Requiem in C-Minor

by Ian McDuff

This, again, is not a happy story: ‘hiatus fic’ rarely is; but – again – it may, in the end, be a hopeful one: redemptive. It is for all my friends and fellow fen, but is extra-specially dedicated to Arsenic the Jaded, Zoicite, LincolnKW, Jericho (whose Secret Santa story is folded-in to the saga), Shirasade, Butter_Fingers (hi, Gali), and the Eponymous Georgina.

For those who may be disturbed by parts of this, by presentation or theme, I can say only, these are my versions of these men. They may not be, will almost certainly not be, yours, or their own. I am not dealing, we are none of us dealing, in fact: this is but feigned history, mythos: but we are dealing, regardless of fact, in Truth. That is all that matters, in the end.

It had been a miserable year.

It was the sort of the year that, had James Lance Bass been even more pompous than he sometimes got of late, he would have described in the terms Queen Elizabeth 2^d had used a few years previously about a miserable year of her own: as his and Josh’s and their friends’s annus horribilis. But really, it had been a bad enough year that it had knocked a fair amount of the stuffing, and the stuffiness, out of him.

Josh had noticed it most, and first, as was only right. James had made heroic efforts since his return, but there was a brittleness to his smile and a bitterness in his laughter, and not all the Southern courtesy in the world, nor all the machismo in Mississippi, could fool the few who truly knew James into believing he was all right.

The worst moment had come early in the morning of 19 November, in the chill pre-dawn darkness. James and Josh were in Mississippi, effectively camped out and roughing it. They were deep in the country, far away from any light pollution. It had been a sweet idea of Josh’s, to get his James away from it all and revel in the Leonid meteor shower.

He had not been prepared for James to break down, utterly, his face averted from the heavens he so loved, sobbing bitterly in his arms, castigating himself as a fool and a failure, casting doubt upon the promises and plans – he knew, he choked out, what those were worth, now – for April of ’03, and gasping between wracking sobs, over and again, bitterly, ‘Comedy is a pop star in space.’

Were you surprised at the ‘Fan buys Justin's half-eaten French toast on eBay for $3000’ incident?

You can't want me to justify it surely? (Laughs) I am so indifferent. It’s comedy. (Laughing) It’s like a popstar going into outer space.

In that moment, Josh hated Justin more than he had hated anyone, particularly Justin, ever in his life. More than he hated Krieff, or Manber, or Bobbie … more, in that moment, even than he hated Lou Pearlman.

When he hung up his Mouse ears, he returned to school and less Disney-esque behaviour. “I got caught smoking pot,” he admits.

– British Glamour, January 2003

They were supposed to be supporting him.

They’d said they were supporting him, that they did support him. Lying fucks. The minute he set out to work on his solo CD, they were out the door like so many scalded cats. Jesus, the one of them that was the closest thing he really had to a big brother, the one he’d clung to for years, in whose footsteps he’d followed, the one he’d tried to be, was plotting a rival solo stint. The one he shared a brain with got as far from him as he could, breaking off contact, fleeing his presence. The one who’d always been able to talk him through things, the one who gave the best hugs, the one who gave him the feeling that there was a core, a ground, a center, had seized the chance to go make headlines and grab stardom on a whole ’nother order of magnitude while he was locked away in the studio, scared shitless, waiting to see if the studio time in and of itself would mean the fans would forget him and knowing after that that he’d be in agony waiting to see if they rejected him when he stood alone. And the last one. The one he’d gone through growing up with, alone and scared and homesick in a foreign country. The one who stood for home in his mind, who could remind him of what he’d lost years ago just by drawling out a few words that reminded him sharply, with bittersweet longing, of the roots he’d fled. Bastard hadn’t just overshadowed him: he’d run so far so fast, he’d gone to such extremes … fucker was ready to leave the fucking planet to get as far from him as humanly possible.

‘Thirteen? You were all of thirteen damn years old? Gawda’mighty, J, the Sam Hill were you thinkin’? Hell, what in tarnation was your momma thinkin’?’

‘Oh fuck you, Bass! Fuck you, fuck interviews, fuck the British press, fuck everyfuckinthing! It’s this sorta fuckin’ lecturin’ makes me want to get high!’

‘Support.’ Shit. Backstabbing bastards. He’d show the fuckwads. Rub their noses in it. Nobody got by with hurting Justin Fucking Timberlake. Betraying him. Nobody: least of all the people he’d trusted, had allowed to get close enough that they could hurt him and betray him.

‘J-Dawg?’

‘Yeah. They ready for me?’

‘Naw, be a while yet. You look tense, man. I could … calm you. I got plenty.’

‘You could calm me by using that mouth for something better than talking.’

‘Cocky little fucker. Huh. I can do that. But you be better if you chill some anyways.’ Justin caught the baggie out of the air.

‘You taking notes from Brit?’

‘Oh yeah, you such a straight white boy. Straight white boy with a thing for some thug love. You ain’t gawn be ’memberin’ dat ho’s name, ’bout fifteen minutes.’

The rage of course passed, as rages do; Josh could become so enraged with Justin, as he could with James, or Joe, or Chris, precisely and only because he loved him so much and so ceaselessly and so unconditionally. But it left an aftertaste. The day before Thanksgiving, before they met up with the Basses and flew to Chicago for a Chasez-Bass family Thanksgiving, they celebrated the feast in New York – in deference to Joe’s schedule and the Macy’s Parade Rent appearance – with most of their other family.

Justin was scheduled to be absent. It was just as well, Josh thought.

Brian of course was unable to join them, Baylee having made his Spanking New debut into the rotation on Tuesday the 26^th. Josh and James had been among the first to make it to Hotlanta to coo over the Littlest Littrell, and both had been allowed to go into the nursery and lay gentle hands upon the miracle in the bassinet. (It was only later, heading for New York with fellow baby-worshippers Kev and Kris, Aaron [Jane called it kidnapping, but Nick preferred the term ‘rescue’] and Nick and Howie, AJ and Sarah, and Chris, who had sung Baylee a ‘Chip Skylark’ lullaby, all about shiny teeth: CK and AJ had already been declared Baylee’s ‘Fairly Oddparents’ – it was only later that Josh and James, comparing notes, realized each had had the same thought at the time: that the other was going to be a splendid father someday.) At least, they all agreed, Brian was having a good year.

‘Mostly,’ Howie said, judiciously. ‘He told me on the downlow that he’s still a little shaken.’

‘Shaken?’

‘Verdad. Who wouldn’t be, hearing his genteel Southern belle wife, at the worst of the labor pains, scream at him? Said, “Why couldn’t he have been one of the gay boybanders?” And, “When they get this fuckin’ ninety-pound kid out of her, it’ll be a cold day in Hell before his dick ever gets in there again, if this is the result.” He says she also said something about he’d better borrow Kev’s man-skirt, because as soon as they let her up she was getting her hands on a scalpel and castrating his sorry ass. Brian told me he’s all in favor of natural childbirth, but if they don’t give LA some Darvocet next time, they can give him her share.’

Josh was glad that Howie was going to be staying with him and James in Mississippi for a bit, talking some things through with them while getting used to Nick’s solo touring commitments. Howie was having troubles of his own, but at bottom, his determined good humor was always and eternally restful.

Josh hoped that would still be so when he himself had to go back out to promote his single.

‘Help Me’ is about a period in my life when I felt lost in this world. It wasn’t until later on that I realized that I was depressed, and that I could use some help. Trust me, I’ve seen some very bad things the past few years.

I completely went up in the life of a pop star and I didn’t know what was right or wrong any more. I was surrounded by sharks who were only after my money, and a few of my friends were doing drugs. They wrecked the atmosphere within the group.

Luckily, no. I saw how someone’s personality got screwed up by drugs and I had enough sense to not touch it. You don’t know how happy I was when AJ went to a rehab center. He’s a good friend. And to see him just slip further away every day was horrible. Others who took advantage of us and did drugs, I just turned away from them.

– Nick, in Belgian press, December 2002

He’d thought support would feel … closer … somehow.

They’d said they were supporting him, that they did support him. He had to believe that.

But.

The minute he set out to work on his solo CD, it felt different. Worse. He didn’t know how to be, without them there. The band, this band, they were great. Really. But. Fuck. It was fun, honest it was, it was what he wanted, needed even…. Why couldn’t they see, though? Jesus, the one of them that was the closest thing he really had to a big brother, the one he’d had a crush on for so long when he was young, the one he fought with and rebelled against and loved so fiercely even now, the one he’d half-wanted to be, was taking him at his word, treating him as an adult for the first time ever and giving him space. Lousy fucking timing, there, Kev. Couldn’t he tell that that was the last thing he needed now? The one he shared a brain with was all tied up with LA and the baby on the way. Couldn’t Brian figure out that right now, he needed a little babying too? The one who’d been able to talk him through things, except during the other’s own personal hell, the one who before going through that refining fire, and especially after, had taught him, first, how to be a man – and then how to be a man; the one he counted on to be wise and streetsmart and watchful, had actually fallen for his line of bullshit about standing on his own two feet and was letting him try. Damn it, Alex, you’re supposed to be unbullshittable: can none of you understand that there’s a middle ground between working together and giving him more space than he really wanted? He needed enough distance to feel he was doing this on his own, sure, but couldn’t they support him from a distance that was a little less distant? At least there was the one that mattered most. His love, his lover, his all. Howie. Baby. I know you got stuff to do. But hurry. Hurry, please. I need you.

One thing was sure. Next time he asked for support and some space, he’d tell them – better yet, he’d have Howie explain, so it didn’t get garbled in transmission – just how much of each he needed.

‘Nick?’

‘They ready for me now?’

‘Not quite. Just wanted to tell you we had that roadie, the one who was dealing on the side, removed.’

‘Good.’

‘And….’

Nick raised an eyebrow at the grin he was getting.

‘We have a special visitor on set. Over at the craft services table. You could go grab a bite, make nice.’

‘Um.’

‘Trust me. You want to.’

Nick sighed and followed, rounding the corner of the trailer to see –

‘Howie!’

– British Glamour, January 2003

Amazing. Sell enough singles, sell enough CDs, get enough airplay, and the ‘brothers’ who left you in the lurch came back all smiles and bon-, bonhom-, whatever, to show how they’ve been ‘supporting you all along’ and are ‘so proud of you.’

Except Lance. Space Boy was actually in the US of Fuckin’ A and still managed not to show. Had to be in Houston (and no wonder Spazz had that freshly fucked gleam), Houston Fuckin’ Texas, George-W.-Redneck Country, he oughta be right at fuckin’ home there. He hadn’t come crawling out of the woodwork to pretend he’d been there with Justin every step of the way, to steal a share of his big, solo, finally-on-his-fuckin’-own spotlight.

Justin could almost respect him for that. Compared to the Three Stooges, he did.

His mother touched his arm, almost tentatively, looking at him as if she were an awestruck fan. ‘Break a leg, hon.’

Then she was gone, and he had his precious allotment of alone time, to Center, to Meditate a Moment, Say a Mantra, Get in Touch With His Energy, to – oh, who the fuck was he trying to kid? He’d been afraid even to freakin’ fart all day for fear he’d shit himself. He’d never been this scared in his life.

He needed the guys so bad. Right now. He needed them there yesterday. Oh God he needed CK to make him smile, Joey to wrap him up in a hug, C just to beam peace in his direction. Dear God but he needed the Bass to look him in the eye and let him know he could do this. What had he been thinking? Why had he pushed them away ever since Jive first dangled the shiny new toy in front of him? They’d tried, God knows they’d tried to support him, and he’d acted like they were trying to horn in on his spotlight. God but he needed to lay off the shit, it was fucking him up. He needed – he needed his momma, not the fan who’d been half-afraid to touch his forearm, his momma. He needed Miz Diane. Johnny. Karen or Bev or Phyllis. This was it, he was quitting the shit, it was fucking with his head, he’d start tomorrow, he’d –

‘Two minutes, Mr Timberlake. Two minutes.’

There’d been a rumor that CK had gone completely to p-, er, to seed, well, um, Mr Bass, sir, to the dogs (James hated the way people tried to half-ass it when they had to break news to him that they knew he wouldn’t like). There was a claim that Chris’s summer RV road trip with Ron had involved some drug use (some people were graceless enough to hint that Chris’s summer weight gain was related to this), and at one point, it was said that there were photos of paraphernalia in the RV posted on Ron’s site. James had had Beth and some of his own people whom he trusted research that assertion, including checking cached pages and archive services, to no avail: if there had been such evidence, it had been taken down, now: all to no avail, and thus to his great relief. James no longer trusted the post-Clive Jive as far as he could throw three fat Teutonic Bertelsmann VPs, but he trusted his own people to tell him the unvarnished truth. Besides. If he had evidence, then he’d have a duty to act, and no Southerner could long stop his ears to Duty, Stern Daughter of the Voice of God. And that would be unpleasant at best. When it came to protecting others, Chris would lie like a rug, and do it poker-faced. But he would never lie about his own behavior if asked, and James wasn’t sure which would be worse, a confirmation or the only other reaction Chris ever had when confronted, namely a cold fuck-off-it’s-none-of-your-concern. The rumors, though, persisted, and they fit in all too well with a confession Josh had made once he’d gotten back stateside, and been able to deal with anything beyond the eviscerating emptiness he’d felt since Manber and Krieff had screwed him over. They fit in far too well, moreover, with what was swiftly becoming, in mental initial caps, ‘the Timberlake Problem.’

It’s like. Bastards. All this time. All this time he’d worried and wondered and felt guilty about the whole idea of forcing a hiatus on them to do something on his own, and all this time. All this time that he was sweating how to approach them, struggling with the guilt over wanting to walk alone for a mile or two. How long had they been planning this? Behind his back. The minute he said something, it was like, it was like, okay, now we can show our hands, adios-M-F, we already got it lined up, CK has a star to make, Joe’s gonna be one, C’s gonna write for one or two, and Asshole’s off to see the real ones up close. Like that was spur of the moment. But it’s all his fault, right, he’s the one flirting with breaking up the group, it’s his project that threatens everyone. Fuck that.

Backstabbing motherfuckers.

‘But. He’s my best friend,’ Josh said, miserably. ‘I love him, I support him, I do, I think it’s a great album. And he’s been supportive of my soundtrack single. He has, Joe.’

‘Hey, I know all this. So. Listen to yourself. And then. Ask yourself. Which of us’re ya trying to convince? Me? Or you?’

‘Who’s the new girl in PR?’

James had taken the question to himself, in those more innocent days. ‘Gayle? She’s from Arkansas, went to UAB, though, I b’lieve, majored in Communications, nice girl, plays the church organ at that little Presbyterian church in Winter Park when she’s home. Got engaged to a feller at college who was from Alabama, but it didn’t take, on account of how he was an asshole, best I can tell, cheated on her with one of the gals as was set to be a bridesmaid –’

‘Jesus, TMI. I was just asking,’ Justin said, and stood up. ‘All I wanted was a name and whether she was single, not her family tree.’ And he slammed out.

‘He didn’t ask for her name,’ James observed, with a Southerner’s irritation. ‘He asked who she was.’

‘Baby? Did you take your Zestoretic and your Lipitor today?’ It was the week before James was approached about the Soyuz mission.

James snorted. ‘Yeah, we’re a hard-core bunch of rock stars. Other bands take massive amounts of illegal shit to make themselves stupid. We’re stupid enough straight.’ He put on his ‘announcer’s voice.’ ‘See ’N Sync’s baggage searched at Customs! Thrill to th’ excitement of seeing vials of pills discovered! Sigh in relief when disappointed Customs officers and DEA agents realize they’re all heart and blood pressure medication, Paxil for evvvvvvv’rybody, and Glucotrol for Chris!’

‘Baby. Did you –’

‘Yes, Josh. I took them. I swan, I’m going to have some damn surgery to get to where I ain’t having to take meds ever’ damn day.’

‘I was just –’

‘Hon, I ain’t fussin’ at you a-tall. You take care of me. I – that don’t bother me. It makes me feel … well, hell.’ He turned a bit pink, and mumbled. ‘Loved.’

‘What was that,’ Josh teased. ‘I don’t think I heard you just then, James Lance Bass-Chasez. It makes you feel what?’

James just turned, wrapped himself around Josh, and buried his face in the crook of Josh’s neck. ‘You heard me the first time,’ he rumbled.

‘Yeah,’ Josh smiled. ‘Loud and clear.’

There had been turkey, of course. Turkey cacciatore, turkey tetrazzini…. A Fatone Thanksgiving had to have its Italian elements. Certainly, on the actual feast day, they’d have as assimilated an all-American meal as anyone. But for this preliminary gathering, Mama had decided (predictably enough) to give all the boys a taste of the Old Country. This was no problem, as Josh was a notorious junkie for pesto, Howie adored Mama’s clam sauce, and James was a fool for carbonara. Those were the only three picky eaters. The rest would eat anything, and Nick, of course, would inhale a mouthful of roofing nails if you put them on his plate. Joey approved of Nick: finally, someone else who knew how to eat.

It was a typical, packed family gathering, all his families together at once: the Fatones and their various ramifications and in-laws, the Baldwins who could make it (Briahna was a great lurer of relatives), his brothers from ’N Sync, and the Backstreets. Joe cast a wary eye on Cousin Vito, who was well into the Brunello di Montalcino already, and liable at any minute to think he was Mario Lanza and serenade them all, but it looked like Aunt Luisa had him under control for now.

Doddering old Uncle – well, a cousin of several removes, but ‘uncle’ to everybody – old Uncle Benedetto tapped him on the shoulder, pointing discreetly to where Nick Carter and a slightly dazed Aaron sat. Aaron was still getting used to how the Fatones defined ‘family,’ and how – and how loudly – they interacted. ‘Tedeschi?’ Uncle Benedetto was curious, and the two blonds did stand out. Joey shook his head. ‘Inghlese.’

