Billy and Stud: ``Bitter Street Love''

Billy fell in love with Stud the moment he saw him entering Coffee Andy's on Highland Avenue. Coffee Andy's is a restaurant where malehustlers gather throughout the day before scattering along Santa Monica Boulevard a distance of perhaps a mile, an ugly gray stretch from the tip-end of Hollywood to the beginning of West Hollywood long before the boulevard turns chic in the area of mutual cruising, unpaid homosexual encounters.

Billy heard Stud before he saw him, heard his motorcycle have a fit outside before it passed out. “The Wild One,” Billy looked out the restaurant window and said to Ed, a middle-aged married client of Billy's; he drove in from Pasadena once or so a week to see Billy, and paid him $30, the amount Billy had asked for when they met—and then Ed would always add more. He would also take Billy to dinner—like now.

Stud walked in shirtless, showing off his gymnast's body, pushing the time before he would have to put his shirt on—a waitress was charging at him; he peeled on a sleeveless t-shirt with a slight tear that showed a part of his chest. He was frowning because the motorcycle had hinted of a death rattle.

Seeing him approach, Billy lowered his long, dark eyelashes, assuming a look he knew was among his very best, and then he flashed his beautiful green-speckled brown eyes at Stud and allowed a strand of sun-lightened blond hair to fall over his forehead. Billy was eighteen.

Billy pushed away the strand of hair, counting on its falling again, and splashed a dazzling look on Stud.

Billy was crushed. “Oh, that thing,” he said. Ed had been consoling Billy about that.

Recently that woman announcer and her busy crew had invaded Santa Monica Boulevard with vans and wires and lights and cameras, doing, they said, a feature on “street life” that would tell “the truth.” They interviewed several hustlers; Billy was featured. Yes, he'd looked great—his eyes even greener, mistier. It was only when he saw the news program—as he sat about the TV set with several of the other hustlers who shared the two-room apartment in a building that would be demolished at the end of summer—that Billy realized he'd been used. The female announcer had kept saying, “You're very beautiful; certainly you make a lot of money.” She kept reminding him all his friends would see him on television—along with prospective rich customers, even a movie director. So Billy told her he made $1000 a week hustling the streets. In the segment, none of that Mandy Lang-Whatever's pushing had been included; just the figure—which a vice cop who followed in the program used as evidence that there were a “lot of perverts out there buying young bodies.” The program had ended with a long shot of other street hustlers, idling along the trashy blocks, peering into slowly moving cars, malehustlers searching that night's cheaply paid contact. “They peddle their bodies for high stakes—to the highest bidder, these young prostitutes, coming here to make their fortunes on the erotic streets, the way others in yesteryears came to find fame—legitimately—in the movies,” the woman's voice-over had throbbed. Billy had felt dirty—the way he hardly ever did hustling the street.

“Yeah, I thought it was you,” Stud said. He strutted to a table in back, pulling several pairs of eyes after him.

Including Billy's. “… —and that woman said I was effeminate—I'm not effeminate,” Billy protested to Ed.

Ed soothed him. “She said you were very beautiful, effeminate or boyish, depending on how one viewed you,” he reminded Billy. “My wife commented on what a beautiful youngman you are, Billy. You do have a boyish beauty,” he emphasized.

Billy was beautiful. He had a slender blond body that turned golden instead of tan, eyes so misty at times they looked painted with water colors, and long dark eyelashes. It was true he was not effeminate—he was gracefully boyish, looking radiantly younger than his eighteen years. Tonight he was wearing the familiar Levi cutoffs, which showed off his proud round buttocks, and a powder blue shirt, chopped at the stomach to exhibit his gold-tanned waist hardly 27 inches. He was from Louisiana, from “a city with a French name,” he would say, not wanting to evoke it further. A southern accent filtered his speech.

“That youngman who just walked by thinks you're very beautiful also,” Ed said, tracing Billy's gaze on Stud.

Billy did notice him looking his way. “A lot of people stare at me since I was on that TV show and said I made a thousand dollars a day,” he said ruefully. “I could kill that Mandy Do-Shit!”

Stud looked away when he realized the two were talking about him. He was good-looking, eighteen years old; he hadn't had a haircut since long before he'd left Bozeman, Montana—empty fields, frozen winters, poverty, anger—and so it curled in dark loving licks at his neck and about his ears. He had a muscular body built by hard country work and improvised gymnastics. He'd been in Los Angeles a night and a day and had made $30 hustling. Like other restless youngmen of his age and meager background, Stud learned from scandalized newspaper and television accounts about malehustling in large cities. These reports were always breathless in their denunciations. Like the others, Stud heard only the huge amounts of money to be made “out there.” That message became an insistent beckoning away from a drab life and angry shouts.

Last night, with his satchel containing his possessions, he had walked to Santa Monica Boulevard; he saw dozens and dozens of youngmen on the streets, semi-exposed bodies, some masculine, others effeminate. The pretty ones sometimes called each other “she” and the masculine ones called them that, too, at times. Some were not effeminate, but pretty in a way Stud found confusing. A man stopped for him. Stud asked for “the usual.” The man offered $30. Stud wondered whether he should have asked for more. At the man's pretty home—as pretty as any Stud had ever seen before—he watched the segment in which Billy starred on television.

Ed gave Billy an extra $20 today. “Go over and talk to that kid.” He paid at the cash register and left. There were mean clients and sweet ones—just as there were good hustlers and the criminal types who beat and robbed their clients—and hustlers sometimes got beaten up, too—and Ed was one of the sweetest clients—giving Billy an “emergency telephone number,” even trying to talk him into leaving the streets, offering to help him get a job, or go to a trade school—even though they didn't have sex at all sometimes. But Billy hadn't even finished grammar school and had already been busted for prostitution.

“Can I sit down or you wanna be alone?—you look so moody.” Billy went over to the youngman with dark hair.

A smile broke Stud's scowl. He had a chipped tooth on one side of his mouth. Maybe that's why he smiled crookedly, to disguise it. Whatever—it made him look very sexy. “You really make a thousand bucks a week?” he asked Billy.

“No!” Billy said. “That woman made me say that—and she knew it was a lie. What's your name?”

“Stud,” Stud said—he called himself that now; the man he'd gone with last night had called out to him, “Hey, stud!” “I figured she tried to get you to say that so the cop could say what he said,” Stud said knowledgably.

