Page 441 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 411

pocket. But he could not shoot. He could not kill the winner. He could
not murder the new Mr. California. He could not kill his lover in whose
magnificent body, he could only hope, lodged, as in his own flesh, the
memory of how they had for so long felt one to the other.
He called Kick’s muscle-hustle number, prepared to leave at least a
threat on his machine.
“You stay out of my way. I love you too much not to warn you. I want
to kill you.”
But he had not even been able to do that. There is an acceptable level
of evil in the human heart, but Ryan, for all his pain, lacked the venom
to act.
When he heard that the windshield on Kick’s Corvette had been
smashed, he wished he had done it himself. When he heard that Kick
thought he had done it, he realized that Kick had never known him at
all. He was a creator, not a destroyer. He lived only on paper. Kick had
nothing to fear. Ryan took small solace from Francis Bacon: “By taking
revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing over it, he is
superior.”
For months he languished in his Victorian. The place assaulted him.
He opened drawers and found sweet old notes:
“I love you, madman!” He decided to reconnect his own answering
machine. He tested the tape.
“Hello,” the voice said, “you have reached 285-53....”
Ryan’s face blanched. It was Kick. It was the message he had recorded
when first he had moved in. The drawl in his southern voice was beautiful.
“I was wrong. He didn’t fall from grace. I did. He was too good for
me.”
Small reproaches, sharp as stabbings, creeped out of Ryan’s bureau
drawers and closets. Small reminders: Kick’s brass cock ring, a Baggie
of clipped blond hair, forgotten letters, a sweat-stiff pair of weightlift-
ing gloves. He began the slow task of collecting the scattered detritus of
their affair. It was like nuclear waste storage and retrieval. Its half-life was
eternity.
“I’m tired,” he said, “of being mugged by memories every time I open
a box I haven’t touched in a year. I’m living at the scene of the accident.”
For four months Ryan haunted his Victorian. His small appliances
danced on the counter tops. His electric meter spun in hungry circles. He
could not leave. He could not bear the chance of running into Kick on
Castro. Dr. Quack threw up his hands. Ryan’s depression required more
than Valium. Dr. Quack sent him to Dr. Shrink who smoked his pipe

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