A minute later they were gone. We went inside, and one of the alliance officers phoned Nordstrum's lawyer. We rode back into Albany in charged silence.

18

Trucky's, just after midnight, was jumping—more like a Friday than a Wednesday night. I could never figure out how these people got up in the morning to go to work. Maybe they didn't; maybe they'd discovered a way to sleep for a living or

were independently wealthy. Though few looked as if they'd managed either. I saw several faces of people who'd been at the Rat's Nest earlier.

Mike Truckman was at the door, just barely upright. As we came in, he pumped my hand and said, "Don, I wanna 'pologize about the other day, really I do. I'm under one hell of a lot of pressure, and sometimes I fly off the handle when I shouldn't. You won't hold it against me, right, buddy? Let's get together one day real soon. We'll chew this thing over and straighten it out. Real soon, you hear?"

I said, "How about if we talk right now?"

"Whazzat? Beg pardon?" Freddie James's "Hollywood" was banging out of the speakers at the far end of the bar. I saw Timmy move toward the dance floor with Calvin Markham. I leaned closer to Truckman and shouted, "How about right now, tonight?"

Ignoring this, he leaned into my ear and said, "The Rat's Nest was hit again tonight, j'hear that?"

I told him I'd been there when it happened.

"You were? Jesus, you weren't hassled or anything, were you? I'd hate for you to—get hassled."

"It was humiliating. I didn't like it. They arrested Nord-strum, and we called his lawyer. He's probably out there by now. Could we go back to your office for ten minutes?"

He looked at me bleakly from out of the caves of his eyes. "Oh God, what'd they get Nordstrum for, underage or some shit like that?"

I said, "He tried to bribe the Bergenfield police chief-according to the chief. I doubt whether that'll hold up. Unless it's true and the cop was wired. In Bergenfield the cops are probably lucky to get flashlights in their budget, though these days you never know."

"I gotta go," Truckman said. "I got this new kid mixing drinks. Listen, buddy, we'll talk soon, right? Be cool, now." He ducked under the bar and went over to a young man in a yellow T-shirt with a bottle of chartreuse liquid in his hand.

I watched them for a minute—Truckman glanced back at me once—and then I bought my draught and moved toward the dance floor. I ran into Phil and Mark in the mob around the

dancers and asked if either would like to dance. Mark said he would. We did. Then Mark danced with Timmy, I danced with Phil, and Calvin Markham danced with a tall black man with sorrowful eyes who was wearing a red T-shirt with white letters that said Rabbi.

When Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" came on, we switched again and I ended up with Timmy, and by the end of it some of the younger dancers were yelping and shouting and shaking their fists. These were gay men together, and it was Wednesday night.

Half an hour later we were standing by the bar when Timmy, seeing something over my shoulder, said, "Uh-oh."

I said, "What'd you say?"

He shouted it, over the music: "I said, Uh-oh. Uh-oh."-

I turned. Harold Snyder was pummeling her way through the crowd toward us. She had on a low-cut dress the same shade of red as her martinis, big red hoop earrings, and a Veronica Lake wig. She was grinning and leading someone by the hand.

"Donnie! Donnie—you incredible hulk, you! I don't know what it was about last night, but you changed my entire life! You brought me good fortune, you fabulous Pisces!"

Timmy, Mark, Phil, Calvin, and the rabbi stared at Harold wide-eyed. Then they all looked at me.

I said, "Oh."

"Donnie, I want you to meet Ramundo. He's in show business in Poughkeepsie, and he's starting a dinner theater, and he wants to star me in the dramatic stage version he's writing of Barry Manilow's 'Copacabana.' Now, is that a part for me, or is that a part for me!"

We all exclaimed enthusiastically, and there were introductions all around. Ramundo, fiftyish, grandly mustachioed, and beaming in his powder blue velvet dinner jacket and ruffled orange shirt, kissed each of us on the lips and said, "Hoy."

More pleasantries were exchanged over Harold's unexpected entrance into what she now referred to as "the industry," and then Ramundo excused himself to "sloid over to the p-yowder room and frishen up."

"Where does Ramundo come from?" Timmy said. "Patagonia? Santa Lucia? Tibet?"

"Oh, I wouldn't know that," Harold said, adjusting her

Veronica Lake wig and looking at us with one eye. "Greene County, I think. Or San Francisco maybe—Ramundo is so-o-o cosmopolitan. I met him at the tubs."

I said, "The tubs?"

"This morning, Donnie. I always slip in around ten, then hang around for the noontime action. I'd just taped up my sign—I always hang a sign on my cubicle: Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life—when Ramundo walked by and exposed himself. I pointed at his teensy-weensy, darling little hard-on and said, 'Ooo, it's Mister Bill! How are yew, Mister Bill?' and Ramundo looked at me and said, 'Don't talk anymore like dat—like a smutty lady. I am going to make you a star!' Well, naturally I thought that was just a line, but then after sex we talked, and he meant it. Even after he came. Can you believe it? Can you believe what's happening to this tired old cleaning lady?"

A day in the life. I said, "Will you be moving to Poughkeep-sie then, Harold?"

"Yes, I've informed Mike that I'm resigning as his underpaid barf mop as of tonight. We're motoring down from the city after brunch tomorrow in Ramundo's mother's Chevette. I'll—" She looked at me. "—I'll miss you, baby."

Phil, Mark, Calvin, and the rabbi examined the walls. Timmy sipped his beer.

I said, "Well, it might not have worked anyway, Harold— us. Our life-styles are somewhat different." Though not all that different, I realized with a pang of something-or-other.

"That's the truth, Donnie, sad to say. I was thinking that very thought after you left last night. You're so—intellectual. Like your friends here. I'm more—of the earth. A people person."

Timmy said, "In this crowd an intellectual is someone who's seen All About Eve at least three times."

"Oh, really?" Harold said, looking surprised. "Well, I can relate to that." Then she gave me a troubled look. "Are you going somewhere tonight, Donnie? After closing?"

I said I was, but to forget about all that for now. I leaned down and kissed her and said, "Good luck, Harold. I wish you— continued good luck."

"And happy trails to you too, Roy." She gazed at me, and

just for an instant I again saw in her eyes Harold the yoo-hoo boy of Sneeds Pond, New York, trapped in a room with a Bible, a football, and a photo of John Wayne. She saw me see it, and she hugged me tightly.

When Harold pulled away, Ramundo had returned, and the show-biz couple went off to the dance floor to wow the country guys in from western Massachusetts, and to step on the other dancers' ankles, with a rhumba.

Mark, Phil, Calvin, and the rabbi left at one-thirty. Timmy had arranged to have the morning off from work, and we danced and hung around and ate popcorn until three-thirty, when we went out and drove my car across Western Avenue and parked in an abandoned Gasland station. I shut off the engine and we waited. The night was black and icy, and I ran the engine every ten minutes or so to warm us up.