How Long Has This Been Going On (76 page)

"Deal's a deal," Frank murmurs, trying to signal Lonnie to move toward the door. I'm not God, right? We have to make our miracles for ourselves.

"I'll
make the shittin' deal!"

"Stay put," Frank tells Lonnie. "Be cool."

The subject says, "Don't give orders."

Frank shrugs and holds it, limp, agreeable, unthreatening.

"You're too tall," the subject tells him.

* * *

Walt wouldn't leave Blue's side, though Mason kept trying to separate them. Nor did Walt have much to say.

"So
serious,"
said Mason, putting on an earnest face to match Walt's. "Are you depressed or profound?"

"Worried," said Walt, as Blue gave him a heartening caress along the back of the neck, and Mason, with a flicker of the eyes, censoriously rose above it.
Be discreet,
he silently warned;
I don't want to,
Walt replied.

Walt managed to drag Blue off to a corner of the cavernous living room, but even there Mason pelted them with friends and associates to meet and conversations to fabricate, all about nothing—because when two gay men are forced to delete the gay from their rap they have to leave out whom they know, how they live, and where they've been. What's left?

"Mason wants you to play the piano sometime er other," Blue told Walt, when they were alone.

"Ugh."

"At least then you won't have to talk."

"I need a drink."

"What's all this drinkin' you've suddenly took to?" Blue asked as he waved at a waiter. "Used to be, you'd pass out halfway through a V-8."

"Johnny taught me the pleasures of the festive cup."

Blue said nothing, as he invariably did now when the Kid's name came up. Walt asked the waiter for a Bloody Mary. Then Blue made an announcement: "If this Mason thing works out, I'm goin' to get us a real place of our own."

"Hike Johnny," said Walt.

Mason brought over a sparklingly pointless couple, some banker and his wife, he inquisitive and she vivacious on any topic. Yet they lacked content. Naughty Walt kept addressing them as "Mr. and Mrs. Banker," and they left soon.

"Don't get into trouble, now, youngster," said Blue.

Frank said, "The problem is that cops basically think like you do. But we're not allowed to say so."

"I'll frisk you," said the subject. "Pat you down, that's the way."

"But it's tricky, balancing one action with another action. One life with another life, say. I'm totally passive here, right? Still, it's my training against your gun." "I'm in charge of this," said the subject, quite furious.

"Oh, I see that."

"And you get down!"
the subject screamed, pushing Lonnie back onto the couch. "You
move
when I
say,
you hear, now?"

"I don't do small talk," Walt, on his third Bloody Mary, was explaining to yet another of Mason's couples. "I only do topics."

"The economy," said the man.

"Choosing the right school," his wife put in.

"AIDS," said Walt.

Challenged, not deflated, the couple aired their sympathies. Then the wife said, "The ones I really feel sorry for are the infants. The innocents."

Walt froze.

Blue jumped in, quoting Walt: "'All victims of AIDS are equals.'" But that didn't stop Walt from attacking this couple's heterosexist view of the plague. "They're innocent and I'm guilty, is that it?" he cried. "What am I guilty of, you loathly disgusting idiot?"

The woman looked at him as if, at any moment, a sign would appear, reading that Walt was a psycho and therefore not responsible.

"You lurid bitch," Walt added.

"That's enough," said her husband.

"Go fish," Walt told him.

The couple walked away.

"You better stop," Blue told Walt.

"Let the innocents stop! Let their straight phobo
parents
stop! Let the right-wing Nazis stop!
I'm
not going to stop!"

Walt was moving, Blue trying to grab him, and suddenly Mason was there, absolute consternation in a black pin-striped suit.

"The Howards told me..." Mason began. "I really feel—"

"Your mother blows dead rats in hell," Walt observed.

"I'm takin' him home."

"No, I really feel sorry for the infants," Walt insisted, resisting Blue's grasp. "You can't know how much, the infants. It's so—" Even Mason put out a hand to restrain the vivid Walt, but he backed away from them. "No, I'm at the piano. I'm entertaining, remember?"

The whole room was watching.

