Page 359 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 329

Later, as the clock struck midnight, Ryan knelt in front of his image
of Kick posing on screen in a slow-motion display of extravagant muscle.
He was crying.

9

Early Christmas morning Ryan drove his VW Rabbit to Solly’s pent-
house. They distracted each other from the day itself. Solly sat on his
couch and reminisced about his long-dead young lover. He was bitter.
“Mickey was really rather clever to jump off the Bridge on New Year’s
Eve. Clever in the sense that every holiday season since, and for every
Christmas to come, how can I help but remember him and the way the
afternoon light was that New Year’s when the police came to my door.
They found his wallet on the Bridge. They asked me if I knew him. I
said he’d been missing, which wasn’t unusual, for a week. They told me,
with all his presents still wrapped under the tree, that he had taken the
Final Big Swan Dive and what did they want me to do since they hadn’t
yet found his body, and I never had to do anything, because they never
found him.
“He disappeared. The way everybody disappears. Oscar Wilde said,
‘Everyone who disappears is said to be last seen in San Francisco. It must
be a delightful city. It has all the attractions of the next world.’ But Mick-
ey’s never been seen again. San Francisco isn’t what it was in Wilde’s day.
Every Christmas and New Year’s, I guess, Mickey’s forced me into my own
little memorial service. The way things are, the daily funerals, Falwell,
Reagan, I’m glad he missed the seventies and will never hear of the ugly
eighties. He wouldn’t have liked either very much. This may be a good
year for California wine, but it will be shit for its whining fornicating.”
“I thought I was depressed,” Ryan said.
“This whole City is depressed,” Solly said. “Do you remember Randy
Faragher?”
“Of Randy and Dan Brodie? Sure. We always called them Randy and
Dandy.”
“They’re not so dandy these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“Randy’s at San Francisco General.”
“What?”
“He’s a vegetable. He shot himself in the head.”
“He’d never do that.”
“We’d all do that.”

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