Beauty Queen

gratification I have? he asked himself. So he stayed largely virginal and kept walking. He visited with gay antique dealers and gay artists and gay restaurant owners and gay lawyers, and always they knew him simply as "John." When he heard of the Metropolitan Community Church, he started attending the services regularly, always sitting in the back, never drawing attention to himself. He was deeply moved by the sermons of the Reverend Troy Pearry (even if Pearry ious a Presbyterian.)
    Gradually, he had come to realize that there were two New Yorks. There was the visible New York, the one acknowledged in history books and old prints and bronze plaques and museums. And there was the invisible New York, unacknowledged anywhere save in the laws that forbade it and the sermons that condemned it. It was that gay and lesbian New York, so complex that few of its own inhabitants knew all its twisting byways, so complete that a person could live out his or her days there and hardly ever speak to a straight person.
    He didn't return to his car until late afternoon. This was one day when he didn't have any new notes in his notebook.
    Chapter 5
    Jeannie had not given her political workers much time. But to their credit most of them dropped whatever they were doing and came to their first meeting.
    Now they were all sitting around in her large living room. The sunlight poured through the western windows, through the screen of Sidney's palms and orange trees, onto the overflowing ashtrays, revealing air bluish with cigarette smoke, the squashed sofa cushions, and the half-ruined wheel of Camembert cheese and the last dried slices of rye and French bread.
    Jeannie scooped up some of the ashtrays and carried them into the kitchen to empty them, wrinkling her nose.
    Her old campaign manager, Tom Winkler, followed her, with a small smile on his face.
    As she dumped the ashtray contents into the garbage can, he leaned against the large refrigerator. Arms crossed over his chest, he said: "The trouble with you is, you don't really like the smoke-filled rooms."
    "Ugh," said Jeannie. "I've never smoked, and I'll never get used to it, I guess. My mother never smoked, either. It was the one thing that neither of us could stand about my father. My mother always used to tell him that he would never have to go to Hell because he carried it around in his jacket pocket."
    "Being a Baptist is easy for you, isn't it, Jeannie? It's your second nature."
    Jeannie was at the sink, scouring out the ashtrays with soap and hot water, still wrinkling her nose at the fact that her hands had to be immersed in that ash-flavored water.
    "Is that intended to be a dig at me because I didn't put out a lot of booze for everybody to drink today?" she said.
    Winkler shrugged pleasantly. "How do you expect me to do my finest work if you don't oil my brain with a little good bourbon?"
    Winkler was the kind of tall, slouched man who just missed having a little paunch. His gray hair always had an unkempt look, he never wore his belt in the snuggest hole, and you were sure he might have a shoelace untied. If you didn't know him, you might dismiss him as a slob. If you looked at his resume, however, you learned about his grim, disciplined, brilliant campaign work for the Rockefellers and for Mayor Shay. He had come to work for Jeannie in 1977, because he was convinced that she could fill the void that the departed Rockefellers had left in New York State politics—a conservative with stature, but a conservative who could do what the Rockefellers hadn't done—reach the people, move the grass roots.
    Jeannie knew, however, that he had been shaken by her decision to take a sabbatical from politics last year. He was also worried by what he knew and she knew was her nervous breakdown. He had worked grimly to keep the truth about it from the press, to help her throw up a smoke screen, saying that Jeannie Colter wanted a breather, to be with her family and her husband and her children for a bit, that she wanted to write a book, and various other lies.
    Now he leaned against the refrigerator studying her as she bustled about, drying the dripping ashtrays, which were now sparkling clean.
    "Jeannie, how are you, really?" he said.
    "I'm fine," she said. "Really. I've gotten a lot of rest, I've done a lot of thinking. I haven't exactly written the book, but I've made a lot of notes on my thoughts. I've got a whole box of pages in there somewhere. Maybe some editor could put it