An effiminate young waiter breezed over. “Well, aren't we everywhere!” he said to Billy. “First we were over there with the sugar daddy, and now we're over here with the macho man. And, honey, you haven't made a thousand bucks since you began hustling your buns at the age of ten.”

So Stud strengthened his defense. “Fuck,” he said to the waiter, “you would've done the same thing—I would've.”

“Take your order, sir?” the waiter frosted over. Stud ordered a hamburger and fries—double hamburger for the protein to keep his muscles firm. He looked at Billy, expecting to be thanked for his defense.

Instead, Billy said quietly, “I'm not a ‘she,’ Stud. I'm a ‘he'—just like you.”

Stud was flustered. When he saw Billy on television, he'd thought Billy was a girl—not because he was effeminate—he wasn't—but because he was so beautiful. Within his experience, he couldn't think of anyone being that beautiful and not a girl. Sorry, he wanted to say. Sony, he tried to say. But he couldn't.

Billy brightened. “Where you staying, Stud?” he thickened his Southern accent.

“I—we—got an apartment around the corner. Have a recent vacancy, too. Everybody gives a few bucks.”

“Sounds good,” Stud said. Billy's eyes were actually as greenish gold as they had appeared on colored television!

Outside, darkness was inking the sky. Billy suggested they walk to the apartment. Stud said he didn't want to leave his bike there. The bike leaned forlornly against a pipe at the edge of the coffee shop. Even the chain with which he had secured it looked weary. It was a skinny motorcycle, eager to give up. Billy told Stud where the apartment was. Stud suggested Billy ride there with him.

Billy's heart leapt—but he also eyed the motorcycle and wondered whether it would hold them both even that short distance. Stud was undoing the chain, making motions that would flex his biceps. Showily, he removed his shirt. Billy decided he would ride with him even if the rickety machine collapsed.

Stud stood up, ready to mount his bike. He and Billy were the same height; then he noticed Billy was wearing sandals and he was wearing cowboy boots. He straddled the machine, hopped down on it. The machine made not the slightest announcement it intended to start. “Motherfucker.” Stud tried to control his anger.

Pumping away at the silent machine, Stud was sweating rivulets. He was becoming angry. “Fuckiri cocksucker!”

Stud pumped more—and with one foot he kicked at the side of the machine as if spurring a horse. The machine jangled to life. “Quick!” he called to Billy, who hopped on.

The machine bucked, bucked once more, and then rolled on as smoothly as it ever would again. Billy put his arm on Stud's moist stomach, and he leaned his head against Stud's shoulders; only the blond, golden-streaked hair touched the brown-tanned skin.

The machine made it around the block. In front of the apartment building, it died, died—they both knew—forever. Stud looked down at it. “It brought me all the way from Montana.”

Carrying his satchel, Stud started pushing and pulling it toward the building, thinking he might be able to sell it as scrap.

The building was the last on the block. Two others had been abandoned. The one on the corner was only slabs of concrete like upright pieces of discarded jigsaw puzzles. The other had not yet been demolished, but its windows had been knocked out. That emphasized the desolation of the building left standing.

One side of a double swinging iron gate had become unhinged, so loose now that even a breeze threatened to topple it. The grass was a bristly mat of yellow. A fountain in the courtyard was a dry pool of debris. Trees still struggled for life. Valiant flowers—gray—managed to grow.

To the side of the courtyard, several open stairways led up to the second and third storeys of the building so decrepit no one cared who moved in or out—mostly hustlers. Before the new season, concrete demolition balls would attack the morose structure.

Stud chained his dead bike around a tree. He followed Billy up one flight of squeezed steps. They walked along a corridor that would be dark no matter what time of day it was.

Billy didn't even think to wonder how Stud was reacting to the crumbling building. The hustlers who took their nightly posts along the boulevard slept from place to place, or in garages, parks—jumping over wired gates and past warning signs. Sometimes they slept in doorways. Having a place of your own—a rented room, an apartment—that was something!

The door was unlocked. Stud and Billy walked into a two-room apartment littered with hamburger wrappers, fried-chicken boxes, cans of soft drinks, beer, milk. There was one large window—and a small one in the open bathroom. Several mattresses were scattered about the floor. Doorless closets revealed shaggy clothes. A small color television—on—was chained, tightly chained, to an exposed pipe. A stunted stove, a refrigerator with coils. Heat squatted in the bare rooms.

“Looks just fine.” Stud meant it. He put down his satchel and looked at the others in the room—two youngmen and a girl, all about his age.

“This is Dianne from— …God knows where,” Billy introduced. “She just appears.” He hugged Dianne fondly; she let him.

“Like a mushroom, overnight,” Dianne growled in a surprisingly rough voice. She was a small, frail girl with an acne problem.

“Sedalia, Missouri; know where that is?” Gary had just turned seventeen—a veteran of two weeks and still making it, a slim tough-looking youngman with the angular features popular on his type; he had a flowery tattoo too large for his biceps. He lay on a mattress and in his shorts with Valentine hearts. His eyes were tied to the television set.

“Tim from Albuquerque, New Mexico,” Tim announced himself. He was pretty and more than slightly effeminate. He wore subtle makeup. Unlike Billy's, it was not the sun that had bleached his hair.

“Stud?!” Dianne blurted incredulously, clearly hinting she might just laugh aloud. “Stud!” she rasped in her tough voice.

Stud almost retreated to his real name. Instead, he dug the heels of his boots firmly into the mushy wood of the floor and challenged, “Yeah, Stud!”

“Shee-it.” Dianne swigged from her beer can. She straddled a chair and leaned her elbows on its back. “You gonna tell me you're straight?” she tossed. No one knew where she came from or what she did. Almost every day she'd just turn up from nowhere in her old Toyota and go back wherever. Though she never stayed, she brought food. If, especially on weekends, someone had left without paying a part of the rent, she'd contribute a few bucks. She was just there among exiles.

Gary looked away from the television screen, Tim blinked. Dianne said, “Shee-it!”

“I've never kissed a guy or done stuff like that. I never wanted to do a guy or get fucked,” Stud offered in evidence. “I never fucked a guy, but I fucked lots and lots of girls in Bozeman.” Two. “And that's how it's gonna stay.”

“Straight as a bow—sorry, arrow,” Dianne derided. “And what's so fuckin’ good about that?”

“Leave him alone, Dianne,” Billy defended softly—but he felt a pang of apprehension about Stud. “He's just Stud. Period.”

