“After that, of course, I took her in hand, and whenever possible I arranged my high school and Little Theatre productions with a role for her in mind. I also tried to get that horrid mother of hers to allow me to enroll her in an acting class in the city—even offered to pay all the expenses out of my own pocket. Of course, she refused. ‘Buncha damn foolishness,’ I believe were her exact words.” He paused again and clasped his hands together. “Her damned mother foxed me at every turn. I suppose she had been considered good-looking in her youth—though the idea escapes me now—and she resented Betty Sue. And who wouldn’t, stuck on that horrid trailer house behind that sordid beer joint. Once, when Betty Sue was fifteen, I had a friend—a professional photographer—take a portfolio of photographs of her. They were lovely. Later, when I asked Betty Sue what she had done with it, she told me that it had been lost, but I remain convinced that her mother destroyed it.

“So sad,” he said, sipped his drink, and hurried on. “At fifteen, she played Antigone in Anouilh’s version, and at sixteen, Mother Courage. I wouldn’t have believed it possible.”

“Pretty heavy stuff for high school,” I said.

“Little Theatre productions,” he said. “We had a great company then. Even the San Francisco papers reviewed our productions favorably. She was so wonderful.” He sounded like a man remembering heroics in an ancient war. “With a bit of luck, she might have made it on Broadway or in Hollywood. With a bit of luck,” he repeated like a man who had had none. “The luck is nearly as essential as the talent, you know.” Then he gazed into his empty glass.

I broke into his reverie. “How old was she when you seduced her?”

Gleeson laughed lightly without hesitation, his capped teeth gleeming in the sunlight. The hummingbird buzzed the sun deck like a gentle blue blur, pausing to check Gleeson’s fragrance. But he wasn’t a flower, so the bird flicked away. Gleeson rattled his ice cubes and stood up.

“I think I’ll have that drink now,” he said pleasantly. “Would you care for another Tecate?”

“I’d rather have an answer to my question,” I said.

“My good fellow,” he said as he fixed a drink, “you’ve been the victim of sordid rumors and vicious gossip.”

“I got your name from Mrs. Flowers,” I said, “and that’s all. Except that I understand now why she gritted her teeth when she said it. Otherwise, I don’t know a thing about you that you didn’t tell me.”

“Or that you surmised?”

“Guessed.”

“You do the country bumpkin very well, my friend,” he said as he handed me another beer. “But you slipped up when you didn’t ask me to explain what ACT stood for, and you didn’t learn about Brecht and Anouilh in the police academy or in a correspondence course for private investigators.”

“I’m supposed to be the detective.”

“I imagine you play that role quite well, too,” he said, “and I suspect that it isn’t in my best interest to continue this conversation.”

“I don’t live here,” I said. “I couldn’t care less how many adolescent hymens you have hanging in your trophy room. Better you here with candlelight and good wine than some pimpled punk in the back seat of a car with a six-pack of Coors.”

“I’m not that easily flattered,” he said, but I could see smutty little fires glowing in the depths of his eyes. “However, I do occasionally indulge myself,” he added, smiling wetly. “Most of the simple folk in town think I’m a faggot, and I let them. A very nice protective coloration, don’t you think?” I nodded. “But Betty Sue and I never had that sort of relationship. Not that I wasn’t sorely tempted, mind you—she had a fierce sexuality about her—and not that she might not have been willing. Certainly, if I had known _ … known how things were going to work out, known that she wouldn’t pursue a career in the theatre, I would have snatched her up in a moment. But I was afraid that a sexual relationship might interfere with our professional relationship.”

“Professional?”

“That’s right,” he said. “I may be only a high school drama teacher now, but I have worked off-Broadway and in television, even taught in college, and I know the business. Betty Sue might have made it. And I confess that I intended to use her if she did.” He sighed again. “Athletic coaches often rise on the legs of their star players, and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t have the same chance. So I abstained. Betty Sue, as young girls so often do, might have grown bored with the older man in her life, and confused the sexual relationship with the professional one. So, my friend, I kept my hands off her,” he said with just the right touch of remorse mixed with pride.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to see his face behind the wistful mask. “You must still have friends in the theatre,” I said, “and I assume that you have asked them about Betty Sue over the years.”

“So often that I’ve become an object of some derision,” he said ruefully. “But no one has ever seen or heard of her. That’s a dead end, I’m afraid.”

“Could she have been pregnant?”

“She could have, yes,” he said. “I assumed that she wasn’t a virgin much past her fourteenth birthday. But, of course, I had no way of knowing.”

“You know,” I said, still bothered about the earlier lie about his drink, “sometimes people confess a little thing—like your selfish intentions about her career—to cover up something larger.”

“What could I possibly have to hide?” he said blandly.

“I don’t know,” I said, then leaned forward until our hands nearly touched. “I’ve got a little education,” I said, “but I’m particularly sophisticated—”

“Still a country boy at heart?” he interrupted.

