You Only Live Twice

by SekritOMG

For Julads. In his third year at Oxford, 1966-1967, Stanley's life is at a crossroads. The boy he likes is seeing someone else, his tutor hates his work, and homosexuality is illegal in Britain. Yet a posh, handsome classmate has taken an interest in him; could this be the year Stanley figures out the direction he's meant to head in? [AU; prequel to "The Rectum is a Tomb"]

2. Hilary: January-March 1967

Ah, sorry, I said I'd have this up on Friday and it's Saturday.

---

Hilary

January-March 1967

After Christmas, Stanley went into London. He had loved the holiday as a boy and in the present found it challenging to recall why. They said it was a holiday for children, and that much was true; his sister's brats were eight and 18 months. Rhian laid waste to the crackers before they were meant to be pulled, leaving the cardboard in a pile on the dining room table while the adults were upstairs getting ready for midnight mass. Phoebe just squirmed in Stanley's arms, kicking and howling. A non-believer himself, his penance for refusal to participate was stewardship of the children while his family was out. To calm Phoebe down he told her about Sebastian and Aloysius, and the adventures they'd had. "She's an idiot," said Stanley's sister, on the way out of the house. "She won't absorb a thing you're saying about whatsit and who-knows-what."

Stanley half expected Shelly's husband to interject, though he should not have been surprised that the old man didn't. He was in his 60s and had never said a word to Stanley, not even in passing. They all shuffled out of the house for church and left him there to put the baby in her basinet and read Rhian a story. Phoebe howled for an hour but eventually the house became still. Stanley swept up the Christmas crackers and put away the congealing pudding, finished wrapping up his gifts to his mother and his sister, and typed a note to his father:

Though there is nothing I could give you that you could not purchase for yourself, I felt at the holiday I might put my feelings into words. I am grateful for the education you have secured for me and the freedom you have begrudgingly allowed me to find out what I would like to pursue in life. I wish I could love science, as you do, for there appears to be great comfort in the certainty of knowing facts and coming to discover new ones. I believe my truth, however, lies in letters. I should read and write for years if I could, for fiction is the only sense of certainty I have ever found. There is nothing vile in stories, only comfort, for at worst the vileness in stories is invented, or cautionary. I am proud to tell you that my prospectus on the oeuvre of Evelyn Waugh has been accepted and I am researching a thesis on his works which allows me to read as much of his writing as I please. There may be a future for me in the academe, or I may wish to emulate Waugh and write my truths. Whichever comes to pass please understand that while you see me in some senses as deficient, I am happy now at the very least. Thank you for indulging me. I know no man wishes to have a homosexual for his only son but yours is going to turn out all right I should think. Happy Christmas and best wishes in the new year from your son, Stanley

When the typewriter ink was dry Stanley used a fountain pen fitted with a wide nib to sign his name with a flourish. He blew on it until it set and folded it into an envelope which he stuffed into his father's stocking. With the girl in his bed he curled up on the floor with a quilt and a pillow. When Rhian jolted awake in the morning crying, "Christmas, it's Christmas!" she leapt from the bed and put a foot in Stanley's face. It was then that Stanley knew he was well over it.

When Shelly and her family finally cleared out after dinner, Stanley's father asked him to come into the parlor and have a chat. Randy Marsh was a triumphant grand-stander, short on both temper and will to accommodate. Stanley knew from the moment they sat down, beers in hand, that the conversation would not be pleasant.

"Thanks for the note," he said.

"You're welcome," Stanley replied.

"It was the least you could do, I suppose."

"The least I could have done would have been nothing."

"I suppose that's true."

"I could build a fire," said Stanley. "In the backyard. A real one."

"What would the point of that be, Stanley? Why couldn't we just sit in the house, where it's warm already?"

"I suppose we could do." Stanley drank his beer too quickly, unsure of what else to say.

"I guess it's good that you're happy," Randy said, "having settled on this plan to do — what, exactly?"

"Write, sir."

"Will you take a fourth year?"

"I might do."

"Would you go on for an M. Phil?"

"I could do," said Stanley. "I just know I want to write."

"Well, son, what is it that you intend to write?"

"I don't know. I only know I have the capacity in me to write something. And I want to read. I feel I have things inside of me I want to tell to someone, these, er — these things."

For a moment Randy sat there, drinking his beer. Stanley hated to look on him, for he hated to think of his father as some possible future version of himself. There was gray in his hair and he wore an ill-groomed mustache that harkened back to the very worst of the 1930s. Stanley hated to think that someday he might find himself stuck in the mannerisms and efforts of his youth; it was a major facet of his decision to cut out the bleach from his shaggy hair. It was just now growing longer again, but it was back to regular old blackish-brown. Stanley wondered why his father hadn't said anything about it. He hadn't seen the old man since his birthday.

"You know," Randy said, "I haven't heard you mention what you intend to do about funding."

"Funding?"

"Yes, you know, a living. Do you intend to eke one out?"

"I intend to write," Stanley repeated.

"But son, you cannot simply sit down at your old machine and type money into existence. It doesn't work that way. There's an intermediary step between writing and making a living and you appear to be without any conception of how to connect the two."

"Then perhaps I'll do that fourth year. Would you approve of that?"

"I wouldn't be against it." The beer finished, Randy crushed it in his hand. "Any girls?"

"I know some girls." Stanley thought of Wendy and her thick fringe and short skirts. "What about them?"

"Have you been seeing any?"

"I see girls all the time, but I'm not dating one."

"Of course not."

"Well, I don't quite know what you want me to say," said Stanley.

"I want you to say you're at least trying," said Randy. "Couldn't you at least try?"

Stanley wanted to hate his father for sentiments like this, but at the very least Randy sounded sincere. In some sense Stanley felt sorry for his old man, for there was truly no comprehending what it was to be like that unless one was like that himself. "I absolutely swear that if I found myself attracted to a young lady I would ask her out," Stanley said. "I might even come to love her, if you can believe it. I feel that love is a gift and I don't discriminate at its source." He thought of Token, and how unlikely it was that Token had taken a fancy to him, how fortunate. "I'm receptive to almost anything, you know. It's simply that I can only receive that which is being transmitted."

"That's rubbish." Randy sighed deeply, slumping in his chair. "Do you want to get arrested?"

"No."

"Well, you do know this is illegal. I should hate to see you in some sort of trouble. I should hate to have to come and bail you out from some stockade."

"It's not the seventeenth century, Dad, I don't know that there are stockades."

"Oh, just you see," Randy grumbled, and he got up. Evidently the conversation was over.

---

For Christmas Stanley's parents gave him two spools of typewriter tape, a gray cable-knit jumper, and pocket money. It was meant to last him all term. "Don't spend it all in one place," his mother bid him. "Have you any idea what you'll spend it on?"

"Socializing, I should think," Stanley replied.

"Yes, that would be ideal. Daddy and I thought you might take that friend of yours out."

"Kyle?"

"No, of course not, that posh young lady."

"Oh, you mean Wendy," said Stanley. They were in the car and he was in the passenger seat, his rucksack on his knees. It was the day after Christmas and he sighed at the thought of being trapped in the car for even another moment, so thoroughly done with this was he.

"Yes, Wendy. She seems like a nice girl." She had been to dinner with the Marshes once, at the start of second year. They had beamed at her as if she were the answer to their prayers, and Stanley hated to admit that in some small part he had been pleased to let them think, for a moment, that there was a glimmer of hope in that gesture. He had invited her for his birthday, though, purely to demonstrate to her that his family was just as he'd described them.

"She is a nice girl." The approach to the station was trafficky, with travelers presumably returning to work after Christmas. Stanley was on leave but it was, in fact, a Monday, which meant that life would go on after Boxing Day. "She's too nice for me. Even if I were attracted to her, and she returned it, her father's an earl. She thinks fairly highly of herself and she'd not muck around with the likes of me."

"You never know," said Stanley's mother. "Maybe she fancies you."

Clutch tightening on his bag, Stanley replied, "Well, I don't fancy her, or any girl, I don't like girls and you know it, so why do you push me about it?"

"Oh, Stanley," she said. "You could just try."

They were close enough to the station now, paused behind a lorry, that Stanley felt safe opening the door and getting out.

"Oh, don't get out here," she said, "let me take you to the entrance."

"It's 30 meters away, thanks, I'll walk." He opened the door and looked down at her. He was wearing his new, nice gray sweater. It was woolen, warm, and itchy. "You know, dad said the same thing to me, about trying. Do you think I'd be this way if I could help it? I'm only doing what I can."

"Stanley—" Now the cars behind them were honking at her.

"Wendy's a nice girl and she deserves to be with a nice boy befitting her rank. Why would you want her saddled with me?"

"We just want you to be happy," she said, "Daddy and I. We do."

"I'm going to be happy. I'm going to write and I'm going to be happy. I'll be home on the 15th." He slammed the car door and hoofed it to the station.

---

Kyle was waiting for Stanley at Victoria wearing an absurd opera-style coat of black fur which was overlarge and, Stanley immediately deduced, must have been Kyle's mother's. He was sitting alone on a bench reading Tatler in a full face of makeup. Stanley was shocked that Kyle had not been arrested, but then, this was urban life; you came across odd sorts here and there. "My dear," Kyle said, looking up and folding over his periodical. "I have been sitting here for quite some time, you know, your coach was late."

"Nice coat," said Stanley.

"Oh, don't be a bitch. Help me up." He stuck out a hand.

Obliging, Stanley pulled Kyle to his feet. "I hope you've got a car waiting, darling, I should hate to get on the Underground like that. I'm not sure your adoring public will be ready to receive you."

"Oh, Stanley, so provincial! I thought we could take a taxi to the Bucky first and have a drink."

"I've got my luggage, though."

"What luggage, that old thing? Please, you'll be the belle of the ball. I'm languishing, please, I have to be out. I can't stand another minute in that house."

"Then it's lucky you're leaving — when, tonight?"

"Tomorrow morning, of course, but dinner's at 6. And you're coming, you know, and they surely won't let us go out after. I must be amongst my people, Stanley, if I am to be trapped with them and their grief for two weeks I might implode!"

"Is it that bad?"

"God, it's worse. My father hasn't stopped crying for a week. I've barely seen my mother. She can't stand to look me in the face."

"It might be the full eke, then."

"This? If I'd seen her today it might have given her pause. But I slept until noon, of course, and then came to meet you. Meanwhile, she's gone to a meeting — on Boxing Day, Stanley! And we're flying overseas tomorrow. I can't deal with it. Please don't make me get on that plane with them."

"Don't you want to see your family, then?"

"I want to stuff myself full of Hershey bars and dance to rock'n'roll with dinges and pick up some duchess at the docks and ask her to make me her wife," said Kyle. "You know, American stuff."

"Aren't your parents worried Ike might return while they're away?"

"Precisely. Or rather, they hope he'll come back to the house to get his things while we're gone, and you'll be there to catch him. Why else do you think they'd let you stay over while we're out of the country?"

"I just presumed I had charmed them."

"If he comes back you must telephone immediately of course. I shall give you the number."

"I've never called internationally before."

"Oh, it's great fun!

Stanley could not quite tell if this comment was meant to be sarcastic.

Despite a previous summer spent in London and a number of short trips, Stanley did not know his way around the place too well. This resulted, during the cab ride to Soho, in his wondering whether perhaps they weren't closer than not. Still, he was glad not to have to carry his bag on the Tube or the bus. What was more, Kyle fussed with lipstick in the backseat of the taxi, applying another layer though he seemed well-covered as things stood.

"Believe me," Kyle said as he stared out the window, "my family's nothing special. My mother and my aunt will commiserate and shop and my father will sit in the house reading legal journals and I shall be left to shadow my cousin, and he is dreadful. Ike would at least diffuse the tension to some degree by being a petulant little bugger but without him there will be no one to shield me from Kyle and his — how to describe it? He whines when he speaks, always complaining. 'I can't, I can't, it's bad for my digestion,' he's sort of like that. And he asks the stupidest questions — do you have Coca-cola in England? Do you have telly? Do you have maths in school? He's been here to visit us repeatedly, he shouldn't need to ask. But he will, because he has nothing else to say, merely that and complaining, 'it's so cold this winter, it makes my skin so dry' — do you know, I want to say to him, 'I have some cold cream in my trunk, heartface, if it can help me fit a cucumber up my aris I imagine it would do wonders for your skin.' … But I wouldn't say that to him, of course. Let him suffer."

"What about your uncle?"

"Who? Oh, my uncle. He works. He'll have dinner with us once, maybe. Nothing special."

"It sounds preferable to holidays with my family."

"Oh, I know, with all those little brats running around, it must be horrid."

"Well, there's only two of them. They're all right. I'm not much for children but I can tolerate this lot. They're my blood, you know, I suppose that makes a difference."

"You'd make a stunning father, Stanley, really."

"Thank you, darling, that's kind."

Kyle had no response to this, merely shrugging it off. He looked at his nails and said, "I intend to drink myself ill, if you must know." Then he sighed. "I really take this varnish off tonight. My father will burst into tears if I get on an aeroplane like this, it's really tragic." He drew out the air on aer-oh-plane, the emphasis on that syllable making the word sound fussy in Stanley's ears. "Well, it's his problem I suppose," Kyle concluded.

When the cab pulled up to the curb on Oxford Street near Wardour, Stanley and Kyle split the fare and ducked out of the crowd's path. "Will you buy me a drink?" Kyle asked. "I'll tell you my dilemma."

"What dilemma?" Stanley asked. His grip on the rucksack was failing, and he paused to reaffirm his hold. It was not too heavy but awkwardly shaped, and difficult to keep out of the way of pedestrians.

"I said I'd tell you if you got me a bevvy."

"Well, all right. But then you'll have to listen to mine, of course."

The pub was cramped with queens, a real crowd drinking and eating late lunches or early dinners. A few odd men reached for Kyle as he led Stanley around on the hunt for a table, grabbing at Kyle's thighs and rear end through his fur coat. Kyle loved to make a point of deflecting this attention, though Stanley could see Kyle was turned on by it in the way his posture became straighter and he snapped back at their entreaties.

"Oi, beautiful, it's our wedding night," one shouted. He was red in the face and fat, nearly grafted to a bar stool he must have first occupied hours before.

"I've a husband, thanks," Kyle snapped, though he had a smile on his face. To another, he said, "I don't make it with sea queens!"

"This place is full-up," said Stanley, and Kyle gave him a look that all but asked where else Stanley thought they might go. The truth was, neither of them knew anywhere else. So long as the pub wasn't raided the Duke of Buckingham was safe. Not that Kyle seemed eager to leave; he had obviously dressed up for this. When Stanley had paid for their drinks (a shandy for Kyle and a gin and tonic for Stanley), they stood in a corner by the underused women's loo.

"So what's your dilemma?" Stanley asked. He leaned against the wall with his bag between his legs.

"You go first," Kyle said.

"I paid," Stanley insisted.

With a deep sigh, Kyle stared into his drink.

"You don't want to leave town," Stanley guessed.

"Well, no, but it's not that." Kyle looked up. "Should I see Eric tonight?"

"That is your dilemma?"

