Harlan's Race

East Sixties, and a calming spot I knew, Paley Park. In mid-block, a couple of townhouses had been demolished to create a quiet courtyard. Under the tubbed trees, dozens of New Yorkers sat dreamily at cafe tables with their bag lunches and takeout coffee. They were mesmerized by sounds of the waterfall that sheeted down the back wall. We picked a table in some sunlight against the wall, where I could see everybody.
    “Why Hames-West?” I asked. “You’re not a hemophiliac.”
    “Oh, no. I’m just fascinated with blood. Mom used to talk about bad blood ... meaning yours. How can blood be bad?”
    As he talked about his work, I could see how bright he was. A lot brighter than me.
    “You single?” I asked.
    “Engaged. You’ll meet Astarte. We’re going to get married when I finish my internship.”
    Did this mean he had no gay leanings? Not necessarily.
    “Astarte? Quite a name,” I said.
    “Outrageous name, huh? She’s beautiful too ... a real goddess.”
    In my most determined woman-dating times, I had never referred to any female as a goddess. Betsy and other young lesbians and New Agers talked a lot about Diana these days. The old dykes I’d known talked mostly about Amelia Earhart.
    ‘You ... uh ... live alone now?” he asked.
    ‘Yeah.”
    Our limping conversation died. He sat staring at the waterfall for a while. Suddenly he said, ‘You feel so cold.”
    A silence. “I followed the whole ... the Olympic thing on TV. What you said to the press after the trial. I felt... I really ... well, I cried. I told Mom I was going to write
    you. But she gave me such a bad time that I didn’t.” Another silence. “I don’t blame you for being angry at me.” How could I explain that I wasn’t angry, just frozen inside?
    “Well,” he said, “it was great to see you once, anyway.” On the street, my son gave me a last shy forlorn look. Suddenly my hand sprang out, almost on its own, and gripped his sleeve. His eyes met mine. Instantly, I saw how stupid and paranoid I was being. He could be trusted. I crushed him against me — this warmth, this life that issued from a desperate try at being straight, on the back seat of an old car in 1953. We held each other hard for a couple of minutes, as the warm sun faded over the roofs. This time, Michael managed not to drop his notes. As our hug relaxed, his hand patted down the front of my jacket
    — he’d discovered the stick I carried inside. He stared at it.
    “My world is a dangerous place,” I said softly. “If you’re going to be in it, you have to get hip.”
    “Can I visit you a lot?” he said. “Make up for lost time?”
    As November passed, and I marked time to mid-term, it was clear that Angel had something besides “mono”. The drive from the college into New York City, along a gray-water Hudson River to the narrow sooty streets of Greenwich Village, had always depressed me — reminding me of lonely searches for city sex. Parking my car on the street, Michael and I rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and heard Steve unsliding ten different dead-bolts.
    A sickroom twilight had gathered in their apartment. Steve had quit writing, and puttered, taking care of his lover. He didn’t want his domestic situation aired in the press, so friends and business associates were kept away with the fib that he was writing something big. Angel’s weight had dropped to 115 pounds. He had headaches, which he communicated by a new word, “hurt”. From the way he stumbled and walked into walls, there were central-nervous problems.
    “Doctor Jacobs ordered up a bunch of tests,” Steve told us. “Maybe it’s a new flu or meningitis or something.” The thought of a nasty new bug, spreading to Prescott, or to Michael and his girlfriend, worried me. But so far Michael and I hadn’t caught it. My resistance had always been good.
    About this time, LEV. sent me another letter.
    KEEP YOUR SON AWAY FROM FAGGOTS. OBEDIENCE WILL BE REWARDED. DEFIANCE IS ALWAYS PUNISHED. FEAR IS HEALTHY.
    Wrathfully I mailed it to H-C. They had a whole file of letters now. Julius had gone over them with a fine-toothed comb, Harry said. The pattern coming clear was no pattern at all. LEV. seemed to have culled his materials from every wastebasket in the country.
    Harry also mentioned that Julius found no prints on the .22 casing. Nothing to connect the bullet with anything.
    The local police had failed to connect the LaFont shooting with that local hunter kid and his old