The Front Runner

police weren't working very hard at it. The wildest rumors were going around, and everyone was being careful.
    I could visualize Billy falling into the hands of this maniac. I could see the police photographing his nude body as it lay on the dirty cement floor, stuck in a pool of black, dried-up blood.
    My first impulse was to go to the city and look for him. But where?
    I hurried to my office and dialed his father's California number.
    John sounded sleepy—I must have awakened him. But when I told him, he was instantly alert. Hearing his deep, warm, precise voice reassured me a little.
    "I've tried hard to explain to Billy," he said, "what it means to be a man your age, and to go through what you did. He keeps saying he understands, but I don't think he really does, yet. But I don't think he would be unfaithful. The other times, he stayed with it to the end, and the end was always hard on him. It was always the other guy who walked out."
    "He always told me those other affairs weren't serious." "Serious, not serious . . . you can't pigeonhole feel-
    ings. They were intense, but they were kid stuff. The feeling he has for you is very different. One thing above all, Harlan, you have to trust him. He panics when someone he loves doesn't trust him. I learned that the hard way. I gave him a very bad time about drags, and it was the only time he ever ran away from home. He was in love with a kid who was using drugs, and I was just terrified he'd start. But when I quit nagging him and told him he was on his honor, the trouble stopped. And I don't think that, outside of smoking a joint now and then that he ever went near drugs. And of course when he got serious about running, he quit smoking."
    "Where am I going to look for him?"
    "Look, try the movie theaters. That's where he always goes when he's really down. That time, he was gone a week and I found him in a theater. You got a paper there? Tell me what's playing, and maybe I can give you a lead."
    "I fished the new Village Voice out of my pile of mail. (Ten years ago, I wouldn't have been caught dead reading the Voice.)
    "Is Song of the Loon playing, by any chance?" John asked.
    "No."
    "Too bad. That'd be a sure bet."
    "There's Warhohl's new film. There's a whole festival of Peter de Rome. The Experiment. That looks about it."
    John was silent a minute. "Try The Experiment first, then the others."
    "Experiment's at the Bedford on East 69th. Uptown. We're coming up in the world, John."
    "Slumming," said John.
    "The first show he can see is the two o'clock. If I leave right now, and he's there, I can catch him before he leaves."
    "Call me the minute you find him. And call me if you don't."
    I jumped into my Vega and drove like a madman down to Manhattan. It was a fine warm spring day, and I drove with the window open. The smell of the
    woods along the parkway reminded me painfully of that day, just thirteen months ago, when we'd begun our relationship.
    In Manhattan I drove around for half an hour, swearing out loud, trying to find a parking place in the crowded upper East Side streets. Finally I squeezed into one in front of an antique shop, and I ran, not walked, the six blocks to the theater.
    It was a plush new one, with a gleaming glass box office. It was twenty-five minutes to four. I asked the cashier, then the ushers, if they recalled seeing a young man of Billy's description. They didn't remember, which wasn't surprising, since I didn't even know what he was wearing.
    So I went into the lounge and sat down on the jazzy red sofa of real leather to wait. About fifteen people were waiting there for the next show. They were drinking coffee from the expresso bar.
    I waited those twenty-five minutes in anguish. I was remembering seeing Loon with him, and touching him for the first time. I was sure I wouldn't survive losing him. If he ever leaves me, I thought, I'll kill him, and then I'll kill myself—even if it's before Montreal. I would put a single bullet hole into his perfect body, destroying it as effectively as the murderer I was still worrying about.
    Across from me, two well-dressed gays were sitting on another red sofa, sipping at their little white cups and talking in low voices. One was handsome, about six feet, with a build that even I would have called athletic. Not a runner—a swimmer, maybe. He had long, unbelievable, auburn curls. I looked at him hatefully, seeing him not as a possible lover but a possible rival.
    Finally the people started coming