Page 31 of The Happy Month

“You mentioned a lesbian who was murdered. Do you remember much about that?”

“It’s been ages. I think her body was found under a bush somewhere near the Rose Bowl.”

“Pasadena.”

“Well, yes, of course. I don’t remember much more than that. The police figured out she was lesbian and didn’t do much. I think the lesbo groups put up fliers and wrote letters and things, but nothing happened.”

“Except, you said people connected it to Vera Korenko?”

“Or at least they tried to. The more they said someone’s killing lesbians the less interested the police became.”

Ronnie stood in the doorway to the dining room and cleared his throat loudly. “Dinner is served.”

Junior and I went into the dining room. The table was set and there was a salad sitting in the center. John brought in a big bowl of pasta and sauce. Ronnie followed with a bottle of red wine and a Crystal Geyser for me.

We filled our glasses, served ourselves, made the appropriate noises about how good everything looked. It really did. Finally, John said, “I have Internet Explorer. I could try to figure out who Hadrian was.”

“What do you mean?” Junior asked.

“Patrick Gill had ‘my Hadrian’ carved on Ivan Melchor’s tombstone,” I said.

“Oh my God, that’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard in ages.”

“You know who Hadrian was?” Ronnie asked, skeptically.

“Children, you embarrass yourselves. Hadrian and Antinous were two of history’s most famous gay lovers. Hadrian was emperor of Rome when he met Antinous, the most beautiful young man in the entire world. They fell desperately in love and Hadrian brought his lover on his military campaigns. Then, in Egypt, Antinous drowned in the Nile. Hadrian was bereft. He commissioned statues of Antinous wherever he went. His grief was as big as the world.”

“Putting that on Ivan’s grave means he and Patrick were lovers, doesn’t it?”

“It also means Ivan was the older of the two. And very likely the top,” Junior said with a smirk.

“How do you know that?” Ronnie asked, with even more skepticism.

“Because in ancient Rome, gay sex was everywhere but it was only okay if you were a top. You could fuck your slave or your neighbor’s teenage son, but they couldn’t fuck you.”

That was just bit too close to home, given that Ronnie was much younger than I was and… Well, I decided to change the subject. “Junior’s been to a lot of the bars that Patrick saved matchbooks for.”

“Yes, back in the seventies. Speaking of the seventies, I remember this joke we used to tell. Why do faggots have mustaches?”

We looked at each other, none of us had mustaches. John had had a Van Dyke for a while the year before, but it had been gone for a long time.

Junior picked up on our lack of facial hair saying, “Okay, so a lot of guys had mustaches in the seventies. Come on, why do faggots have mustaches?” He paused dramatically then crowed, “To hide the stretch marks.”

We didn’t laugh or even chuckle. Junior frowned and said, “Somewhere along the way people lost their sense of humor.”

CHAPTER NINE

July 26, 1996

Friday morning

When I arrived at The Freedom Agenda, Karen told me we’d gotten an email from Paul Michaels with the reunion information. She’d printed it out and handed it to me. I went in the back, made myself comfortable, and called the number. When I asked for the information on Sharon Hawley, I was told they couldn’t give it out but that they would contact her and give her my information. It was up to her whether she called me. I gave both the number for The Freedom Agenda and my cellular number.

We were expecting Raymond Harris, Larry Wilkes’ public defender, at eleven. I had some time to kill, so I went out to the front and asked Karen, “Could you check Lexis/Nexis for Ivan Melchor. He was born in 1906 and died in 1972. It’s for the Karpinskis.”

“When we get you a computer, I’m going to get you a login so you can do this for yourself.”

“Oh God,” I said. I really didn’t want to get involved in things like that. I mean, a lot could go wrong, right?