The Front Runner

man," I said. I was talking as though I had drunk five scotches. "And I suppose you'll get married."
    He shrugged again. "Those marriages don't last. Anyway, if you really love someone, you don't have to formalize it. And Buddhists are supposed to reject rituals."
    I felt like my heart was lying there on the sawdust floor, being pushed around by thousands of dancing feet.
    "Do you love someone, Mr. Brown?" Billy asked very cautiously playing with my empty Coke bottle, turning it around and around.
    "No," I said.
    "But you must have, sometime."
    "No."
    "Not ever?" he persisted.
    I drained the last of my Coke from the glass.
    "But you have to love someone, sometime," he said.
    "True," I said.
    "Look," he said, "don't be embarrassed by what Delphine said. I knew all about you when I came to Prescott."
    This embarrassed me even more.
    Billy went on. "My father started hearing about you in New York. He even saw you around a few times." Billy smiled a little. "I understand you cost an arm and a leg."
    "Listen," I said, "that's a very painful period of my life, and I don't like to discuss it."
    "All right," he said. "But in return do me a favor."
    "What?"
    "I wish you would cut this Mr. Brown crap with me," he said.
    I shook my head. "If I let you call me by my first name, then I have to let all the other students do it."
    Billy sat looking very sad for a moment. He pushed the empty Coke bottle back toward me. Then he shook his head. "Mr. Brown," he said, "I wish you weren't so unhappy."
    My hands were lying on the table, knotted into fists. He reached slowly over and laid one hand over mine. His hand was hot and a little moist. My stomach jerked. Was it possible that he liked me?
    I had an image in my head of a ballroom filled with people. A glass ball was turning slowly overhead, making those spots of light swirling over everything. A thousand John Sives in black suits were dancing cheek to cheek with a thousand sequinned Delphine de Sevignys. They waltzed gaily, thousands of them, like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The band instruments glittered and blared. John Sive and Delphine de Sevigny were tapdancing, looking at each other with eyes of love. Then off among the drifting thousands, I could glimpse Billy. He was walking slowly toward me, cutting through the dancers. He was wearing track shorts and singlet, and his Tigers with the blue nylon uppers, and a headband keeping his hair out of his eyes. The sweat glistened on his limbs as the spots swirled over him. His face was grave. He came slowly and held out his arms to me. We held each other tightly, and put our cheeks together, and danced slowly while the band played "Stardust."
    I shook his hand off. "Don't do that," I said. "You
    never know who's watching. I don't need sympathy anyway. I'm just fine."
    He drew his hand away as if he'd been burned.
    On New Year's we didn't go to a party.
    In the evening, the four of us walked around in the streets looking at the lavish Christmas decorations all over midtown. It was very cold. We walked up Park Avenue a ways and looked at the trees trimmed with white lights. We bought roasted chestnuts from the vendors and ate them, burning our fingers. Billy allowed himself to eat some chestnuts. We stopped to listen to the Salvation Army carolers on Fifth Avenue. A few blocks farther we stopped to listen to a few shivering members of the Hare Krishna Society, as they sang and prayed half-frozen in their saffron robes.
    John and Delphine walked ahead, arm in arm. Nobody on the crowded sidewalks noticed them. John and Delphine were having a sudden romance. Billy raised his eyebrows a little and said, "Dad's off and running again."
    Billy and I walked behind them, not arm in arm. Since the night at the Baths, a tension had sprung up between us. I sensed that I had hurt him, and was sure now that his touching my hand had been friendship, nothing more. But I didn't want to apologize, because the distance between us would help me control my feelings for him. At the same time, if anyone had tried to prevent me from walking the streets of New York with him that night, I would have fought with both fists.
    We went to Rockefeller Center and watched the skaters circle the big rink, their breath blowing white in the air. We looked up dizzily at the giant Christmas tree by the rink.
    Billy looked at me and said, with a certain peculiar belligerence, "I'd like to skate."
    I said, "That's all we need is you should twist an ankle."
    "Where do