Harlan's Race

Island?”
    “I need to be alone. Have some things out with myself. Billy’s death. The way I’ve been so addicted to love.” The feel of his glossy hair was getting me hot.
    ‘Yeah, you pobre loco ... you’re always hearing those wedding bells.” He pulled his head away, and looked around at me. “What if LEV. makes a move on you out there?” ‘You’ve taught me what you can.”
    I sat down by him, and we gazed out across the bright water.
    He changed the subject to familia. “Marian and Joe live in Malibu now. Joe’s had a stroke — right side paralyzed. She nurses him. You hear from our Betsy?”
    “At Christmas. She and Marla are fine.”
    “Why don’t you take a run up north ... see them and Falcon?”
    “Oh, I don’t know ...”
    He stood up. “Let’s drive up. I got nothing else to do.” From a pay phone, I caught Betsy grading papers at home. She was reluctant, but finally agreed that she and Marla would meet us next morning, at the Colusa Wildlife Refuge. And they’d bring Falcon. She said that Marla knew a little about the security problems, and they weren’t eager to have me visit their home. With a new energy, my sidekick and I crossed the city, finally striking Los Feliz Boulevard on our way to the Interstate 5 north. Chino was zigging and zagging, making sure nobody was following us. Finally he took a right off Los Feliz.
    “We’ll zag through my old barrio,” he said. “Silver Lake is mostly Latino. Some Anglos and Asians. Gays and lesbians moving in too. That’s a new thing since I was a kid.”
    We took a quick detour over Silver Lake’s breezy hills, past the small lake, through a maze of old fixer-upper houses where gays and professional people lived. A grim grid of streets on the hotter flat was where poorer Latinos lived. Along Hyperion Avenue, he pointed out a few gay bars, bookstores and restaurants.
    “Any familia still here?” I asked.
    “No. My uncle and cousins moved to Santa Barbara. My grandma lives near the Santa Ynez reservation. I call now and then, but I haven’t seen them in a long time.”
    A few blocks further, he zagged left into a hilly park, as beautiful and big as Central Park. The more civilized vistas had noble old shade trees and lawns planted a century ago, that drank up precious California water. Above us reared the wild wooded ridges — natural, tangled and brushy, almost like a dry tropical forest. The maze of green.
    “This is Griffith Park,” he said.
    As we drove along the curving roadway, we passed dozens of runners and race-walkers and joggers and bicyclists. Some wore Front Runner T-shirts — stragglers from the run that Vince invited me to. Vince was up there somewhere ahead, moving along with that miler’s stride. Suddenly I felt a pang of missing the sport.
    “So the Memorial is run right here,” I said.
    “It is.”
    “Good course for a 5-K.”
    “In the daylight it is,” he said dryly.
    “Is it cruisy at night?”
    “Very cruisy. When I was a kid, I hiked over here sometimes to hide in the bushes and watch guys haciendolo. These days, paramilitary groups sometimes come in here at night to train. Black power groups... right-wing Anglos. Sometimes they hunt each other. Sometimes they hunt the gay guys. Yeah, it gets pretty loco in here at night.”
    He gave me the first faint grin of the day.
    “Let’s hope LEV. doesn’t attend the Memorial,” I said.
    ‘Yeah,” said Chino. “The thought has already crossed my mind.”
    Soon we were on Interstate 5, racing north over the Grapevine pass, into the desert. We shared the driving, talking Spanglish. He was relaxing a little. By nine that night, we were north of Sacramento, pulling off the 1-5 into a truck-stop. The motel room had two beds, but need flashed between us, unspoken, so we lay down on one bed. The thought of what organisms we might be trading did cross my mind, but only for a second. After all, I knew him, didn’t I? We’d never given each other crabs or clap — there was something to be said for that. As usual, he kept his back to me, but his warm cock filled my hand, and he reached around for mine. His rich skin tasted of chilis and unshed tears.
    Billy’s shoe glowed in my suitcase.

    ext morning, we gazed over the incandescent flat of
    the Central Valley. Its engineered squares of rice-lands and wheat-fields were a hot green. Here and there, distant grain elevators broke a smoggy horizon that was straight as a slide rule. Along brimming