"Well, yes," said Kyle, "what else would it be?"

"And here I thought you had put all that slap on for me."

"Stanley, you don't care what's on my face."

"I do!"

"Well, then you need a hobby." Kyle smirked and sipped his shandy, getting lipstick on the rim of the pint.

"Look," said Stanley, "it's hardly up to me whether you see him. I don't see you bringing him back to your parents'."

"No, we'd probably go back to his place."

"And where is his place?"

"I don't know, wherever his mother's implanted herself recently, with some current beau."

"That hardly sounds appealing."

Kyle sighed. "I like to think I can lose myself in the act. Ignore the surroundings. Maybe her chap's got a nice flat or something. Now I'm curious. Or we could do it in some cottage, you know, however."

Hearing this gave Stanley a sinking feeling of envy, or perhaps it was mere frustration. He was right here, after all; if Kyle needed to make it with someone, why not stick close to home? There was disappointment, too, in the idea that Kyle had gotten himself all done up and dragged Stanley out, and in this premise had been the suggestion of flirtation, and now it was apparent that none of it was for Stanley at all, and that was confounding. Also there was the frustration of having paid for Kyle's drink, at Kyle's insistence, and Stanley hadn't received even a 'thank you.'

"I don't care what you do with Eric," he said, polishing off his gin and tonic. He had drunk it quicker than he'd realized, or meant to. "Call him, don't call him. I'm getting another drink. Will you watch my bag?"

"Certainly." Kyle sounded caught off-guard.

At the bar Stanley ordered a double gin, straight-up. He knew he should pace himself or at least thin his drinks out, but all this stuff about Eric was really throwing him for a loop. It wasn't so much that Stanley minded getting drunk in the afternoon on Boxing Day; it was more that he was going to vomit up all of the money his parents had given him for Christmas if he kept going at this rate. To his good fortune, though, an old queen with a grating East End accent put his hand in the back hem of Stanley's trousers and said, "Cheers, ducky, this one's on me."

"Thanks," Stanley said in reply.

"What's a great big thing like you doing here all by her lonesome?"

"I'm not alone, I'm with my friend. That's her there, ajax the loo."

"Oooh," said the man, in a derisive sort of way. "Look at the esong on that old girl. I bet she doesn't know the first thing."

"She knows the first thing," said Stanley, "though I'm not sure she knows the second or the third."

He laughed, the old man, wide-mouthed and showing off gold teeth toward the back. There were an awful lot of sea queens at the Bucky, and Stanley figured they must have been in on leave. Surely there were pubs and places for cruising closer to the docks, but the Bucky with its forced Victorian charm and acid-etched glass details felt a bit camp and there was a good jukebox. At the moment Dusty was crooning over the speakers; all Stanley could think was that Butters would have loved it and sung along.

"I've got your number, ducky. Your mother's been charpering for a butch omee with big blue eyes."

"Well, I'm terribly flattered," said Stanley, "but my friend is waiting."

"She can come along, if she wants."

"I don't think she wants that." Now he felt bad. "Thanks for the drink, though. Cheers."

"I think I've just had an odd experience," Stanley said when he returned to Kyle.

"Oh, you think so. Can't you tell?" He folded up his copy of Tatler and bent over to stuff it into Stanley's bag.

"Some old sea queen called me a 'butch' and told me he had my number."

Kyle's mouth turned down. "Well, Stanley," he said, "of course she's got your number, look around."

"But a butch, though."

"In a relative sense." Kyle gestured to himself. "Look, I'm out of drink, would you get me another?"

"Why should I get you anything? Call Eric and ask him to get it."

"What is your problem with Eric?" Kyle snapped. "I know you had him first but you were very clear on not wanting him. You told me he was TBH!"

"He is, but that's not my problem. I don't want him. I just don't understand why you want him. He treats you like rubbish. You don't even like him."

"Stanley, he's gorgeous!"

"You're shallow like the murky water in the trough of a fountain in winter," Stanley replied.

"Oh, that's clever, dear, did Waugh come up with that one?"

"No, I did!"

"Well, it's stupid, and you're stupid if you think I could get anyone better!"

"You're stupid and vain if you think literally anyone wouldn't be better!"

"You'd better be nice to me!" Kyle threatened. "Or you can sleep on the street."

"I've a return ticket," said Stanley. "I wouldn't sleep on the street, I'd go back to Oxford."

"Enjoy!" said Kyle, and he pushed Stanley toward the wall and swept off — to the bar, presumably. The hem of his coat brushed Stanley's shins on the way.

Finishing his drink, Stanley stood in the corner, stewing. A couple came over to chat with him; one was in full drag, her lips smeared an alarming crimson color to match her sequined pumps. The other was another sailor, with tattoos up and down his hairy forearms. "This me missus," he said, introducing Stanley to the drag queen. "Georgina, and I'm Randy."

"I'm not," said Stanley. "Just got in town today."

"Oh, you're just a baby," said Georgina, pinching his cheek. "Come back with us, darling, we've got a flat in Fitzrovia. It's big enough for three."

"No thanks," said Stanley. "I'm not looking."

"Don't be strange," said Randy, if that was his real name. It was Stanley's father's name, too, and something about that was off-putting. Randy's breath smelled like he'd spent all winter living on a ship, eating nothing but sardines. Something about the ease with which Stanley could have claimed the opportunity made it just appealing enough for him to feel regret in turning it down.

"My friend's at the bar," said Stanley. "I've got to make sure she's not in trouble." He picked up his sack and handed his empty glass to Randy, going off to find Kyle.

Gloria Jones was crooning throughout the pub, her voice crinkled, jumping when the needle skipped. The place was crammed with bodies, thick with humid breathing and warm despite the weather outside. Someone splashed a stout on Stanley's bag and the scent of it wafted to his face; someone grabbed for his behind and squealed, "Where you going, love?" and someone else cried, "He's NTBH, that one!" He had never been in the Bucky with a crowd before; small white lights twined around aluminum tinsel above the bar. Paper loops made colorful chains across the tin ceiling, and the carpet floor was soggy with spilt drinks. He felt it difficult to breathe, presumably from the thick smoke needling at his asthma. A part of him was sure it was Kyle, though; where was Kyle? Had he left, had he gone home with someone?

Not yet, Stanley learned. He was seated at a booth with a crowd of older men, none of whom struck Stanley as attractive. Unfortunately they had been buying Kyle drinks, and when Stanley stood over the booth Kyle slurred, "Here's my friend, boys. I told you he'd turn up."

"Maybe we should go," Stanley said.

"You go, heartface. I've made some new friends."

"Er, hullo." Stanley felt cowed, and sat down.

"This is Marvin," said Kyle, "and Geoffrey—"

Stanley didn't care to learn their names.

"Would you like a drink, ducky?" someone asked him.

"No thank you," he said. "Darling, can we go?"

"No! I'm having fun!" Kyle seemed to be working on two drinks at once. "You're my best friend, Stanley, tell these gents something about me."

"Can't we go home?"

"Come on, dear," Kyle bid Stanley, "just one thing."

This was cruelty, Stanley felt. He had gotten off his coach wanting to tell Kyle about his family situation, and the thought of it was still burning at him. How was he expected to have fun out drinking when he had an actual life to attend? "He's writing a thesis on William Blake," Stanley said. He was so shocked at how hoarse it sounded.

"Oh, you're at uni, are you?" One of the old men asked. This one was dignified, his gray hair slicked to perfection. He was wearing a three-piece suit.

"I guess," said Kyle. "No, Stanley, tell them something fun!"

"This isn't fun for me," said Stanley. "Sorry." He bent over and took the Tatler out of his bag, intending to read it.

"Don't be like that," one of the men said, and Stanley ignored him. He turned to the table of contents, scanning the ads. Here was an ad for pantyhose, there one for a jeweler down the Princes Arcade.

"Oh, such a bitch," Kyle said, presumably about Stanley. "Ignore her, my dear, you were saying about me?"

"Your hair is national treasure!"

"Thank you, ducky, I know, it takes a lot of work. The texture is so fickle, I practically have to rub it with a starter—"

"Another round!" said someone, and Kyle asked for an Asti.

By dinnertime of course he was ruined, two of their would-be suitors departed. "Stanley," he said, crawling onto Stanley's lap. "I think I'm going to be ill."

"Yes, I gathered that." Stanley pulled a half-eaten plate of chips toward them and said, "Don't ruin this coat. Let's be sick on this if we have to."

"Is she going to be all right?" that Geoffrey fellow asked. "I could take her home."

"You know, she has an early flight tomorrow," said Stanley. "So I don't endorse that. Her father would have your neck."

"All right," said the other one. "Point taken." They turned to go, not without leaving their numbers for Kyle.

"I'm really going to be sick," he said.

"Then let's go to the toilet," Stanley suggested.

"No, I must get out of here. Oh my god. What was I thinking?"

"I don't know," said Stanley, "but you can tell me in the cab."

It was dry and dark out as they left the Duke of Buckingham; stumbling toward Soho Square, Stanley directed Kyle to a sewer grate, and held the hem of Kyle's coat up while Kyle copiously vomited.

"I warned you," said Stanley, "I warned you."

"Yes, I know, you know everything, you're so smart."

Stanley noticed that some sick had gotten on his shoe.

"Come on," said Stanley. He helped Kyle upright. "We can get a taxi on Oxford Street. Baby steps. One foot after the other."

"Sometimes I just wish I were dead," Kyle moaned.

"Well, you look fabulous, so let's not discount that."

"Thank you." Kyle wiped his mouth, and Stanley noticed that the vomit sort of matched the color of Kyle's nail varnish.

They found a cab after much waiting and moaning, Kyle clinging to Stanley's arm. After a few minutes he said, "I can't even stand," and crumpled over to sit on Stanley's bag. "I hope my coat isn't getting ruined."

Kneeling so that his trousers were in the gutter, Stanley gathered up the hem of Kyle's coat and tucked it where it didn't brush the ground. "How's that?" Rubbing his hands up, he stood. "Very well."

Back in Islington, Kyle's father met them at the front door. He extended a hand for Stanley to grasp, grip limp like a wilted stem. "Have you been well?" he asked.

Gerald Broflovski was a man of diminished stature, though Stanley could not quite describe why he seemed this way. He was no shorter than Stanley was, with a grim demeanor and a farcical beard. He should have been intimidating, but Stanley found him to be rather a non-entity. "I'm well," Stanley said, setting his bag down on the floor in the foyer. "Better than you've been, I imagine."

As if all of the air had gone out of him, Mr. Broflovski slouched into the front door as he shut it. "We've been better, it's true." He patted Stanley on the shoulder, barely making an impression. He said, "Happy Christmas." He then turned to his son and, brushing some hair from Kyle's forehead, said, "You seem unwell."

"I'm drunk," said Kyle. "Sorry, Daddy."

"Wash your face before dinner."

"If you insist."

"Have you packed yet?"

Kyle said nothing.

"Please don't bring that ridiculous coat."

"Well!" Kyle cried. He grabbed it by its excess and swept it around. "I suppose not!" He pushed past his father, shouting, "Come along, Stanley!"

"Thank you for having me," Stanley said, picking up his bag again.

"Never mind that," said Mr. Broflovski. "It will be brought up for you."

Mrs. Broflovski had prepared dinner, a stew of leftover things the family would not leave in the refrigerator while they were away for a fortnight. It was a meat meal, with hunks of lamb, beef, and chicken, with disintegrating leftover potatoes and bullet-hard peas. Kyle's mother had dismissed the staff and she ladled it over white rice herself. She cut up stale challah from Friday night (it had come directly from an East End bakery and still tasted of salt and egg) and sat down with a glass of wine. "Well," she said, glancing over at Kyle. "Bubbe, you look horrible."

"I'm drunk." Kyle pushed his bowl of stew away. "Please serve me some wine."

She looked to Kyle's father for advice, but Gerald merely shrugged, already buttering a piece of bread with oily margarine. "All right, well, enjoy." Kyle proffered his glass and she filled it.

They said blessings over the wine and bread, to which Stanley nodded along. He was hungry and cold, forever uncomfortable around these people. He did not know what to say, about his afternoon out with Kyle or about the situation with Ike. It was surely rude not to mention it, but what did one say? Was it to be treated like a death; should he offer his condolences? Feeling uneasy, he sipped his wine slowly and said, after a few minutes of steady eating, "Well, thank you for inviting me to stay. I'm very grateful."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," said Sheila. "We won't be here. Someone needs to get the mail. Plus, you know, if Ike comes back." She became quiet, which was unusual for her. She sighed into her wineglass. "Well, if he does, please call right away. Maybe it's optimistic to think he would, you know, but he's left so many of his things here. Plus he's not a bad student, you know, it just boggles me to think he'd just leave school and everything. He wants to be a solicitor, you know. He's always been very ambitious."

"He's not ambitious," said Kyle. "He's just disdainful. He hates me, that's why he left."

"Kyle, you know that's ridiculous."

"It's not ridiculous, you mark my words. If he ever comes back, you ask him."

"He'll come back," said Stanley, "I'm sure of it. Won't he?"

"Surely," said Kyle's father. "He's testing us, that boy. He thinks he's teaching us a lesson."

"A lesson about what, Daddy?"

"I'm sure he doesn't know."

"Little kid stuff," said Sheila. "The kids today, they're all going crazy. My sister says they're all reading that beatnik poetry and that stuff rots your mind."

"How would she know?" Kyle asked.

"She has a son," said Kyle's father.

"Yes?" Kyle said. "What would he know about it? About anything?"

"Kyle, that's your cousin. Be kind."

"Kind about what? Surely you understand he's completely naff."

"A what?" asked Gerald.

"Never mind." Kyle crossed his arms and sat back, pouting. "I feel ill. May I be excused?"

"No," said Sheila. "Bubbe, eat something. You'll feel better."

Kyle sat back in his chair, looking down at his food with disdain. Slowly, with everyone's eyes on his, he softened, until he reached for a piece of bread

"Well," said Sheila, refilling her wine glass. "What else is new? How are you, Stan?" She scooped more stew onto her plate. "What's the plan?"

"How do you mean?" Stanley asked.

"Well, what are you up to?"

"He's writing a thesis, Mom. Like me."

"Well, what are you writing it on?" she asked Stanley.

"Um." Stanley sat up straighter. "Evelyn Waugh."

"Oh." She seemed to perk up around this information. "Brideshead, right?"

"Right."

"I never read it."

"Oh, it's very good," said Stanley. "You must read it."

"What's it about?"

"You know, it's really about — a great many things."

She continued to gape at him. "Such as—?"

"Well, you know." Stanley desperately wished he had refilled his wineglass before this conversation had gotten underway. "Two boys at Oxford, and the protagonist, Charles, he sort of falls in love with his friend, in a sense, or perhaps the friend's family. He becomes engaged to his friend's sister and she simply can't marry him, because she is a Catholic. And it's framed around the Second World War."

"Oh," said Sheila. "So it's about the war?"

"The war doesn't much factor back into it. But the framing device is that he's stationed at their house during the war, and the house is called 'Brideshead Castle,' so in effect the war is just a prompt for him to sort of … revisit things."

