How Long Has This Been Going On (4 page)

"What destroy? So they get collared—"

"And fired from their job. Or, like, it's the third offense—you know what they do to them then?"

"Man, suddenly, you're all... I don't know about you, boy, I really don't. Because all of a sudden—correct me if I'm wrong—you're doing a Let's Feel Sorry for the Homos routine."

They were each standing at the side of the unit, in the open doors, staring at each other across the roof.

"Don't you ever... You don't feel something for these guys? Picking them off like... like pool scum in a net?"

"Shoot, I didn't make them that way, did I?"

"'Shoot,'" Frank repeated. "Right,
'shoot,'"

"Well, did I? Was it my idea they come down here pushing it around Griffith Park?"

Jack pronounced it "Griffiss." Another of his many charms. Griffiss Park.

"These faggots keep on living different from us," Jack went on, "something's going to happen to them. They know the rules. You break the rules, you pay."

They stood staring at each other for a moment. Then Jack added, "Now, look, already. We going to argue the philosophy of life or are we going to do our job?"

They were on the edge of the part of the park that was known—not to them—as "Garboland." No one knew when the name had come into use, or why. Perhaps because it was a place of avid fantasy, of romance to death, you might say. Every night, from sundown nearly to dawn, men would populate Garboland, sitting, strolling, lurking, and looking: cruising. The results were variable. Most nights, only the most determined would score, and scoring was often no more than a fast grope or a blowjob behind the trees. The more romantically inclined held out for something more sociable and less furtive—an exchange of phone numbers for a dinner date, perhaps, or walking out of the park together, then car trailing car through the city to whoever lived nearest, or whoever felt like playing host, or whoever wasn't married.

On "hunting nights," Frank and Jack would split up, Jack following Frank at a distance till Frank parked himself on a bench and waited. Twenty-one years old and, as Jack always reminded him, a looker, Frank never waited long. A man would pass, gazing at Frank. Frank would gaze back. The man would pause, perhaps look at his watch or pretend to spot something fascinating in the distance. Frank called it "punctuation." The man would back up, sit next to Frank, and open it. "Nice evening." "You alone tonight?" Or maybe he'd just nod.

This man was the fish.

Going by the book, Frank would offer neither encouragement nor resistance. The fish would keep talking, getting closer and closer to it, always riding on those strange make-believe phrases, like "Would you like to take a walk?" or "Could we go somewhere and get to know each other better?"

Finally, Frank would ask the guy, "What exactly do you want to do?"

This was the hook.

Some guys shied away at that point. Frank never knew why. Some of them, the smart ones, might have read him as a cop. They were the ones that got away. But some of them told him exactly what they wanted to do.

And that was the bite.

So Frank would stand and tell them they were under arrest as Jack stamped up with the cuffs.

That was fishing, and that was Frank's life, to his despair. He told himself that it was going to happen anyway, that if he didn't, somebody else would. He figured that at least with him doing it nobody ever got hurt, which was not usual when Vice cops went fishing. There was a detective named Ragdon who was known as "Filthy Bill." Six-footer. Face like one of Dick Tracy's villains and the heart of a bank president. Ragdon had worked his way up from Vice, and they say that for his entire career every fish he brought in was a bloody wreck. Resisting arrest, right? Some little slob who couldn't call Lou Costello "Fatso" resisted Filthy Bill Ragdon. Right.

Something else. Maybe it didn't matter in the long ran. But whenever Frank saw a man who looked... well, like a good guy... Frank would put him off, glance away and shake his head and never reel him in.

Like tonight. Frank's on his bench, alone in the dark except for Jack hiding behind Frank's left shoulder, way back in the greenery. There's enough moonlight to catch the outlines of moving figures here and there. Twigs crackle, leaves whish against something. Every now and then a whisper floats over from somewhere. It could be a scene from a movie, Frank thinks. Dark lighting, all this atmosphere, then A Doomed Stranger enters.

It never took long. Two or three minutes after Frank took up his post—four minutes, absolute tops—some guy would come wandering up the path, the fish all set for the hook. You never knew what you'd get—young, old, athletic, out of shape, shy or so practiced they could have been working from a script. Some of them could be movie stars. Some of them could be Frankenstein's Uncle Cy.

