The Front Runner

bodyguards and Vince brought Billy to the hotel, and we all searched the room for bombs, and then the bodyguards left and camped in the corridor outside.
    We locked the door, and were alone for the first time in more than a week.
    Billy was curiously quiet and keyed-up. He slipped off his brown split-suede jacket and prowled around the room, stopping to look out the big window. Evening was just coming. The sky was rose-red and the city lights and smog of Montreal spread out to the horizon.
    I just watched him, waiting for him to unwind. He was dressed up a little for once. He had on a soft blue silk shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and gray knit slacks with flared cuffs that showed off his long legs and small rear end to perfection.
    It struck me how much he had matured in the twenty-one months we'd known each other. Love, struggle and hard work had burned all the last traces of coltishness out of him. A certain blurred youthfulness was gone from his face, leaving it defined, burnished, expressive. He was twenty-four now, or would be on September ninth. He was very much a man, very much my peer.
    As he moved around the room, I couldn't take my eyes off him, loving his quietness, his hardness, his seriousness.
    "Foxes," he said. "Rubbing up my thigh all week."
    I laughed a little. "Has that got you bothered?"
    "It makes me remember what I really like."
    We stood by the window a little, looking out at the lights. He pulled the gold medal out of his pocket and put it in my hand. "It's yours," he said. "Keep it."
    I laid it on the dresser.
    "I keep trying not to think about tomorrow," he said. "I have to do it again, and I don't know if I can. When I came out of the last turn in the 10,000, I was dead. I reached down and there was nothing. Good thing he was dead too."
    "You've got one up on him," I said. "He's thinking about how you beat him once, and how you might do it again."
    We talked for a while about the race, and slowly his apprehension eased. We decided that he wouldn't try to run away this time. He'd set a slower pace at first, but fast enough to drain Armas steadily. Then starting at 3,000 meters he'd stage a long drive to burn off Armas' kick in the last half-mile.
    Finally, wordlessly, he kissed me on the mouth. Then he moved away from the window, unbuttoning his shirt slowly. Shrugging it off, he threw it over a chair. In the soft lamplight, he was a living anatomy lesson.
    "You're in a heavy mood," I said, taking off my tie.
    "I've got a real load on," he said. He smiled a little, with that seductive ruttish look in his eyes. "If we don't get it off me, I'm gonna be like with five pounds of lead in my jock strap tomorrow."
    He stripped off his slacks and his snug, white cotton briefs. Jerking the bedcovers all the way off the bed, he lay down on the sheet. To tease him a little, I took my time, taking off my own trousers and underpants. He lay there propped on one elbow, twitching pleasantly with impatience, running his free hand up and down his flank.
    "Come on," he said. His eyes were level and hot as two blue-gray flames of pure oxygen.
    "Coming," I said, trying not to smile.
    He kept caressing himself, rolling his head back and forth, and his body flexed and writhed a little on the sheet.
    I stood naked at the foot of the bed, lifted one of his bare feet and inspected his sole. "How are those blisters? Hm, they look pretty good. Parker takes good care of you."
    He laughed with exasperation and jerked his foot away from me. Rolling over on his stomach, he rubbed and writhed himself into the sheet. Then, with a lithe, slow twist, he was over on his back again, his whole body wringing with need and life. He seethed with that effervescent peak that would last maybe two weeks more before going flat, like a living champagne. I just stood there admiring him, making him admire me, playing with myself to tease him more.
    "They mixed up your birth certificate," I said. "You're a flaming Scorpio."
    "Astrology is a lot of crap," he said.
    I lay slowly down by him, and we embraced with an exhalation of relief, rolling slowly this way and that, our thighs tangled and gripping. We made love with slow, deliberate, obscene tenderness. There was the sureness of the thousandth time we had done these things. There was even something of the sharpness of that first time eighteen years ago, in the theater with the youth in the red jacket. Slowly we doubled and twined and kneeled and slid on the bed. We didn't speak except to