"The house?"

"Well, no, really his entanglement with the family."

"So it's about — what? I'm sorry, I'm not following."

"I don't know, a great many things," Stanley repeated. "The aristocracy, I suppose. He's a somewhat artistic middle-class person and he falls in with these aristocrats, and it sort of prompts you to consider if he is in love with these people, this girl, because of their status, or if he glorifies the status because of the girl. Well, the people. Her brother. His friend. At Oxford." Inwardly cringing, Stanley concluded, "And that's sort of what it's about, you know."

"And what is your paper about?" Kyle's father asked.

"Oh, Daddy, come off it, you don't need to give him the third degree about the whole thing."

"If this is his work he should figure out how to articulate it," said Sheila.

"We are on holiday," said Kyle. His skin was already red from scrubbing off the makeup, and as he become exasperated he turned the color of his nail varnish, a blanched-salmon shade.

"It's all right, darling. I really don't mind describing it."

"Look, if I have to spend all day tomorrow on an airplane and all of the next two weeks stuffed in that split-level in horrifying Connecticut" — Kyle pronounced it exactingly, Kinnect-uh-cut — "then why don't you let us act for an evening as if we might take actual joy in our lives?"

"Whoever said life was joyous, Kyle?" his mother asked. "What did you do to earn a holiday?"

"I did extremely well in my art history course!"

"Yes, we're pleased about that," said Sheila. "What else?"

"I don't know!" said Kyle. "Please, I feel so sick, please let me go to bed."

"Well, all right," said Kyle's father. "You may be excused."

"Thank you." Kyle said. He finished the end of his glass of wine. "Stanley, let's go."

Standing, Stanley folded his napkin back onto the table, laying it beside his plate. "Thank you for dinner."

"If he comes back," said Sheila, "the number at my sister's is next to the fridge. Call us immediately! And don't let him leave."

"Of course not," said Stanley.

"Stanley!" Kyle grabbed Stanley's arm. "Help me fold my trousers. Come on."

---

Before Stanley could fold any trousers Kyle insisted on assistance with the removal of the pair he was currently wearing. Kyle had evidently shaved his legs; they were both smooth and nicked with garish razor cuts. "I thought Eric might like it," he said, brushing his ankle against Stanley's face. "Oh well, I suppose. Like all of my efforts it's merely a lost cause." He lay back and sighed, draping a forearm over his brow.

"Did you want to pack these?" Stanley held aloft the trousers he'd just removed from Kyle's body.

"Oh, you know what I like to wear. The climate there's roughly on par with this one at the new year, so I don't need anything special. Some slacks, some sweaters, socks and shoes. Nothing fancy or interesting. A suit coat, maybe. In case we go into the city. That's all, really."

"No rouge?"

"There's no one to impress there," said Kyle. "So, no."

Stanley opened the closet and dragged out Kyle's trunk, the one Stanley had most recently watched Kyle pack before he'd gone down from Oxford for the holiday. "Do you intend to help me with this or are you simply going to lie there?"

"I know you'll do it for me because you're such a dear," said Kyle. In his pants and nothing else, all the makeup scrubbed away and his hair wrecked, he seemed fragile in a different way. Without the billowing fur coat Kyle was pinkish, his skin blotchy, his nipples pointed in two small peaks. There was no muscle definition, but a general dearth of fat. The exception to this was Kyle's stomach, which was taut when he laid down and stretched, as he was doing now. Yet Stanley could picture the softness that gathered there when Kyle sat up, small rolls he fretted over occasionally when he wanted attention. Then of course there was his arse, though it was hidden in his briefs now.

As a body it was unremarkable, but it meant everything to Stanley. He thought of it constantly, even and perhaps especially in his meetings with Token. There Kyle's body was a point of desperate contrast; Token's corporal state was many things to Stanley, but it was not vulnerable, nor did it haunt Stanley's consciousness. Token's body was more analogous to his own, in its degree of athleticism (a passive sort of trimness, neither cultivated nor slack) and its solidity. Token's body was all brown, the tone consistent all over. Stanley's was consistent too, like something that had come out of a machine, produced for the least amount of controversy, meant not to be remarked upon. Then there was Kyle's body, which Stanley could not forget about. He stood there in the room staring, drinking it in like the face of a lost relative he'd not seen for years. Stanley had one of those, his uncle, and yet it was unimaginable that such a reunion would command his focus the same way Kyle's unexpected nakedness did.

"All right, let's see here." Stanley unlatched the trunk. "This shouldn't take long." He would start with Kyle's pants. Perhaps, he figured, it might lead to an erection, and that might lead to sex. But as Stanley folded Kyle's briefs into neat, tightly rolled cigarillos, he realized that Kyle had passed out, sprawled atop his quilt and looking a bit green still. Besides, by the time he had finished with the packing, Stanley's arousal had waned; this corresponded with his closer inspection of Kyle's body. Here were fingerprint-seeming marks on Kyle's collarbone and bruises on the insides of his shorn thighs. (Kyle typically had a wealth of hair there; it must have taken forever, Stanley assumed, to be rid of it all.) These were greenish yellow blotches, their edges turning to red-purple where blood vessels had burst. They were marks consistent, Stanley knew from his own experience, with the manner in which Eric Cartman fucked: without a starter, he had gripped Stanley's thighs for dear life, his whole body crushing into Stanley back while he used his grip in Stanley's thighs for anchorage. If Kyle hadn't been sleeping Stanley would have inspected further, but in this case it was useless. He went off to brush his teeth.

When he returned to the bedroom, having put on his cotton pajamas, Stanley climbed into bed with Kyle. It was a challenge, to be sure, with Kyle splayed across the bed in his exhaustion. Gently Stanley pushed him aside, curling around Kyle until they were clutched together fast. Though Kyle was asleep Stanley kissed his jaw and said good night. "Bon voyage, darling," he whispered. "I'll miss you."

---

Conducting a clandestine affair at Oxford was trying in that the place often felt very quartered and small, yet for all its grief Stanley knew he would at least see Token at tutorials. There they could pass each other notes before class about future meetings, or hang behind after the others had filtered out, disappearing behind hedges to go wandering together into the gray mist of the afternoon. Token was a country gentleman, after all, and he tramped through mud with confidence. Stanley had recollections of idyll hunting trips with his uncle, and while the trips themselves were a distant memory Stanley's wistfulness for England's outdoors returned slowly in Token's company. He felt no apprehension at sauntering into New College and rapping on Token's door. Were Stanley caught pursuing this queer liaison he might end up expelled or, worse, arrested. If nothing else he might be asked not to return to New College, his access to Token somewhat limited. Now, in London over the post-Christmas holiday, he was positively nervous, fixated on getting in touch with Token. He wasted one day dwelling on it, sequestering himself in Kyle's house as he considered his options. The Broflovskis had left in the morning with their baggage; Kyle left Stanley with a kiss on the cheek. "Be good, Stanley," he'd said, as if he knew Stanley intended not to be.

It was a lonely night for Stanley, with the books in Kyle's parents' library and just one glass of their whisky for company. He drank it slowly throughout the afternoon, his eyes glazing over Exodus, which should have been of interest to Stanley. Yet he found it difficult to maintain focus. By the time it was dark out in the late afternoon he called Wendy up in Gloucestershire. "Are you coming to town?" he asked. "I'm here for a bit. A few weeks."

"I won't be there until the new year," she said. "It'll be 1967, Stanley. What exciting things do you think we'll see this next year?"

"Well, I don't know," said Stanley. "But you sound a bit drunk."

"I am a bit drunk. It's my parents — my grandmother — the neighbors — dreadful parlor games. Actual charades."

"Do you mean the game?"

"I mean the idea that this is all just a pale imitation of actual life," she said. "But we played a few rounds of the game, too."

"I didn't go out at all today. Kyle dragged me out yesterday afternoon and it was brutal. To the Bucky. It was far too much, so I sequestered myself all day. And now I'm lonely."

"Poor Stanley! I know the feeling. Can you imagine, I've been sequestered for a week now! But I'll be back in town soon enough. Let's go shopping, shall we? Shall we make plans?"

"I would love to." They agreed to meet on Monday on the steps of the National Gallery at 10 o'clock.

"Happy Christmas," she said to him in closing.

"Thank you, dear. It wasn't happy, but it's over." Stanley penciled their date into his agenda and replaced the Uris on the shelf. It had been a mistake. He took the newspaper to Kyle's bed with him and lay in in it, now empty and cold without him. Kyle had left his scent behind, likely inadvertent: women's perfume; the faint trace of alcohol he sweated out after drinking; other cosmetic chemicals, things Stanley could never make out. The smell would linger for a day or so and fade away, or perhaps the maid would come to wash the sheets and obliterate the presence of Kyle in this bed, leaving Stanley well and truly alone.

In the morning Stanley got up and did the unthinkable: he went to the Post Office and sent Token a telegram. It was painfully old-fashioned, a very Butters type of thing, really. But it seemed the most elegant solution, considering he did not know Token's telephone number, or even if Token was in town. It was a simple missive:

Viscount. Am in Ldn 4 wks. Staying at KB's. Call: CAN849. -SM

"This going to a real viscount?" the clerk joked.

"That's none of your concern," Stanley hissed. Then he felt bad, and added, "No, sorry. Of course not."

Of course after this the trouble became waiting for the call to come through. On the walk back to Kyle's Stanley went into the grocery and bought some dried currants and figs, a tin of Irish oatmeal, and a liter of whole milk. Over the stove on one of Sheila Broflovski's cast-iron skillets Stanley heated the milk, stirring in the oatmeal by the forkful, then adding the dried fruit. As it simmered and thickened, Stanley disappeared into the liquor cabinet and helped himself to a bottle of mid-range brandy, a spoon of which he added to the concoction on the range. Then for good measure he added a second. His mother, who had made elaborate puddings for all of Stanley's father's colleagues recently, had been saying over their Christmas dinner that the potency of alcohol cooked off after a time. Unfortunately for Stanley the oatmeal began to burn before this appeared to have been accomplished; the final result was both bitter and over-sweet, a soggy mess that was no good. Still, with nothing else in the house Stanley sat alone at the dining room table eating his day's meal straight from the skillet. Disliking it, but not wishing to subject himself to another cooking experience in the near future, Stanley simply put the leftovers in the refrigerator in the skillet, for tomorrow' breakfast or for dinner, if he ate dinner, which perhaps he would not. With neither his mother nor the Magdalen staff to cook for him, Stanley was not sure what else to do about it. Go with a girl and marry her, probably. Sighing as he slammed the refrigerator door shut, Stanley resigned himself to a life of hunger. He did drink a glass of the brandy, though.

Much to Stanley's surprise, Token rang the next morning. "I hope I didn't wake you," he said, sounding as if he'd been at it for hours already. Stanley had passed out drunkenly on the living room sofa, the pages of his book wrinkled with sauternes. It was already late, perhaps 11. The sour taste of dryness was in Stanley's mouth.

Despite the fact that Token could not see him, Stanley felt embarrassed. "Of course not. I've been up for hours now."

"Hm. I'll take your word for it. You're at Kyle's, are you?"

"Yes. I'm keeping an eye on the house while they're in the States visiting Mrs. Broflovski's relations."

"Oh? And did they say you might have guests?"

"They said nothing about it at all, actually."

"Well." Token paused for a moment. "Should we meet for a drink this evening? I have dinner with Clyde at the club at half-six, but I should be free of him by nine, or half-past. Shall we meet then?"

With the mention of Clyde jealousy sprang up in Stanley's mind, and he sat up on the sofa, rubbing his eyes with the telephone tucked under his chin. "I could do," he said. "What's old Clyde up to?"

"Nothing, I'm sure. His parents have a flat in town."

"Well, whose don't?" said Stanley, whose parents did not.

"Where will we meet?" Token paused. In a low voice, he said, "I've missed you."

Stanley clutched his legs to his chest, the receiver probably leaving a mark on his chin. "Yes," he said. "Me too. Have you been to the Duke of Buckingham?"

"No," said Token, "how is it?"

"Dreadful. But perfect."

"That sounds like an oxymoron."

"It must be seen to be believed." Strictly it wasn't true, but Stanley enjoyed the hyperbole of it. "It's our type of people, you know."

"Which type, students?"

"No. Not that type."

"Oh." There was a pause. "Why don't we meet at the Savoy?"

"The hotel?"

"Yes," said Token. "They make an outstanding old-fashioned."

"I don't drink those."

"It hardly matters, Stanley. The point of getting together is the company, not the drinks."

"Then we should go to the Bucky, Viscount. The company is truly exceptional, and more fitting."

"Please do not call me that," said Token. "Stanley, I mean it. I'll see you this evening, after dinner. Where is the Duke of Buckingham?"

"It's somewhat obscure. Do you have a pen and paper?" Stanley explained the directions, recounting the process for gaining admission. "If they ask you what you are doing there, you must say you are going camping."

"Well, now, what's the meaning of that?"

"It's to keep the clientele limited."

"It sounds very exclusive."

"Yes," said Stanley, "by necessity. The last thing the customers want is to be carted off by Betty Bracelets, and the last thing the proprietors want is a raid. It's bad for business."

"It will be quite bad for me if I'm seen at this place."

"The beauty of the place is that anyone who sees you there won't want it known that he was there himself and most likely won't go spreading it around. Think of it as mutually assured destruction."

"I don't know that I find that thought terribly comforting," said Token. "But it will have to do for now. I'll see you tonight, I suppose, at the Duke of Buckingham."

With a sigh, Stanley relented. "Or the Savoy is fine."

"Are you certain? I wouldn't want to force you."

"I'm greatly looking forward to it," said Stanley. He meant it, too.

---

Stanley had never been to the Savoy. Had it been two years ago it might have impressed him. With Kyle he tended to feel giddy and daring, but Token did not inspire confidence in Stanley, vis-à-vis his presentation in public. Most of London remained on holiday, and here in the lobby were all sorts: theatergoers, courtesans, mistresses, the foreign elite. American laughs filled the lobby, raucous and jarring. Why couldn't Mrs. Broflovski's sister come to London? Why did Kyle have to go there? Stanley felt overdressed in his slacks and tie, though comparatively he was shabby, his clothing second-hand, originally his father's. Perhaps it was time for a new tie; this one had a very dated argyle pattern that made Stanley hate himself just slightly.

In the bar a man in tails was playing jazz piano; quite a crowd was gathered in the lobby, and yet in here the mood was more sedated. Hushed conversations were evident, disclosures spit over tabletops laden with crystal glassware. The room hummed with the verve of society, and Stanley knew he stood out, especially in his old tie. Women with bouffant hair hunched over their cocktails, the geometric splash of their glittering earrings swayed gently in candlelight. Token was easily spotted in his well-cut sport coat, grinning over a drink.

"What is that?" Stanley asked, as he received a chaste kiss on the cheek. He returned the gesture duly; social stuff.

"Try it." Token lifted the glass and placed it in Stanley's hand. "They call it a Hanky-Panky."

"And what's in it?" The glass was fluted and wide-mouthed like a martini, a surprisingly delicate vessel. Stanley took a sip and recoiled: gin and sweet vermouth.

