The dome of the sky swept upward from the earth in a long and slow curve. Above the western horizon, the sun was shining around banks of thick cumulus cloud. The air was translucent. There was a breeze. It was time to put your collar up. The campus was beautiful. Sear maple leaves carpeted the lawns.
Curtis took it all in as he walked across the campus over to the Fine Arts Center. His heart was high.
If the kid could do it, he thought. He nodded with determination and compressed his lips.
Curtis knew Tim was just the one to play Henry the Fifth in the spring production. He'd had a bunch of the kids read and Tim had a sense of the words and a feel for the rhythm of the verse.
He was a natural. He could talk Shakespeare. It was not stilted. He did not mouth pseudo-English full of words that went up and down like pistons and took you nowhere. He did not fall into the kind of posturing that plagued so many amateurs -- and professionals. Tim lived the words. They went through him. And they came around to the audience out of him and they had real meaning. And he had a voice. What a voice! He could go from sweet and caressing to harsh and frightening in a heartbeat.
There was one problem. A big one. He was overweight.
Henry V was the most athletic and charismatic and good-looking of Shakespeare's kings. Oh, he knew a Machiavellian thing or two, but his personality was not, at least not on the surface, disgusting or diabolical, like Richard III's, for example. He was charming and arrogant and defiant. When he was brutal or manipulative, it was for England. He was a winner.
Hey kid, Curtis said taking Tim around the shoulders when he found him backstage tinkering with a broken video camera.
Tim looked up and gave him a smile. It was a warm face and a pretty face. But it was too full, too fleshy, too soft and shapeless. It did not have its own definition. There was a gaunt intensity that belonged there that was not as yet revealed on the face. It was buried within the face.
The part is yours.
Wow! Tim exclaimed and wiped his forehead.
There's a catch, Curtis added. There is a proviso.
Tim put the camera down. He fixed his gaze on Curtis and waited in silence for him to continue.
If you can get yourself in shape by next May. That's the proviso. Take off, say, twenty-five pounds, he said, scrutinizing the boy, and get some muscle tonus. Do you think you're up to it?
Am I? Tim exclaimed.
I've got seven months? he added as if calculating.
It was the second week in October.
Seven months. It's going to take a lot of discipline.
I can do it, Tim said. I want to. I always want to get in shape, he said, blushing. I promise myself I'm gonna do it, and then -- he turned it into a joke -- my slacker personality always gets the better of my ambition. But this is motivating, he said with earnest seriousness.
I've got to have a guarantee, Curtis said. No slacking. We begin rehearsals after Thanksgiving, and once I give you the part, I'm counting on you. This is serious.
I know that, Tim said.
There's a month before Thanksgiving, Curtis said. Here's what I'll do. You're in training starting right now. If I'm satisfied with the way you're going in a month, no slacking, straight focus, real progress, the part is yours. If not....
I understand, Tim said. I won't let you down.
You're what? Marty yelled, picking his way through a pile of dirty laundry for a passable pair of socks.
Yeah, Tim said.
Repeat it, Marty said, standing up. I want to hear it again.
I'm going to live in Sessions, Tim said.
Sessions was Curtis' dorm. He was house master. It was a weird dorm, a combination of artsy and jock.
What's wrong with staying here? Marty said, hands on hips, belly hanging over his jeans.
Nothing's wrong with staying here, but if I'm gonna get the part and if I have to be in training, Curtis wants to....
Everybody knows what Curtis wants, Marty interrupted him. I'm worried about you, boy.
There's nothing to worry about, boy, Tim responded.
And there wasn't.
Curtis hardly let the kid out of his sight. He oversaw his eating and went through a series of daily exercises with him.
By Thanksgiving, he was putting all his money on Tim.
They began easy. Curtis took control of everything.
Tim went to classes. He went to daily rehearsals. He spent the rest of his time with Curtis.
He ate in Curtis' rooms, and he only ate then, and he only ate what Curtis fed him. For a week his jaw ached with desire. He was dying for bread, and the thought of chocolate cake made him curl his fingers into fists. But he stuck to his discipline. And then, he started to enjoy the hungry feeling. It made him taut and edgy. It went along with the new feeling his body had. When he touched himself, he felt a body he did not know but felt attracted to. He felt hip bones and ridges and a flat hard belly.
He became angry because he was hungry, and anger fueled his work-outs. Anger shaped him. Being angry put him in touch with the role he had to play: the great warrior king who smoldered with inner fury and fire and a fierce pride, a charismatic figure who could summon men to battle.
