City of Night

by John Rechy

  Inside, there are certain familiar faces. Jamey, Randy, and Chick are sitting together. I sit at the bar with them. The jukebox is playing: “Children, go where I send you—how shall I send you? Im gonna send you one by one—. . .” Then the curtains parted, and the lightning streak of the sun flashed into the bar.

  “It’s Lance!”

  “Whats the matter with him?”

  “Is he sick?”

  “Lance, baby!”

  “Come on over here, Lance. . . .”

  “He looks Terrible!”

  “Hes drunk!”

  Voices fluttering through the smoky bar like lost birds.

  Randy, who had been tapping his fingers to the rhythm of the jukemusic, flattened his hand on the bar with an angry: bang!!—the fingers suddenly tense, motionless.

  Jamey slid off the stool quickly, walked to the tall slender figure now inside the bar and said: “Why, Lance-baby, I thought you were in New York—what happened to your show? I thought—”

  The slender figure moved past him, staring anxiously around the bar.

  “Whats the matter, Lance?” Chick whispers, following him as if to shelter him; aware of the chorus waiting.

  Lance O’Hara squints dazedly, reels toward Chick: “Chick—I—” And then. “Have you seen . . . Dean?”

  Voices, the music—the deafening sounds. Smoke like a gray shroud. . . . I walked out quickly.

  Across the street, the cops were frisking three youngmen. I started to walk back toward the Boulevard, and then I was aware of someone close behind me. I waited. I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder, and I turned to face Lance O’Hara.

  “Youre not: him,” he sighed.

  The cops were looking in our direction now. Lance was leaning heavily on me, about to pass out. “Come on,” I said, leading him away.

  “No—wait. Will—you—drive?” he mumbled. “Please—come with me. Im parked—parked—somewhere!” He began to laugh at not being able to remember where his car was.

  I had seen him turn on Sunset earlier, and I led him around the corner.

  “There—” he said. “Thats my car.” He handed me the keys, got in stumbling; leaned back, covering his face: “Whew! I cant—cant—drink. . . . Lets go—. . . anywhere!”

  I looked at Lance O’Hara now.

  When I had first seen him at the Splendide, the subdued light had chosen mercifully to bless him—and I had seen the youngman who had reigned securely. Now, in the glare of the summer sun, there was little mercy. I see the crushed Lance O’Hara of the now-fading legend: tall, yes—slender; but his face, bloated from drinking and sleepless nights, had the look of alarm which only the faces of the once very beautiful and anarchically disdainful, on the brink of relinquishing their claim to that anarchy, can have: The skin was yellowish in the bright light, lines converged under the eyes forming small sagging sacks; his dark hair was matted at the forehead with perspiration. But the haunted eyes looking at me, a clear blue that melted almost indistinguishably into the white, are what I notice most: They are the astonished eyes of someone who after years of wearing sunglasses is forced suddenly to remove them in the savage stare of the sun. . . .

  “Lets—drive—somewhere,” he said. “Anywhere—nowhere—sooooooooommmmmmmmmewhere—over the rainbow!” Laughing chokingly, he swerves sideways on the seat—“Ooops!”—retrieves a bottle of whiskey which had rolled under the seat and drank thirstily from it. I started the car, moving toward the Strip on Sunset. As if on its own, the car speeds past the California palmtrees, silent witnesses to speeding life, fleeting Youth. Lance opens his eyes suddenly wide, seeing me, I thought, really for the first time. “You dont even look like him,” he said. “Not at all, really. I followed you out When I saw you leave—leave the bar, I thought—I thought you were—Dean. . . . Hey! Lets make it: A Party—havent had—party in—oh, long, long—. . . I wanna get realleeee drunk!” He held the bottle to me and I drank from it. His panic was infectious. Im aware of Flight now, acutely—of Lance’s, mine. “Wowee,” he said, “youre drunk too—thats it—wowee!”

  We were on the Freeway now, cars racing before us, toward us, next to us. The world, everyone on the Freeway, is spinning in wide swirls . . . Away! . . .

