Page 58 of The Rules of Magic

“I appreciate it,” she said. “Thank you.”

She followed the Reverend into the house and up the stairs. The carpeting was beige and the walls were white, but yellowing. There was the scent of mothballs and of coffee that had recently been brewed. No lights were turned on. The Reverend didn’t like to spend the money on electricity bills, plus he could see just fine until it was pitch dark. After dark he went to bed. Or he sat by his window, looking into the yard as if he could see back through time into the past. His wife had died much too young, of cancer, and maybe that was when everything started to go wrong. He was strict with his son, and he feared bad luck, and then it seemed he had brought it upon himself, and upon everyone near him.

“Watch your step,” he found himself saying, for the stairs were steep.

Once inside, the Reverend switched on a lamp. Jet had wanted to see Levi’s room ever since they’d met. Whenever they sat in the park he would describe it in the greatest of detail. The blue bedspread, the trophies he’d won on the swim team, photographs of his mother and father on a picnic out by the lake. The wallpaper was blue and white stripes, the rug was tweed. Jet stood in the doorway now. If she closed her eyes she could see him sitting on the bed, grinning at her, a book of poems in hand. Her eyes were brimming and hot.

“Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality,” Jet said, quoting Emily Dickinson.

When she opened her eyes the Reverend was standing beside her, crying. They stood together like that until the light changed, with bands of blue falling across the floor.

After a time, Jet followed him downstairs. He opened the screen door for her and they walked into the garden of daffodils. Everything else was black. Even the soil.

“I can drive you to the bus station,” the Reverend said.

“That’s okay, I like to walk.”

He nodded. He liked to walk, too.

“You can come by next time,” he said. When she looked at him, confused, he added, “I know you’re here every month. I see you at the cemetery, but I don’t want to disturb you. I know you want your time with him.”

Jet stood on the sidewalk and watched him walk back up the steps to the porch. The lamp had been left on in Levi’s room and it cast a yellow glow. Jet waved and then turned. She walked the long way to the bus station. She liked to walk through town, especially in the fading light. It brought her comfort to know that for more than three hundred years people in her family had been in this town, walking where she walked now. The next time she came she wouldn’t wear this black dress, which was too warm for the season. And she would come earlier in the day so she would have more time, because for the first time in a long time, she felt she had all the time in the world.

On June 28, 1969, the weather was hot, eighty-seven degrees, unusual for the time of year. New York City grew steamy, as if the heat rose from its core. On Christopher Street, between West Fourth and Waverly Place, the Stonewall, a restaurant that had originally been a stable, was burning from the inside out. The heat was trapped and it had to rise up. Organized crime ran it as a gay bar and everything about it was illegal. There was no liquor license and corrupt officials were handed enough cash to look the other way. Sometimes they did, but sometimes they chose not to despite the payoffs. There were raids and customers, including trans people, drag queens, and the young and the homeless, were beaten and humiliated and jailed, dragged onto the street, cuffed, bloodied, and facing a legal system that saw them as without rights.

Late on this particular night, Vincent was walking with his dog when he came upon a crowd that was growing by the minute. He could have gone in another direction, but he came this way. Later he would wonder if he knew, if he needed to see for himself who he was and where he belonged. He usually paid no attention to anyone when he walked his dog at night, as he would have paid no mind to the crowd, which had been growing in number ever since the brutal arrests, had the police not encircled the area.

Eight officers who had beaten customers were trapped inside, and when tactical forces arrived as backup, a riot began. Garbage cans and bricks were being used by the crowd to defend themselves. Vincent stood there, frozen. When confronted with the enormity of what was happening, the pure revolutionary action of standing up to be who you are, he was unable to move. Be yourself, his aunt had told him. Was this who he was, a man who feared to show himself? A rabbit? He could not have despised himself more at that instant.

“Why don’t you do something?” someone shouted.

One of the homeless kids from Christopher Park was being beaten, doing his best to protect his face with his hands. Before he could think, Vincent pushed the officer off. He concentrated and a hail of stones fell, scattering several of the officers. When the kid limped away, the officer went for Vincent, tackling him. Vincent toppled, his face hitting the cement. Harry was barking like mad, and would have attacked whoever came after him next, but Vincent gathered his wits and rose to his feet, calling the dog off. They ran down West Fourth Street, off the pavement, cutting off traffic. Vincent was bleeding, a gash down the left side of his skull.

He let the dog into the yard at 44 Greenwich before going to the ER at St. Vincent’s. For days afterward there were riots, and many of the wounded would be brought here. Vincent himself had a concussion and was in need of stitches, and there was the matter of his hand, which had bent backward during his fall. They sent an intern to take care of him.

“What have you done to yourself?” the tall rangy intern asked.

When Vincent gazed up he saw Haylin Walker, in his scrubs, a look of worry on his face.

“There’s a riot out there, Dr. Walker. I didn’t do this to myself.”

Haylin then recognized him. “You!” He threw an arm around Vincent so heartily Vincent winced in pain.

“Are you sure you’re a doctor?” Vincent asked.

Hay grinned. He still had the same easy smile he’d had at fifteen. “Pretty sure. I just got posted to a residency at Beth Israel.”

He was good at stitchery, and, because there were many other patients waiting for him on this day, extraordinarily fast. “There. Your looks won’t be ruined. What a mess today has been.” He got to work on a cast. “You may have trouble with this hand for a while.”

“I was lucky. It’s mayhem out there.”

Hay looked embarrassed, but he swallowed his pride to ask, “How’s Franny?”

“Considering you let her go, do you care?”

Hay gave Vincent a look, then took a moment to sit beside him on the gurney.

“Does anything turn out the way we want it to?”