This
guy, tonight, seemed like a grown-up version of your kid brother, and Frank tried to freeze him off by turning away. But the guy plopped down on the bench and said, "I think I've seen you here before, haven't I?"

Frank turned to him, real slow, not too friendly. I don't want to hook you, okay? Why don't you just trot along? Be smart and go home.

"My name's Lark. Larken, really. Dumb name, huh?"

The guy held out his hand; Frank took it without answering.

"I really hated it when I was a kid. All the other boys had regular names. Steve, Bob, Jim. There was a Cornelius in my third-grade class but everybody called him Neil. What's your name?"

Frank looked at the guy, his eyes tight, his mouth a line drawn by a ruler, trying to show him that this is no place for kid brothers. The guy's smile had dimmed, but he was no quitter. Moving closer and gently taking Frank's hand, he said, "Want me to tell your fortune? A Gypsy taught me.

He brushed Frank's palm lightly, once, twice, again. He looked at Frank. "Actually, it was an entertainer I know. He goes by the name of Gypsy Pete."

The guy brushed Frank's palm again, sweetly tingling the skin.

"Feels good, doesn't it?" the guy asked.

Frank nodded.

"Except you really have to relax for this. Just put yourself in the hands of Gypsy Pete." The guy laughed nervously. "It's quite a routine that he has. Quite a routine. See, he sort of mesmerizes you while he's telling your fortune. I don't do it as well as he can, but then he's part Gypsy. He
says.
And Gypsies always know more about the world than anyone else, I hear. They have to, because everybody hates them, so they learn how to defuse that hatred and persuade people that—"

"I'm waiting for somebody," said Frank, as the guy, Larken, kept brushing his hand.

"I was hoping you were waiting for me."

Frank leaned in real close to the guy and said, "I want you to walk away from this bench right now. Don't make me get up."

The guy gulped and moved a bit away from Frank, but he didn't leave, didn't even let go of Frank's hand.

"Why do I have to walk away?" he asked.

"Because I... I don't want to hurt you." "You're hurting me now."

Frank turned his wrist so that now he was holding Larken's hand. He brushed Larken's palm, once, twice. "Gypsies." Again. "I know Gypsies, too. Know what they told me?"

Larken shook his head.

"The law is on your homo tail, and they're going to catch you if you don't run for it."

Larken got up, staring at Frank. He clearly wanted to say something, but suddenly turned and walked quickly away.

Frank's heart was pounding. He leaned hard against the bench, ran a hand through his hair, exhaled, threw his arms back.

"You let him go," said Jack, coming up.

Frank shrugged.

"How come you let him go? How come, Frank?" Jack sounded almost hurt.

"He didn't break the rules."

"He was perfect."

Frank looked at Jack. "What do you mean, perfect?"

"You talked all that time and he didn't bite? What are you waiting for, some guy to drop his pants and bend over?"

Frank stood up. "Hey," he said. "Jack?" for emphasis. "You
can
that stuff,
right?"

"Just don't be so busy with the next one, huh? It's a collar, not a marriage bureau. It's no vacation hanging around back there in Sherwood Forest."

"What are
you
beefing about? I'm the one who does the..." Dirty work.

"Yeah, well, pick up one of the Merry Men and let's get the shit out of here. I'm getting hungry."

The next guy up the path was a fat old scrounger in a baseball cap who called Frank "Dollface" and felt up his ass and then, irritated at Frank's bland reticence, told him, "You're not the only slice of loin on the meat rack, honey."

Rising to signal Jack, Frank thought, This is going to be a pleasure.

Elaine wrote letters to herself on legal pads. Some began "Dear Elaine," others "Dear Mrs. Denslow," and every so often she would address one to "Dear Homemaker." She wrote as an artist paints fruit, standing apart from her life and looking at it. Its textures, colors, light. For instance:

Dear Elaine:

You married a fine man. Everyone told you so at the time, and they were right. He was a nice-looking boy, right up there in the main crowd in school. "The Echelon," they called it, in the yearbook: Most Likely to Own U.S. Steel, Most Humorous, Most Promising Star. Jeff was Most Popular. All the girls were wild for him, I suppose because he was so gentle. It was the wrong award; he should have been Most Shy. Once he saw Elaine and two friends whispering about him and staring at him. You might say they were penetrating him, and he blushed and locked his eyes on the floor so hard he almost shivered. Elaine thought that was the sexiest thing she had ever seen.