Uncle Benedetto nodded. ‘No won’er they keep to themselves. Germans, they would be ordering everybody around.’

‘Well, they’re English background, y’know, but, American like us. Nick, that’s the eldest, was actually born here in New York, I think?’

‘Here? In da City? Basta.’ Uncle Benedetto was unconvinced. No native New Yorker was shy like that.

‘Naw, someplace upstate or somewheres. Chautauqua area, maybe? Near the Pennsy line? I dunno.’

‘Figures. Well, get them to say something, do something, they can’t just sit. That’s what we got Cousin Salvatore for.’

Joey nodded, but when Uncle Benedetto tottered away, he looked at the two Carters, Nick shielding Aaron from the fast-paced milling-about, both of them tense as no one should ever be when among family and friends. Then he thought about what ‘family life’ meant, had to mean, to the Carter kids. He got up from his chair, quickly, and went and grabbed them both off the sofa.

‘C’mon. You’re missing the main attraction,’ he said, and dragged them to a room at the far end of what was now his, his, very own brownstone, to the room where a relay of cooing aunts and female cousins were watching and cosseting Briahna while the menfolk shuttled in in shifts to coo at her and say quick Italian prayers and blessings.

Nick held her carefully, as she gurgled confidingly at him: carefully but competently, with the ease of past practice. Aaron, when it was his turn, was cautious, awed, but touched. They slipped politely out when the next batch of Fatones shouldered in, a bottle of grappa in hand, to lookit th’ baby.

Joe excused himself and went into his and Kel’s bedroom. She found him there ten minutes later, sitting on the bed, his shoulders hunched like a Central Park carriage driver’s in the cold after a long day, his rosary shuttling through his big, workman’s hands.

She looked her question at him. He shook his head. ‘Carter. And AC mostly. God, Kel, those kids in that family never had a chance.’

She stooped and kissed his temple, lightly. ‘They have one now. And Briahna will always have a family that cares and knows how to care. You’re a good man, Joe. And a good father. Now go be a good host.’

Joe followed her back out to the throng, but his mind went back to what Lance had told him about the get-together down South, earlier in the month, just after Hallowe’en, before everyone first went to monitor LA’s pregnancy and Brian’s nerves.

‘He broke his foot?’

‘What he gets for tryin’ to walk on water,’ James snorted. ‘’Bout damn time something reminded him he ain’t Jesus Christ after all.’

Nick just shook his head. He had Aaron with him, all long legs and coltish shying from sudden moves or noises: the Hallowe’en debacle, the way in which the Carter siblings’s family albums were getting filled with mug shots, had Aaron badly spooked. Nick would have liked to have gotten the girls away from Jane as well, but that just wasn’t possible right now. Not with Angel and BJ giving Jane a reason to ‘keep them in the jurisdiction,’ an excuse not to let them out from under her thumb. If she were worth a damn as a mother, Nick thought, this would never have happened. Why couldn’t other people see that this time, what ‘these kids’ absolutely did not ‘need, was their mother,’ damn it?

‘I’m concerned,’ AJ said. ‘From a distance, I don’t like the changes in him.’

‘Well,’ Kevin said, judiciously, ‘I am pretty.’ That got a laugh.

‘Seriously, though,’ AJ went on. ‘It’s easy to say that he’s misspoken or been misquoted, and that happens, we all know that. Comes to the thing about seeming to steal credit for “The Two Of Us,” I’ll bet ready money that was a misquote or a confusion. We know how it is, all of us. Fuck, used to be I was lucky to be misquoted, given what I prob’ly actually said. But he’s a Jive act. He has handlers who should know the score. There’s always time to catch something before it goes to print, and ways to do it; it isn’t like he’s been on live fuckin’ TV when these’ve happened. Now, Jive being Jive these days, fuck me if I know whether they’re stirring things up deliberate to create a buzz, but you’d think he’d object to that on the group’s behalf. I dunno. I just don’t fucking know what’s in his head. But the way he’s going on. It worries me.’

Joey caught up with Kris and Kev over by the penne melanzane.

‘So. Chicago, huh?’

‘Yeah,’ Kevin breathed, bumping shoulders with him. ‘You know.’

‘Yeah. I do. So: the sleazy shyster, huh. You doing it “Method” or what?’

‘You’re the Stanislavsky boy. Me, I’m just playin’ Lou.’

Joe grinned and slung an arm around his pal’s shoulders. ‘One thing about it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘No way can you claim your band did Broadway first.’

‘You asshole,’ Kevin grinned.

A cool November evening in Mississippi, waiting to hear if LA or Stace was to be the first to give birth. James and Josh were snuggled together on the couch, under a tatty old comforter, watching Excalibur for what must have been the eightieth time. Nicol Williamson and Helen Mirren were chewing scenery when James remembered to hit PAUSE and flick over to MTV for the news headlines. Unfortunately, the clock on the system was a little fast, and they caught the last few seconds of Christina’s latest video. They looked at each other, and Josh started giggling. James pushed the remote button for a splitscreen, and intoned, ‘That is Helen Mirren. This is Helen Mirren on crack.’ Josh lost it, sides heaving, helpless to stop giggling. So they ended up missing the news segment anyway.

‘Oh, that’s right, he’s the Second Coming of Michael Jackson. Weird enough for it, I’ll grant him that much. I guess that leaves us – where? Anybody heard from the Jackson-Other-Four any time in the last twenty years? Who wants to be Tito?’

‘Monster trucks? Monster trucks? C … okay, it’s official, you have got to divorce the Mouth of the South, okay? He’s turning you into Big Gay Fluffy Rainbow Redneck.’

Josh giggled into the cell phone. ‘Fuck off, Chris.’

‘No, seriously, what’s next, OnlyKickerArtist.com? You’re going to go to Nashville?’

‘James is an Outlaw, baby. Austin. Me an’ Willie.’

‘Jesus, and the press shits itself when J smokes up with Nelly.’

‘Not funny, Chris.’ Josh was unwontedly serious. ‘James is on the warpath.’

‘Meep.’

‘Consider that your heads-up.’

‘Hah! The Bass doesn’t scare me.’

Josh snorted. Chris’s words were hollow, and they both knew it.

James had his share of patterns. Whenever he felt like a failure, he changed his mode of relaxation. They’d been taught, early on, to spout the spiel. The teenies thought video games were the bomb, so they were boys who wound down by playing video games. Just as the little girls wanted them straight and unattached, and so by God and Lou Pearlman, straight and unattached they were, until the claims were made stale by repetition. The odd thing was, Chris and Justin did like video games, actual PS2 and X-Box video games of the most fratboy sort. And James would play them with them, getting off on the pure competitiveness; besides, it helped stabilize Chris, and, hell, it was mostly free these days. If he could stomach ‘hard lemonade’ for the sake of the kickbacks, he could sure-God make CK happy by playing Madden Football with him.

Josh had no use for games, except for card games and mahjongg, nor did Joe, unless it were computer chess. But James….

It was at once true and misleading to say he liked, or even played, video games, just as almost his whole public presentation over almost a decade now had been at once true and misleading. When James was overwhelmed, when his hopes were dashed and his plans were run mercilessly over by the steamroller of events, he booted up the PC, not the ’Box.

He didn’t use first-person shooters as a release for his rage, nor did he seek anodyne in racing virtual stock cars or scoring virtual touchdowns. No. James commanded vast armies in the field, besieging the walls of Acre or letting loose the ataman Cossacks upon rival claimants to the tsardom of all the Russias; refighting The War all the way from Blackburn Ford and First Manassas to his defeating Meade at Gettysburg and taking Washington for the Confederacy. Still more often, he relieved his thwarted ambition as the most commanding figure of the railroad age, or as the founder of Trade Empires or an Industry Giant; he ruled the Hanseatic League, or he combined arms and statecraft and economics to become emperor of Rome or to found a new dynasty upon the Middle Kingdom’s Dragon Throne. The only sports title he played when in this mood was Baseball Mogul, because pretending to be Barry Bonds, as Chris or Justin would, was nothing compared to being owner and GM of the New York Yankees or the St Louis Cardinals, a canny trader and a gate-gouging tycoon.

He indulged these fantasies, and was comforted by them, for the same reasons that casting himself as one of James Clavell’s Hong Kong traders, a triumphant tai-pan of the Noble House, comforted him, and at his lowest moments those books would be dragged from the shelf and obsessively reread until the worst was past. Josh had learned to be alarmed when James would not admit to be being troubled, yet took refuge in Clavell nonetheless.

‘Buongiorno, Joshua!’

‘Joe, you do know what the time difference is, right?’

‘Eh, you’re still up.’

‘But shouldn’t you be –’

‘I’m behaving, man. Kel and Bri are at Mama’s, Mama is having one of her “I never getta to see da gran’-bambina” fits. And I’m sober as a judge. Cast party or no cast party.’

‘So you got a wild hair and called?’

‘Hey, who else is your Very Oldest Friend? Knew you before the nickname? Only one other’n the Bass who’s really allowed to call you by your real name? Ran interference for you two for years? Got –’

‘Okay, Joey, okay. I get it. To what do I owe the honor, man?’

‘Saw the BMU vid, paisan. An’ I thought, okay, the Bassman’s rubbin’ off on ya, next one’ll be a duet with Reba at a tractor pull –’

‘Joe. Dude. You and CK talk or what? Already heard it, man.’

‘What? Little fucker beat me to the punch? I’ll wring his neck: “nobody steals my lines,” says Mr Broadway.’ Joe’s laughter was rich. ‘I just saw the trucks and I thought, hey, Poofu has made a Southern boy outta you after all.’

Josh sighed, much put upon. ‘What, you think he wanders around the house singing Roy Acuff?’

‘Or at least Randy Travis, sure.’

‘Listen.’ Josh put the cell next to the speakers on his desktop, which were pouring out the webcast of Pat Gwynn at the Beach. Craig Woolard’s modern beach classic, “Love Don’t Come No Stronger (Than Yours and Mine),” was just ending, followed immediately by the opening strains of the Drifters’s classic “You’re More Than a Number (In My Little Red Book).”

‘Cat is that sort of Southerner, Joe,’ Josh said, picking the phone back up. ‘As for what he wanders around singing….’ He flicked on the intercom, locating James in the kitchen, where, sure enough, he was singing unselfconsciously. ‘That ain’t Leon Redbone, Joe, that’s Lance live over the intercom.’

‘Cool. Always did like Fats Waller. So. You guys, um, ain’t misbehavin’, then?’

‘Oh, we misbehave,’ Josh smiled. ‘I start singing Marvin Gaye or he breaks into Barry White or Lou Rawls, and, bam, it’s time to find the nearest flat surface.’

‘Okay, TMI, C.’ This was followed by something that sounded suspiciously like Joe’s muttering about ‘never eating off that table again when I visit.’

‘So. You just called to laugh at my video too?’

‘I wanted to rag on you in person, or it wouldn’t be the same. Seriously, though? Check your fucking email, C.’

Josh grinned. He should have known by now that the others loved him – and how they operated. Sure enough, there were emails from Joe and from Chris.

Paisan!

Dunno about up, but you're blowing me *away.* Great job. My hero! OK, at least my PB&J.

Bri sends kisses. Kel would too but that would touch me in my Italian honor. Be good to the Bass.

Love ya

JOEY

And then there was Chris’s.

Kitten,

Meowr! Saw the vid. Cool beanz, man. I'd tell U on the DL its better than J's but then I'd haveta kill U, and then spend my life on the lam from J for saying it (I cd take him) and from UR Bassman for killing U (and he _scares_ me).

U go girl!

– CK

Josh was still grinning twenty minutes later, after Joe let him go, when James came in to see if he was ready for bed.

JC was sleeping the sleep of the just, having – on his return from post-production, all wired and on a music high – kept Lance up for hours babbling about Drumline and bands and Grambling’s influence on band programs at Historically Black Colleges.... And having, of course unintentionally, patronized Lance for not being hip to the Band Geek Subculture, and – this being his biggest error – blown right past Lance when Lance tried to get a word in edgewise about his own taste in marching bands.... Sleeping now was an error. He of all people should have known what vengeance waits on Those Who Mess With the Bass.

‘You signed a photo?’

‘She was nice about it.’

‘She mentioned that dumbass “Grababootie & Pinch” tee, asked to feel you up, and you not only let her polish your posterior, you had it recorded for, pardon the term, posterity?’ Howie was trying to sound stern, but his eyes were mirthful.

Nicky was reduced to whining. ‘But, baby. But. She asked –’

‘I think perhaps you do need one last tattoo, mi querido, and I know just where it should go. “Exclusive Property of Howie Dor- ”’

Nick had caught his Howie’s playful tone, but his answer was serious on all the levels that mattered. ‘Don’t even go there, babe, I don’t need a tat to remind me that all of me belongs to you.’

Being a heavy sleeper was both his curse and his blessing. It allowed Josh to sleep through distractions and annoyances. Of course, it also left him defenseless.

JC’s dream shifted from a pleasant scene involving Lance as a martinet band director with a kink for light bondage to something vaguer and more disturbing, vortices of light and flame. Somewhere, there was shouting, a barking, commanding sort of shout, and a piercing whistle blast....

The long roll of the drums started dragging him towards wakefulness, accelerating his waking with its crescendo. But it was the crash of brass, at make-your-ears-bleed volume, that caused him to try and sit bolt-upright in bed, heart pounding, sleep-stunned, only to find himself neatly tucked into the linens to where he was nearly immobile, as the Fighting Texas Aggie Marching Band blared the “Aggie War Hymn” on a stereo system whose volume was set to infinity.

Cursing and sputtering, he finally managed to free himself and turn the damn thing OFF, only to realize that written on his abs, in indelible marker, in the handwriting he knew so well, was the simple message, Military Rules.

At least the Merry Pranksters had been sensible enough to send the postcard in a damn envelope.

Still. Nick dashed off an email. No more gag gifts at the studio.

‘Josh, dear! You come right on in and set yourself down. Would you care for some ice-tea? I just did brew some…. Josh? What is it, sugar?’

‘Miz Diane –’

She just looked at him, then, with an eyebrow keeked up: an expression startlingly, painfully reminiscent of one of James’s own. In the silence, he could just hear the radio she kept on in the kitchen twenty-four hours a day, year-’round. ‘Now don’t you “Miz Diane” me, Joshua. You know better than that. Unless you’re trying to tell me something about your place in this family?’

‘No ma’am! No. No. It’s not that. It could never be.’

‘Then, unless ever you’re fixin’ to tell me you’re no longer one of my two sons-in-law, you know perfectly well I like you to call me accordingly. Lord, Josh, hon, don’t scare an old woman like that.’

‘I’m sorry, Momma B. I am. Not that you’re any sort of old woman anyways.’ He grinned, if tremulously, and got an answering smile from her. He could almost hear her thinking, Well, blood does tell, and he is Louisiana stock on his daddy’s side. No Southern boy could have done better, even if Maryland’s only the Border South. Well, parts of it, anyway. ‘It’s. I have to go away for a little while, Momma B.’

‘ ’S a mite earlier than we’d thought, you to go back out on business.’

‘That – there’s no change, there, it’s just. Um.’

‘Did you and James Lance have a fight, sweetie?’

‘No ma’am. It’s. I want to – I have – well, like, it’s, um.’

‘You were awfully lonesome while he was away, I know. Did you run off the rails a mite, sugar, while he was overseas?’

‘Not – I never cheated on him, Momma B, I wouldn’t, you have to believe that –’

‘Oh, I do, sugar. In the first place, you’re better than that. In the second place, you two boys love each other too much. In the third place, Jim would shoot you like a dog.’

‘Frankly, Momma B, I’d be scareder of you than of Daddy Jim.’

‘As you should be, dear. I mean, dearly as I love Ford, if he’d cut up and gone ganderin’ whiles Stace is carryin’, I’d have the hide off of him so fast it would make God Himself blink.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

‘But there are other ways of running off the rails, Josh. I wish you’d been here more often. I’d like to think we might have he’ped.’

‘I. I think you would have.’

‘I never did care for that Los Angeles, dear.’

Josh stole a glance at her and hung his head low.

‘And that Timberlake boy is still not too old for me to put over my knee, I ever catch up with him.’

‘Momma B?’

‘Josh, sugar. I realize I’m just a country schoolmarm from Mississippi. But these days, we see more than enough of these things, even here in Hinds County. I’m not blind, dear.

‘And dearly as I love Lynn. Her ways are … not my ways. She’s spent a long time trying to give Justin everything on a silver charger. Well … divorced parents, dear. Unfortunately, she’s succeeded all too well. And in the process, she’s also succeeded in doing what she set out to do, becoming his best friend. Well, there’s something to that: there’s a sense in which a boy’s best friends are his parents. But Justin never needed Lynn to be his pal; he needed her to be a parent.’

‘But. You said. I mean, I don’t want to blame anyone but me.’

‘That’s very responsible of you, Josh. But I can’t help but notice that it’s Justin who seems to be at the center of this. You, at a loose end. Chris, even more so. And that Tara Reid girl: that was his doing, was it not? I understand that with your own solo efforts, you need to be seen with a girl on your arm. But there were better choices, I would surely have thought. She seems, though, to be close to Justin, and that … scene … he’s a part of just now. Josh, dear, I’m not fussing at you, truly I’m not, although I do wish you’d come to me and Jim or to Roy and Karen earlier. Just … dear: don’t let yourself be led. Not by Justin, right now. Not by anyone. You’re more than capable of standing on your own two feet.’

