Beauty Queen

a full future that was yet unrevealed.

Chapter 15
    11 was a beautiful August day. On the rooftop garden on Bedford Street, the petunias and begonias had bushed out in full bloom, spilling over the edges of the milk crates. The canvas awnings were a little more sun-faded than they had been two months ago.
    Mary Ellen and Liv sat drinking their morning Sanka, watching Kikan strolling lazily around on the decking. Sam's little kitten ghost seemed to be somewhere around. Mary Ellen stretched out her long bare legs in the sunshine luxuriously.
    She thought of Sam Rauch, and smiled. The other day he had said wistfully, "I wish there was a gay synagogue." Mary Ellen had told him there was one, Beth Simchat Torah. It met on the West Side somewhere, and was supposed to be a joyful group of people. Sam's jaw had fallen on hearing this. But then he'd said softly, "I always wanted to be a cantor . .
    Armando had disappeared. He had quit his job, taken his pier kitten and a few things, sublet his apartment, and gone. He had said good-bye to no one, not even Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen felt an enormous sadness on thinking of the big man. He would probably spend the rest of his life wandering the country, looking for another Danny — "seeking and not finding."
    At the same time, she was a little relieved that Armando was gone.
    Another disappearee was Captain Bader. She had called the precinct to say hello to him. They told her that Bader had quit the force. He had taken a job in private life, and had moved his family to the Midwest somewhere. The men had been sorry to see him go. In the precinct's news column in Spring 3100, they had wished him luck.
    Mary Ellen sat there in the sunshine, thinking of the tall heavy captain with the dark circles under his eyes. She knew she would be haunted by him too, wondering what his truth was, and how he had lived with it.
    But then there was Jewel—always a joyful truth. Jewel was now assistant editorial director at her little publisher. She was working on another book of startling poetry that they planned to publish next spring. It. would be Jewel's literary debut with a "straight" house.
    "Well," Mary Ellen said to Liv, "so what do I do? Do I look for another colorful job as a bodyguard? Or do we move somewhere else, so I can try to get hired as a cop again?"
    Liv shrugged pleasantly.
    "It is your life," she said. "You should not ask me. It depends on how much of a police person you feel you are."
    "I was born to be a cop," Mary Ellen said. "It's bred in the bone; blood will tell, as my dad used to say about the horses. I am a cop."
    "Then we should move somewhere else," said Liv.
    "We could try California, huh? We could try one of the cities there, where they allow open gays on the police force, huh?"
    "I would looooove to see California," said Liv, grinning. "And I will liberate the post office there."
    Mary Ellen waved at the neighboring roofs covered with broken glass, soot and pigeon shit. "Bye-bye Big Apple, hello Golden Gate."
    But a lump rose in her throat. This was her father's city, the streets he had patrolled, the OTB windows where he had placed his bets, the bars where he had played poker with her on his knee.
    Liv read her thoughts.
    "Every day we say good-bye to something the day before," she said. "Someday we have to get used to saying good-bye."
    "Except to you and me," said Mary Ellen.
    "Yes," said Liv, smiling. "That is the one exception ..
    Up on East 69th Street, Jeannie slumped in the wrought iron chair, her half-full juice glass forgotten on the table. She gazed across the East River, thinking over a thousand things that she had already thought over a thousand times in the last few days.
    She had made a colossal ass of herself, for sure. To make everything perfect, an AP photographer had caught her slapping Jessica in the driveway at Windfall, and the photo had gone out on the wire services. People still criticized her for the famous list of homosexuals. They were those little political mistakes that would take a long time to live down. Fortunately, she was young and tough, and she could plan as far ahead as necessary. Nixon had made mistakes, and he had come back to be President, forget governor. Carter had made the mistake of admitting to Playboy that he lusted after ladies—they would never let him forget that—yet Carter had become President. Slapping Jessica around in public was surely not going to keep her from being governor of New York. She would have to make