Beauty Queen

today," said the WNEW newscaster. "This is the fourth defeat for the bill now famous as Intro Two. The news of the defeat was greeted by a storm of protest by gays and their supporters in the city . .
    Sitting there slumped over, Danny felt the weight of the handgun in his pocket. It was like a millstone, dragging him to the bottom of the sea.
    He was so alone, sitting there at midday like a tired businessman or an old drunk. He didn't dare to go steamin' and gleamin' in crowded discos at midnight, with a thousand men doing the Bionic Boogie all around him. He didn't even dare to have dinner with Armando publicly in a restaurant— they had always eaten at home. Wouldn't it be nice if Armando could pick him up at work, and the guys in the locker room could yell, "Hey, Danny—Armando's here!" But that was a dream. Not even Martin Luther King's kind of dream. It was a dead dream.
    At four that afternoon, he and Mary Ellen would go on duty. It was no rumor now that a giant gay demonstration was going to happen at Colter's headquarters that evening while he and Mary Ellen were on duty. Colter's headquarters were in the next precinct uptown. But if those guys couldn't handle the riot, and called in other precincts for help, then what?
    Danny figured that the usual figure of 10 percent gay, applied to the U.S. population as a whole, also applied to the NYPD. Which meant that, in Manhattan, dozens of other police officers, sergeants, captains, etc., were secretly feeling the same dream and doubts that he was. He did not have to know these hidden police gays personally—he did not have to know their names. He knew their feelings to the full, and that was enough to link him with them.
    His hand tightened on the glass of Wild Turkey.
    The men at the other end of the bar were leaving. They were big husky outdoor types, beautiful men. Two wore machine-faded Levi's, and the third, a blond, wore his daytime everyday bagged-out black leather pants.
    As they tramped by Danny, the blond man stopped and put his hand on Danny's shoulder and said:
    "The word is out, brother. Walk by Jeannie Colter's office at eight tonight."
    Danny looked gloomily up at them from his drink. He sincerely hoped that the blond didn't decide to grope him. If he did, he'd find the off-duty gun in his pocket.
    "Walk by?" he said.
    "Yeah," said the big leather man. He was weather-beaten, looked about thirty-five—a ranch type, maybe a fugitive from the West.
    Danny went into his simpleminded trucker's act.
    "Well," he said, "I've heard a lot of wild talk about violence. I'm not so sure this looks good to the straight folks up at the big plantation house. Know what I mean?"
    The blond man's hand tightened lovingly on Danny's arm, but respectfully did not slide any farther down. It was not a moment for groping.
    "No violence," he told Danny. "Some of us have decided to be there as enforcers. You see, we think that the folks up at the plantation house ought to see our power. But we also don't want to dirty our hands with that bitch's blood. So it's gonna be a walk-by, brother. Understand? Anybody gets out of line, we take him out."
    The big man winked at Danny.
    "See you at Thirty-eighth and Park, brother," he said. The three men walked on out of the bar, with that muscle-bound semi-bop that not even a black brother from Harlem could duplicate.
    Danny looked at Lenny in disbelief.
    "Yeah," said Lenny, "I guess there's been a lot of controversy about this thing tonight. Some people want it to be noisy, some people don't. But the organizers have realized they'll turn out more gay people if they advertise it as a peaceful thing."
    Danny thought about it a bit more, feeling a single ray of light shining into his dread. Then he went to the telephone and called Mary Ellen. She was home, housecleaning and about to take a shower and get ready for work.
    He told her what the three men had told him.
    "You and me have been through the whole thing a million times already," he said. "We don't dare call in sick, right? Eveiy gay person on the force is going to be tempted to call in sick today, and they'll be watching whoever does. If we're on duty, and we get assigned a run to this affair, we can't sabotage our car or something, because they'll find out, right? So . .
    Mary Ellen's mind was already a jump ahead of him. You had to hand it to her—she was a brave smart girl.
    "So you're saying that we go if we have to," she said. "You're saying we should take the