Stay of Execution

Told you I'd have another Hirschfeld drawing.

Since Pride Month is drawing to a close, I thought I'd mark it with the public debut of a short story I wrote a few years back, one in which I mused on the differences in attitude towards the LGBTQ community of a half-century ago, before such a community was even referred to as LGBTQ. The main character is, or was, a real person, but he's been fictionalized here, hence my amazing ability to read his thoughts. Though inspired by a real event, it didn't involve the real person I just alluded to, though I'd like to think that if everything had fallen exactly in place, it most certainly could have. It's one reason to write fiction, to see to what extent the facts can be redeemed.

TRIGGER WARNING: About a third of a way through this story, a nasty LGBTQ epithet comes to the fore and is then repeated several times thereafter. I'm sorry if anybody finds the mention of this word disturbing, but I honestly don't think I could have told this tale without it.

 

Truman took a sip from his drink and wondered what he might say on TV tomorrow. He had no new book to promote, the only logical rationale for appearing on television in the first place, except for that other logical rationale--Truman liked appearing on television. The producers knew that when they asked him to fill in as a guest at the last minute on a local interview program. That he hadn't been their original choice--"Erich von Daniken forgot he had a prior commitment"--was all the more demeaning, though much less demeaning than going a whole month without appearing on the airwaves at all. Local. In the last year he had appeared on both Dean Martin's and Sonny and Cher's shows to what he could have sworn was critical acclaim and high Nielsens. Not bad for someone represented by a literary, rather than an entertainment, agency. But maybe he should sign with the latter, too. Get his own talk show so he could ask the questions. No, that would be boring. He'd rather do the answering. Well, at least this was Manhattan local. Tri-state local. It might not get Martin's or the Bonos numbers, but wasn't that still something like a quarter of the total U.S. population? He'd have to look it up. Since the novel he was working on was nowhere near finished, and so had nothing to promote, he wondered what might be asked of him. There was no way to prepare. Now that he had earned a reputation as a criminologist of sorts, something might be asked of him along those lines. But he didn't really feel like talking about crime. He had spent five years of his life living with a quadruple murder that ended with two men hanged--

Truman quickly downed his screwdriver and signaled the bartender to make him another. The memory of the two of them dropping through the floor. Horrors.

Well, Truman's next book would be different. He had earned a respite from darkness, from tragedy. Champagne and the Ritz from here on in! Well, at the moment it was a screwdriver and a gay bar on Christopher Street, but his new novel would focus on the former, and those who took such an existence for granted. Just what to say about such an existence is what had Truman vexed. Nice way to live if you can afford it? Well, he could now afford it, thanks to his best seller--DON'T DWELL ON THE BEST SELLER! Or risk the memory of the two of them dropping--

Truman downed his screwdriver and signaled for another. Concentrate on the new book. Life among the rich. Do it wrong and it could end up Harold Robbins. Actually, from a sales standpoint, that would be doing it right. But his goal was loftier than that. It was not Robbins but Marcel Proust that Truman looked towards for inspiration. If only he could summon Proust back from the dead for assistance. He could be a ghost writer, hee, hee.

"Excuse me"

Interrupted in the middle of his own witticism, Truman looked up at a young man, an attractive young man, of about 20. He had a mustache and hair down to his shoulders. Those attributes along with the tie-die shirt and jeans made Truman think "hippie", although a young man with a similar style whom he had tried to pick up a week earlier had taken offense at the term. Apparently, the term, but not yet the look, was now considered passé. Well, Truman wouldn't make that mistake again and call this young--hee, hee--prospect that. He wouldn't call him anything that he didn't want to be called.

"Well, hello there," Truman replied in his most hospitable voice.

"Do you have any identification on you?"

Truman quickly pulled out his trademark Moscot sunglasses from his jacket and put them on, nearly blinding himself in the dimly lit bar in the process.

"Recognize me? That should be identification enough."

The young man let out a chortle. An unintended chortle, as his face turned grim.

"This is serious, Mr. Capote."

So he had recognized him!

The young man continued: "Do you realize you are in an establishment where men have been spotted illegally kissing other men?"

Oh, so he was a policeman? With that hair and mustache? The Serpico look was certainly catching on fast.