"You don't like it? You're making that face."

"What face?"

"That face where you don't like something."

"I don't have a face like that." The bartender handed Stanley a cocktail menu, and brought a shallow dish with salted, oily cashews. "Cheers," he said to the bartender, who nodded in regard.

"We could get a table, but I much prefer to watch them work." Token sipped his drink; the richness of his presence was made for this place, Stanley figured. No one had ever been handsome like this. "This isn't my favorite, either. I'll have a Manhattan next. Please tell me if you'd like a recommendation."

"Fancy drinks aren't my main interest."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

"Well, I'm predominantly interested in simple things, straight up. A nice glass of Scotch whisky, you know, or a good champagne. Of course, the better the spirit, the less accessible. So I find myself drinking sweet wines with Kyle — sherry, for example."

"Yes, Kyle." Token pursed his lips. "How is Kyle?"

"Fine, I suppose. He didn't want to go abroad."

"Oh? Why not? I've never been, have you?"

"I've never been out of Britain. My father hates to travel."

"Well, we must amend that sometime. It's no use becoming a worldly young man with an Oxford education and missing the chance to actually see the world."

"I don't think my father quite sees it that way," said Stanley. "He is far too in love with Oxfordshire to leave it. He'd rather stay there his whole life and study the material substance of the place than go anywhere else, even to London for a day. Did you know I hadn't really been to London until I was 19?"

"Of course I didn't know that," said Token, "but I'm truly sorry. It's a wonderful town."

"Yes. It is. Well, I know that now, having been here. After our first year, Kyle let me stay on with his family for the summer. I'll never forget the kindness. It was ... my first time, I suppose."

"You were a virgin," Token marveled.

"Well, to the city." Stanley reached for his glass.

Token finished the last bit of his cocktail and set the glass aside. "You spend an awful lot of time with Kyle," he said.

"Well, he is my best friend."

"Craig is mine, I suppose. Or, perhaps not."

"Clyde?"

"No, I don't mean Clyde, though I am fond of him, he's such a dear. No, I mean — it seems silly to have a best friend as an adult, wouldn't you say? Why single out one man? It's fairly schoolboyish."

"How is Craig?" Stanley asked, though he didn't much care. He meant only to be polite.

"He's been up at Nommel over Christmas," said Token. Stanley saw it spelt out every time it was pronounced, perhaps because, or maybe in spite of, the fact that it was pronounced nome, "Like the administrative districts of ancient Egypt," as Craig had described on the first (and last non-acrimonious) interaction two and a half years ago. Craig had been a lowly courtesy marquess then, but he had seen fit to inform Stanley that he would one day in the future become the Duke of Nommel in his own right. And, now he was. "I haven't seen him, but he'll be in town shortly."

"Why is he coming here, then?"

"He's very ambitious, Craig." Token rolled his eyes, as if even to another member of the aristocracy Craig's ambition was ludicrous. "He's in a rush to do everything. Besides, he'll have to take Annie out over New Years, you know. Be seen and all that."

"Well, what does it matter if he's seen? Does he really want to marry her? Who wants to get married at 21 anyway? It seems so rushed."

"It's hardly rushed. Now that he's inherited his title he feels such pressure to get on with it. To be honest, Stanley, I can't say I blame him." Token sighed, slumping on his bar stool. "Did you want another drink?"

"Certainly." Stanley waved over the bartender and ordered his second cocktail, a Corpse Reviver No. 2. Token ordered his Manhattan, and when it came he gazed into it quietly for a time. Stanley might have spoken out, but the truth was, he didn't have much to say. Should he tell Token about Christmas with his family? Would Token like to hear about his parents' disdain? Surely not; either Token agreed with them, or he was in a similar predicament. Should Stanley discuss Kyle's family, their grief over their missing son? That felt like a violation of privacy. Though he was aware that to a certain extent he was being, well, used, Stanley felt his occupation of Kyle's family's home was a sort of honor. How could he relay that to Token? In this place, or all places — not their usual Oxford haunts, one of their chilly bedsits, but under a score of tinkering jazz piano? Stanley sipped his drink in quiet and watched Token fish for bar nuts.

Suddenly, then, after swallowing back a cashew, Token cleared his throat and asked, "Have you ever been with a woman, Stanley?"

Taken aback, Stanley let his answer form as he sipped his drink. Then he raised his shoulders, slowly crooked his fingers, and said, "No."

"Why not?"

"Why not? Isn't it obvious?" He cocked a brow.

"No," said Token, "it is not obvious. Most men, regardless of preference, eventually become involved in some capacity with a woman."

"Well, not me," Stanley scoffed, "I'm clean." Then jealousy began to curdle around the particulars of their evening, and Stanley asked, "Have you?" He took a sip of his drink.

"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell."

"Oh, come on! That's utter rubbish."

Fingers in the bowl of nuts Token turned to Stanley, evincing a sad smile: "Have you been with Kyle?"

Emptying his drink, Stanley wiped his lips inelegantly. "I have done." His fingers were shaking.

"What is that like?"

Now Stanley began to glare daggers at the bartender, wishing for another drink. "Not dissimilar from whatever you're used to, I'm sure."

"What is it that you assume I'm used to?"

"I don't know, viscount, you said you don't kiss and tell."

"Would you like me to do so?"

"Do what you wish," said Stanley. "Curiosity killed the queen." He said this in a high voice, a sort of camp lilt to it.

"I hate it when you take that tone." Token was fiddling with his glass, tapping it against the coaster. "But satisfaction brought it back."

Stanley put a weak hand to his chest, a slight bent to the wrist. "My dear, this tone took me."

Pulling Stanley's hand from his chest, Token scowled and said, "Oh, don't. That's not you."

"What's not?" Again with wrists bent back, Stanley put his palms up.

"This whole act, that's not you. And we're in public!"

"Well, god forbid someone see you suffering the wilting presence of some middle-class queer," Stanley hissed. "You invited me here, remember? Mutually assured destruction?"

"I remember," said Token. "Look, it's a natural reaction. Two men in public having an intimate conversation is tolerated by almost everyone. But if you want to truly be yourself you must forgo the trappings of the lifestyle and just relax. It's as if you think I'm completely ignorant to everything. I've been to enough drag shows to know it's not my scene. And, I suspect it's not yours either. Not really."

"I'm not hiding," said Stanley. "I like being this way. I like the Duke of Buckingham. The people are horrid and the food is congealed, and the drinks are overpriced, but I don't enjoy hiding in plain sight. I don't want to hide at all."

"What I am saying is that perhaps you don't fit in with that crowd."

"That is my crowd."

"I don't know. Is it really? These voices and gestures and things, they're like an affectation you put on."

"What isn't an affectation?"

"Well — like Kyle, I suppose, for example. He does not appear to be acting how he is. He simply is that way."

"Of course he is acting," said Stanley. "He is trying to project a very particular image. Token, everything is affectation. The world is just a stage — is anyone in the group doing Shakespeare?"

"No," said Token. "Clyde is working on Marlowe."

Stanley scoffed. "I'm sure he'll have loads of insight into Marlowe."

"You see, there is a good example against your affectation argument. Clyde is not putting on airs. He's just sort of how he comes across."

"Stupid."

"I mean, straightforward. Almost without complication."

"I don't know Clyde very well," said Stanley, "but I'm sure he is an actor in some sense. In the sense of — the straightness he projects, for example. It must be covering up something else."

"It's not fair to drag that into it."

"Drag that into it? Viscount, that's where we began it."

"Don't call me that, please."

"You are being terribly stubborn. You might refuse to go to a queer pub and you might decline to be acknowledged as an aristocrat, but those things are always going to be true of you. In my reckoning it's safer to put a bit of levity into it while embracing those things."

"Well, that's fair enough, if you must, but it's not proper to address anyone as a 'viscount,' and I don't believe that to spend time with you I should have to go to your Duke of Buckingham. It's you I want, not all of them."

"That's all right," said Stanley, attempting to be conciliatory. "You know, Kyle forced me there the other day, before he went on holiday. And it was not pleasant, because I didn't really want to be there. So, I do understand." Stanley slumped back in his seat and took a sip from his untouched water goblet.

Token cleared his throat. "If you didn't want to go, then why did you let Kyle force you?"

Stanley had not actually thought about it. The concept of saying "no" had not exactly occurred to him. "I suppose I just wanted to go wherever he was going."

"Did you — make it with him, that night?"

"No." Stanley set his water down carefully.

"Did you want to?"

It took a moment to conjure an answer. Stanley took another sip of his water and angled the glass toward Token. "I have always been attracted to him."

"I wouldn't be upset if you had," Token said, quietly. "It seems natural to want what one wants, though Kyle in particular is outside of my interests. But I don't — I suppose the major consequence of acting upon this persuasion is that I couldn't actually ask you not to be persuaded. If that makes sense."

"Persuaded by what? He was drunk and acting sort of reckless. He didn't come on to me." Stanley dropped his voice down, and in a whisper said, "He doesn't want me."

"But he did at some point?"

Stanley began to feel nauseated, the leftover oatmeal slurry of his dinner unhappy with the introduction of the Corpse Reviver and this particular line of questioning. He had assumed that Token would want to fuck him after a drink at the Savoy, but the evening had defied Stanley's expectations. "I won't deny anything but it was never serious. Regardless of what I feel he's not interested in someone like me. If he had a fleeting disposition toward my company it was spurred by something else — curiosity? Accessibility? Lack of other options? Surely you understand, seeing as you're not with one of your friends."

"My friends aren't interested in that sort of thing."

"If his grace the Duke of Condescension isn't interested I'll eat my shoe. Or anything else you hand me." Stanley slammed his hand on the bar. "Where is the bloody barkeep?"

"Stanley." Token put a hand on Stanley's shoulder. "This is a nice place. Don't do this."

"Don't do what? None of this is what I came here to do." Stanley gestured around the room with his water goblet. "I'm not having it with Kyle, all right, if that's what you want to know. He's getting charvered by that reprehensible … kraut queen. We're not an item."

"Well, what is that lout doing with Kyle, anyway? Couldn't he have someone less auspicious, if that was what he wanted?" Token put his hand to his mouth and glanced into the empty glass in his hand. "I seem to have bitten off more than I could chew here."

Sighing his frustration, Stanley put his elbows on the bar and said, "I don't understand it myself."

"Well." Token set the glass down. He slid off of his stool, patting Stanley on the back. "No, don't get up." He reached into his pocket; Stanley took a gander at the area, in order to revisit the familiar site of Token's cock snapped up inside his trousers. There it was, of course, seemingly half-hard, unnoticeable to those not looking for it. With a clink Token put a 20-pence piece on the bar; finally, someone spotted them, and came over.

"Closing out, sir?"

"I'm retiring for the night," said Token. "Bill it to Room 408. Token Black." He squeezed Stanley's shoulder with a sort of genial touch, as if to imply that he owed Stanley some sort of debt. "If Mr. Marsh would like a nightcap before heading out, put that on the bill as well."

"Very good, sir."

"It's 408," Token repeated, unsubtly.

"Yes, sir." He stepped away, perhaps to make a drink for another customer.

"Well, Stanley. Thank you for your company this evening."

"Of course."

"I'll be heading up to bed."

"Have a good night."

"I will, my dear, certainly. And you too. Don't be long."

"Of course not. Thank you for the drinks."

"Any time," said Token. His voice caught on uncertainty, but he shook it off: "Any time."

With Token departed Stanley ordered another drink, a neat whisky. When it arrived each mouthful felt heavy, tinkering jazz piano the best accompaniment. Stanley sighed into his cup and wondered what Kyle was doing. Playing mahjong with his aunt and mother, or watching a film with his cousin? No, it was earlier over there; it wasn't yet dinnertime. Was Kyle soaking in the bath alone with a glass of wine, jetlagged and bored? Or had he crept away from his family to peruse at the local tearoom? Either way, Stanley missed him greatly. London glittered with potential at all hours, yet without Kyle to shine a light on the place, some of its allure was lost. The clientele at the American Bar glittered, too. Stanley had no use for them, though. He left 20 pence for the inefficient bartender, and went back out into the hotel past the venerable piano. At first Stanley headed for the lift, but he then thought better of it, making for the stairs.

---

On the second morning in January Stanley met Wendy on the steps of the National Gallery at 10. She was wearing a bold swing coat with a houndstooth knit and a black fur trim on the hem and cuffs. "You look brilliant," he bid her, kissing her face. "It's stunning."

"I got it for Christmas," she said, "don't you love it?"

"I do. Let me look at you." He took a step back, admiring her as new year's tourists pushed their way into the building. He hadn't seen her for a month. "It's really a work of art."

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," she said. "Don't say that in the presence of the old masters."

"There are no old masters out here, unless you count Nelson. Shall we take a gander?"

"That's the idea," she said. "Yes, let's." She extended a hand toward him and he gave her an arm to grasp, escorting her up the steps. She wore yellow thigh-high boots with thick black soles and a purple knit beret.

"This is quite a look," he said, fondly. "Quite a look."

"I am obsessed with this coat. I've never owned anything so beautiful."

"You should be, it's perfect. It's perfectly you. Where did it come from?"

"Oh, Mummy won't share her dirty secrets. Probably doesn't want me buying anything new. But I have some Christmas money left over, from the rest of the family. Shall we go to Selfridges after this? I'd like to look at gloves."

"Of course, absolutely. We must." Stanley steered her toward the Turners and the Constables, and they sat on a bench and gaped at the Cenotaph to the Memory of Joshua Reynolds until Wendy rolled her eyes.

"I can't believe you like this Romantic stuff."

"Well, I don't, really."

"Oh, what, is it Kyle's favorite, or something?" When Stanley went pink she said, "Well, yes, of course, it would be — such perfectly foggy idealism. You know, the pre-Raphaelites couldn't stand Reynolds; they called him 'Sir Sloshua.' They found him so academic."

"I don't really care for the pre-Raphaelites." This was not strictly true; Stanley found, in the farthest recesses of his consciousness, that something about those frizzy-haired redheaded Amazons was androgynous to his preference. He chose to bury this as deeply as possible. Mostly it was that he did not want to be someone who loved pre-Raphaelite art, and he preferred to cling to that idea tightly as he studied the young buck in the foreground of Reynolds' tomb. He still didn't understand Waugh's attraction to the topic. "There's nothing wrong with using art as a portal to understanding other people."

"Yes, but you're not using this to understand Constable, or even Joshua Reynolds. You're just fixating on this like it's an echo of Kyle."

"He actually prefers William Blake."

"Whatever," she said, "it's not my concern. Let's go shopping." They made a pit stop at Asnières on the way out. "I'm dying for a trip to Paris," she whispered, her gaze fixed on the bottom of one young bather.

"Please don't die on me. You'll make it there."

"Wouldn't you just love to come upon this scene?"

"Schoolboys? Not exactly, no. No thank you."

"You were a schoolboy once," she said. "Wouldn't you have just died?"

"I would have died of shame, I think. Are you ready? Shall we go?"

"Oh, I suppose." She buttoned up the front of her coat. "Aren't you no fun?"