Gary said, “Hell, man, as long as you charge, what difference does it make what you fuck?”

Ernie, a Mexican youngman, older than the others, maybe nineteen, with dreamy soft eyes and brown velvety skin, walked into the apartment. “You the new tenant?” he asked Stud.

Stud nodded. Ernie walked over and kissed Dianne, who turned her cheek: “Ugh!” Then he kissed Billy on the lips. Stud frowned. “Hey, you looked beautiful on TV,” Ernie told Billy. He opened himself a beer. “You contribute yet?” he asked Stud. He went to a drawer, took out a box with some concealed rolled joints he'd come back for.

Ernie said it casually to Gary in order not to sound uncool: “Heard you got real low on downs yesterday. That shit's a killer, especially when you switch to uppers.” Then quickly: “I'm on a roll,” he said, combing his slick hair, “gotta keep it going when it's hot.” He groped his groin.

Gary had lowered his head when Ernie mentioned the pills. Now he reached up playfully and grabbed Ernie's ass. “That, too?”

That night Stud went out with Billy into the world they called “the street.”

It was another world, ugly and beautiful. Like no other. When things went right for Billy, he would not trade it for any other. When no one but the cops and “queerbashers” stopped, he did wish there were something else. There wasn't.

Most of the hustlers on the street could do nothing else, with hardly any education or skill, families relieved by their disappearance, some with records of petty truancy, options all but shut at a time when they were just opening for others their age. Most abandoned their brief turbulent pasts when they came to Los Angeles. Some on the street were there because they had to be, and resented it—those were mainly the ones who robbed, beat up clients; others came to love that world—at times—because it contained a tacky glamor available to them in no other way.

Otherwise thrown away, discarded, they had only their youth and beauty—sometimes only their youth—to unlock doors to worlds they would never peek into otherwise except for those moments of sexual importance when they shone like stars.

They did not know it, of course, except as a shapeless anger mixed with fear, which recurred without pattern, that they were doomed; youngmen who would live out most of their lives as ghosts of what they had been, briefly, one summer, one season.

With variations in between, there are two main types of malehustlers: the overtly masculine and the pretty-boyish. Like Stud, there were those who claimed to be “straight” and “did nothing”—just got blown, masturbated for or were masturbated by someone; posed, flexed. Just as masculine, the self-proclaimed “bi's” might allow themselves to be fucked but would not go down or would go down but not get fucked—or do any or all of the variations, depending on price and the client. Most of the customers of these youngmen were middle-aged homosexuals (although there do exist the young exceptions); men, often married, discovering their homosexuality probably latently.

The pretty-boyish hustlers were not necessarily effeminate; like Billy, very often not at all. In others, the boyishness might veer toward girlishness, finally painted effeminacy—or they might turn toughly masculine. Usually they got fucked or they sucked the client. Like Ed, most of their clients were married and, quite probably, heterosexuals who had problems with the women they would have preferred and so turned to unthreatening youngmen.

The hustling strip along Santa Monica Boulevard was created a few years ago when developers decided that the then-hustling area on Hollywood Boulevard and the side streets off it was ripe for profitable “renovation.” And so began the vast raids against “undesirables.” The lucrative real estate campaign was pushed as a campaign for morality. Daily, the police rounded up the loitering young people—cruising or hustling homosexuals, Negroes, Mexicans, and others who came to the crushed boulevard because there was nowhere else to go. As repeated arrests bludgeoned the area, the survivors of that powerless army scattered to Santa Monica Boulevard, the blocks at the end of Hollywood, the beginning of West Hollywood. This new strip had one clear advantage—on this street hustlers could linger, pretending to hitchhike, while the clutter of Hollywood Boulevard had not allowed that pose. The bruising “clean-up” accomplished, the renovation of Hollywood Boulevard proved more costly than profitable to the politicians and building interests, and so it was abandoned. Especially on warm afternoons, some of its earlier inhabitants still return in desultory bands; but late at night, the long famous street dies, a few feeble arcades remaining doggedly open, in mourning.

The hustling area on Santa Monica Boulevard is one of the ugliest stretches in the city—one of the few where, for blocks, there are no vines or flowers, just weeds; row after row of mostly one-storey moribund buildings; warehouses, garages, spotty bars, auto-body shops, second-hand furniture stores, a mortuary, abandoned stores with no vestiges of identity, a sloppy food stand—and one small park commemorating a historical incident long forgotten. The street is flanked by dark electrical posts, the remains of a streetcar system. Thick black wires linking one post to the next enclose the shabby street.

“He wants you,” Billy said quickly when a man stopped around the corner after having eyed them where they stood on the street. Cockily, Stud began walking toward the man. The man shook his head. Stud felt awful. Billy knew it. “I don't think I wanna go with him. Probably just stopped ‘cause he recognized me from TV,” Billy said. “Go on,” Stud understood, ‘"I'll make out.”

Billy did not hop into the car, just chatted through the window while casting a spell over the man and sounding him out. If anyone was too immediate about stating a price and a sexual act—the two requirements for a prostitution bust—stay away. Reasonably assured otherwise, Billy would get in, wishing aloud that “there was some way you wouldn't have to be nervous about who's who on the streets these days,” inviting a signal—like having the man reach over and touch him intimately. Cops are forbidden to do that, although there are many stories otherwise.

“You got a beautiful body,” the man said to Stud. The guy was okay, Stud determined. He laid it on the line: “Thirty-five dollars—and I don't do anything.” “Fine by me,” the man said, “but all I got is twenty dollars; maybe we can do something in the car and you'll be back soon enough for someone with thirty-five dollars,” he coaxed. Stud didn't want Billy to see him get out of the car. He figured he'd be ahead anyhow. In a parking lot surrounded by vacant cars, darkness, swirling wind, Stud lowered his pants to his knees and the man blew him and jerked himself off.

“First really slow night I've had,” Gary complained when Stud was back on what he was already thinking of as “his”—and sometimes Billy's—corner. “Had five rides up and down the street; everyone just wants to talk tonight.”

Nearby, that swarthy Ernie leaned so tough against a wall that Stud took off his shirt.

Stud was new, good-looking, muscular, and so he stood out; he made it again that night, for $30 this time. The man who picked him up took him home, dressed him in cowboy clothes and jockstrap.