  “Bumpity-bump,” said Lance, drinking again from the bottle, handing it to me. “More I drink, more you look like him. Dont care who you are—so—long—as—you—driiiive. Oops! Liquor hit—my head! Bumpity-bump. Hey! Lets ballt . . .” Then he was silent, eyes closed. “You dont know—Dean—do you?” he asked me abruptly. “Havent seen him—since—whee—. . .” holding the bottle for me again. “Dean,” he said furrily, and again he seemed to pass out.

  Now my vision became fantastically clear—which is that stage preparatory to my becoming drunk, when each object becomes sharply real. The traffic had thinned, and we were moving past many-colored fruitstands strung along the highway like a gypsy caravan.

  Now we’re in the mountains, here lushly green, there brown-patched, leprous—past, occasionally, areas of burned-down trees: Dead. The road winds treacherously in a series of tight S’s—the sky is blue and clear: a cool inverted inaccessible lake.

  At a turn in the road, the car almost swerved into the trees. Lance sat up: “Have—a—baaall!” he laughed. “Crash the fuckin car!—lets go up in flames!—aim for Heaven!—get there with a Wham!”

  Green scenery rushing toward us, retreating. Vast blue of the sky like shifting panels. . . .

  “Im drunk,” Lance said. “You too? . . . Here—if we drink more, we’ll be on the way back—cold sober again. . . . There. . . .”

  Crack of wood!

  Green shrubbery trembles. The car has stopped. I leaned on the wheel, surrendering to the dizzy carousel of green. Dots of sun needled my eyes as the leaves shifted dazedly about us. Lance staggered out.

  “Great to be Drunk!” he says, making his way down the hill. “Great, great! Everyone should be drunk—all the time—right? . . . Whole fuckin world on one great big endless: Durrrunk!”

  I pushed against the door, against the bushes. Tall trees sheltered us from the sun. At the foot of the hill, some water, very blue and clear like the sky, winds serenely along the trees. I knelt, throwing water on my face, trying to stop the green merry-go-round whirling about me.

  And in one wild instant Lance was hugging me to him, sobbing urgently. “Dean—dont—go—away—”

  “Im not Dean,” I kept repeating.

  But he didnt hear me. “Dean—” he was sobbing, holding me tightly. The scenery stopped spinning now and collapsed, came crashing over us—the trees burst, shattered. Again, once, the sun pierced the leaves in a myriad of light—pinpoints bursting in the water shimmering. And Lance’s arms squeezed me tightly—and he whispered over and over:

  “Dean . . .”

  I felt my hand in the water, my one contact with reality. I let my fingers dangle in the spring. . . . And the scenery which had closed in on us green, blackened, and . . . the . . . pinpoints . . . of . . . the . . . shattered . . . sun . . . are . . . closing.

  I awoke and the sun slashed through the trees blindingly at my eyes. Beside me, Lance’s head almost touched the spring. I pulled him away, threw water on his face, and he opened his eyes abruptly, stared at me, surprised, trying to remember. And then he turned from me and began to sob.

  I walked back to the car and waited, and finally Lance returned. “Who are you?” he asks me.

  “I just met you—early this morning.”

  He was silent

  “You asked me to take your car.”

  “I remember—something like that.” His eyes stared ahead in the dreadful limbo of after-drunkenness and near-hangover. “Where are we?” he asked.

  “Near Arrowhead—I think.”

  He still avoided looking at me. “I remember now—I saw you in some bar. I mistook you for Dean. I dont know what I was doing looking for him in the bars—hes not even old enough to get in.”

  “I was drunk too,” I
said, to ease his obvious embarrassment

  As I drove his car down the mountain, he became friendlier, his embarrassment relaxing. “I dont remember everything,” he said, “but whatever happened—if something was wrong—Im sorry. I cant drink,” he explained.

  We stopped at one of the water faucets along the road and got out. The world shrugged beneath us: expansive and unconcerned.

  “I—fell off a cliff—once,” Lance said dully, staring down. He laughs bitterly. “If youve been around the bars in Hollywood at all, youve probably heard about it.”

  I was silent.

  “No comment? That means youve heard. Hell, I dont care. If I only knew what really happened. I was drunk that night too. Some marines—I was with them—I dont even know how—I was frantic; drunk. Someone had just told me that—. . .” He stopped for a long while. “I remember shouting something to the marines; I remember—. . . The car stopped. There was a cliff. . . .” He stood staring down at the impassive world. “Sometimes—sometimes I think—I think I knew that cliff was there when I jumped. . . .” He was silent again. “When you look down like this,” he said, “it’s almost as if the world is waiting for you to jump, and the only thing you can do is turn back and postpone it—for a while—or throw yourself on it and get it over with. . . .”

