Harlan's Race

still stuffed in one pocket of his black leather jacket. His silver peace symbol, on its leather thong, was askew.
    This tall, rangy youth had exchanged a look or two with me, before Billy and I fell in love. At that time, I still had a rule about not sleeping with my runners, so I had stiff-armed Vince. After I finally let myself love Billy, Vince had hidden his feelings out of respect for Billy, who was his best friend. Officially, Vince was in Montreal as my assistant. Unofficially, he was the other gay, world-class runner I’d trained — the one who hadn’t made the team. The ruined miler whose stride still gave him the look of a wolf on the hunt. Now he felt like he wanted to cry on my shoulder.
    My shoulders ached with weariness — I hitched them. Vince hesitated, then came over and rubbed them gently.
    “You should ... like, get out of those clothes,” he said hoarsely.
    I knew he wanted to show caring. But touch was something I shunned right then, so I walked away to the closet. Billy’s brown velvet suit was hanging in there. Just last night it had clothed his living frame, at an uproarious celebration dinner. My fingers ran down the sleeve. So soft. But not warm. A deep wrenching racked my guts. But no tears came.
    Just then, Harry Saidak and Chino Cabrera came in.
    “Oooh, it’s the baby killers,” Vince said with an edged voice. “Lock up the napalm, Mary.”
    Vince was 24, and as a college student he’d evolved from the peace movement into the gay lib movement. But my peacenik assistant had a hard time stretching his acceptance of gay to include these two veterans.
    The two vets ignored him.
    They were a colorful pair. Harry was 35, a six-foot Green Beret, with the Midwestern good looks of a blond Rock Hudson — except he was missing Hudson’s gift for comedy. He’d been in Vietnam early, and was still the perfect soldier. Chino was 27, Chicano, 5’ 10”, sinuous and Asian-looking. He was a SEAL, fresh from the Nam, where he’d been a scout/sniper, and later an advisor, and he was struggling to adjust. Chino was the one with the humor, though his power to laugh had been severely strained.
    The two had met at a veterans’ group, spotted each other’s gayness and hunger to come out, and agreed that a peacetime use for their skills was in order. With violence against gays and lesbians on the rise, they figured they’d get some business from the gay community. So Harry and Chino had settled in West Hollywood, the gayest part of L.A., and started their own small firm — H-C Security Service, Inc.
    But gay celebrities and gay hoi polloi had a passion for living on the edge. “We shouldn’t have to be protected,” activist George Rayburn told H-C indignantly. So the two men, who’d had millions spent on them in uniform, often wound up working for beer money as bouncers at gay clubs.
    During that long Montreal day, our two Mary marauders had lost a little spit-polish — boots dusty, jeans sweaty. They wore no holsters — Canadian authorities wouldn’t let them carry arms. Chino didn’t like packing a gun anyway, because he was still too afraid that he’d overreact.
    “Okay, everybody ... time to talk turkey,” said Harry.
    Wanting to listen, Bruce, Marian and a hollow-eyed John Sive pushed into the bedroom too.
    Billy’s father, a civil-rights attorney, had an angry expression that reminded me I’d ignored his advice on bodyguards. Before the Games, worried by death threats, John and I had agreed that we needed our own security — gay brothers whose loyalty was beyond question. John hadn’t liked my hiring H-C. Combat vets are too trigger-happy, he said. But few big-name protection services wanted to protect any famous faggots, whereas H-C was eager for the job. John and I had had a big fight — our first.
    Harry looked at Bruce. “Not a word in print till you hear it from the police,” he growled.
    “I know the drill,” said Bruce coolly.
    Harry looked around at all of us.
    “So,” he said, “sniping got a shot in the arm in Vietnam. Makes the JFK hit look a little primitive. Now the thinking is coming home, and other people are using it. Mech and his partner are that kind of sniper.”
    My whole body jerked, with a volt of nervous energy.
    “Partner?” I said. “More than one?”
    “Professionals usually work in pairs,” Chino told us. “The boss and I just looked at some footage from the security cameras in the stadium. The techies zoomed us as close as they