Page 357 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 327

Castro Theatre was brilliant with bulbs and neon. The first of the Big
MGM Four was playing. Forty-one years after its initial release, the big
Christmas flicker at the Castro was Gone with the Wind. Customers
queued up at the box office. Even on Christmas Eve, maybe especially on
Christmas Eve, people sought the brilliant comfort of the light shining in
the darkness from the projector, unreeling visions over their heads onto
the silver screen.
Ryan turned left and walked past Donuts & Things. He imagined
how Kick and Logan had lounged against its windows, the way, once,
he and Kick had held court so many afternoons. The Chicana girls, who
twenty-four hours a day pushed stale crullers at the gay and gullible, had
locked the door. They moved about in the glaring fluorescence of the
shop, scrubbing and cleaning. Ryan had never seen their door closed. Feliz
Navidad was a serious feast.
He walked down to stand at the Corner of It All. A leftover hippie
working his Christmas scam was loudly shilling mistletoe to everyone
bustling corner to corner.
“A buck a bunch. Mistletoe. A buck a bunch.”
No one seemed to be buying in the neighborhood where easy kisses
had turned dangerous. He missed Kick. He wanted to hate Christmas.
Thom was dead. Sandy and the triplets had moved back to the Midwest.
His mother was in the Bahamas. Kweenie was off to El Lay spending the
holidays with January. He was alone. All he had was Solly who had invited
him to his penthouse to spend Christmas with a young hustler who was
to be Ryan’s Christmas gift from Solly. He made a note to remember to
return Solly’s gun.
A vague anxiety hit him. He begrudged everybody everything for a
minute, then chided himself again for truly being a Scrooge. He bought
a sprig of mistletoe from the hippie and crossed 18th Street, past the cold
facade of the Hibernia Bank, and stood alone under the tree shimmering
with tiny white lights.
Where had everyone gone? Where was his father? Was he here now?
Ryan felt like an invisible child raised by blind parents. He longed to feel
Charley-Pop’s presence. He longed to feel united this night with Kick. It
was no Christmas carol he hummed. It was the love theme from Casa-
blanca that constantly swelled up inside him when he least expected it:
lyrics about the same-old/same-old story, about love, about glory, about
doing, about dying, wondering, “As Time Goes By,” about the future. The
future. He didn’t know what that would forgodsakes be! He didn’t know
on what he could rely. Rely. That was love’s operative word. He relied on

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