Elaine liked to smoke cigarillos while she wrote, and she tanked in black coffee. It was a quiet-afternoon thing, writing the letters, a task but a pleasing one. It made her appetitive. Sometimes she topped off the smoke and caffeine with sucking candy—butterscotch squares or green mint drops.

Jeff lost something after graduation. At first, I thought it was his sense of belonging, his prominence on the team sports and his popularity. No: his shyness. Somehow or other, he managed to get used to himself, to take himself for granted as a fine man who always does the right thing. That's why I feel so guilty not worshiping him any more. He not only needs it—he deserves it. He really does. And I'm twenty-seven and drying up.

Driving to the Meeting, Larken kept berating himself for not being aggressive enough. That's how you connect, isn't it? You
push
for it. You let that man in Griffith Park go, like a fisherman throwing one back, you know that? Just gave him up. He was such an attractive fellow, too. You don't see a hell of a lot of them there, for some reason. It's mainly a ghoul party, in fact. I don't blame anyone for how he looks, but is that all I get?

Following instructions, Larken parked on San Mateo and walked the three blocks to the address on Knowland. Security compelled them to hold the Meeting at a different member's address each time, and to disperse the cars in order to keep neighbors from getting a read on the Group. A bunch of cars at a single house disgorging an all-male coterie would look suspicious.

I still don't understand why he seemed friendly and then suddenly turned on me. Maybe he thought I was a cop?

Reaching the address of the Meeting, Larken took a long look at himself at one of the little windows that bordered the upper half of the front door. He ran a hand through his light hair, pulling it back to see how it would look shorter. Then he tilted his chin and put on a more or less steely gaze, trying to sample himself as a Vice cop.

Ridiculous, he told himself. No cop looks like me. Of course, that would be the best kind of Vice cop, wouldn't it? Undetectable.

Suddenly the door swung open and "Paul," the man whose house it was, stood glaring at Larken.

"What are you doing, you truly vicious fool?" Paul said, under his breath so the neighbors couldn't hear. "You want to bring all the nosey parkers out to—"

"Just get him inside, for Chrissakes!" a second man cried.

Paul literally pulled Larken into the house and carefully closed the door. The other men had all arrived, and were standing in the living room looking at Larken.

"Why do you think we use fake names and change the meeting place every time?" Paul went on, advancing on Larken as Larken backed into the room. "Why do we park our cars blocks away? Why do we stagger the arrival times twenty minutes apart?"

"All right, Paul," said one of the men. "You've made your point."

"Not to him, I haven't! Not to him!"

"Jesus."

"I'm sorry," said Larken. "I was just... I wasn't thinking."

Paul threw up his hands in disgust.

"If we're going to turn on each other like this," said another man, "Alfred," "how can we possibly hope to start a movement for homosexual rights?"

"'The Liberation of the Homosexual from the Oppression of the American State'!" snapped Paul, really upset now.

"Goddamnit, Paul," said yet another man, "Jake." "You cut it out or I'm leaving."

"We'll all leave," said Alfred.

"Well, why can't he get it right?" Paul complained; but his tone was already changing from fury to mild irritation as he surveyed the faces in the room.

"Let's just sit down and start the—"

"No," said Paul, very calm now. He looked away from everyone and sighed deeply. "I have to apologize," he said, turning back to them. "I'm scared and I'm nervous and I flew off the handlebars. I'm scared, that's all. Maybe about nothing. Maybe about the old biddy across the street who spends the whole day peering at everyone through her window curtains. I don't know. Maybe she's blind. Maybe the police will be in here in five minutes."

Yet all we do is talk, Larken thought. Six homosexuals, some married and some not, all lonely for another man to talk to and love, but we scarcely even
socialize.

Larken wondered what it would be like if they suddenly decided to pair off. It was hard to think of any of these men sexually. But Jake was pretty nice-looking, dark-haired, short and trim in a T-shirt and slacks. And Alfred was rugged in a kind of nondescript way, big without power. Paul was definitely the least imposing of the group. He was its founder and leader, but he was half-bald and very overweight.