Truman pulled out his wallet, and handed a card to the young man, adding: "Here's my lawyer's number. You'll note that he's a partner in one of the biggest and most prestigious law firms in Manhattan. This is a clear case of entrapment. When I walked into this establishment today I had no idea such unsavory acts were taking place. Unsavory acts that I took no part in. I was sipping my drink and minding my own business when you walked up to me."

"Oh, I'm not here to arrest you, Mr. Capote. I'm here to recruit you."

"Recruit? Now I am confused. That hair, that mustache, the way you're dressed. Is this an example of the ‘new’ Army? Anyway, I'm too old."

"Let me introduce myself. I'm Saul Florentino, of the Gay Emancipation Organization. We recently split off from the Gay Activist Alliance, itself having earlier split off from the Gay Liberation Front. Also within our ranks are disaffected members of the Mattachine Society, the Janus Society, and the Daughters of Bilitis."

Not liking where this was going, Truman took a stab at changing the subject.

"I do admire that colorful shirt of yours. Did you make it yourself?"

"Huh? I bought it from Kmart."

"Kmart, eh? Sounds like the counterculture has been co-opted by the bourgeois. Not that you're a hippie. I hear they're passé these days."

"The shirt was cheap, a blue-light special. You can call me a hippie if you want, but I prefer to think of myself as a freedom fighter. As for the counterculture, most of whom you and everybody else call hippies have outgrown it and are now crawling back to the Establishment. But unless there's a radical change in society, I can never outgrow it, no matter my age. I am gay, was born gay, and will always be counter to the culture. You, too, but you just don't realize it. You can't just watch the struggle from the sidelines, Mr. Capote. You have to participate!"

Outraged, Truman replied, "Now, look here, young man, I have done more for the cause of homophilia than any man in America, perhaps the world!"

"Oh? And what have you done exactly?"

"I am one of the greatest living American writers, a master prose stylist of the postwar period. 'A Christmas Memory' is one of the greatest short stories of the 20th century! Holly Golightly is one of the best-known literary characters of the past 50 years! In Cold Blood an expert piece of reporting that has single-handedly transformed journalism into an art form!"

"I'm aware of your accomplishments, Mr. Capote, but what does that--"

"I'm not finished. I have a net worth of over a million dollars! I own a luxury apartment in the United Nations Plaza. I also have a home in Beverly Hills. I eat at the finest restaurants. Am invited to the best parties. I threw one of the best parties, the legendary Black-and-White Ball. I've shopped for clothes on Rodeo Drive, and, of course, jewelry at Tiffany's. I know movie stars. Frank Sinatra is a personal friend. I--"

"I get it, Mr. Capote. You're rich and famous, but how does that help the gay cause?"

"I've set an example! I gone higher and farther than any gay man before me. I’ve proven that provincial prejudices toward homosexuality doesn't have to be a barrier to success. You just pull yourself up by the cliché, I mean bootstrap--"

"You got it right the first time."

"I'm talking, not writing. Obviously, I never would have put such a trite phrase down on paper."

"I've read the gossip columns. While gays are fighting and dying in the streets, you're busy partying with your rich pals."

"Oh, the way you say 'rich pals', as if they were cannibals. Your generation is so very wrong about them. If you'd just give them half a chance, you'd find that the wealthy are very open-minded, especially when it comes to sexuality. My next book will go a long way toward rehabilitating their image."

"If the rich are so open-minded, how come homosexual acts are still illegal here in New York and almost everywhere else?"

"Well, the rich don't write the laws. They're not elected officials."

"No, but they buy elected officials. They'll throw a sack full of money at some politician to make sure a factory they own keeps on spewing toxic chemicals into the air, but when it comes to gay liberation--"

This conversation obviously wasn't going to lead to sex. Truman decided to cut it short.

"Look, young man, why don't you try enlisting Gore Vidal? He fancies himself a political provocateur."

"I plan to, but right now he's in Italy."

"Well, if you hurry, you can make the 8:45 flight to Rome."

The young man laughed. "All right, Mr. Capote. I'll leave you alone for now. Rome, huh?"

He began walking toward a coat rack by the entrance but then stopped. Looking back, he yelled out, "Arrivederci, Mr. Capote!" and threw Truman a kiss.

The gesture wasn't meant to be sexual, but Truman got an erection anyway. He jumped off his bar stool and scurried over to the cute young man.

