The Math Teacher Is Dead
by Robert Manners
Smashwords Edition Published by Robert Manners
Copyright 2010 Robert Manners
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~1~
It was ten-thirty on a sunny September morning, and Danny Vandervere — beautiful, athletic, popular, and sixteen years old — was perched on the edge of an old maple desk, leaning back on his hands with his jeans bunched around his knees, getting a blowjob from Mr. Janacek, his second-period Senior Calculus teacher; the man was doing a very workmanlike job of fellating Danny's obscenely large cock, and Danny was enjoying the ministrations, but his mind was wandering.
Non-reciprocal sex just wasn't Danny's style, and he found it a little frustrating that Mr. Janacek would not allow himself to be touched; Danny wasn't even allowed to play with the teacher's hair or rest a hand on his head — the man had brushed his hand away when he tried. Just sitting there getting sucked off was nice, but it wasn't really sex, and there was absolutely nothing in this world that Danny loved more than sex — full-contact, total-involvement, mind-blowing coitus. A non-reciprocal blowjob just wasn't fully engaging, so Danny's mind suffered the intrusion of plans, ideas, and worries that had nothing to do with what was going on with his body.
The worry that Danny was working over that particular morning was his motivation in seducing his teacher: it had occurred to him, when Mr. Janacek went for his fly with a tortured sigh, that he might have had a mercenary motive when he delivered his most effective smoldering look and leaned against the desk in a steamy crotch-forward posture while asking a seemingly innocent question about antiderivatives; after all, calculus was one of his weakest subjects, and the other teacher with whom Danny was having an affair taught his other weak subject, chemistry.
Though Danny wanted to believe that he'd responded to Mr. Janacek's furtive but unmistakable glances in order to spread happiness by giving of his body to just about anyone who wanted it (and with his extraordinary beauty, his curling black hair and clear pink-and-white skin, his big gray eyes and ripe red mouth, his tall muscular body and massive cock, an awful lot of people did want it) the fact remained that Ms. Fenniman had neglected to mark the three incorrect answers on his chemistry quiz the day after he'd given her three orgasms in the back-seat of her Impala during lunch hour. If Mr. Janacek was similarly grateful for the use of Danny's body, his beloved 4.0 grade-point average would be a good deal safer.
Still, it wasn't as though Danny couldn't have brought up his grades in the traditional manner of hard work and extra-credit assignments, he had a genius IQ and perfect grades came easily to him; but ever since discovering sex early the previous summer, first being seduced by a young woman staying at the lakefront resort near his family's home, and then seducing an older man at the same resort a week later, fucking had pushed all of his other pastimes into the background.
He figured he'd racked up a couple hundred conquests since June, which was rather a feat considering that he lived in a tiny California mountain town with a population of just under five thousand (though a trip to San Francisco to buy his school clothes had bumped the numbers up quite a bit). And all that intercourse took up most of the time he'd once spent on studies, sports, and music.
So, Danny decided as the orgasm mounted in his loins and he made some warning noises at Mr. Janacek's bobbing head, it was simply a coincidence that it was his calculus teacher, rather than his English teacher or history teacher, who was giving him a blowjob that fine sunny morning; and he resolved to redouble his efforts to master calculus so that he wouldn't need any displays of gratitude in order to keep his GPA up.
*****
One might be inclined to look askance at a forty-three-year-old teacher having sex with a sixteen-year-old student; but one must bear in mind that Danny Vandervere is something of a special case.
For one thing, he doesn't look sixteen: although he still has the clear skin and beardless chin of a child, his face is fully formed, with an elegant but decidedly manly bone-structure; his body is almost completely hairless, but it's a well-developed man's body, perfectly proportioned with broad shoulders and narrow hips, slender but rich with muscle; and the poise and confidence with which he moves and speaks belong to a much older person. It is difficult to think of him as anything other than an adult.
For another thing, he is something of a local celebrity: Danny's great-great-great-grandfather built the town of Vandervere, California in 1880, as well as the Royal Vandervere Paper Mill, the town's only large-scale employer. The town and the mill, as well as the surrounding million acres of tree-covered mountains that lie between Redding and Eureka in the Coastal Range, belong entirely to the Vandervere family, held and maintained by the venerable and incalculably wealthy Vandervere Trust.
Being a Vandervere in Vandervere CA is a little like being a ruling lord in feudal Europe: the family owns everything in sight, not just the mill and the land but all of the commercial and rental property in town, as well as the bank that holds the mortgages on all the properties they don’t own; and they are not absentee landlords, they live right there in the town and are involved in every aspect of political, commercial, and philanthropic life in Vandervere and surrounding Ternion County — Danny’s uncle Charles runs the mill and all of its subsidiaries, his father Taylor has been the mayor for four consecutive six-year terms, his great-uncle Marcus was mayor for nine terms before that, his cousin Augustus is the County Commissioner, and his Aunt Claudia is the president of the School Board.
As a result, Danny grew up in an atmosphere of almost groveling deference and profound respect from the townspeople; and though he was not as arrogant or demanding as the majority of his aristocratic clan, people tended to not think of him as a human being — and certainly not as a child — but rather as a prince or even a demigod, something quite different and set apart from themselves.
And then there is his beauty, breathtaking and flawless, which can batter down anybody's defenses with a soft look and a slow smile. His eyes are huge and slightly slanted like a fawn's, the soft warm gray of wood-smoke tinged with violet and flecked with gold, framed by impossibly long black lashes and exquisitely arched brows; his skin is as luminous and smooth as an infant's, his downy cheeks bear a hot strawberry blush, and his opulently carved lips are a luscious cherry-red; his thick ebony hair is soft and glossy, worn in a cherubic halo of loose curls, his teeth are even and white, his nose is perfectly straight and perfectly centered.
It's not just his face, either: everything about him, from his long-fingered hands to his elegantly attenuated feet, from the sound of his deep rich voice to the woodsy smell of his sweat, is beautiful. His personality is open and sunny, unfailingly kind and honorable; and though he sometimes catches himself manipulating people with his looks and his charm, he does his best to counteract this flaw in his character with generosity and good intentions.
