Free The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren Page B

gazing into the fire. "She was very ugly about it. I told her, 'It's your own ugliness, it's going to make you ugly.' But she didn't believe me."
    "Well, now you know," I said. "Men give, and women take."
    He looked at me questioningly, and didn't say more. I sensed that he wanted to question me about my life. Since it had always been my policy never to discuss my personal life with my athletes, I was not about to answer his questions.
    "Well," I said, "it's nine-thirty, and you ought to be getting back to the dorm. Who are you rooming with?"
    I got up, and he got up too.
    "I asked for a room to myself. Vince and Jacques are rooming together."
    "What are the relationships here? Just so I don't put my foot in it."
    Billy was picking up his battered Mao jacket from the window seat.
    "Vince and Jacques are the lovers. I'm alone."
    "Tell me one more thing," I said. "I just can't believe three of you on that team. One, maybe, but three, . ."
    Billy laughed, pulling on his jacket. "Why not? It's a big team, sixty guys. And a big school."
    "How did the three of you end up there?"
    "Oh, we sort of accumulated. I met Vince my senior year in high school, when we rah in the Golden West Invitational. That was some race, man. He sat on my neck, and then he tried to blast me. Lucky for me, it was just over his distance. I beat him to the tape by about three inches. After the race we got to talking, and we became friends right away."
    "Lovers?"
    "No," said Billy, leaning against the door, answering as if I had just asked him the time. "D'ya have to be lovers all the time? No, we're just best friends. That summer we went crazy running together. We went to every open race we could get to, and we had a great time. And we'd decided we wanted to be on the same college team, and Oregon wanted to sign us both, so that was that."
    "Then you met Jacques at Oregon."
    "Right. And Jacques was still straight, then, but he'd been having suspicions about himself. When he saw Vince, it was love at first sight. Poor Jacques, he really suffered. Both of us helped him. Jacques adores Vince, but he's awfully nervous about the whole thing. I'll never forget how he cried when Lindquist got done with him. Vince and I were ready to kill Lindquist just because of Jacques."
    "I've noticed he's very protective about Jacques."
    "Yeah. A lotta guys that don't know Vince, they think he's a bird of paradise, and very fickle. But he's more of a mother hen."
    Billy was leaning against the door, looking so wise and so appealing that the old panic was rising in me.
    "Well," I said, trying to sound hearty, "any time any of the three of you have something on your minds, feel free to make an appointment to see me in my office."
    Billy was opening the door, and the fresh night air poured into the room. "We sure will, Mr. Brown. You've been great. Thanks a lot."
    He went out into the snow and closed the door. I was left alone.
    FOUR
    THE three boys' coming to my team also caused quite a little stir in the track world. When runners of their caliber change teams, it always causes a stir. Usually, however, such runners move to a team or school of equal or higher status.
    "Prescott?" everybody wanted to know. "Where's that?"
    Right away we had some reporters nosing around the campus. The three runners said glibly that they'd come to Prescott because they liked my coaching methods, and that they were tired of the impersonality of big schools.
    As the December days passed, I was better able to assess my three new team members.
    Jacques' biggest problem, I could see, was his nervousness. He was going to be one of those runners who wind up with a shelf full of trophies and a bleeding ulcer. He was not only nervous about being gay, but about competition. He went through agonies before races, shaking, throwing up.
    He settled straight into his studies, spending long hours in the biology lab. His main interest was ornithology. He also played the alto recorder, and immediately joined the