When Stud returned to the apartment, Billy was back, too; he was wearing only his cutoffs and getting ready for bed. On the mattress next to him, a barely covered velvety brown back and a heavy-haired, curved leg sprawled. Ernie! Billy reached over and pulled a small mattress, locating it closer to his than Ernie's was. Pretending to be choosing where to sleep, Stud chose that one.

On the street the next night, Tim, with bolder makeup, gasped at Stud, “Billy's talking to a pig around the corner. I saw him bust someone earlier.”

When Stud got there, Billy was leaning into the car window. The driver bent over and opened the door. Just as Billy would have got in, Stud yelled at the driver, “You trying to pick up my kid brother, huh? I'll punch you out for that, I oughtta call the cops!” He looked over at Billy and barked, “Get away!”

Stud looked at the man behind the wheel—a cop, for sure—and with deep anger Stud said, “Fucker, you goddamn fucker.” The frozen face stared at him.

Billy was ecstatic that Stud had saved him. He treated Stud to a steak at Coffee Andy's—and they started with a fresh, water-sequined salad. Stud treated Billy to a first-run movie.

Back at the apartment, Stud realized he hadn't gone hustling that night. Billy laughed—but it was suddenly very important to Stud that he go out.

Largely because of mutual—and rampant—threats and dangers on the streets, a close warmth may develop among hustlers. That is compounded by their being exiled exiles—shunned by “straight” homosexuals—the vast majority, pursuing careers and unpaid sex encounters and affairs, looking on hustlers as a puzzling blight on their horizon.

At night, hustlers band together, warn of that night's new danger—and always, always exaggerate their earnings even while cadging a cigarette. No one will ever admit to going for less than $35—but all will, and for much less in the deep, desperate hours of crawling nights.

Often, in the afternoons, especially in the lot next to the closed Bank of America building or near Big Boy's Hamburgers across the street—and when the cops don't run them out—the camaraderie overflows among the masculine youngmen and the pretty boys, all gathered, jostling each other, clowning, playing, wrestling showily.

Today, several of the youngest were skate-boarding. Others rooted or jeered. A blond boy carved out a dazzling series of 8's on his board. Another wove perfect S's about him. Challenged, the first one somersaulted onto his board, knobby knees held rigidly, bare feet poised. The other tried to best him—balancing himself on one hand. He fell. Glee broke out as the two began wrestling. Others joined the pileup of flailing, laughing bodies.

Ernie saw Stud standing with Billy. The Mexican youngman showily tied his shirt about his waist. He jumped, grasping the protruding part of a billboard announcing a movie about the end of the world. He began chinning himself, counting aloud until he had drawn a growing crowd, who took up the count. Numbers rose. Ernie's straining back was a smear of brown sweat. He forced one more chin, another—101!—dropped himself easily, and accepted cheers.

Stud grasped the same board. They all counted aloud. Billy looked on, both proud and apprehensive as Stud, dripping sweat, approached Ernie's record—but everyone could see his lats beginning to quiver, resist: 97! 98! 99! 100! 1-01! 1 … 0 … 2! The record toppled. One more chin and Stud let go. Ernie came over bigly and congratulated him. The clasped congratulations turned into a hand-wrestling contest—which Ernie won. Now others swung from the billboard—12 hard chins, 5, 3! Heckling, laughter. The skate-boarders tried new tricks, falling deliberately, all laughing, romping—and then two squad cars came, scattering these male prostitutes.

Ernie and Stud walked away with Billy. “You both won,” Billy congratulated the two. That didn't please Stud. He suspected there had been something between Ernie and Billy. Among hustlers sex may occur—unpaid, of course—affairs unaffected by each other's hustling. That morning when Billy was in the bathroom, Stud had pushed Ernie's mattress a few inches away from Billy's. Billy saw him. “Cleaning up,” Stud said.

Dianne came over one afternoon when Billy and Stud were watching the chained television. She laid down a sack of groceries. She sat in her familiar way, arms crossed about the back of a chair, legs straddling it. It was the afternoon movie, about a soggy creature who appears out of a murky pool.

“Who'd be afraid of that seaweed?” Dianne said. “I can show you a thousand scarier things just outside the door.”

Stud watched rapt. Billy leaned over on his bare shoulder and rested his head there at the same time that he reached for Stud's hand. Stud pulled away as if he had been scorched by fire. Billy's head jerked from the sudden movement. Dianne shoved the chair away and stood up, glowering down at Stud.

“You're encouraging him—and you keep insisting you're fuckin’ straight.”

“I am straight,” Stud said. He faced Billy, knowing Billy would tell Dianne to mind her own— …

Stud was still staring incredulously at the shut door when it opened and Gary staggered in. He acted jittery, glanced at the food Dianne left but didn't touch it. He nodded at Stud and lay on a mattress and fell asleep. Stud noticed he was wearing a flashy new watch.

Angered that Billy had gone out just like that, Stud went to Coffee Andy's. Ernie was there. Now that they had both won a physical contest—a “shoot-out,” Ernie called it—they were friends.

“Everyone's on a downer, man,” Ernie said. “Big raid coming down. That TV program really got people all fucked up about perverts and shit, and the vice is moving in…. Hear all about those hustlers robbing Johns?—that ain't gonna help either, man. This rich guy got beat up in a motel the other night, robbed, maybe got killed—heard it both ways. You never know.”

The street was a cauldron of rumors, often exaggerated, embellished. A robbery became a wave. A rape became an epidemic. There were the recurrent rumors—a heterosexual who hated hustlers was going around beating them up, then it was a closet homosexual, then a cop on the force, on-duty, then an off-duty cop, a retired cop. Most rumors signaled a dangerous new truth in that forbidden world where anonymity invites violence. Youngmen with little identity beyond the outlines of their bodies were rendered vulnerable to others, just as others were vulnerable to them.

“… —heard two, but Tim said three or four and only to femme guys, or the pretty ones, but I heard they picked up only masculine dudes, so watch out, man,” Ernie was going on.

“What?” Ernie's words pulled Stud away from his thoughts about Billy walking away like that.

“These guys, man,” Ernie repeated. “They drive a van or a pickup; Gary said he saw them in a long limousine—same guys, though. Maybe they shift around, you know? They pick up hustlers, man, rape them real ugly, like with their fists and weird dildos. They're supposed to be straight, hate gays, especially hustlers. Cops ain't doing shit about it…. Hey, look at that Gary!—he's shooting up hard now— …” Gary didn't even nod back when they left.