*****
Danny was casting around in his mind as he buttoned up his fly, trying to think of a way to make amends to Mr. Janacek for manipulating him into sex; the teacher was clearly not happy about what had happened, now seated at his desk with his head in his hands, his fingers clutching painfully at his thinning brown-gray hair; Danny was accustomed to a display of at least satisfaction from his partners after having sex, if not actual glee, and the teacher's obviously miserable reaction was jarring.
"Are you OK?" Danny asked solicitously, laying a hand on his teacher's shoulder.
"I shouldn't have done that," Mr. Janacek replied in a strangled, desperate voice, shrugging Danny's hand off his shoulder.
"But I wanted you to," Danny replied, meaning to take responsibility for the act, though the teacher thought he meant that his wanting something was more than enough reason enough for it to happen.
"Nevertheless," Mr. Janacek's voice hardened and he straightened up in his chair, "You're my student, and you're a minor: what I just did was immoral and illegal, whether you wanted it or not."
"Oh, pish," the boy replied lightly, dismissing such picayune concerns with an impatient shrug.
"Did you say 'pish'?" the teacher looked at the boy incredulously and laughed.
"Yes, I did," Danny giggled, "Sorry, I've been reading a lot of English novels lately."
"You're a strange kid, Danny Vandervere," Mr. Janacek finally looked Danny in the eye, shaking his head in wonder, the desperation and shame leaving his voice.
"I'm really not a kid anymore," Danny said with an authority that very few sixteen-year-olds could carry off, "I am perfectly capable of making decisions about my own body, and with whom I wish to share it."
"But still," Mr. Janacek protested, though without much conviction; Danny could tell the man's sense of moral shame was dissipating in the face of his calm poise.
"And speaking of which," Danny said in a sultry tone as he sank gracefully to his knees in front of the teacher and laid his hands on the man's thighs, "I'd really like to share more with you."
"Oh, Danny," Mr. Janacek moaned with a mixture of sadness and lust, "No."
"Please?" Danny begged prettily, casting his eyes up at the man from under his lashes and wetting his voluptuous mouth with an agile tongue.
The teacher hesitated, his moral nature struggling mightily with his animal nature, his reason melting away in the heat of the boy's dazzling beauty; Danny took that hesitation as assent and dived into the man's crotch, deftly unzipping his pants and fishing his cock out of the opening. It was small and uncircumcised, which Danny found adorable, it fit so comfortably into his mouth and required so little effort to tease into erection.
It was over all too quickly, though; Danny tried to draw it out to give his teacher as much pleasure as he could, but after a scant three minutes Mr. Janacek let out a stifled cry and grabbed spastically at Danny's hair, trying to pull the boy's head away from his lap so as not to come in his mouth. Instead, he splattered semen all over the boy's face and neck, as well as his own brown argyle sweater-vest.
"Such a pretty mess," Danny smiled mischievously up at his teacher, opalescent semen dripping from his scarlet lips onto the floor.
Mr. Janacek wondered if the boy knew he was quoting a song from the teacher's own youth in the long-ago 80s as he reached into his desk-drawer for a box of tissues (the brand manufactured by Royal Vandervere Mills) and set about wiping the boy's face and his own sweater, which he planned to take off and hide in his briefcase.
"Are you OK, now?" Danny asked as he helped Mr. Janacek tidy up.
"Letting you do that didn't help matters any," the teacher replied with regret, but not with the desolate tone with which he'd lashed himself earlier.
"You mustn't feel guilty about giving in to me," Danny reasoned, leaning down to plant a kiss on the man's forehead, "I always get what I want."
"I just wish you wanted things that boys your age are supposed to want. And tell me, did you really need help with antiderivatives, or was that a ploy?"
"It was partly a ploy," Danny admitted with a laugh, "But I really could use some help with them."
Back on familiar ground with calculus, Mr. Janacek visibly relaxed, and Danny listened carefully as the teacher explained the concept of antiderivatives in greater detail than he had in class. When he'd finished, Mr. Janacek was pleased to see that Danny understood and had assimilated the information in his remarkable brain; there is nothing so satisfying to a teacher as seeing ideas take root in their students.
~2~
Since his encounter with Mr. Janacek had taken longer than Danny anticipated, he'd overrun morning break and was now almost ten minutes late for French class. But being a Vandervere meant not having to face consequences for such minor infractions; besides which, he was already fairly fluent in French due to growing up with a French nanny, as well as having private tutoring in French literature the previous year; he was only taking the class because it was a college requirement that he needed on his transcript, and an easy A on his crowded academic schedule. Danny put his books away in his locker and went along to the restroom to primp his hair and enjoy his own reflection for a while.
The teacher's frenzied grasping hadn't done too much damage to Danny's carefully tousled curls, they only needed a little pulling, pinching, and patting to return them to their rightful places; standing back from the full-length mirror in the boy's room, he closely examined his clothes, rebuttoning the fly of his jeans when he noticed he'd missed a button earlier.
Stepping back even further, he took in his overall appearance, and tried out a few nonchalant poses to enjoy the effect. His clothes were not in the usual teenage fashion, the deep aubergine polo shirt and artfully faded blue-gray jeans being a good deal more form-fitting than what was worn by his peers, most of whom preferred to wallow in oversized layers of t-shirts and hoodies with sagging khakis or wide stiff jeans that completely disguised their bodies; he also eschewed the puffy athletic shoes and flat sneakers that other boys wore in favor of stack-heeled motorcycle boots that made his buttocks stand out and gave his walk an eye-catching swagger: Danny was intensely proud of his body, and loved the effect he had on people by showing it to its best advantage.
Danny's style of dress had caused something of a stir among the more fashion-conscious boys when he adopted it for his Senior year, and they aped his tighter clothes to the best of their abilities — though most had to resort to vintage shops and the internet for pre-millennium 501s and Izods where Danny's lavish allowance from the Vandervere Trust enabled him to wear Gianfranco Ferre and Ralph Lauren Purple Label; and they all pulled back from the blatant display of cock and ass, pecs and thighs that were Danny's whole reason for dressing as he did.