  He turned and smiled at me—the enchanted smile of the legendary Lance O’Hara—and he put out his hand to me in a gesture of friendship. “Thanks for coming out here with me.”

  In the car, he said abruptly. “I know! Lets go there now—to Laguna Beach! I havent been there since that day. Weve still got time! I’d like to see it again.”

  When we reached Laguna—that city like a slick patchwork quilt—the beach was deserted and cold.

  We walked on the darkening beach. Lance stared ahead at the ocean. We lay on the sand silently. Then Lance got up, moved to the very edge of the water, which advances murmuring toward him, retreating, advancing closer now more violently. He stood against the sky, a shadow, the water lapping at his feet. . . .

  As we drove back, Lance seemed happy. “I want you to stay with me tonight—will you?—and tomorrow Im going to give a party. I want to very much suddenly. I want to invite them all—and theyll all come, if only out of curiosity. But they wont see what they want to see. . . . Will you stay with me tonight?”

  5

  This is the house of Lance O’Hara—the house of Esmeralda Drake the Third. . . .

  In the hills, serene.

  The smile on Lance’s face seems serene too: belying the existence of a ghost, tapping along the house with a cane. . . .

  Most of the morning, Lance was on the telephone. “Yes, it’s me—Lance! Im having a party. . . . As early as you like. . . . Here, in my house—you know where I live. . . .” And most of the morning, and into the afternoon, the telephone rang as if itself aware of the party.

  Since yesterday at Arrowhead, Lance had not mentioned Dean—except once, last night, when, in bed with me (as he tried, I knew, to stifle with sex the screaming memories), he had called me by his name. But each time he answers the telephone today, the smile freezes, he closes his eyes, breathes deeply to contain the welling panic. He stands moments over the telephone, his hand uncertainly over the receiver. The “Hello,” coming finally, becomes a wrongly answered question. . . .

  Chick, naturally, was the first to come.

  “Baby, I didnt know you even knew Lance!” he said, winking at me knowingly—and then he swept toward Lance, embracing him with genuine affection. “Lance, baby, oh! I could cry to see you looking so Great. What a grand idea to have a party! Remember the Old Times? Remember when we were dancing in the Movies together? . . . Party every night. Never went to bed except to party some more. . . .”

  And now, it seems, they are all here: the handsome masculine ones desired alike by men and women; the gushing swishes, hands aflutter like wings; the few stray women secure among the men who will idolize them but not love them; and as in any group of homosexuals and those lured for whatever reason to them, there is here a mood of superficial good humor, of euphoria bordering on hysteria.

  So the motley chorus has invaded the stage.

  But looking at Lance, strangely sparkling now, the Furies are forced to abandon their dour prophecies. Only momentarily. They wait, They know. They have been alerted by life itself. Like criminals returning to the scene of the crime, the whisperers know they have returned to the scene of the beginning of the fall.

  Jamey burst in, in a very brief striped bikini. “I went to the beach,” he explained breathlessly. “I just heard about the party, and I was told it was going to be very informal—so voilà!”—striking a bathingbeauty pose. He catches sight of Lance and rushes toward him. “Well, Lance, welcome back—it hasnt been the same without you. And the other day, when I saw you—you know, at the Rendezvous Room (though I hardly expect you remember), I said, My God, whats happened to Lance!—he looks terrible,” He stares calculatingly at Lance, and what he sees displeases him: It is again the Lance of the legend which Jamey must see destroyed. “And by the way, Lance-sweetheart, did you find him? . . . Oh, you know, whoever you were . . . looking . . . for . . . remember?—oh, look, theres Chick!” rushing away from Lance, leaving the words suspended behind him like a curse. “Chick, honey!” Jamey gushes. “I didnt expect to see you here—after that awful scene you had last night. I heard all about it! Did that tramp really rob you? Youve got to be more careful about picking anybody up on the Boulevard these days,” he says loudly, aiming at anyone here who might have been picked up on the Boulevard. Later I hear him say to someone else: “I think Lance is trying to fool us—hes not as happy as hes pretending. And what the hell’s happened to that little tramp Dean?”