‘That’s. That’s why, um, the reason I’m going away for a bit is, I, um.’

‘Yes, dear, I know.’

‘Take care of James, Momma B.’

‘Oh, I’ll try. But that’s really your job now, isn’t it?’

‘I need to fix myself first.’

‘Yes, I do know, dear, truly. That’s why I think you’re doing the right thing, so you can come back and do your job, being there for James. Now, come give your Momma B a hug, dear. Ssssh. It’ll be all right, sugar, it will. We’ll be praying for you every day. And remember, dear, we know that “all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord, and are called according to His purpose.”’

‘I feel so. So, um. Hell.’

‘Here, dear, use this tissue. Now. You call me when you get where you’re going. Where is Alex right now, anyway?’

Josh was nonplussed.

‘Now, dear. Surely that was obvious. Give him my love, though, he and Sarah, and tell him I’m still willing to he’p with anything he needs right now for the wedding, such as addressing the invitations. Josh. It’s going to be all right.’

‘If you’d shut your mouth and open your mind –’

‘Oh, I’m impressed, he quotes James Taylor lyrics.’

‘What, one of the premier singer-songwriters of the past forty years ain’t “street” enough for you? Last I checked, you were a no-’count white-boy f’om the Memphis suburbs your own damn self.’

They’re friends. They talk. People either won’t believe it, or they sneer at it, or they make up smutty stories about it, damn it (Josh was deeply offended by slash. James was amused by some of it, moved by some of it, even including stories that paired his Josh with Alex, or any number of other guys … and turned on by a small percentage of it). But, damn it, they’re friends. They talk. Usually on the phone, of course, but, still.

‘Great,’ AJ growled, but doing so with a grin. ‘I suddenly have a pouting kitten in my kitchen.’

Josh looked at him with kittenish reproach. (He remembered something James had said, once, when Josh was stung by something in the press, or it may have been a careless comment from one of the others, possibly even James: he couldn’t recall what started it, now. But James had rolled his eyes and said, ‘Damn, tiger. Who did you think you were fooling with the Fluffy-the-Kitty act?’) ‘I get,’ Josh said carefully, ‘just a little tired of that.’

AJ pursed his lips, then smacked them, resoundingly. It was a damned sarcastic sort of move, somehow. ‘Then why encourage it?’

‘I. I don’t.’

‘Look, handsome, you’re married and I’m about to be. Kinkily interesting as it might be, find somebody else’s ass to blow smoke up, ’kay?’

The problem, as James uncompromisingly saw it, was not that Justin had lost his innocence, his certainty, and the love of his young life, and was thus somehow entitled to lose his faith and his principles and his manners; it was that he had lost his faith, and his principles, and his manners, his other losses being, then, purely symptomatic. ‘It all comes,’ James had snapped, in a tone that made it clear that James, at least, thought Justin had had the consequences coming to him, ‘from goin’ back on your raising.’

‘Do you think I need to go in?’

‘Do you?’

‘I. I’ve licked this before.’

‘Mmmhmmm. It’s that “before” that worries me. C…. When did you get, when did you get this small and breakable?’

‘He’s going to be a heartbreaker when he grows up.’

‘Unfortunately, She is pimpin’ him out now.’

‘Nick –’

‘No. I’m sorry, I really am, but, no. That woman should be removed from, like, things by Sercial Sovi-, fuck, by Social Services. She’s an unfitted mother. Look at BJ. Look at everything. Angel. Leslie. I hate that woman so much I get the shakes thinking about it, no shit, I fucking do. And. I mean. This. I see this, I see a real family, and, man, it’s, I can’t deal, okay? And. Aaron. All of them. I wish I could, I dunno, freeze them away and let them be outta this until they’re old enough to deal, without having gone through what I’m going through, went through. I mean this: there’s not nothing that can make you feel so much like shit, make you hate yourself, as knowing that the best news you could get is that your fucking parents, your mom especially, was dead.’

‘She tells you to talk to Trace? What, she blames us for corruptin’ you?’

AJ came back in from a smoke break with a wary look that shuttered immediately once he knew Joe had caught on to it. ‘Look what followed me in,’ he said, deadpan. Since the deadpan was expected of AJ, he could get by with it without Justin’s being certain that it was a sign of disapproval or discomfort, and Justin let it slide. ‘No tags on it, so, can we keep it?’

‘Hey, y’all! This must be the Fatone party! Got a place for a poor crutch-wielding cripple to sit?’

‘Do you, though? Really, man. Honest. Do you think I can do this without checkin’ into a place?’

Josh was drumming out a complex two-step beat on AJ’s kitchen table. AJ refilled their coffee mugs and slid Josh’s over, mainly so Josh would have something else to do with his hands. Variations on the Theme of BT were fuckin’ annoying, dude.

‘Ain’t for me to say. Josh. I’m not a sponsor, okay? I’m a baby, a newbie in recovery. This ain’t my gig.’

‘I’m sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to help.’

‘Yeah, you should. I can’t answer things but I can point you to where to find answers. And I owe you, man.’

‘Me?’

‘Just because things worked out the way they always should have, you and the Albino. MFEO. That’s good. But. I remember, okay? Nikki. Look. Part of what I do, okay? Making amends. It’s a big thing, and it’s pretty much a lifelong process. And when that happened, I didn’t even have the excuse that I was fucked up. That was envy. And general horniness, sure. But mainly … you were all the things I wanted to be and envied, even then, star material, punched your Mouse ticket, All-American Boy. I figured it would be an extra kick, a sewer rat like me to take a girl from you, and I did.

‘And now, Jesus, here we fuckin’ are, with all that’s happened since, neither of us who we were pretending to be then. And here we are, friends again, I like to hope –’

‘– Alex! Of course we are –’

‘And, well. Here we are. It’s fuckin’ ironic. But. Look. I don’t like, unless maybe with D, or sometimes Bri, funnily enough. I don’t like to talk outside my Meetings much about my, um, Higher Power, okay, I know I have to let go and forgive others like I need forgiving but I swear to you, man, one of the hardest things on my plate is forgiving Lou for, shit, everything, right, but for this, for making me uncomfortable about talking about my spiritual life. But. Me being here for you, man. It’s. Call it atonement, maybe.’

’N SYNC is promoting the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, the largest public health media campaign ever undertaken by the Federal Government.

What’s Your Anti-Drug?
’N SYNC’s first full stadium tour, which ends August 24, spotlights a public service announcement that features band members talking about their “anti- drugs,” the things they use or do instead of using drugs.

- Time (Magazine) for Kids, June 28, 2001

‘Um, C.’ Chris was uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘About. With the Drumline thing. I mean, you’re going to have to do publicity, and. You know.’

‘I know.’ Josh sighed.

‘Have you thought at all about who – shit, this is not going well. Look, we all know the score. I’ll be blunt.’

‘There’s a shock,’ Joe said, dryly.

Chris ignored him. ‘Either the label or some Suit somewheres will find you a beard, or you find your own. What’s your thinking?’

‘Why not borrow Tara,’ Justin interjected. ‘You know, Tara Reid. Worked for Carson. She’s used to the red carpet, she’ll leave y’ alone, she parties nice: could work.’

Joe’s eyes narrowed. He’d been in New York now long enough to have gotten plugged into the grapevine, and he had all sorts of inchoate objections to this. He also wasn’t sure anymore how to take Justin, not these days, not the new Justin who had come out of the solo studio. He wasn’t sure even if he could trust him.

Before he could order his thoughts, though, C was saying, ‘Worth lookin’ into, man. Thanks. Have her, like, y’know, call, and we’ll talk.’

‘I thought we’d never get her to sleep.’

‘From the looks of it, baby, it’s going to take even longer to get you to. Want to tell me what’s wrong, Joe?’

‘That’s what I’ve been waiting to do. Unfortunately, that daughter of ours had other plans.’

‘Seize the moment, Fatone.’

‘Eh, I’m good at that, Baldwin. It’s. The thing is.’

‘Uh-oh. That is the Timberlake Tone. I recognize it.’

It wasn’t the physical sensations, James reflected as he settled in to sleep for the remainder of the flight. Those had been overwhelming, after long absence and abstinence. But what stayed with him, would always stay with him, were the cherry-red flush that stained Josh’s cheekbones as they slowly and sensuously held back, and the absolute love and trust in his blue-grey, ever-changeable eyes as they let themselves go. That was a memory, if ever man were given memory, that would sustain him through the Russian nights ahead.

‘JC would not recognize a robbery in progress if they held the gun on him. He’s no fool, but he lives on a different plane than the rest of us. That’s why he got his clock cleaned in Los Angeles as a kid.’

‘Kel –’

‘And I don’t know what to make of Justin anymore. Look, Joe, you’ve taken care of JC since God knows when, and that’s great, it’s part of what I love you for. But if you have these suspicions. And I think it’s wise, right now. But taking care of JC is someone else’s job now. You know perfectly well what you need to do. You just want me to be the one to say it.’

‘Wench.’

‘Guido.’

‘Smartass.’

‘Lug.’

‘Okay, okay. You’re right.’

‘As always.’

‘Whatever. I’ll email the Basstronaut first thing in the morning.’

‘Good. See? You knew it all the time. I just had to be right for you.’

‘You’re always right for me, baby.’

‘Not that way I’m not, not tonight. Welcome to fatherhood, Fatone: having a kid who wakes easily in the next room puts a crimp in it.’

‘“One of these days, Alice, one of these days – bam! Right in the kisser!”’

‘“G’ night, Ralph.”’ Kelly’s imitation was perfect.

Chuckling, they snuggled closer together, and closed their eyes.

On cue, Briahna woke, and started wailing.

… Justin really set tongues wagging at Lotus on Sunday, where he was seen sharing a joint with his own mother. Justin, raccoon-eyed starlet Tara Reid, two bodyguards, his mother and another woman were squeezed into a banquette. Our spy saw someone at the table roll two joints and pass them around. Both Timberlake and his mom took a puff.

– New York Post, ‘Page Six,’ 17 December 2002

‘Addictive?’ Joe snorted. ‘Grow up, C. Ya want addictive? Makin’ a character come alive, makin’ an audience clear back in the cheap seats suspend their disbelief, gettin’ into someone else’s skin for a coupla hours, that’s addictive. Mama’s baked ziti – and being with your family, eatin’ it: that’s addictive. The smell of baby powder and a new-bathed daughter and the way a picture book feels in your hands when you read the bedtime story and the glow a Donald Duck nightlight casts. That is addictive. The rest of this shit? It’s high-school, paisan. Chickenshit. Kid stuff. You can kick it. You got a whim of iron, we all know that by now.’

‘Wanna go clubbin’?’

‘Clubbing what, baby seals?’

‘Whoa. The fuck crawled up your ass, Phat One?’

‘You’re on my shit list right now, pal. And don’t even ask why. If you don’t honestly know, it just proves my point.’

‘Well fuck you, Fatone.’

‘Nah, thanks anyway, Just, I got better offers waitin’.’

‘Never heard you tssssound gay-errr, Nick-ay. Like Twuman Capote. People hear “thay I’m mitthing out / My feet don’t touch da gwound,” they’re thinking, “Yeah, ’cause he’s so light in his loafers.” No, man, I mean it, you’ve never sounded queerer. Not even when you lithp “traaaaaaash” in “Blow Job,” I mean “Blow Your Mind” – you and Hello Kitty, man, what is with the hummer references from you and Sashay anyway? – hell, Junior, you don’t sound that gay even in the start of “Miss America,” where the intro and the first fuckin’ line sounds like Michelle Vega or Sheryl Fuckin’ Crow.’

‘Aidge! You fuckwad.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Love you.’

‘Back atcha, you freak. I do not have a gay accent, though.’

Alex looked at him over his glasses. ‘Shit. Like the gay Borg, man: prepare to be assibilated.’

‘Good thing I love your scrawny weird ass, you bastard.’

‘Hey, Joe! How ’bout you? Whaddya think about Junior’s new rockin’ sound?’

‘What, “the Bay City Rollers cover KISS”?’

‘Oh, you asshole, Joe.’

‘Yeah, you’re grinning.’

‘I grin for all the boys who do dinner theatre revivals of Broadway musicals.’

Chris wormed his way past Joey’s bulk, grinning maniacally. ‘Oooh, this should be good. It’s been waaaay too long since you’ve felt up for a game of the dozens, Carter.’

‘“The Dozens”? I thought Justin was your token Black member. Shouldn’t you be rehearsing for the remake of Farinelli, you little weirdo?’

‘Naw, they got Peter Jackson to direct, and all he wants is you to do the singing voiceovers for Orlando Bloom as the castrato.’

‘And here I thought he was used to Halflings. Oh well, maybe you can be Mini-Me in the next Austin Powers movie.’

Chris looked eloquently over at Aaron. ‘I’m not the one with the clone, man.’

‘Who the hell would tamper with Nature’s balance to clone you,’ Howie chimed in, before Nick could let his protectiveness swamp his playfulness. ‘One’s one too many. I can see why they only want you as a cartoon, ’mano. You are a cartoon.’

‘Better than drag, man. That was you in Carter’s “I Got You” vid, right? In the bikini?’

‘Hey,’ Nick grinned. ‘I looked long and hard –’

Chris cackled.

‘– Oh, fuck you, Critter, I went out on a limb to find a girl for that shoot I could stand to pretend to mack on, of course she had to remind me a little of my Sweet D.’

‘Yeah, I noticed how when you were splashing around like Chasez on crack, she ended up on top.’

‘Good one, CK,’ AJ grinned.

‘Hey! That was the director’s fault, man! I just did what they told me – except, yeah, making Max’s song about D, which I don’t think Max had in mind.’

‘Awwwwww….’

‘Sappy romance. Like Fatone reaching for his true love in the café scene in “TIPY” –’

‘What true love, man? That was all about the Basez –’

‘Yeah, only Joe would sing a ballad to fries and catsup –’

‘Eh. So I improvised. They probably, what, had to do five takes of you trying to splash the surf with your hands, ’cause you kept missing –’

‘Dude, it was all so choreographed –’

‘I should hope to God it was,’ a bass voice rumbled.

‘Bassman! Get in here! It’s rag-on-Carter time!’

‘All I can say is, I can see why you play around with them damn stinkpot power boats.’ Nick rolled his eyes: J. Lance Bass, Mogul-Yachtsman, had just weighed anchor and crammed on all sail. He was in for it now. ‘My God, I never saw such an unseamanlike exhibition!’

Chris cackled again, chanting, ‘He said “unsemenlike”!’

‘The Sam Hill were you doing? I’ve seen trained chimps ascend a mast in a more sailorlike manner. And who the hell was responsible for your running rigging and the lubberly setting of sail? My God, we ever take the Rafe Semmes back out, I’ll rate you as AB, move Howie to First Officer, and let Josh cox!’

‘He said “cocks,”’ Chris yodeled, gleefully.

‘“Cocks,”’ AJ intoned, and Kevin, Chris, and Joe did barbershop harmony on the word.

‘Tell me again why we are involved with these people,’ Kel asked Kris, giggling.

‘Don’t know a one of ’em. Sure as hell not married to one of ’em.’

‘Says the lush about my smokin’-up, as he pours himself another fuckin’ drink. S’prised your hands’re steady enough to get the whisky in the fuckin’ glass, yo.’

‘Well, at least drinkin’ is legal.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake, like that’s anything to give a shit for –’

‘I suppose your judgment is all that better’n what the people, through their elected representatives, done decided? Last I looked, this-here country was a democracy, and, last I looked, thinkin’ the law’s for other people cain’t be, oh, let’s say justified in a country where the people make the laws, ’lessen it’s on a moral level with the Selma March or things of that sort. Or are you plannin’ to tell me that you’re strikin’ a blow for liberty and committin’ civil disobedience, on account of I’m liable to take a far sight of convincin’ as to how your gettin’ stoned in a nightclub is up there with the Freedom Riders puttin’ it on the line in Birmingham and Montgomery.’

‘From a man who prob’ly voted for Trent Lott, that don’t cut much ice with me, Buh-ass.’

‘Don’t even start giving me health tips. I’d say I’ve done pretty fucking well keeping this body in shape, and every major media outlet and millions more fans than you’ll ever have seem to agree.’

‘And you had all that with less effort than most people have to spend to start the damn car in the mornin’, and cain’t be bothered even to be grateful! You were out fucking up and getting fucked up while I was having fucking heart surgery to be ready for my mission!’

‘Scrubbed, wasn’t it.’

Offstage, out of the spotlight, AJ had, James reflected, a new way of walking. Like an old top kick who didn’t like the orders he’d gotten, knew that those orders were going to get a bunch of his men killed, but had to execute his orders anyway – though he’d twist them around if he could, to accomplish the objective with less of the loss.

Kel had been sweetly adamant, all drop-forged steel in a taffeta wrapping. She’d had all she planned to take of Justin’s obviously, odiously fake charm, as if the people here didn’t know better, as if they of all people didn’t deserve better. ‘Justin, dear, with the crowding and with your on-again-off-again foot situation, I’ve got you a nice chair and a little table, and an ottoman where you can put your feet up. It’s just down the hall, where everyone can come say hi to you. Come along, now.’ AJ, oddly enough, after exchanging a glance with Joe, had been the one to help herd Justin into a room of his own.

‘I suppose we ought to Go Pay Court,’ James muttered.

‘You know,’ Nick observed, ‘you and Aidge have the same sorta walk.’

‘What?’

‘Not the same, y’know, stride or nothin’. But when you’re being your real selves. I mean, it’s not physilac-, phys-, physically the same, for one thing you’re a little pigeon-toed, I guess from having your feet in the stirrups and heels turned out, riding horses and all….’

