactorily explained. You could tell this story as if you were sitting there too, with three of them (which with you would make four), and could tell how JC and Lance learned from him the truth. Yes, the truth of how on that day years and years ago it was not that Isabella had failed to appear as JC watched for her, it was not that she had decided to remain in her room, wrapped warmly against the cold of an uncommonly winterish Spring.

No, it was that she had not decided against crossing the cathedral square (you would learn). It was that she had not returned from her previous day's visit to her lover's grave, a man named Jose Miguel Arcadio, a man to whom Isabella in her youth had sworn an oath of true undying love, giving him the solemn promise of her still young heart, doing so even as she was prevented by her mother from marrying him, this man she loved, and was forced instead to marry the man who would become the father of her only son.

(What was this man's name you might wonder. But it was a name that Isabella's son did not utter, not out of distaste, but simply because it didn't seem to matter to the story he was telling, and neither JC nor Lance bothered to ask). This man whose name you do not know was nonetheless (you were told) himself well-known and respected, a man of great wealth and prestige, a man - Senor Cavaziel said - who smelled always of camphor and pipe tobacco.

"My mother was very kind to him," Senor Cavaziel said, rubbing the swollen knuckles of his left hand with the shaking fingers of his right hand. "But you could see that she detested him. Her back always stiffened when he was near, and her breath would reek of rotten wood. I do not know why. But it did."

Isabella never said a single angry word to her husband, or ever treated him ill. This is what Senor Cavaziel told Lance and JC (and you). She smiled and hummed and endured, for the sake of her son, and for the sake of her unfailing faith that, if she did endure this trial, which was her marriage to a man she did not (and could not) love, that the Blessed Virgin would one day bless her with the gift of her husband's early painless death, freeing her finally to be with the one to whom her heart had promised her, and to whom she had been by life wed in the secret still-unconsecrated intercourse of her soul.

Or would you hold back from telling such a tale, unsure that something as darkly tragic as this - a tale in which Jose Arcadio is killed by a street car, struck down as he was walking to meet Isabella at the small café where she awaited him with the news of her husband's death, two cups of coffee on the table before her (coffee she had ordered before his arrival, so joyous and eager was her heart to tell him her news), but the coffee on this fateful day would soon grow as cold as his flesh in death's grip.

Could you tell this tale, and tell how that Isabella's body had been found three day's after her own disappearance lying on the grave of Jose Arcadio, her pale thin arms embracing the cold granite of his headstone, his name nearly indecipherable from having been rubbed so many times by her frail white-gloved hands, tell how when they found her body, which seemed a miracle in itself, because it lay in a dim and lonely corner of a seldom-visited cemetery, a lonely shadowed place that might never have been noticed except that a twelve-year old boy, Antonio Macondo, had on this day been attracted by a swirling cloud of brightly-colored butterflies hovering near the ground where Isabella lay, softly alighting and then taking flight again, their parchment-thin wings fluttering like a silk fan in the face of a wealthy woman on a hot and humid day. Would you tell how on this day he had discovered her, Antonio who was truant from his school this day, the sky having been too bright and full of sun for him to pay attention to his boring studies. So he had set out to look for adventure, and found it, attracted to the cemetery by this spectacle of ever-fluttering color, and there he had discovered Isabella, looking as if dressed in a gown of a thousand butterflies, each of which had alighted upon her cold stiff flesh, as if trying to warm her then lift her up, to carry her aloft, far and away.

A fantastic story such as this, would you tell it, could you tell it, swearing along with Antonio Macondo, who when he told this story laid his hand on his heart and swore to its truth, swearing that he had seen (with his own eyes, he swore) the butterflies carry Isabella away. Or instead would you stay silent, content to know that, even if you chose not to tell this tale, perhaps afraid that it was too fantastic to believe (or perhaps because you wanted , your silence would not have betrayed Isabella, or the spirit of her undying love. You would know this because you would know that Antonio would tell this tale, again and again until his ninetieth-ninth year, the tale of Isabella Cavaziel, found on the grave of her lover, and of the butterflies that Antonio stood and watched disappear into the sky, each carrying a part of the lady's soul to meet the man she had always loved, to meet him in a place where they might be together, always.

Or you could write of something more mundane instead (mentioning JC and Lance's trips in the postcards Aaron received). Yes, you could write of Aaron, and of the time he spent with Colin Farrell in Dublin, of how Colin had signed Aaron up to play the summer with the St. Mark's Rangers Under-14 football club, and how at every game Colin shouted himself hoarse, cheering for Aaron and the team, and how after the game they would always go to the pub near Colin's house, the Six Arms pub, and they'd have a burger, or a one-and-one (which is fish and chips in Dublin), and a Guinness, of course, although Aaron could only have only one small glass, while Colin would certainly have a pint or two. But, wait. Since you may have already done a scene where the two of them sat and had lunch, talking about their day, what was on their minds, about things both big and small, you might decide to write about the match instead, the match that the Rangers didn't win, a final match against Home Farm Athletic, a club coached by an overweight man with thinning blond hair and sallow skin, a man named Nicky Byrne, a man who Colin seemed to know, but not particularly like, telling Aaron, "He had a bit of a go as a pop star once, but nothing brilliant as your aul man had."

If you were telling the story about the soccer match, about how Aaron played Left Wing and Nicky's son Liam played Stopper, and how Aaron scored the goal that tied the match 1-1 fifteen minutes into the second half, beating Liam to the ball and scoring on a left-footed kick that shot right past him. That could be an exciting scene, but nothing too challenging (for the reader, or the writer) either. So maybe you'd focus on something else, part of the match, but something more dramatic, and telling too, how the match was lost at the last-minute when the goalie for the Rangers tripped over his own feet and missed an easy block on the fifth kick of a shoot-out, giving Home Farm the win. You'd show Aaron red-faced and angry, pointing at the goalie, jabbing his finger repeatedly in the air, and yelling "Maybe next time you best mind yer your feckin' gutties so you ain't be makin' such a bleedin'hash of it, ya eejit!"

What about Colin though? You would have to know Colin, who'd probably been staring in disgust at Nicky Byrne as he jumped up and down like a fool, congratulating his son Liam on the game-winning kick, that Colin would have heard Aaron's tirade, and turned around and seen Aaron angrily kicking the turf, sending clods of grass and dirt sailing across the field like lobbed hand-grenades. It would be at this point you could show Colin running across the field, taking Aaron by the arm, and half-dragging him to the sidelines, all red-faced and angry, but taking a long deep breath before speaking, speaking in a voice so icy and stern it caused the hair to stand up on the back of Aaron's neck, saying - no, hissing, and doing it through gritted teeth - "I don't feckin' want to hear you actin' the muzzy and beratin' a mate like that ever uh-gain. Not while I be tending to you, you hear me? If your aul man had a been here, he'd been right 'shamed of you, and I be here to tell you, I be 'shamed for him, feckin' mortified." And then, if you wanted to tell the story true, even though this part would be a bit sad actually, you'd describe how Aaron's face turned first pale, then a deep scarlet, and how stunned he looked hearing Colin talk to him this way, how ashamed he felt, and how true-sincerely sorry he was, as Colin spun him around and gave him a push, telling him "Now you go apologize proper to that fella, and make it right wit' 'im by askin 'im along for lunch."

Do you think the reader would feel sorry for Aaron, or maybe satisfied that he was getting the comeuppance he deserved? Or maybe the reader would relate to how he felt right then, being forced to walk back on to the field, knowing everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to apologize to Jack for how he'd yelled at him, knowing that Colin was watching him too, making sure he did it (even though Colin knew he would), apologize and try to make it right, with Jack, and with Colin too, for it was disappointing Colin that would have hurt Aaron the most, true and sincerely hurt, which of course Colin surely knew, and felt bad about himself for making Aaron feel that way, but also knowing that it had been an important thing to do, for the both of them, a thing that Lance would have expected him to do, and done himself, for sure.

If you told this story though, of Colin and Aaron, and of all the time they spent together in Dublin, and their adventures there, how would you bring the story to an end? They have surely said good-bye before, with tears and all, so why describe that, and risk perhaps, in any case, ending a brightly happy story with (cliché) tears? So maybe instead you could end this part of your story by describing the shocked look on Lance's face, and on JC's too, when they got back to Dublin and for the first time heard how thick an Irish accent Aaron had acquired, so thick they could hardly understand him as he asked about their trip. Or maybe you'd just describe the way JC's eyes had shined with tears when on the plane home Aaron told him about visiting the cemetery where Colin's wife and son were buried, how he had gone there without Colin knowing, to put flowers on their graves, intending to spend a few minutes there, but then spending over an hour instead, sitting cross-legged talking to Colin's son - His name is Cian, Aaron had told JC, just as he told him how he had sat there, in the late afternoon, sun filtering through the dense leafy branches overhead, quietly talking to Cian, like he was sitting right there with him, introducing himself to him, like meeting someone for the first time, someone with whom he wanted to be friends. And if you ended the story this way, you might even consider a last line like this: It was easy for JC to imagine Aaron sitting there, in a cemetery that was for that moment no longer a sad place to be, but a place of wonder where anything was possible, even a friendship that transcended the world of the living and the dead.

Or perhaps an even simpler story would say more. For example, the story of how Lance, wearing old clothes that JC hardly remembered ever having seen, spent two weeks last Spring washing, scraping, sanding, and priming each and every inch of the outside of their house, getting it ready for painting. How Lance had then tested 41 different colors, painting larges swatches of each color on different parts of the house, keeping careful track of how each color looked at different times of the day and night, taking a digital photo of each, and printing it out and putting it into a three-ring notebook he used to keep notes on his project. How JC had returned from a five-city small-club tour to find the house looking like a patchwork quilt of clashing colors with Lance still unable to decide which one, explaining (despite JC's obvious exasperation) that it was a color they'd have to live with for ten years, so it was an important decision, to which JC had replied, "Well, it's an important decision you better make by tomorrow or I'm making it for you. I'm tired of living in a house that looks like it was painted by someone on a bad acid trip."