Satisfied with his beauty, Danny left the restroom and ambled down the broad silent corridor to the library, where he pulled a new copy of The New Yorker off the Periodicals rack and fell into a comfortable chair with his feet up on the table to while away the remaining third-period hour.
He was watched but not challenged by the librarian, Mr. D'Arby, who was completely in love with Danny; and though Danny was usually happy to return such adoration with sex, he found the librarian dreadfully repellent: he thought Mr. D'Arby looked like an inflated frog, obese and lipless and pop-eyed; the thought of the man touching him with those short sausage-like fingers or pressing that soft spherical body against his made him shiver with revulsion.
Still, he was nice to the man, and flirted with him outrageously whenever he checked out books (which was two or three times a week, as Danny was a voracious reader), earning the man's undying loyalty and affection.
It was affection that Danny craved above all else, the need that drove his prodigious sexuality; and even before he became sexually active, he was fully engaged in getting people to love him. As a child he had gone out of his way to charm people, to study what it was that made them respond with fond smiles and then give it to them; he watched his father charm people when he wanted something, and replicated that charm, watched his other relatives treating people with disdain and did the exact opposite.
The charm came quite naturally to him: his openness and his sweet disposition, his amazingly retentive memory and his interest in the details of people's lives, were as much a part of him as his beauty; and like his beauty, he cultivated his charm assiduously and displayed it ostentatiously, using it to get the affection he needed. He could never get enough of it, and during his short life had exercised his charm to such an extent that the entire town loved him.
The exception to this rule, and the obvious genesis of this insatiable need, was his own family: his parents, his brothers, his aunt and uncle and cousins all despised him, had done so almost since his birth; he had nearly killed his mother in childbirth, earning both parents' animosity; and from the very beginning he was so clearly different from the rest of his family — his curling black hair and huge bottomless gray eyes, his inhuman prettiness and precocious intelligence, his gentleness and sweetness. In a clan of handsome blond WASPs, conventional and average in every aspect but their autocratic sense of entitlement, Danny was the ugly duckling, suffering the cruelty and isolation of a pariah.
But like most young men, he was blissfully ignorant of what made him tick; he was aware that he used his beauty and charm to manipulate people and to make them love him; but he had no idea why he was compelled to do so — nor did he really care. He just knew that he was happy, that he loved his life and the pleasures it gave him.
Danny put away his magazine and headed for the gymnasium before the bell rang, and was already undressed and standing naked at his locker when the rest of the fourth-period boys came pouring noisily into the locker room. Some of the boys wondered how he could be so comfortable, naked in a room full of clothed people; others shook their heads at his blatant exhibitionism; most wished they looked like him, quite a few wished they could touch him; a select few already had, and Danny was engaged in picking out those he would approach next — part of the reason he flaunted himself in the locker room was to gauge reactions and catch those flashes of lust that indicated the kind of interest he craved. All of the boys looked at his oversized genitals, some with disgust and most with envy, but there was a certain look that came into a boy's eyes when they were lit with desire, and Danny was constantly on the hunt for that look.
He had marked down a chubby blond boy, a trumpeter in the marching band, as his next quarry by the time he was dressed in his tight white t-shirt and baggy blue jersey shorts (though he liked to show off his body, he did not wish to appear out of control, and he frequently got erections during gym class that he didn't want everyone to see); he called out a greeting to the boy, whose name he remembered was Derrick, and reveled in the confused blush that mantled the blond's smoothly rounded cheeks.
"You goin' after that fat nerd, Vandervere?" Henry Ahern, Danny's wrestling partner and frequent fuck-buddy, fell into step beside him as they made their way out of the locker room.
"He's not a fat nerd," Danny defended his prospective conquest, "I think he's cute."
"Well, you think I'm cute," Henry elbowed him in the ribs, "So what does that say about me?"
"You're cute in a different way," Danny explained seriously, "He's like a cherub in a Bavarian church-painting, you're like a sexy woodland animal."
"You're weird," the other boy laughed as he positioned himself far enough away from Danny that they wouldn't hit each-other during calisthenics. He was a good deal shorter than Danny, compact and burly, the star wrestler of the varsity team; his short tufty hair and small deep-set eyes were russet-brown, his skin translucent and liberally scattered with russet freckles; his thick and muscular little body was furred with fine russet hair, even on his back and flanks, he was intensely proud of the dense russet bristles on his blunt and muscular face, and sometimes sported creative little beards or goatees that he always shaved off before a match.
And like most of the boys Danny pursued, Henry was enslaved to Danny's body but found his mind an alien and disquieting territory — his wide-ranging tastes in people, his arcane quotations from books and movies nobody'd ever heard of, the weird classical and jazz and old rock music he played in his car — like their elders, Danny's classmates loved him but did not think of him as being one of themselves... he was an Other.
But all Danny knew was that people loved him, he never really sensed his separateness, or rather didn't think of it as something that should or could be different. Nor was he aware that this separateness was what made his sexual conquests so successful: boys could give in to his desires without thinking it changed them or made them gay, they were simply paying due tribute to the dazzling deity who took such unaccountable interest in them.
The plump and bashful Derrick, for example, was flustered and flattered to discover that Danny was stealing peeks at him all through calisthenics, and kept glancing meaningfully at him as he went jogging around the indoor track; the blond boy never once questioned whether or not he would do whatever Danny asked of him — it was a question of when and how, rather than if or why — and it wouldn't mean coming out or being an outcast, wasn't the same as pursuing a relationship with a real person.
The Vandervere High athletics department was run in an unstructured "holistic" plan where students could choose to take part in any number of athletic activities at the same time: starting with group calisthenics, the students gravitated toward whatever activity most interested them; since Danny was on two different varsity teams (cross-country and fencing) and interested in wrestling and swimming as well, there was always some speculation among the fourth-period class as to which group he might join. There was a sigh of disappointment when it became clear Danny was going to practice track rather than a team sport, as his natural grace and good-natured sportsmanship, and more importantly his example of encouraging poorer players rather than insulting them as jocks usually did, made any game more fun.