"Look," said Truman "I don't want you to think I don't care about what happens to other gay people. I do care. And I care about what happens to you. Ever hear of a local show called Bookchat? I'm going to be on it tomorrow. At 7 at night."

"Oh, so you've finished that book about rich people?" 

"Well, no, but I'm a lion of literature. I don't have to have finished a book. Now, I'd like you to appear on that show with me. You can promote your cause. It's not a national audience, but it's New York City, so it might as well be national. Now, you can either meet me there or stay the night at my place and we can both go in together."

"I'll meet you there."

"All right," said Truman, trying to hide his disappointment. "Let me give you the address." Truman reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "524 West 57th Street."

"CBS."

"It can't be. They told me it was a local broadcast. Channel 2, I think."

"So it is. But it's a CBS-owned affiliate. Their flagship station, in fact. This is going better than I had hoped. Mr. Capote, you got yourself a date!" With that, the pretty young man bent down and kissed Truman right on the lips!

His hard-on got even harder.

Cozily insulated from the November elements in a full-body sable coat recently purchased from Sak's Fifth Avenue, Truman stood under the marquee of the CBS Broadcast Center waiting for that darling young radical to show up. Paul--wasn't that his name? Once on the air, Paul would get his political jeremiad out of his system, Truman would be hailed as a hero of the gay lib movement (if he wasn't already) and the two would dine at La Côte Basque, or McDonald's if that was more to the young Kmart shopper's liking, as just part of an overall celebratory night on the town, ending with a celebratory night-into-morning in his United Nation's Plaza bedroom. Might as well treat him to breakfast, too. Maybe La Grenouille. Or Perkins, if that was more to his liking.

CBS. Odd that he hadn't recognized the address. Two very dear friends of Truman's, Babe and William Paley, owned CBS. He had been here and to the corporate headquarters that was somewhere around here many times. But he had taken a cab, or, in recent years, a limousine. He didn't need to know the address. All he had to do was tell the driver, take me to CBS. If the driver asked him to specify, he'd either say the one with the studios or the one with the bigwigs. And what bigwigs Babe and Bill were! Through them Truman had met every major CBS star from Lucille Ball to the guy that plays Archie Bunker. Not that Truman wouldn't have eventually met them anyway. Meeting famous people was a specialty of his. He had danced with Marilyn Monroe and sucked the cock of Errol Flynn without any help from the Paleys. Still, he was grateful for their friendship.

"Hello, Mr. Capote!"

It was the handsome--boyishly cute, actually--young man. He was wearing one of those frontier-like jackets with fringes, a button-down shirt, and jeans. Would they let him on TV like that? Perhaps. Everybody was beginning to dress a bit more casual these days.

"Hello, Paul. I am so very pleased you could make it."

"The name's Saul, Mr. Capote."

"Oh, well," Truman giggled, "I said that in the off-chance you're struck by lightning on the way to Damascus. By the way, you can call me Truman."

"OK, Truman."

"Do you know what I was just thinking about? How I didn't recognize the address even though I'm friends with the couple that owns CBS. Can you believe that?"

"Oh, I've done my homework, Truman. I know who you run around with, but if it's the Paleys you're talking about, I don't think that they actually 'own' CBS so much as have a controlling interest. It's a publicly-traded company."

"Whatever. Business bores me. But the Paleys do have a lovely apartment. Picassos everywhere."

The two of them walked into the CBS building and up to a burly security guard with sideburns almost down to his dimples seated behind the reception desk.

"Hello there, good sir. My name is Truman--"

"Capote!" the guard exclaimed. He stood up and held out his hand, and Truman took dismayed note of a wobbly beer gut that accentuated all that burliness.

"I am so pleased to meet you. In Cold Blood is my favorite book! I've read it twice and seen the movie. It's my favorite movie, too. I've seen it twice!"

A fan, thought Truman, pleased. This might be a good chance to show that young radical just how accepting the general public was of his homosexuality. He decided to camp it up.

Lowering his head and batting his eyes, Truman asserted, "Oh, you make me blush!"

"Do I really?" the guard replied, thrilled.

With an air of impatience, Saul asked, "Can you please tell someone Truman Capote is here?"

"Um, let me look," the guard glanced down at a paper. "Bookchat. Local broadcast..."

With mock distress, Truman exclaimed, "You make 'local' sound so demeaning!"