At this point in your story (assuming you told it) you might have to decide to tell how Lance had taken Aaron to school the next day, and how once he got back, he made JC breakfast and brought it to him in bed, and how after eating it, Lance licked the syrup off JC's lips, kissing him, and then making love with him, lolling away the morning in bed, all the while with JC well-knowing that he was being not-so-subtly cajoled into letting Lance have more time to decide on which color to paint their house, time that he let Lance have, four more days of time, until finally at last Lance did decide on a pale slightly-green sapphire blue that JC instantly adored, saying, "It's like the water off Sitges, remember?" And here would be the easy part, because of course a good writer would choose to describe Lance's loud and prideful laugh, and how he had embraced JC and kissed him because that was the exact thing that he'd been thinking, and the reason he'd chosen this color; it was not just beautiful, it reminded him of the ten days he and JC had spent alone in Sitges, living in a tiny stone house on a secluded stretch of beach right outside of town, never bothering to get dressed during the day, because no one was around as they floated naked in the shallows at the edge of the beach, the water splashing over their deeply-tanned skin, their fingers rarely anywhere but on the other, in a kind of constant making love that was their play together there, play so wonder-filled and joyous that it was like the play of a child, play solely for the sake of play, and for exploration.

So, yes, that part would be easy, but this next part would be less so, because on the first day of painting, which Lance had insisted on doing himself, what if he fell off the ladder and broke his arm in two places? Would you want to include that in the story, a story that could just as easily end with Lance remembering the ten naked love-filled days they'd spent in Sitges soaking in air and salt and sun and sea of the Mediterranean? You might decide to leave this part out, to not risk upsetting the reader. Or you might look for a middle way, emphasizing (for example) that the break was not serious, and that the ER physician assured the nearly hysterical JC that it would heal without the need for surgery, and of course there was no real risk of dying from a broken arm, that was what the doctor had said. Of course, to tell the story this way, you might want to leave out the part where JC screams, "What do you mean no REAL risk?

What in the fuck is an UNREAL risk? Like one I'm just IMAGINING? Are you saying I'm just IMAGINING this?"

The other problem with this part of the story, which some readers might find too conveniently coincidental, even though it is exactly as it happened in real life, is that just as JC started screaming, that was right when Aaron arrived at the hospital, himself upset over hearing that Lance had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. So maybe you'd want to leave this part out, or at least not mention how Aaron started to cry when he saw JC screaming and so upset, immediately imagining the worst. Instead, you might want to consider fast-forwarding a week, to when Lance is in no more pain, and with just a cast to remind him of his injury. Or maybe a fast-forward of two weeks - no three - because that way you would be closer to Lance getting his cast off, and you'd skip the week-long argument that JC and Lance had over whether to hire professional painters to finish painting the house, a move that Lance strongly, even bitterly resisted, and that JC just as strongly, and just as bitterly, insisted upon.

On the other hand, if you left this part out you would also need to leave out the part where Aaron suggests that he and James do the painting, and how Lance had said, instinctively, and thus without giving it any thought, "No, it's too dangerous for you to be up on the ladder," at which point JC yelled, "Exactly! God damn you!" and then stomped out of the room, leaving Lance standing there red-faced and wondering what had hit him. Is that how you'd want the reader to see him, suddenly ashamed for having discounted JC's feeling because he wanted to paint the house himself, to be able to take sole credit for it? Or would you prefer to mention that Lance followed JC upstairs and apologized to him, asking JC's forgiveness in a way that only one who'd spent twenty years loving but one man, and never loving another, could? Yes, that is probably how you want to end it, moving like life from loving joy, to caring concern, to sadness and fear, then resolutely back to loving joy again.

Considering all the many stories you might tell, and trying to choose among them, unable to tell them all, so maybe telling more than one, you might find yourself growing concerned about your reader, fearing that he or she might grow frustrated at not learning more about Aaron's friend, James, about not hearing of the semester he spent studying abroad at Cite Scolaire Internationale Lyon, studying French and music on a scholarship he had applied for without first asking his mother, telling her only when he had won, and telling Aaron even later, not wanting to see the disappointment and hurt on his face, or to explain why he wanted to go. This is a story you would probably want to tell, because it has so much to say about Aaron too, because he surprised James by being only happy for him, congratulating him, and offering his support and encouragement, making James feel guilty for having underestimated Aaron, and bad for being consciously selfish in wanting to get away and on his own, to be with Stephane, and to learn better how to better speak French, a language that he could not speak with Aaron, and did not want to.

Does this mean that something has changed in James, in how he felt for Aaron? If you were writing this, what would you say? No? Yes? Maybe? You do not know? What if he simply wanted to visit France, to see the many places that Stephane had described in his emails to him? Maybe he found that the Cite Scolaire Internationale Lyon was a truly excellent school, and that a scholarship to study there was too good to pass up? Maybe he had decided that being fluent in French (and maybe other languages too) was a goal he truly wanted to achieve, the ability to travel from country to country, and in each place to be able to fit in, yes as a foreigner, but as a foreigner who could speak the language of the place? Maybe James was coming to understand that he enjoyed being an outsider, in not entirely belonging to any one place, or one person, and that already, even at the age of 15, he was growing restless, wanting to wander, to tug hard against the roots that held him in particularity to a given locale? Perhaps if he did not feel entirely comfortable within his own skin, a stranger to himself even, then he might embrace the logic of the stranger, la logique de l'étranger, the logic of one not known by choice, because he fears he cannot be known, and believes he does not want to be known.

Was this the elusive, at times impenetrable, at times maddening, logic that would find James spending six months in a medieval village that was over six hundred years old, walking the shadow-filled stone-cobbled streets to the train that each morning took him to school, stopping to talk to Matthieu who worked with his father in la boulangerie next to the station, the one where James bought pain au chocolat to eat on the train, the one where in the back of the store he would, near the end of his stay, kiss a boy for the very first time, and begin to sink as if by instinct to his knees until Matthieu stopped him from undoing the front of his pants, shaking his head no, and pulling James back to his feet and kissing him again, even more intensely, and whispering into it, telling James, "Non, je ne suis pas prêt," which made James laugh and loudly say, "Je suis, je suis."

If you were the writer, and you told this part of the story, about James and his first kiss, do you think that would illuminate him? Or do you think that you might have to go further and risk disappointing the reader's more romantic expectations, telling the reader (him or her) that James did not go back again to la boulangerie, and never sought another kiss from Matthieu, and even risk telling the reader why, that what James wanted was not to be found in a kiss, that what he wanted was that which Matthieu was not ready to give, not without coaxing that James, seemingly always in a hurry, was not prepared to waste his time, at least not right then, with less than a month left in his stay in Lyon. Or if you wanted to be blunt, since this was how James thought of it, and you have divulged quite a lot already, and already risked the reader's ire, you could explain that what James wanted was sex, because he was not sure of love, except that he knew if would take more time than he had, and that if he happened to find it, he'd just be forced to leave it behind when he left or - even worse - endure being apart from one with whom you'd just fallen in love. So, you see, this was a thoroughly pragmatic decision that James made - although some people might call it cold, or calculating - because, of all things that James knew and did not know, he was sure that he wanted to have sex, and to have it with as many boys that he could, boys different than Matthieu, riskier more-experienced boys, or even men, anyone with whom he could discover a world of solitary sex, a world where he knew he might be the equal of anyone else, at least for that moment when desire dictated, and not reason, nor the heart.

This was how James had felt being followed home from the train station by a man in his late twenties, a man who looked like he worked with his hands for a living, a man who he had caught staring at him. James had boldly stared right back, giving him a sly confident smile that seemed to say, "I know what you want. I want it too." And so it was that James and this man hardly made it inside the back door of the house before ending up on the kitchen floor, which is where Stephane, having come back early, found his young friend entangled in a half-clothed, half-naked embrace, the man's cock in his mouth, oblivious at first to having been seen, and then, when seen (or knowing he was seen), James saw himself through Stephane's eyes, saw himself starkly, in the sad and disappointed look on his face, a look that took days and days to melt away, despite James repeated promise that he would never be so stupid or careless again, a promise to which Stephane's single reply was, "We will see, won't we?" So, now tell me: if all this had all happened to James (and to Stephane, who had been busy writing a script, while trying too to be a good friend for James), and you described it all true and well, would the readerbe mistake to conclude son séjour de six mois en France was nothing more than a frolic, just an adventure for James, or was it more a turning point? Or, worse - a portent?

But wait - what about JC and Lance and their 20th Anniversary? The reader may suspect you weren't going to mention it because you didn't want to be overly sentimental or make it improbably romantic or, even worse, melodramatic (like maybe their having a big fight, only to then make-up - oh, and of course, make love, so there could be sex in it too, which some few people complained there was not enough of). That would be one of the reasons the writer might have to avoid this topic, a 20th Anniversary just seeming too too symbolic. And that's what Lance and JC might think too, maybe they'd make love in the shower, something they used to do nearly every day, a ritual that had begun on tour, when they were afraid of being heard, and the noise of the water in the shower (plus the feel of the water on their skin) felt safer, more intimate, opening up a private place where they did not worry about being heard or seen or discovered. And if after making love, with JC lying on top of Lance, both of them stretched out on the floor of the shower, the water falling like summer rain, washing the stickiness of JC's semen from Lance's thigh and hip and arm, if there in their drowsy half-out-of-breath slackening embrace they said anything - in addition, that is, to saying "I love you", or "Happy Anniversary" - if in standing up and grabbing towels and laughing as they dried each other off, if in doing this the subject of how to celebrate came up, either one of them might easily have said, "We just did. We just did." And wouldn't the reader know that was true?

Yes, yes, yes, he would. But the reader would also know something that Aaron did not, and could not know of their conversation, after making love. An inexperienced or uncaring writer might fail to pay attention, having one character know everything that every other character knew (as if they knew all the writer knew). Yet that is not how real life is. (Right?) In real life we know only what we see, or hear, or feel, or smell, or are told - although even if we are told, we may not know for sure. (Right?) So knowing this, the smart reader would know that Aaron did not know that Lance and JC wanted only a simple small celebration. From Aaron's point of view, which was his and his alone, the twenty years that his parents had spent together included twelve years with him as their son, and he was not the kind of boy - or should we be calling him a young man by now? - he was not the kind of young man to forget such a thing as a 20th Anniversary, or of the importance of time, its passage, and its celebration. Perhaps Aaron had already spoken with his dad, one or the other or both, asking them what they wanted to do. And perhaps it had been decided, between the there of them, that they'd all go out to dinner together, nothing fancy, or elaborate, just a quiet dinner at the Red Fox Inn, especially now that Luanne owned it and JC could eat there without having to worry about how things were going in the kitchen, or at the bar, knowing that just as Shirley had entrusted it to him, he had been right to entrust the Inn to Luanne, who loved the place like Shirley had, so that selling it to her (for a good but fair price, she having insisted on not getting it as a piece of charity) had been the right thing to do.