By the end of gym class, Danny had run two and a half miles and envisioned a breathtaking array of erotic tableaux with Derrick, and was horny enough to consider inviting the boy to his car for lunch; he decided, however, that Derrick wasn't ready yet for a gymnastic half-hour in the back of Danny's huge black two-door Ford Explorer (his sixteenth birthday present from his parents, though he wanted and had lobbied hard for a small red roadster); he would have to be cajoled a bit, brought out of himself, to overcome the natural shyness and awkwardness that made him a band-geek rather than a popular kid.
There was also Henry, a reliable standby, with his filthy mind and thick knobby little cock always up and ready to go; and a couple of other boys Danny had been playing with over the six weeks since school started. But in the end, he decided to just masturbate quickly in the toilet stall before showering and heading off to the cafeteria to eat.
Vandervere High is a rather posh establishment for a small-town public school. Since the terms of the Vandervere Trust require the Vanderveres themselves to attend public school in Vandervere, the family was interested in keeping the academic and extracurricular standards at a level worthy of their own children; and as a result, Vandervere High was considered the equal to any East-Coast prep-school, and its graduates had their choice of colleges.
The facilities are lavish, as well: two gymnasiums with their own swimming-pools so boys and girls wouldn't be distracted by coed exercise, as well as tennis and squash courts, riding-stables, and a nine-hole golf course; large and well-lit classrooms with expensive audio/video equipment and brand-new books; separate state-of-the-art auditoriums for music and theatre, a library of a half-million volumes, and an elegant full-service cafeteria that rivaled the best restaurants in town.
When Danny came away from the counter with a salad of baby greens with chicken, walnuts, and apples in a raspberry vinaigrette and a large bottle of Italian mineral water, he scanned the bright noisy lunchroom for a table to grace with his presence; he thought about settling in with the band geeks, but some instinct told him Derrick would freak if he moved too fast; he then considered joining Henry among the jocks, but was in no mood to have his salad teased by devoted burger-eaters; he'd be seeing the performing-arts crowd later, and the math-and-chess-club clique was already enrapt in a bizarre role-playing card game that Danny had never understood.
After some consideration, he decided on the core group of Populars, which centered on his ex-girlfriend Sandra Bettancourt, a beautiful and curvaceous blonde with a winning personality and a cool manipulative streak that Danny enjoyed watching (so long as he wasn't the one being manipulated). He'd dated Sandra early the previous year, comfortably unaware that everyone but him was already having sex, and quite ready to believe that Sandra was a virgin and saving herself for marriage; much later, he discovered she was the designated slut of her summer-camp, a secret life she led when she was away from Vandervere.
Despite her feline cruelty at the time of their breakup, Danny still enjoyed her social circle on occasion, loftily amused by their cattiness and backstabbing since it could never touch him — he was a Vandervere, a universally-beloved Vandervere at that, and nobody dared. He sat down at the head of their table in the center of the room, where they could best see and be seen, and responded happily to their fulsome compliments on the color of his shirt and his performance at a recent varsity fencing match.
"Danny, sweetie," Sandra cooed at him and pressed her huge left breast against his arm, "Have you met my cousin Eric? He just moved here from San Diego."
"Hi, Eric!" Danny leaned around Sandra and extended his hand to the newcomer, a slim and very pretty sharp-featured blond boy who looked enough like Sandra to be her fraternal twin, "Welcome to Vandervere. How are you liking it so far?"
"It's OK," Eric replied with an almost-unnoticed sneer tainting his otherwise pleasant voice, letting his hand lie limply in Danny's grip, "Very pretty."
"It must seem awfully small after a big city," Danny smiled, noting immediately from his sibilant speech and airy gestures that the boy was gay — nobody else in the school was so obviously and typically gay, and Danny was excited to meet someone with whom he wouldn't have to play coy little word-games about sexual orientations and identities.
"Well, San Diego isn't all that big," Eric sneered openly this time, and Danny felt the tiniest shiver of revulsion as he looked into the boy's pale green eyes, somehow empty and hungry at the same time.
"I hope I'm not being rude, but why did you move in the middle of September?" Danny wondered, pulling away from the boy just a bit and trying to figure out where that shiver came from, "It must be difficult getting into the swim of a new school six weeks into the semester."
"I'm sure nobody would mind you being rude," Eric answered somewhat equivocally, leaving Danny in doubt as to whether he'd been rude or not, "But Mumsie thought I was getting into too much trouble with my friends at school, and packed me off to my uncle in the country to keep me pure."
"How much trouble can you get into before Homecoming?" one of the girls asked, impressed by this glamorous boy and his tantalizing dark past.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Eric drawled feyly and aimed a lewd wink at Danny.
"Eric, you're terrible!" Sandra giggled and swatted playfully at her cousin, who rolled his eyes eloquently; the subject shifted to the limited but fully enjoyable social outlets for teenagers in "downtown Vandervere" (meaning the four streets that enclose the Town Square, one of which was not surprisingly named Main Street) and Eric put on a mildly interested expression as he took it all in, though he never had his eyes off of Danny for more than a second, regardless of who was speaking.
"It was nice meeting you," Danny said enthusiastically, though not entirely truthfully, when the bell rang to signal the end of lunch and five minutes' warning before fifth period.
"Chahmed, Ah'm shewah," Eric joked with a stagy Southern accent and gave Danny another limp, damp handshake in parting. The newcomer was painfully smitten with Danny, and covered his sudden obsession with a show of snide humor that his old friends in San Diego thought was a scream but which didn't seem to be going over so well with these mountain yokels.
Danny didn't give very much more thought to Eric as he hastened to his locker to retrieve his English and chemistry textbooks and his notebooks. The new boy fascinated and repelled him at once, and Danny was put in mind of the slender lime-green snake his brother used to have as a pet, which produced the same contrary reactions in him.