Alarmed, the guard replied, "Oh, gosh, Mr. Capote, I didn't mean anything by it!"

"Oh, I was just kidding, you big silly Pooh bear!"

The guard breathed a sigh of relief and turned his attention back to the paper. "Um, Bookchat is in Studio 32, right here on the ground floor." The guard signaled to a short, chubby teenager in a suit and tie with the CBS eye logo on it who was standing to the side of two big doors.  "See that page? He'll take you there."

Truman clutched his hands together and bent his left leg backwards off the ground, "Oh, that would be simply divine!"

"It would, Mr. Capote? Really?" said the guard, excitedly.

"Oh, my, yes. Will you be here when we come back?"

The guard nodded vigorously.

"Well, now, if you're a good little security guard, I might just give you my autograph!"

"Oh, Mr. Capote!"  

Truman gave him a little wave goodbye, and he and--Paul? No, Saul--followed the chubby young teenage page through the big doors and down a hallway.

Saul glanced at Truman, and remarked, "'Simply divine'? You've just set homosexuality back 50 years!"  

"I was only trying to prove a point. If that guard and I were two little kids at the playground, he'd try to beat me up. But now he wants my autograph. He doesn't care that I'm gay."

"Yeah, well, people will overlook a lot in a celebrity. When my parents found out I was gay, they kicked me out of the house and would have nothing to do with me for about two years until I snagged them a couple of tickets to a Liberace concert. He's their favorite entertainer. Now I get Christmas cards. My mother signs them, anyway."

"Liberace's not gay," said the page. "He once sued someone for calling him that and won."

Truman and Saul looked at each other and started laughing. The page gave a puzzled glance backwards, and apparently decided it best if he laugh, too.

The page led the both of them into what Truman recognized from his many talk show appearances as the "green room", nicely furnished, at least compared to a doctor's waiting room, with a refrigerator, a small bar, table full of snacks, and a TV set tuned to The Merv Griffin Show. There was a somewhat tall, somewhat thin man in the room sitting in one of the plush chairs. 

With a faint leer on his face and a bit of suggestiveness to his voice, the page said, "Here Mr. Capote, you and your 'friend' can wait here until it's time to go on. You're a bit early."

The way he said friend! Obviously the page had gotten the wrong idea about the exact relationship between him and the young gay liberationist, not that Truman didn't wish it had been the right idea.

Truman sat down on a comfy-looking sofa, and was dismayed that the young radical hadn't sat right down next to him. Instead, he just stood there, staring intently at the door that the page had just closed behind him upon exiting the room.

"You know, Tru--" Oh, he had called him Tru! Not Truman but Tru. He does want to get intimate! "We're just down the hallway from where Walter Cronkite delivers his newscast."

"How can that be? This is local, he's national."

"Broadcast technology has advanced quite a bit in the last few years. They do amazing things with antennas these days. "

"Well, how do you know Cronkite is right down the hall?"

"Oh, I know the whole layout of this building, as well as ABC and NBC. Not just here, but their Hollywood operations, too. And the layouts of the movie studios. I can tell you everything you need to know about the set of Marcus Welby, M.D."

"That's not a movie."

"It's filmed at Universal City. I've been there. Oh, have I been there."

Well, Truman thought, this young man obviously has a fascination with show business. He probably couldn't get work--most actors can't when they're just starting out--and so had turned to radicalism in desperation. That's why he had tried to recruit him to his cause, so he could get on television where some big producer might see him. Truman bore him no grudge for having been taken advantage of in such a manner. He's Lana Turner, and I'm Schwab's drugstore, hee, hee.

"You know," said Truman. "I could help you out. I have many, many connections in the entertainment industry. Why, in the last year, I've been on both Dean Martin and Sonny and Cher. As we speak my agent is negotiating an appearance on The Carol Burnett Show.

"Do lions of literature often do TV variety shows?"

"I'm blazing new trails, my dear boy!"

"Sure, Truman. Um, I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back."

"I understand. You're nervous about your television debut."

The young man--Paul? Saul?--exited the room.

"Excuse me, but I want to say that I'm very honored to meet you, Mr. Capote."

It was the somewhat thin, somewhat tall man.

"Actually," Truman replied. "We haven't quite met, but I'm sure it will be quite an honor when we do."

"Oh, excuse me. I'm Harry Fisher. I'm going to be on Bookchat, too."