And so the Red Fox Inn it was. That was how it was going to be, a quiet dinner to celebrate twenty (or twelve) years together on a date, March 11, 2018, that was nearly in the shadow of the upcoming premiere, and the steady rise in publicity about the first Star Wars film to be released in thirteen years. Or that was how JC and Lance had probably thought it was going to be, because Aaron may have had a different idea; it's possible he wanted something grander, something noisier, more celebratory and joy-filled, something he could claim to have planned and pulled off, for his parents, on their anniversary. If that was how he'd thought about it, he might have then asked James to help him, and maybe he'd have called Colin too, who had been planning to be in town soon anyway, and Eric Bana, who lived in San Diego now, and Justin and Mel of course. If Aaron had done all that, and spent one whole day searching through boxes downstairs in the basement to find the guestbook people had signed at their promising, which is what he knew his dad had called it, and with Colin and Justin's help, if he'd arranged for them all to be at the Red Fox Inn, Lance and JC may have walked inside to have dinner, thinking that was so, but they'd have gotten the surprise of their life instead. Wouldn't that have been a night to remember, and something you'd be mad not to want to write about?

And so, you see, that was how it may have been back then, during the year and nine months or so that followed everyone's return home from Australia. So much had occurred, some things important, and some things not, and so many things had changed, but maybe not so much, not when you looked hard enough, and close enough, and long enough, enough to try to tell the story honest and true, that is, if that's possible, because, to really tell the story of it all, or even several small parts of it, and to do it all justice, to make it real, believable, and true - how would you tell it? How?

Because, to be honest, I'd really like to know.

"Your home is beautiful," Gabriella said, sitting across from couch on which JC, Lance, and Aaron sat, side-by-side, facing her and the TV camera and lighting scrims that were set up just behind her. "Thank you for letting us see it."

"You're welcome," JC said.

"You've never let it be photographed before," Gabriella said. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"Oh - It's not really a change of heart," Lance said.

"Actually, yes it is," JC said, firmly. "And it's not something we're entirely happy about, to tell you the truth. But there it is."

"Josh is right," Lance said. "It's not something we're entirely happy about."

"Lowering the shields a bit," Gabriella said. "Is that it?"

"Well, to use a Star Wars metaphor," JC said, laughing. "Yeah."

"I'd say doing this interview is really more of a compromise," Lance said, trying to explain. "It's hard to keep thing in balance sometimes, but we try."

"A compromise how?" Gabrielle asked.

"It just seemed like some of the - I'm not sure how to put it..."

"Media interest," Lance suggested, turning to look at JC, a strained smile showing on his face. "Lots of it."

"Yeah, media interest," JC said. "It seemed like it was getting way out of control, or it was about to. So we felt like we needed to get out in front of it a bit."

"So you called me," Gabriella said, smiling.

"Yes," JC laughed. "Gabriella, Dateline Goddess, please save us."

"Oh stop," Gabriella said, waving JC off.

"Anyway, there's always going to be attention," Lance said. "We'd be idiots if we thought the world was just going to leave us alone. I mean, we choose to put ourselves out there, so it'd be hypocritical to complain too much. But..."

"There are limits," JC said, leaning forward slightly. "There has to be."

"And we try to enforce them," Lance said. "For Aaron's sake, and our own."

"Was there a breaking point of some kind?" Gabriella said, tilting her head to one side in what was plainly a well-practiced motion. "That made you decide to give us a call and say, 'Okay, one big interview, an exclusive, and then that's it."

"Paparazzi at Aaron's school," Lance and JC said almost simultaneously.

"Yeah, that was kind of weird," Aaron said, laughing. "This guy in a big hat and bad sunglasses taking pictures of me during lacrosse practice, like what's that about?"

"You'd be surprised what some people consider newsworthy," Gabriella said. "Or what kinds of pictures the tabloids will pay for."

"I wouldn't be surprised at all," Lance said. "Believe me."

"Lance and I have pretty much seen it all," JC said.

"Was this something you feared when you decided to let Aaron be in the movie? You must have had some big concerns."

"Huge ones," Lance said. "I mean, first off, it's Star Wars, and you have to know that that's mega. And then there's this whole new interest in 'N Sync again."

"Lance and I - we're used to it," JC said. "Like I said, we've pretty much seen it all. But Aaron. That's different. For me and Lance - fine, bring it. Take your best shot. Write or say whatever you want. But for Aaron, no."

"See, we understand how it works," Lance said. "

"How it's kind of a game."

"Is that what they've told you Aaron?" Gabriella said, turning slightly in her chair to better face Aaron. "That this is all just a game."

"No," Aaron said. "Not really. But, you know, my dads are real big on me staying like focused on school and stuff. They don't want me getting all stuck up or anything."

"That'd be easy to do," Gabriella said. "Being on the cover of People magazine."

"That was weird," Aaron said, matter-of-factly. "And, actually, I was kind of mad about that, to tell you the truth."

"How so?"

"That article was supposed to be about the movie," Aaron said, his voice growing more animated as he spoke. "Which it sort of was. But they turned it more into this thing about me, and about how it was my first movie, and I was going to be this big star, like if I wanted to, and how my Dads are all like famous and stuff. So that was why I was kind of mad because they took a whole bunch of pictures of my Dad and me together, and all of us, you know, Colin and Stephane and Eric - it was really cool."

"The group photo was supposed to be on the cover," Lance said.

"That was what we were told," JC added.

"And so then you're out doing the shopping one day," Gabriella said.

"That was exactly what happened," JC said, nodding his head and pointing at her. "I'm with Aaron in the grocery store. We've got a cart full of stuff, you know, just like always, and we're in line waiting to check out."

"You do your own shopping?" Gabriella said, displaying genuine surprise.

"Gabri-ella," JC said, making a mock exaggerated frown. "Of course, we do our own shopping, and cooking. Plus no live-in maid or anything like that."

"We have a pool service," Lance said. "If you want all the gory details."

"Aaron mows the lawn," JC said.

"For a measly fifty bucks," Aaron grumbled, good-naturedly.

"Which he promptly spends on video games," JC said, smiling at Aaron.

"Dad - video games cost more than fifty bucks," Aaron said.

"Well, anyway," JC said, going on with his story. "Aaron and I were standing in the check-out line and all of sudden I hear someone behind me, a girl saying, 'Excuse me, but could I please have your autograph?'"

"I was pushing the cart," Aaron said. "We were next up, and the dude in front of us was just done paying, so I wasn't really paying attention. I didn't hear her."

"I did though," JC said. "And I'm all thinking - okay, this is a bit of a bother, and I'm already running late, but, you know, I'm thinking I need to set a good example for Aaron and all."

"It was kind of funny," Aaron said. "Because I totally noticed Dad getting ready to turn around, and he totally had his I'm-always-be-nice-to-people smile on, which I've seen like thousands of times, and so I'm all about it and pretty much knew what was up. Or I thought I did."

"It was this teenage girl," JC said, starting to laugh as he thought about it. "And she was way-more jumping up and down than I usually get these days."

"She was all like squealing and stuff," Aaron said, laughing. "And her face was all pink like she'd been holding her breath or something."

"She had a magazine in her hand," JC said. "And a pen, which I start to go for, you know - to sign with. But before I can take it she gives me this wicked dirty look, sort of like, who in the hell are you, and why are you trying to steal my pen?"

"She didn't recognize who you were?" Gabriella said, pretending to be shocked.

"I guess not," JC said, looking disappointed.

"It's okay sweetie," Lance whispered, as he patted JC on the hand and tried not to laugh. "You still have plenty of fans."

"Oh pipe down," JC said, poking Lance in the rib with his elbows.

"That was when she handed me the magazine," Aaron said. "And I was all like, what's this about - that is until I saw my picture on the front of it."

"You hadn't seen it before?"

"Nope," Aaron said. "And it was major-league freaky. I was like, whoa!"

"Did you sign it?"

"For sure - her name was Courtney," Aaron said. "She was pretty sweet. I mean, at least she didn't try to kiss me or anything. "

"Has that happened?"

"Yeah," Aaron said, blushing. "I don't much go for people trying to get up in my face with their, you know, lips and all. But I try to be cool about it."

"It's not that people mean to make you uncomfortable," JC said. "They just don't stop and think sometimes. But, believe me, there is pretty much not a place on my body that hasn't been grabbed at some point or another."

"The movie comes out in just over two weeks," Gabriella asked. "And when it does, the attention will only intensify. Any second-thoughts?"

"Totally not," Aaron said, surprised at first at the question. "Sure things have changed, you know, with me being recognized and all, but making the movie was a really cool thing for me. I made some really good new friends, and got to do lots of stuff that I had never done before. So, no, I don't regret it at all."

"We're really proud of how Aaron's been handling it," Lance said, smiling at Aaron and then patting him on the knee.

"Were you worried? I mean, that he wouldn't handle it so well."

"Sure we were," JC said. "What parent wouldn't be?"

"But we take it as it comes," Lance said, putting his arm around Aaron's shoulder and giving him a gentle hug. "Together, as a family."

"Well let me ask you about that then," Gabriella said. "Because it's not something I've heard you talk about, your being two gay men."

"Yes."

"Partners?"

"Yes."

"Almost twenty years.

"Raising a son?"

"Yes. An adopted son."

"How's that been for you? Two gay men, pretty much out there in the public eye, trying to raise your son and live a semi-normal life? Difficult, I imagine."

"You know Gabriella," Lance said, removing his arm from around Aaron as he leaned forward. "With all due respect, that's not something Josh or I have ever felt the need to talk about, not publicly."

"Except to say that we love each other very much."

"And that we are proud of the life we've made together, and of our family."

"Yes we are," JC said, nodding.

"But the rest is something we want to keep private," Lance said. "Not because we have anything to hide, but because its there just for us."

"Well, let me ask it this way then," Gabriella said. "Gay rights have come a long way since the two of you first came out. Is that something you've worked to support?"

"I'm not sure we came out," JC said. "Did we Lance?"

"I'll have to check our press-clippings," Lance said, laughing.

"But seriously," Gabriella said. "Coming out, that had to be a big deal for you."

"We just stopped hiding who we were," JC said.

"And how much we meant to each other."

"But there was no press release or anything like that."

"No picture on the cover of Out magazine."

"Or being grand-marshal of the San Diego pride parade," JC said.

"You have to admit though," Gabriella said, still pushing the subject, unsatisfied by the responses she'd received so far. "It was a risky move."

"No," Lance said, firmly. "It was not. Because the only thing that I was unwilling to risk was losing Josh. Or hurting him."