But there were so many other fish to fry, such as a Byronically handsome boy in English class who Danny was zeroing in on with subtle observations about homoerotic undertones in Oliver Twist, the book they were reading at the moment. And then in chemistry class, trying hard to concentrate on Ms. Fenniman's lecture while remembering her with her dark hair plastered to her narrow elegant face, riding him like a bucking horse and yelling obscenities with an abandon that stood at odds with the prim white blouse and gray skirt she wore in class while speaking of bases and acids in her crisp Bostonian voice.
Since it was Thursday, Danny had Drama Club after class, where he got to giggle and whisper with Jeremy Sinclair, the boy he thought of as his official "boyfriend," though nobody appeared to know about them and they hadn't even had sex — like Danny's girlfriends of the previous year, Jeremy seemed fearful and hesitant to take that step, worried that Danny would no longer take him seriously as a love-interest if they gave in to their base lusts.
And since Danny was by no means sexually frustrated, he accepted Jeremy's strictures, and contented himself with looking at the boy — he was quite the prettiest boy in school, after Danny himself, with his fashionable mop of floppy brown hair and beseeching puppy-brown eyes, his soft pink mouth and flawless peaches-and-cream skin. He was almost as tall as Danny, as slender and graceful as a reed, with a wonderfully expressive way of talking with his hands that Danny could watch for hours without getting bored. He was an actor, and quite a good one, though he was a little too retiring when it came to going after roles, so always ended up playing second lead.
Danny's second girlfriend of the previous year and the star of the drama club, Felicia Goode, came sailing over to where he sat with Jeremy, bestowing theatrical air-kisses on him while giving Jeremy a sidelong glance of suspicion; Felicia had tried to get Danny to join the club all through Junior year and was mystified when he suddenly turned up at the beginning of Senior year; but Danny had read enough over the summer to realize that drama clubs were the usual refuge of boys who liked boys, and he wanted to find as many such boys as he could.
Felicia wasn't as beautiful as she was arresting, tall and skinny with a Barrymore profile and great masses of curly chestnut hair (which she secretly treated with henna), but amazingly graceful and commanding in her movements and speech. Danny enjoyed watching her as much as he enjoyed watching Jeremy; in fact, he frequently got the two of them confused in his memory, they were so much alike in their personalities, and used almost identical rationalizations when insisting on keeping their relations with Danny chaste.
"People! People! Please settle down and pay attention," the drama teacher, Mr. Oland, clapped his hands over his head and bellowed at the assembled teenagers. He was a thick and florid man with a curly fringe of white hair around a massive square face, given to baggy sweaters and floppy scarves and a fake English accent, as gay as a paper hat in the Quentin Crisp manner; Danny was considering pursuing the man, but worried about causing trouble with the teacher's well-known longtime partner, who also taught at Vandervere High: Mr. Cartwright, the wood- and metal-shop instructor.
The two dozen students drifted toward the front of the theatre and grouped themselves into a loose semicircle around the teacher, the stage-crew types standing idly in the rear while the actors moved to the front displaying practiced looks of avid interest that they didn't really feel: they all knew that this was the announcement of the Fall Play, and knew that it was going to be Shakespeare this year; they were only mildly curious which play was going to be put on and which roles they would pursue.
"My dears," Mr. Oland orated grandly, "It is time to announce the decision of the Performing Arts Council, which as you know consists of myself, Mrs. Greenwood the orchestral music teacher, Mr. Stockman the president of the PTA, and Mrs. Vandervere the president of the School Board, regarding the Fall Play. This year, we will be putting on the classic and crowd-pleasing Romeo and Juliet. Mrs. Vandervere was particularly insistent that we do this year's Shakespeare in the historical manner, agreeing to pay for the authentic Elizabethan costumes herself."
This caused a susurration of excitement: when Mrs. Charles Vandervere (née Claudia Bremerhaven of the Philadelphia Bremerhavens), wife of the president of Royal Vandervere Mills and Danny's aunt, interested herself in the school play, the production values were high and the costumes fabulous, bankrolled by the Vandervere fortune... there would be a token fundraising drive by the students, most likely a chocolate sale, to pay for the sets and programs, but Claudia Vandervere would spend thousands on tailor-made wardrobe that the student actors would be allowed to keep if they pleased her sufficiently with their performance.
The students broke into groups after this, the actors wondering which roles they should try for and the crew wondering if the scrims would be painted or built. Danny didn't really care one way or the other, knowing that the only reason Aunt Claudia was interesting herself was because there was a Vandervere in the drama club; though she had no interest whatever in Danny, she was very interested in the Vandervere name appearing in the best possible setting.
"Danny? A word?" Mr. Oland approached Danny and gestured for him to move away from the other students for a private chat, "I know that when you joined our little club this year, it was with the understanding that you would be studying the backstage aspects of the drama."
"I'm very interested in set-design," Danny agreed.
"And you will be very good at it, I'm sure," the older man assured him, "But I wonder if you would indulge me and apply your talents on the stage as well as behind it?"
"What do you mean?" Danny asked suspiciously, not liking where this was going, "You know I'm an execrable actor, Mr. Oland."
"Oh, not execrable! Perhaps you are rather unskilled in portraying emotions that you don't feel, and your reading could use some polish, but you have many talents that I believe would be a valuable contribution to our little play."
"Such as?" Danny eyed the man askance.
"I was thinking particularly of your fencing skills: you are an accomplished swordsman, one of our varsity team's best fencers? And we mustn't discount your looks, you have a grace and elegance that would be an ornament to the stage."
"But Mr. Oland, I have absolutely no desire to act, and certainly not in something as challenging as Romeo and Juliet. I particularly wanted not to act when I joined the Drama Club."
"Oh, dear," the teacher sighed, sagging like a deflated balloon, "I didn't want to say this to you directly, but your aunt intimated to me that I would be foolish not to cast you in our production. She was somewhat insistent on that point."
"And Aunt Claudia will pull the funding for the costumes if I refuse," Danny said sadly, knowing that he was going to lose this battle: he would happily defy his aunt, but he couldn't let her snatch the expensive production from his classmates.
