Beauty Queen

pet food and vet care for pets. The tax money will go to, uh, clean up after, uh, dogs on the streets in the bigger municipalities. Now, this is going to accelerate the rate of abandoned animals, because people won't be able to care for them, so . . .
    Jeannie had been about to cut the kid off irritably, but with his last sentence, she began to see what he meant.
    Winkler's mind was miles ahead of them all.
    "That English vet," he said, "what's his name, Herriot, sold millions of copies of his book. People are pushovers for animals, right? And why should pet owners be discriminated against that way? I can see Jeannie being photographed visiting shelters, and going to bat for old people who can't afford to keep pets . . .
    "It's not a big idea, really," said the aide, growing braver. "But it will show people that Mrs. Colter cares about the smaller issues like that. . .
    "I like it," said Jeannie to the aide. "Write me a memo on
    it."
    For the moment, the storm had blown over. They all felt charged with a new sense of purpose.
    Chapter 11
    It was shocking, Mary Ellen thought, how fast a dead friend could disappear out of your life, if you were gay.
    Danny had been whisked away into the eternal blue without giving his friends any of the comforting rites that society afforded to straight people. His parents had the body removed from the morgue to an undertaker in the Bronx. They told the press that none of Danny's "depraved associates" would be allowed at the brief church service, or in the huge Bronx cemetery where Danny was laid to rest amid hundreds of rows of thousands of tombstones. So neither Armando nor any of Danny's friends sat in the church and heard the comforting words of the Catholic priest about the resurrection and the life. They were also denied the catharsis of crying at Danny's graveside.
    Mary Ellen found that Danny's death had lodged in her throat like a lump of bread too dry to swallow. And, she told herself, she had been only Danny's friend. Armando must feel a hundred times worse.
    The condolences that Armando had received had been "off the books," so to speak. No nice notes from relatives saying "If only I could find the words" and all the other funeral folkways which became more precious when you were denied the right to them.
    However, within itself, the gay community had reacted heavily to Danny's death—not just in New York, but all over the country.
    The gay newspapers ran editorials about it. For a week or so, picketers outside Jeannie Colter's headquarters carried signs such as COLTER PREACHES MURDER and BLACKBURN'S BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS. That Sunday, at the MCC, Reverend Erickson preached to a packed church and wrung muffled sobs from his congregation with a fiery sermon about the able young police officer, cut down in the flower of his youth just as he was finding his way out of the closet. Reverend Erickson also managed to get in a few digs at some gay Christians who had hardened their hearts to Danny's death because he was into S&M.
    "We are our brothers' and sisters' keepers," he thundered, "regardless of what their lifestyle is."
    As the MCC general conference in Washington, D.C., got underway, the MCC board decided that the candlelight march to the Lincoln Memorial, planned for Friday night of the conference week, would be turned into a gigantic memorial service for Danny Blackburn and others who had died violent deaths back over the years of the gay liberation movement.
    Mary Ellen and Liv, seeing how Armando was suffering, tried to persuade him that they all ought to go to Washington for the Friday march.
    "It won't be his funeral," she told Armando, "but it'll be the next best thing."
    She had been afraid that Armando would start drinking a lot. But Armando had learned too much discipline as a bartender to drown his grief in booze. He trudged to work at the Eagle's Nest every day, went through the motions behind the bar, drank no more than usual. The big man, an underground celebrity overnight, didn't make plays for his customers' sympathy. He was silent, with fixed eyes, beyond reach, like a wounded animal. The men crowding into the bar quickly learned that he didn't want to hear their condolences. He didn't even accept the larger-than-usual tips they left.
    Finally Armando said he would go to Washington. This was on Thursday night. Sam and Jewel decided they would go too.
    Friday afternoon, the five of them drove down to the capital, Mary Ellen and Sam and Liv in front,