He stood straighter and looked taller. His fat disappeared. He was carved into the image he had only been able to dream about. The gaunt intensity that had been buried in his face emerged. Blended with that sweet prettiness that Curtis had seen before on his face, it lent him a strangely unfathomable aspect. There was some part of him that he would always withhold no matter how badly you might want it. And it only drew you nearer to him. It made you more devoted to him. Whatever grace he would bestow would suffice to gladden people in his presence. He had that power. It had been trapped. Now it had gotten out.
When the Christmas/New Years recess came, Tim agreed he'd stay at school with Curtis rather than fly back to Los Angeles. His parents were happy to consent to the arrangement since they had plans to spend the holidays in the turquoise Caribbean.
Most of the school was shut down, but Curtis had access to a part of the gym, even if the pool was closed.
The winter had been mild. There was a heavy snowfall the day after Christmas. It started in the evening, fell softly through the night and glistened, undisturbed in the morning.
Tim did not complain although Curtis worked him even harder during the break than he had while school was in session.
What are the virtues of a soldier? Curtis asked him one evening during the second week of a dismal January before the start of the spring term. They sat at a table near the hearth in a local seafood restaurant.
Strength, endurance, discipline, obedience, Tim responded, slowly chewing a succulent tuna steak, seared on the outside, almost raw in the middle.
Ruthlessness? Curtis interrupted him.
Maybe so, Tim said. If ruthless means overcoming your feelings.
What do you mean?
Well, you may feel like you don't want to hurt or kill someone else, Tim said, holding a piece of fish on his fork inches away from his mouth. But in battle, you have to. Or you'll be killed yourself. He took the piece of fish into his mouth.
Ok. But you're assuming the soldier does not want to kill. What if he does feel like it? Curtis asked.
That's also ruthless.
So ruthlessness, dear Glaucon, always has to be a soldier's attribute?
It seems so, Tim laughed.
They walked through the fresh snow back to the deserted campus.
Curtis put some logs into the stove.
It's hot in here, Tim said after fifteen minutes.
Take off your shirt, Curtis said.
Tim looked at him.
Take your shirt off, Curtis said, I want to see how you look since we started.
Oh, Tim said. Sure.
It was hot in the room and quite comfortable to be shirtless.
Tim stood and pulled the t-shirt he still had on over his head.
Curtis looked at him.
Go look at yourself, he said pointing to the full length mirror on the closet door in the bedroom.
It was not as if Tim had not seen his reflection in a mirror since his regimen had begun, but he had never looked paying such deliberate attention or when someone else was looking at him looking at himself.
Curtis gazed at him and smiled. He could not have hoped for better.
He was aware, also, that something had changed in himself. He felt more vigor streaming through him than he had since he couldn't remember when. He'd always liked the boy. Now, well, now, he saw what a beauty he was to boot. The boy excited him.
Rehearsals went well. Everyone was galvanized around Tim. His presence excited them. He was handsome. He was strong. He was well-wrought. He carried himself with square-shouldered grace and a growing, easy confidence. Everyone noticed him.
In April, the school paper did a feature on him and how preparing to play the king had changed his life. "Everyone has noticed it," the feature began. He spoke matter-of-factly about the regimen he had followed, but he also spoke of his own emotional responses to what was going on.
I was freaking out at first, he said. I wanted the part, and I had made up my mind that I was going to get in shape for it, like an athlete. But boy, it changed my head around.
When he had looked at himself in the mirror the night Curtis had been looking at him, he felt a rush of gladness. It aroused feelings of delight he had never experienced. But he felt they were his, that to acknowledge them would convey selfhood and identity.
That's who I am, he realized. He became his strength.
He had turned from the mirror. Curtis was looking straight at him. Their eyes met. Tim knew that Curtis knew what he had just felt and shared it with him.
Tim went over to him and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, as you would kiss a father or a mother, or a favored aunt. But when their flesh met, he knew the rest of it and pressed himself against his teacher.
Curtis took his wrist and held him at arm's distance.
He smiled, examining the boy.
You'll do, he said.
Thank you, Tim said.
And when he stood on a platform above a throng of soldiers wearing boots and tights, a peasant blouse and a cloak, holding aloft his sword, his body stiffened and stretched to its full height, and summoned them once more onto the breach, he crooned and growled and called out so furiously that it drew everyone in the audience to him.
At the party afterwards, Curtis held his hand and embraced him and kissed him in front of everybody.
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