Outside, a smoky dusk pulled at colors. Smog was making an urgent incursion before the wind pushed it away. Around the city, the foggy smoke gathered like enclosing barbed wire. Scenery seemed sketched on a gray screen. Gray, starless night descended. Hustlers lined the streets at their posts.

Suddenly an army of squad cars invaded the boulevard. Up and down the street, the hated angered glow of cop-lights filtered into the night. Cops rushed at every hustler in the area, shoving them against the nearest wall.

Billy! Stud thought. A brutal white light flashed in his face. “Put your fuckin’ hands up and move to the corner,” the amplified voice ordered Stud and Ernie. Two cops jumped out of the quivering car and corralled other youngmen. One of the cops was a redneck with the beginning of a beer belly and broken veins on his nose, although he was hardly thirty. The other cop was an oval-shaped blond woman with a mean face.

Ernie winked reassurance at Stud. Stud winked back. The thought of Billy persisted. Billy, shoved against the wall! Billy, mauled! … The cops made them face an abandoned hot dog stand—palms against it. “Feet out farther,” the woman cop ordered. Ernie's arm slipped.

Rage gripped Stud. But he had to stay like that, powerless. One word, and they both would be handcuffed. Another squad car drove up; two more cops jumped out. Stud felt hands exploring his lower body, for “hidden weapons.” He kept thinking of this happening to Billy. No!

The woman told them to turn around. Stud blinked in disbelief. All the cops had their guns out. The redneck said, “Whattayasay we book ‘em all?”

The redneck went back and radioed in the squawking car. The woman moved her gun in an arc covering them all.

The jumbled cop-jargon came back in broken snatches on the radio. “Compound's booked solid; no more buses,” the cop said.

“They set one up in an alley nearby, take everyone there, then to jail in buses,” Ernie said. “They just ran out of buses, that's all. Hey, where you going?”

“You walk over there and they'll stop you again and this time they'll have a bus,” Ernie said.

“Hey, I saw that old guy Billy sees—waiting for him when we left Coffee Andy's; I bet Billy's there—I'm sure.”

Billy was there, with Ed. Billy rushed up to Stud. “Ed drove me up and down the boulevard to see if they'd stopped you.”

Billy walked in just minutes after Stud entered the apartment. “You really went looking for me?” Billy asked him.

“Yeah.” He tried to sound indifferent now. He felt Billy's hand like burning iron on his shoulder. This time he didn't push it away.

Gary walked in. Stud pulled back. “Feel like I'm thirty years old and just turned eighteen,” Gary said. The garish watch was gone. There was another one on his wrist. His face was white beneath a layer of tanned skin. He sat on the mattress, counting out some money from a wallet, discarding cards and papers, keeping others. “I'm not asking for money anymore,” he said to no one, “I'm taking it!” He started to light a cigarette, but his fingers were trembling so erratically that the match kept blowing out. Billy lighted the cigarette for him. “Shit!” Gary threw the cigarette on the floor and walked out.

Billy gathered the discarded cards carefully. There was a driver's license with the photograph of an older man. He didn't look like Ed, not at all—but Billy thought of him. He decided to put the cards in an envelope and mail them to the address on the license.

That night, Billy woke up startled. Stud was asleep beside him. Billy leaned over and outlined his shoulder, his arm, his hip. “I love you, Stud,” he whispered to the still form.

The next night heat gathered. More young bodies were bared on the street. The streets were inhaling the heat in the day and exhaling it at night.

Two happy middle-aged men in an expensive Mercedes stopped to talk to Billy and Stud. “We want both of you. We're having a grand party, and we want to liven things up with pretty, fresh faces. We'll pay you for the night, and then you can just have a good time.”

They got in. The two older men, still attractive, were lovers. “Together twenty-five years—so, you see, it can work.” “With a little bit on the side,” the other said naughtily. “And we're celebrating the anniversary of another couple—thirty years together!”

There were about twenty men in the beautiful old home. Most of them were of the same age as the two, also well-dressed, attractive. On a long table, food was spread like a chopped rainbow.

Sounds of approval and applause greeted the entrance of Billy and Stud when they walked into the dining-room. “Have you ever seen two more beautiful boys?” one of the men whose anniversary this was asked his companion of thirty years. “Well, we were rather pretty in our time,” the companion remembered, to happy applause from the other men. “They are adorable,” the first man said. “And so obviously in love,” the other added. “They'll last thirty years, too!” one of the men who had invited them said, to more responsive applause.

But everyone had a great time. No sex. Billy and Stud were star presences. At midnight they all toasted champagne to the couple's thirtieth anniversary.

That night in the apartment it was Stud's turn to look at Billy asleep. The moon did not enter this side of the building, blocked always, but on bright nights its light filtered in—so did the gray morning. Stud watched Billy intently. Billy's body was not softly formed; where had he got that idea? It was slim, yes—but very solid-looking. Stud leaned back and had trouble falling asleep.

The next day when he returned to the apartment in the afternoon, Billy was sitting on a mattress sewing a shirt.

“Got a mighty fine body there,” a man called out of a car window to Stud that night. Stud flexed, as he did always to that remark. There were hustlers on every corner. So Stud got in. “How much you go for?” the man asked, “and what can I expect for it?” Stud knew instantly the man was a cop.

“Not hustling,” Stud said firmly. “Let me off at the corner.” At the corner, two arms reached in through the open window on Stud's side and pulled him out. The driver of the car handcuffed him. He and the man waiting at the corner said, “Los Angeles vice officers.” “You're under arrest,” the man who had propositioned him said easily.

Stud protested. “I told you I wasn't hustling.” He couldn't believe he was actually chained.

“Guess I didn't hear that part,” the cop said. “All I heard was when you told me you'd blow me if I paid you twenty bucks.”

The enraged heat rushing out of Stud's body made the night's warmth chill his flesh.

In the cop station flooded with hideous white light like in hospitals—but colder, uglier than that—Stud was booked for prostitution. All about were other chained, crushed presences, mostly Mexicans and Negroes, and youngmen like himself—and women, most in short skirts.

Stud felt himself drowning in a stagnant ocean of indifference. He could disappear, just disappear—because a cop had lied—and no one would know where he was.

Call whom? He shook his head. An iron door opened with a grating electric buzzing. Beyond it were rows of iron-barred cells. Years ago, Stud had gone to a zoo. He left, crying, so sorry for the pacing animals locked up like that, like him now in this nightmare that was proceeding. He was put in a cell with four bunks suspended by angled chains. An uncovered toilet. There was a youngman sitting on a bed.