“Right. And, like you said, you’re a professional— you know all about acting and lying, wearing masks,” I said, “and if I find out that you’ve been lying to me, old buddy, I’ll damn sure be back to discuss it with you.” I crushed my empty beer can in my fist. An old-fashioned steel can.

Gleeson laughed nervously. “You’re a terrible fraud,” he said as cheerfully as he could. “You couldn’t fool a child with that act.”

“Unlike yours, old buddy,” I said, “mine ain’t an act.” Then I grabbed his wrist and squeezed the heavy silver bracelet into his soft flesh. “Intellectual discourse is great, man, but in my business, violence and pain is where it’s at.”

“My god,” he squeaked, squirming, “you’re breaking my arm.”

“That’s just the beginning, man,” I said. “Keep in mind the fact that I like this, that I don’t like you worth a damn.”

“Please,” he whimpered, sweat beading across his scalp.

“Let’s have the rest of it,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing, I swear … Please … you’re breaking … “

“Listen, old buddy,” I said pleasantly, “the U.S. Army trained me at great expense in interrogation, filled my head with all sorts of psychological crap, but when I got to Nam, we didn’t do no psychology, we hooked the little suckers up to a telephone crank— alligator clips on the foreskin and nipples—and the little bastards were a hundred times tougher than you, but when we rang that telephone, the little bastards answered.”

“All right,” he groaned, “all right.” I released his wrist. “Can’t you get this off?” he grunted as he struggled with the bent bracelet.

“Sure,” I said, then straightened the silver. His face wrinkled and his eyelids fluttered. He rubbed his wrist as I fixed him a drink. “You had something to tell me.”

“Yes, right. Once, some time ago,” he babbled, “I thought I saw her in a porno flick over in the city. The girl was fat and awful, a pig, it might have been her, it looked like her, the print was bad, all grainy, and the lighting even worse, but it looked like her, except for this scar, this ugly scar in the middle of her belly.” When he stopped talking, his ruined mouth kept moving like a small animal in its death throes.

“Why lie about that?” I asked, honestly amazed.

“I was … I am ashamed of my interest in that … that sort of thing,” he said, then rushed into his drink. “And it was so sordid, that awful fat girl and all those old men …”

“You remember the name of it?”

“Animal.. . something or other. Lust or Passion,

something like that. I can’t remember, it was so horrid,” he moaned, then began to weep.

“And so exciting,” I said, and he nodded. “That’s all you had to tell me?” I asked, and he nodded again.

It didn’t sound right, but I didn’t know what sounded wrong. I did know that I couldn’t push him anymore. I didn’t have the stomach for it. The only interrogation I had seen in Vietnam had made me sick, but I didn’t remember if I had vomited because of the tiny Viet Cong’s pain, the Vietnamese Ranger captain’s pleasure, or my own fatigue. I had been in the bush for twenty-three days, and I could sleep standing up with my eyes open, which was good, because I couldn’t sleep lying down with them shut. A few days later, I made the mistake that got me out of Nam and two years later out of the Army. Those times seemed far away, usually, but listening to Gleeson sob into the clear sunlight, they seemed too close.

“Hey,” I said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Oh, I understand,” he blubbered, “that horrid war twisted so many of you boys.”

“I left Nam nine years ago,” I said, “and I’m no boy, so don’t make excuses for me.”

“Of course,” he said as sincerely as he could, “of course.” Then he took his hands away from his face and wiped at the tears. “Will you do me one small favor?”

“What’s that?”

“If you find her, will you call me? Please. I’ll pay anything you ask. Please.”

“You might have thought of that ten years ago.”

”Ha,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Ten years ago I was still in my thirties, instead of nearly fifty, and I had no idea that I was going to be here ten more years, no idea that the peak of my career was going to be some little high school actress. No idea at all. I didn’t know what she meant to me then. I do now. I’d just like to see her, talk to her again. Please.”

“I won’t find her,” I said. “But if you do …”

“I’ll let you know for free,” I said. “Sorry about your wrist, and thanks for the beers.”

“My pleasure,” he answered, a slight smile curling his lip, then his head dropped into his hands again.

I left him there on the sun deck, his huge head cradled in his arms like that of a grotesque baby. As I stepped out the front door, a young girl wearing a halter and cut-offs took that as her cue to push her ten-speed bike up the walk. I wanted to tell her that Gleeson wasn’t home, but her greeting and smile were shy and polite with wonder, her slim, tanned thighs downy with sweat.

“Hello,” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

“Stay me with flagons,” I said, “comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.”

“What’s that?” she asked, sweetly bewildered.

“Poetry, I think.”

Instead of taking her in my arms to protect her, instead of sending her home with a lecture, I walked past her toward my El Camino. Youth endures all things, kings and poetry and love. Everything but time.