‘Whereas,’ Joey quipped, ‘C’s bowlegged since you guys hooked up, but, like “Giddy Up,” it ain’t about horses.’

James punched him in the bicep, but Nick ignored them both. ‘But there’s something in how you move, it’s, it’s like. A gunfighter or a marshal or something, going out in the street for a showdown with the bad guy? I dunno. It’s just like that, to me.’

‘Well,’ said James, pragmatically. ‘Let’s hope that stopping in to see Justin, now that he’s done crashed the party after first begging off, don’t amount to High Noon.’

His mother’s kitchen had a comforting sameness to it, a sense of the timeless, the unchanging, the fixed. James Lance had never expected the life he now had. Idly, he had dreamt, on occasion, growing up, of wider horizons. Space, of course, was the widest horizon of all: but when he had daydreamed of NASA and the Program, it had never been part of any careless fantasies of finding another home, of Mississippi’s being anything but his true home. Those vague speculations, that occasional yen for brighter lights and broader latitude, had been fewer, usually motivated by his deepest fears, growing up, of who he truly was. But never had he contemplated being plucked from his well-marked path to become an integral part – he could now, at last, accept that he had been the completing part – of other people’s dreams, of a life on the road and of circling the globe suborbitally. Yet so it had been; and he had learned, slowly, through no volition of his own, that he was fundamentally and indissolubly tied to Mississippi, to the broad kingdoms of the Deepest South. The realization budded and burgeoned and blossomed within him before he was aware, but when it was full-blown, he knew it for truth. His being taken away from what he had sometimes felt too narrow a world had taught him a love for, his need for, the permanent things, for the firm, the fixed, the real. Holy the firm.

Here in this kitchen he was embraced, surrounded, stayed. Anchored. The constants of his life were here. The clock that had been a great-aunt’s. The complex scents of years: years of cut flowers; of canning and pickling and cooking, biscuits and ham and fried chicken and okra, snap peas and grits and greens and Hoppin’ John and butterbeans dripping with sweet cream unsalted butter, cornbread and chess pie; of garden smells that had come through open windows over season after season in their due course, of magnolias and azaleas and dogwood, roses and crape myrtle and Confederate jasmine. When he was small, back in Laurel, before they moved to Clinton, he would pick wildflowers, humble ones that throve on scrubby land or sheltered in ditches and the verge of roads, onion flowers and Virgin’s Bower clematis, bluestar and cardinal flower, ranunculus and verbena, compass plant and coreopsis, dayflower and mud plantain. He picked them for his Momma, without thinking, without motive, and always she would thank him and ruffle his hair and put them in the blue-green glass vase. The casual picking of wildflowers had stopped after they moved to Clinton, because he was older by then; but the vase remained, and there were always cut flowers in it still, there on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. He remembered a line his grandmother Bass was fond of, and would always confide with a twinkle in her eye: ‘Dahlin’, it’s a vayce if it cost less than three dollahs; if it’s moah than three dollahs, hon, it’s a vawze.’ Well, the vase in the windowsill had probably cost little enough in its day, but it was precious now, made invaluable by use. And somehow, the ghosts of long-faded flowers, in another house, still clung to it.

The radio, too: that was a fixture. That was a sheet anchor. All his life, there had been a radio in the kitchen. All his life, it had been on, a quiet background that was warp and woof of the tapestry of his life. Day and night, waking and sleeping, home or away, in houses occupied or unoccupied, Diane Bass had had a radio on in her kitchen, in the heart of her household domain. Here, in Clinton, it picked up Jackson stations, mostly, though she would tune it sometimes to stations from farther afield. When Big Jim turned on a radio, it was for a purpose: for a Cardinals game (Jim Bass was just old enough that the Braves had not always been an Atlanta team to him, and for most of the history of the major leagues: until the Dodgers and Giants left New York, the Braves left first Boston and then Milwaukee, and the first round of expansions in ’62 had created the Astros and Mets: the Cardinals had been the westernmost and Southernmost team in the Bigs. The powerful signal of KMOX had broadcast Augie Busch’s team’s games to the feet of the Rockies, to Texas and the Gulf South, and Big Jim had grown up bleeding Cardinal red, listening to the mighty deeds of Schoendienst and Del Rice and Stan the Man, Stanky and Slaughter and Solly Hemus, Gibson and Flood and Ken Boyer and Julian Javier, McCarver and Brock); or to listen to in the garage as he changed the oil on the car. Jim would listen to the big bands and the lounge singers, and to hat act country, but that was it: his tastes were set, defined.

But the kitchen radio, for all 8760 hours of the year, Diane’s radio, was tuned to the Full and Foursquare Gospel, to Christian radio, be it country or contemporary, the Gaithers or the rich array of choirs in the Black church: to the Billy Graham Hour and Seed From the Sower and the commentaries of J. Vernon McGee. Diane’s Christianity wasn’t obtrusive, it was merely all-pervasive, and James Lance had never realized how much it was a given in his life and his home until he had been away and returned. Ever faithful, ever sure, the latest in a series of radios witnessed on behind him, quietly and tirelessly, its presets carefully entered: WTWZ; WHJT – ‘Alive 93.5;’ WOAD AM, Gospel Radio for the Jackson area….

He remembered how a friend of his, one of the Attaché baritones, had been sitting at the kitchen table with him one afternoon, drinking Co’-Cola, and had grinned shyly and said, ‘Your momma listens to more gospel than a “colored granny.”’ And James Lance had not clouded up and rained all over his friend, as he would have had he heard that sort of language from almost anyone else, because this was Dante who said that, and Dante was allowed to make those sort of jokes, as Dante was Black himself.

The kitchen was the heart of Diane’s domain, in this house, in every house they’d had, and always, always there had been a radio on, tuned to a Christian station. And Dante had been on to something. James Lance could just remember Pearl, and remembered very well Pearl’s daughter, Emma, who had taken over Pearl’s role when Pearl had retired to a well-earned rest, back in Laurel; and here in Clinton, there had been and still was their beloved Norah. They weren’t maids, and they certainly weren’t old-fashioned mammies: they were what folks called ‘mothers’s helpers,’ and there were, he now realized, looking back, a fairish number of people, in Laurel and in Clinton both, who had thought it was a mite biggity of Diane and Jim to have them, such ‘help’ being generally the province of families a little higher on the social and economic scale than the Basses had been before ’N Sync. But as a working woman, a school teacher with two children, Diane had been entitled to all the help she could get. And with Pearl and Emma and Norah in turn, Diane had bonded, transcending all the bitter barriers of color and race in Southern history, in a shared faith that was expressed by their singing joyously and unselfconsciously along with the hymns on the kitchen radio. Pearl had never cared to be called by her surname, despite Diane’s efforts, and had insisted on calling Diane ‘Miz Bass.’ Emma and Norah had so far unbent as to call her ‘Miz Diane,’ though they too preferred to be called by their Christian names, and not ‘Miz Freeman’ and ‘Miz White,’ respectively. Diane had insisted at first, on each occasion, and gave up only grudgingly when it became clear that neither wished for that form of address. Thinking about it now, James Lance wondered just how much of that derived from an ingrained, ineradicable distrust of even the best of ‘white folks’ not to turn upon their own ‘help,’ and those musings, into which, like all Southern boys, he fell from time to time, never failed to depress him, to oppress him with the crushing burden of the South’s history and its Original Sin.

But the kitchen radio whispered hope, reminding him that all burdens, like Pilgrim’s, can be lifted, and all divisions be bridged, all differences transcended, as surely they had been when Pearl and Diane had sung together of the ‘Old Rugged Cross,’ or when Diane and Emma had raised conjoint voices to ‘tell the old, old story,’ or when Norah and Diane trilled and descanted over that best-known and best-loved of all melodies, ‘Amazing Grace.’

When it came right down to it, something else Dante had said, after they’d returned from a show choir contest Up North, had been pretty much true. ‘At least Down Home,’ his friend had observed, with a slightly bitter edge to the thought, ‘you know where you are and where you stand.’ And James Lance had learned that lesson well. Back before he learned yet another necessity of guarding his tongue, yet another layer of self-censorship: this layer being the suppression (most times) of his accent: he had found that his Southern speech, and a knowledge of where he was from, brought forth a set pattern of responses from not a few Yankees. First, of course, were the sneers, the reflexive assumption that he was half-witted, savage, brutish, and doubtless a Junior Klansman. Then, almost as often, operating on that assumption, the Yankees would trot out long-suppressed bigotries of their own, assuming that he would agree and that their displays of hatred were safe with him, as a presumed kindred spirit. Even in his shy, uncertain days, when he was trying desperately to blend in to the woodwork, such hatred had always brought him out of his shell, to tear such folks a new asshole, his voice trembling with barely suppressed rage, his face white and taut with anger. Even when Lou, aghast at his telling an Arista executive just what he thought of the man’s racist jokes, had slapped him, once.

And when you got right down to it, the chasm that had opened up between him and Justin had grown from just such mutual misapprehensions. Justin thought of him, it turned out, rather as those long-ago Yankees had. He had been carefully not thinking about that, and carefully not thinking about Justin, but it turned out that, there in the amniotic safety of his mother’s kitchen, he had actually been thinking his way to just those subjects and that conclusion. When you got right down to it, Justin was in freefall. And he, James Lance, had not been helping at all.

There was the old saltshaker on the kitchen table, with the crimping dent in its metal top that had been there since long before James Lance was born. There, over the doorway into the dining room, was the petit-point sampler that a great-aunt had stitched: Lord, Be Thou Our Guest and Bless This House. Underlining the essential quiet were the steady tick of the clock, the hum of the refrigerator, and always, always the hymnody of the airwaves.

And Justin, rootless, deracinated Justin: what stable core, what abiding place, did he possess?

All this time. All this time James Lance had tried to relate to Justin from a shared perspective, a Southern rootedness, Mississippian dealing with Tennesseean, a son of the Baptist faith to a fellow Baptist. And all this time, he had been baffled by the failure to connect.

He didn’t recall, thinking back on it, the same stability in the Harless kitchen. There was no symbolic, totemic radio there. Diane Bass’s radio had been a speaking witness all his life, and had been a silent witness to that life’s most poignant moments. His coming out to his parents had happened, unexpectedly and uncomfortably, on the road; but it was in this kitchen, with the radio softly playing ‘Love Lifted Me,’ that he and they had truly talked it through, his momma reaching over to clasp his trembling hand with one of hers while, with the other, she had pulled a pale, trembling Josh into a comforting hug. It was in the kitchen, to the strains of ‘Blessed Assurance,’ that he and Josh had told his parents and Stace and Ford of their engagement, and Jim had swept both of the boys into a fierce hug that said all the things Big Jim had never been able to say and never would. It was in this kitchen, with a gospel choir from an AME Zion church in the background, praising God as ‘the fount of ev’ry blessing,’ that Ford had formally asked Big Jim and Diane for Stace’s hand in marriage, and it was at this table, with the radio playing ‘How Firm a Foundation,’ that Stace and Ford had told them that there was a baby on the way.

How, how in the great wide world, had he ever expected Justin to respond to him as if Justin had shared such a history, or known such core stability?

The Justin of the earliest days had still had a grasp, however tenuous, of his Tennessee roots, of choirs and hymn-singings and dinner-on-the-grounds. But Justin had by now spent most of his life in Florida or on the road, and in a Florida that, unlike the Panhandle, was no part of the South. By now, Justin had spent most of life on soundstages and in stadiums, in hotels and recording studios.

For James Lance, the South was the place you went home to. For Justin, it was the place you got the hell out of.

And Lynn, who had tried so hard to be father and mother both to Justin, and who – partly out of divorcee guilt and partly out of sacrificing love – had moved heaven and earth to allow Justin’s talents not to be buried: Lynn, who had then for a time had to mother not Justin only, but Josh, and James Lance, and Joe when she could and even Chris when he would let her: Lynn by now, exhausted and believing, as materially she could well believe, that her task was done, had fallen back, and was now more fan and supporter than parent, more co-manager than mother.

Of course Justin did not respond to James Lance as one who shared his ways and raising. It was so simple he could not see how he had missed it. It was so simple it was no wonder he had missed it. Justin didn’t respond to him Southerner-to-Southerner because Justin no longer had those roots – or any. Not any at all. Well, James Lance knew by now how to deal with the rootless, and the Yankeefied: he had been doing it for years.

And it was time he did deal with it. The space program – the space program failure, he reminded himself with brutal honesty – had taken a fair chunk of his time and attention, but that was in the past, now. And his job, one he did well and only occasionally resented having been saddled with by default and without his own wishes and convenience being so much as consulted, was to be the businessman of the group. If the group were ending, so be it. But until Chris and Joe and Josh – and he himself – signed off on any such idea, it was not Justin’s to end unilaterally. And that being so, he had a job to do, for all their sakes, and a duty to perform, as much for Justin’s benefit as anyone else’s.

There was Thanksgiving in New York with Joe, and the Mme Tussaud’s unveiling. He and Justin would get down to brass tacks, then and there.

He was about to rise when he noticed his mother standing in the doorway.

‘Momma.’

‘Sugar. Are you all right? Sitting in the dark like a broody hen, and all.’

‘I am. I am all right.’

She smiled. ‘Good. I think you just might think better when you’re not staring at that computer screen, sometimes. I swan, every so often I half expect to find that you’ve grown a USB port where your bellybutton’s been.’

‘“Where the Yankee shot me,” right, Momma?’

‘Your grandmother taught you that one when you were knee-high to a duck. It’s late, baby. Are you done?’

‘Yes, ma’am. I’d just finished my thinkin’.’

‘Then you get yourself to bed.’

He kissed her gently in the cheek. ‘I love you, Momma.’

‘I love you, too, sugar. You’re a good boy, and your daddy and I are mighty proud of you. Now. Bedtime.’

‘Night, Momma.’

‘Night, sugar. Say your prayers, and I’ll see you in the morning.’

Justin had made a needling comment to Nicky that was either a jab at the Carters or a quip on the Fatones as a ‘family’ in the Mafioso sense, possibly both, which Josh had tried to fend off into a general ramble about families. Justin had cut him off with a barbed statement about how this ‘happy Norman Rockwell family shit’ could be overdone.

‘Oh, fuck that. I didn’t know what family was until you guys.’ Nick’s face was painfully open, unguarded, raw with honesty.

‘Family’s the folks as got your back,’ Brian agreed.

‘Are they?’ Justin’s tone was sharp. ‘Because what I’ve learned is, family are those you let get close enough to hurt you.’

‘You’re all right.’ Josh was earnest, urgent. ‘Family are the people who are close enough to where they could hurt you terribly – and don’t. Won’t.’

AJ nodded. ‘Listen to the man. Remember where he’s been.’

‘“Word,” Infant,’ Chris said.

“I’m not into titties,” he says in a drawl that’s part naughty Southern boy, part hip-hop-fortified purveyor of dirty pop. “I like a little junk in the trunk.”
– British Glamour, January 2003

‘“Junk in the trunk”? Jesus, J ... “I’m an ass man”? More like you’re an ass, man. The hell -’

‘Aw, now, go easy on him, James,’ said Howie, with a grin and a wink. ‘When it comes to being slavishly addicted to the ghetto-booty, neither me nor Josh have any room to talk, what with Nick’s Butt-That-Launched-A-Thousand-Ships and your Bass Ass and all.’

‘Amen, brother,’ Josh giggled. ‘We just need to find J an ass that’ll make him happy. A fine ass - hey! That’s it! KIRKPATRICK! Get y’ ass in here!’

‘I can see the ass thing when you’re doing your bi stuff, J. I just can’t believe all this time you weren’t a breast man when you were working my side of the street,’ Joe said, shaking his head.

‘Yeah, well, Brit knew me that damn well as she thought, she coulda saved a lot of money –’

The temperature in the room dropped precipitously, matched by the glacial tone of James’s voice and the green berg-ice of his glare. ‘Your momma raised you better’n that, boy.’ Joey, D, Nick, and Josh began edging towards the door. ‘I’m about tired of how you’re being this damn unfair to Brit, and I ain’t even goin’ to discuss how trashy and tacky your “Cry Me A River” thing is –’

The others fled.

‘The fuck business is it of yours, anyway?’

‘It’s my business on account of she’s my friend just as much as you are–’

‘Your friend? Your fag-hag, more like! What, you shop with her and she lets you decorate for her? After the band’s put to rest, how ’bout you shave your head and take over “Surprise by Design” –’

‘Why you little son of a bitch –’

‘You’ll be swallowing those teeth, you say word one about my momma again –’

‘The Sam Hill have you been smokin’ anyway? Crack?’

‘Do not even start on that, ’specially if you want us to all play nice with Britney, who the hell you think I spent the last four months of that relationship jacked up with?’

‘Oh, blaming the girl is real manly there –’

‘What the hell would you know about manliness?’

‘I don’t even have time for that immature horseshit right now, let’s stick to the point, I ain’t plannin’ on settin’ idly by and you to be dissin’ Brit like this, I don’t care if you and she were the first to fuck each other’s lives up, that ain’t the way it’s goin’ to be! You think Kev and Kris ain’t had fights? You know as well as I do they’ve had problems, and his bein’ seen and making news at ever’ red-light hoochie soiree from coast to coast like Joe his own self don’t get him no Brownie points with me, but Kris and Kev seem to work things out and ain’t nobody actually ever caught him cheatin’, just lookin’ improper, but at his worst the boy ain’t been this chickenshit! D and Nicky, Joe and Kel, Brian and LA, ain’t a couple in the world ain’t had problems, and in this damn pressure cooker it’s a damn sight worse by about a hunnert times, ever’ damn reporter on the planet tryin’ to get dirt on us-all, but worst come to worst with any one of them, damned if I can imagine a one of the guys actin’ thisaway about an ex! Only you, sonny-boy, only you – and don’t that just tell you something!’