"Hello, boys and girls," Walt predicated, taking stage. "Walty is eager to—" He glanced at a dowager with a ferocious bodice and emeralds enough to outfit a Ziegfeld-size Oz pageant. "Yes, madam? What, your pet goose is ailing? He suffers from what the Catholics call sexagesima? Meaning his shithole is too tight? Never fear, the doctor is in. Just put him on the examination table, loosen him up, and let's have a gander."

Casing the joint like a pro—like the Kid doing his Act, come to say it—Walt spotted a particularly handsome man, winked, and stared at him, saying, "And now for my next trick."

The party stood in its tracks, drinks in hands, faces set, bearing it. Mason was looking at no one, and it was out of Blue's hands. "Music, ho," said Walt, moving to the piano. The Kid would have popped out another one-liner here, but Walt was a novice at cabaret. He jumped into a piano version of the vocal break to "Mr. Sandman," then sang the lyrics that the Kid had taught him:

Mister Sandman!

Please make me cream!

Send me a hunko,

'Cause I need to ream!

Give him a bum

Like melons in season.

I'll rim him promptly

'Cause I can't bear teasin'...

"They've been throwin' stuff in here all the day long," said the subject. "Telephone, food, you. Tryin' to distract me, ya see. Tire me out. So I'm done with the talkin'."

"The trade," Frank reminded him.

"You," said the subject, sending it to Lonnie but holding his gun and his gaze on Frank. "Who told you to get up?"

Move fast, Frank thought. The subject's tired and punchy.

"I told you to sit down," said the subject, turning his aim upon Lonnie, as Frank pulled up the back of his windbreaker with his left hand and drew with his right. Smooth, swift, silent; yet the earth turns over.

The subject and Frank are barrel to barrel. "Let the boy go and you'll have me, okay, we know that," said Frank, edging around to stand between the subject and the hostage, both hands steady on the piece, ever ready, our Frank. "Go, Lonnie," he says. "Slow and easy."

The subject was silent, no doubt reconsidering his choices as Lonnie, with great misgivings, went to the door and awkwardly fumbled it open through the rope around his wrists. "Close it after you," Frank ordered. "Tell them to stay put and wait."

Without a word, Lonnie left them alone.

"There it is," says Frank.

"Shit, I shoulda frisked you right off."

"You didn't handle this well."

"You got your trade, didn't you? Aren't you goin' to surrender to me?"

"Let's talk first."

"Fuckin' cheater is how I see it."

"You wanted a dead cop, right? You'll have one, I assure you."

"So stop holdin' the drop on me!"

"I'm curious to know what leads a man to this moment in his life. Two men, to this moment. We must have something in common, you and I. Something in our character. Right?"

"You gonna put your shittin' gun down, or what?"

"True, I don't see anything in you that I could share. You're a real dumb fuck, for starters—my Aunt Matilda could take a hostage more efficiently than you did. You're a mean fuck, too—what's that kid guilty of for you to put his life in jeopardy?"

Strange how quiet it was outside. There had been no noise when Lonnie left the house—no cheers, no stampede of media people, no splurge of light for the cameras. It was keenly still in the whole world.

"If you'll allow me some philosophizing," Frank went on, "the trouble with the world is, nobody's guilty of crimes any more. Guy sneaks into the city offices and murders two men out of personal revenge, then claims candy made him crazy. The jury doesn't say, Cut the bullshit, you killed two men because you wanted to, you disgusting slimebag. The jury says, Oh, okay."

Frank spoke with cold precision, but his eyes were on fire and he held the gun jutting out almost up the subject's nose. Frank was right, of course: The subject was incompetent by even amateur standards and had vaguely expected to pull off a publicity coup and then surrender, not be cornered by an angry angel of death.

"So what's your excuse?" Frank asked him. "Bad home background? Incomplete sex life? Maybe you're just a rotten piece of scum who doesn't deserve to live. Why trouble the state to try you? You're guilty. You know it and I know it."

Worrying, the subject said, "That phone thing they threw in here works both ways, remember. It's pickin' up every word you—"

"In the movie of this, my next line is 'Say your prayers.'"

The subject slowly lowered his hands and dropped the gun. He was shaking. "I give up," he said.

Frank lowered his gun, too, slightly, and let off five rounds into the subject's stomach.