"I never claimed to be much fun," he said, though he had her in tears of laughter when they sat down for a drink and a salt beef sandwich at the lunch counter in Selfridges: "I am just saying, all men in tight pants look a bit queer, but it's like they don't even care. Everyone's hair is getting so bushy. Fashion is headed for a timely death if we keep going down this road. Everyone looks like a sad clown."

"I don't!" she protested, smearing mustard on her sandwich.

"No, you don't, you can reign it in, thank god. But half the chaps in this sandwich shop would fit right in at the Duke of Buckingham. It's atrocious."

She giggled at his impertinence, drinking a fancy cherry soda with a fount of whipped cream floating on its surface. From that rose a striped paper straw, on which her coral lipstick left a shiny smudge. "You're so irreverent," she said. "Such an iconoclast, Stanley."

"It isn't my fault everyone looks so stupid."

"And people look so smart in Oxford?"

"No, everyone there is so bloody boring." He sighed. "Except for the handful of friends I've acquired, all of whom came from elsewhere." The greasy sandwich soaking the paper plate in front of him was the first real food he had enjoyed in some time, since his mother's Christmas dinner. It was served with a small crock of baked beans and an iceberg salad. This was someone's idea of American food, Kyle had told him once. "Wendy," he said, in all seriousness, "if I stay there after graduation I will actually die."

"Oh, you'll find a way out," she said. "Are you going down this year?"

"I don't know," said Stanley. "I'd like to stay on, and maybe do an M. Phil."

"Oh, and then — what, enter the academy?"

"No. I want to write."

"Oh! Well, what are you going to write?" With a plastic fork she took a heaping bite of beans.

"I don't know yet! That is precisely why I should stay in school. My father would pay for it. I mean, for me to live in a little flat of my own. Provided I were doing something reasonable. I don't think he wants me in the house. I think the sight of me upsets him."

"It should," she said. "Because he is at the end of his life, and yours is just beginning."

"I think it is more because he is disgusted by my proclivities. He keeps insisting I 'try.' " Stanley pushed the dish of beans toward Wendy. He leaned into her. "Try to what, though?"

Ignoring the beans, she put her hand on his. "We could try it," she said.

"They would love that," he said, pain in his voice. "I mean, my parents. They would love it."

"I mean, you'd have to pull out. I won't have any more surgical consequences. It's been a while, so maybe I'm out of practice. And it couldn't go anywhere, dear, I'm sorry. If it did work. I couldn't be seen out with you, or I wouldn't get any suitors."

"It's like a bloody Austen novel, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, sort of. I'm going to the opera tomorrow night with this one chap — the son of some baron, I think. They keep setting me up with people. All these gentlemen are so vile. You wouldn't be vile, Stanley, would you?"

He pulled his hand away, planting it in a fist on his thigh. "I'm not sure I'd be capable of doing it," he said. "I mean, at all. It's nothing against you, dear, but I am not sure I would be capable of willing myself to perform adequately. I fear you would only be disappointed."

"Well, it's quite all right," she said. "My satisfaction, or lack thereof, wouldn't be the point."

"And that wouldn't be fair, then, would it?"

"Oh." She sighed, taking another forkful of beans. "Fair or not, it's my lot. To be unsatisfied, you know."

"I think there is a disconnect here. It's not the right thing to do."

"I understand, then. … Honestly, I'm a bit relieved."

"Well," he said, "we avoided that potential awkwardness, then."

They spent the rest of the day in Selfridges, Wendy inspecting the stiff leather gloves and supple leather shoes, tip-toeing around the department in a pair of black-patent wide-toed Roger Vivier pumps with a metallic-trim buckle. "Do you like these, Stanley? Should I buy them?"

"Well." He glanced at her, coat in a pile on a chair, her legs lean with the lift of a sturdy heel. "They are very au courant. They'll look quite glamorous with the coat."

"But they aren't quite pedestrian enough for every day, are they? Must I reserve them for special occasions?"

"I think they would look good with everything, which would make them a good investment if you hadn't already a generous collection of shoes."

"But I very much like shoes," she said. "And I should but some hosiery to go with them. Yes, I think I shall purchase these."

Stanley held her coat up and open as she slipped into it. She charged the Roger Viviers to her father, and carried them with her to intimate apparel.

"I don't feel comfortable in this department," Stanley said. "I'll go browse the menswear."

"Suit yourself," she said. "There's nothing scandalous about it, but all right."

In suiting Stanley appraised the fabric of the dress shirts, the patterns and qualities, the weight and the texture. If Stanley wanted a nice suit would he go to Craig for advice? He chuckled to himself at the thought; it was highly unlikely. With no need for luxury items Stanley drifted into shoes, sniffing the leather soles of a mustard-colored pair of pointed-toe ankle boots. Too mod for his taste, Stanley put them down and began to leave. His plimsolls moaned against the floor, the polish worn away after a season of holiday shoppers.

A shop clerk with a high-buttoned collar stopped Stanley and said, "My dear, may I help you?" he was a slim man, a pink bowtie at his throat, slim fingers curled under his chin. "Were you interested in trying on those boots?"

"Well, I was browsing," said Stanley. "Just waiting for my friend. She's in intimate apparel."

"Oh." His fingers went to his hips, which he cocked out brusquely. "Will she be a while, dear? It's a slow day. Everyone's still drifting back into town. What's your size?" His eyes went wide as he said it, an unmistakable nod toward Stanley's belt.

Though he considered himself a nervous person, Stanley found the clerk harmless; perhaps intriguing. He crossed his arms, stiffened to raise his chest, cleared his throat. "Oh, I should think an 11." He waited a moment. "Or so."

"Well, my dear, take a sit." The clerk patted the seat of a wooden stool, a hollow knocking accompanying the gesture. "I shall measure you."

So here Stanley found himself, in the men's show department of Selfridges on the day after New Year's Day, an ash-blond man with a bit of pomade swirled into his hair kneeling with Stanley's naked foot in his hands. "An 11 indeed," he said, softly. "That's respectable."

"It's the only respectable thing about me."

"Hmm." The clerk stood, the measuring device in his hands. "I'm certain that isn't true."

Stanley stood in his bare feet, socks falling from his lap. He had wanted to do this suavely, and there they went, falling to the floor without grace — but Stanley told himself the man was only a salesman in the Selfridges men's shoe department, so his opinion did not matter, and if it did, well — didn't he see socks on the floor all of the time? "What's your opinion on camping?"

The clerk giggled, covering his mouth. He raised an eyebrow. "That's bold," he said.

"You're bold," said Stanley. "Don't be bold with me."

As if swooning, the clerk wilted slightly and brushed some hair from his forehead, the strand that wasn't cemented in flawless place. "I've a break at 1500," he said, voice tight. "There's a lovely cottage at Marble Arch. Have you been?"

"No," said Stanley. "I'm visiting. Do you recommend it?"

"Oh, so you've a place to stay? You could … come over for dinner. It gives me such a sense of fulfillment to entertain visitors." At "fill" he took another gander at Stanley's dick.

There was no one else in the department, improbably, though Stanley imagined it might have been because the businessmen were all back to work following the holiday. He wanted to consider this offer, to take the salesman up on it, to say "yes" without heed and fuck his tight, prim arse in a filthy john. Token wouldn't do it and Stanley was hard up for it, wishing just to take a man from behind, leaving fingerprints and bruises and purplish remainders on his flanks, only to disappear and let the memory of their encounter fade with the markings it had made on that man's body, until one morning he woke up wishing to touch himself idly to the recollection of it, finding that he remembered only the place and not the look of Stanley's face, the color of his eyes, the tenor of his voice. It felt dangerous and arousing and promising, the clarion call of the city in full-force.

"Stanley?" It was Wendy, her Viviers in a shopping bag. "Are you here? The clerk said you went this way — yes, there you are." She sat on a stool across from him, crossing her boots at the ankles. "Are you trying on shoes?"

"Just for fun," said Stanley, "as I was waiting."

"Oh, I wasn't that long!"

At this the salesman lifted one eyebrow, a look of narrowly contained resentment on his face. He put his hands to his hips and slouched, presumably realizing the promise of this encounter had evaporated.

"I'm not disturbing you, am I?" Wendy asked.

"Hardly," said Stanley. His face was hot. "Perhaps another day. For the shoes, I mean."

"Of course, sir." He snapped up the shoebox, sliding one of Stanley's socks back toward its owner, across the carpet. "Another time."

Having a coffee across the street following the encounter, Wendy tucked her elbows onto the table and leaned in to ask, "What was that?"

"It wasn't anything," said Stanley, "as you might have noticed."

"Did I ruin something for you? Poor Stanley." She grabbed his forearm and smiled weakly. Some of her lipstick had come off over the course of the day and she hadn't reapplied it. "He was attractive. I approve."

"No, please don't worry. I wouldn't have done it anyway."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," said Stanley. "I didn't want to. I didn't feel it would be appropriate."

"Well, whenever is that sort of thing appropriate?" she asked.

He was scanning the menu, looking for something to drink. They had only coffees and teas and soft drinks; greasy chips and bacon butty rolls; cubed ham and pea salad with mayo on toast. This seemed dreadful and Stanley closed his menu, settling on a water. "I'm not sure it would be fair to Token."

"Oh, the mysterious Token," she said, her clipped tone mocking him. "Do you think he would have turned that man down and cited unfairness to you?"

"No," said Stanley, "because he'd never end up maneuvering himself into that situation. I am not sure he'd be present enough to do so. It's tricky."

"In what sense?"

"In every possible sense."

"I shall take your word for it, seeing as I have never met him."

"I'm sure there's some club you might both belong to."

"Oh? Well, Daddy and Mummy are at the Lansdowne — what about Token?"

"Well — White's, I believe."

"Dreadful!" she exclaimed, hands to her mouth. "Fat old Tory cows chewing cud. Dreadful!"

"Token is not a fat cow. He is actually rather good-looking."

"Well, since you won't introduce me to him I suppose I'll have to take your word for it."

"I could do," Stanley said. "Introduce you, I mean. Next term."

"I'd enjoy that," she agreed. "I'd enjoy it very much."

---

Kyle came back more miserable than he had left, a permanent scowl drawn on his features. He painted over it with pink lipstick immediately. He barked at Stanley, "Put on something respectable and take me out of here. I won't be in this house with them for another moment. Come on, we're going."

"Don't you want to tell me about your trip?" Stanley asked. "Or tell me at least where we are going?"

"We are going out; that is where we are going. I am not content to sit on my arse for the rest of my holiday. I had to share a room with my horrid cousin, who snores like a wild animal. I had to sit in their house all day, listening to them discuss it over and over again: where did he go? Why did he leave? When might he come back?"

"I don't know, darling." Stanley put a hand on Kyle's shoulder. "And I'm sorry."

He didn't bother responding to this. "And the men! We went into the city and ate delicatessen and fish eggs and cold salads made with mayonnaise and my mother wouldn't let me go to the opera, or off on my own, or anywhere fantabulous, but she made me go to the Frick Collection and see all the dreary bronzes and old masters. I just wanted to run away but I only had five dollars. Where could I possibly have gone?"

"Pardon," said Stanley. "What about men?"

"They were everywhere!" Kyle put his hands over his face and moaned. "Every street corner, every taxi rank, every fucking gallery in the Frick! These starchy, butch American men — it wasn't fair! It wasn't fair of them to make me go! I had no one to even talk to!" Now he grabbed for a tweezers and pointed it at Stanley. "I wish you had been there."

"Why? What would I have done?"

"I just felt so alone," said Kyle, and though he did not start to cry he collapsed onto the surface of his desk and sighed loudly, hoarsely. "Why weren't you there?"

"Because I was here," said Stanley. "You know, minding the fort."

Kyle sat up and pulled a pocket mirror from his desk drawer. "And how was it? Ike didn't come back, did he?"

"Well, no, not to my knowledge."

"Since you were here the entire time," said Kyle, "so you would know if he'd come back."

"Well, yes," Stanley lied, feeling guilty. "Where are we going out to? Aren't you tired?"

"I am tired," said Kyle. It was mid-afternoon. "Let's just go down the pub."

They went to the place nearest Kyle's, with a homey sort of air and a green sort of carpet. "The Serious Man," it was called. They had been there before, two summers back. The place hadn't changed, and the same rotund bartender sold them a glass of shandy each and a plate of chips with toast and beans. Kyle ate half of the chips and then half of the beans, then he ate the second half of the beans with the toast. Stanley dipped one chip in the beans and then let Kyle have the rest. They ate silently for a while. "I shouldn't be hungry," said Kyle, "I ate on the aeroplane."

"It's fine," said Stanley, "consider it tea. He put a surreptitious hand on Kyle's thigh and said, "My poor dear."

"I did buy you a souvenir." Kyle pulled something out of his coat pocket. "Two things." They were gleaming packages, squarish and thin: a chocolate bar that said HERSHEY'S and a packet of baseball cards. "Thank you for watching the house."

"Well, thank you for allowing me to stay." Stanley thumbed the foil on the chocolate bar and sighed. "I don't deserve this. And I'm sorry Ike didn't come home."

"Oh, of course you deserve it, it's not as if you could have made him come home. He does what he wants, my parents say. I don't believe they're wrong. He does what he wants and I am forced to be the good one. And anyway, don't be impressed. A chocolate bar costs a few pence. And it's not even good — I've enough change in my pocket for a real Dairy Milk."

"And do you have a taste for one?"

Kyle sipped his shandy, leaving a big pink lip-shaped smear on the rim of the glass. "Reckon I could do."

They walked down to the corner shop where Kyle's family bought dry goods and Kyle bought cigarettes if he wanted them. Feeling generous, Stanley bought the chocolate and then, at the off-license, a cheap bottle of sherry. It was all he could afford, and Kyle did not complain. Though it was a chilly evening they went into the green a few blocks away and sat on a damp bench, passing the bottle between them and comparing chipped-off squares of chocolate.

"This is not good chocolate," Stanley said of the Hershey's, its waxy texture insipid on his tongue. It took a healthy gulp of sherry to chase that feeling from his mouth.

"Let's open the baseball cards," said Kyle. "Come on, give me the packet."

"No thank you! I'd like to keep them like this, as they came."

"Then we shan't find out who's inside!"

"Well, I don't know of any baseball players," said Stanley, "and besides, if they are kept in their wrappings then the promise of the gift remains intact. The principle of potential is still inherent—"

"That's whimsical nonsense! Give it here." Kyle grabbed the package and tore it open, a stack of slim cards spilling onto Kyle's thighs.

Stanley's heart clenched at the scene, realizing it as a moment of loss. First Kyle had brought him this beautiful gift; then Kyle had needlessly ruined it.

"Look at these men," Kyle was saying, as he shuffled through the deck. He popped the piece of bubble gum into his mouth and it made a cracking noise when he chewed it. "And I don't even like baseball! It's so fucking American. Every man in America is like this, Stanley. They're all clean and earnest in this uncomplicated way. There is no hiding, because there's nothing to hide."

"Surely that's not true."

"No, it is true," said Kyle. "You'd know it if you went there!"