"She didn't say so, dear boy," the man tried to soothe Danny's obviously hurt feelings, though he didn't understand why it hurt him to have his aunt in his corner to such an extent — didn't understand that it was the Vandervere name, rather than Danny himself, she was boosting.
"What exactly did you have in mind?" Danny squared his shoulders like Sydney Carton at the tumbrel.
"I was thinking the role of Tybalt," Mr. Oland pitched the idea with enthusiasm, "Not a lot of lines, and not a lot of emotional range, but lots and lots of swordplay. You can coach our Mercutio and Romeo in the art better than anyone else in the production."
"Of course, I will, Mr. Oland," Danny relented with a rueful smile, thinking the role of Tybalt wouldn't be too bad: he was supposed to be arrogant and rather wooden, which Danny could do fairly easily, and spent most of his time onstage just standing around grandly. He could simply memorize Michael York in the Zeffirelli film, "But I must insist on being allowed to audition for the role. I would prefer to avoid any appearance of favoritism because of my name."
"Of course, dear boy, of course!" the teacher was immensely relieved, "Though I doubt you'll have much competition; most of the boys go for Romeo or Mercutio, the romantic and the comedic, one usually has to stick an also-ran into the Tybalt role. Thank you, Danny."
Danny walked back to his original seat and was soon joined by Jeremy, who was excitedly debating whether to try out for Romeo or Mercutio. He nattered on for several minutes before noticing that Danny was sitting glum and silent with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Which do you think I should try out for?" Jeremy asked, cocking his head to one side.
"That would depend," Danny smiled at him, the adorably cocked head lifting his spirits, "on whether you want to kill me or be killed by me."
"How so?"
"Please don't tell anybody about this," Danny whispered confidentially, "But Mr. Oland wants me to play Tybalt. And if I don't, my Aunt Claudia might renege on her promise to pay for the costumes."
"But that's great!" Jeremy enthused, "I wish I had an aunt who would guarantee me a role."
"Your talent guarantees you a role, Jeremy," Danny told him earnestly, "But everyone knows I couldn't act my way out of a wet paper bag, and that I'll be playing Tybalt because I'm a Vandervere."
"Wet paper bag," Jeremy snickered at the phrase, "But I can coach you, nobody will care that you got the role because of your name, once you show them you really can act."
"We'll be coaching each-other, then," Danny smiled fondly at Jeremy and stroked the back of his hand, "I'm to teach Mercutio and Romeo how to fence for the sword-fight scenes."
"That'll be fun," Jeremy said with a certain lack of enthusiasm; he was not an athlete and found strenuous physical activity boring, "So, which role do you think I should audition for?"
"You'd be wonderful in either," Danny said thoughtfully, "but I think I'd rather see you as Mercutio. He's not onstage as much, but he's so different from your own personality; Romeo wouldn't be enough of a stretch. And you'd have to kiss Felicia, which I don't think you'd like."
"Is she that bad of a kisser?" Jeremy looked alarmed.
"No, she's a fantastic kisser. She might turn you straight, and then what would I do?" Danny poked him playfully under the ribs where he was ticklish.
"Stop, someone will see!" he whispered, giggling.
"So what if they see?" Danny was often mystified by Jeremy's unwillingness to be public about their relationship. But Danny was a Vandervere, and had never been teased or bullied by a classmate in his entire life, so had little understanding of the risk most gay kids run by being obvious in high school.
"People! People!" Mr. Oland drew the club's attention again, this time to lead them in a discussion of lighting techniques, giving them examples of different moods, different colors for different actors, and how to use the light-board. Though the actors would prefer to just act, and the crew would prefer to just deal with the stage, Mr. Oland believed that any denizen of the theatre should know about every aspect of a dramatic production: actors must know about stagecraft and crew should know how to act. Danny of course preferred the technical lectures, and was always embarrassed when he had to take part in dramatic exercises and improvisations; Jeremy found the discussion of lights pointless and tuned out, spending the whole hour thinking over what Danny had told him about playing Mercutio.
~3~
As usual after Drama Club, Jeremy and Danny spent the afternoon together, ostensibly to study but mostly just to be together for a little while without their peers watching them. Jeremy's parents were very strict about their son's time and didn't like for him to go out after school; if it was anybody less than Danny Vandervere asking permission for Jeremy to stay out late on a Thursday afternoon, they would have refused — but one doesn't refuse a Vandervere. So awed were they by a Vandervere taking interest in their son, they probably would have even approved of them dating.
Vandervere High School, a grand belle-époque brick edifice with a complex of newer wings and annexes sprouting from its back like a squid's tentacles, sits on the edge of the old town, at the intersection of three main roads: Pine Street, which bisects the old town through the square; Lake Road, which leads not very surprisingly to Lake Augusta, a man-made body of water created by damming the Augusta River for electricity, which was surrounded by recreational facilities and a resort hotel, and on the western shore of which Danny's family home stood; and Watertown Road, which led to the Vandervere Mills' spring-water bottling plant and a subdivision of homes that had been built in the eighties to accommodate the new plant's employees.
There was an electric streetcar system that ran along these roads, connecting the old town to the subdivisions and the mills and plants, built in the 30s and maintained as a free service by the Vandervere Trust; but Danny and Jeremy walked, since Pine Street was only a little over a mile long, and their destination was at the other end from the high school: the original Vandervere mansion, a monstrous Gothic-and-gingerbread fantasia bristling with turrets and dormers, gables and cupolas and oriels, in which dwelt Miss Mathilda, Miss Myrtle, and Miss Maude Vandervere, collectively know as the Aunt Ems.
These three unmarried and slightly eccentric old ladies, the sisters of Danny's grandfather, were the only Vanderveres who actually loved Danny; they had taken him under their collective wing when he was twelve, overseeing his education as a "gentleman" by hiring extra tutors as well as music and dance instructors for him, teaching him etiquette and poise along with the more ceremonious social skills — Danny was probably the only sixteen-year-old in the county, perhaps even the state, who could bone a fish at table, dance every dance at a cotillion, and play a skillful game of bridge.