“Happens,” the youngman said. He looked haunted. “I called my father; the bitch said he's not coming for me.”

“What… happens now?” Stud asked, his heart a frozen fist of anger and fear.

“Wait. Eventually they'll take you to a judge; you can't pay the fine so you'll go to jail.”

The nightmare pushed deeper. Stud felt his body trembling inside, but the outside was rigid. The world was outside and he was in a cage. Would Billy think he'd just gone away, just like that?

Billy heard about the busts. A real raid was going on, not like the routine harrassment every night, the news was flashed to Coffee Andy's. Stud! “Yeah—I saw him, they busted him,” one of the skinny skate-boarders said.

An answering service. “I want to leave a very, very urgent message for Mr. Edward— …”

“I'll call Ed.” Billy heard the woman's voice: “Ed, it's Billy, I think he's in trouble.”

It had been so long since he'd heard his real name that Stud didn't respond at first when a cop yelled it out. “Bailed out,” the kid in the cell with him said. Stud merely accepted it. “Can I call someone for you?” “That bitch? Fuck him,” the kid said.

The buzzer hissed. The iron door parted. There stood Billy, in his cutoffs and blue shirt chopped at the middle. For all the cops to see, Billy hugged Stud. Ed was talking to the bondsman. Billy's description of Stud, the location of the arrest, and “Bozeman, Montana” had identified him.

As they were walking out of the cop station—and making sure the cops’ attention was on them—Billy stopped, looked around. “You ever noticed?” he asked. “You ever noticed that cop stations are lighted the color of weak piss?”

Even in the deep depression he was in, Stud was able to look at Billy with a lot of admiration.

As Ed drove them to the apartment, Stud felt more fear than when, at ten, he had run away the first time—a distance of ten miles.

At the loose iron gate to the building, Billy told Stud to go ahead, he'd be right up. Stud thanked Ed, promised to pay him back, really, really. Billy got back in the car with Ed.

“He'll have to go to court; they'll reduce the prostitution charge to disorderly conduct. A fine. I'll take care of it.” He gave Billy money.

Billy remembered his own arrests: the miserable days in jail, the ugly man who called him a queer and tried to fuck him—but Billy fought and fought—the odor of urine, the spotted food. “What did the cop report say?”

“That Stud offered to go down on the arresting officer for twenty dollars,” Ed said softly.

Billy winced in anger and pain for Stud. “You know it's a lie,” he said to Ed.

In court Stud was fined on a reduced first offense of disorderly conduct. “The cop lied,” Stud said to the judge, perched over everyone like a humped hawk. That was the only moment the judge looked—glanced—at him.

Not even the steak that Billy treated him to could bring Stud out of his dark, dark mood. “Fuckin’ liar cop!” he kept saying; he seemed more depressed by the cop's report than the fine or the arrest; the cop had deliberately humiliated him further, that was clear—had known how to do it.

As they walked on Santa Monica Boulevard—all gray, closed buildings—a car came to a sudden stop ahead. Two youngish men yelling, “Fags!” “Queers!” started shoving Tim and another equally effeminate boy around near the pizza parlor.

All the accumulated rage erupted in Stud. He ran across the street, Billy followed. Stud's knee connected with a groin. He felt a fist on his cheek, and punched back. Tim and the other effeminate youngmen were flailing with small hands. Billy rammed his fist into the face of the other attacker. Stud looked at Billy in surprise when he heard the crunch of teeth.

Then another of the nightmares of the street happened. He was walking along the boulevard. A car slowed, and then it moved on. “You're not worth thirty-five dollars,” a man said to him. “I'll pay you five bucks.” “Fuck you!” Stud slammed the car door. “You want me to pay you and you do nothing?” another man was indignant. Stud said Fuck you, again, got out. Another man agreed, and then he noticed another youngman, new on the streets. “I think I'm looking for something else tonight,” the man said. Stud saw him pick up the kid who had just walked by. A nervous middle-aged man said yes to everything and couldn't keep his hands off him as they drove into a dark residential area. Before a small house, the man stopped, opened the car door for Stud to get out—and drove off leaving him stranded. Humilated, Stud walked back to Santa Monica Boulevard. He didn't want to know what time it was—but he knew it was at least midnight. A squad car flashed a light in his face. He walked on. A car stopped. As Stud approached, the man appraised him and drove off. Stud knew he must look very tired. He began counting the numbers of hustlers still out. Dozens. He saw older ones, in their twenties—the old-young who haunt the streets, knowing death can occur at twenty; the ones he didn't hang around with. What would happen to Billy when he was twenty, twenty-one? Stud stopped himself when he realized he was doing what he'd never done before; what others did—peer anxiously into slowly moving cars and grope himself. It had to be three o'clock. Shadowy bodies soon to be trapped by the threatening, accusing dawn. Finally Stud surrendered, started walking back to the apartment. Then a car slowed as it turned the comer. Stud heard it stop, and his heart raced in gratitude as he walked quickly around the comer, only to realize that the driver of the car had stopped for another youngman, slouched against the lightening shadows. Feeling very, very, very tired, Stud walked back in gloom to the apartment, with the dark knowledge that for the first time he had not been able to make it on the street.

The next day, to assert his identity, he had STUD tattooed on his arm. And that evening everything was different! Everything changed, as it has a way of doing, and he made it several times. The one disappointment of the day: Billy had frowned when he saw the fresh tattoo on Stud's arm; then quickly he told him how wonderful and tough it looked—but Stud remembered the first look. He told himself Billy had reacted only because the tattoo had not fully healed. Yes! That was it.

He and Billy were standing on “their” corner when a round-faced man got out of his car and offered to pay them both a “modeling fee” to let him photograph them nude. Billy said yes, Stud shuffled his feet.

Of course, Stud and Billy had seen each other naked—on their way in or out of the bathroom, or at night, lying without a sheet in the hot beds. Here, in the man's house, they both stripped awkwardly, though. While the man fussed with the camera, they stood on the floor at opposite sides of the room. Then Billy looked at Stud and could not take his eyes off him—he was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. Stud glanced at Billy and noticed he was becoming more masculine all the time, but strangely just as pretty.

The man photographed them separately. Then he offered to double their “fee” if they would pose for “sex pictures.” “Nothing kinky,” he emphasized. “Just you— …”He pointed to Stud. “… —going down on him.” He pointed to Billy.