Fisher held up a book. On the cover was Dick Hickock and Perry Smith!

Truman started to shake. He felt like throwing up.

"You all right, Mr. Capote?"

"Why...did you...write a book...about those two?" Truman gasped.

"You don't find them funny?"

"Funny?! How could you--" He took a closer look at the book. The Films of Abbott and Costello. How embarrassing.

"I critique all their movies. Offer biographical information. Interview the actors who are still alive, including Bud Abbott himself. He's not in good shape. In a wheelchair and everything."

"Oh, I am sorry, my good man. I thought it was Perry and Dick. I must see an ophthalmologist."

Fisher smiled. "The two guys you wrote about In Cold Blood. The killers."

"Only one of them did the actual killing."

"They both got the chair, didn't they?"

"No, they were hung," and just then Truman saw the image of them swinging from the rope as the floor sprung open. With shaky legs, Truman hobbled over to the bar and poured himself a straight whiskey.

"Did you see them hang?"

"Yes. Yes I did."

"You're lucky. I always wanted to see an execution."

Feeling anything but lucky at that moment, Truman asked, "Why would you want to see something like that?"

"Well, I think it'd be interesting. That's why I'm a writer. To write about things I find interesting. I find Abbot and Costello interesting, and I find executions interesting. Unfortunately, I doubt if they'd let me write about both. At least not one right after the other. My publisher wants me to do The Three Stooges next. Nothing against them, I think they're interesting, too, but I really don't want to be pigeonholed as an author."

Truman could commiserate. After the success of In Cold Blood, his publisher for a while kept sending him proposals for every murder to make the front page of The New York Post. But he wanted to get back to his masterpiece-in-progress, where he would make it clear once and for all to Doubting Thomases like that young radical--Paul was his name, right?--that the rich weren't all that bad. A further incentive was that you rarely saw anybody tied to a noose at a garden party in the Hamptons.

"Moe and Larry are both still alive," the somewhat tall, somewhat thin man continued. "I look forward to meeting them, but those guys that came after Curly and Shemp, I'm not interested in them at all. I'll just be going through the motions interviewing them. I bet you didn't have that problem."

"Well, if I did I wouldn't admit it, and I didn't interview anyone I wasn't already interested in. The only thing I didn't look forward to was--" Truman took a mighty gulp of his whiskey, as the unwanted memory came back.

"You mean the execution?" asked the man who wrote the Abbott and Costello book. "I'm sure it wasn't pleasant to watch but look what they did! They slaughtered an entire family. You can't say they didn't get what they deserved."

Get what they deserve? Well, thought Truman, two wrongs don't make a right. Actually six wrongs if you add up the Cutters and Perry and Dick. Not that they were innocent. Or innocents. Insane, maybe. That's what their lawyer was trying to prove, but the judge wouldn't let in the psychological exams. "Personality disorders" and the like didn't fall under the legal definition of insanity. Truman wondered if anything else would have, at least in Perry's case. In his many interviews with the man, Truman had gotten the distinct impression he was a homosexual, albeit repressed. Perry knew a bit about that world and seemed curious to learn more. As much as Truman despised linking homosexuality with insanity, if it could help the young man evade the hangman's noose, it would be worth it. The lawyer didn't think so. All the jury needs to hear is that Perry is a faggot, he said dismissively. Truman took that to mean they'd convict and condemn him to death. So instead the jury assumed he was as heterosexual as Dick, and the jury convicted and condemned the both of them anyway. The crime was too horrific. Probably nothing could have saved them. Truman certainly couldn't have saved them. The lawyer seemed to think otherwise. He thought Truman could somehow bring about a last-minute reprieve. You're rich and famous, he said. Rich? He was living on a New Yorker advance. Famous? Some of those Kansas farmers thought they were meeting the former President when they first heard his name. You wrote a famous book, the lawyer said. The governor's wife is an Audrey Hepburn fan. Truman eventually stopped taking his calls. He did go see the execution itself. Dick and Perry both had requested that he be there. He watched them drop--Truman gulped down the rest of his whiskey--and then went back home to Manhattan to write his book. In Cold Blood sold more copies than Other Voices, Other Rooms and Breakfast at Tiffany's combined. That finally made him rich and famous. Now he might be able to get a couple of condemned killers a stay of execution. Just not Dick and Perry.

