The Front Runner (25 page)

For a moment the gale blew the bird cruelly. I felt a lump in my throat as I watched it. It planed sharply to one side, fighting with its wings. Then it was gliding safely downwind, away over the tide flats and dunes.

I saw Billy's eyes follow it too. The last of my young birds.

The ferry left the island at seven
P.M.
Steve and the Angel were staying on, but they walked down to the pier to see us off.

As the ferry pulled away, the six of us were all leaning on the rail on the top deck, the wind blowing our hair, our collars turned up. We waved at Steve, who was standing on the pier. He waved back. The Angel Gabriel didn't wave.

Then we sat down amid the jumble of suitcases, cat-carriers, dogs on leashes, children, and casually dressed straight parents. I felt defiant. Why should I take my arm off Billy's shoulders just because we were going back into straight country? I kept holding him. Sleepy from all the fresh air, and lovemaking, he yawned, slid down a little in the seat and put his head on my shoulder.

None of the others were being demonstrative, so to all appearances we were the only gays on the ferry.

Billy gave a soft chortling laugh. "You're getting there," he said. "We're gonna live together any day now."

"Life is too short," I said.

Finally a man in a heavy Irish sweater got up and came over to us, swaying, carrying a half-full glass in his hand. He was one of those Fire Island lushes who walk onto the ferry with a martini.

"Would you mind," he said, "not doing that in front of my wife and children?"

I looked up at him with macho insolence. "Would you mind not drinking in front of us?" I said.

THIRTEEN

IT was incredible that right after the Fire Island weekend Billy and I had our worst fight.

With all the hassles and pressures, my fear of losing him had been troubling me more and more. I tried hard to hide the fear from Billy, but he sensed it. He was hurt more and more by what he saw as my lack of trust. He was quiet, less tender, and retreated into his training, his teaching and his yoga.

On Friday morning, April 23, he mentioned casually that he had sat up late in the dorm talking with Tom Harrigan. "Consciousness-raising," he said.

I was tired and edgy, and my imagination jumped to conclusions. I questioned Billy sharply. He insisted that they had only talked, about something troubling Tom. I scolded him for breaking a training rule. At that, he just walked away from me.

All that day, he didn't speak to me much. That evening he didn't come over to my house.

The next morning, Saturday, he put in a hard workout. Around noon, I realized that he had disappeared from the campus.

I was panic-stricken and asked Vince if he knew where he'd gone.

"He went to New York," said Vince. "He hitched a ride down with Mousey, Janice and a couple others," naming four heterosexual students. "I just thought he was going to meet his father."

A gay kid loose in New York City on a Saturday night could do almost anything. Or almost anything could be done to him. Horrors flooded my mind.

I could see him being cruised or cruising on the street. The neon lights bathed his hair and shoulders in harsh color. I could see him agreeing, walking away

with the other man. This was ludicrous, because Billy had never been fond of cruising. But I could see it.

I could also see other, more possible things. He could be 'kidnaped and held for ransom by someone who recognized him. He could be beaten up, and his body wrecked, with the Trials just weeks away. He could be spirited away somewhere, drugged, gang-raped, whipped. I was sure that someone, somewhere, wanted to get their hands on the body of
my
Angel Gabriel.

Recently a big murder scare had hit the Manhattan gays. In three weeks, five gays—two of them known activists—had been murdered. Two were fished out of the East River. The other three were found in tenement basements. All had been tortured, mutilated and killed by multiple stabs. The killer, who seemed to be a straight Jack the Ripper with a vendetta against homosexuals, had not been caught. The gays were convinced the police weren't working very hard at it. The wildest rumors were going around, and everyone was being careful.

I could visualize Billy falling into the hands of this maniac. I could see the police photographing his nude body as it lay on the dirty cement floor, stuck in a pool of black, dried-up blood.

My first impulse was to go to the city and look for him. But where?

I hurried to my office and dialed his father's California number.

John sounded sleepy—I must have awakened him. But when I told him, he was instantly alert. Hearing his deep, warm, precise voice reassured me a little.