"I'll never go there," said Stanley. "I've never left England. I've never even been to Wales."

"Don't waste your time going to Wales, Stanley."

"Jesus." Stanley took an especially large gulp from the bottle of sherry. "You and your athletes," he said.

"What? My dear, that is offensive." Kyle crossed his arms. The cards were still fanned out over his thighs, the names and winking faces and straining arm muscles of men Stanley did not recognize all facing heavenward. Kyle smacked noisily at the gum in his mouth. "Especially since I do not know what you're referring to."

"Isn't Eric a rower?"

"Oh! Well, I suppose, but — my dear, he's hardly an athlete."

"What is rowing if not a sport?"

"Oh, I think rowing is a sport, it's just that Eric is hardly an athlete. He isn't serious about it. He won't keep training after he goes down in the summer."

"Why not? And why is he going down in the summer?"

"Because he isn't a scholar, either," said Kyle. "He just wants to get into the City, and make a lot of money."

"Well, good luck to him."

"I suppose." Kyle was silent for a moment, taking the bottle from Stanley and generously swallowed away half of it. He then wiped his lips, the lipstick smearing off in a dash across his wrist. "I hate that you always bring him up."

"Me? I always bring him up? Kyle, he is your beau."

"My beau? Stanley, he wouldn't even see me on Christmas!"

"Is he required to?"

"I called him at his mother's and he wouldn't even wish me a happy Christmas. I said, 'I am going away over new year's, you won't see me, don't you want to say goodbye?' And he said no, of course not, why would he? 'You're a Jewess, Kyle,' he said, 'do not call me on Christmas. Your people murdered Christ.' "

"He says that sort of rubbish all the time, though!"

"But I was leaving and he didn't want to see me," said Kyle. "Not even a farewell."

"He isn't a nice person, though. Why are you so surprised?"

"I just thought he—"

"Don't say it!"

"Well, at least I thought he'd want to make it or something. There I was, offering it to him. He didn't even have to do anything! I would have gone to him. And he didn't even want me — do you think there is someone else?"

"Kyle, I don't know. Surely not. Who would want him?"

"Stanley, haven't you looked at him?"

"Yes, I have looked at him."

"Well, he's gorgeous! Who wouldn't want him?"

"I don't want him, Kyle. He has the personality of a Banshee. Get close and he screeches at you."

"That is just not true!"

"Darling, it is perfectly true. A man who loved you would be overjoyed to hear from you. He'd want to see you before you left. He'd make you feel worthy of his time. Eric acts as if you are this astounding inconvenience to him. He treats you more or less like a stray animal which, every so often and at his convenience, he deigns to feed scraps from the table. Any good chap would be enamored of you. He should treat you like a queen!"

Rolling his eyes, Kyle finished the end of the sherry, tossing the empty bottle into the bushes. "Well, Stanley, perhaps that is where we differ. You fail to understand that queens have no value. Treat me like a queen? Of course he does, stupid, it's just that my inherent worth to him is nothing."

"Do you even hear yourself?"

"Of course I hear myself! If you think it should be any other way you are delusional. All I wanted from him was a farewell buggering. Why can't I just have that?"

"He's hateful," said Stanley. "And you are delusional if you think that's all you want from him. Finding someone for the evening is the easiest thing in the world. It's finding someone you actually want that's hard. And the worst is you wanting him to want you back."

Stanley expected Kyle to become angry and shout at him. Instead Kyle's voice was cold and quiet: "And what would you know about it?"

Stanley said nothing, thinking only of Token and his room at the Savoy.

"Yes," said Kyle. "I thought so."

---

At the beginning of term, all of the third-years gathered in Garrison's study, around his large wooden table. The seats were plush, the windows shut against the wet January afternoon. It was gray outside, and dark inside. The lights were on, both the overhead and the floor lamps, and the tacky candelabras over the mantel. Stanley's knees were shaking, beside Token at his left and Kyle at his right. The chair at Kyle's right was empty.

"Does anyone know where Eric is?" Garrison took off his spectacles at the head of the table, rubbing his eyes.

All gazes met Kyle's. "I don't know," he said, casually. Stanley felt Kyle's leg beginning to knock against his, though. Then Kyle's hand searched for Stanley's under the table. Stanley grasped it. "He should be here."

"Well, is he rowing, or something?"

Kyle looked to the window. "On a day like this?" he sighed. "I don't know, I'm not his keeper."

Clyde spoke up. "Don't they row in the rain?"

"I don't know, Clyde." Kyle rolled his eyes, let go of Stanley's hand. "I'm not his mother."

From across the table, Craig drawled, "No. You're his wife."

They all began to laugh, and Kyle's face heated up. Even Garrison, they were all laughing. All but Stanley.

"I'm not a joke!" Kyle said. "I don't know where he is! He comes and goes as he pleases. Bugger off, Craig, you're miserable."

Craig licked his lips, unbuttoning the jacket of his suit. His eyes narrowed. "Bugger off, your grace," he corrected.

"All right, all of you fools, stop nattering." All Garrison sat up straighter, putting his spectacles back on, pushing away his mug of tea. He bent down to withdraw from his knapsack a fat pile of papers. "Have you all had a nice Christmas? Mine was miserable, reading all of your rubbish. Granted, some did better than others. Shall we start alphabetically?"

Around the table, no one nodded.

"I'll take that as a yes. Let's see. Unfortunately, Broflovski, I think this puts you on the spot again."

"It's fine." Kyle shrugged, smoothing his hair away from his face, clearly nervous. He had the least to be nervous about. Stanley wanted to pick him up, and carry him from the room. Thunder rolled outside, flashing against the windows. "Eviscerate me, sir. Go on."

Garrison smiled at him; he was cruel, perhaps, but he respected Kyle. "You're too hard on yourself. This is solid."

"Really?"

"Yes, here." Licking his thumb, Garrison flipped open to a page. "You write a bit around points, not to them. If you're going to talk about housing conditions in London, don't simply allude to them. Give me research, boy, research. Go to the British Library. Find some city rolls. Give us figures. Your language is beautiful. I think that printing seminar did you well."

"I agree." Kyle nodded, a bit more relaxed. "I think it did."

"Your art, your grasp of art, does your style many favors. It's delicious, utterly. But this isn't art history. If you aim to make English sociological, you'd better go find me some data. Do you boys know anything about data?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Regardless. Excellent job. You're on your way, Broflovski. Just stabilize your emotions, you know."

"Stabilize them?"

"With data."

"Oh, of course." Kyle blushed even harder now. "Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me," Garrison snapped. "It's my job."

"Of course."

"Of course." Garrison looked down at his pile. "Cartman," he said. "Well, Cartman's not here. His paper's shit, though, complete rubbish. I fail to see how that boy has not been sent down yet. If any of you want to know how to completely bungle a paper, here's your example." He held it aloft, the papers flapping open. It was not very long; Eric had no patience for typing. "He didn't bother showing up, anyway."

Stanley scribbled, in the margins of his note tablet, a message to Kyle: What's he writing on?

Kyle sighed, sat up straighter, flipped his own paper over; Stanley caught a glimpse of the straightness of his lines, the mechanical proficiency with which he typed. Lots of editorial comments in the margins from Garrison, but no red-pencil marks for typographical errors. Kyle was neat like that. Malory, Kyle wrote back. Racial purity. The foundations of English statehood.

Of course, Stanley figured. He scribbled back, he would do.

Kyle didn't reply. He just shook his head.

"—complete rubbish, Donovan, utter misery," Garrison was saying. He was apparently in mid-rant. "It's like you've not read a book before in your life."

"He hasn't," Craig said. To this, the table laughed. Even Clyde laughed at his own ineptitude.

"Stop laughing, you imbecile! What do you think, it's funny to be an idiot? Jokes aside, we'll have to make an appointment," Garrison told him. "Marlowe deserves better than this."

"I see, sir," Clyde said. He grasped at his paper across the table, and promptly stuffed it in his knapsack. He didn't bother to look it over.

"Let's see." Garrison pulled out the next paper. "Yes, indeed. Marsh."

Stanley legs were now trembling so much he was unsure he'd be able to stand up and run out of the room, were he humiliated here. Not that he would, of course. He would sit there, and he would take it. It was so cruel of Garrison to do this to him, to all of them. But Garrison had no pity.

"Yes, sir." Stanley felt Kyle's arm beside him, trying to take his hand. And Token's hand rested on his thigh, stroking. Here he was, surrounded. It felt less than supportive and more like a trap.

Garrison sighed, sliding the paper down the table. "This is passable."

Stanley gaped at him. "That's it?"

"You know of my fondness for Waugh, Marsh."

"You aren't fond of Waugh," Stanley replied.

"Yes." He nodded. "Exactly."

"But, sir—"

"It's passable. A passable paper on an impassable subject. You're a better writer than you think you are. But even you can't make me care. Is that enough for you? You want me to sing your praises?"

"No."

"Well, do you want me to eviscerate you?"

"No!"

"Then keep your mouth shut. Keep your mouth shut, Marsh. It'll serve you well. Who's next? Ah, right. Stotch."

Down at the farthest end of the table, on the other side of Eric's empty chair, sat Butters. He stuck his head forward. "Here, sir."

"Yes, I can actually see you today," Garrison said, "since Eric's decided not to obscure you for once."

With his own paper out of the way, Stanley leaned back, fumbling into his jacket pocket for his cigarette case.

---

After the tutorial Stanley and Kyle walked down to a café on Market Street, where they sat and had coffees. Kyle lit a cigarette and tapped his nails against the wooden table. He smoked the cigarette down to a nub and then went to the counter to order something. When he came back Stanley looked up from his book and asked, "What did you get?"

Kyle lifted his coffee cup and said, "A piece of shortbread."

"Oh, that sounds nice."

"Would you like one?"

"No," said Stanley, "thank you."

"You never eat anything." Kyle pouted, and got up to retrieve his shortbread.

"Were you going to get some work done?" Stanley asked.

Through a full mouth, Kyle said, "Mmm, no, I wasn't — why?"

"Are you going to the British Library, then? To look for rolls?"

"I don't know!" said Kyle. "Maybe next weekend. I have a date with Erica tonight."

Stanley raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't know where she was."

"I don't know where she is right now! Sleeping? Pulling off? Who can say! Out rowing — I don't know where she is at all times! She doesn't tell me anything." Kyle crammed an enormous bite of shortbread into his mouth, crumbs clinging to the corners of his lips.

"Maybe she won't show up," Stanley said, brightly.

Kyle swallowed down the shortbread. "Of course she will. You can be sure of that." He leered pointedly.

Sighing, Stanley took out his notebook, saying, "Well, have fun."

The bell tied to the doorknob at the front of the shop clanged. His slice of shortbread consumed, Kyle lit another cigarette. He was facing the door, and answered Stanley's look of curiosity with a withering, "It's Miss B, of course." He stubbed out the cigarette and waved Butters over, crying, "Heartface," in a cloying way, "I dare say that went well!"

Butters was still in his academic dress, the robe draped over his bony shoulders, looking despite the ubiquity of such a thing and the cheapness of the polyester like a starlet at her premiere in a mink stole. Kyle, who had a real fur coat, scarcely managed to look so believably female. Butters said, "Yes, I'm so relieved," the pitch of his Northern accent just deep enough to give him away. He was wearing his hair combed out, its length akin to that of a chic bob, no bangs. Under the robe he wore little cigarette pants he had sewn himself and a pair of women's sandals. He hadn't had them on at the tutorial, so he had probably stashed them in his book bag. "He liked everyone's, though, didn't he?"

"Not Clyde's." Kyle lifted his chin for a peck from Butters, and they both made demonstrative kissing noises when their cheeks met. "Stanley? Be a dear—?"

Stanley got up and fetched a chair for Butters from the next table, patting the seat so that he could join them. "Do you want a coffee or anything, Butters?"

"Oh, how sweet of you," she said, "but just a cup of tea for me. Thank you, Stanley."

Fetching the tea Stanley heard the whole exchange over his shoulder. Butters was saying, "Well, we met for breakfast at the Oriel commissary, and I asked if he was coming to the tutorial and he said, 'Oh, the bloody tutorial. No, I'm going back to bed.' I suggested he come but he really did not want to be bothered."

"Of course he didn't," Kyle said. "He won't be bothered to show up tonight, either."

"Oh, no," said Butters, "he was much looking forward to — that."

"I don't know which is more bothersome. The fact that he'll flunk out of uni if he keeps this up, or the reality that he simply does not like me. That's the real dagger to the heart."

"Oh, Kyle, no! Of course he does."

"He doesn't act it!"

"He's Eric, you know, he's obstinate on the outside, but his interior is all soft."

"You'd hardly know it, the way he gives it to me. Not that I don't enjoy it, I do, I'm simply saying — you can't do it like that to someone you like!"

Stanley interrupted the conversation when he set the teacup down, some beverage sloshing onto the geometric-patterned saucer. "Nothing fancy," he said, taking his seat. "Just earl grey."

"Thank you!" Butters opened his robe and reached into the soft, small cross-body purse he was wearing underneath. "What do I owe you?"

"Never mind that," said Stanley.

"Such a gentleman," said Kyle.

"I'm merely being polite."

"Well, yes. It's just as I said."

Butters asked, "Is something wrong? You are both in a low mood."

"That tutorial was hell," said Stanley. "He thinks my paper's rubbish."

"Oh, that's rubbish," said Kyle. "He thought it was quite an achievement! He just doesn't like Waugh. And no one is required to like every author. There are too many. One's brain would become clogged up."

"Fancy that," said Butters, for no real reason. He sometimes said things merely to demonstrate his engagement. He was loading his tea up with lumps of sugar now, stirring them gently, his bent fingers and wrists expressive as he whisked the spoon around. "Yes, there we are. I've been dying for a lovely tea all morning."

"You might have bought a whole pot," said Kyle.

"Oh, hush." Butters took Stanley's hand and squeezed it. "This is lovely. It's quite sufficient. Thank you." He took a first sip, leaving a faint trace of petroleum on the lip of the cup. He turned to Kyle. "You were saying?"

"Nothing important. I've forgotten, since we've all paused to discuss Stanley's generosity and heroism."

"Why are you being such a bitch?" Stanley asked.

"Take a look in the mirror!"

"Oh, boys," said Butters, with a bit of a sigh. "Can't this wait?"

"I don't want to hear about your date tonight." Stanley crossed his arms. "That's all."

"All right," said Kyle, "perhaps I'll stop discussing mine if you agree to discuss yours!"

For a moment Stanley was not sure exactly what Kyle meant. But a knowing smile of sorts curled onto Kyle's lips and he nodded slightly, humming an mmhm. He leaned in as if he were claiming a prize. "Go on," said Kyle. "Tell us."

"Well." Stanley sat up straighter and kept his arms crossed. "Darling, there's nothing to tell."

"Oh, that's just rubbish!" Kyle's fist hit the table. "Who is it! What's her name?"

"Don't you think if it were important I'd tell you?"

"I used to think that," said Kyle. "Well, I've my own troubles with Erica. She's a vulgar old bitch. So I wonder, what's gotten into you, Stanley? Or, rather — who've you gotten into?"