Truman looked up at the TV, expecting to see Merv Griffin. Instead it was Walter Cronkite, whom Truman had met through the Paleys.

"In Watergate news, the Nixon administration denied the latest allegations to emerge from..."

Truman, whom hadn't been following the ongoing national scandal too closely, wondered if the allegations were of a sexual nature. Maybe Nixon was gay! He was repressed over something. Look how he walked. A tin soldier moved more gracefully.

The short, chubby teenage page poked his head through the door.

"Hey, Mr. Capote, the producer wants to see your boyfriend before he lets him go on the air with you."

"That guy is your boyfriend?" asked the Abbott and Costello author. "You're not gay, are you?"

Truman put his hand under his chin, wriggled his fingers, and in a sing-song voice asked, "Well, what do you think?"

The author laughed. "Oh, I get it. Very funny."

The page looked around the room. "Where is he?"

"Oh, he needed to use the men's room. He'll be right back."

"There's one right here in the green room. Right behind you."

Truman turned his head. So there was a bathroom! Now that he thought about, he'd even used this particular one in the past. The door was open some. His young friend--boyfriend, hee, hee--wasn't in the darkened lavatory.

"Well," Truman replied to the page. "He obviously was unaware that--"

"Hey, isn't that who you're talking about?" asked the Abbott and Costello author, as he pointed to the TV screen.

Cronkite was at his desk talking--"Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said today in a news conference..."--but to his left with his frontier-jacketed back turned to the camera was the young radical. He moved to the center of the screen, turned toward the camera, and sat down right on the desk, obfuscating the anchorman in the process. The radical pulled out what looked to be a poster from the sleeve of his jacket, and unfurled it in front of him. It read:
                                                                                                           

                                                              CBS

                                                            UNFAIR

                                                                TO

                                                              GAYS

 

Now he began to speak:

"Sorry to interrupt the broadcast, but this is important. The much-vaunted CBS news organization has practiced continuous discrimination of gays through censorship. It recently reported on a gay rights bill struck down by the New York City Council but failed to add that similar bills have become law in 23 other cities in the last few years. Furthermore, this news program covered 5,000 women who marched down Fifth Avenue, but ignored another occasion when 50,000--I repeat, 50,000--gays marched down the same avenue in protest of..."

Oh, God, thought Truman. How am I going to explain this to the Paleys? I let this nut in here!

"My, My," said the somewhat tall, somewhat thin man who wrote the Abbott and Costello book. "Your friend is quite the rabble-rouser."

"He's not my friend! I just met him yesterday! He tricked me into bringing him here!"

There was the sound of pounding footsteps. Truman glanced at the open door. The security guard whom he had earlier dazzled with his celebrity ran past it and down the hall.

"Now where is he going?"

"Right there," replied the page, pointing to the screen.

The guard, now on television himself, grabbed the young rabble-rouser by the shoulders and yanked him off Cronkite's desk. The screen went black for just a moment, only to be replaced with:

                                                            PLEASE

                                                            STAND

                                                                BY

"And that's the way it is," muttered the page.

BAM! The sound of something hitting a wall could be heard through the open door. Truman ran out into the hallway to investigate.

Toward the end of  the hallway, near a sign that said STUDIO 33, the security guard had the young radical pressed against the wall, the latter rather defenseless as his arms, legs, and even torso were tied up with what appeared to be cable.   

"FAGGOT!" the guard screamed, punching the radical in the face.

And that wasn't the end of it.

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

"FAGGOT!"

 POW!

"FAGGOT!"

 POW!

Truman shook his head sadly. There was nothing he could do for the young man. He certainly wouldn't be spending the night with him.

Truman turned to go back into the green room, but never made it, for blocking his way were...

Dick Hickock and Perry Smith!

Truman ran away from the two, stopping only to avoid colliding into the guard and the radical.

"Whoa, Mr. Capote!" cautioned the guard, who then went back to what he was doing.

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

Truman spun around and away from them, but, there, at the end of the hallway, were Dick and Perry!

"Best to stand back, Mr. Capote. This could get violent," warned the guard. "FAGGOT!"

POW!

"Could get--well, all right" Truman replied, and then turned around once again, and Perry and Dick were still there.

Oh, dear, if he must be haunted by a ghost, why couldn't it be Marcel Proust?

