GIANT STEP

by Morgan Ives

A Self-Contained Unit from a Novel in Progress

one

The doorknob rattled, and Tommy Zane, buttoning the top button of his shirt, shouted "Just a minute." Then, as he slipped back the bolt and opened the door, he stepped back, uncertain.

"Oh-I thought it was Mario."

"It's me," Angelo Santelli said testily, "what's the matter with you? We never lock doors in this house."

"You never knock on them, either," Tommy replied, "and I have a sort of crude objection to Lucia or Tessa catching me in my shirt-tail."

Angelo stood in the low doorway; a big man, stocky and compact, he looked younger than the forty-four years he claimed. He had put a weight, and softened considerably, since the days when he'd been manager and catcher for the "Flying Santellis"; but he was still, muscular and good-looking, and it wasn't hard for Tommy to reconstruct in his mind the time when Angelo had been one of the top acrobats with any of the big circuses.

"Mario's not up yet?"

"He went to put some more ice on his face. He ought to be up in a minute," Tommy said, stepping back inside the room.

"Mind if I come in?"

"It's your house. Sure, sit here." Tommy motioned the older man to the one chair and sat down on the foot of the bed, kicking his discarded tights under the edge of the blanket. A slim, energetic redhead in his early twenties, he,

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like Angelo, appeared considerably younger.

"Cigarette, Angelo?"

"I'll smoke my own, thanks. Those things you and Mario like, they taste too much like cough drops. What happened to his eye?"

"Didn't Lucia tell you? He was practicing a pirouette, and Lucia didn't drop the bar fast enough. The trapeze smacked him in the forehead-he hit the safety net like a cannonball."

"I saw you putting ice on it, in the kitchen."

Tommy looked up quickly, warily; covered it by fumbling in his shirt pocket for a lighter.

(It hadn't been anything. He'd just been remembering. It had been-oh, how many years now? Back when he was just a kid, crazy to fly, hanging around winter quarters, practicing endlessly on rings and horizontal bars. Watching the aerialists. Running errands for them, helping with their rigging. And showing off, of course; trying to attract attention. And he had. There'd been the day Mario-Mario Santelli of the Flying Santellis-had smiled at him, and said "Okay, okay, kid, on the ground you look good, put on the safety belt and let's see what you can do up at the top of the rigging.”)

"I understand enough-" Angelo checked himself. "I've been trying to tell myself I just didn't understand, Kid.”

Tommy found he had forgotten to breathe, and did. "Can you understand this, then? Mario and I need each other."

Angelo Santelli colored to the roots of his dark hair. He put out his cigarette in a china ashtray shaped like the state of California, grinding it out painstakingly, to cover his abrupt loss of voice. Finally he coughed. "Look. It's hard for me to remember you're just a kid. Look here-Tommytwo grown men shouldn't-"

"Angelo, for-I'm 24. Don't think you have to explain the facts of life to me."

"It's a goddam cinch somebody does," Angelo retorted, thrusting out his jaw. "No, you listen. I know you had a kid crush on him, when you were a little fellow. We expected that. Kids mostly outgrow that stuff. He wasn't much more than a kid himself, back then. But I simply wouldn't believeeven after what I saw downstairs just now-"

"Heck, we were just clowning." But Tommy's brain was running a ratrace. Exactly what could Angelo have seen? Sure, he'd put his arm around Mario's shoulder, and then Mario had turned and pushed a piece of ice down his neck and they'd started scuffling and punching each other-

"We were just kidding around,” he repeated. He saw Angelo's face start to lighten, and he knew the big man would believe what he wanted to believe. Angelo handed him back the lighter. "Remember the day I offered you a