"When we moved to San Diego," JC said. "We considered ourselves pretty much retired. We'd left 'N Sync, and, I don't know, the rest was just going to be time for us."

"And I had no great hopes about a movie career," Lance said. "Not at that point."

"But The Ghost Road?" Gabriella said. "Your acceptance speech."

"I guess that was a kind of coming-out," Lance said, after pausing to think first, and then taking JC's hand. "But that was not why I said the things that night I did."

"So why did you say those things?"

"Sometimes the heart insists on speaking," Lance said, his voice quiet. "And when it does, I've found it's best to let it."

"And so we fast-forward ten years," Gabrielle said. "And now you and JC have a son, Aaron here. How does it feel to be such a prominent non-traditional family?"

"Oh-oh," JC said, covering his mouth as if to stifle a laugh.

"I hate that word," Lance said, frowning. "Non-traditional - what in the hell does that mean? It's like saying our family is like a three-legged dog - it walks okay, but it's still missing something."

"I certainly didn't mean to insult you," Gabrielle said, slightly taken aback.

"Well, it is insulting," Lance said. "There's no two ways around it. We are just as real, and just as traditional, as any other family with a legally-adopted son."

"We are pretty darned traditional," JC said. "At times, boringly so."

"How about you Aaron?" Gabriella said, turning back to him. "Has it been hard being raised by two men?"

"Nope," Aaron said, grinning at Lance and then JC. "Not at all. I got the two best dads in the world. So I think I'm double-lucky."

"There you have it," Gabriella said, charmed by Aaron's sincerity. "Next subject - JC, Lance - 'N Sync winning a Grammy - exciting, right?"

"It was definitely a surprise," JC said. "Especially winning for album of the year. But I think mostly it was kind of bittersweet."

"Because of Joey?"

"Yeah - that was tough," JC said, his voice softening, and his eyes beginning to glisten as he looked momentarily away.

"But your acceptance speech," Gabriella said. "That was perfect I think. Lance, whose idea was that?"

"No one's really," Lance said. "We seriously didn't expect to win. In fact, I almost wasn't there. Aaron and I were in middle of post-production up at Skywalker Ranch doing these crazy eighteen-hour days with Ang and the Foley guy. And, as usual with movies, everything was taking way longer than anyone thought."

"It was kind of fun though," Aaron said, remembering it.

"So I called JC and he was very cool about it. He said he didn't mind if I skated on the award show. Still, I was feeling really bad about missing it. "

"He and Aaron flew down at the last minute," JC said, smiling.

"We barely made it in time," Aaron said. "But Dad drove crazy-fast from the airport, speeding and stuff."

"Lance!" JC said, having not heard this before.

"Sweetie, it wasn't that fast."

"It was fast," Aaron said, laughing.

"So the speech?" Gabriella said.

"We were walking up to the podium," Lance said. "Sort of in shock, really."

"Chris, and Justin, and me and Lance."

"And we all just kind of looked at each other - I don't know, it just all of a sudden seemed obvious what needed to be said."

"It was simple really," JC said. "Like we knew what the point of winning it was."

"And so," Gabrielle said, picking up a card and reading from it. "You said, 'We'd like to thank you very much for this award, and the recognition that goes along with it. But mostly we'd just like to say, Joey - this is for you."

"And it was," Lance said, softly. "It really was for him, because I know he would have really loved the album. It was very much in his style."

"It's weird," JC said, his voice serious and thoughtful. "Because when Justin and I were laying down the lead vocals, and mixing the album, at first we wanted to update it, you know, keep it current. But then we realized - no, it should be old school, stripped-down ballads, lots of acapella, like we did when we were just starting out."

"Do you listen to your dads' music Aaron?"

"When they make me," Aaron said, laughing.

"Hey!" JC and Lance said simultaneously, and laughing now too.

"No, some of it's pretty cool," Aaron said. "And being in their video was fun."

"Why'd you want to be in it," Gabriella asked.

"Car money," Aaron said.

"You're not driving until you're twenty," Lance said, joking. "Maybe thirty."

"He always says that," Aaron said, rolling his eyes.

"So, Aaron," Gabriella continued. "What's one of the fun things you've done lately? For the Star Wars film?"

"Getting scanned for my action figure was way cool," Aaron said. "I can't wait to buy one. You know, not for like an ego thing, but just to say I have one."

"You liked that?" Lance said, looking at Aaron with surprise.

"Totally," Aaron said. You had to wear this tight blue-rubber suit thing and jump around and stuff. It was really cool."

"What else," Gabriella said, prodding Aaron to go on. "Was there one thing you liked best making the film?"

"Hmmm...that's hard," Aaron said, pausing for a moment to think. "There were a lot of best things I think. Like working with my Dad, that was probably the best. Getting to meet Colin Farrell, that was a totally good thing too."

"You spent this last summer with him in Ireland I hear?"

"Yeah, I played football - or I guess you'd say soccer - for the St. Marks Rangers in Dublin. I had a blast."

"And he learned to swear like you wouldn't believe."

"Daaaad, it's not really swearing over here."

"Well, let's not challenge the censors," Gabriella laughed.

"Okay," Aaron said, blushing again.

"And Lance, how about you? What did you enjoy best about making this film."

"Working with Ang is always a joy," Lance said, nodding emphatically. "But having an opportunity work with my son, that was definitely the best thing for me. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I had no inkling it was going to be such a joy too. He's a phenomenal talent, and I can't wait for the rest of the world to see."

"That's high praise from a man who's already won two Academy Awards."

"Just wait," Lance said, smiling. "You'll see."

"Okay," Gabriella said, standing up and extending her hand to Aaron. "That's it I think. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me."

"Sure thing," Aaron said, standing up now too.

"When this going to air," Lance asked, following JC and the others to the side of the room not cluttered with cameras and lights.

"The Sunday before the release," Gabriella said, unhooking her microphone and handing it to an assistant. "It's a ninety-minute 'the making of' show. We're going to talk to everyone. And show a few clips. It should be good."

"Great," Lance said, shaking Gabriella's hand. "Thanks again."

"You're welcome," Gabriella said, smiling.

The general manager peered at him in a way that made him know he was about to be embarrassed. Aaron had seen the expression many, many times, but more so lately. It was an expression of puzzlement that gave way to recognition, to surprise, and then to a kind of knowing pleasure, like a person might display having just filled in the last word on a crossword puzzle. Aaron was much too polite to show his impatience, and annoyance, at being appraised like this, so he hid it behind and increasingly well-practiced smile. But there was, unfortunately for Aaron, nothing he could do to hide his embarrassment. He invariably blushed when someone said, and people lately seemed to say it often, "This can't really be Aaron, is it? Look how big he is!"

"This is Mr. Valdez," Lance said, extending his hand to him. "He has always taken very good care of your Dad and me here at the hotel."

"Dad," Aaron said, finally letting a trace of impatience show in his voice.

"We were here last year. Twice. For the Billboard music award thing, and for Dad's concert. Don't you remember?"

"That's right," Lance said.

"Look at him," Mr. Valdez said, beaming at Aaron. "I do believe he is taller than you now, Mr. Bass, nearly as tall as Mr. Chasez."

Aaron seethed inside. He hated it when people talked to him as if he wasn't there, as if he was being shown off like a favorite photograph pulled from his Dad's wallet. He had gotten used to some kinds of attention, and mostly ignored it, or politely played along, like when people asked him for his autograph. That he could deal with because it seemed more like a game, or a job, and people were usually nice, and he didn't want to be rude or unkind. But this fascination with how different he looked, when he didn't feel like he looked any different at all, that was what he didn't understand.

Okay, that was a lie, because Aaron remembered how shocked he'd been by the sight of himself halfway through eighth grade, in early February, not long after turning fourteen. He'd come home from Lacrosse practice and taken a shower, just like he always did. There were only two bathrooms upstairs, the one in his parents' room, and one down the hall next to the living room.

He was walking down the hall after taking a shower, still damp because the bathroom was small, and it got hot and steamy in there even if he left the door open. The cool air in the hallway felt good on his skin, and Aaron usually dried his hair and face and under his arms as he walked down the hall, not bothering to wrap the towel around his waist.

On this day, Aaron had been in the middle of drying his hair, thinking about his chances of next year making the junior varsity squad in all three of the sports he played, an accomplishment he was not sure he could or would achieve. His face covered with the towel he was using, Aaron didn't see Lance enter the hall from his bedroom, and he ran right into him, knocking Lance to the floor. Startled, Aaron dropped his towel and kneeled down to help Lance back to his feet. Aaron remembered that Lance had pushed his hand away after he'd helped him to stand up, and that his face was bright red in what he had first thought was anger and only later recognized as embarrassment.

"Are you okay?" Aaron asked, noticing his towel on the floor and squatting down to pick it up. "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to knock you down."

"Aaron," Lance stuttered, looking him in the eye and realizing for the first time that he had to look up, even if only slightly, to meet Aaron's gaze. "You should get some clothes on. You're...uh, you're a little old now to be walking around like that."

"Okay Dad," Aaron said, confused at first. "Sorry."

"No," Lance said, frowning slightly. "Don't be sorry. It's totally all right. I was just thinking maybe it's about time time we get you a bathroom, you know, like connected to your room, like me and your dad have. That way it'll be more private for you, and easier for you to take showers and stuff."

"Sure," Aaron said, still confused at what this was all about, and why his Dad seemed somehow unsettled. "If you think that's cool."

"It'll be good," Lance said, smiling. "Now, how about you getting some clothes on. I don't want you catching a cold."

Aaron had returned to his room, wrapping the bath towel around his waist as he made his way the rest of the way down the hall. Once inside, he tossed the towel on the floor next that day's dirty clothes. Turning around, Aaron faced his reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the back of his bedroom door. He was close to six feet tall, and his skin was the color of honey. His shoulders were broad, his chest was smooth and muscled and tapered to a lean flat stomach. His hair, having returned to its natural color, was a light sun-streaked brown that Aaron wore with long bangs that hung nearly in his eyes with soft loosely-cut curls that nestled against the small of his neck. He was shaving now, although it was not yet necessary everyday. He had the beginning of sideburns, not yet trimmed or sharply shaped (although they would be for the premiere). Untrimmed and not yet fully grown in, his sideburns looked like charcoal thumb-smudges that echoed the concave slope of his cheeks to his square and deeply-dimpled chin. Aaron's arms were like a great swimmer's arms, long and strong but not over-muscled, his fingers hanging well below his hips when he let arms fall to his side. His pubic hair was thin but dark, like the hair on his legs. It looked shaved, but wasn't.

