Beauty Queen

her kickoff speech at the opening of the Y.W.C.A. on Friday. And get this. I am supposed to go over there and cover it for Haskins. He wants me to do a feature on how this kind of crusade affects police work. I'm even supposed to interview the great lady."
    "Homosexualism ?"
    "That's apparently what the born-again crowd call it," said Jewel, raising her pinkie again. "I talked to her headquarters to make an appointment for an interview, and that's the word they use. They can't even bring themselves to use the word homosexuality, let alone gay. Haskins has me doing all kinds of research, you see."
    "What religion is she?"
    "She's a Baptist, but that's neither here nor there. All those conservative religious people are alike, no matter what church they're from. They all hate us. They all interpret the Bible differently when it comes to other things, but they all hate queers and dykes just the same. It's the only thing they agree on."
    "What else do you know about Jeannie Colter?"
    "Not much," said Jewel nonchalantly. "Rumors that she had some kind of nervous breakdown, that she's become a real religious nut, that she and her husband don't get along too well . . ."
    "You don't know much, do you?" said Mary Ellen.
    Jewel smiled, and then just as quickly her smile faded. "You know," she said, "back in the Middle Ages, there was an inquisitor in Germany named Conrad Something-or-other. He traveled around Germany on a mule with a little hunchback assistant, and everybody hid when he came to town. He burned more people at the stake than any other single person in those days. Heretics, witches, queers, you name it. They called him The Witches' Hammer."
    Jewel drank the last of her coffee.
    "Jeannie Colter is going to be the Hammer of the Gays," she said.
    Mary Ellen tried to scoff it off. "Every other politician in the country makes anti-gay noises . .
    Jewel shook her head. "You wait and see. This is no ordinary anti-gay person. I've been reading some of her old speeches. She's touched on it now and then. She's well informed. Most of them just make noises about gay men, right? Well, Colter even knows that lesbians exist, and she hates them too. I'll betcha a teacher made a pass at her once, and she loved it, and now she hates herself."
    "Well, thanks for cheering me up," said Mary Ellen.
    "Sorry about that," said Jewel.
    "Too bad there isn't a little button you can push," said Mary Ellen, "to make people like that go away."
    "Yeah, really," said Jewel.
    The silent bedside clock said 5:30 with its little flip-down numbers. As Bill looked at it, the 0 flipped to a 1. Marion's head lay heavy on his arm, but he knew Marion was not asleep. He knew Marion was there, feeling the tension in both their bodies.
    The bedroom looked just the way it had for years. On the opposite wall, Marion's cuff links and tie-clasp lay on top of the priceless eighteenth-century English highboy, and their clothes lay on the tapestry-covered wing chair. The fireplace was a romantic-looking brick affair with a marble mantel, but it was nonfunctional, and had one of those little gas-burning fake birch logs in it. The shuttered windows closed out part of the sound of cars floating up from West Eighth Street four stories below.
    The fact was, it had been a rather unsatisfactory hour. Maybe he was getting old. Maybe it was silly to think that one could go on with a long love affair. He had always felt a little nervous at having such a good sex life in his sixties anyway.
    When the little flip-down numbers said 6:00, he would have to be dressed and going out the door. Jeannie's hastily arranged fund-raising dinner was at eight, and he had to get home to his apartment, and shower, and dress.
    "All right," said Marion, "are you going to tell me what's the matter with you, or do I have to ask you?"
    "You won't approve of what I'm going to say," said Bill.
    His arm was going to sleep, and he moved it a little. Marion must have taken it as peevishness and not wanting to be touched, as he sat up swiftly and looked down at BUI.
    Bill lay there with his head propped against the thick rosewood headboard of the wide bed, looking up at Marion. Even with the livid bum scars on it, Marion's torso, half-hidden by the sheet twisted around it, had a lean clean beauty to it, a functional beauty, as if designed to offer little wind resistance—like the cars he helped design. Bill could imagine that body marked also by the caresses of years, overlaid one on the other, like a