Beauty Queen by Patricia Nell Warren

Author:Patricia Nell Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay, romance, novel
Published: 2013-10-02T16:00:00+00:00

Liv was waiting up for them, drained with worry. Switching from channel to channel, she had caught glimpses of the walk-by on the evening news. She sat the two exhausted cops down at the kitchen table, and poured two strong cups of coffee.

Danny slumped down in his chair.

"I'm fed up," he said.

Mary Ellen propped her elbows on the table, put her head on her bands, and closed her aching eyes. She could still feel the girl's spit on her face.

"Was Armando out there tonight?"

"No, he wasn't," said Danny. "We had a discussion about it. Not a fight, you understand. Just a discussion. He said he wasn't going to go because he sincerely believes that somebody should take Colter out."

"Hard to blame him for thinking that," said Mary Ellen, getting up and fishing in a kitchen drawer for the aspirin bottle. She took two. "On the other hand, the guys who were there got you and me off the hook, didn't they?"

"Yeah, sure, this time," said Danny. "What about next time?"

"Look," said Mary Ellen, "you want to come out? Come out. And start job-hunting right away."

Liv sat listening to them with her eyes full of pain, stroking Kikan on her lap.

"I like being a cop," said Danny. "But I like feeling good about myself too. I don't like the way I feel anymore. Everybody at the Spike thinks I'm a truck driver. Well, I might as well be one. Better be a truck driver and free than what I am now." Mary Ellen started to speak, but he kept talking. "Look, I'm not passing judgment on you. You're carrying on this family tradition, and it's harder for you to think of giving it up. Me, the only tradition I have is Danny Blackburn."

"I'm not trying to stop you," said Mary Ellen. "Go ahead and try it, and see how far you get. I don't like how I feel either, and I have to find my own way. But I support you one hundred percent, whatever you decide."

The next day Mary Ellen went through her usual routine of visiting with Sam and Jewel. At Pier 36, Sam bit into the cheeseburger she brought him. He wasn't too interested in hearing about the walk-by. He said:

"You lose one, you win one."

"What do you mean, Sam?" she asked.

"Well," he said, "the city council voted my rights down, right? But I got my library back."

"You mean the Mattachine books are safe?" she said.

He grinned. "The Church of the Beloved Disciple got some money together and bought the whole library. They're fixing up a room for the books. Soon as they've got them catalogued, people can go up there and start using them again."

As usual, Sam escorted her to the stripped Cadillac to show her how Miss Beautiful's kittens were coming along.

At Murphy's Coffee House, Jewel was bitter, and hardly able to talk about the vote. She hadn't been sent to the walk-by. But she hadn't dared to join it as a protester either.

"The rumor is,"

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