"I've tried hard to explain to Billy," he said, "what it means to be a man your age, and to go through what you did. He keeps saying he understands, but I don't think he really does, yet. But I don't think he would be unfaithful. The other times, he stayed with it to the end, and the end was always hard on him. It was always the other guy who walked out."

"He  always told me those  other  affairs weren't serious." "Serious, not serious . . . you can't pigeonhole feel-

ings. They were intense, but they were kid stuff. The feeling he has for you is very different. One thing above all, Harlan, you have to trust him. He panics when someone he loves doesn't trust him. I learned that the hard way. I gave him a very bad time about drags, and it was the only time he ever ran away from home. He was in love with a kid who was using drugs, and I was just terrified he'd start. But when I quit nagging him and told him he was on his honor, the trouble stopped. And I don't think that, outside of smoking a joint now and then that he ever went near drugs. And of course when he got serious about running, he quit smoking."

"Where am I going to look for him?"

"Look, try the movie theaters. That's where he always goes when he's really down. That time, he was gone a week and I found him in a theater. You got a paper there? Tell me what's playing, and maybe I can give you a lead."

"I fished the new
Village Voice
out of my pile of mail. (Ten years ago, I wouldn't have been caught dead reading the
Voice.)

"Is
Song of the Loon
playing, by any chance?" John asked.

"No."

"Too bad. That'd be a sure bet."

"There's Warhohl's new film. There's a whole festival of Peter de Rome.
The Experiment.
That looks about it."

John was silent a minute. "Try
The Experiment
first, then the others."

"Experiment's
at the Bedford on East 69th. Uptown. We're coming up in the world, John."

"Slumming," said John.

"The first show he can see is the two o'clock. If I leave right now, and he's there, I can catch him before he leaves."

"Call me the minute you find him. And call me if you don't."

I jumped into my Vega and drove like a madman down to Manhattan. It was a fine warm spring day, and I drove with the window open. The smell of the

woods along the parkway reminded me painfully of that day, just thirteen months ago, when we'd begun our relationship.

In Manhattan I drove around for half an hour, swearing out loud, trying to find a parking place in the crowded upper East Side streets. Finally I squeezed into one in front of an antique shop, and I ran, not walked, the six blocks to the theater.

It was a plush new one, with a gleaming glass box office. It was twenty-five minutes to four. I asked the cashier, then the ushers, if they recalled seeing a young man of Billy's description. They didn't remember, which wasn't surprising, since I didn't even know what he was wearing.

So I went into the lounge and sat down on the jazzy red sofa of real leather to wait. About fifteen people were waiting there for the next show. They were drinking coffee from the expresso bar.

I waited those twenty-five minutes in anguish. I was remembering seeing
Loon
with him, and touching him for the first time. I was sure I wouldn't survive losing him. If he ever leaves me, I thought, I'll kill him, and then I'll kill myself—even if it's before Montreal. I would put a single bullet hole into his perfect body, destroying it as effectively as the murderer I was still worrying about.

Across from me, two well-dressed gays were sitting on another red sofa, sipping at their little white cups and talking in low voices. One was handsome, about six feet, with a build that even I would have called athletic. Not a runner—a swimmer, maybe. He had long, unbelievable, auburn curls. I looked at him hatefully, seeing him not as a possible lover but a possible rival.

Finally the people started coming out. I sat watching them pass the lounge door, shaking with nervousness. Then I saw Billy.

He came walking slowly through the lobby, alone, hands in pockets, wearing an abstracted air. He was wearing his most tattered jeans, a washed-out purple jersey, his eternal worn-out Tigers, and a $150 jacket of brown split-suede that his father had given him

for his last birthday. As a concession to anonymity, he had on dark glasses. With an aimless air, he stopped in front of the billboard announcing the coming attraction. a revival of
Last Tango in Paris.
Gravely he studied Marlon Brando as he grappled with his teenage daemon. He did not see me.

My muscles started to slump with relief. I was just getting up when I overheard the two strange gays talking excitedly.

"Look, that's Billy Sive," said the swimmer.

"Darling, I can't believe it."

"It's him. I saw him close up at the Garden."

"And he's alone, darling. He must have broken up with what's his name, the coach."

"God, he's beautiful," said the swimmer softly.