Staring at himself in the mirror like this, something that for some reason he did not remember doing before, not like this, as if taking an inventory, Aaron felt the urge to masturbate, an urge he managed quickly to ignore. He had by now been masturbating for nearly a year, and some of its intoxicating novelty had finally worn off. So instead of touching himself, as he often did before or after a shower, instead of coaxing an erection, and massaging it to climax, Aaron just looked at himself, as if for the first time, and he was startled at the discontinuity that he had failed to notice. There had been, it seemed, no end to the changes his body had gone through; that he knew better than anyone. But suddenly the changes had coalesced, as if in one instant, to transform him into someone he hardly recognized, even though he knew it was him. It was like seeing someone you had once known well, but not seen for years. At first glance you'd know that you knew this person, but you might not at first remember their name, not until some clue was provided, or you recalled something you'd done together, and then - voila - it was there, the moment of recognition. That was how it was for Aaron that day.

"How do you do Mr. Valdez," Aaron said, extending his hand as Lance had done, smiling graciously, careful to appear appreciative for the attention. "It's very nice to see you again."

"And you as well," Mr. Valdez said, shaking Aaron's hand. "Welcome to the Four Seasons."

"Thank you sir," Aaron said, bowing his head almost imperceptibly.

"Will you be having your usual suite," Mr. Valdez said, turning his attention back to Lance and JC. "Or, if you wish, we have a nice two-bedroom suite we've held for you just in case Aaron would prefer a room of his own rather than sleeping on the pull-out in the living room."

"Aaron?" Lance said, turning to him. "What do you think? It's your call."

"I like our usual one Dad," Aaron said, shrugging his shoulder almost in apology. "It's where you and Dad have always stayed and I like it."

"Suite 311 it is then," Mr. Valdez said. "Just like always."

As Toni snubbed out her cigarette and tugged at the waist of her dress, which had suddenly seemed too small, she looked across the room, trying not to appear bored, and forcing herself to smile. She'd arrived a few minutes ago, having worked her way up the red carpet, signing some autographs and being interviewed before entering the theater. In the Hollywood food-chain scheme of things, she knew she would not be the last to arrive, not having her name above the title, like Lance and Colin did, but she was not the first to arrive either. Seeing Stephane, she waved him over, not needing now to pretend to smile. She was happy to see him, and surprised to see that he seemed happy too. Gone was his usual glower and his slump-shouldered wandering walk. He strode forward toward her, his arms outstretched, laughing and embracing her, then kissing each cheek in turn.

"Bon jour Toni," Stephane said, releasing her from his embrace. "It is my delight to see you again."

"How sweet of you to say," Toni said, blushing as she softly shoved his shoulder, as if to push him away, but not really. "How have you been?"

"I have been quite well," Stephane said. "And you?"

"Working," Toni said. "Always working."

"Me, I have taken much time off," Stephane said. "Staying home for a change. It is nice, to do nothing, I find."

"I can't just do nothing," Toni said. "I go insane."

"I thought that too. But it was, as I said, quite nice. I read quite a bit. And I started work on a script, nothing too ambitious, something small and personal, for a film I think I'd like to direct."

"That sounds exciting," Toni said. "Any part in it for me."

"There is a cuckolded wife, I do believe."

"Oh lord - no more cuckolded wife-roles for me, thank you very much."

"Perhaps you are right," Stephane said, laughing softly.

"So weren't you lonely holed up in Chez Stephane all alone."

"Ah, but I was not alone," Stephane said. "James spent just over six months with me, studying French, and the cello. You remember James, yes?"

"Now Stephane," Toni clucked. "You know I remember James."

"Well yes, I suppose you would," Stephane said. "He was your favorite mystery of a few years ago."

"I don't suppose I'll bother asking for details."

"But there is nothing much to say," Stephane said, continuing to smile so brightly that Toni found it suddenly disconcerting.

"Or nothing much you will say."

"Yes, there's that," Stephane said, laughing again. "But I will say that I have found that James is immensely talented. He speaks French near-fluently now, and his cello-playing, it is quite moving. Often, he would play for me at night. Alas, for one his age, James remains - how shall I say - too much in a hurry to grow up."

"Some children are just like that," Toni said. "When I was young, I hated children my own age. My mother was endlessly shooing me out of the living room at her parties and telling me to go outside and play with my friends. But what friends? Childish games just seemed too tedious to me. I was always starved for adult conversation."

"I see," Stephane said, carefully considering what Toni had said.

"Of course, now I can't stand adults either," Toni laughed. "So I fear it really is just a case of me being anti-social."

"But as they say, even a porcupine must find a way to make love."

"Oh - I like that one," Toni said, nodding approvingly and putting her hand on his shoulder. "I must get that embroidered on a pillow at once."

"You are too much," Stephane said, smiling.

"Yes, I am," Toni said. "So will James be attending?"

"I believe he is here already," Stephane said. "With his mother, Luanne. I will need to look for them soon. They are expecting me."

"You've come alone then?"

"Yes, as usual," Stephane said. "But I am certainly happy to keep you company for a little while."

"Ooh, a beard of my very own."

"Your what?"

"Never mind," Toni said, tilting her head and looking over Stephane's shoulder at the people milling near the entrance. "I'm here with Ryan anyway."

"Ryan?"

"Sad but true, although sadder for him I hasten to add."

"What happened with Brendan?"

"Oh lord," Toni said, shaking her head. "You didn't hear?"

"I do my best - how do you say - to stay out of the connection."

"Out of the loop, dear. It's out of the loop."

"All right, yes. Out of the loop. So, no I did not hear."

"Everything was going smashingly," Toni said. "That is, according to Ryan."

"They seemed happy when I saw them at Skywalker Ranch."

"All true," Toni said, looking at the pack of cigarettes she had placed on the table next to her, wondering whether to smoke one more before it got too crowded and made people prone to complain about the smoke. "I saw it myself. I had dinner with them four or five times. They were all atwitter about buying a house together. Ryan had moved into Brendan's place right after they got back from Australia. But they said they wanted something bigger, less of a bachelor pad, if you know what I mean."

"One that did not smell of past sexual conquests."

"Exactly."

"What was it when you saw them, a year together by then?"

"Just short of it," Toni said, coughing into her fist and clearing her throat. "It was all they talked about, 'Can you really believe it's almost been one year' - blah, blah, blah, blah. You'd think they'd cured cancer or circled the globe three times in a balloon. I mean, let's be serious, even I've made it past the one year mark. Several times."

"It must have seemed like a very long time to them. An achievement."

"No doubt," Toni laughed. "Like walking across the room without falling."

"You are so cynical."

"I prefer to call it world-weary," Toni said, lighting up a second cigarette and then blowing a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. "It sounds more sophisticated. And less brazenly callous."

"So what happened - no, let me guess. Ryan came home early one day and found Brendan in bed with the postman."

"If only it could have been that classic," Toni said, her voice softening a bit, and a note of sadness edging into it. "And less regrettable."

"Qu'est-ce que c'est - is that sympathy I hear?"

"Why yes, it is," Toni said, sounding insulted. "I am not all made of ice you know. And it's damn sad, actually. Damn sad."

"Tell me," Stephane said, leaning toward her, half-expecting her to whisper. "Tell me what happened."

"Ryan has AIDS. You knew that."

"No," Stephane said, frowning. "I knew he was HIV positive, but..."

"Well, he has AIDS. Not full-blown or anything like that. But...anyway, it's not good thing, obviously."

"Brendan knew this?"

"Oh, he knew," Toni said, flipping the hair out of her eyes with the back of her left hand. "He knew all right."

"Because...?"

"Because Ryan told him," Toni said, wondering why Stephane might possibly think otherwise. "When they were first together."

"And Brendan did not care."

"Not in the least," Toni said, taking a long and noisy drag off her cigarette, then snubbing it out like she was angry at herself for smoking it. "He was into barebacking. You know, sex without condoms. He told Ryan he never used them, and that he was sure he was HIV positive too. He just didn't know for sure because he'd never been tested."

"Ah, if only ignorance was bliss."

"I can't say I understand any of it," Toni said, shaking her head in disgust. "In a way I thought they made a perfect pair. Not a sentimental bone in either one of them."

"That is rarely true," Stephane said, frowning.

"Oh, I know that," Toni said, almost angrily. "But for some reason, I was happy for them, you know? Ryan seemed genuinely affected by Brendan, maybe even in love, and, fuck, I don't know, it's just ..."

"You wish you understood what happened. Or why."

"No, I know what happened," Toni said, putting her hands on her hips as if trying to brace herself, like part of her expected the floor to suddenly shake. "And I know why."

"Tell me."

"For whatever reason - well, I guess that's the thing I don't know. But Brendan decided to get tested, and, as you would say - voila - he was negative."

"Negative."

"Yup. And that, as they say, was the end of it."

"He left Ryan."

"Without a word of apology," Toni said.

"Nothing?"

"Oh - he said good bye, sure. You know, after he'd told him about the test results and packed all his things for him, and basically showed him the door."

"Nice."

"It gets better."

"Or worse."

"The little fucker's engaged now."

"Dites cela encore!"

"Huh?"

"Say that again."

"Yeah, he's engaged. Brendan's engaged. And you'll never guess to whom."

"I fear to even try."

"Alex Bledel."

"I think I may be ill."

"Oh, sweetie pie, mama ain't even to the best part."

"No - it's not possible that she is..."

"Pregnant."

Stephane stared wide-eyed at Toni, aghast for reasons that he did not, or could not, fully comprehend. None of these people mattered to him, not in any meaningful way, but he felt both repulsed by them, and saddened for them. It was like seeing a dog or a cat struck in the street, struck and killed - disgusted by the gore, but also saddened by the thought that some person somewhere might stand calling for a beloved pet that would never return home. Was this why that he had so steadfastly resisted forming attachments, why he preferred to keep people at a distance, even if only an arm's length? Because he could not bring himself to contemplate the reality of losing something, someone, that had mattered to him. But there was another side to this he realized. He could understand the pain of this loss without having experienced it himself. What was that? He did not know, and perhaps could not know. All he knew that suddenly he wished to see James again, and wanted this more intensely than even minutes before.

"I don't know why this makes me so angry," Stephane finally said.

"I'll tell you why," Toni said, picking up her cigarettes and narrowing here eyes into a sharp piercing stare. "Because you've got a heart sweetie. That's why."

