Page 394 - Some Dance to Remember

364 Jack Fritscher

“How do you need me?” Ryan asked. “I used to know. I need to know
now.”
“We have my body,” Kick said. “We have your words. When my body
is gone, all that will remain are your words.”
What was is it Kick had said the night of the first muscle contest
victory?
I want us to be a story told at night in beds around the world.
“So that’s what I’m writing? Your memoirs? The Gospel according to
Saint Kick.”
Kick grinned. “Who better than you?”
“You are droll,” Ryan said. “Do I look,” he smirked at Kick’s impos-
sible suggestion, “like an apostle?”
Is that what you want? A biographer? A press agent?
Most gay men only want daddies.
Kick silenced Ryan with a kiss good-bye.
“Trust me,” Kick said.
Ryan was exhausted. “I’m too far gone not to trust you.”
That night Ryan watched no videotapes. He had no lust for Kick’s
flannel shirts and posing trunks. Instead, he prayed. He actually knelt, for
the first time in years, at the side of his bed, feeling more defeated than
foolish, praying for Kick, praying against dee-struction and depression
and disaster, praying for himself, praying for all the boys who had died,
who lay dying, and who would die. AIDS was not going away soon.
Kick called from Bar Nada. He had to stay another day. The next day
became the next weekend. On Wednesday of the following week, Ryan
picked up the phone to call the ranch.
Is it psychic coincidence, or just chance, when two people try to
telephone each other at the same time? It’s happened to everyone. You
reach for the phone. You pick up the receiver. You get set to punch in
the numbers. The person you intended to call is already on the line. “It
never rang,” you both say. Maybe you overhear a bit of conversation you
shouldn’t hear while the other one waits for your phone to ring. Not a
whole conversation, mind you, just a sentence. Not a sentence even, just
a phrase: words spoken in the background by someone speaking to the
caller on the other end of your line. All you catch through the beeps of
your touchtone is an Attitude. Muffled syllables of words you can’t quite
hear. Then a voice, closer to the receiver, laughing, saying something like,
“Shut up.” Or maybe Shut Up! Never let him hear you say that.
“Kick!” Ryan said. “I was about to call you.”
“I called you.” Kick was still laughing.

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