He got up, his eyes fixed on Billy. I knew he was going to cruise him. My first impulse was to walk over there and break his thoroughbred neck. Then a base thought entered my mind. I would try to watch what happened, and stay out of sight, and see if Billy would let himself be picked up.

Billy turned away from the billboard and pushed out through the glass doors. The swimmer followed, while his friend stayed sipping coffee. As casually as I could, I went out on the street. I could see then-two heads among the people milling outside. My hands were clammy with the sweat of fear.

Billy was already halfway down the block, ambling sadly along, not looking at anything, his uncombed hair blowing in the spring sunshine. The swimmer came up by him, walked at his side, spoke to him. Billy didn't look at him, just hunched his shoulders, and kept going. The swimmer laid his hand on Billy's arm. Billy shook it off.

They reached the corner. The swimmer was still talking and put his hand on Billy's arm again. This time Billy turned swiftly on the swimmer, his fists clenched, and even from thirty feet away I could see the hostile expression in his eyes. The swimmer shrugged and turned back toward the theater, passing me.

Billy stepped off the curb and started across the street. He hadn't noticed that the light was red. A

battered yellow cab was speeding along the crosstown street toward him. He didn't see it.

I sprang forward, yelling, "Billy!" I could see him lying terribly injured on the street, legs shattered. I could see an ambulance screaming with blinking red lights.

The cab screeched to a halt just four feet from Billy's uninsured million-dollar injury-free legs. It skidded a little sideways, the smoking tires leaving black skidmarks on the street. Billy started a little and jumped sideways.

The cabbie leaned out the window. "Mutha-fuckin cock-sucka! Why doncha watch where ya goin?"

Billy raised his middle finger at the cabbie, and ambled on across the street.

"Billy!" I yelled again, now on the corner. He heard me and turned. I ran across the street while the light was still red, narrowly missing getting hit myself.

He was waiting for me by a florist on the corner. We stood looking at each other. Hot sweat poured down my body under my clothes at the thought of how the cab might have hit him. I felt so ashamed that I had thought he would walk off with that swimmer. I tried to put my hand on his arm. But his eyes were somber and reproachful, and he shook it off.

We walked along the avenue in the sunshine, jostled by shoppers.

"Look," said Billy, "we can't go on if you're going to treat me like this. You're afraid of losing me, but you're creating a situation where you might."

"Don't threaten me," I said.

"It's not a threat. It's a fact. If you don't believe in me, how can we love each other?"

He stopped and faced me amid the afternoon strollers. We were speaking in low voices, but if we'd shouted, no one would have paid any attention. Stranger things happened on Manhattan streets than two gays having a domestic quarrel.

"Look," he said, "if I could show you all the thoughts in my head, you wouldn't see anything there that would make you jealous."

I was feeling more and more ashamed.

We were walking again, toward Fifth Avenue.

"What can I do to make you more sure?" he said. "Whatever works, I'll do it. I don't care what it is. I just don't want to have these fights with you."

We went along Fifth Avenue, under the budding trees. Then we turned into Central Park and walked along the paths. Cyclists and strollers walking dogs passed us. We walked apart, under the newly green trees, over the worn lawns scattered with rubbish.

We sat on a park bench. Near us, a bum slept on the lawn in a stained overcoat, a newspaper over his face.

"Look," said Billy, "if the bourgeois rituals mean that much to you, then let's get married. What the hell. Whatever keeps things peaceful. Would that help?"

I took his hand and held it hard, wanting to kiss it.

"Let's come out," I said. "All the way. Why should they tell us how to live?"

Billy smiled a little. "The USOC will burn us at the stake."

"Let them try," I said.

We didn't have any great making-up embraces. First of all, we were in Central Park, and second, the quarrel had shaken us both very much. We roamed around the park just touching each other, full of a strange new hurting tenderness. We drifted through the Children's Zoo and petted the ponies and looked at the pigs and chickens. We wandered across the Sheep Meadow and fell into a game of tossing frisbees with some students. At the pond, we watched the children sail little boats, and helped one small boy rescue his capsized schooner. We went out on the lake in a row-boat for a while. For the first time, I didn't care if we were recognized or not.