The Midnight Dance — Behind the Scenes: Chapters 3 & 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2 introduced Charles by Day. He’s an asshole but he’s also sure of himself, of his business and hopeful about the future. Chapter 3 is Charles by Night.
We see how worried he is about his business and how he doesn’t like the person he is. He’s reflective, even poetic. A gentler self, the self that Elam will come to love.
The Flaming Unicorn
Color plays an important role in this chapter and becomes a theme representing the influence Elam has on Charles. The scene moves from greyscale (white noise, low lights) to rainbow the second Elam enters it. Charles wants no part of it at first – Elam is the flaming rainbow and Charles is trying to quash everything ‘rainbow’ within himself.
“It’s like a pride flag made out with a unicorn and then exploded. As if the thing wasn’t the liquid manifestation of Mardi Gras already, the bartender proceeds to set it on fire.”
Later, Charles will tell Devin: “He ordered the gayest drink I’d ever seen. Love at first sight. With him. Not the drink. But the drink was good too.”
Charles falls under Elam’s spell right away as the two chat. I wanted them to have a connection that’s deeper than just finding one another hot. This is a hookup but it’s a complicated one because its Elam’s first time and it involves Charles letting down his guard. That wouldn’t have happened if they’d gone straight to dancing. In fact, it wouldn’t have even gotten to dancing if Charles hadn’t been coaxed into it.
“Oh, I’m not—”
He pulls away. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought…” He bites his bottom lip and his gaze slides away from mine. There’s color in his cheeks and every fiber in my being is yearning towards him. I want to kiss those cheeks. I want to kiss him. He swallows and he stands. “Sorry.”
I grab his arm. There’s no thought, only instinct. Only the knowledge that I can’t let him get away. “No, I mean, I am.” Even now I can’t say it. I’m gay. The word lodges itself in my throat.
Charles can’t even say that he’s gay out loud at this point, but he already wants Elam enough to go to a gay club.
Elam’s backstory
“I only know this one because I used to dance here. Ballet classes are expensive.”
Elam’s backstory and feelings about it were one of the things inspired by A Chorus Line. In this case, Paul San Marco monologue because it helped me understand how a boy who wants nothing more than to dance might put himself through dance school (ballet can be incredibly expensive).
This is the first of three jobs that Elam mentions, but at this stage we don’t know that Elam is only 18. Charles assumes, after seeing the dancers inside, that Elam would have been on the bar in a cowboy hat. Firstly, he doesn’t have that sort of build. Secondly, it would have been illegal. No, whatever dancing Elam was doing was much more shady, something where he could lie about his age and they wouldn’t care. This is why he’s so defensive of sex workers later, because he’s already used his body to make money. How far he went, I left deliberately vague. Elam may only be 18 and still a virgin, but he’s been forced to grow up fast through circumstances. Both with his family background, and with the jobs he took to reach his goals.
Chapter 4
In this chapter, Rainbow Elam enters Charles’s world of grey. Including his car.
The amount of time I spent researching the car…
I chose this particular car (the Lexus RX 450h) because it would have been a year old at the time when they meet. It’s both a luxury car and, supposedly, the greenest hybrid SUV of the time. The SUV factor foreshadows what we’ll learn about Charles visiting the farm.
The silver and black, of course, match everything in his life, including his apartment. It’s all just shades of gray until Elam arrives.
How Charles looks
“The streaking lights throw the planes of his face into relief. It’s all hard lines from his chiseled jaw to his square chin. He has a neat, close, hint of facial hair that’s carefully maintained and cut to accentuate his angles.”
I wrote Charles to match the picture of Zane I had sitting on my hard drive for the cover of Kiss of Life. As luck would have it, the model also did a nice stock image in a suit. So here are the brothers side-by-side.
Charles’s apartment
When I wrote Brian’s apartment in The Spindle’s Curse, I picked a real apartment building. I made sure that the building was old enough for the apartment to be rent controlled and even got some blueprints of the layout. This helped loads with writing a location that felt realistic (and with things like how long it takes to get places!)
So, when it came time to Charles’s apartment I did the same thing. Charles lives at Sky – Luxury Suites because:
“These stylish units feature spacious living areas infused with natural light, designer finishes, state-of-the-art fully-equipped kitchens, hardwood floors and a wide-range of innovative in-house amenities, including 15,500 square feet of fitness space and two breath taking zero-edge swimming pools.”
They had me at fully-equipped kitchen.
Plus, it was essential that it was walking distance from Elam! He’s a bit further than Lincoln Center Plaza at 1.3 miles.
The interior is made up, but it was inspired by this video on the largest apartment in New York City. I shrunk it down significantly of course! And I gave Charles just the one floor. He doesn’t have Arrigo-level wealth, after all. The main thing I wanted was the view:
Elam’s age
Drinking age in South Africa is 18 so it only occurred to me when Elam whipped out his ID, that Elam wouldn’t have been allowed into the club. And so was born the plot device of the fake ID. It turned out super convenient as it gave Charles a reason to freak out.
Would he still have slept with Elam if he’d seen the real ID? I’m not sure. He really likes him, but I think that he would have needed more reassurance about the age gap. It’s something that continues to bother him going forward (and will come up for them again). From the outside, we can see that Elam is mature for his age and that Charles is emotionally stunted, so they balance each other out. From Charles’s perspective, he’s incredibly aware of the power dynamics and would have probably been frightened that he was taking advantage. This is partly why he jumps to the conclusion later that he’s been taken advantage of – it’s sheer projection.
The first “dance”
This whole scene was so tricky because on the one hand it has to be romantic enough that they want to see each other again. On the other hand, it couldn’t be perfect. It would be totally unrealistic for Elam, a virgin, to experience no discomfort. It would also overshadow all their future lovemaking if it went off without a hitch. The essential thing was to show Charles’s kindness, because we didn’t have a lot of that from him yet.
By the end of the scene, I wanted to establish Charles as the protector who will give Elam support until Elam finds his own strength.
Fun fact: it was totally accidental that the free sample of this book on Amazon ends with this scene. I wonder if that has anything to do with this book being my top seller?