Page 38 of Spoiler Alert
“MYTRAINER SAYS I SHOULD HAVE A CHICKEN BREASTwithin reach at all times,” Marcus told his parents the next day. “The more protein the better, especially when you’re trying to bulk up.”
Which he wasn’t. Not now, anyway.
That didn’t matter, though. For the sake of this private show, pretense took precedence over reality.
He stretched out an arm and let it rest along the top of the dining room chair next to him. With a smug smile, he cast a caressing, lingering glance over the muscle definition evident beneath and below his tee. The bulge of his biceps. The thick solidity of his forearm. The veins on the back of his hand. All evidence of endless, sweat-soaked hours at innumerable hotel gyms around the world. All evidence of how seriously he took his job and how hard he worked at it.
In his profession, in the role he’d inhabited for seven years, his body was a tool to be maintained. Kept strong and flexible both. Polished. Admired by the audience.
He appreciated the actual exercise, how it felt and what it helped him accomplish, much more than how its results looked in the mirror. But once more, this wasn’t about reality.
“You’re supposed to carry a chicken breast at all times?” Horizontallines scored across his mother’s high forehead, as familiar as the graying ponytail at the nape of her neck. “How would that even work? Would you bring a cooler with you everywhere?”
Under the table, he tried to find enough open space to stretch out a bit, but amid the tangle of four chairs, his parents’ own long legs, and the legs of the table itself, there was nowhere to go. Fair enough. If his knees were beginning to feel a bit cramped, he supposed he could suffer through the discomfort for another hour or so.
Like the rest of this San Francisco home, the dining room was barely large enough to serve its purpose. Five years ago, flush withGatesmoney, his parents’ cramped quarters in mind, he’d offered to buy them something bigger. They’d immediately, and emphatically, refused. He hadn’t asked a second time.
They didn’t want what he had to give. Again: fair enough.
“No cooler necessary.” He lifted his shoulder in a desultory shrug. “Ian, the guy who plays Jupiter, always has a serving of fish in a pocket somewhere. A pouch of tuna, or a filet of salmon.”
That much, at least, was the truth. It was only one of many reasons Marcus and most of the cast avoided Ian.
Fishy motherfucker should’ve played Neptune, Carah had muttered only last week.
“The practice sounds... dubious, at least in terms of sanitation.” His mother tilted her head, eyes narrowing behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “Why would you need to bulk up? Didn’t you say you were done playing... your previous role?”
She still couldn’t bear to sayAeneas. Not when she believed with every ounce of conviction in her ancient-languages-devoted heart that E. Wade’s books had bastardized Virgil’s source material, and that theGods of the Gatesshowrunners had only dragged the demigod’s lyrical, meaningful tale further into the muck.
Hisfather agreed, of course.
“I’m done playing Aeneas, but I need to maintain a baseline fitness and strength level, even between jobs. Otherwise, the road back is too hard. So thanks for this.” With a sweep of his hand, he indicated his half-finished plate of food. “You’re helping me remain a prime physical specimen. Grade-A man meat.”
His father didn’t look up from his own plate of poached chicken and roasted asparagus, instead dragging a forkful of the tender poultry through the green goddess dressing he and his wife had prepared in their small, sunlit kitchen earlier that morning as Marcus watched.
When his parents cooked together, it was like his sword fight with Carah. A dance rehearsed so many times that each precise movement required little thought. No effort.
His parents didn’t stumble. Not ever.
Lawrence picked fragile leaves from bundles of fragrant herbs while Debra snapped the offending woody ends off her asparagus stalks. Lawrence prepared the poaching liquid while Debra trimmed the chicken breasts. Spoons flashing in the sun, they tasted the dressing in the food processor, a slight tilt of the head and a moment of eye contact enough to indicate the need for a pinch more salt.
It was beautiful, in its own fashion.
As usual, Marcus had leaned against the cabinets closest to the door, safely out of their way, and watched, arms tight across his chest or against his sides.
If he took up more space, he’d become an intrusion. Unlike most of his lessons, that one hadn’t taken long to sink in.
Marcus’s mother rested her fork and knife neatly on her now-empty plate. “Will you be joining us for dinner too? We planned to go shopping this afternoon, then make grilled cioppino tonight.Your father intends to char some flatbreads while I mind the seafood skewers.”
On their tiny deck, the two of them would crowd around the old charcoal grill, arguing amiably as they worked within arm’s reach of one another. Another version of their dance. A tango, fiery and smoky, rather than the pristine waltz of the morning.
His parents did everything together. Always had, from as far back as Marcus could remember.
They cooked together. Wore blue button-down shirts and endless khaki slacks together. Washed and dried dishes together. Went on rambling after-dinner walks together. Read academic journal articles together. Translated ancient texts together. Bickered about the clear superiority of either Greek—in her case—or Latin—in his—together. Taught until retirement at the same prestigious private prep school together, in the same foreign languages department, once Debra no longer needed to homeschool Marcus.
Long ago, they’d also conducted late-night, not-quiet-enough conversations about their son together, in mutual accord about their growing concern and frustration and determination to help him succeed. To push him harder. To make himunderstandthe importance of education, of books over looks, serious thought over frivolity.
From their cowritten opinion pieces about theGods of the Gatesbooks and series, he imagined that aspect of their partnership had never entirely disappeared, even after almost forty years. Much to the glee of various tabloid reporters.