‘Um, Joe, I think maybe we better go back in there and break this up – before someone or something, or some band, gets broken, or broken up.’

‘It ain’t a damn thing to do with your fucking moral superiority, especially with you being a faggot to start with anyway, it’s that you think it’s trashy and tacky!’

‘Whoa!’ Joe’s face was suffused with anger as he pushed himself in between his two bandmates, just before James, eyes blazing with a hard and gemlike flame, could quite get his hands around Justin’s long, tempting column of throat. ‘C, get him outta here.’ James’s face was pale, but only with hatred and fury, his lips compressed so tightly and his jaw so ridged that the blood had left him; and Joe wasn’t ready to deal with that. He turned his artillery on Justin, instead. ‘As for you…. If I ever hear you say anything like that again, to anyone, let alone Jamesanjosh. You of all people. Fuckin’ unbelievable.’

‘Shit, I ain’t puttin’ –’

‘Vaffanculo! Shut it before I shut it for you.’ Even now, there was little doubt Joe still could, though it would be a near-even match.

‘Joe.’ He looked over his shoulder to see AJ leaning against the doorjamb, blowing smoke rings. ‘Look at his pupils, man.’

Joey looked.

‘I’ll take it from here,’ AJ said, with an air of much-put-upon resignation. As Joe shut the door behind him, he heard AJ asking, flatly, ‘Okay, what pain pills are you on, how many drinks did you add to that, and how many joints have you put on top of that?’

‘Shit.’ AJ slumped against the wall.

‘You get any answers out of him?’ James was grim.

‘Yep.’

‘Wonder if I could.’

‘Right now? He’s about to peak, crash, start coming down, you ask me. Yeah. Right now you could get more answers than you really want or need, or will like.’

‘Then I reckon I should strike whiles the iron is hot.’

‘James! No!’

‘Baby –’

‘Let him, Josh. Normally, this would be all sorts of wrong, far as I know, though I keep telling you people, I’m too new at this to haveta keep making these calls. But. This has been boiling for a long time, and maybe if J and the Bassman have it out, finally, maybe it’s all good. Maybe it works. Maybe it’s what’s needed.’

…One of my best friends from when I was 14 was gay.

– Advocate interview, 24 December 2002

‘So?’

‘The whole damn world done a process of elimination as to who you met for the first damn time and was one of your “best friends” when you were fourteen, J.’

‘So? So what? Not like you aren’t, right? Does it still matter anymore?’

James was dangerously controlled and quiet.

‘Now just what do you think you mean with that “so,” Timberlake? This screws up a right smart of things, including, since – as you are so quick to remind me – I didn’t make it onto the launchpad, it scuzzes up the April shot. It puts Josh in a hell of a position with his stuff comin’ up. And most importantly, God damn you, it’s for ME to decide when it no longer matters.’

‘Look, it was a fuckup, maybe. Okay. If it was, it was an accident, okay? You been on my ass plenty already about places I misspoke.’

‘Misspoke, hell. This was malice aforethought. Other interviews, I’ll maybe buy that you were misquoted or you misspoke and wasn’t nobody out of all them handlers there to catch it. But I read this article in the Advocate. Ain’t nobody goin’ to sell me on the theory it wasn’t clearly, heavily edited t’ Hell-and-gone, and plenty of proof stages to catch a “spur-of-the-moment mistake” in. That ain’t your voice, that ain’t your diction, and that sure as Hell ain’t your brains. You’re smart, smarter’n a lot of folks can fathom, but it ain’t that kind of smarts, that glib, facile philosophizin’ and that earnest political correctness. Seven years and more, I don’t know the sound of your voice and the pattern of your thoughts, one of us is dumber’n I think either of us is. That ain’t you, stream-of-consciousness, unedited, and it don’t set well with me, you to try and lie about it. This was polished and damn sure submitted for approval afore it went in. But you and Jive atween y’all sure-God managed to leave it in and let it go to press, and I don’t have much choice but to wonder just why.’

‘I fuckin’ sure as hell did say “jealous.” Because you are. That’s what all this is about! I’m a success, and. You. Failed. All those smarts, because we all know you’re so much smarter than the rest of us, hell, you’re smarter than anyone, aren’t you, you’re smarter’n Gawd, and yet, you failed. And that just eats your closet gay small-town ass right up, don’t it, dawg. You couldn’t make it. And that’s why you pick and pick and pick and pick and pick and pick all the muthafuckin’ day and night, because you can’t fucking stand it and you hate me because I didn’t fail and you did!’

‘I don’t hate you! That has nothing to do with this, any of it! I can’t fucking stand you, but I don’t hate you! Hell, you’re not worth the energy!’

‘Bullfuckingshit! You’re so jealous of me you can’t see straight, though I guess “straight” was never on the cards for you, huh, and you pick and prod and put me down all the time because of it. If you think for one fucking minute I’m going to apologize to you because you couldn’t hack it and I could –’

‘Fine! You win! I didn’t hate you until you started this fucking rant, but fine, you’ve got what you wanted, because now? Now I hate you!’

‘Y- you hate me?’ A sudden, plump tear spilled out of Justin’s eye and rolled slowly down his face.

‘Justin….’

‘You. Really? You hate me?’

‘Oh, God fucking damn it. Of course I don’t. Jesus Christ and General Jackson, the hell would I hate you?’

‘… Because I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t handle it if you hate me too, I –’

‘Good God Almighty, J, of course I don’t hate you –’

‘Then why have you been all in my face like this, Lance?’

‘I. Fuck.’

‘ ’Cause I think you must hate me to be that way to me, Lance, and I don’t, I can’t, I mean if you hate me –’

‘It’s on account of I love you, God damn it, and I miss you, the real you, not this, this godawful stranger you’ve been, I miss the Justin who’s my brother, the one I grew up with, my God, do you think I’d give a shit if it weren’t that I give a shit?’

‘I. Shit. I don’t know how to be that Justin anymore. I never was, maybe, maybe I was never him, any more than I’m who I am now, I don’t know how to be Justin –’

It was always in his plans to make a just-Justin record. When you’ve formed a group, extricated it from a management deal and joined the same label as your rivals, the Backstreet Boys (whom you then outshine by releasing the fastest selling pop album of all time, No Strings Attached), you don’t let anything take you out of the game.

– British Glamour, January 2003

‘Why you? Because – and the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t force this out of me in public – because we stand or fall by you. Yes, I know you didn’t want that responsibility at first. And frankly I think it’s been bad for you. It’s Josh as writes the “bubblegum shit” that paid for your damn cars, and it’s me and Chris what got us away from Lou. When it comes down to it, Josh is a thousand times the musician you are. It’s Joe who will be remembered out of all of us, in Hollywood and on Broadway, years after we’re dry bones in forgotten graves, and he’s smart as a whip. Chris has the purest voice anybody’s … never heard; and is far and away the smartest of us, and if he ever gets the gears to mesh, there’s no telling what he won’t achieve. And then there’s me. Now, I’m not as smart as Chris, maybe. I’m not as sharp, as quick a study, as Joe, and you’re going to see over the next few years that not even you nor Josh can own a stage and a crowd like he can. I don’t have Josh’s passion, I don’t have his effortless talent, I would kill to have his voice and his musicianship. But I know what I do have. I have more determination and a tighter focus than the four of y’all put together, and the four of y’all are, aside from me and maybe my momma, the stubbornest damn people in the history of mankind. I’m not as quick as a couple of y’all, but I will outlast granite. You never wanted to be the frontman? Well, tell you what, I never wanted to be the businessman. Not that anyone asked what I wanted. But I know how to do it now. Chris ain’t got the patience, nor Joey, nor you, nor Josh, not for this, not for the daily grind, not to think about every damn tactical move and string them together into operations, all in the pursuit of an overarching strategy.

‘And with all that, it comes down, even so, to you. You. You have almost as much presence as Joe, almost as quick a grasp and as moving a voice as Chris, almost the musicianship Josh has, and you have a certain charm that even now that it’s mostly faked – and I loved it and you better when it was mostly real, and I could kick my own fool ass and t’other three’s for letting Them turn you into a product when you should have been bein’ allowed to become a man, and your own man at that – point is, you’re the whole package, you are the sum of us, what’s best in all of us, you are the incarnation of the qualities that all of us together gave this group to make ’N Sync what it has been … and that, Justin, is why you are the frontman and why you matter and why this group stands and falls by you. And I’ll tell you one last secret. It’s why no matter how pissed off we are, we love you so Goddamned much: enough to get pissed off like this. Do you understand that yet? Every damn one of us loves you more than we can stand to admit and more than we know how to say or how to handle.’

‘My momma. She. I love her, you know I do, but. She –’

‘Justin Randall Timberlake, before you say to me what you’re a-fixing to say about Miz Lynn, I want you to open that door a minute, just a crack, and look out there into that room. I want you to look at Nicky and at Aaron and how there’s always, always that little space around them and how they shy away from that milling mass of Fatones who are out there unknowingly showing them what a fambly’s s’pposed to be like. Then, if you’ve still a mind to, you can tell me what a stage-mother Lynn done been to you, after you’ve thought a minute about Jane Carter and what it really means to have the Stage-Mother F’om Hell.’

‘I had a dream. Last night.’

Josh looked at his love. ‘Mmm?’

‘I don’t dream much, you know that.’ Josh did know. James never slept enough, often couldn’t sleep at all, and when he did sleep, it was either too lightly to enter into deep, REM sleep, or so deeply, through sheer exhaustion, that whatever dreams tormented him – and from his fidgets to his still, if now rarely, recurrent sleepwalking, Josh knew that torments there were – whatever dreams tormented him were perhaps mercifully blocked from his recollection when he awoke.

‘I just remember a snippet. A scene.’

‘I’m here, babe.’

‘It wasn’t. It wasn’t bad, or threatening. At all.’

‘A good dream.’

‘Well. In a sense, yeah. Not. Well, you’ll see.’ James was carefully looking off into the middle distance, his profile turned resolutely to Josh’s gaze: not looking at his spouse. ‘It was just … just an interior. A bedroom, I guess, maybe a hotel room, maybe even institutional. It was night, I guess, and most of the light was from a TV set, or something like it: whatever people would watch then. Because I’m pretty sure, not from anything, you know, just the feel, but, yeah, it was, like, maybe fifty years from now? Anyhow. It was – no sound, just the blue flicker from the screen. And. It was just two old men. Sitting there. One was sitting up, sitting Injun style, a scrawny old man, with hair that was, I dunno, kindy suspiciously dark, ’cause he had a grey mustache, and his dentures weren’t in, and propped up with pillows against the headboard was another old man, all stout – well, fattish, really – bald on top, but with white hair around the sides and a white walrus mustache, like Wilfred Brimley. And, well, that was it.’

‘And that was a good dream.’

‘I think it was. I really do. Just those two old men, together, watching the TV, with the sheets all rucked up. Even if it was in an old folks’s home, which I can’t tell, it might ha’ been.’

Josh’s eyes widened as he thought about it. ‘James –’

James turned towards him, ducking his head, looking up at him from under his lashes. ‘I. It just came to me that that was, they were. Us. 2053 AD or whatever, and still together.’

‘James.’ Josh was glowing like an old hurricane lantern. ‘That. Yes. That is the sweetest –’ and words failed him, and he caught James up in a passionate, tender embrace.

‘Why not?’

‘That’s what you said in that damned interview. “Why-not-and-what-the-hell” was the attitude, it sure enough was.’

‘Which damned interview?’

‘Okay, you know what? You have a point. Several of them were pretty bad. I happen to be referrin’, though, to that one about Nelly and drug use.’

‘Oh.’

‘Alex was fixin’ to fly out and kick your ass. When I found out that you found Josh a damn beard who was down with you, your posse, and your damn dealer, I was fixin’ to fly out with him. And I don’t even want to talk about Chris.’

‘It ain’t.’ Justin clamped his mouth shut and changed his approach. ‘The Chris thing. You. You drink.’

‘We’ve been over that.’

‘It’s the same thing.’

‘Like hell it is. No, you listen up a minute. I already done told you my feelings about legal versus illegal. But the real point is. I always did figure that the problem with all these programs that lump smokin’ and drinkin’ in with drugs was, whatever the idea behind it, sure enough people were going to define drug use down to the same level as cigarettes and sour mash. And damned if they ain’t. You’re old enough now that if you drink in public, it ain’t scandalous necessarily, nor yet illegal in itself. But I’m going to be real Goddamn bent out of shape, I ever have to bond you or Chris out on possession charges.’

‘Or C.’

‘That situation is a-fixin’ to be fixed, and yessirreebob, damn right I’m almighty pissed about all that, and your part in it. And that damn raccoon-faced skank Tara. And this all makes us look like fucking idjits, after them damn anti-drug promos, and no I don’t take kindly to bein’ made to look like a damn fool. Happens more’n e-goddamn-nough ’thout y’all contributing to it. The –’

‘Lance. James. Over the years. We’ve changed, all of us. We’ve – reinvented ourselves? Yeah. Look at C, dawg. And.’

‘Is this about you reinventin’ yourself? Because if it is, all I can say –’

‘Yo, my turn. Point is. Look at you. You ain’t out and out said it, but you’ve left the Baptists just as much as I have. A good long while there, you didn’t set foot in a church house. And now. Horses and sailing. You try to do the popstar threads when it’s expected of you, but you and I both know it’s all khakis and Izods and blazers now. Fuckin’ madras, man: what is up wit’ dat? You’re a closet Episcopalian now, a fuckin’ Republican, a country-club rich Southern boy. Shit, when you need a nic fix these days you fuckin’ snort snuff – and sneeze your fool ass off; and I know damn well you’ve been caught sitting at home reading and smoking Cuban cigars or a damn briar pipe. Prob’ly drinkin’ port. You’ve been sixty for, like, the last five years, and I keep waiting for you to tell me and Chris you can “get us into Augusta National ’cause you’re a member now.” Fine, dawg: whatever. I’m just sayin’. I don’t know, don’t none of us know anymore, when it’s moral outrage with you or just snobbery: “gentlemen don’t do drugs, they get smashed at the Country Club.”

‘And that’s the thing. I mean, you ain’t lecturing CK. You figure he’s just trashy and there’s no point? Born tacky, so why bother, let him act that way?’

‘Have I ever – have I ever once – indicated I feel that way about Chris?’

‘A little, yeah. I don’t think you even know you do.’

‘Then after I lecture his toking ass, I have a hell of an apology to make to him. Because I don’t feel that way about him at all. I have so damn much respect for him it ain’t even funny. When I think about what he’s lived through and overcome…. On the one hand, I can almost see why I should cut him some slack on account of that. On t’other hand, it’s just exactly because he’s so damn capable of overcoming any damn thing on earth, and he knows better….’

‘I come bringing coffee. And news that Briahna is napping, so.’

‘Thanks, Aidge.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Josh needs you for a minute. And I want to talk to the Kid a minute, even if he won’t fuckin’ look at me when I come in a room.’

‘Break time. Gotcha. Let me know.’

Howie caught James’s eye as he went to go find Chris and wait there for AJ. Howie made his characteristic gesture, the two fingers lightly put to his lips and then his heart, and then flashed as a peace sign.

‘You and Sosa, man,’ Nick said in his ear. ‘Must be a Caribbean thing.’

‘Espositito mio, you know I’m not a position player. I’m your starting pitcher, baby.’

‘So. You’re here. Start lecturing, O High and Holy Bass.’

‘Come here, Chris.’

‘You dipshit, you’re squeezing too hard. Fucking Russian weightlifter steroids. Leftover from the Soviet Olympic Teams, I bet. Put me down, Comrade Borscht-Bassoff, so I can bite your kneecaps! You break this, you’ve bought it –’

‘Chris?’

‘What?’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

‘So you can lecture me?’

‘So I can tell you I love you.’

‘Whoa whoa whoa –’ Chris was paddling his feet in the air like a dachshund who wanted to be put down that instant. ‘I know the Fine Kirkpatrick Ass is irresistible, but I’m not gonna wreck your and the Kitten’s happy home. Fluffy would scratch, dude. I’ma get –’

‘Oh hush up. I’ve got you, Chris. I’ve got you. It’s okay.’

‘So, what, you’re not here to lecture me?’

‘Of course I am. But I’m mostly here to remind you I love you.’

‘Shhhhhyeah. It’s what all the cosmonauts tell me.’

‘Listen – Skylark. I’d walk ten miles just to see you smile.’

‘No fair quoting my voice work!’

The Bass ignored him. ‘And now that that’s said.’

‘You’re gonna lecture me.’

‘Nope. I have someone to do that for me.’

‘Whoa! You got minions for everything now? See, I knew this Evil Overlord thing was getting out of hand, trust me, it’s like Fu Man, you over-delegate and bam, world domination slips right outta your gr- … oh, shit.’

‘CK. ’Sup?’

‘You brought McLean to lecture me? That’s low, Bass.’

‘You of all people should know by now, Christopher. I don’t fight fair. I fight to win.’

‘I should never have taught you all my secrets.’

‘Hey, babes. You had nothing to teach me about fighting dirty. You have met my momma, have you not?’

‘I’m back. Talked to Critter. Aidge is talking to him now: we swapped. You okay?’

Justin shook his head, then nodded. When James sat down next to him, though, on the arm of his chair, this time he leaned, a little tentatively, but perceptibly, against James’s side.

‘I. It was like MMC. And then us. This. It was. New. I had to learn everything all over again. Learn to, learn to … fit in. Prove myself.’

