Harlan's Race

fly, and write.
    Days were healthy work on the water. My lungs, still delicate, didn’t fill the way they used to. But Doc Jacobs had told me they’d heal. Evenings at the typewriter, I raced in a wondrous frenzy, not stopping to fix typos. As Billy had said, it was simple. I had broken the set pattern, demanded change. Life is change, and growth. Death is part of change. Like pieces of sharp glass polished into gems by the patient waves, Billy’s death had worn into something that could heal me. This miracle came to me not from the pages of somebody’s book of rules, but through my own slippery life.
    A new psych had struggled into life. But that boy I’d seen in the dream was young, delicate, his wings still wet and crumpled. I had to get him in shape. The loaded .45 lay by my typewriter — starting pistol in a new race.
    As the days passed, I made phone calls to see if others were healing.
    “Harlanito ... what’s happening, man?”
    ‘Things. Are you okay?”
    “Haven’t reached FUBAR yet. I got a little work... made some money. You sound good.”
    “Finally started that book.”
    “About time. I miss you, pinchi. You calm me down.” “You crazy sea snake, I miss you too. When are you going to come talk to me?”
    “If I go FUBAR, I will. By the way ... on the two cops there. I talked to Harry, and we agree it’s okay for them to know a little, as long as you just describe us as private eyes. And don’t mention Julius.”
    Xi. i, Mikey.”
    “Hlo, Dad.” His voice in the phone was subdued, cautious. “How you doing?”
    “Oh ... okay.”
    “Me too. Things looking up a little.”
    “Yeah?” Cautiously.
    “Weekdays alone is okay. Weekends, it’d be good to have my boy underfoot.”
    “No kidding,” he said dryly.
    “You want me to send you an engraved invitation?” The next Friday evening, Michael came out alone, and we mended the fences. He opened up about what was bothering him. Running had given him more energy. But he wasn’t very interested in sex. He felt he didn’t measure up as a macho — especially to my example. With Astarte it was a special friendship, he said. If he ever felt that feeling for a guy, maybe he’d be in a gay relationship. But he didn’t. “Jesus,” he added, “all I hear is sex, sex, sex. My passion is my work. Is there something wrong with me?”
    “No. And I envy you, kid. Passion almost killed me.”
    On the cherry-shaded deck, I showed him The Box for the first time. He gingerly inspected the re-united track shoes, flipped through the July 1976 issue of Time, with Billy’s and my faces on the cover. Billy’s suede jacket, crushed flat. The shorts, and the singlet with the Olympic rings on it, already looking old-fashioned — athletic styles were changing. I’d laundered them several times, but a few grayed blood-stains still endured.
    Michael held the shoes, with tears in his eyes.
    “Why are you keeping this stuff?” he asked.
    “So people won’t forget. So Falcon can know someday that his father was a real flesh-and-blood man.”
    Michael shuffled through the Epstein photos.
    “Passion for your work, huh?” he said.
    I flushed.
    “Dad, this stuff is weighing you down,” he said briskly. “Let me take it back to the city. It’s probably safer with me anyway.”
    Hotel Brown needed repairs. As July and August passed, Michael and Astarte and I went to work with a rented gas generator and a do-it-yourself book. A Patchogue contractor put new shakes on the roof. Window-seat cushions got new covers. We kept up security, and set as few patterns as possible.
    I wondered when, and if, Chris would visit me.
    But the summer stayed quiet.
    My low profile had worked — since 1976, there’d been a turnover of house owners, and few in Davis Park even remembered Steve. The cops called me Har, and people went from there to “Harold,” and I didn’t correct them. Even conservative families knew me as the bearded loner who worked the bay and dabbled in writing. It was such a relief. It was also a lie, because I wasn’t being myself.
    My celibacy didn’t fit the cops’ picture of sex-crazed homosexuals. So they figured I was prime to be turned. Now and then they dragged me to the Casino, or the Friday-evening “sixish” by the ferry dock, where singles mingled to drink Harvey Wallbangers and hit on each other. I had a good time studying the straight social scene. After I let an art-gallery owner who looked like Farrah Fawcett slip through