"I'm really not into anyone!" It was true in this case, strictly. In the way that Kyle had intended it. "Don't you just wish it were easy sometimes?"

"IF what were easy?" Butters asked. "I don't understand."

"There's nothing to understand. He's being lyrical again. But to answer your question, Stanley dear, no. Where's the joy in something being easy? I, for one, invite a challenge."

"That's a healthy attitude!" Butters threw his hands up into the air, fingers curling into his palms. "All right, I should tell you both."

Kyle asked, "Tell us what?"

"I've decided to go down at the end of the year. I'll move in with Bradley! We'll get a flat in the city. Maybe Manchester — maybe London! It depends where he finds work. I could perform there, you know! Either place. You'll have to come!"

"But Miss B!" Kyle clutched a fluid hand to his chest. "I thought you planned to read for the master's?"

"I will!" Butters sat to attention, hands on the table. "I shall make an application to do so wherever I end up. I should get Garrison's support — you heard what he said today, that my scholarship is intriguing, it has potential—"

"What would you read for?" Stanley asked.

"Well, English, I'm sure. I'd like to continue my work on Tolkien."

"Oh." Stanley shrugged.

Kyle kicked him in the shin. "Be excited! Don't be such a bitch yourself. That's very good, Miss B. Congratulations!" Kyle pressed his fingers to his sternum, as if to indicate his heart was swelling. "I am so happy for you."

"We were discussing it last night, once we'd reunited following the holiday. We can't bear to be apart any longer. I'm so excited! This is what I'm meant for. To be a helpmeet to him."

"Why can't she be a helpmeet to you?" Stanley asked.

"We'll help each other," said Butters. "That is what I truly want."

Picking at the leftover crumbs of his shortbread, Kyle heaved a sigh. "It's wonderful for you. I would love to have a love affair like that."

"How do you mean?" Butters asked.

"Mutually loving, I mean. I'm so sick of being overlooked and neglected. It's wearying. I am prematurely old. I just want to be adored."

"That's such rubbish. Do you have any idea how many people adore you?" Stanley stood, pushing his chair away from the table. "Eric is horrid. He's funny but he's cruel and it's a bad combination. Put up with him if you want him or find somebody who does adore you, who treats you how you want to be treated. But either way, you must cease complaining about it. Love him for what he is or be done with it. That's my advice."

Butters sat there, stunned, a look of dumb shock on his face. He turned to Kyle as if to ask, can you believe it?

Kyle evidently could, for he rolled his eyes and said, "Really, Stanley, is that all?"

"Er — yes, that's — that's all."

Pantomiming a yawn, Kyle waved a hand in front of his mouth and said, "Your position's been noted, Stanley, thank you. Now, are you storming out in a huff, or not?"

"I'm not leaving in any sort of huff, though I am walking out on my own terms. I'll see you at dinner."

"Oh, Stanley," said Butters, "don't leave!"

"Oh, let him go! He's no fun. He's so serious."

"One of us should be," said Stanley, and he did leave. He walked directly to New College, feeling as though a cloud of utter despair were following him all the way. It was actually quite sunny out now, and mild on top of that.

When Token answered the door he said, "Oh, well. This is a pleasant surprise!"

"Kyle is such a bitch," Stanley said. "May I come in?"

"Yes, of course. Always! What did he do now?"

"He isn't doing anything! That's the point."

"Well, how does that make him a bitch?"

"Because he knows that I — he just knows he is being a wretch and he insists on continuing that behavior! He is having an affair with Eric, and Eric is so awful to him—"

"Who isn't Eric awful to?"

"Well, that is precisely my point!"

Token rolled his eyes. "Were you coming in?"

Stanley pushed inside and Token slammed the door behind them. "It's utterly hopeless between them!"

"Stanley. Why do you care?" Token sat on the bed, folding his legs regally. He had the straightest and most self-assured posture.

"I care because he's my best friend, I suppose."

"So you wouldn't want him to be unhappy?"

"Of course not!"

"How would you react if I told you that knowing all you care about is Kyle makes me somewhat unhappy?"

"He is not all I care about," said Stanley. "And I would hate the idea of you being unhappy!"

"Well," said Token, "what would you do to improve my happiness?"

Stanley did not have to think long. He climbed onto the bed immediately.

---

It seemed a long term, and deceptively boring. Wendy threw herself into a translation project, a reworking of Thérèse Raquin. Stanley admired her work ethic but found himself missing her company. Twice he invited her to meet Token, and each time she demurred, stating her busyness. "I shall be freer next term, when this task is mostly behind me. It is my hope that I might conclude my obligations before the vac, so that I might spend next term looking for a husband."

So many things about it seemed wrong. "You're too smart to leave, though! Aren't you planning on doing a fourth year?"

"Perhaps, if it's required in my search to find a husband."

"This is madness," said Stanley. "You're too smart for this to be a priority. There are so many things you could do—"

"Couldn't I do them with a husband?"

"I suppose, but you could do them without one."

"Well, you're one to talk. Of course it doesn't seem like a real problem to you. No one's pressuring you to get married."

"Well, believe me, they are—"

"Certainly not in the same sense, nor for the same reasons, nor to the same degree. I'd delay it if I could but women not much older than I become spinsters. And there are fringe benefits to such an arrangement — I'd like to find someone to have sex with, for example. Safely, I mean. Without the threat of shame ruining it. I'd like to actually enjoy it, without a looming sense of dread."

Perhaps she felt comfortable admitting this as they were sitting on the bank of the river, a pair of sandwiches from a dreadful coffee shop sustaining them through a brutal day of coursework, from which their frank conversation was a mere hour-long pause. "You know," Stanley said, kicking a rock into the river, "it must be nice to have sex freely with one's husband without the threat of shame resulting. Each time I do it that threat is a part of it, and yet I continue to do it anyway, because it's otherwise enjoyable. So pardon me, then, if I find your sense of worry and immediacy slightly exaggerated."

"Find it however you wish but you don't understand, you couldn't understand, and I suspect you couldn't possibly. I have a tutorial in half an hour, so you'll excuse me—" She tried to push herself up, but her sleek boots were quite impractical.

Standing up, Stanley pulled her to her feet. "I shall walk you, if you aren't quite sick of me."

"I am not sick of you! Merely tired of your insistence that our lives are the same. They aren't the same. You might find a wife in a heartbeat if you wanted one."

"Then excuse me if I laugh at that idea, because it is ludicrous."

"It's not as if other men in your position don't get married."

They stopped at the stony arch that led back onto the Magdalen grounds proper. "Wendy," he said, taking her by her shoulders. There was something dark in his voice, and heavy. "Don't you ever dare suggest something like that to me again. It would be as if I suggested that you go with a woman. How would you enjoy that?"

"I sometimes think it would be easier," she said, "were that an option. Which it is not!"

"It wouldn't be easy." His voice was leaden with bitterness. "How could you know me and ever think it would be?"

"Well." She shook herself out of his grasp, prying one of his hands from her shoulder. "Don't you go telling me that I need to do, either, and perhaps we'll understand each other best."

Stanley agreed that this seemed fair, and he walked her back toward the main road. Coming out of the commissary they ran into Kyle, clad in his robe and shaking like a leaf, his hair all a mess, as if he had done with up with a great deal of mousse and then someone had gone on to pull it apart.

"Darling," said Stanley, "you look terrible. What's wrong?"

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with me!" Kyle barked, overreacting. "What the hell have you been doing?"

"We were eating lunch," Stanley said.

"Kyle." Wendy proffered a limp hand, no joy in her tone at all. "It was rude of him to say that. You don't look nearly as bad as all that."

Refusing to take her hand, Kyle put his hands on his hips and said, "Oh, like I really need to hear it from you, too!"

"Well, how have you been?" she asked.

"Just fine!"

"How is your project going? On — Blake, if I recall correctly?"

"Yes," Kyle hissed, "on Blake, and it's fine. It's going well, even."

"Well, I'm very glad to hear that."

"Kyle's work is excellent," Stanley added, unhelpfully. It earned him a mean glare.

"It's all right, I suppose." Kyle rocked on his feet, as if trying to feel taller than Wendy; this despite the fact that he was taller than she, even by quite a few inches when she wore those books with the fat heels. "Garrison's asked me to stay and do a master's."

"Oh my god," said Stanley, "you hadn't told me!" He turned to Wendy. "I didn't know."

"That's excellent," she said. "Congratulations."

"Don't bother with congratulations. I'm not certain I'll be able to do it. I'd love to disappear forever into the world of Blake, but sometimes life's priorities don't reflect exactly what one wants." To Stanley specifically, Kyle turned and said, "I don't tell you everything."

"Yes, that's perfectly clear." Stanley's heart sank.

Sensing the awkwardness between them, or perhaps merely eager to leave Kyle behind, Wendy took a small curtsey and said, "It's been wonderful to speak with you, really, and I'm so pleased to hear of your offer. But I shall be late to my next lesson—" She stuck a hand out for Kyle, but drew it away before he could decline to take it. "We shall have to make some plans," she said, pecking Stanley on the cheek. "Thank you for the sandwich."

When she was gone, Kyle exclaimed, "You bought her a sandwich?"

"It was merely the gentlemanly thing to do."

"Don't I deserve a bloody sandwich?"

"Do you want me to buy you one?" Stanley gestured to the commissary. They would be running out of sandwiches soon, forced to close for an hour to restock.

"I wouldn't dare presume make you do anything gentlemanly for me," Kyle snapped. "Anyway, that's the first time an aristocrat has ever curtseyed in my direction. She was taking the piss out of me, wasn't she?"

"No, Wendy doesn't do that. It's your imagination I should think. Listen, do you want to go to dinner in the hall tonight?"

Without even considering it, Kyle said, "I have plans before which I should probably not eat." As if to really drive the point home he licked his upper lip in a slow, slick motion.

"Great. You know what, I hope you have fun."

"Who cares if I have fun? What a silly idea." Kyle put his mouth to Stanley's ear, brushing back shaggy hair to whisper, "I just want to have an orgasm."

Though shaking, Stanley managed to quip, "Good luck."

"Well, thanks," Kyle said, in a normal volume again. "My luck hasn't been the best lately, so I appreciate it."

"Of course."

They embraced casually, in a way that felt to Stanley almost brotherly. He had never had a brother, to his parents' great disappointment, and for a moment the thought occurred to Stanley that perhaps all of the things he had felt for Kyle over the years — lust, longing, concern, camaraderie, the desperate need to protect — were born of a misplaced hope to one day have a fraternal or familial bond with just one person in the world who truly understood Stanley and all the things he wanted. But at this moment, smelling Eric Cartman's cheap chemical aftershave overshadowing the sweet scent of Kyle's perfume, Stanley was not sure they wanted the same things at all, or even understood each other one bit.

---

One afternoon, Stanley was walking with Kyle in St. Cross Road, up to the new English Faculty Library. Kyle hoped they might have some of Blake's letters available on microfiche, as he thought that Garrison had implied this was the case at a recent tutorial. "But who knows what that man is talking about half the time." Kyle scowled, kicking a rock which went skittering across the pavement and into a gutter.

Figuring he might as well do some work of his own at the EFL, Stanley had decided to come along. He was not quite regretting it yet, though he was generally distracted by the promise of dinner with Token that evening. "What's wrong?" he asked Kyle. "Surely you're not actually bothered about microfiche."

"Well," Kyle huffed, "it's very annoying to use!" He was quiet for a few beats, opening and closing his mouth as if he wanted to say something but hadn't decided what. Passing a post box and a group of first-years smoking at the corner near Jowett Walk, Kyle said, "Sometimes I feel rather unappreciated!"

Remarks like this made Stanley irritable, for it was his opinion that Kyle was quite appreciated; at least, Stanley knew that he had quite a deep appreciation for Kyle. In fact, he'd feel quite lost without Kyle, and was at all times interested in deferring to Kyle, accompanying Kyle to the library, fretting about Kyle's emotional well-being. Kyle was also the subject of some appreciation from his parents, who found him rather clever and liked his self-discipline, and from Garrison, who always has something encouraging to say to Kyle in tutorial, and never dropped little hints about microfiches to Stanley. Or to any one else, really. When Kyle said he felt unappreciated it surely meant he felt, specifically, that Eric was not appreciating Kyle as fully as he might. And this was frustrating for Stanley, because Eric seemed not to appreciate anything, and Stanley didn't know what he might say about it, anyway. "He doesn't love you like I love you," maybe, though Stanley had spent quite some time wondering if he should ever say this to Kyle. It was unlikely Kyle would be amenable to such a statement.

So Stanley just endured. "Well, what'd he do now?" he asked, hoping to sound bored by the matter.

"Who's to say he did anything," said Kyle. "It's just the problem. He doesn't do anything. Then I complain and it's too much for him to bear, poor Eric."

"Poor Eric?"

"Well, he's not a patient man."

"I'll say," said Stanley.

"Sometimes I feel like he is receptive to my efforts," said Kyle, "and then sometimes I feel as though he's merely sabotaging my hard work."

What sort of hard work? Stanley wondered. But as usual, he didn't ask. He had his own frustrations, with Token and overall, and the added stress of worrying about Kyle's relationship with Eric threatened to push Stanley from complacently concerned to truly anxious. All things considered, he did not much enjoy feeling anxious. He said, "I don't know what your problem is, specifically, but he's not a pleasant human being. He can be fun to drink with, you know, but sex with him isn't enjoyable." Stanley said this in a very low voice.

"Oh? I find it very enjoyable. It's just afterward that's frustrating. He has all these rowing obligations and he's always dating women."

"Women!" Stanley punctuated this with a brief, forced laugh, unsure if he meant it to be genuinely funny or if piercing the blow to Kyle's ego with camp irony.

"I ask him what he does with them, you know, and he didn't have much of an answer for me, merely implied that I ought not consider it my business. I just wish he would acknowledge me in some sense that didn't involve a lot of slimy grunting. That's just the worst, isn't it?"

Stanley wished he could say something to Kyle, because these malformed complaints shared quite a bit with Stanley's primary contention with Token, namely, that Token had such incredibly narrow sexual preferences that Stanley sometimes found their intimacies frustrating. It would have been satisfying to discuss this with Kyle, but Stanley knew he couldn't. "Yes," he said, "it sounds quite awful."

The modernist tiered striations of the pale library loomed in the distance. Kyle was silent up to the front door. Stanley half expected him to come out and admit that he knew all about Token, and how dare Stanley keep it to himself, and weren't they best friends, and wasn't it hurtful? Instead, Kyle cocked his head in an especially pretentious way, drew a heaving sigh, and said, "If I'm to spend my afternoon up to my tits in microfiche, I'll insist on a cigarette first."

Stanley lit it for him, cupping his hand against the ferocious breeze of mid-February. "There you are, darling." He wondered if he had a cigarette for himself.

"Don't look now." Smoke billowed from Kyle's lips, the fag fast between his middle and index fingers like a housewife at the cooktop. "His Ass the Cunt of Nommel has arrived."

"He's a duke, darling, so your pun's not quite apt." Stanley's back was to the entrance, and he hoped Craig would not come to speak to them.