‘God, J.’

‘Be. Be a man. Be tough, y’know? Street. Make my bones, get my cred.’

‘We’ve really failed you, haven’t we.’ James’s shoulders slumped, and he sat in his chair like a beaten man.

Justin wasn’t looking at James; his gaze was fixed carefully on a loose thread in Joey’s ratty Turkish carpet. ‘I was … I mean, everything, out there on my own. Nobody had my back. I know people have said shit about, y’know, Freddy, and Carlos. I. Um. I’ve said a few smartass things myself.’

‘Have you though.’

‘Shit.’

‘We’ll deal. Don’t matter. Go on.’

‘But. I knew, really, I knew that when – I knew that despite the jokes, they were just glorified gofers. What you and C have, man, I know that’s real, and y’all wouldn’t do that. Partly…. Partly it’s knowing what y’all got, you and C. I don’t have that. And. I didn’t have all y’all. Y’all two at least had a gofer you could trust, Freddy and Carlos and all. Trace. And Nick – not Carter, you haven’t met this Nick, he –’

‘I know who you mean.’

‘He. They, he and Trace. I mean, they’re my road dawgs, my homeys, but.’

‘Justin.’

‘Yeah.’

‘If … if there’d been a crisis. In Russia. And you’d been scheduled to do eight million other things. And I’d called and needed you. Would you have come?’

‘Fuck, Lance, how can you even ask, of course I –. Oh. But. I couldn’t do that to y’all. Drag you away from space? Drag Joe from Broadway, from his dream in his New York City, where he’s getting more respect in one night than the five of us have earned in seven, eight years? I’m not that selfish, no matter what I guess you must think –’

‘CK would have been there for you like a shot, without disarranging the schedules of the International Space Station or the Great White Way. Josh would have dropped everything, even his own shot at getting out from under –’

‘My shadow?’

‘The shadow,’ James said firmly, ‘of the group as a damn whole – and what a hole it sometimes is. But he’d’ve been there in a New York minute.’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? Any of us. Or if you just needed a shoulder and some home cookin’ and didn’t want to fret Miz Lynn, hell, Momma’d’ve been there in a heartbeat, you’d just called her up.’

‘I couldn’t. What, dawg, you thought I did this to get fame or money or fans? Fuck that, them thangs I got. This was. I needed to prove. I wanted –’

‘And you think I of all people cain’t understand that? J. Listen here. I’m in a group where more people have heard Chris and Joe than hear me. No, now listen. Nobody but my momma even knows I’m there ninety percent of the time, ’ceptin’ as far as people are watching to laugh at my footwork. Tellin’ me about needin’ to get out on your own and see if you can be somebody that ain’t a cog in the damn machine, well, shit, J, you’re tellin’ Noah about the damn flood.

‘But I learnt myself something that I guess you ain’t learnt yet. And what I learnt is, there ain’t no shame in needing your brothers. In needing somebody to have your back. Hell, J, you got your ass in this damn crack tryin’ to recreate that dynamic out there, tryin’ to build up a posse to substitute for us whiles you were away f’om us. And – look, some of them people’re great people, and I admire a lot of ’em as talents and not a few of ’em as people. But you got yourself in with a crowd who somehow sold you a bill of goods about how to prove yourself that didn’t do you no sort of favors. If that’s what it takes to run with the big dogs in that part of the industry, you damn well had better get your poodle ass back under the porch.’

‘P- poodle? You asshole.’ But Justin was grinning as he said it.

James grinned back. ‘It’s the curls – dawg. Live with it. But looky here. I mean this. I’d say the same thing, you were doing the rock scene and getting’ coked up, or’d run off to do techno / electronica and was a-spending money on E. There’s a culture there where you’ve been that you don’t need to be no part of. Look what it’s done to you, past few months. Hell, this “bubblegum shit” –’

Justin winced.

‘– Is plenty damn dangerous enough. Look at Aidge. You heard what Nicky said in his “oh-shit” interview. Think about it.’

‘I didn’t mean that. What I said. About, about … that you’d failed.’

‘Yes, J, you did. When you said it, you meant it. I’m willing to believe you don’t mean it now, and that you’re sorry you said it. But you meant ever’ damn word at the time. And there’s a sure-’nuff sense in which you were just speaking the truth. I did fail. And I do hate that. And it wasn’t the first time and I reckon as it sure-God won’t be the last, but that don’t stop me hating it. But.’

‘I –’

‘Hush up, now. Ssssh. I ain’t fixing to get mediæval on your ass. But I want you to think about something here. There’s a differ’nce atween “failing,” and “being a failure.” Standard you’re using? Standard you’re using, I failed, sure as hell did. But, that standard, so has Nick. So has Chris, with Fu Man. So has Joshy, back in the Dark Ages in Los-Fuckin’-An-ge-les-Cal-i-forn-i-cate, and now as far as not getting screwed over by Jive ’bouten his own solo work. So did Aidge, with his life for a whiles there and with his own solo dreams. And just to pour salt in it, Nick looks like he failed measured against you with these solo gigs, and measured against AC, matter of that, and Aidge looks puny as against Nick’s at least gettin’ a solo shot at it, and Josh looks like he failed long as your solo stint’s the yardstick, and far as bidness dealings go both Chris and me look bad up against what Howie’s done so damn quietly, ’cause let’s not kid ourselves, FreeLance is headed for the same trashcan as Fu Man’s in, and I look like a tool as far as the big screen goes, you stack me up against Joe … and I guarandamntee you as how ever’ damn one of us, it stings like fire, confronting them facts. And hell, I could go on, but that’s enough to make my point, the which is, I’m damned if you can call a one of us failures. Chris…. Chris is still hurtin’ over Dani, always will be, I reckon. But you look at where he’s come from and what he’s done by sheer guts and willpower, pullin’ hisself up by his own bootstraps, and you look at what he’s done far as his goals of making a whole new world for Bev and the gals. ’S Chris a failure, J? Has Chris failed? Me and Josh…. Long as we got each other, damned if we’ve failed. Don’t matter if I never get to a launchpad and Josh never gets a Grammy, hell, a Top Ten single. Nicky? He’s got D. And he’s fought the Bitch-Mother to a standstill and done more’n any one man could hope as far as keeping AC and the gals from goin’ completely to the dogs, though it’s sure-God been an uphill fight and not even Nicky could protect ’em from ever’thing. And Aidge. I got so damn much respect for him I cain’t tell it all. Anybody can go to Hell. It takes “much man” to go through Hell and back, and become what he is to us all now. And any man who’s got Miz Sarah ain’t no failure. Any of this getting through to you, J?’

Justin said nothing, his shoulders slumped. After a long moment, he spoke. ‘Um. I. Look at it that way. D and Nicky and you and Josh, Bri and LA, Aidge and Sarah and all. I’m the failure.’

‘Oh no you ain’t. You ain’t even failed. Any more’n Chris is a failure on account of Dani. Now, I dunno as whether you and Brit’ll ever work it, or whether your destiny is elsewhere, whoever he or she may be. But you listen up, brother mine. All the rest of us done failed at things, relationships included. The only thing that will make us failures is if we really did fail you so bad you cain’t see what I’m a-fixin’ to tell you. All of us done learnt at least one thing from failing. You know what that is?’

Justin shook his head, still not daring to look up.

‘Failure ain’t permanent. What we learnt is, failure ain’t permanent, is what we learnt. Not unless you let it be. And the only way to be a failure, no matter how many damn times you fail at something, is to let it be permanent, to not get off your ass and dust off your britches and get back on the damn hoss that just th’owed you.’

Justin’s reply was simply to turn, bury his head in the crook of James’s neck, and let himself be held as the tears spilled over.

But there was a stress fracture in that steel core.

Howie’s great area of vulnerability and self-doubt lay in his sexual and romantic side. His failing point was his self-doubt when it came to seeing himself as what he was, and how much he meant to Nick: disvalued by others in the past, he had learned all too well to disvalue himself. What Nick saw when he looked at Howie, Howie never grasped for sure, despite Nick’s actions and words; what Howie saw in the mirror was never enough for Howie when set beside the image of Nick that Howie held in his mind.

For far too long – and not least because of the pressures that being in Backstreet had placed upon him, in a job where they were selling themselves as available, non-threatening heterosexual fantasies for teenies, quite as much as they ever sold music and harmony – Howie had been convinced, at first unwillingly, but repeatedly, by circumstances piled upon circumstances, that he was missing whatever spark it was that dwelt in others and caused them to attract the love of another. That he would never hear the words, in any romantic context, ‘I love you.’ That he would live, and die, utterly alone.

And then it had happened. Nick had happened. Howie had developed a myriad of defenses, a set list of sublimations, a series of taboos and prohibitions to shield himself, and to shield others from attentions that, he was certain, would be unwelcome. And just when he had finally, fully learned to function that way, Nick had come along, had offered him all that he had ever stopped daring to hope for, and forced him to abandon the defensive works, the fortifications, he had built up through years of unremitting labor.

And now Nick was gone. Not permanently, as far as Howie knew, though his heart refused to be certain. Not after a quarrel, not after a diminution of the intensity of their passions and their love. But gone, on this solo voyage.

And Howie knew, now, bitterly, that there was something worse than never knowing the touch of a lover, never having someone to come home to, never learning the intricacies of the intimacy of hearts as well as of flesh; and that was, to have these things withdrawn after tasting them.

It was as if he had starved all his life and then been invited to a banquet, only to be hustled away from the table halfway through the second course.

‘Cuz?’

‘Kevin! How’s Kris?’

‘Fine. How’s the mama-to-be?’

‘Good. Resting. Got her feet up, taking a nap.’

‘Well, when they’re asleep, I hear they don’t talk incessantly about how bloated they feel.’

Brian snorted, and heard an answering chuckle over the phone line.

‘Listen. I called to see how y’all were, honestly. But. I’m worried about Howie. And Nick, I guess. Anyone heard from D?’

‘No, darn it. He taking this worse than we feared?’

‘Hell if I know. Why I’m calling around to see if anyone’s heard.’

‘Alex may be home by now. I know he and Sarah were out somewhere earlier.’

‘I know, I couldn’t get them. I’ll try again in a minute. Meanwhile, you hear anything –’

‘Night or day. Of course, I’ll call collect.’

‘You are cheaper’n Frenchy-Sync.’

‘Well, unlike C and Lance, I’m fixing to have to start up a college fund for a son.’

‘Heyyyyy, Junior.’

‘Aidge!’ Nick swept his smaller bandmate into a hug.

‘So. Listened to the preview CD you sent me, Junior. Since when was D bi?’

‘What?’

‘Sweetness. Bi. Since when? I mean, I listen to the lyrics, man, and when you say a girl “makes the man in you want the woman in her,” well, shit. Best of my knowledge, the only man that’s been in you is Howard, soooooo…..’

Nick snorted. ‘You fuckwad.’

‘Yeah, you love me,’ AJ grinned, giving Nick a resounding, wet buss on the cheek.

‘ ’Course I do,’ Nick said stoutly, planting a kiss in return on AJ’s rapidly growing expanse of denuded scalp.

From the doorway, there was an amused, throat-clearing sound. ‘If you’re through with my Alex,’ Sarah said, ‘and you’re not worried about cooties, you could get your big, fine, gay ass over here and kiss the girl in the room too.’

Nick grinned, face-splittingly, and grabbed her into a spin and a dip.

‘Thank God you’re here. I was. I was afraid you wouldn’t come out here to see me.’

‘You called, I came. Besides … I have to talk some business with you, too. Later – that can wait. Are you and D having problems?’

‘No! Um. Are we?’

‘Don’t panic, Carter, I don’t know of any on his end. It’s just that everyone’s always taken their problems to Howard, so I figure, hey, you’re not doing that, maybe it’s about Howard.’

‘Howie’s about the only one it isn’t about. And why not call you? You’re the other big Inner Peace guy now, Mr Serenity Prayer.’

AJ looked sharply at Nick over his glasses. ‘You drinking or using?’

‘No! No. No way, man. Too damn easy.’

‘Good.’

The worst part, Howie reflected, was having so much time to brood. There was little point in working on anything musical, even aside from Nick’s absence, what with Brian an expectant dad, Kevin playing husband and activist, and AJ deep in the throes of wedding planning. He’d thrown himself into DLF activities, but those could not fill all his hours. Nor could his family. As for Tabu, it had long since gotten into the groove, necessarily, of a turnkey business as far as his input went, and ran itself; in addition to which, after AJ’s public and Nick’s private struggles, let alone the more public problems that beset Nick’s siblings – who, after all, were his in-laws as far as he and Nick were concerned, whatever Jane and the rest of the world might think – well, Howie was increasingly uneasy about even owning a club. It struck him, in Father de Guzaman’s traditionalist phrase, as being an ‘occasion of sin’ for his friends and brethren.

The nurses in the ward had gotten used to him, welcomed him. There was very little risk of his being mobbed, or indeed recognized, in the wee hours, and if he were, well, he was doing good deeds by stealth, and had nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, the hospital establishment had gotten to know him very well already, through the DLF. If he was a trifle out of place amongst the other regulars, old men, mostly, who found in their shared volunteerism a last opportunity to do service and good, so be it: they and he respected each other and had a quiet understanding.

So tonight, as on many nights, Howie was in the Neonatal Wing, one of the volunteers who rocked and stroked and patted the babies, encouraging their development until they were taken home.

‘I was afraid you were mad at me too.’

‘Nick-ay….’

‘Don’t call me that, Alexander.’

‘Nobody’s mad at you.’

‘Yeahright. Other’n Howie, obviously, no one’s come to see me until you two got here, no one wants to talk –’

‘Pffft. We’re not mad.’

‘Frick is.’

‘Bullshit. He’s scared.’

‘Fuck. You’d think my best friend would believe me when I tell him this is not the end of the group –’

‘Oh get over yourself, Junior. That ain’t a fucking thing to do with it. He’s worried about you. He’s worried that Jive is screwing you, just the way Kevin is worried, except Kevin’s louder and more vocal and does that Scary Eyebrow Thing when he talks about it. He’s worried that Jive’s screwing you and Timberlake, matter of that, backing you both both ways and then ready to shaft whichever doesn’t take off, dump the runner-up in the grease. He’s worried that you’ve been suckered into doing this for the wrong reasons, doing it not because it’s right for you but because it’s right for them. He’s real worried about the business shit you and I are gonna have to talk about in a minute –’

‘– Huh?’

‘– Man, I love you, but Sarah and I have, like, shitloads of wedding planning shit to do that we’d be better off doing than flying out here to see your rockstar ass in person, if it weren’t so important. But don’t dodge the subject. Brian’s worried about all that, and he’s incredibly worried about what this time apart is doing to you and Howie. And. Well.’

‘You said “scared.”’

Sarah patted Nick’s hand. ‘Don’t be blond, handsome. He’s scared because any week now he could wake up and find a baby in the house, and he never thought he’d have to face the first days of fatherhood without Uncle Frack there to calm him down and plump LA’s pillows for her.’

‘Oh. Oh. Shit. God, why the fuck is my timing always so lousy?’

Sarah tried, she really did, but it was hopeless. It was a good three minutes before she was able to stop giggling.

‘Yeah, Aidge is taking the Nick front. I’m hoping that maybe, when we get together, Jamesanjosh™ can talk to D.’

‘Sooner the better. Hey, can I call you back, cuz? LA’s hollering at me to fetch something.’

‘Anyhoo. Um. Junior, we still have to talk a little business here. You’d better sit down.’

Nick looked at AJ’s expression and tried not to let his hands start shaking.

They’d had a few precious hours together, he and Nick, with their friends of both groups and alone, a last, early November chance before Thanksgiving, before Baylee was due. And now there was some crisis brewing in the world of Backstreet, and Howie found himself on a flight to Atlanta, his muscles straining unconsciously as if he could propel the aircraft to fly faster.

There were those in the room who were lucky to have dodged some charges in their wilder days. Nick himself of course had gotten popped for that bar fight. But if James Lance Bass were ever to be charged with anything – assuming he never indulged in insider trading – it would probably be for the unauthorized practice of law. Still, there’s no harm in an experienced businessman’s giving his friends some advice, and it’s not as if he hadn’t talked it over with Josh and with ‘Uncle Phil.’

They’d met, Backstreet and the Bass-Chasezes, at James’s request, to discuss James’s concern; and out of his gallant concern for Brian and LA, they’d met at the Littrell residence, so LA didn’t have to travel. After all, Jamesanjosh™ were in a rare state of excitement themselves, with not only LA due, but, shortly thereafter, Stace and Ford scheduled to have their first child. Josh was positively giddy about being an uncle twice over.

Conversation was desultory as they waited for Howie, who had had a DLF commitment – a grant proposal meeting – and thus had had to take the latest flight.

‘Where’s Justin?’

Nick’s question was idly curious. James’s answer – and here among friends he and Josh were definitely their private selves, the ‘Lance and JC’ of a million public appearances discarded – was glacial.

‘Who?’

Kevin shot Josh a look. Josh sighed, and explained.

‘I don’t think it’s worth bothering about, really,’ Josh said. ‘James just isn’t too happy with him right now.’

‘Who is?’ Kevin’s smile, though, was rueful. ‘I mean, I don’t mind being called pretty. I don’t even mind being called a motherfucker. But little? That I minded.’

‘Don’t worry, muffin,’ his wife drawled out, ‘if anyone ever challenges you, I’ll sign an affidavit about your size.’

