Harlan's Race

relatives, paintings and photographs that celebrated gay male beauty, and art-deco stuff he’d plucked off the sidewalks where people left it for the junkman. The sniper could now do his peeking from the rooftop of the old apartment building across the street. Harry got me a state-of-the-art telephone de-bugger from somewhere, and I installed it on Steye’s phone.
    Evidently the sniper was unhappy about my moving in with Steve. Maybe he thought Steve was my new lover. Three days later, a rock shattered Steve’s front window on the 4th floor. It had the usual inscription on it. Chino didn’t have to tell me that LEV. probably fired it from across the narrow street, using his wrist-rocket.
    Naturally, by the time I got to the rooftop, nobody was there. I mailed the rock to H-C, and they started checking new apartment-dwellers in the area. We had heavy wire screens put over the windows.
    On the surface, Steve pulled himself together. Angel’s death seemed like a thing from outer space that ate him alive before our eyes, like in a movie.
    Knowing how much Steve loved company with his paper-shuffling, I helped him sort through his unpublished work. With the old discipline, working late nights, he did the galley-proofing of Pollen Kisses, the autobiography that he’d finished on Fire Island. I was the bodyguard now — attentive, efficient, protective. I did some writing too, very laboriously. Steve critiqued my stuff, and I was able to make my first sales — all to the gay press, since my by-line in a straight magazine might draw unwelcome attention.
    Steve shared writing secrets. Pornography had taught him about literature.
    “Whatever the feeling is ... if I don’t feel it, the reader won’t feel it,” he said to me.
    When Steve’s weight dropped and his lymph glands swelled and he had a persistent cough, we called it lingering flu and overwork. By spring, when Steve sent the Pollen galleys back to his publisher, he didn’t look well. But he refused to go to the doctor. Meanwhile, eerie shop talk kept trickling among gay doctors who worried about STD. When Michael learned about Steve’s celibacy, and his reusing Angel’s old needles, my son muttered about blood.
    “That’s the way junkies pass hepatitis B,” he reminded us. “It’s a wonder Steve doesn’t have toxoplasmosis.”
    Watching my best friend disintegrate was terrible. Angel was pulling him like a magnet, drawing him out of life.
    One day, Steve tottered to his desk, and fished out a folder of legal papers.
    “Will you promise to do what I ask?” he demanded.
    He wanted to give me his power of attorney. He had kept Angel’s ashes, and wanted their remains mingled on the Fire Island beach. All income was now in a nonrevocable trust — royalties, investments, insurance policies, licenses. His condominium apartment and beach house belonged to the trust. The sole beneficiary was me. The trust would protect me from estate taxes. I could live comfortably off the interest, he said. He hoped I’d publish his manuscripts.
    I was devastated, and tried to protest.
    “No, no,” he said. “You’ve been my best friend, and you’ve never had a nickel.”
    ‘Your family won’t let you leave a dime to a queer. They’ll break the will.”
    “No, they won’t — they’re all bleeping rich.”
    Fumbling in his robe pocket, Steve pressed an object into my hand. It was warm with his body heat — the gem of beach glass that Angel had given him, that day in ’78.
    “Next time you’re at the Beach, put this in the jar for us,” he said.
    On March 20, Steve asked me to meet with his publisher for him. While I was gone, he shot vitamins with one of the old syringes, and managed to mainline air into a vein. It looked like an accident, but I was sure he’d done it on purpose.
    The New York Times carried the standard obit. Steve Goodnight, author of ten controversial books, including the bestselling Rape of the Angel Gabriel, had died at his Manhattan home, of an apparent accident following a lingering illness. The gay press carried longer notices. That Saturday, a huge memorial service spilled standees onto a Village street. I was one of the speakers; my heart of steel managed to say how much I’d miss him.
    Next day, ten of us rode a rental boat over to the Beach.
    John Sive, Chino and Harry had flown in. We had no idea where Vince was. Marian and Joe Prescott didn’t come either — Joe had just had a stroke. At the Hotel, we stood stupefied