Harlan's Race

that was.” The laugh was dry, without the old sparkle.
    ‘You came from The Grove?”
    ‘Yeah.”
    “So... you’re out?”
    “My wife doesn’t know. I still feel a lot of conflict.”
    “How’d you manage in the service? Guys must have been all over you.”
    He laughed. “I managed to avoid the military. The only overseas shooting I do is with overseas guys — my favorites being French guys. I was based in Paris in the late Sixties.”
    His eyes were sparkling a little, so we both got to dishing.
    “So you like frog legs,” I said.
    “French men are more natural. I felt less guilty. When I wasn’t doing that, I bicycled around the country. It was a wonderful time of freedom. I almost didn’t come back.”
    “So that’s why you look so fit,” I teased. "You still run?”
    “Running is boring. How do you stand it, Harlan? Now soccer..
    After we shared dinner, I invited him to overnight in a guest room. Late that night, the two of us were in the Tower Room, talking. He showed me wallet pictures of his wife and kids. He was curious about my loves, the public scrutiny. I was feeling a mild attraction, more like an old loyalty, but definitely not what Vince called the “juju”. It shocked me to see my capacity for disillusion.
    Sometime after midnight, Chris and I were sitting on the roof outside the Tower Room window. Under full moonlight, the ocean was a sheet of neon silver. On the bay nearby, a boat was drifting with engine off, running lights dark, rocking gently. The occupants were probably making wild love. In the moonlight, I noticed his hands — lean, strong, well-made. Sexy hands. Chris steered the talk around to the summer of ’52. The last day of vacation together before school started. Crazy stunts we’d done. Running in the woods together. Plinking at targets with my .22. The shy kiss. He’d never forgotten it. He’d been sorry that he hadn’t written — he was too scared and guilty to write. But the kiss had changed his life forever.
    He was sitting right behind me, and his warm hands closed on my shoulders, squeezing gently.
    “Harlan, you can unbend a little with me,” he urged softly. “I finally unbent.”
    It felt too sudden.
    “I’m not that easy anymore, Chris,” I said.
    “Come on.” His lips were on the back of my neck, searching in my hair, which was down to my shoulders now. His warm breath found my bare skin. Those lips that had changed my own life forever. “Old times’ sake. Who knows ... maybe it was meant to be, after all this time.” For a moment, I almost let it happen. Then I moved my head away from him and said, as kindly as I could, “We’d need to know each other again.”
    As Chris went down the spiral staircase to his bedroom, his eyes showed hurt. Next morning when I got up, Chris was already gone. His tracks angled across the dunes to the beach
    — heading west toward Cherry Grove.
    For a few days I felt bad, wondering if I’d been insensitive about a chance at love. But then I pulled myself together. It hadn’t felt right to plunge in like a fool, and I had to trust that. Maybe he’d think it over, and agree with me, and call again. If not, loving life had to include letting the past die.
    Another person who walked back into my world that summer was an old enemy—my ex-wife. She’d been in touch with John Sive about Michael. But now she’d changed her tune. The three-Kleenex approach. Begging and pleading to see her son. Heartbroken. Wouldn’t I see her, and work out our differences, so that Michael would be in touch with her again? She had in mind a summit meeting at a restaurant in Lake George, halfway between our two homes, no lawyers present, no lovers or spouses, no security—just the two of us. I talked to John from the marina pay phone. John had gone on being my lawyer, but the distance was still there.
    “I strongly advise against the meeting,” he said crisply. “It isn’t your job to be a go-between between her and Michael.” Harry and Chino agreed.
    “If Kevin was that violent,” said Chino, “it tells you where she’s at. She might pull a Saturday-night special on you.”
    ‘You think LEV. might be connected to her?’
    ‘We can’t assume LEV. is a man. There’s nothing in the letters that gives us a fix on sex. She could be paying some guy to do her dirty work Julius is going to give her a once-over.”
    At that, I really felt a shiver. When John Sive relayed my refusal to Mary Ellen, she went wild into