James smiled at Kris, though still frostily. ‘Moving along –’

‘No, really,’ AJ interrupted. ‘I mean, I’m alarmed, too, about the drug reference in that press he did, about smoking weed with Nelly. That’s a hot button with me, just like I guess Josh wasn’t too happy about the “bubblegum” crack, though that’s on a fuck of a different level. But I’m alarmed more than mad, because despite it all I kinda like the curled mutant kid. And hell, fucker’s sitting around with a broken foot….’

James started to speak, but Josh cut his lover off. ‘Right after he announced plans to walk on water,’ he noted. ‘That didn’t sit well with James.’ Brian nodded: he could understand that.

‘It’s a judgment,’ James said, darkly. ‘Let’s see him walk on water with a busted foot, now.’ James still had his Southern Baptist moments, and it was pretty clear he’d felt that Justin’s proposed SFX were blasphemous, and that his irreverence had been properly and swiftly punished by the Lord.

James had laid out the situation starkly and clearly. ‘Our contracts are a little different, so – assuming the Boy Wonder doesn’t actually desert us despite his promises – we don’t have the same problem. But what it looks like to me, just from a business perspective, is that Jive’s playing both ends against the middle with y’all. Never would have happened in Clive’s day, but, he exercised that “put” option and we’re all back to dealing with the damn Huns.’ James – and Josh – had never forgiven the Germans for trying to force James out of ’N Sync in the beginning. ‘I were y’all, I’d get me a lawyer to look at it.’

‘No need,’ Howie said from the chair he was sharing with Nick, instinctively expressing the unanimous opinion of Backstreet. When cut came to shoot, as James might put it, Howie, as the real founder of BSB, invariably took charge. ‘Uncle Phil says this also?’

Josh nodded.

‘Then we trust your judgment all the more, James. Thank you for warning us.’

‘Um.’ Kevin looked carefully away from the others, ignoring Kris’s frown and indeed a swift poke in the ribs. ‘We’re going to look lawsuit-happy here, and I have a pretty good idea who’s going to be the point man on that.’

‘Never bothered you before,’ said AJ, eying him speculatively.

‘No, no, I just. I want to make sure we’re all on board if we do do this. I mean, the other end they’re playing against the middle here is, well.’

Nick untangled himself from his Howie – they’d been fiercely, desperately intertwined since Howie had walked in the door, both obviously in dire need of the other’s touch – and crossed over to hunker down in front of Kevin’s chair, gently tugging on Kevin’s chin hair to force his bandmate to look him in the eye. ‘Kevin, sometimes I’m not as mature as I could be, and I’m no genius either, but I can understand where La- James is coming from. If Jive is using my gig to delude – James, was that the word?’

‘“Dilute,”’ James said, gently.

‘Told you I wasn’t a genius. Okay. If they’re di-lud-ing our trademark in my promos, and, if I got this right, if we let them we could lose it, well, that’s not right. This is my family, and this is my career, and these are my royalties and my retirement, and yours and the guys’s and Howie’s for our future, and I’m not gonna let anybody use me and my solo thing to broach. Brooch. Breach. Whatever, I’m with you guys, even if I can’t say it right. Okay?’

‘You don’t mind looking like you’re on both sides?’ James asked it kindly, but it was a legitimate business question, and he wanted Nick to understand just what he was letting himself in for.

Nick accepted the question in the spirit it was asked. ‘Doesn’t matter, people will say stupid things about me anyway. Besides,’ he grinned, ‘people have thought I was on both sides ever since Willabitch gave that radio interview.’

Howie winked at him.

‘Serious, though. What we’ve done as Backstreet and what we’re gonna do as Backstreet until we die, that’s my retirement and that’s my and Howie’s future, and maybe I could sit by and watch mine get fucked over, but isn’t nobody gonna use me as a weapon against Howie. Or the guys.’

The meeting had broken up all too soon for Brian, who would gladly have made them all remain, at gunpoint, until Baylee made his grand entrance; all too soon for Nick, whose enthusiasm for his solo gig had taken a battering by reason of these revelations of Jive’s duplicity; and of course all too soon for Howie, who was still in serious Nick-deficit, and feeling the deprivations. They promised to get back there the minute LA’s contractions started, and to see each other at Thanksgiving if not already gathered at a maternity ward; but it wasn’t enough, though Howie pasted on a smile and pretended he could deal. His only real smile, after Nick started getting ready to leave, came when James took Kevin aside and told him, quietly, that he and Joe had made some calls, after a producer Joe knew on Broadway had approached them, and if Kevin was interested in reading for a part in Chicago, well, that could be arranged. Kevin’s excitement was contagious, and Howie could at least be happy for others. No matter how miserable he was, himself.

‘Kev?’

‘Nicky.’ The name and the tone were automatic, Pavlovian.

So was Nick’s response. He glared at the innocent cellphone. ‘Don’t call me that. So. About Howie….’

Howie and Nick had said their farewells, and Howie’s face was set, his eyes resolutely dry. It was his turn now to take his leave of LA and Bri.

Brian looked at him imploringly. ‘D, why don’t you stay?’

Howie exchanged a look with an amused LA. Gently, he said, ‘Rok. You and LA need this special time together, preparing the nest. And you need to start getting psyched and ready to be alone – not alone in the way that you don’t have us, but alone in the way that you and LA have the sole responsibility here.’

‘I’m awful nervous,’ Brian said quietly.

Vaguely, from the kitchen they could hear James humming: he’d insisted on cleaning up after them.

‘I know. But that can’t be, and it isn’t deep down, because you need anyone but Leigh to stand beside you on this. I know you. I know you can stand on your own two feet, without me, or Nicky, or Alex, or even Kev standing next to you.

‘No, see, hermano, you’re going through a big change here. You’re not leaving us, as your family: you couldn’t if you tried, and that will never happen. But you and LA are creating a new family of your very own, the three of you against the world, a special thing and a unit all its own. That’s what you’re feeling. It’s labor pains: the birth of a new family, not to replace, but to, well, complement your family with us, just the way it was when Kevin called you, and you joined the group and were the last piece of what made us a family, a Backstreet family, to go with, not to substitute for, the families God gave us in our parents and siblings. Sabe?’

LA just beamed at Howie: if Brian could be made to see what she’d been telling him, or trying to, since the hiatus started, it would be now, because it was coming from Howie.

Brian ducked his head, accepting it but unwilling to admit it. ‘I worry an awful lot ’bout you, too. And Frack. But you, mostly.’

‘I’ll be fine.’ (What the heck was that tune James was humming in the kitchen? It was maddeningly familiar.)

‘Why can’t you at least stay close? I don’t want you to be so alone right now. It makes me feel a mite guilty about the life we have, LA an’ me.’

‘He will be close,’ Josh piped up, startling them: he’d appeared in the room suddenly, with an electric broom in one hand and a rag and a spray-can of Endust in the other. He and James were serious about doing the cleaning, after commandeering the Littrell residence for a meeting, what with the lady of the house in the state she was in. ‘He’s coming to Mississippi with us, aren’t you, Howie?’

Howie just looked at him, open-mouthed. Josh paid him no mind: he’d cocked his head to one side and was listening to his lover’s humming. ‘James!’

‘Darlin’?’

‘Stop that.’

James stopped humming, and then was heard to laugh out loud. When he spoke, a moment later, his blush was audible. ‘Sugarpie, I swan I wasn’t thinkin’. I didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘Babe, I don’t care what you hum, most of the time, or sing, which is even better. I love to finally get to hear you. But not that one.’

‘Aw, darlin’ –’

‘James –’

‘All right, Joshua.’ And as James called his love’s full name into the room, both Howie and Brian suddenly caught on to what familiar, unplaceable tune James had been humming:

Bri and Howie were suppressing grins, but Josh turned a serenely oblivious eye to that as he resumed as if he’d never interrupted himself to begin with. ‘Of course he’s staying with us. That way he’s on hand for whichever baby comes first, Baylee or Leighton. But that way, he’s not in the way during this very important time –’ Josh all but wagged a finger at Brian: it was clear that as Briahna’s uncle and the future uncle of Master Littrell and Little Miss Lofton, he’d made a study of the issue, quite probably including doing actual research, knowing Josh – ‘this very important time, the expectant-parent phase of your pair-bond development.’ (Yep. He’d been reading up on it all right.) ‘And mostly, if there are any two people he could use to talk to about the whole separation anxiety, long-distance relationship thing, I’d say it’s me and James. Because, you know.’

That clicked, and Brian nodded, subtly urging Howard with a tilt of the head to accept the – well, it was less an offer than a command performance, but either way, it was the right idea. Josh missed that interplay, though a grinning LA didn’t, for Josh was listening to James singing, softly. Howie and Brian concentrated on the sounds from the kitchen as well, and Brian lit up, glowing all over, even as Howie and Josh started almost unconsciously to harmonize: ‘That,’ Brian exulted, ‘is even better for the baby than pre-natal Mozart.’

And Josh dragged his James, blushing, into the room where LA had her feet up and forced him to begin again, with Brian’s and Josh’s tenors soaring over James’s rich bass and Howie’s countertenor floating effortlessly in the empyrean, descanting, trilling like a skylark. In later years, it would become one of the stories LA and Bri most loved to tell Baylee, and one he would most like to hear, how not so very long before his birth, he was serenaded in the womb by his father and his Uncles Howie, Josh, and James:

Inevitably, of course, Howie had gone to stay a while with Jamesanjosh™ in Mississippi. For, in the end, Josh was right: Josh and James had lived this sort of separation, and survived it, and if anyone had the answers Howie needed, it was they.

‘The thing is,’ James had rumbled at him as Howie gingerly sat a preternaturally gentle horse that James had chosen for him, ‘you and me, D, we were raised with some heavy baggage about machismo. Now, that may be a word from your culture, as a word, but I can guarandamntee you, as a Southerner, the concept’s chained to me and all my people like a leg-iron. And we are both, still, struggling to come to terms with that, and with our faith as well, reconcilin’ our love for the Lord with our sexual orientation.’

Howie was silent a moment as the horses’s hooves kept a steady walking pace through the muffling pine duff. ‘Verdad,’ he admitted at last.

‘Now, it seems to me as how them sort of pressures, well, ’d be right liable to leave anybody with a hangup or three. And … hell. I was lucky enough to find Josh early, when we were young: but even by then, I’d gotten used to the self-censoring, I’d internalized the caution, I’d resigned my sorry ass to a lifetime without love, without touching and being touched, with no one to hold and be helt by, and it took me a right smart of time to get to where I could open up. For you, love came along later in your life than it did for me, and I know damn good an’ well as how you still have problems conceivin’ of yourself as a sexual being, as being entitled to be one, to express your sexual self, especially with all the strictures of machismo hanging over that handsome haid of yours. If you learn anything f’om this, this time apart, it had damn well better be to seize the day when you can. And that extends pretty damn far: we already done told you, me an’ Josh, to be free of the whole damn house and use the fax, the phone, the DSL. Ain’t noticed as you have. Howard Dwaine Dorough, you listen to me: time I was in Russia, only thing that kept me sane, or at least not any more plumb crazy’n I am for starters, was IM and the phone. You should see the damn bills for that.’

Howie looked at James with something akin to alarm, as well as a good deal of blushing embarrassment. ‘Ay de mi. Are you suggesting what I think it is that you are suggesting, Don Jaime?’

‘I p’fer “Iago” as the Spanish form of my Christian name,’ James grinned. ‘And yes, I am. Digital getdown – I seem to remember there was a song about that? ’Bout the same time there was a song called “Giddy Up,” which –’ James put on his TV voice – ‘is not about these here horses, I assure you.’

To this, Howie’s blush was a sufficient – and his only – reply. Howie hastened to change the subject. ‘I just. I worry. There’s a lot of temptation out there, and Nick. He’s exposed to more temptation than anybody – oh, except maybe Timberlake. More than, well….’

‘More’n I am, maybe, on account of he’s young, the frontman, and admittedly pretty damn hot. But not more’n you’d be. You can’t really worry Nick’d be stupid enough to stray.’

‘Not, well, cheat, but … find something better. I mean, he is younger, and a lot hotter than I am –’

James slewed around in his saddle to pin Howie with an incredulous stare: gracefully, with the ease of a born horseman; Howie knew he’d have been on his ass on the ground if he’d tried that. ‘Who the Sam Hill sold you that bill of goods?’

‘Wh- ’

‘Yes, there’s a difference in y’all’s ages, and thank God for that, because some poor sumbitch in that relationship has to have some damn ballast and maturity right now, and, right now, it sure ain’t Nicky. There’s some difference in my and Josh’s ages, too, come to that –’

‘– But two and half years is nothing compared to –’

‘Sheeyit, it’s a huge damn difference when you’re starting a relationship in your damn teens. Point is, in case you ain’t but noticed, Mr Latin Lover, you are, with the inevitable exception of Josh, about the hottest motherfucker on the damn planet. And that –’ James cut off Howie’s vehement protests – ‘that, neighbor, is part and passel of the whole getting-comfortable-with-your-sexual-self thing you need to take the opportunity to do, while you and Nick have to spend this time apart, is to realize that, you hear?’

‘Well, damn. It’s just like when we’re, y’know, there, together. All the best parts, when Howie talks dirty, are in Spanish. And … I’m mologing-, monlog-, mogloning-, I only speak American, damn it!’

‘Oh, honey,’ Josh had said as they sat on the verandah, guitars by their feet and a bottle of Bordeaux between them. ‘You have to trust Nick, and you really have to trust yourself, the power within you, it’s, like, James tells me that the one force, physical force, that extends through the whole cosmos, is gravity, and any two objects, no matter how far apart, exert a gravitational pull on one another and all other objects, see, so, it’s like, no matter the distance, gravity never loses all its force, and, so, well, it’s like that, like, okay, Nick’s a star –’

‘Yes, he is,’ Howie smiled. Not that that stopped the flow.

‘– and you’re a star, and there’s always that pull, and the two of you, you’re like not even that distant, no matter what it feels like right now, okay, you two are like two stars in a, what’s the word, a binary system, revolving around each other all the time and rotating on a mutual axis, and growing ever closer –’

‘Until we create a huge, flaming fireball? And, what, turn into you guys’s logo?’

‘“Fast, furious, and flyin’ right atcha,”’ Josh said, with a sheepish smile. Howie reached over and squeezed his hand, lightly.

‘At least it wasn’t a hot-dog analogy,’ he chuckled.

There were a few moments of companionable silence. Howie gathered his courage in both hands and asked. ‘Um. Josh. When La- James was in Russia. There was, um, Freddy….’

‘Oh, sweetie. Freddy was nothing.’ Josh turned to face Howie full-on, and became passionately urgent. ‘Freddy’s a star-fucker, sure. Or star-fuckee, I guess. But, maaaan. Not my star. I could tell you all the rational reasons. James – in this case, very much Lance – would never give that sort of power, the power to be outed with proof, to anyone on the Outside. And the Russians. Do you know what the Soviets used to do to us?’ Josh had been reading again. ‘Our gay brothers and sisters? They sent them to the labor camps, death camps really, working them to death with no safety regs and not enough food, brutalizing them, they’d given them the jobs that meant certain and agonizing death, on the White Sea Canal and in the uranium mines where they were given no protection from radiation poisoning.

‘Howie, the cats who run the Russian space agency and all, the scientists, the techs, they came of age in the Soviet years, they were trusted party members or they’d never have gotten to college or grad school. You think they think any differently about us – the Soviets called us “golden boys” and it wasn’t, it’s still not, meant kindly – you think attitudes have changed? James kept his dick in his pants all that time, unless he was on the phone or the IM with me.’ Josh blushed a little, saying that, but kept his head high.

‘Freddy was like Bobbie. He’d make himself useful practically for free, just to trade on the connection in other ways, and James used him for just that, as a gofer and, even there he needed one, as a bodyguard. I mean, Freddy has done some bouncer work, he’s adequate as security. And no way was James gonna make his dream, his determination to do this and be taken seriously, be further written off as another ’N Sync stunt by having the usual crew of Sexual Chocolate along for that.’

‘Those are the rational reasons, Josh. I can reason myself sick about Nick, and it still isn’t enough, sometimes, to feel, well, safe. To be sure he won’t find someone better.’

‘But there is no better for him. That’s what I meant. It wasn’t the rational reasons for me, either. It wasn’t even putting all my trust in James. It was because I had faith in me, too. I don’t say much about that. I hate to sound like Jus- I hate to sound bigheaded. But on this, yeah. I have that faith in myself. Freddy could, maybe, have satisfied James physically, though I like to think I’ve spoiled him for lesser lovers. But he could never have satisfied James’s heart and soul, he could never have replaced me emotionally. As long as I knew and know that, I’m safe, we’re good, and nothing else matters. Just like with you and Nick.’

‘Did you want James not to go?’

‘Man, did I ever. Selfishly. For me. But he had to. This isn’t, wasn’t, just about his dream. The space program in this country has been languishing since Challenger. The public attention span is long gone, and Congress follows suit in budgeting. James’s one real desire was to get people, especially young people, excited again, about the space frontier.’

‘With its space cowboys?’

‘The whole nine yards, yeah. Smartass. But. Excited. As excited as they were when our folks were younger. Tang, Walter Cronkite doing the live coverage of the moon shots, Apollo 13, JFK, The Right Stuff. James wasn’t just doing this for himself.’

‘But it was enough, wasn’t it, that it was his dream? Even that would have been enough for you. Right?’

‘Of course. But – Howie, man, Nicky’s not just doing this solo gig for himself, either. He knows, we all know, the times are changing. When you and we go back to the studios, the same old sound won’t cut it. The fans are growing up, moving on. Nick is trying to get some cred here and bring you some new base.’

‘I feel like such a tool. I can’t cyber with Nick! It’s just, just so…. And don’t tell me to try phone-sex instead.’

‘D?’

