Harlan's Race

buyers’ dock with 6 bushels of neck on. Neck had dropped to $25.1 split the $150 with him.
    On the following Monday afternoon, Doc Jacobs’ nurse called. The tests were okay. Vince’s blood work did show traces of hepatitis B. But he was clean on syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, amoebas.
    “Well,” said Vince, with a glint in his eye, “bourgeois time is ... like ... over.”
    But I still had some uneasy questions.
    ‘Workout first,” I said. I was trying to get him running again.
    He smiled slyly. “Whatever turns you on, Mr. Brown.”
    SEVEN
    11 was a weekday, so the Island was quiet.
    That evening, Vince and I went for a short run, along the 9-mile stretch of empty dunes that lay between Davis Park and The Pines. Two miles at an easy pace — Vince wasn’t used to sand yet, and I didn’t want to stir up his old knee injuries. It was the first time that he’d felt “unfucked-up” enough for any cardiovascular stress. As we headed out, I was wearing my shabbiest sweats and carrying the stick, as usual. His sleek new sweats looked good on him, but they’d clearly seen little use.
    About an eighth of a mile west of the Hotel, in the last light, a bird-watcher was sitting in the dunes. Armed with binoculars, he looked like he was watching songbirds. Suspiciously I eyed his distant figure as we passed. A paparazzo in disguise? Was a tabloid headline going to read SHOCKING SECRET LIFE OF HARLAN AND VINCE IN FIRE ISLAND SEX NEST? Or was he surveilling us for reasons of violence?
    Finally we were jogging the last quarter mile, in the dark. ‘Where’d you get hepatitis B?” I asked.
    “Sharing a needle, I guess.”
    “How do you stay so squeaky clean on amoebas?”
    “I never do much of anything to get amoebic.” Surprised, I looked over at his sweaty profile glinting in the moonlight. These days, so many men and women, straight
    and gay, had done everything in the book. Even I had tried everything once.
    “It’s refreshing to find a man who’s still a bit innocent,” I said.
    Vince laughed.
    “I wasn’t Billy’s friend for nothing,” he said. “Only I... like, translated his philosophy a little different.”
    At a tense moment in our courting, Billy had said, I go to bed only with people I love. One time he had said these same words to Vince. He and Vince had met at a California high-school meet, and Vince was instantly attracted. Billy had rebuffed him in the kindest way.
    By now, Vince and I were opposite the empty dunes just west of Hotel Goodnight. It was dark, and the bird-watcher couldn’t be seen. Probably he had gone back to his campground, or back to the mainland.
    “So ... how do you translate Billy?” I asked him.
    Vince looked over his shoulder at me, with that bewitching grin.
    “I only get fucked by people I love,” he replied.
    He’d insisted he never loved anyone but me. So he meant that no one had ever had him that way. Not quite believing him, I punched him in the shoulder with a scoffing expression.
    “I never wanted to,” he shrugged. “Had too much fun on top.”
    “It doesn’t fit the picture I have of you.”
    “You don’t know me very well, Mr. Brown,” he said, grinning with wonderful insolence. “I’m patient.”
    “Lazy, maybe,” I ragged him. “Or nobody wanted your hairy ass.”
    When I grabbed at his arm, he evaded me. Our workout dissolved into rough play. It was good to discover that I could kick up my heels again. We ran in wide circles, tagging each other, hot in the impact of our salt-rimed bodies.
    “Not too hard... careful of your knees,” I said.
    Vince quickly looked up and down the moonlit beach. It was empty, except for a distant stroller or two.
    So he recklessly hauled off his clothes, and sprinted naked into the surf. I was close behind, nude myself — coming up on his shoulder with my own racing kick. Nobody could get good pictures in the dark. Screw the media. Screw the snipers. Screw our notoriety. Wings of water flew from our feet. Vince delighted my eye, plunging forward into the foam, ducking under it. Then he straightened exultantly, with hair sleeked and bubbles draining down his body. Even in the dark, that virginal butt of his shone whiter than the rest of him. I surged up beside him.
    We were just getting into a good surf-wrestle when suddenly Vince said in a low voice:
    “The fuzz.”
    From the west, the beach Jeep of the Fire Island police had just come through a cut in the dunes, probably off the Burma Road, which