Beauty Queen

about gays in the Police Department, she might know more than she let on.
    In all his years of furtive churchgoing, she was the first person he had run into who would know him in his other life, as William Laird, real-estate man and developer. Hopefully, she had not noticed him, being engrossed with her lovely blonde friend.
    Shaking with fright and confusion, Bill got up and left the church while the congregation was still bellowing out the last verses of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
    Even as he walked out, he cursed himself for his fear.
    With his glasses back on, he sat in the car for a while, feeling like he was on the verge of tears. Finally, he drove downtown, to do his usual cover-up sketches. He wandered through the Wall Street district, so empty on Sundays, and went to Trinity Church. The services were over, the church was empty.
    He wandered around in the churchyard, looking at the sooty old tombstones, and wishing that his bones were moldering under one of them.
    In the church, Mary Ellen and Liv stood together, singing "A Mighty Fortress" together at the tops of their voices. Now and then Mary Ellen sneaked a glance at Liv because she liked to study her lover's profile when she sang. Liv had the wholesome abandon of a child singing a Christmas carol, showing her tonsils, cocking her head to one side.
    When the Reverend Erickson preached the sermon, it was—of course—about the Jeannie Colter business.
    Mary Ellen sat there listening trying to make some sense out of it. The Reverend Erickson had picked out various quotes from the Bible to show that gay people had to love their enemies, and to pray for them.
    Mary Ellen tried hard to digest what the preacher was saying. She knew very well that Jesus had talked about loving thine enemies and turning the other cheek and so on. But the very mention of Jeannie Colter's name stirred up a witches' caldron of resentment in her stomach. The Bible talked a lot about revenge and outraged anger too. "Revenge is mine, saith the Lord." "And they took them out and stoned them," and so on.
    "What we need," she said to herself, "is a gay Joshua who will march around the straight Jericho, and blow a trumpet, and make the walls come a-tumbling down."
    When the service was over, Liv said, "What is this general conference?" She added wistfully, "I have never been in Washington, D.C."
    "I wanted to go to the general last year," said Mary Ellen, "but it was in San Francisco, and I couldn't afford it. Maybe we should go... get away from the witch hunt for a while."
    "Oh, I would looooove that," said Liv. "We could drive down there, no?"
    They were walking slowly down the aisle toward the back of the church, arms linked, jostled happily amid the congregation. At the church door, the Reverend Erickson was shaking hands. Mary Ellen reached out to the pile of flyers and took one.
    Eighty miles north of New York City, Jeannie Colter was attending the 11 A.M. worship service of the First Baptist Church in Pawling.
    She sat in the first row of pews, on the right. With her were Auntie Mary and Steve. The smaller children had gone to Sunday school, and her father was down in New York. These days he came up to Windfall less and less—he was so engrossed in his South Street thing! If it weren't for Steve, so straight and tall for seventeen, with such a good head on his shoulders, she would have felt totally alone.
    Behind her back, she could sense the sympathy— condescending and otherwise—of the congregation. Poor brave woman . . . coming to church alone all these years . . . unsaved husband who rejects God... maybe she doesn't pray hard enough for him . . . I've heard rumors that their marriage is on the rocks . . . shocking.
    Things had not gone well at home that morning.
    Little Cora had asked if she could go to the movies with a boy. Jeannie had said that no, she couldn't, that she was too young. Cora had retorted that all the girls her age were wearing bras, so she wasn't too young to go to movies. Jeannie had retorted that wearing bras and going out with boys had nothing to do with each other, and that Cora had nothing to put in a bra, in any case. Cora then retorted that she knew girls her age who were already sleeping with their boyfriends. Jeannie had been horrified that her daughter was able to talk about it so easily, let alone that she was in contact with girls who were doing it. Just for that, she had retorted, Cora wouldn't be going to the movies with anybody.
    "It's