Danny had been going to the Aunt Ems' every day after school since the sixth grade, and though he never slept there, he had his own room in the mansion. He always met the mannish eldest sister Mathilda at the Town Library on the square, where she served as head librarian, curator, and official town historian; he walked with her the rest of the way up Pine Street to meet the younger two sisters, Myrtle and Maude, identical twins who still shared the same room at the age of eighty; high tea was then served in the shadow-cluttered music room by Oscar, a creaking butler so old he referred to himself as "colored."
After tea, Danny was taught piano and voice and dance under the eyes of the Aunt Ems, then retired with whatever academic tutor he was working under at the time to a dark-paneled study filled with the taxidermied remains of now-endangered or -extinct animals slain by his ancestors before the first World War; on Saturdays, he came into town with Mrs. Espinosa, his family's housekeeper, to do the marketing, and spent the rest of the day with the Aunt Ems learning directly from them about family history, table-setting, flower-arranging, appreciating opera, and the various philanthropic duties that fell to the rich in service of the poor.
Then at six o'clock, Oscar would drive Danny back to his parents' house in the Aunt Ems' bulbous old Cadillac limousine, not speaking one word the entire way until he opened the door to the car and said "Good evening, Master Marcus."
All of the Aunt Ems called him Marcus, which was in fact his name: Marcus Daniel Vandervere IV, though the rest of the family called him Marc-Daniel since the name Marcus had seemed too grandiose for a little boy; and he preferred to call himself Danny because he said the name Marc-Daniel sounded "like a Pekinese coughing"; but Marcus Daniel Vandervere II was the Aunt Ems' father, and in the grand tradition of elderly maiden ladies they worshiped and venerated their father, so they considered the name Marcus a compliment of the highest order.
Danny was devoted to the Aunt Ems, and they were the only feature of his day that he would not give up for his sexual pursuits. He did, however, start bringing friends with him on his after-school visits, and the Aunt Ems were not always enchanted with Danny's varied fuck-buddies; but they were especially fond of the pretty, gentle Jeremy, and Aunt Mathilda lit up when she saw him accompanying Danny into the library.
"Ah, Mr. Sinclair, how delightful," Aunt Mathilda said in her oddly brusque voice, which made even the frothiest pleasantries sound like the bark of a drill-sergeant; she was dressed in one of her typical suits, the heathered blue herringbone jacket cut and draped exactly like a man's suit and worn with a white shirt and a silk necktie, but with a three-quarter-length skirt instead of pants; her shoes were similarly ambiguous, highly-polished masculine wingtips with a curvaceous two-inch heel. She wore her thick iron-gray hair parted on one side and brilliantined, but with a heavy bun of coiled braids nestled at the nape.
"Miss Vandervere," Jeremy responded gallantly, shaking her hand gently and bowing ever-so-slightly, as Danny had taught him.
"I have heard, Marcus," Aunt Mathilda said to Danny as she settled her hat — a man's gray felt fedora with a small curled pink feather and antique marcasite brooch on the band — and picked up her briefcase-like handbag, "that your Aunt Claudia has wedged her unfortunate nose into the Fall Play this year."
"Yes, ma'am; she's offered to pay for the costumes," Danny replied, taking his great-aunt's gloved hand and tucking it into the crook of his elbow as they descended the library steps and continued up Pine Street.
"Claudia doesn't 'offer' to do anything, Marcus," Aunt Mathilda sniffed contemptuously, "She blackmails people into falling in line with her wishes by making a pretense of some minor concession. What does she want in exchange for the costumes?"
"She wants me to be given a role in the play," Danny responded miserably.
"Danny — Marcus I mean — is going to play Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet!" Jeremy told her excitedly, still thinking this role was a signal honor.
"How times do change," Mathilda chuckled mirthlessly, "When Maude wished to appear in the school play as Lily Miller in Ah, Wilderness!, our sister-in-law — your grandmother, Marcus, who was just as much a blue-nose busybody as Claudia — made such a stink you'd have thought Maude was proposing to appear nude in public."
"Aunt Claudia seems to think that if a Vandervere is on the program, it must be in the cast rather than the crew," Danny snorted, "I wanted to do set design and construction, not to act."
"I'm sure you'll be a credit to the name whichever you do," Aunt Mathilda assured him, "Are they doing the sword-fighting on stage in this production? That is a talent you legitimately possess and of which you are rightly proud."
"Mr. Oland asked me to coach the other actors in fencing," Danny told her, "Which I am perfectly happy to do. But I am not an actor, it's not something I'm good at."
"Marcus, you are good at so many things," Aunt Mathilda's voice took on the dangerous softness that signaled her expectation that one take her next words to heart, "You have so many talents; almost everything you've undertaken has come easily to you. I think you should embrace this challenge and meet it head-on; it will be character-building to work hard at something that doesn't come easily."
"Why is it," Danny wondered in a stagy voice to show that he was joking, "that everything which builds character is either tedious or embarrassing?"
Aunt Mathilda and Jeremy laughed obligingly as they ascended the stairs onto the mansion's front porch and the ancient Oscar opened the front door to them.
"Good afternoon Miss Mathilda, Master Marcus, Master Jeremy," Oscar croaked in a voice that had once been an impressive basso profundo and now sounded like granite pebbles rattling around in a wooden box. He was well over ninety, possibly approaching a hundred, but refused to retire; the Aunt Ems had grown up with him in their home, first as the gardener's boy, then as a driver, then as their butler, and were loath to part with him — so since he was remarkably healthy for his age and had all his mental faculties, nobody wanted to force him out of work.
Aunt Myrtle and Aunt Maude were already ensconced in the music room, seated in matching balloon-back chairs with a tea-table groaning under the weight of cookies, petits-fours, scones with Devonshire cream, deviled eggs, and a glittering Edwardian garland-style tea service of over a dozen pieces. They remained seated as Danny and Jeremy kissed their hands, fluttering their lace handkerchiefs and fussing with their matching chiffon afternoon dresses, Myrtle in pale green and Maude in pale peach, as the boys complimented their appearance and Mathilda helped herself to black coffee and a plain butter cookie.
