Harlan's Race

in.”
    Through its windows, the master bedroom glowed like a magic cave, from the holiday lights on apartment windows across the street. Like jukebox hues, color played across the Greek youths in the gilt bedstead, making them move. The fireplace was that New Yorker’s joy — a real working fireplace, already flickering with split pine we’d bought at the florist. I pulled the curtains shut, and threw my shirt on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Vince stripped down to his white Jockey briefs, and threw a log on the fire.
    My stomach tightened with tension.
    While I pulled on a silk robe of Steve’s over my boxer shorts, Vince hunkered in front of the fire, watching the flames. Glowing color bathed his nude limbs. I felt armored against his attractiveness, yet he had never looked so good to me. What was the power that this man had, to loot my imagination and hold my emotions hostage for so many years? Now he was 27, less seductive, more poignantly adult and quiet. The little childhood scar under his right eye was deeper. He was even less vain, a scar or two on his lean body.
    Vince stood up, and came toward me. “You look tired.”
    “Working too hard.”
    “Let me relax you, babe.”
    Warily, I put my hands on his bare shoulders, and held him away. That was when I noticed that his Lambda tattoo was gone. He’d had it peeled so he could “pass” in Julius’ world. The scar was well-healed. More than anything, this told me of the hidden violent world he was moving into.
    ‘You know it was a summer thing,” I said. “It’s been over for a long time.”
    Vince looked amused. “It wasn’t over two months ago.”
    He put one hand on my chest, rubbing me gently through the silk robe. His energy told me clearly that he knew he might be killed.
    Finally he said, “Look... do we have to have this drama about a relationship? Can’t we just be friends, and get it on?”
    Turning away from him, I leaned against the drawn window curtains. The icy chill coming through the glass bathed me.
    “Come on, love. Nobody lives forever,” he said quietly.
    Pressing against me from behind, he slipped his arms around me. Through the thin silk, his bare arms felt good
    — not passionate, just good. I was missing touch. So much in his touch called up the emotion and joy of an almost forgotten sunlit past, one without threatening letters. In his warmth, I could catch the new fragrances of his new life, whatever it was. He smelled of castile soap, English
    Leather and gun oil. For a moment there, I almost lost control.
    “Life isn’t enough. There has to be honor,” I said over my shoulder. “You can sleep on the sofa there.”
    As Vince let me go, his eyes flooded with a surprisingly intense emotion.
    “So Rhett is down to the place in the script where it says Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” he said.
    “I do give a damn,” I said hotly. “But quit trying to use me.”
    Vince backed away a few steps. The expression in his eyes was not tender now. It was level, cold. No going back now. Time for the most telling lines in the script.
    “I can feel where you’re at,” I said. ‘You’re a step from your revolution, and you’re in over your head.”
    He was silent, standing by his travel bag now, pulling out his combat knife idly. It was a good knife, and it had seen hard use.
    “It’s not your business,” he said.
    “It is my business,” I said to his back. “We have to fight. But fight within the laws, and change the attitudes. If we get violent, we will pay. They will be even more violent back.”
    He frowned. “This is the same shit I’ve been hearing from you for years.”
    ‘You cried over Billy. But you’re going to make other people cry?” I persisted. “Bomb airports? Blow the legs off women and children? Kill hostages? Does that make sense?”
    He said nothing, flipping the knife and catching it expertly by the handle. His indifference got me angry, an Irish anger that flared somewhere between rage and hysteria. I’d have to trust that last flicker of feeling he still had for me. It was the moment to do the unexpected — break the pattern. The most I could do was use my skill with words, and say something he might remember.
    “If you hurt innocent people,” I said, my voice trembling, “and drag the whole gay community into total war, you’d be no better than the guy who shot Billy.”
    The next words poured out of some dark core of will.
    “In fact,” I added, “if you