  “I dont know,” the other answers. “I thought maybe he’d be here. . . . Youve go to admit,” he said, “Lance looks good.”

  “Dont let him fool you, honey, hes just pretending to look good. Dont you notice how there isnt too much light in here?”

  “Thank heaven for that, sweetie—you dont suffer from the dark yourself.”

  The stage is set. Lance O’Hara is surrounded by the waiting chorus. . . . But so far, Lance was perfect—laughing, moving from group to group, recalling incidents, love affairs, shamelessly flattering the extravagantly gushing women. “Didnt I tell you theyd all come?” he whispered to me. “The vicious fairies. And theyre disappointed it’s not a wake yet”

  Like a summer storm in those areas where in one instant it changes from bright to thundering dark, it happened.

  Dean stood at the door—the same youngman who had talked to me that night on the Boulevard.

  Lance had been talking to someone. The sudden silence descending over the room like a blackwinged bird made him stop instinctively. All eyes alternated between the youngman at the door and Lance. Lance was suddenly livid, the circles around his eyes deepened. He whirled about, smiling—moving toward the youngman. “Dean! Youre just in time for the party!” His voice shook. The breathless chorus rehearses its lines. “Where have you been?” he asked casually, placing his hand falsely steadily on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Away,” Dean said curtly, and that word, thrust at Lance like a stone, makes the whisperers realize they have not turned up in vain. Lance dodges the stone, clings to the façade of composure. The conversations of those who understand—and soon, aware, of those who dont—stop abruptly as if the needle had been removed from a record. The whispers, ready to be released at any moment, are balanced like a great rock on a cliff, ready to tumble disastrously. Jamey, who had left the room before Dean came in, walked in at the wrong time: “My God,” he says, “I was almost Raped in the powder-room.” But no one laughed. It was as if someone had coughed during the crucial moment of a drama. “Whats happened?” he said, and then he saw Dean and Lance staring tensely at each other. And Jamey squints his eyes victoriously.

  Dean marched past Lance, past the staring eyes—into the bedroom. Lance is behind him, gliding
past the stares knifing him brutally, ready to repay him now for his beauty, for the anarchy of that beauty. Chick steps quickly before Lance, whispers frantically: “Lance!—dont go after him!—theyre watching you!” But Lance brushes him aside and follows Dean into the bedroom.

  The door closes.

  From behind that closed door come voices, alternately raised, lowered. Now the door of the bedroom swings open, and Dean walks out, his clothes thrown carelessly over his arm. Lance stands momentarily at the door.

  And now he will do what will delight all of you who have hated him for his unquestioned reign: Lance will follow Dean. . . .

  He catches up with him, pulls on the clothes draped over the youngman’s arms. The clothes spill on the floor: Lance’s façade crumbles before us. “Dean—dont—go—” he pleads. (And is he pleading as much for his life as for Dean? I wonder.) “I have to talk to you—come back into the bedroom—I—” The pressure of Lance’s hand noticeably becomes heavier on Dean’s shoulder. Dean jerks viciously away from him. And he lashes:

  “Dont touch me, you fuckin faggot!”

  And the door, slammed by Dean, refuses stubbornly to close—swings open, wide open, admitting the coming night.

  The whispering has not yet been unleashed. Lance must admit his fall—with a look, a word.

  He stands before the door, his back toward us, facing the night. . . .

  And what is he staring at beyond the door? Is he looking at the disappearing figure of Dean? Or is he staring past the youngman? Does the same ghost that had hovered that afternoon on the beach, that night on the cliff, loom now at that door? . . . Lance doesnt move. Perhaps he cant face the buzzing bees behind him yet. Or is he acknowledging at last the old, old man who has waited patiently for his revenge? . . .

  And in anticipation of the crushed look which will bring down the curtain on the reign of Lance O’Hara, Chick rushes crying into the next room; and Jamey sighs: “Well!’ and that sighed word really means: “At last!”

  Now Lance will turn to face you, and the look of defeat will confirm the news that the reign of Lance O’Hara is over—that the charmed life has ended. Tomorrow, in the bars, you will write the epitaph.