‘I feel. I mean, we tried. And he got revved up, but Dios, he’s practically still a teenager, of course he’s horny enough to get revved –’

‘Did you?’

‘Well, yes. But. It feels like I’m using him. To get off.’

Josh and James winced, in unison, then exchanged a glance to see who got to take this one first.

‘Howie. Listen, man. Do you feel that way when you’re making love? No. Then, dude, what’s the difference?’

‘I can’t articulate it to you. I just feel it.’

‘Well, now, D, maybe you just don’t quite know what being used is.’ James cut in as smoothly as a young gentleman at a cotillion. ‘Let me tell you a little story.

‘Joey. Before Kel. Before Briahna, mainly. I saw Joe use girls. I expect some of them were using him. But the only time I ever saw Joe get used, really…. You know how sunny Joe always is, and that ain’t no mask. But. Only time I saw the mask slip.’

Josh drew James tighter into an embrace.

‘It was by J. Who really was a horny teenager at the time. Horny, and already unsure and all mixed up to hell-and-gone. If we’d done better by him then, maybe today he’d … but that’s a rabbit trail. Point is. Joe was solid, and hell, Joey’s handsome even if he is straight as a damn die, and that may have been part of it right there, on account of I think most of the time, Justin was actually flat not conscious of what-all he was doing, but, hell, if he’d done that with me or Josh, well, he’d have had to realize things he was desperate not to realize.

‘Anyhow. It was. Boy was always brushing up on Joe, rubbing against him like a horse itching on a fencepost. Shit, he was what, fifteen? He’d’ve humped a urinal at that age, prob’ly did, which I guess is better’n being humped in a pisser –’

Howie winced.

‘Why didn’t we notice? Even notice J was questioning and having more than the normal hot rocks? Shit. I was seventeen myself, struggling, everything in my life on a knife-edge, from my coming to grips with things to my dancing and singing to getting things worked through with Josh. CK was overwhelmed, trying to keep up a budding relationship with Dani and run interference for all of us with Lou Fat-Fuck. Josh – he and I – were busy dodging, hiding, dealing with shit. Joe, well. Joe obviously knew what was going on with Justin. Knew he was being used – I mean, right then “J-Dawg” was a good nickname for Justin, on account of he was damn near humpin’ Joe’s leg. Joe knew. Knew and endured.’

‘And that,’ Josh said firmly, ‘was because he loved Justin the only way Joey, as a straight man, could or can love him. Enough to let himself be used that way, even. But I’ve seen you and Nicky. It isn’t like that with you two. And. Tell me, when you two thought about, well, trying to be together virtually, who was the initiator?’

‘Um. Well. Nick.’

‘Doesn’t sound like he’s just being used, to me.’

‘And,’ James said, ‘I don’t care if he is young and horny, fact that you rev him up, seems to me like you’re what does rev him up, so you can stop doubting he’s as crazy for you as you are for him.’

Yawning, he padded to the door, then paused to throw on a pair of boxers and a robe, in case Miz Diane or Jim or Ford had come back with the guys; then headed for the other guest room to see what sort of loot Jamesanjosh™ wanted to show him.

He pushed the door open and stood stock-still.

In that first moment only sense-impressions flooded him, impressions he was never capable afterwards of naming. His dream made flesh, incarnate, there. The lambency of light. Limpidity. The liquid grace, the fluidity with which Nick sprawled on crisp white sheets. The wash of sunlight that flooded the room through leaf-screened windows, striking gold-glinting sparks from the dusting of fine hairs on haunch and arm, turning Nick’s hair into a nimbus, a halo. Gold-gleaming, gilt Nick, naked and waiting, prone, looking over his shoulder from the head of the vast bed with a loving, avid gleam in his eyes that left Howie breathless with its intensity.

Nick. There. For him. Flushed delicately with want, eyes heavy-lidded with desire.

‘But –’

‘Hi,’ Nick said, voice husky with need.

‘But. You’re supposed to be. The. I mean.’

‘Fuck ’em.’

‘But.’

‘And speaking of that,’ Nick said, his right leg moving subtly higher against the linens, invitingly, positioning that magnificent ass, the ass that launched a thousand racing boats, just so.

‘I love you, lover,’ Nick said, plaintively. ‘Please. Come love me.’

And suddenly, Howie could move, and breathe, and think again.

‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘Oh, yes.’ And bronze met gold against the argent sheets, and the earth moved under them, and the heavens opened in glory.

‘You floss.’

‘Are you sure you’ve come down yet?’

‘Yeah, yeah. You floss, Bass.’

‘You’re purt’ nigh a monument to the marvels of orthodontics and good dentistry your own damn self, J.’

‘But. What I’m trying to say. I keep myself fit and I look after The Smile and all that because. Well. Vanity, okay, maybe a little. And, y’know, workin’ out, liftin’ and runnin’, I like the burn and the rush and shit. But I do it too because it’s my meal ticket. C used to lift wit’ me an’ all, but he decided he didn’t like it, it bored him, he’d rather spend the time writin’, so he stopped mostly, does – well, hell, you know what he does now, low impact shit and swimming and all, and girly aerobics and, shit: steppin’. Fucking girl. And fucker hasn’t gained an ounce. Fuckin’ lost weight.’

‘Look, he may be my Josh, and I love him to death, but you don’t have to tell me how annoying the little bastard’s metabolism is. I look at a God-damned rice pudding or some fried catfish and I gain five pounds.’

‘And then you sweat your guts out, dawg, getting’ it right back off, same way you tackled dancin’. I respect that, fo’ shizzle I do. But. It’s like the flossin’, okay?’

‘What is with this obsession with my gums –’

‘O-kay! Okay. Point. Point is, okay, it’s your ticket too, I get that, sure. But. Word, homey. You do this shit because you have commitments, and you have a job to do, and – Bass, you do shit because you’re a fuckin’ adult, and it’s the adult thing to do, and you freakin’ like bein’ an adult.’

‘And you don’t.’ The Eyebrow of Doom was raised as he said it.

‘What fucks me up is I never got to be a fuckin’ kid first!’

‘Well, damn, J. Fine, you had your ass on a soundstage before you knew what made your dick hard. I wish you’d had time to grow up, too. I really do, J. And I came to this later, and two years older’n you. But that meant I had to cram what you’d learned over years, since that damn beauty pageant, into months. And we tried, I swear we did, to give you space and as much of a childhood as we could. You ain’t quite the Lone Ranger here, babes. Whiles you were hoss-playin’ with CK, I was balancin’ homework, college correspondence courses even, with doing half Johnny’s job and damn near all of Fat Lou’s, and running a couple comp’nies out my hip pocket while you were out buying bling and collectin’ cars. I got a big-ass chunk chewed out my life, too, here. And you look me in the eye and tell me this: would you trade it for anything? What we have, what we’ve had, what we can still have? What we accomplished?’

‘God damn you, Bass, your fuckin’ logic is messin’ with my vibe. The hell can I throw a pity party, you keep askin’ shit like that?’

James grinned, and bumped his shoulder against Justin’s. ‘Hey. Hey. We love you, dumbass. Talk to me. What do you wish you’d had different, really?’

Justin’s brows were knitted in concentration. ‘I wish. I wish Lou had been honest. I wish we’d done what he started to do with Backstreet then backed off of. I wish we’d ignored The Program. I wish we’d done it the way Chris wanted and not twisted his dream out of shape just to make more money. Just to make … just to make me the star. I never wanted Chris to have his dreams done that way. I. I wish we’d done what we wanted, not what we were told the market wanted. I wish we’d done the music that inspired Chris to start us, doo-wop and a capella, and covers of the sh-, the stuff Joe Senior did with the Orions, and jazzy shit that would have made C so fuckin’ happy, man. Yeah, okay, maybe we’d have been the next Rockapella ’stead of the next New Kids, or maybe we’d be playin’ those fuckin’ beach clubs in Myrtle Beach you like, doin’ beach music and R&B - Motown. But. I wish we had. I wish people could hear you, I wish you’d been the new Barry White like you could be. I wish C was the frontman like he shoulda been. I wish CK’d had his chance to be this generation’s Aaron Neville, the boyband Smokey Robinson. I wish other people got to hear Joe shine and soar and swoop and cover that fuckin’ range he has, all smoky gold. And maybe then, maybe. If we’d sold our music instead of our asses and cared about the music and the critics, not the fuckin’ teenies. Then maybe you and C, man, you coulda been out, and we’d have had the XY cover shoot and we’d been marketed that way like they started to do wit’ the ’Streets an’ then got cold feet about. And maybe I’d have been able to grow up some more and maybe I wouldn’t ha’ spent all this time fuckin’ suspended among my uncertainties and forced to be the Pop Prince wit’ the Pop Princess and I’da figured out who I am and which way I swing. I wish we’d had that. And the respect and the cred that comes with honesty and shit.’

‘J –’

‘And I wish some other stuff, too. I wish momma had stayed my momma and not gotten caught up in the hype the way I have to where she’s a fangirl now, not my momma. I wish I had a parent, not another member of the “en-tou-rage.” You know what I was wishin’ when I was in LA and then while you were in H-town and I had the entire fuckin’ world watchin’ to see if I’d screw up at the VMAs? I was wishin’ you were there. And I was wishin’ – so hard it hurt – that Momma Bass was there for me like she was in Germany an’ all when my own Momma had to go home to Paul or shit. I was wishing my own momma would be a mother to me the way Diane is. That’s what I was wishin’ for.’

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, J. I truly am. Momma would have been if you’d asked, I know. No – I know, we’ve been over why you couldn’t, why you had to prove yourself to yourself by yourself. Hardheaded little fucker.’ Justin smiled a bit, and leaned a bit more against James’s broad shoulder. ‘But. About that other stuff. Wishin’ as how we’d been true to ourselves and our music, and had gone for the critical acclaim rather’n the easy money. Respect and all. It ain’t too late. We couldn’t spend all the money we got, we spent the next fifty years tryin’. We can afford to become ourselves now. We could put out a doo-wop album or vocalese jazz, next time, and suck up the loss and get some damn critical acclaim, we want to go that route. Justin. Look. I don’t know if we have another album in us. That’s up to you, a lot of it. I do know that if we do, it’ll have to break a lot of new ground and move with the times, one way or t’other. But together or sep’rate, we can be ourselves now, we can afford to, and we can get the critical nod, if we just gut it up and try. Always believe that. Never doubt that, not for a minute.’

‘Do – do you? Do you believe that, really?’

‘I sure-Gawd do, J. Serious as a heart attack.’

‘Then maybe I can believe it too. Y’know, that’s something else I wish. I wish we hadn’t had to go through this to be friends again. All of us. You and me ’specially.’

‘Maybe we had to. Maybe this here is what-all it took.’

‘Maybe you’ll have to believe for both of us for awhile.’

‘I can do that.’

‘Yeah. You know what. You can. I know you can.’

‘Stop fidgetin’ and close your eyes, J. Damn near need to be propped up with matchsticks as it is. Just trust. And rest.’

Justin yawned. ‘Okay. I can do that.’

Five minutes later, AJ and Josh crept in. ‘He out?’

‘Yeah. Like a light. Thanks, Alex.’

‘It’s been done for me. I’m just payin’ forward, man.’

Josh smiled. ‘Should I be jealous?’

James snorted. Justin didn’t wake. ‘Yeah, right. We’re … friends again. But you think I don’t know what side my bread’s buttered on, mister, you got yourself a whole ’nother think a-comin’.’

‘You’re not leaving me for Limba- Limba- Limberlake, then?’

‘You’re bendier. And prettier. And sexier –’

‘Jesus, do you two mind,’ AJ groaned.

‘– And hell, I may be an ol’ country boy fresh off the watermelon truck, but it don’t take me long to look at a hot horseshoe. My momma didn’t raise no idjits.’

‘Looks to me like somebody raised about five,’ AJ said to no one in particular.

‘Ten,’ Josh said. ‘Alex. Honestly. What do we do with him now?’

‘Let him sleep.’

‘After that, smartass.’

‘I can make some calls. Find a sponsor. And hell, I’m still a baby at this myself, but I’ll help where I can. You got my number.’

‘You’ve helped a hell of a lot already.’

‘Just payin’ it forward, like I said.’

‘You’re a good man, AJ McLean.’

‘Jeeezus, Kitten, keep it on the DL, will ya? My badass rep’s already shaky.’

‘Josh?’

Josh recognized immediately what was in James’s hand. Those damned photos. Dallas. Lenny Kravitz. New Year’s.

‘James. I swear I didn’t. I’ll pee in a cup if I have to, to prove it to you, it was close quarters, that damn fake tent thing, but unless it’s second-hand there is no THC in my body, I swear to you –’

‘Baby. Calm down. I trust you.’

‘I. You. You trust. Okay. Did? Um.’

‘Just calm yourself on down, sugar. I trust you.’

‘I. Idon’talwaystrustmyself.’

‘You want to try an’ run that-un past me again in English, hon?’

‘I don’t always trust me. I don’t. And. Back in the day. When I did. My judgment got all. And it’s dangerous. When I was younger. Before you, well, after you but before us, when, um, when I’d –’

‘You got smashed or high, you were on your knees or your back in a New York minute. I know that, baby. I also know that was half a lifetime ago. Hell, with my damn allergies, you think I wouldn’t know if you’d smoked pot?

‘What it was, I was dropping these off in case your clippin’ service didn’t have the same ones I got, in case Momma Karen wanted ’em for the scrapbook. Now. What brung this-all on, hon?’

‘While. You were away, okay? I told you already that I. But it was because. I was alone, I was scared, I was going nowhere, Jive acted like I was dogshit and J was God…. So, like, Dallas called, and I was excited, and. You know that, um, m-, milieu.’

‘Cain’t blame it on “that milieu,” mon vieux. You dabbled long afore that, when you were about as whitebread as the Wonder Bread shelf at Winn-Dixie.’

‘I. I didn’t mean. But there was that milieu, and then J got Tara to beard for me, and I hadn’t known she was heavy into it, and. So.’

‘I know.’

‘Y- you know?’

‘Oh, neither AJ nor Momma dropped any dime on you, though knowin’ you the way I do I know damn good and well you talked with the both of ’em. I just figured it out.’

‘Oh.’ Josh couldn’t look at him.

‘So you can stop beatin’ yourself up about bein’ a bad person and a bad husband and that-all, on account of how, soon as you said to yourself you had you a problem, you went and got he’p and fixed it. I wish you’d told me how it happened, way you are now, back when I got home and you told me that it happened, but what matters is you fixed it and you didn’t try an’ hide it. And now that I’ve heard from you that it happened when you were alone and depressed and being dissed “by fortune and men’s eyes,” that’s all the more reason, me not to worry about you being tempted at a party when you’re happy. I do think you need to be more careful, for image purposes, about what invites you accept, but I know you’re working a particular groove right now and I reckon as it’s payin’ off. Anysomehow, it’s done and over and all right, and you’ve told me the last part of it now and we’re fine.’

‘I should have told you everything when it happened.’

‘Hon, you should. And what I’m a-fixin’ to say, I shouldn’t. And for any other time, any other circumstances, I wouldn’t. But maybe your instinct not to hit me with this right then, to protect me, when I was watching the wheels come off ever’thing in Russia and couldn’t fix that, and couldn’t have come on home to deal with this right then…. Maybe that one time was the right time not to have told me until I got home.’

It had been a horrible year, an annus horribilis (though God knew James wasn’t about to say that, even to Josh. He’d never hear the end of it).

He’d fallen apart during, and missed, the best Leonids in ages, though he’d been able to see and enjoy the Geminids, later. Josh had been incredibly depressed on World AIDS Day; Thanksgiving was spent in combat, all of them fighting to save J’s soul, and Christmas and New Year’s were largely sacrificed on the altar of publicity for “Blowing Me Up.” Howie had been down, Nick’s siblings were falling apart, Justin had gone off the rails, all hell had broken loose.

But that year was over now. Blessedly over. Done.

James looked over at Josh as he clambered into the car (what he wouldn’t give for a tenth of Josh’s effortless grace). Josh was, at last, serene, and James knew he himself was at peace, more at peace than he had been in years. The PCAs, the AMAs, all the flummery of January had been unimportant, and all the press speculation meaningless.

The Grammys, though. This was it. There would be no sweeping declarations – hell, there might be: who knew, anymore, with these loony brothers of theirs. But there needn’t be, at least. No grand scenes required. But there would be signals enough. They would come together and they would, at last, just know, without much discussion, if any. Osmotically. Either the band was coming back; or they were breaking up and moving on, but breaking up, now, on terms that didn’t break their brotherhood; or they were going to simmer down, be like the Tams (fifty years, only fourteen albums, and still icons: what a gig) or the Moody Blues. Three possible ways. Fork in the road.

But whatever the decision was, even if they picked one that didn’t work out and had to be revisited, whatever choice they made, they could rest now. Be at peace. James and Josh exchanged quiet grins.

The driver opened the door and the cameras started flashing as they set foot on the red carpet. Chris was there, quivering a little with excitement, and Joe, looming over him, with a smile as wide and warm as the Gulf Stream. And Justin, looking intense, but looking, finally, himself, whole. James could feel Josh relax, next to him. He nodded sharply and wheeled them into line, almost ready to sing cadence for their march in, the seemingly casual amble that was so disciplined beneath it all.

He could rest now. They all could. They knew where they stood.

Fair-use quotation from ‘Miss America,’ 2001, Aleena, M. Taylor, S. Lee: sung by Nick Carter, Now or Never, Jive / Zomba / BMG 2002.

All other tunes and lyrics traditional (public domain).

All news clippings as credited, and referenced pursuant to the fair-use doctrine.