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

The radical began to slump downward. The guard merely slid him back up against the wall.

"FAGGOT!"

POW!

After that last punch, the radical turned his head, the only part of his body he was capable of moving at that point, toward Truman. His once-pretty face was now a mélange of blood and bloated flesh.

"Tru...," he moaned.

Despite himself, and in violation of every prudent instinct he could muster, Truman made an appeal to the guard, "Will you please stop doing that to him?"

"Mr. Capote, this man broke the law!"

"What law?"

"He was trespassing!" he replied, and turned his attention back to the young radical, "FAGGOT!"

POW!

"Trespassing?!" Truman exclaimed. "A misdemeanor?! It's not like he slaughtered a family in Kansas!"

"A family in Kan--Oh, I get it. Good one, Mr. Capote! Well, hanging is too good for this faggot!"

POW!

"And as for his being a faggot, so am I!" Truman exclaimed.

"Aw, don't kid with me, Mr. Capote."

"I am a faggot! And so is Liberace! And the Paleys--"

"They're faggots?"

"No, you fool, they're worse, as far as you're concerned. The Paleys are very good friends of mine, the same Paleys who own this very network, this very hallway, and that very wall you're punching that young man's head against!"

"Mr. Capote, I have a job--"

"I can vouch for this man!" a familiar voice shouted out.

It was Walter Cronkite, standing underneath the STUDIO 33 sign.

The guard pointed to the badly bruised radical.

"Him?"

"No," said Cronkite. "Truman. He really does know the Paleys. I've been to their home many times, and Truman's always there."

Further emboldened, Truman began wagging his finger at the burly guard.

"You heard him. Uncle Walter! The most trusted man in America. LBJ said he lost the Vietnam War when he lost Walter. Or something like that. That's how influential he is. Now if you don't stop punching that young man right now, I'm going to tell the Paleys on you. Also, I won't give you that autograph I promised. You still want it, don't you?"

"Well, sure, Mr. Capote, but I can't just let him go. We called the police and they should be here any minute. It's my job to keep this faggot subdued until they arrive."

"Look at him! How much more subdued can he get?"

The guard sighed, and took his hand off the tied-and-bound man's chest, causing him to slide to the floor. Truman crouched to his level, looking for some signs of life on the bloody mess that was once his face. As it turned out, he needed only to hear that sound of life.

"Thanks, Tru..." he said in a weak voice.

"Thanks for what? Looks like I'm a few blows too late."

"No, no... You came right in time...One or two more would have finished me."

Truman smiled. "I guess us rich and famous types aren't so bad after all, eh?"

"Well...you're not so bad after all...As for the other rich and famous...I'll have to wait and read that book of yours."

"We need to get you to a hospital."

The young man nodded his head to something behind Truman.

"Maybe they'll take me."

Truman turned to look. Down the hallway, past where the kind of tall, kind of thin man and the chubby teen page were standing--had they been there the whole time? --were a couple of policemen, looking curiously through those big doors he and the radical had earlier walked through.

The guard pulled the radical back up and tried to march him in the direction of New York's Finest, but he fell back down, the consequence of both his feet being tied together, and the beating he had just taken. So the guard picked him up again and began dragging him backwards toward the cops.

"So long, Truman," said the radical as he was being pulled away. His voice didn't sound quite as weak.

"So long... Saul?"

The puffy-face radical smiled. "Hey, you remembered! But Paul would have been all right, too. It's a variant."

"Aren't we all?"

Cronkite shook his head.

"What do you suppose got into that young man?"

Truman shrugged. "Maybe he just wanted to break into show biz."

Cronkite laughed heartily and put his hand on Truman's shoulder.

"You were always good with the bon mots, Truman. Hey, the Paleys are having a dinner party next week. I expect to see you there." And with that the venerable newscaster disappeared back into Studio 33.

As for Truman, he decided he'd call it a day. Go back home and work on his novel. He had his own rabble to rouse.

Except that at the end of the hallway, the teenage page was talking to a middle-aged man Truman recognized as the producer of Bookchat.

The man went back inside, and the page called out. "Mr. Capote, Bookchat was supposed to start fifteen minutes ago. They've been pretending to have technical difficulties. We have to get you on the air."

Truman sighed, and walked reluctantly toward the Bookchat studio, wondering all the while if it wasn't too late to break out of show biz.