Page 190 - Some Dance to Remember

160 Jack Fritscher

wondered if, with Kick, he had in fact become starry-eyed or if he simply
had outgrown Solly Blue.
People can be chronologically correct for each other, right for a time,
until time changes, and they change and grow away from each other.
Teddy and he had been that way. He had no desire to leave Solly behind.
He needed him almost as much as he needed Kick. He could not let either
of them deny the other.
Ryan’s cake from the Court of the Two Sisters was three layers of
air creamed over with three kinds of chocolate. The sugar rush hit him
instantly. For more than a year he and Kick had eaten only omelets, tuna,
cottage cheese, raw vegetables, chicken breasts, and black coffee sweetened
with pink packs of Sweet’N Low. His system raced. Maybe Solly was
no longer a safe person. Sometimes a man has to choose one friend over
another. That was a choice Solly could never win.
“Can I use your phone?” Ryan asked. “I have to call him who has no
name.”
“Don’t, Ry.” Solly tried to soothe him. “You know what I mean...what
I meant. Try toning him down some. Unlike you and all the Castronauts
who worship him, I don’t believe he’s a god. If he were a god, I’d be
thankful for the evidence of him; but divinity is more than good looks
and muscles. He’s a man. He’s just a man.” Solly bit his lip. “He may not
even be that.”
Ryan dialed Kick. “Hi. It’s me,” Ryan said. “Yeah....Sure. I’ll take a
taxi from down here so you don’t have to drive the Vette to this part of
town....Right....Of course, I’m horny....OK...18th and Castro...in half an
hour.”
Outside the open penthouse windows, the City lights came on all
around Saint Anne’s Apartment Tower. The rim of Twin Peaks glowed
with the falling sun. Ships floated high at easy anchor in the East Bay. The
very height of the penthouse gave Ryan vertigo.
Before Kick, in those long years of his depressions, he had feared the
easy way Solly’s windows opened out and over nothing. He feared maybe
deep down he was a flier, if not ready for the Bridge, then ready for a high
dive from the window into a wet hanky in the street. But now, with Kick
in his bed, he knew he loved the risky business of being in-love.
He turned to say it to Solly, but he could not speak. His new truth
was something he had to keep to himself now that he could no longer
share it with Solly Blue.
He couldn’t tell Kick that, more than loving him, he was in-love with
him. They had exchanged promises. He had asked Kick that they never

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