Walt finished his song and stood at the piano, smiling at everyone. Walt smiled at Blue, who silently and slowly shook his head, the anger rising in him from deep, deep in the bone. Walt smiled at Mason, who also shook his head. "Thanks for the use of the hall," said Walt, already on his way out.

He was content. He took no notice of Blue, took his time retrieving his coat, said nothing as he strolled out into the wonderfully crisp and vital Nob Hill nightscape, where Blue, coatless, caught up with him and sorely taxed young Walt for his disloyalty and ingratitude and selfishness. Walt didn't respond. He kept walking.

Roughly pulling him around, Blue cried, "You stand and listen when I'm talkin' to you, Mister!"

But Walt turned again and kept walking. "We're quits, Blue," he called over his shoulder, still content.

The phone thing was cackling, and Frank heard the voice of the chief of operations furiously trying to find out where things stood.

Watching the subject writhing in his death throes, Frank said, "Hurts, right?" He picked up the receiver and said, "This is Frank Hubbard. The position is excellent. Give me one minute and I'll be home free."

There was static and the chief for reply, but Frank simply repeated, "I'll be home," and put the phone thing down. He sat on the couch, trying to keep his mind clear. He, too, was shaking. "You have your good days and bad days," he said aloud. "Tomorrow I could wake up a neurological wasteland, but this was a good day. The dog is off the quicksand."

He carefully fitted the .38 into his mouth, opening wide so he could aim the muzzle as close to straight up as makes no nevermind, and pulled the trigger. He was peaceful then. And now he is out of the story.

Who is the hero of this novel, I wonder? There have been moments when the Kid, Lois, Tom and Luke and Chris (triadically), and perhaps especially Frank could each have emerged as the protagonist. But perhaps our saga lacks what Stonewall culture has, largely, lacked: a leader. Yet other oppressed peoples thrust forth their Spartacus, Boudicca, Wat Tyler, Margaret Sanger, Lech Walesa. It sometimes seems as if the sole unifying figure in gay culture is the current major male porn star.

Nevertheless, with the passing of Frank—who made the most ambitious voyage in these pages, from a dupe of the authoritarian regime to a progenitor of the rebellion's supremely mutinous characteristic, its sexuality—a hero does leave us. After the power of this man's self-assertion, the comings and goings of these people seem less vigorous by comparison, just so much gossip. Imagine a scandal sheet relating how a certain young musician and his love-for-sale boy friend threw a Major Scene at the New Year's "do" of the scion of an old Nob Hill family, how a certain drag artiste of local renown helped the musician move out on his boy friend on the sly, lock, stock, and cock ring. Rumor hath it that the scion has crossed the hustler off his party list and that the musician and the drag hag have run off together to Baghdad-on-Hudson.

Or what about that lady director and her hunk-of-the-month actor lover? The whole town's talking—seems the two are suffering tie-the-knot blues, because he wants her to end her career to concentrate on layette technique and the P.T.A. Sources close to the pair say it was a frosty February indeed when the couple separated, temporarily, so
she
could fulfill an engagement helming
She Stoops to Conquer
for the New York Shakespeare Festival. But the Town Crier hears that
he
flew in last weekend for a surprise visit, and all New York swears that
they
were the Couple of the Year—in the few moments, that is (we blush!), when they left the bedroom.

Tongues wagged when an Asian actress of our acquaintance dumped first one girl friend, then another, within a week, apparently in hopes of becoming San Francisco's gayest divorcée. Now the dish queens are exploding with the news that the ladies have erected a ménage à trois. It's Beach Blanket Bedlam!

As for that well-heeled, well-featured, and oh-so-contemporary family whose teenage son recently played a starring role in the suburban hostage drama that swept the ratings late last year: Looks like the generation jitters are over at last. Says the chastened son of this brush with death, "No more Daly City for me!" He's free again and eligible as ever, girls, so form a single line.

It was a quiet New Year's, though, for Larken Young, cited as the Sole Survivor and Longtime Partner of the late Frank Hubbard, who got his

Fifteen Minutes of Famous the hard way in that same Daly City extravaganza. Larken spent the end of the holiday clipping the newspapers and pasting up the final pages of the scrapbook he had been secretly keeping for twenty years on the life and works of big Frank. And now he, too, is out of the story.