Page 386 - Some Dance to Remember

356 Jack Fritscher

Kick. He wanted him alive, balanced, in their high-flying mutual act of
love on the high wire, not haywire, not prematurely dead like both their
fathers. Kick was the only man since Charley-Pop died who stood between
Ryan and Death. He cleansed his heart. He stroked up the Energy, more
loving than sexual, in himself. Kick’s eyes remained closed; his breathing
deepened. Ryan studied his face for a trace of his once soft smile. Ryan was
the high priest of the temple of this body. He savored the years of intimacy.
He felt the Energy of it all building in himself. Plato had said the soul
rides the body the way a man rides a horse. Even if the soul inhabiting
this body had faltered, Ryan knew he’d love forever the rider who had
fallen so far. No matter the storm. No matter the risk of misunderstood
communication.
He stroked himself to still, sad music. Was this always how Famous
Couples crashed, burned, and exploded? He was Dido mourning Aeneas.
He was Romeo, void, bereft over the unrousible Juliet. They were Dae-
dalus and Icarus cruising too close to the sun. They had come so close
to touching something eternal. They had pushed back the barriers of the
finite. They had soared and cruised too close to infinity. Perhaps what
gods there were had grown jealous or fearful and knocked them both
from their high horse.
In his heart, Ryan said, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. For what I must do,
Oh, my God, I’m so heartily sorry. Ryan, rising up into full passion on his
knees, ejaculated the hope and sorrow of his seed across Kick’s splendid
body. He saluted all they had been and all they had tried to invent in a
world with no models. He came, not to pleasure, but to sadness for all the
joy they’d never know together again.
Kick’s face remained expressionless. But he was not asleep. He was
more brutally handsome than ever. Handsome. Ryan rolled the word like a
hard gem in his mouth. Handsome is as handsome does. What would Kick
do when Ryan asked him to clean up his act?
The thought was blasphemy. Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for hav-
ing to offend thee. Ryan lay back beside the man who called him lover,
watching him, until, in the dim, gold light from the spot over the bed,
they drifted in each other’s arms to sleep together, the way they had the
night of their first meeting.
In the morning, in the shower, Ryan washed Kick’s body. For the
first time, he saw on Kick’s back, unmarred by adolescent acne, traces of
something more than acne and less than boils. Three small eruptions. One
on his shoulder and two in the small of his back. Exactly the blemishes
Kick had long ago faulted as signs of heavy steroid use in professional

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