"Yes," Stephane said, almost to himself. "Perhaps that much at least is true."

"Josh is an expert at this Aaron, I'm serious, so listen to what he has to say."

"First off," JC said, putting his hand on Aaron's knee as their limousine pulled out of the hotel driveway. "You're Dad's full of it, because he was always better at these things than me - at least I think he was."

"Josh - I was not. You know these big hoo-hahs always made me crazy. My first premiere I thought I was going to pee my pants."

"You did great though," JC said, reaching across Aaron and giving Lance a gentle shove. "You're sincere. You can't help it. And it totally comes across."

"Well thank you," Lance said, grinning, and then leaning across Aaron to give JC a quick kiss. "I think."

"Dad," Aaron said, plainly nervous. "We're going to be there in like less than ten minutes."

"Okay," JC said. Here's the deal. You're Dad and I will get out first."

"Don't get right..."

"Lance - I thought I was telling him this."

"Sorry."

"Like your Dad said, don't' jump out right after us. Wait for the noise to settle down a bit, then get out. The photographers will want to get a picture of just you getting out of the limo. You're the new meat."

"Josh!"

"Sorry."

"I'd rather get out with you guys."

"It's okay," Lance said. "We'll be waiting like ten feet away."

"We'll do the carpet and the rope line together."

"Okay."

"Make sure your jacket's unbuttoned when you get out of the car."

"If it's buttoned, it'll squeeze around your stomach and you'll make a funny face when you get out."

"This is kind of stupid."

"Yup," Lance said.

"But you're going to feel way better about this if you know what to expect," JC said, his hand still on Aaron's knee.

"And the good thing about the unbuttoned jacket is that it gives you something to do once you're out of the limo. The camera's are going to be flashing like crazy and you don't want to be looking at that right off, so look down at your jacket and button it."

"Okay," Aaron said, nodding. "Look at jacket. Button it. Don't look at cameras."

"Not at first ," JC said. " Not until you're eyes have adjusted to the light."

"Otherwise you'll squint," Lance added."

"Right," JC said. "Then, once you're eyes are adjusted, then look up and smile."

"Like you would at a surprise party."

"Like - Wow, you guys all showed up for me?' Sort of like that."

"I'm starting to wish I hadn't been in this movie now," Aaron said, swallowing hard. "I don't think I like lots of people staring at me."

"Sweetie," JC said, firmly, but not criticizing. "It's a little late to be thinking that. Being here is part of the job, a job you said you wanted to do. You should take this just as seriously as you did making the movie because you don't get one without the other."

"Your Dad's right," Lance said, putting his arm around Aaron.

"I know," Aaron said. "I'm just scared. I don't want to look stupid."

"You won't," JC said. "In fact, you look very handsome."

"Thanks Dad," Aaron said. "It was really hard to decide what to wear."

"You did a good job," Lance said, squeezing the back of Aaron's neck and then taking his arm from around his shoulders. "Why'd you pick this one?"

"I don't know," Aaron said. "The other ones seemed too grown up, and like sexy. Like the Prada one, it was way too 'Look at me, look at me, I'm a player'. This is the one Marc Jacobs made special for me. I like it because it's sort of funny, like the uniform I used to wear in elementary school, with the blue jacket and badge on it, and the grey pants - you know, but it's really nice material too."

JC stared open-mouthed for a moment and then shook his head. Aaron was right. It looked like a more grown-up, but not too grown-up, version of how Aaron had dressed in Elementary School, right down to the white shirt that was not tucked into his pants and black leather oxfords that he wore without socks and unlaced. JC had always made him tie his shoes and tuck in his shirt before taking him to school and then watched him as he walked up the steps to the schoolhouse, pulling his shirt out from his pants and, he knew, untying his shoes once he got inside. That was always how he looked when he had picked him up each day. But JC never said anything. He was amused by Aaron's small defiance, and approving of it.

"Dad," Aaron said, nudging JC. "You're staring at me."

"Sorry," JC said, shaking his head as if to clear it, and smiling at Aaron.

"I was just remembering something. That's all."

Before Aaron could reply his cell phone buzzed, vibrating in the inside pocket of his jacket. Pulling the phone from his pocket, and flipping the cover open, Aaron looked at the caller-ID screen and smiled.

"It's Colin," Aaron said, raising the phone to his ear. "Hey Big Da!"

"Yeah," Aaron said, leaning forward and looking out the window as he continued to talk into the phone. "We're almost there. Where are you?"

Aaron turned around in his seat and looked out of the limousine's back window. Colin had opened the sunroof in his limousine and the top half of his body was sticking through it. He waved and pointed at Aaron and then gave him the thumbs-up.

"Yeah, I can see you," Aaron said, laughing. "What? No...I'm not nervous.

I'm not. Okay - I am, but it's cool. I'll be okay. Dad gave me the 411 on the red carpet thing. Yeah, he's a pro. Uh-huh. Okay. All right. I will. Yeah. Cool. Later Da."

"Colin said hi," Aaron said, slipping phone back into his pocket.

"Hey - you ready," Lance said, noticing the limousine beginning to slow and then stop. "We're next up."

"Who's in front of us?" JC asked.

"Eric and Rebecca, I think."

"You going to be okay?" JC asked, looking at Aaron and smoothing the hair out of his eyes.

"I'll be fine Dad," Aaron said, giving JC a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks."

"Do you have my sunglasses," Lance whispered into JC's ear.

"Yeah, here," JC said, handing the glasses to Lance and then taking hold again of his hand. "It is kind of bright."

Sliding the sunglasses into place, Lance took a deep breath and looked back at the limousine. He and JC had emerged from it a few minutes earlier and crowd had just now quieted, and the high-speed cameras had stopped clicking and flashing and whirring and their lenses were pointed away from them and at the limousine's still open door. Minutes seemed to pass as no one emerged from inside the limousine. A puzzled look formed on Lance's face. He glanced at JC and then back to where Aaron was supposed to appear. And then he finally did, his face poking out with a big antic tooth-filled grin.

Waving, Aaron stepped out of the limousine, looking down for a moment just like JC had advised, and buttoning his jacket. When Aaron looked up, his eyes seemed full of fear at first, despite his big smile. But then, just as Lance was about to be concerned, Aaron plunged his hands into the side-pockets of his jacket and let his shoulders playfully droop as he bent to one side, then the other, arching his eyebrows, and slyly smiling, as if about to mug for the cameras, but not going too far, then giving the photographers in the press box an exaggerated conspiratorial wink, like he was saying, "Remember the deal, you're supposed to make me look great." The crowd, which had loudly tittered before, went wild with laughter and applause.

Aaron pulled his hands from his pockets and held them palms up and shrugged as he rolled his eyes. It was a funny gesture and one the crowd loved. It seemed to say that he didn't take any of the ruckus too seriously, but he still appreciated it. He stood there for several minutes more, waving occasionally, and waiting for the cameras incessant shooting to stop, which they never did. Finally unwilling to wait longer, Aaron gave the photographers a final good-natured wave and jogged up the red carpet, his loose untied shoes slapping the ground, each short stride exposing a bare ankle and heel.

"How'd I do," Aaron said, smiling at Lance and JC, and shrugging.

"You're a natural," JC said, taking Aaron's arm and giving it a quick squeeze.

"Scary," Lance said. "But true."

"Thanks dad," Aaron said. "It was fun."

JC and Aaron had managed to make it up the red carpet more quickly than Lance, talking to nearly as many people, with Aaron signing autographs while JC watched. They seemed to have worked faster than Lance, who had a tendency to want to find out more about each person he met, and to write something more personal than "Best Regards" with his autograph. Glancing toward the theater's entrance, Lance saw JC and Aaron waiting for him, and he waved them on, signaling that they need not wait. Aaron waved back and smiled at Lance, proud of him, and how handsome he looked, and trying to show it. JC waved too, then took Aaron's arm and led him through the throng of reporters staked out just inside the lobby.

Turning back to the crowd gathered just on the other side of the red velvet rope-line, Lance finished signing another autograph and was about to hand the pen back when he saw him. Lance didn't recognize him at first, but somehow knew that he'd seen him before. It was a strange feeling, made stranger by the fact that it was not so much his looks that seemed familiar, but the way he was standing there, pressed up against the rope line, a book in his hand. It was this scene, and this exact setting, that Lance remembered. Signing another autograph, instinctively, and without much paying attention to what he said to the woman, or even her name, which he somehow signed, Lance smiled at the man with the book, and the man smiled back and waved. A young boy stood next to him. He was maybe seven at the most and clutching a Star Wars action-figure to his chest. He looked frightened.

Walking over to where the man and boy stood, Lance extended his arm and shook the man's hand. The man smiled, grateful that Lance had noticed him and took the time to stopp. The boy looked up at Lance, still seeming frightened, but smiling now too. Lance crouched down and looked at him.

"What's this," Lance asked, pointing at the action-figure.

"It's you," the boy said shyly.

"Can I see?"

"Yes," the boy said, turning the figure around so it faced Lance now.

"Do you think that looks like me?"

"Yes," the boy said. "Can I have your autograph on it?"

"What do you say Billy?" the man said, rubbing the back of the boy's head.

"Please."

"Sure thing," Lance said, smiling as he took the figure from the boy and signed it with a felt pen the man had handed him. "How's that?"

"Thank you," the boy said.

"He's a sweet boy," Lance said, standing up and facing the man once more. "Is he your son?"

"Yes," the man said. "My partner and I adopted him when he was a baby, just over six years ago."

"That's great," Lance said, about to pat the man on the shoulder and then realizing who he was. "Wait - we've met before."

"Yes we have," the man said, holding up the book he'd been holding under his arm, a battered copy of The Ghost Road. "You signed this for me quite a while ago."

Lance took the book from the man's hand and opened it. On the inside cover he found his signature and what he'd written:

To Jared and Thomas,

BE EACH OTHER'S HERO.

Best Wishes, Lance Bass.

It was hard for Lance to believe that the book was real, and in his hands, and that he was seeing what he'd signed so long ago. It had been at The Ghost Road premiere, and Jared had said that he and JC were their heroes. Lance remembered that it had stung him hearing this, because he was feeling less than heroic right then, having destroyed and lost, or so he had thought, his relationship with JC. That was why he'd written what he wrote, or one reason. It was not just that he felt like no hero then, but because he had recognized that, if a relationship was ever going to last, it took near heroic effort to make it do so.

"You're Jared?" Lance said, finally able to speak.

"Yes, that's right," he said. "Thank you for signing my son's toy."

