Beauty Queen

question with another blunt question: "Are you really ready for us to live together?"
    "Are you?" Bill had parried again.
    "I've been ready for years," Marion had said, in a low voice. He stood there in the sunlight, the wet breeze moving his curls, and the strong sunlight picked out every line and scar on his fine face—picked out every fleck of color in his searching eyes. No doubt about it. Marion was no longer young either.
    Bill had not been able to face those searching eyes. He had turned away, and gone to the next broken window, and looked out. A big passenger liner had been steaming slowly in under the Verrazano Bridge—he remembered that detail very clearly.
    "I would like to think that I'm ready," he said softly, "but I don't know. All I know is that I want this place. I see myself living here, and I see you here too. I see us waking up in the morning, and looking out these windows at the harbor."
    "Is that a real wish?" asked Marion. "Or is it just one of those fantasies that make us feel less guilty?"
    "I don't know," Bill had said. "I don't know what holds me back. It's not my religion—I've sorted that all out. And it's not my profession—self-employed, I'm independently well-off—nobody can take away my job or my money if I come out. It's not even Al. It's . .
    "It's Jeannie," said Marion.
    "Yes," Bill admitted.
    "Are you worried about what she would think? Or are you afraid of her?"
    "Both," Bill had said simply. "I'm afraid of ... of that moment when she will turn on me like a lioness and call me an infidel."
    "But according to your way of thinking, she is an infidel," said Marion. He smiled a little. "I notice that every Baptist uses that word about any other Baptist who doesn't agree with him."
    "Yes, that's right," Bill had said, shrugging, watching the great steamer majestically heading across the bay, raising her white bow-wake, past the Statue of Liberty. "The infidels cursing each other. It doesn't make much sense, does it?"
    "My dear Bill," said Marion crisply, "the whole history of humanity boils down to two infidels cursing each other. Sometimes I think that what separates man from animals is not that he has a soul, but that he is capable of nasty arguments about religion. Can you imagine two aardvarks arguing about how many angels on the head of a pin?" Bill had started laughing. "Or two elephants arguing about whether Moses really wrote the first five books of the Bible?"
    They had both laughed a long time, each of them leaning at his separate window, as the beautiful ship steamed on across the bay and disappeared behind Battery Park, heading for the North River.
    Now, standing there alone at the window, Bill remembered this conversation so clearly. It came at him like eerie whispers from dark comers of the great loft, where the wind had piled up stained yellow newspapers.
    He walked around some more, wondering what was troubling him about the house. Now and then he found his hackles bristling. He had felt so good about it every other time that he had visited it. Something was here that had not been here before. He had an ESP about houses and buildings, and sometimes he wondered if he could be a professional sensitive. He wondered if some muggers were hiding somewhere in the building, waiting to jump him. Now and then he slipped his hand inside his jacket to feel the length of weighted lead pipe that he always carried when scouting out old buildings.
    At last, on the second floor, he found it.
    In the northwest comer room, as he played the flashlight along the dark wall, he saw an old man sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, his head tipped over on his shoulder. The man was wearing a ripped tweed coat; his long white hair was mussed. The flashlight beam also reflected red from two tiny pairs of eyes on the floor beside the man, and from another on his shoulder. Then there was a scuttling sound, and the eyes disappeared. Rats.
    Bill froze, his hair rising up on the back of his head. Instantly he recognized death. His heart pounded, and sweat sprang out all over him.
    He dared to walk a few steps closer, playing the flashlight over the crumpled figure. The man, probably a tramp or a wino, couldn't have been dead more than a day or so, as the smell was still faint. But the rats had already been at work—the man's lips had been eaten away, baring the dried gums and dark-stained teeth. The flesh was stripped from the hand laying in his lap.
    Trembling with revulsion, Bill left