Beauty Queen

fiercely.
    "An amateur job," sniffed one of the arson squad men to Mary Ellen. "No finesse at all."
    That night, as she sat at home with Liv eating dinner, they watched it all over again on the evening news. Liv even swore that she could spot Mary Ellen in the shots of the scene.
    "Why are you so depressed?" Liv wanted to know. "It was just a place where they show dirty movies."
    Mary Ellen shook her head.
    "I'm not crazy for porno films," she said. "I don't defend them as freedom of speech. I don't think I'd even be crazy about porno films about women. But that's not the point. The point is, that people only bum down the gay theaters that show pom."
    "Is that really true?" Liv insisted.
    "Ask any police department in any big city," said Mary Ellen. "The arson rate for gay theaters and gay bars is higher than for straight bars and straight theaters. For Chrissake, on the West Coast, gay discos and gay bars are always burning down."
    Liv was gazing at the TV screen, where the smoke-and-flames scene had just shifted back to the newscaster at his elegant big desk, which looked like the console of a spaceship on "Star Trek."
    "At work," Liv said, "people are talking a lot about Jeannie Colter. I hear all the talking. But I don't say anything . . .
    Jeannie Colter was watching the same TV broadcast, as she sat at her dressing table blow-drying her hair. She had a dinner lined up with city council member Ervin Blakey, whose vote she felt she could swing, if she frightened him enough.
    As she watched the smoke and flames rolling up from the burning theater, a deep thrill rushed through her. It was like something from the Bible, like the final day of the cities of the plain when the Lord rained His destroying fire on those who defied His word. Reverend Irving would have been able to come up with a thousand Bible quotes about fire.
    "Probably some arsonist with a finer moral sense than most people," she thought. "I hope they don't catch him. If I dared, I'd burn down every theater like that in this town."
    Several days later, Bill was saddened when a smaller all-male theater downtown on the Bowery, the Grecian, was also gutted by fire. This time, witnesses recalled seeing a man fleeing from the vicinity.
    Quick radio work by the police caught him a few blocks from the scene. He confessed to setting both fires, and was booked.
    Now Jeannie's critics were accusing her of creating an evil climate in New York City, a climate that made open season on gay people and anything connected with them. Jeannie, who had responded to the pickets and other gay harassments by hiring a few security people, had an answer to that. She said that she regretted the crimes themselves but that, in a way, the crimes represented the feelings of New York City's decent law-abiding ordinary citizens. "The average person does not want these places in town," she insisted. "My mail is running ten to one in favor of cleaning this element out of town."
    Bill was sad for a number of reasons.
    One was: he and other city historians knew the Grecian as a stately, if seedy and rundown, example of an early 1800s theater. He had a number of photographs and sketches in his bank of files, from when the little marquee stood in the shadow of the old El, now also gone.
    This city's sign must be Scorpio, Bill thought. It is forever devouring its own tail.
    As the days passed, however, Mary Ellen learned that Jeannie Colter's verbal violence was affecting gay women too.
    One afternoon, at Murphy's Coffee Shop, she heard from Jewel a wrathful story of vandalism. The victim was a lesbian news-magazine, Women, that had been launched six months before. Women was now being quietly sold on some newsstands in the city, alongside such New York-oriented gay male magazines as Michael’s Thing.
    "They broke into the printer's during the night," said Jewel, her voice tremulous with anger. "They completely destroyed the new issue. It had just come from the bindery and was ready to be shipped. They ripped up a lot of copies and poured oil and paint on the rest. And then they trashed the type that was already set, for the issue after that."
    Mary Ellen felt a little ill.
    "And," Jewel added, "the perpetrators had to have some inside help. Because the printer had other jobs in the shop— non-gay stuff—but none of that got touched."
    Mary Ellen sat weighted with sadness. The incident had happened in the West Village. She wondered whether the precinct there was working hard on the