Beauty Queen

midnight hours. He had been a little unfaithful to Armando (though not much). Armando, not possessive, was amused. The hell with the shooflies. Let them see him.
    Danny had even gone to the Treasure Chest and bought a leather cap just like Armando's. He had driven the store crazy, trying on everything in the place. He even toyed with the idea of buying a pair of those black leather chaps that bared your buns, but he couldn't afford them.
    He did collect a bunch of old keys from around his apartment, and proudly hung them on his left hip. The hell with the shooflies.
    That day, Armando had had the day off. Danny had gone to his lover's apartment about noon. They had a rather ordinary but very emotional session in the bedroom. Then they went out to the Men's Club, and had a big steak dinner and a few drinks. Then the two of them toured various bars on Barrow Street. All eyes turned toward them, and Danny knew that he and Armando made a very impressive pair.
    Then they went back to Armando's apartment, and had another session, and talked about moving in together. Then they fell asleep.
    Danny woke up about two, and knew that Armando was finished and would sleep clear through.
    So he got dressed and put on his jacket and his new hat and his bunch of keys. He felt strangely happy. He didn't have a job, but at least he had a lover, and he was very happy about that. He'd survive, somehow.
    Out in Armando's garden, he could hear the gingko tree and the ivy leaves rustling in a delightfully unsettling breeze. Off in the distance, over the noise of the occasional passing car and a stereo in the neighboring apartment, he could hear distant rumbles. A summer thunderstorm was blowing up.
    Out on the street, on an impulse, he decided not to go home yet. The night was young, and he felt so beautiful.
    So he headed for the Spike, for a night-cap.
    He walked swiftly, feeling an eerie little rush as he walked down the long blocks of darkened warehouses.
    It had been years since muggers had tried to jump Danny. Matter of fact, the last time he was mugged was during his bad-boy days. He was hanging around a supermarket parking lot in Howard Beach just about this time on a Saturday night, looking to cop a nickel bag of grass from one of the local small-time dealers; three boys mugged him, beat him up, and robbed him of the five dollars he had in his pocket for the dope.
    At the Spike, he enjoyed himself enormously, considering that none of the guys in the place seemed worth being unfaithful to Armando with. He leaned unsmiling against the bar for a while, and let himself be admired from a distance. He had an interesting conversation with Lenny, who told him all about his boyhood in Wyoming. He had three shots of Wild Turkey, and one on the house from Lenny, and when he left the place, he was riding pretty high, with the black leather cap cocked at a rakish angle over one eye.
    Outside, he could see the thunderheads coming over the Palisades, all lit up with fantasies of pale orange and pink and yellow lightning. The wind blew as fresh across the river as he could ever remember it, and it actually carried from somewhere a scent of grass and trees across the Hudson to the sleeping city.
    Danny turned the comer of 21st street and started east toward Ninth Avenue, whistling tunelessly.
    There was a big feeling inside him, of Saturday-night good times going back over the years—good times in the little clubs and discos of Long Island, when he still thought he could get to like girls, good times in redneck bars in the shadow of the elevated in Queens, where his innocent face helped him to hustle a little pool, playing for quarters against straight left-over-beatnik types in black leather jackets—good times that taught him everything he knew about people and about the streets, and that had stood him in such good stead on the force. Good times hanging around people who were fencing stolen goods and dealing coke and playing numbers and hijacking trucks—even people who smuggled seed clams in from the South Shore towns—never getting into serious trouble himself, (well, a couple of scrapes as a juvenile, but never as an adult) because he was too fond of his family to hurt them, but always on the edge of trouble, always knowing what was going on.
    Danny knew that he had done well on the force, and he was convinced he would get another chance to give society all his knowledge of bad boys and how they got to be that way.
    A small part of his