Loneliness wasn't his motive. He had, after all, had a lover once. His name was Leo, and he was a Taurus. Danny had noticed him ordering tuna salad in a Mexican restaurant. They chatted, discussing the tribulations of chronic dieting, and it had seemed at the time that out of this sparkling repartee came love.

Leo had been recently divorced from a woman who could have been a singer if she'd only kept a tune. He talked about her incessantly, playing the faded demo tape to everyone's annoyance. Danny would listen politely, smiling without nodding approval, wishing privately that the bitch had never been born. Then one evening the tape went on in the middle of their passion play. No longer able to suppress his horror, Danny ran screaming down the sidewalk. They tried to make up after that, to pretend that three was a cozy combination. But Leo knew, and Leo resented, and finally Leo left him for a Lhasa apso. Danny's only regret was that he never threw up on Leo's shoes.

A startling ad jerked Danny back to the moment. He was staring directly into the face of ecstasy: "G/W/M 32, 5' 10"," 160 lbs., very gdlk. hot and hung seeks G/W/M to 40 for slow sessions. Looks not important."

Looks not important. Could it be? Could the world have instantly turned upside down, with white now black, and the condition of the spirit taking precedence over biceps? Danny's belief in the order of things shook to its childhood foundation. Maybe this time he would be picked for the baseball team. Maybe this time somebody would ask him to slow dance. With new confidence he reached for the See's chocolates and prepared to dial. One number, two numbers, three numbers

"Hello?" said a thick, rich voice with origins below the sunbelt.

"Uh... Hi... I'm calling about your ad." The pressure was on to have another creme. Danny fought it valiantly.

"So whadda ya wanna know?" "Well, it sounds great. Can you tell me about yourself?"

A sigh of irritation breathed over the line. "It's in the ad."

"Well, uh, it doesn't list the color of your eyes."

"The color of my eyes?"

"You know blue, green, brown." "Red, mostly," said the voice with a chuckle.

Danny's intuition switched to yellow alert. "It says looks not important," he said, cutting to the heart of the matter. Silence. "I'm assuming." Silence. "Assuming what?" Silence. 'You do work out, don't you?" Danny found himself choking on his mocha. He pressed his fingers to his throat and swallowed with great effort. "Pardon?" he said.

"You know, work out, as in the gym,

weights."

"Oh, yes, well I do wait quite a bit, I go to Ralph's and they have like these Neanderthal checkers who have to really really focus on the registers, one number at a time."

Another sigh. "A funny man," said the voice without humor. "So how do you keep in shape?"

"Well," Danny replied thoughtfully, hoping the gentleman callee couldn't hear the crackling of the candy wrapper, "I type sixty words a minute." "Type?"

It was Danny's turn. "You know, as in Jane Arden, Kellygirl."

"You're joking."

"Not at all," Danny said. His anger was rising, the fury of a lifetime that lay burrowed just beneath his skin. He scooped up the last available creme and thought of his next line. "Have you read much Sartre?"

"What gym does he go to?"

With no further adieu Danny hung up the phone, knowing it just a matter of seconds before it would have been hung up on him. He reached for his pen and scratched out the ad, nearly ripping through the entire paper.

Jennifer the cat slinked along the back of the couch to where he sat pondering the wisdom of a run to the market. A vision of ham and swiss had invaded his mind like a wicked thought. He decided to think it over while petting Jennifer, skimming the last few ads for the sake of completion.

There, near the end of the last column, was the sort of ad Danny never answered. It offered too much, declaring to be in the market for friendship. Danny didn't trust ads like that, anymore than he'd trusted Lucille Barnham when she'd asked him to the Senior Prom. He knew he'd get hurt, and he did. Lucille had been a sophomore in need of entrance. She got what she wanted and left Danny sitting on an undersize metal chair while she flirted with the older boys, no doubt screwing two or three behind the bleachers. She hadn't even thanked him for the ride home. So he knew he would get hurt trying to be anybody's friend who hadn't known him for at least five years. He would try, and the first time they went out in public his "friend" would put distance between them, wanting to stay clear of the path of stares and oh mys that haunted Danny wherever he

went.

It wasn't that he was flamboyant. Buoyant, perhaps; remarkably light on his feet for a short man of formidable girth, bouncing up and down on the waters of life. His nails were just long enough to be impeccable without interfering with his typing, and he did wear loose clothing most the time. So his chosen colors were loud to the point of shocking. So he went beyond loose to billowing. Danny loved to billow, sleeves and sweaters and an occasional vanilla scarf fluttering milliseconds

behind him. So his hair was this side of albino. So what? He liked it this way, even if it did make him a sizable island from time to time. He was happy, or as close to it as he'd ever been.

He dug through the wreckage of the candy box, hoping against hope that he'd missed one. When he failed to turn up a crumb he glanced again at the paper. The ad was still there, catching his attention, threatening to flash like a distant neon sign. Nice guy, it said, not asking much. Conversation and maybe? G/W/M 36, average plain, possibly dull but always heartfelt seeks company. Kind souls reply.

Danny furrowed his brow, puzzled by the ad. He thought the man was a fool, that he would be chewed up and spit out like the sissies in high school, only now it was his fellow sissies who did the chewing and spitting, grinding up the meek ones with their incisor attitudes. He'll never last, Danny thought. He's grist for the mill and fat for the fryer and he needs someone like me.

"Why?"

"Why will I tell you anything?"

Danny leaned back in the couch, fascinated by the man. "Why won't you tell me what you look like?"

"Because the conversation usually ends there."

A bell went off, a ringing in Danny's ears as if someone had just pressed a tuning fork to his skull. "Can I tell you what I look like?" he asked, certain for once that he would not be cut short. "Go right ahead," Rudy replied.

"Well, I'm the same height as Robert Conrad, about the same weight as William Conrad, with a voice like Conrad Bain, which is to say I'm large but captivating."

Rudy laughed. It was an inclusive sound, not like the brutal snorts Danny was accustomed to hearing.

"My hair's about the color of a sixtywatt Sylvania, and I tend to dress with the intent to billow. I love to billow." Again that harmless laughter, almost gleeful.

Out of this sparkling repartee came something awesome in this technoera: a friendship.

Jennifer purred, winding around his ankles like a snake on legs as he shoved the See's box aside and plucked the receiver off its hook. Three numbers, four numbers, five numbers ... "Rudy here." "Rudy where?"

"Silverlake."

"Gosh," Danny said, "you're right around the corner."

"From where?"

"From here."

"Where's there?"

"Hollywood. My name's Danny and I live in Hollywood and I read your ad and I, like, really liked it so I thought I'd call."

Rudy did not reply, letting silence hang between them. "You sound like a nice person," he said at length.

"My mother thought so. She's dead six years now, but her opinion always mattered to me."

"So," Rudy said, "what do you want to know about me? I'll tell you anything but what I look like."

"Well," Rudy said, "it sounds like we could be brothers."

"Really?" "Really."

"You don't work out?"

"Not anymore," Rudy said. "I was a gladiator in a past life. I'd say I did my part, wouldn't you?"

"God yes," Danny replied, relaxing now at an alarming rate. "They didn't have Nautilus then. How did you get by?"

"Marble. Large marble blocks. Nowadays they call them freeweights. But that was then."

"And this is now." "Don't ask me to be Mr. Clean.... "Cause baby I don't know how." The laughter came in unison. There was nothing unkind about it, no judg ment in its resonance.

And out of this sparkling repartee came something awesome in this techno-era: a friendship.■

EDGE May 13, 1987 39