After putting away two cups of Earl Gray, a scone, and four deviled eggs, Danny went to the piano and played some Chopin etudes, then inveigled Jeremy into singing some respectable old show-tunes to Danny's accompaniment; at first Jeremy was too shy to sing to the old ladies, but Aunt Mathilda tartly pointed out to him that an actor cannot afford to be shy under any circumstances.
With tea over with, Danny and Jeremy went up to Danny's room to study; but they did no studying that afternoon: as soon as the door closed behind him, Danny pulled Jeremy into a long and intensively seductive kiss that eventually led to some hot and heavy making-out on the bed.
"Wait, stop," Jeremy gasped out after a while, putting his hand against Danny's mouth and arching his pelvis back and away from Danny's frighteningly huge erection. He had an infallible sense for when he was just about to give in and start pulling off his and Danny's clothes, and was absolutely terrified of going past that moment.
"Mmmph," Danny's protest was muffled against Jeremy's hand, but he acquiesced to the other boy's request and rolled off of him, though he kept his arms wrapped around Jeremy's narrow chest.
"I'm not ready," Jeremy said for perhaps the fifteenth time; every time they started kissing, they would get more and more involved until Jeremy's internal alarm went off; and every time he said he wasn't ready, in exactly the same tone and tempo, as if he were parroting back something he'd memorized.
"It's OK," Danny said for the fifteenth time, relaxing against the boy and letting his breathing return to normal, "I don't want to push you. But I want you to know I'll still love you either way."
"Do you really love me?" Jeremy turned his head and looked Danny in the eye.
"I really do love you," Danny equivocated: he wasn't in love with Jeremy, but he did feel a certain kind of love for him — the same kind of love he felt for his horse, and for Henry, and for chocolate pudding.
"Do you see other people?" Jeremy asked suddenly after a long companionable silence.
"Where did that come from?" Danny stalled.
"I see how people look at you," Jeremy was no longer looking into Danny's eyes, but rather at some point between his lip and his chin, "You can get anyone you want. And I see you looking at them, and I wonder if you are getting them."
"I'm not dating anyone else," Danny said carefully, choosing his words with legalistic precision. He never told any of his partners about any of his other partners, partly due to a code of honor which forbade kissing and telling, but also from a desire to not be seen by one and all as a ravening slut.
Jeremy gave him a long, searching look, kissed him lightly on the mouth, and extricated himself from Danny's embrace, saying, "This is such a beautiful room."
It was a beautiful room, octagonal since it was situated in one of the house's two towers, the one at the front overlooking the cul-de-sac around the grandiose fountain at the end of Pine Street. It had four tall Italianate arched windows heavily draped in pale lettuce-green damask, a coved ceiling centering a bronze chandelier crawling with Chinese dragons, and a pale green-veined white marble fireplace fitted with a beautifully ornate bronze Franklin stove; the walls were covered with silvery-green silk patterned with linden leaves above the carved green-gray pickled pine wainscoting, hung with lithographs of botanical illustrations in ornate silver-gilt frames, and the glossy hardwood floor was mostly covered with a circular Chinese rug featuring white flowers scattered on a grass-green background.
The furniture, as in almost every other room of the house, was original: heavy, masculine Renaissance Revival pieces chosen by Danny's great-great-great-grandmother in 1880 when the house was built, upholstered in new but historically authentic cut velvets and embroidered satins in shades of pale green and silvery gray; the bed was regal and surmounted by a high half-tester draped in the same damask as the windows; there were gorgeous and valuable knick-knacks scattered liberally over every surface, ticking bronze clocks and gem-inlaid boxes, photographs and watercolor miniatures in intricate silver frames, little green Sèvres vases filled with fresh flowers and carved jade bowls on rosewood stands.
There was electricity, of course, all of the old gas fixtures and table lamps had been wired at the turn of the 20th century, and the wiring was updated in the twenties and again in the sixties; a heavy 1930s Bakelite telephone with a rotary dial stood on the table by the bed, and there was an electric button by the fireplace to summon servants; Danny had brought in a CD player that was hidden from view in the tall secretary desk, which also housed a laptop computer and a cell-phone charger; but at first glance the room had not changed much in the hundred and twenty-three years since it had been decorated as the principle man's guest bedroom.
"Isn't it?" Danny agreed, wondering what had brought on the non-sequitur, "I feel very honored the Aunt Ems gave it to me, it's one of the most important rooms. Three governors and five senators have slept here."
"That must have been quite a party!" Jeremy joked.
"Not all at once, smarty-pants," Danny reached out and grabbed Jeremy by the waist, tickling him until he fell in a helpless heap on the floor. And once incapacitated, Danny lay down on him and started kissing him again, taking turns between sucking on his mouth and gnawing on his neck just below the collar of his shirt, making him squirm and moan.
Before Jeremy had a chance to tell Danny to stop, they were interrupted by Oscar knocking quietly on the door to tell them that it was almost six o'clock and the car would be brought around to take them both home. Danny thanked Oscar without opening the door, and he and Jeremy spent a few moments straightening their clothes and quietly exchanging ideas about weekend plans; they headed down the operatically grand mahogany staircase, with its deep red Persian runner and tall stained-glass bay window at the half-landing, into the dark and strangely creepy front hall and onto the front porch. The Aunt Ems had already retired to their rooms to dress for dinner, so Danny didn't say goodbye to them, nor was he expected to; he and Jeremy slid into the back seat of the old Cadillac and waited for Oscar to shuffle around to the front and start the car.
They rode in silence all the way to Jeremy's house, which was just off the Lake Road in one of the older subdivisions; his parents, who both worked at Vandervere Mills in managerial capacities, lived in a rambling mock-Tudor with stone chimneys and climbing roses, built in the mid-twenties, a really charming house that suited their very charming son.
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