Near the chained motorcycle, Stud said to Billy, “It is true, Billy, you're bigger hung than me.”

“No,” Billy soothed. “It's just that I was more excited than you, so I looked bigger.”

“No,” Stud said, “you are bigger hung. But I'm not small, either!” he emphasized.

Tim was walking out of the bathroom. He was in full drag. “I am now Tina Louise,” he said. “And I am hustling Western Boulevard with all the other ladies—you boys can have Santa Monica Boulevard.”

The next day at Coffee Andy's there were no new rumors; just the news that Gary was dead, found in a park overdosed on uppers and downers. The death weighed over them all. Another intimate unknown presence had disappeared. They did not even know where the body would be, where they might go and at least say good-bye. Only the hated cops would know, and not care.

In the apartment, Stud folded Gary's mattress until a new tenant would claim it. “Shit,” Dianne kept saying, “shit, shit, shit, shit—it's all fuckin’ shit!”

The next night there was a bright moon. Billy and Stud could tell from the silvery shadows in the apartment. Billy in his cutoffs and Stud wearing only his jeans, they sat watching television. The air was breathless. Billy lay back. In the spill of glowing colors from the television screen, his face looked like that in a painting. Stud turned off the sound, not wanting to change the glow on Billy, and leaned back on the same mattress.

Billy bent over him and kissed him on the lips. Stud felt his cock harden more quickly than it ever had before; he felt Billy's pressed against his and just as hard. Stud's legs curled about Billy's hips. Billy reached for the buttons on Stud's pants, opening them, pulling out the eager cock. He felt Stud's fingers pulling down the cutoffs. Both of them lay naked on the narrow mattress, the electric colored glow brushing their limbs in changing hues. Their erect cocks kissed. Billy slipped down, licking Stud from his lips to his chest, to his waist, down. His lips swirled about his balls and then enclosed his cock, licked his balls again, enclosed his cock, and sucked. Stud sighed and leaned slightly to one side, to see Billy's body, study it openly for the first time—the sculpted buttocks, the golden down. His own limbs were brushed over with darker hair. The meshing of their bodies looked beautiful and right. He shifted farther and took Billy's cock in his mouth, sucking him in the exact rhythm with which he was being sucked. Stud felt the strange, full organ in his mouth. He didn't know whether he was about to come in Billy's mouth or Billy was about to come in his, the excitement was so totally fused. He pulled his head away slightly and studied Billy's cock and balls cupped in his hand, the knot of the heavy balls, the round firmness of the cock; he licked it, and the balls, and felt Billy's tongue slide along his. Stud swallowed Billy's cock, deep, deeper, astonished that it slid into his throat, as deeply as his slid into Billy's! Their buttocks thrust. Then they shifted their bodies and kissed and kissed, their mouths parting only for seconds in order to connect again.

Billy lay back, opening his legs. The light from the television brushed him in gold, the hairs on his legs gleaming. Stud spat on his hand and touched the knot at the parting of Billy's buttocks. Billy widened his legs, his ankles on Stud's broad shoulders. Stud rubbed the spittle on his own cock and into Billy's ass, entering it slowly. He held Billy's legs. Then he arched his body and pushed in as he lowered his torso so they could kiss to die rhythm of his pumping strokes. Billy came against Stud's rubbing stomach. Feeling the moisture, Stud pushed his full length into Billy's ass. His lips and tongue roamed eagerly over Billy's mouth and face. Stud came—came, came, came.

Then he rolled over, onto his own mattress, out of the spill of the television's soundless colors. In the grudging moonlight, Billy noticed, Stud's look had changed.

In the morning the mattress beside Billy was vacant. A note was there, in his place:

Deeres Billy;

Life is strang in't it?!!! You think you no everythin ther is to no an you fine out you dont no anythin atall—life is shor strang!!! I cain love a guy an stil be my self Stud—you heer bout goin away to cleer yor hed—well—thats wat I am doin—to much hapent to soon an Gary dyin like that to—Billy I got-a cleer my hed then maybe life wont be so dam strang—I hop you unerstan???? You ar a boy like me an thats the dam problum!!!! Who nos what tomoro will bring???? Heers wishin you the besta helth—

You truly—STUD

Dianne stormed out. In her Toyota, she drove up and down the boulevard, into Hollywood, back to Coffee Andy's asking everyone whether they'd seen Stud. She even went to the Greyhound depot in Hollywood and circled the Y. She saw his satchel before she saw him in a small park where hustlers slept when they didn't have a place; it was only five blocks from the building where he'd lived with Billy. Dianne parked in a no-parking zone and went to where he was lying looking up at the smoky sky.

“Life is strange, and you're trying to figure it out while it just stares you in the fuckin’ face! You don't wanna be gay, huh?”

“Asshole,” Dianne said. “Look, there's nothing wrong with liking certain sex things and not others—that's where everyone's goofy saying everybody's gotta like everything! Some of us don't like anything!” Dianne sat wearily next to Stud on the grass.

“But I did do certain things,” Stud said, “last night, with Billy. Everything!”

Dianne looked at him in surprise, and then she sighed, relieved. “Well, it's better than I thought. Did you like it?”

“Then, yeah. Later, no.” He shook his head. “I'm not sure; I mean, Gary dying, just never coming back.”

“So each moment matters—that's all you got!” Dianne was very serious. She pulled back quickly. “You wanna know something, asshole? You just about killed Billy. I've never seen him crying like that—like he could just fall over and die.”

“No!” Stud stood up. Sticky fingers of wind clutched him. “Don't say that. I'd die if he died! … I intended to go back. I just wanted to clear my head, I was coming back, I guess I just figured if I told him I was, then it wouldn't seem like I meant it.”

Dianne was leading him to her car. “You're so blind, Stud; you never see that Billy's got problems, too—not like yours, other ones. He might've just rushed out and gone hustling cause that's all he's got…. Well, you wanna go back or not?”

“When you and Billy make up, I'll lend you my wheels, okay?—and you two can go to the beach, get some sun, get away from these fuckin’ ugly streets.”

They were driving along Santa Monica Boulevard. As if she couldn't cope with the emotional gratitude, Dianne merely said, “Fuck it, it's just— .

“Billy!” Stud yelled out the window. He had seen the unmistakable lithe figure of Billy, in his cutoffs and short shirt, getting into a van with painted swirly fingers lapping like flames. Stud felt his heart sink.

