How Long Has This Been Going On (90 page)

Blue smiled down at Walt and replied, "Yeah, well, I guess you got to get back at ol' Blue for sayin' everybody could be replaced, once upon a time when I didn't know any better."

Then Walt looked up at Blue—for once, not critically or impatiently but with absolute trust—and Walt said, "You know why I liked you so much? Because you were the only one to make me feel that I could be in charge, instead of being this leprechaun doing a funny dance in the background. Cousin Tom and Luke and Chris... They all think I'm a professional little brother."

"Yeah," said Blue, tracing with his fingers the lines and angles of Walt's face, "but that funny talk and your wonderin' ways would always tantalize a guy. Oh, don't be cryin', now. Don't be cryin', Walt."

"I'm only crying because of all the times that I dreamed that you forgave me."

That was when Blue took Walt powerfully and irresistibly and permanently in his arms and Walt held and held and held on, because love is Blue.

And that was when the Kid left the Parade. He ran up the cross street, east through Murray Hill, trying not to think of much, not caring where he would end up. It was not long before he came to a kind of clearing in the urban wood, where all the streets give way to the feed-in to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel under a rare great looming of sky. There is a park there, benches and tables next to courts for handball and basketball, and the sportsmen of the day leaped and shouted, oblivious of everything but their score.

The Kid sat there for some time, wordlessly shaking off the street connivers and the homeless and the freaks who work these places, refusing even to look at them—but one of them spoke the Kid's name in a quavery, broken voice, and the Kid met his gaze.

"Peter?" he said, getting up. "What on earth happened to you?"

"I got beaten." Peter crumpled onto the bench. "Gas masks..."

"Hadn't we better call an ambulance?"

"I was crawling along the sidewalk and no one would help me. And now I don't...Johnny, listen..."

"No, I'm going to get a cab and—"

"Please sit down and let me talk to you. See, I'm the new homeless guy in town because... Oh, gee..."

Peter started crying and the Kid dropped back on the bench next to him. Hopeless. How can I comfort anybody when my own life has just gone through the shredder?

"Look," the Kid said. "It's ridiculous to cry, because your life is just under way." The Kid put an arm around Peter, who cried out in pain.

"They kept kicking me and laughing," he sobbed. "How could they do that?"

"We have to get you to a hospital."

"No. Please. Just... Where am I supposed to live now?"

"Why didn't you call me, Peter?"

"Oh, I would have. I wanted to solve it on my own and not be obliged to anyone. You know how that feels?"

"Yes." Oh, yes.

"But then I got hurt and no one would help me. I just don't get that."

Carefully shifting position, Peter leaned his head on the Kid's shoulder. "They walked past me," Peter went on. "Like, it's not
our
problem. Who cares if you die?"

Some moments passed. Then the Kid said, "You'll come home with me and we'll get you cleaned up and fed and rested and then we'll figure something out. You can stay with me, if you like. A vacancy just opened up in my life." Peter's head went up and he was about to say something, but the Kid hushed him with a gesture, saying only, "You'd be surprised," thinking of Walt and Blue on the sidewalk, of how they were tasting each other at the eyes, a pair of cannibals saying hello. Steam puffing out of their ears. Do-or-die love in their souls. So easy for them. So easy. "A vacancy, I say. Maybe we can... comfort each other. I'm old and past it, but I'm smart and funny and I can teach you things and take care of you. And if you would... well, if you'd want to... see, to work out a relationship, that would be heavenly for me at just this moment in my life. Because I'm in pain, too. I tell you this. But if that's not on the bill for you, I'll respect that. Because I never took advantage of anyone. Almost never. And I used to be a looker myself. Somehow I never quite stopped feeling like one. Decades would pass, but I kept thinking I was—"

"What's your last name?" asked Peter. "Your real one?"

"Smith," I told him. "Like yours. Not that I used it much. I always thought it was too joe and regular for a boy on the Other Side."

The sky went boom and, instantly, the heaviest rain since Genesis 7:11 poured down upon the city, and everybody scattered and grabbed all the cabs. So there we were. I helped Peter hobble across First Avenue to shelter under a storefront awning, and he started to cry again. So I very gently put my arm around his shoulders and said, "Don't fret, now. Think of all you're going to see. Think of the friends you'll make and the history that you'll be part of. Everything is possible now. Everything is you: with your ideals and energy and your youth. I would have given anything to have come along now instead of when I did. Come on, Peter."

Peter wiped his eyes. "Will I be famous? Will I be loved? Will I get my heart's desire?"

"Most have to settle for being famous
or
loved, it would seem."

"Which would you say you were?"

"I never quite made it to either. But I got my heart's desire, I think."

"What was that?"

"Liberty."

The rain was beating the streets with such ferocity that everyone had vanished from sight. A few cars passed carefully by; all the cabs were full.

"This can't last long," I said. "Whatever they throw at us, we'll come back ten times stronger." I laughed. "Even if I do sound like an ACT UP poster. Right?"

Peter nodded.

"Right," I said. "Don't worry, because you're safe now, I promise. You're free. Yes, and Blue is safe. And Walt is free. And I'm the Kid—I snap back and never go down, I swear to you. Oh... well, once, at the side of a pool, glorious young men were kind to me and I really lost it, because I couldn't bear it that the ones with all the power could be that nice. I thought it was either nice
or
power. I'll readily admit that I wept that day. But never since."

"I wept today," said Peter.

"Well, you've made quota, and you can't weep again. You're going to work on your fame and love, and your heart's desire, too, and as soon as this terror of nature stops we're going to start laughing. We'll pull absurd stunts and break each other up. I know all the stories—I'll tell you of the Mistress of Thriller Jill's and the Saint of Christopher Street and me, the Green Goddess."

"Do I have to choose between being famous and being loved? Or—"

"It gets chosen for you."

A man ran by, fast as hell, his clothes plastered to his body.

"You can be the new Kid," I told Peter. "It's probably time."

"I won't be much trouble. I'll be full of whimsy, like a panda. Whenever Miss Tybogen would say, 'All right, Richie Mallinson, you march right down to the principal's office and tell
him
what was so important that you had to whisper it to Lester Steranko during Home Room Quiet Time,' all the boys would do the
Dragnet
theme. Dum-dedum-dum. So one day Miss Tybogen said, 'Class, because Marcia Ellsmere has received three A's in a row, she will be the new class monitor,' and I went, 'Dumde
-dumdum ,' and got a big laugh."

He gulped on the last few words and broke into sobs again; and, as I did not appear to have it in me to soothe his pain, I did nothing. You reach a point at which you cannot control the event, so you stand aside and let the hurt flow free.

"Just tell me this," Peter choked out. "Why were the gas masks having fun when they did that to me? I see that they hate me, but why do they
love
to hate me?"

We listened to the roar of the rain on the city, and to the history meter, ticking in our time. Peter, shivering in the sudden cold, moved closer to me.

"This will be over soon," I said. "And then we can go home."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E
THAN
M
ORDDEN
was born in Heavensville, Pennsylvania, and raised there, in Venice, Italy, and on Long Island. An alumnus of the Locust Valley Friends school and the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Mordden worked as an editor of romance comic books and a musical director of off-Broadway productions of opera and musical comedy before launching his writing career. He is the author of twenty-four books, including the more-or-less celebrated
Buddies
trilogy; a novel,
One Last Waltz;
and the pseudonymous story cycle
A Bad Man Is Easy to Find,
under the byline of M.J. Verlaine.