"Oh, forget it," Lance said, shaking his head. "It's my pleasure. Really."

"Well, thank you anyway," Jared said. "I know you should be going. So I won't keep you any longer."

"Wait," Lance said, taking Jared's arm as he started to turn away, and stopping him. "Where's Thomas? He was with you at the The Ghost Road premiere."

"He passed away two years ago," Jared said calmly, only the slight quivering of his bottom lip giving away the deep sadness he still felt.

"Oh my God," Lance said, plainly stunned by the news. "How? I mean, if you don't mind telling me."

"No, it's all right," Jared said. "He'd had leukemia. In fact, it had just got into remission when we adopted Billy. But it came back, and well, the second time we weren't so lucky. He fought hard...but, anyway, it's over now."

"Damn," Lance said. "I'm so sorry."

"Me too, but we're doing all right."

"Daddy, I need to go," the little boy said, pulling on the cuff of Jared's shirt.

"I better be going," Jared said. "Billy's been standing for quite a while."

"No - I have a better idea," Lance said, smiling. "Why don't the two of you come in with me, as my guests."

"Are you serious?"

"Hey Billy," Lance said, crouching down once more. "How would you like to be the first boy in your school to see the new Star Wars movie?"

"Really?" the boy said, his eyes growing wide as he looked at Lance and then up at Jared. "Can we Dad?"

"Are you sure?" Jared said, his brow wrinkled as if he was worried Lance was kidding or would change his mind. "Because if..."

"Come on," Lance said, cutting Jared off, but not sharply, and then unhooking the section of the rope-line that blocked their way. "Let's go inside."

The momentary tumult of the film's score gave suddenly way too a deeply eerie near-silence filled with the sound of Lucas trying to catch his breath as he raced down the corridor to where he sensed his father would be. The quick-pounding beat of a timpani drum echoed each breath he took, and it sounded like the hard-fast beating of his heart. Aaron remembered shooting this scene, remembered how many time he'd had to run the more than hundred yards across one end of the set, in front of a vast blue screen while a Steadicam on a trolley rolled along beside him, filming him as he ran as fast as he could, ran in long loping strides, full of fear that he would not arrive in time. But now on the screen there was no speed to the scene at all. The blue screen had been replaced with a computer-graphic-image of the wall of the corridor leading to his father's office, and the fast-as-he-could running had been transformed into a scarily-tense slow-motion scene in which his running figure was all that filled the screen. It was as if Ang had somehow known to show, not how fast Lucas ran, but how slow it felt to him.

Those viewing the film sat transfixed, sensing that two hours into it the end was near. Aaron stared at the screen, part of him not wanting to watch, uncomfortable seeing himself up there, the other part of him wanting badly to know how the film finally ended, what had Ang decided. As his character continued to run, the shot began to focus more and more tightly on his face, in profile, his eyes staring straight ahead, seeing nothing but the place he needed to get to, the place where he needed to be: by his father's side. He could see himself breathing harder, and hear it. He could see the sweat on his forehead, sweat from real exertion, and real exhaustion. Then just as Lucas seemed about to collapse, from fear or fatigue, the sound of his breathing, and the beating-heart drum, disappeared from the soundtrack, plunging the theater into a two seconds of silence. The silence was shortly replaced by the lonely wail of a single French horn, the score having returned. It was the haunting fugue that John Williams had originally written as the Luke Skywalker theme in the first Star Wars, a film now well over 30 years old. It was the theme that had played while Luke had stared into the distance, watching the double suns of Tatooine sink slowly below the horizon, dreading that he'd ever be anything other than the adopted son of two lonely farmers in the outer reaches of the galaxy.

"You have for a moment my power."

His grandfather's voice suddenly echoed in Lucas's head, making his eyes grow wide and stopping him as he reached the corner of the corridor. Lucas sensed that his father was near, but before he could face the truth of what had happened, or about to happen, he paused to steel himself, his grandfather's voice lingering within him.

"Trust yourself to use it Lucas."

Reaching under his tunic, Lucas grasped his grandfather's light-saber and pulled it from where he had lodged it in his waistband. His grandfather had given him this right before he died. He held it now in front of his face, staring at it with a look of puzzlement and fear. About to trigger it on, his thumb hovered just above the light saber's handle, his other fingers grasping it. Shaking his head no, he slipped the light saber back into his waistband and covered it again with his tunic. Lucas then rounded the corner, rounded it and threw his shoulders back, ready to see what was there to be seen.

Sepp Wolff held Jhon Skywalker by the throat, his blaster pointed at his head. Lucas gasped to see his father's bloody face, and the way he hung so limply to the floor, as if ready to be tossed aside once Sepp was through with him. Lucas stared at Sepp, grimacing at the gaze that he knew had been waiting for his arrival. Sepp had sensed his approach, and planned this set-piece with Lucas in mind, waiting for him to get there before killing his Jhon, wanting him to see final pain he was about to inflict.

Lucas was fifty feet from them, and he could see his father's eyes, which were filled with blood, but no tears. His lips were swollen, almost deformed. Sepp must have slammed his face repeatedly against the cold stone floor. He could see the blood there, and the splatters of it on the wall. A smile played slowly across Sepp's face and suddenly it was as if there was no more warmth in the room. Lucas felt a shudder run through him, followed by a murderous hate so intense that it seemed ready to justify any act, no matter how heinous. He wanted nothing more at that moment but to kill Sepp.

"Follow your hate boy," Sepp said, hissing at him. "It will take you where I want you to go, right to the dark side."

"Let my father go," Lucas said, not hiding the fear in his voice, or the anger.

"Was that a request?" Sepp laughed. "Because I didn't hear you say please."

"Let my father go," Lucas repeated, his words even angrier now.

"And I ask again, was that a..."

Sepp's eyes began to bulge and his face turn red. He was being choked, quickly and viciously. Lucas had not moved from where he stood. He had not even raised his hand. But his eyes had narrowed, and his lips pressed together. Sepp looked suddenly frantic. He had not expected this from Lucas, from one not yet trained at all in the powers of the Force. It did not make sense, no sense at all, and it plainly angered him. Sepp had heard of young Jedi that had displayed precocious powers, but nothing like this. Never.

"I will not ask again," Lucas said, but not out loud this time, speaking instead to Sepp directly, with thought alone, in his mind. "Release him or die."

"How can this be?" Sepp thought, releasing his hold on Jhon and letting him fall to the floor. "How?"

Lucas moved closer to Sepp, not yet freeing him from the crushing hold he had on his throat. Leaning his face forward, close to Sepp's own, Lucas glared at him, his eyes narrow at first. Sepp clawed at his throat, desperate for air, his knees close to buckling as he found himself being pushed now slowly backward down the hall by the force of will alone. Lucas followed after Seep, staring at him, shaking his head in disgust until finally giving him one last hard push and sending him tumbling backwards into a heap. At last able to breath, Sepp gasped for air in loud and noisy gulps. By the time Sepp had caught his breath, and could stand up, Jhon and Lucas were gone.

"You will not prevail!" Sepp screamed.

Picking his blaster up from the floor, Sepp turned and raced down the corridor in the opposite direction from where Lucas and Jhon had fled. He was nearly late for the ceremony formalizing Blake Antilles' ascension to the chancellorship. It was at this ceremony that the Prime Minister would be assassinated, putting the power of the New Republican Army solely under Sepp's control, that is, once General Schirach was court-martialed for failing to protect the Prime Minister, and Sepp promoted to take his place. It would then only take word to Windsor Fritsch to stage the putsch that would overthrow the New Republic and restore the Empire once and for all.

As Sepp raced to the Senate Chamber, Lucas laid his father on the couch back in his office. Jhon's breathing was slow and labored, and his gaze unfocused and far away, as if he was already looking beyond this life to the next one. Lucas felt panic grip him as he held to his father's hand, willing him to come back to him, and to not leave him alone. He was on his knees before him, his shoulders slumped forward like a penitent. A long low moan escaped from Jhon's lips and Lucas leaned forward, ready to hear him, saying, "Father, I will not leave you. Do not be afraid."

"Lucas," Jhon whispered, raising his bloodied hand to Lucas' face, holding it, his fingers pressed against his cheek. "You must stop Sepp, or the Prime Minister will die."

"Sepp cannot kill him now Father," Lucas said, surprised at the certainty in his own voice. "He will be found out, I will make certain of that."

"No - it is not Sepp that will do it."

His words trailed off, becoming weak and listless. Jhon appeared to fade away. Lucas clutched at his father's shoulder's, shaking them, trying to revive him, to pull him back from the brink of death. Watching this, Aaron knew that this was the scene where Jhon had died, where he had cried so hard that he could hardly speak his lines, it being so easy to feel what he had needed to feel to make this scene real.

"Father!" Lucas screamed.

The close-up on Lucas' face is terrifying. Tears stream down JC's cheeks seeing it, and he could hardly breathe. Lance closed his eyes, not wanting to watch. Jared clung tight to Billy, who held out his action figure, as if to give Lucas his additional support. Colin reached forward and puts his hand on Aaron's shoulder, rubbing it twice, then letting it go. James takes hold of Stephane's hand and squeezed it tightly, and Stephane leaned his shoulder against him. Ryan slumped forward in his seat, and Toni rubbed his back up and down his spine as he cried softly into his hands. Lance's back stiffened as the close-up lingered on Aaron's crying face. Glancing back at Colin, smiling weakly, Lance put his on Aaron's knee and held it.

The movie cut suddenly from the tight shot on Lucas' face to a close-up of Jhon's eyes, which seemed to move slightly, flutter, and then flicker open. Taking a long deep breath, Jhon looked up at his son.

"Father," Lucas murmured, fighting back tears.

"Son, it is another," Jhon whispered, barely able to speak. "It is our friend and ally Cassell who will be blamed, and I. So you must go."

"I can't leave you, father. I can't. And I won't."

"You must," Jhon said, sitting up, finding the strength somewhere, and startling Lucas with steely force of his words. "There is no hope otherwise.

And if there is no hope, there is nothing to live for. Nothing."

"But father, if you die..."

"If I die, you must go on, my son, go on to be the greatest Jedi ever. Promise me, Lucas. Promise me."

"No, I can't."

"You are afraid," Jhon said, holding Lucas' face with both hand now, staring up into his pleading fearful eyes.

"I am afraid," Lucas said, through a choke of tears. "I am only a boy."

"You are more than that Lucas. You are my son, and a Skywalker."

"But Father..."