“Don't worry, he'll be checking for you back at the apartment.” Dianne left Stud at Coffee Andy's. “Asshole,” she called back at him.

Stud hung around about half an hour. His emotions bunched tightly. He went back to the apartment. It was emptier than he had ever seen it. Ernie came in. No, he hadn't seen Billy since he ran out in a hurry this afternoon early. “Strange about Gary, huh?” Ernie said. Yes, it was strange, very strange, and it compounded the feeling of physical absence Stud felt about Billy. He went back to Coffee Andy's. Back to the apartment. Each time, the apartment seemed emptier. He noticed how really ugly the building was, really ugly, waiting to die, resigned, everything dry and dead, like his bike—which no one had even bothered to steal.

He walked the length of Santa Monica Boulevard, the hustling stretch. In the lots, nobody was clowning or jostling or chinning. It was so hot everyone lay on patches of grass, like a recuperating army. He waited around, talking to some of his friends and trying to stay away from the apartment, sure that if he did, when he went back, Billy would be there.

Stud went out again, feeling cold in the heat. It would be one of those nights so hot that the heat seems to color the sky a blackish orange. Maybe a distant fire was raging. This was the season of canyon fires.

He milled around Coffee Andy's. Back to the apartment. It was night. Stud had walked miles. Ed! He looked throughout the room, found nothing, nothing but the traces of Billy's existence—several cutoffs, several shortened shirts. No telephone number.

He lay on his mattress, then slipped over onto Billy's. He was so exhausted he fell asleep. When he woke, there was either a very bright moon or it was the beginning to dawn. Had the wind blown all night or had he dreamed it? The heat was like a scalding rock radiating waves in the room. Ernie was asleep. So was Tim. Gary's mattress remained rolled up in a corner. And Billy was not there.

Stud went out. The dawning sun was already burning through the morning smog kept distant by the wind. Coffee Andy's was open. Only when a waitress told him he couldn't come in without a shirt did he realize he had left without one. He walked in anyway, looking for Billy. He lingered outside. He felt a coldness in the heat, as if it had chosen only him. He returned to the apartment, went back to Santa Monica Boulevard through sickening heat.

He saw the slender form coming toward him against the sky, which glowered an angered orange. But it wasn't Billy.

Heat saturated the air and his body. Panting, he sat down on a patch of grass by a closed playground. He let all the apprehension, shackled fear, isolation, loneliness crash on him. He faced that something terrible had happened to Billy. He remembered the flashy van— … Maybe he'd been busted!

He took a deep breath and walked into the Hollywood police station where he had been booked. “I want to know if someone by the name of Billy— …”He didn't know Billy's last name! “… —is here,” he said to the fat cop behind a desk. The balding cop looked up at Stud. “You what?” “Billy—that's his name,” Stud said. “I don't know his last name—we just call him Billy, but you couldn't mistake him for anybody else because he's— … very beautiful.” He felt sweat gathering under his arms, streaking into his pants, down his legs. “He's very handsome,” he corrected.

The cop looked at him as if he wanted to bust this shirtless sweaty boy. “Beautiful!” he seized, alerting other, milling cops to listen to this. “Is he a girl?”

Stud saw the smirking faces. “Billy's a guy, like me,” he said firmly. When he had been arrested, he had thought he would never again feel that helpless, that little, that insignificant, that lost. He knew that was not so. That was nothing compared to now. Seeing the contemptuous faces of the cops, he knew how thoroughly unimportant he and Billy were to everyone else except in those moments when someone desired them. And except to each other. He wanted to shout and be heard, because he knew that none of them, not him, not Billy, not Tim, not Gary, not Ernie, not one of them mattered—not to the cops nor to those TV people nor the ones who had looked at Billy like a freak on that program—not one of them mattered one fucking goddamn bit. He walked out into the melting Hollywood sun.

He went back to the apartment. Billy was not there. Was it possible that somebody could just disappear, just like that? What if he never saw Billy again? What if he'd never know what happened to him. He couldn't stand that. He'd— … He heard the door open, and he closed his eyes. If it wasn't Billy, he didn't want to know right away, he'd keep hope locked in blackness behind his eyes. He heard slow footsteps, forced breathing.

Billy's body sagged into Stud's. Stud would remember that always—and how Billy was covering his face with both bloodied hands. He wasn't wearing a shirt. His cutoffs were brutally ripped. There was blood on his stomach, on his legs— …

Stud held Billy and saw his bared face, black with bruises, one eye closed shut and puffy, the upper part of his lip bloated purple from bleeding. Stud thought, If he dies, I'll kill myself, I'll die with Billy. He felt Billy's tears squeezing only out of one eye. Or was it sweat? Or was it blood!

Stud laid Billy on the mattress. Trembling, he brought towels, as clean as he could find them—towels, water, ice. As the caked blood cleared, Stud knew the bruises had been made by pounding fists. Gently he tested for broken bones. None. He was aware of Ernie but only vaguely—aware that Dianne was here, too. He heard himself asking Billy, “Are you all right, are you all right?” He kept checking his breathing.

Stud didn't know who said that. He only knew the words untapped his rage. “They'll just smirk at us and shove him around.” If Billy got sicker, they would have to call the cops; but he didn't want that, didn't want the cruelty, the cold indifference. And they wouldn't allow him to stay with him. He didn't want to let Billy out of his sight.

Dianne leaned over to Billy and whispered, “Billy, we might have to take you to the hospital.”

Dianne left and came back, with bandages and everything she had ever heard was used on someone hurt. She and Stud patched Billy, dressed the wounds. Stud cooled him with a towel. He wished there were clean sheets, but there weren't. Gently, he tore the ripped cutoffs entirely. The back of them was soaked in blood. He threw them away fiercely with a cry of anger and despair. He watched terrified to see whether more blood would come from Billy's rectum. No. He waited. No. He waited. No more blood! He felt the heat now as if it were something artificial that had attached itself to him forever.

Through the window and over the rooftops, Stud saw the shaggy palm trees of Los Angeles bending in the wind. The glow on the horizon deepened to orange—the glow of sun and wind and fire.

Stud nestled next to Billy, careful not to shake him. “I love you, Billy,” he said.

Billy heard. He tried to open his eyes. Only one opened as wide as it could. It was the most beautiful, cruelest green-speckled color Stud had ever seen. Hope embraced him. Stud's hand closed over Billy's. He felt Billy's fingers press back with determined strength, promising to live.