The Front Runner

the Continental Baths, or the Bedford Theater, or the restaurant where we always ate, and it would hit me like a blow. On campus I would be running in the woods, and I would come to the fork where the side trail branched off, and it would hit me like a blow.
    I had sat in the doctor's waiting room one day while the doctor gave Betsy the periodic examination, and I was fishing through the old magazines looking for something to read, and there was the year-old issue of Time with our faces on the cover. Billy must have existed —there was his face. Driven by a kind of fatalism, I turned to the cover story and the two pages of photographs. There we were, sitting on the green grass, side by side, our arms around each other, kissing. There we
    were at the track, I standing there with the Harper Split in my hand, shouting the split time at him as he blurred past. The photographer had caught his long floating stride at its greatest stretch.
    John and I had visited Steve and the Angel out on Fire Island that spring, and we had all walked along the beach barefoot. It was a cloudy windy day and the surf was a little rough. Our numbers were fewer— Vince, Jacques and Delphine were gone. Only the four of us were left.
    We walked up the shore until only the lonely dunes were by us, their grasses blowing in the wind. We came to, and passed, the spot where Billy and I had made love. But the only image in my memory was his body being carried in by the white foam and left lying on the sand. His hair was full of sand and seaweed, and he did not move. As the foam came up again and again, it simply moved his limp legs a little.
    Was it possible that we had known each other for only twenty-one months? We had met on December 8, 1974, and he was killed on September 9, 1976. It seemed to me that I had lived through several lifetimes of suffering before I met him, and several lifetimes of love in those twenty-one months. I would not be able to love anyone like that again.
    I sat cradling his child. He had said,he would be reborn. But it was an illusion, perhaps the only one he had permitted himself. We would never again know each other as we had. There is no marriage in heaven, not even for gays.
    Two weeks later, with Betsy recovered, we took the baby to the Church of the Beloved Disciple, and Father Moore christened him John William. Just a few people were there, and Steve Goodnight teased me a lot about being so middle-class as to want to christen the baby.
    And still I could not cry.
    TWENTY
    AT Thanksgiving, John Sive and Vince Matti came up to spend the holiday at Prescott with us. It was snowing heavily, a surprise early storm. When I saw John's car pull up the drive, I went out. Vince got out into the swirling snow, the first flakes of it sticking to his hair. He was wilder looking and hairier than ever. I had expected to see him heavier because of his not running, but he was as thin as ever from all the frantic activism and running around. His eyes met mine a little guardedly, but he squeezed my arm.
    "Good to see you, Harlan," he said.
    "Yes," I said. "We've lost touch."
    Betsy was waiting at the door, wearing a flowing red crepe pants-suit. Vince kissed her on the cheek and laughed a little. "How's my favorite Amazon?"
    In the house, we sank into chairs by the fire, and Vince looked around. "Been a while since I was here," he said. "You've changed some things." A little of the old teasing note entered his voice. "You've been decorating, Harlan. What's come over you?"
    "That's Betsy's doing," I said. "She likes to mess around in the house. I've got a little money now, so she can do what she wants."
    "When we drove up, I noticed the addition you built on," said Vince.
    "Yeah, we needed a couple of extra rooms," I said. "One for Betsy, one for the baby. What can I get you guys to drink?"
    "The first thing I want is to see Billy's child," said Vince.
    Just hearing his name wounded me.
    "No sooner said than done," said Betsy.
    She was bringing the baby out of the nursery. Little
    John was three months old by then, and wearing his pale blue sleeping outfit. Betsy kneeled down on the old Afghan rug by Vince's chair and put the baby on Vince's lap. Vince held up the baby tenderly so that John stood braced with his tiny feet on Vince's thighs.
    "He's growing," said Vince. "That's Billy, all right. The brown hair and the eyes. God, Virgo eyes. Did you guys plan that?"
    Everybody laughed but me. They laughed a little nervously, because they