"Lucas, it is all right to be afraid," Jhon said, his voice stronger now. "It is the conquest of fear that gives the courage of life. Find your courage, and you may find life, for both of us. Now go."

"I love you father," Jhon said, standing up, tears streaming down his face, cutting tiny rivulets through the bloody handprints there.

"You will always be my son Lucas," Jhon said, his eyes growing dim. "And I will always be your father. Do not forget that."

"I will not," Lucas said, standing and straightening his back. "I promise you that. And I promise that I will become a Jedi, as you ask, and I will make you proud."

"I know you will," Jhon said, his eyes slowly closing. "Now go."

The last fifteen minutes of the film were so raucous and so thrilling that it hardly seemed real. Sitting on Jared's lap, Billy clung to his father's arms, thrilled and frightened, but still rapt. Unlike Jared, who feared the film was going to end in a way too intense and too upsetting for a boy of seven to see, he watched almost out of the corner of his eye, afraid of the tragedy that looked as if it was about to ensue. Billy had no such fear, he believed that Lucas would succeed, that he would fight through his own fear and save the New Republic and his father too. Aaron had neither faith nor fear, only dread as the story rushed toward its finale, gasping as he watched Senator Ribbentrop slipping his blaster from where it had been hidden in the long loose sleeves of his ceremonial gown and put the trigger at ready, waiting for Sepp's signal to him.

Sepp had arrived by now, standing next to Blake Antilles, supposedly as his body-guard, but secretly as his lover instead. Lucas had made his way to the level above where the ceremony was taking place, having just got there. He edged out onto one of the narrow stone ledges that connected each senator's station to the next, forming a spiraling ring of discs and ledges that rose in circular layers like lichens on the inside of a huge hollow tree. Watching carefully to see if Sepp sensed his presence, he at the same time concentrated on General Schirach, speaking in his mind to him, telling him that he was there, and that he should be prepared to move. Then just as Sepp winked at Senator Ribbentrop, giving him the signal to kill the Prime Minister, Lucas jumped, his tunic flapping behind him like wings. He seemed to soar in a near-perfect arc, landing on Ribbentrop as he pulled the trigger on his blaster. At the same time, General Schirach pulled the Prime Minister out the of the way, the blaster firing into the middle of Blake Antilles' chest instead.

Pulling his Grandfather's light-saber from inside his tunic, Lucas took position next to General Schirach, ready to fight side-by-side with him, and back to back, as a group of Dark Jedi appeared seemingly out of nowhere, determined to kill those who had foiled their plot. Lucas could feel his grandfather, Luke Skywalker, within him, guiding his hand, but not entirely, and giving him strength, but not all of it. At first trying to push his fear away, Lucas let it fill him, and flow over him, like water, and his eyes darkened as he began to fight. Schirach was nearly distracted by the ferocity of Lucas' fighting. He had never seen anything like it because it was not how a Jedi Knight typically fought, which was with a cold and focused concentration. But Lucas was passionate, intense, and angry, but not out of control. It was frightening but fascinating too. It was as if Lucas had dared to let that which had for ions fueled the Dark Force flow into him, but not overcome him. He joined the two, and was suddenly more powerful than either alone.

Ignoring the fighting, Sepp carried Blake Antilles' limp dead body away from the battle and to the top of the building. His half-brother, Clasen, waited there for him with a battle-cruiser, and it with that they made their escape, Sepp unable to speak, wracked with grief and already thinking of revenge. They would make there way back to Sluivan where there they would be for a little while safe.

Aaron took Lance's hand as the scene cut away from the shot of the battle cruiser and returned to Lucas and Cassell Schirach walking the long corridor back toward Jhon's office. The contingent of Dark Jedi defeated, Senator Ribbentrop had been arrested, and the Prime Minister was safe. Now all that remained was for Lucas to find out whether his father Jhon Skywalker was still alive. As Lucas reached the door, he stopped and turned to face Cassell Schirach.

"My father has given me his blessing," Lucas said. "To begin my training."

"You must go to Bespin then. And soon. Before the Dark Jedi regroup."

"I wish to train with you," Lucas said. "To be your Padawan."

"I cannot."

"Because you are afraid of failing me?"

"I was too close to your father," Cassell said, his eyes brimming now with tears. "His death saddens me too much to think clearly enough to be your master. It would feel wrong of me."

"But Cassell, my friend, he is not dead."

"He..."

Cassell did not attempt to finish his sentence. He turned toward the door, pushing it open with his foot. Inside the room, Jhon lay still stretched out on the couch, alive and attended to by his mother, Mara Skywalker. She had somehow known to come, called by a voice that had seemed to speak directly to her heart. Jhon rose up weakly from where he lay, lifting his head and then his shoulders. Lucas rushed to his side, kneeling before him, and holding his head, and taking his hand.

"No father," Lucas said. "You must rest."

"He is right Jhon," Mara said. "You are very weak, and nearly died."

"Thank you for coming Grandmother," Lucas said, looking up at her.

"I could do but nothing else," she said, smiling at Lucas and resting her hand for a moment on his head. "When I felt your call to me."

"It was grandfather too you know," Lucas said, bowing his head for a moment.

"Yes, I know," she said.

Lucas looked back to his father and smiled. Jhon managed a weak smile in return and then reached up and touched Lucas' cheek, still smeared with blood.

"I knew you could do it," Jhon whispered to his son. "I had such faith in you."

"That is why I could do it," Lucas said.

Sitting quietly on his father's lap, Billy smiled as he clutched the action-figure to his chest and nodded, yes, again and again, nodding as if he was trying to say that, yes, he had known too, known all along, with the faith of a child, a faith that believed that good will prevail, if it has the courage to do so. Jared wrapped his arms around his son's chest and held him close to him, resting his chin atop his head. At the same time, Lance slipped his arm around Aaron's shoulders, pulling him closer. JC took hold of Lance's hand and squeezed it, tears fogging his vision as he watched the final scene played out, a scene that was nearly like the one that started the film, but in reverse, with this time Jhon the one standing alone on the roof of the tall building in which he lived, watching an X-Wing fighter not this time arrive, but to depart.

Watching the ship climb the sky, streaking across the horizon, and then circling back low to fly once around the building, low enough for him to see his son inside, his hand waving in a kind of final salute, Jhon waved back, trying to smile, but looking only sad instead. He knew there was no guarantee that he would see his son again, that in the world in which they lived anything could happen. But this was the risk he was willing to take to see his son grow into manhood, to succeed and reach his potential. And so Jhon waved, and he smiled, as the ship turned and disappeared into the distance, far and away.

The close-up of Jhon's nearly tear-filled eyes faded into a final close-up of Lucas at the controls of the X-Wing, the shield on his helmet up, and his own eyes, nearly tear-filled too. Flipping a switch that would send them into hyper-drive, Lucas glanced over his shoulder, smiled and said, "You ready R2? Great. Let's go."

"You have everything you need?" JC asked, eyeing Aaron's new messenger bag, the one he'd bought for him last week.

"Yeah Dad," Aaron said, smiling. "I've got everything, and then some."

"Are you sure you don't want me to give you a ride?" Lance said. "Because I'd be happy to. It's no hassle at all."

"Dad," Aaron said, rolling his eyes, but only a little. "I told you that James has his license now and he's going to be picking me up. He's probably already here."

"All right," Lance said, frowning. "But make sure he doesn't drive like a maniac."

"We're talking James here Dad. He's like the most careful dude in the world."

"All right," Lance said again, not sure what else to say.

Aaron wore baggy blue corduroy pants, a long-sleeve gray t-shirt, and black suede puma trainers that were, as his shoes almost always were, unlaced. Looking at his watch, which he wore with the face under his wrist, rather than on top, Aaron frowned and then looked again at JC and Lance, and smiled.

"I'll be fine guys," Aaron said, leaned forward and giving Lance, then JC, a quick kiss on the cheek. "It just high school, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Lance said, a little sadly. "But it's not like we've done this before, you know. So..."

"I know Dad," Aaron said, putting his arms around Lance and giving him a hug.

"I guess we'll see you when you get home," JC said.

"I've got lacrosse try-outs after school," Aaron said. "So it'll be closer to four-thirty or five."

"Five?" Lance said, surprised at first. "But...yeah, okay, that's cool. You're Dad and me will see you then."

"We can order some pizza for dinner," JC said.

"That sounds good," Aaron said, turning toward the door.

"Bye Aaron," Lance said. "Have a great day at school."

"I will, Dad. Thanks."

Aaron walked to the door and pulled it open, pausing for a moment at the door's threshold, as if unsure whether to walk across it. Seeing this slight hesitation, JC looked at Lance, took his hand, and together they turned around and walked toward the kitchen. Hearing the sound of their footsteps, Aaron knew that they were returning to their coffee, the newspapers that waited to be read, and whatever chores they had planned for that day. Aaron also knew that when he got home, they'd be there, waiting for him, maybe a little nervously, wanting to hear all about his day. That was a good thing to know, he thought, smiling as he closed the door behind him, and then headed down the driveway to the gate at the bottom. As he'd expected, James was waiting there for him, like the other bookend to his life, his parents on one side James on the other, holding him up, keeping him stable and cared for, appreciated and loved, and feeling normal.

Watching Aaron appear from around the final bend of the driveway, James smiled at him and waved. He'd only been waiting five minutes and didn't mind. He figured that Lance and JC had made a big deal about Aaron's first day of high school, way more of a big deal than his own mom had made, since she had hardly noticed. James laughed as he saw Aaron roll his eyes, mouth the words 'I'm sorry', then shrug. Pretending to make light of something that actually mattered a great deal to him. It was an aspect of Aaron's personality that had come to puzzle James, not because he didn't understand it - because he definitely thought he did - but because it was so unnecessary. It was as if since being in the Star Wars film Aaron feared people taking him too seriously. If asked what it was like, he tended now to shrug and say it was no big deal. Suddenly everything was no big deal. And this was the part that James understood, the desire to keep real feelings hidden. But Aaron had never been like that before, and it was what James had always loved most about him. Not that he loved him less. It was just that he'd depended on Aaron to be the more outgoing of the two, the more spontaneous, the person who pulled him by the force of his personality from his own shell. Maybe Aaron was just hunkered down, like when a storm passed over, waiting for it to end. James hoped that this was true. He truly did.

Sliding into the front seat next to James, Aaron smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder.

"You ready James?"

James nodded and smiled, happy to see Aaron, and suddenly touched by the force of the attention now focused on him.

"Great," Aaron said. "Let's go."