The Front Runner

some problems doing the amount of training for the level I thought she could be running at.
    "The trouble with me is, I'm not very competitive," she said. "I think deep down I just do it to feel good and have, a nice figure. I'm not really motivated."
    "Motivation is important," I said.
    "Like Billy," she said. "He was motivated."
    I looked down at the desk. After a moment, she said softly, "I'm sorry, Harlan."
    "It's my fault," I said. "I just haven't adjusted."
    She sat there looking down at her briefcase on her lap, very slender and contained. She had taken Billy's death as hard as anybody among his friends, and it had left her quieter, less of a soapbox orator. She had been burying herself in her senior-year studies, and had not been attending the team open house.
    "Harlan," she said, "you've got to forgive me, but there's something I have to talk to you about."
    A class was trooping past in the corridor, and I got up and hung the COACH IN CONFERENCE sign on the door and closed it.
    "I heard that you're looking for a woman to . . . to . . ."
    "Who told you that?" I barked. I'd been very anxious that this wouldn't get bandied around.
    "Vince did. Don't worry. He didn't tell anybody else, and I didn't."
    "Vince always did talk too much," I said bitterly.
    "Don't be mad at him. He just wanted to help. Anyway, what I wanted to say was . . ." She sat playing with the handle on her briefcase. ". . . Billy was the sweetest friend I ever had. He was the only man I never felt threatened with. I really hated men up until then. Men always seemed so egotistical and out to satisfy themselves. Billy showed me that they could be gentle, and that they can be an awfully good kind of a friend."
    I sat straight and immobile, staring straight ahead at the piles of papers on my desk, schedules, entries for meets, track magazines.
    "Anyway," said Betsy, "I've been thinking. I've always wanted to have a baby. But, like, I couldn't stand to let myself be screwed by some guy, even for that. But. . ." She was blushing just a little now. "If it's ar-
    tificial insemination you're going to do ... I think if there's one guy whose baby I'd have, it would be Billy's. You understand what I mean? Just because he was a friend. I'd do that for him."
    I found that I had both hands over my face. In that moment, I found out how great my capacity for feeling pain still was.
    She was sitting right there in the chair where Billy had sat on the day we'd met. I tried hard to remember how he had looked in his battered Mao jacket, how he had fixed me with those clear eyes of his and said, "We're gay." But I couldn't even remember it. In that moment, even the images of his death were obliterated. He had never existed. He was just a fantasy, one of those fantasies from the gay films where the lovers are always young and horny and beautiful and there is no death.
    "Oh Harlan," she said, "I'm so sorry I made you cry," and she put her head down on a pile of papers on the side of my desk and started to sob. "I'm not crying," I said.
    But she kept on sobbing. I sat there unmoving— comforting weeping females had never been a specialty of mine. Finally she quieted down, sat up and fished in her Mexican over-the-shoulder bag, presumably for Kleenex. Silently I hauled out my own handkerchief and gave it to her.
    "It isn't clean," I apologized.
    "That's all right," she said, and blew her nose in it and wiped her eyes.
    I was trembling just a little.
    "Well," she said, "I don't know what you're looking for in a ... a woman. Maybe I don't meet the requirements. Would you consider me?"
    I looked at her. We had never, for some reason, considered the idea of a lesbian, and I wasn't so sure. On the other hand, we knew Betsy far better than some stranger we'd be screening. And Billy had cared for her. That made it more personal, more fitting somehow.
    "Well, here's the deal," I said, and explained what would be required of her.
    "Look," she said, "it's okay if you pay the medical expenses, but I don't want to be paid extra. But the problem is, I want a baby to take away and keep for myself."
    "Who says we have to stop at one baby?" I said. "He left a dozen specimens, if you give me one, you can have another one for yourself."
    She nodded. "That sounds reasonable."
    "And we have to have the doctor check you out first," I said. "I don't want anybody with hereditary diseases. And we have to make sure you're functioning right before we start. We can't waste even one of those