Harlan's Race

job and owed thousands in child-support, I did a thing that even hard-up straight men quietly do — turned tricks for a couple of years. Americans who’d said that hippie boys should be shot because they went barefoot were saying now that I should be slowly roasted to death in public. These people assumed I was carrying on with all three of the boys at once. HARLAN’S HAREM, the Intelligencer had called them.
    Now, two years later, a few tabloids, gossip columnists, and right-wing commentators were still tracking me.
    The next day, I had to reassure Eileen about Jacques. She had been visibly jealous, because he had been running with me every morning, and helping me plan the track meet. All the campus maples were afire with color that day. I sat with Eileen at the picnic table in her back yard. The two of us could hear the traffic on the nearby expressway, as the annual migration of tourists headed for New England to ‘View the colors”. Red and gold leaves fell around us.
    Flung on the table between us was the copy of the Intelligencer.
    “Eileen,” I said, “Jacques and I were never interested in each other, ever. Can you believe that?”
    She fixed me with her intense light-blue eyes. “Jacques admires you so much. He never talks about Vince.”
    “He’s probably afraid of hurting you, by mentioning Vince.”
    A leaf fell on her hair, and she left it there.
    “Jacques and I are going to run together in the 5-K open at our meet,” I told her. “Do you think you can hack that? He’s going to be my rabbit. I’m aiming for the national masters’ mile again this winter.”
    Eileen sighed, maybe seeing the ridiculousness of her jealous fantasies. I’d seen the silliness of mine with Vince.
    “Why don’t you help with the race?” I pressed her. “Be there with us. I’d like that.”
    Mike Stella and my track team sent a letter to the tabloid, stating their support of me. Bruce Cayton wrote too. So did Aldo Franconi, an old Metropolitan AAU ally. The letters were never printed, of course. With Joe failing, it was Marian who dealt with the press. Jacques and I gave no interviews. Meanwhile, with administration approval, I built a fence around the house, and got a big ugly Doberman to put inside it. If the media wanted to do my dog with a silenced .22, let them try.
    It was good to have Jacques back. He settled into assisting with advanced biology. His humor made him popular with the students. Now and then he made a quick trip to the city alone, supposedly to do library research, but I had an eerie feeling he was tricking. Had he tried to look Vince up? Knowing the mood Vince was in, my lover had probably brushed him off.
    Vince was drifting away from me. I saw him in the city a couple more times — he was surly and restless, and not much fun in bed. It wasn’t clear whether Julius had materialized yet. Vince had somehow patched up his differences with Rayburn, and was staying with him. But he barely had enough money to scrape by, and had probably fallen back on dealing ounces of pot. His NYU courses bored him. He did a little running to keep fit.
    On October 19, Vince made his second and last visit to the campus, and we had our first fight since Fire Island. Deer season was open, and distant shots in the woods echoed the fact that something was up with him. I tried to talk to him. But he just exploded in my face. The last I saw of Vince, he was in the red car, heading off campus with a screech of tires. I knew he had about $50 to his name.
    “Well,” I told Harry on the phone, ‘Vince can sell the car.”
    “He won’t have to,” said Harry’s voice. “Destiny calls.”
    My young bird had finally flown away to Julius.
    The last Saturday of October, our track meet dawned partly cloudy and cool — the runner’s idea of a perfect day. Busloads of athletes arrived from other colleges around the Northeast — fewer than we’d hoped for. But the 5-K open had a good entry, co-sponsored with the Road Runners Club of America. Distance-running fever was hitting America, and the once-tiny RRCA had swelled into a national club with muscle. Our bleachers were actually full. The green field was full of runners, rock music and the echoing voice of the loudspeaker. Mike Stella was our official host, holding forth at the mike with his Italian wit. Betsy was out there with her squad of women runners.
    Keeping to my low profile, I stayed behind the scenes. I had put Vince out of my mind.
    It was really going