"Craig!" Kyle shouted. He waved his cigarette round, ash fluttering in every direction. "Over here, heartface, we see you!"

In pure military lockstep Craig came over, his shoulders boxy in an Italian cloth coat with officious buttons fastened up to the neck. He was holding a large notebook. "Marsh," he said, "Broflovski."

"Dear Craig," Kyle began.

A raised eyebrow flashed a warning.

"Your grace," Kyle sang, "how lovely to see you at our brilliant new library."

"This library's been open two years."

"Time flies by!" Kyle put the cigarette to his lips. "That coat is delicious. You look delectable, I could eat you up! Though, I grant you, it's not ladylike to be a glutton — I prefer my beaux help themselves to the first course. Tell me, darling — your grace — have you enjoyed many dishes in the past?"

If nothing else, Craig seemed genuinely confused. "What's your game?" he asked.

"No game," said Kyle. "Cigarette?" He sucked at the butt of the fag before inhaling, a hint of his pink tongue visible for just an instant.

"No," said Craig. "I don't smoke."

"Pity," said Kyle, "with that bona screech of yours."

"What?" Craig bristled and said, "Really? You know, it's not polite to tease. Nor is it polite to waste the time of your social superiors."

"Who said I was teasing?"

"I don't have time for this," said Craig, "I have work to do on Milton. Good-bye."

"Farewell," said Kyle, then, when Craig was out of earshot: "I do wonder about the color of his eyes."

"What brought this on?" Stanley asked.

"He's a number." Kyle shrugged. "Perfectly alamo, you know, especially with that mouth of his. Shame he's NTBH, you know."

"You know," said Stanley.

"Tell me I'm wrong?"

"Well, I don't think he is, but he's definitely so, you know, you can tell in that way he takes a vada at someone's rear."

"That is precisely what I'm saying! I thought I caught him looking at mine."

Stanley smiled wanly. "And Eric's not enough for you?"

"Oh, I don't know!" Tossing the butt to the pavement, Kyle stomped it into the ground so it left a smear of paper and ash against the newly laid concrete. "I've a date with him tonight, anyway. Who knows? Things might begin to look up." Kyle sighed. "I'd better go into that microfiche. Come on. If Garrison's sent me on a wild goose chase I'll be livid."

"Just don't take it out on me, darling."

"Well, that wouldn't be fair."

Stanley stood there for a moment, until he realized what Kyle wanted. He pulled the door open and said, "After you."

"Cheers." As Kyle swayed inside, Stanley made certain to get an eyeful of his behind. It rocked with pronounced intention, and then Kyle took a step to the left — disappearing from view, along with his arse.

---

When a knock came at the door around midnight, Stanley dropped his book and then hesitated. Who'd come calling so late? It must be Token, he figured, perhaps he was sauced, perhaps he was looking for a fuck? Stanley became hard thinking of it, the sordid nature of an illicit meeting, the swelling of his cock making it hard to pull on trousers. "Forget it," he said to himself, as a second knock at the door arrived, followed by some pitiful scratching. "All right, I'm almost there," Stanley called, flicking his lights off. His cock was struggling to stay in his pants now, but he didn't mind this so much if it was Token. "I'm here, all right, I'm—"

Stanley swung open the door. "Darling," he said, looking across at Kyle, his dark-ringed eyes and his mussed hair. Then Stanley noticed the blood, thick on Kyle's chin and running down his neck into his collar. "Darling!"

"Stanley," Kyle breathed, all but falling into Stanley's arms. "I think I need your help."

"Yes!" Stanley shut the door with a foot. "I should say so!" He led Kyle to a chair, and sat him down. "Who did this? Was this Eric?"

"Well, yes," said Kyle, but with a full, swollen mouth, it was garbled. "Who else could have done? He socked me."

"Jesus Christ!"

"Calm down, you help me—"

"Help you what, is this your lip?" Stanley took Kyle's chin in his hand, kneeling down to survey the damage. "Your lip's split right open!"

"I know, it hurts to talk—"

"Then stop talking." Stanley hopped to his feet, making for the sink. "We've got to get you to a surgeon. Stay right there, I'll get you a towel."

"No surgeons." Kyle sat back in his chair, tucking his legs under him, holding his chest. "They'll ask questions."

"Just say someone hit you." Stanley bunched his white towel into a neat roll, pressing it to Kyle's lip. "Hold steady, all right. Pressure might stop it. But you probably need this sewn up."

Time was languid, 20 minutes feeling like a year. By then Stanley's towel was soaked with blood, not entirely, but the effect was disturbing. Wiping blood from his hands, Kyle started to cry: "If I'm lucky they'll settle for a fine. But if I'm not, it could be jail, Stanley, and I don't want to think about — my poor mother, my parents, they'll be ruined."

"They won't be ruined, all right." Stanley thought of his own father's colleagues, laughing about Stanley's bleached hair behind his father's back. It had been two long years. Stanley took another path: "Surgeons take an oath, you know, it's their job to help you. Your lip's bleeding really badly, darling, you have to get it taken care of, I'm afraid—" And he was afraid; they both were, Kyle's eyes big and wet and his arms shielding himself from the mostly empty room. It made Stanley want to kill Eric, smash his head against an ancient stone wall, make him know for just a moment what he had and what he'd done to it. Stanley had a sort of resolve that he always found unexpected. Someday, he told himself, Kyle's hand tight in his.

"I can't go to a surgeon," Kyle was crying. "Stanley, they'll know."

"You'll just say he socked you."

"The police will become involved! Eric will say I came onto him!"

"That would incriminate him."

"Of course it wouldn't," Kyle wept, "look at me!" It was true that Kyle's toenails were painted with a sickly blue varnish, and hiding beneath the circles below his eyes was a smudged layer of eyeliner. Perhaps he had been wearing lipstick, but it would have wiped away with the blood. Perhaps he hadn't been; that was often a special-occasion treat for Kyle. In the meantime, he was crying: "They'll lock me up, they'll castrate me, it'll ruin my parents, it hurts so much!"

Stanley could not bear it. "Wait here," he said.

Under the sink was a pot, and Stanley filled it with water and put it on his plug-in burner. In his vanity kit he had some mending supplies: a needle-threader, a thimble, buttons, needle and thread. When the water on the burner was boiling Stanley dropped a needle and thread in. Kyle's sobs permeated the room. "It'll be all right," Stanley said. He was trying to remain chipper. "First this, and I'll take care of Eric for you tomorrow."

"First what? Stanley. He'll hurt you, too!"

"I'll be fine," said Stanley, though he was not sure that he would. The needle was trembling in his hand as he approached Kyle. "I've never done this before. But I think it should help. Are you certain you can't see a real physician?"

"They'll imprison me," Kyle wept. "I don't want to die in prison."

"No one's going to imprison you," said Stanley, and he meant it. Not on his watch. By force of will he held the needle steady as it passed through Kyle's lip. "Good boy," Stanley said softly. "You'll be good as new, I promise."

Kyle tried to say, "Oh god," but it came out weird and garbled. He was clearly in much pain.

Stanley did not tie off the stitches, and was relieved to see that when he was done, the bleeding had stopped. "It's not going to be pretty," he said. "But you did so well."

"I feel horrendous," Kyle tried to say. "Can we go to bed?"

They lay together in a spooning position, Stanley's hips to Kyle's from behind. "Why would he do something like this?" Stanley asked, his hand curled around one of Kyle's. It was late, and the gas torches lighting the stone passages of the college were all that lit the bedsit. Through this dimness, Stanley could make out the ridge of stitches sewn into Kyle's lip, and the protrusion of his nose above it.

"Why would anyone?" Kyle replied, hand tensing in Stanley's grasp, able to decipher much more as he was turned from the window, gazing into the room itself, the gap lamps outside doing their part to illuminate Stanley's white teeth and chapped lips, catching in the water of his eyes. "He was angry at me, of course. He's an angry person."

"That's no excuse." Stanley was at a loss for what to say. "My god, darling, I can't, I can't explain—"

"He's a Nazi, did you know? Well, I mean…" Kyle had to pause between bursts of dialogue, to let the threads holding his lip together throb a bit before he could continue. He shook Stanley's hand from his and put it to his mouth.

"Shhh. You don't have to say anything, darling. Please sleep. You should sleep through the lesson tomorrow, really. Garrison will have to miss you."

"I can't. I have to go."

"Eric will be there. Shhh. You don't have to speak. I can close the drapes if the light it bothering you."

"No, it's fine. I like it. I can see you."

"It's too bad that's all you've got to look at."

"Stanley." Kyle winced.

"You all right?"

"Ah, somewhat," Kyle gasped, reaching for the shoulder across the bed. "Your name hurts the most, but it's all right."

"I can give you some aspirin, wash it down with sherry…"

"Oh, that's good, I'd end up vomiting like a botched suicide."

"I could roll a reefer I suppose." Stanley brought his hands against Kyle's neck, trying to soothe something, but not really sure of what, or how. "No one ever thought I should be a medic, you know. Perhaps I should leave Magdalen and become a nurse."

"Oh, you're not that good, Sta — ow." Kyle's bottom lip flattened out around the short A, which was a pity; he had always found the name Stanley, with its drawl of ahhhh against the lick of a long E, to be minutely graceful — and now he couldn't even pronounce it. When he did, his lip began to pull, straining at the clumsy sutures. "Good bedside manner," he concluded, trying to keep things short and undramatic, "but you'd give yourself away."

"Well, I wasn't being serious. But I don't care. Next time Eric clocks you in the face I could fix you correctly. Maybe instead of taking jobs in the City, we should all take a page from Miss B and be housewives."

"Oh, but she's an artist."

"So am I, I suppose. Or, I could be. Isn't nursing an art?"

"For spinsters. Divorcees."

"What's the difference?"

Kyle held back a snicker. "You're evil."

"Not like Eric, though." Stanley's eyes narrowed; this Kyle could make out in the faint lamplight. "Assuming, like you say, he is a Nazi. Although I thought there were no more Nazis."

"Tell the Israelis." Pause. "His grandpa, a Nazi. I know. He's showed me some things. Little medals, things. Barks German to his mother over the phone—"

"You don't have to speak," Stanley reminded him, "if it hurts."

"Reminds me of my mother. She speaks Yiddish on the phone."

"What's Yiddish?"

"You know, Jewish."

"Thought it was called Aramaic, you know, Hebrew."

"No, Yiddish is different, German-Jewish, she spoke it to my grandmother."

"Does your father speak it?"

"Oh, no. Very Old World. Daddy wouldn't have that. He won't hear the word shtetl."

"Darling." Stanley blinked at the torch lights he saw flickering outside his window, the plaster molding where his walls met the ceiling.

"England is the old world. You've never been to Americaaaaaaoow. Oh, fuck—"

"Shhh."

"It hurts." Shutting his eyes, Kyle rolled onto his back. "If I die from this, Stan, just — I love you."

Stanley was quiet for a moment, both of them breathing heavily. Dried blood lingered on his fingers, hiding in the small cracks in his skin and underneath his nails. He would try to scrub it out in the morning, and the thought was upsetting. How could he voluntarily wash away the trace of Kyle from his hands as if it were nothing? His heart was pounding, the adrenaline making Kyle's nonsensical pain-induced remarks difficult to parse.

"I'll kill him," said Stanley.

"Don't pretend. No you won't. I'm sorry, I have to—"

"Shh." Stanley pressed a kiss to Kyle's temple. "Get some sleep."

"Thank you, though."

"Get some sleep, darling."

Soon after they both passed out.

---

"So, Kyle slept over?" Token was casual over the phone, as he was in real life, as was his way. "Again, of course. Right."

"Nothing sinister happened," Stanley asserted, all set to defend himself. "I mean, nothing salacious occurred between the two of us. Something sinister happened, and that would be Eric Cartman—"

"Stanley—"

"I don't know what Kyle sees in him, really, I mean, he's handsome of course but that's not really enough to make up for splitting someone's lip, is it?"

"Stanley?"

"Viscount?"

"You're talking about Kyle again." The discomfort was audible in Token's voice, loud and clear across the wires, even if he maintained a cool, steady register. "I know it's awful, Stanley, but really, Eric Cartman is a brute and I think we know by now what happens with brutes. And honestly, don't call me 'Viscount.' "

"But Token, dear — I only mean it jokingly. It's affectionate."

"I know. But I'd rather not."

"Well, you are going to have to fill those shoes one day, hmmm?"

Token sighed. He hated his social stature, hated how Stanley made fun of him for it, thought it was silly. "If I'm unlucky enough," he joked, although the self-deprecation in his voice was all too real. "Well, we missed you at lessons. I hope Kyle's feeling better."

"He looks frightful."

"I'm sure."

"Do you want to come and visit?"

Without hesitation, Token said, "No."

"Well, I miss you," Stanley said. "I've a date with Miss Testaburger later, but after that I'm free — assuming Kyle goes home. I wish he'd stay clear of Eric for a bit, but I've no doubt that wanker's been holding a glass to my door all day—"

"So why is your friend Wendy 'Miss Testaburger' while you insist on calling me 'Viscount'?" Token had no patience for hearing further about Eric, so he regressed to arguing about titles. "Her father's an earl — like mine, or have you forgotten?"

"I haven't forgotten. I'm trying to amuse myself. It's been a long day — a longer night. I performed surgery, Token. Stitched his lip back together."

"I know. And I'm sure your handiwork was splendid—"

"Dreadful."

"—but he should have gone to a clinic or something, I mean…"

"They would have asked him how he split his lip, Viscount — er, Token."

"I'm sure there are plenty of injuries at the college surgery that call for discretion. "

Stanley said, "Probably," but he said it in a way that told Token he didn't agree, exactly. "Look, Kyle's been through a lot. He's sleeping — I've got him here; I don't want him to go. But when he wakes, he'll want to wander off. He doesn't want to dwell on things. Malady isn't his strong suit."

"I'd be troubled if it was."

After swallowing, Stanley continued in a hushed and serious voice: "Token, I know it seems that I dwell too often on Kyle, but, well, he is my best friend and he's in a, well — a situation that's become physically harmful. There's nothing between us. I mean, there's nothing going on with Kyle. We're close, I know, I'm sure you think too close, but there's nothing—"

"I know."

"I do mean it, Token, I've told you we've been intimate, but that was ages ago."

"I know," Token repeated. "Stanley, I believe you. I know there is nothing between you, and I haven't got a leg to stand on, even if there was. It's not what's between you, anyway, that would bother me." There was a pause, and an awkward moment of silence. Then: "I love you, Stanley. I'll see you tomorrow, I'm certain. After your date with Lady Wendy, I suppose — whom I'd love to meet."

"You should come out with us."

"I think I'd like that — or maybe, another time…"

"You'd like her, Token — she's funny."

"Oh, you're funny."

"Well, speak for yourself."

"That's all I can attempt." Token cleared his throat. "We'll have to talk later."

---

Stanley did manage to introduce Token to Wendy. It was on a frozen, cloudless late February evening at a straight pub packed to the rafters. It was dinner Stanley had suggested, but Token was due back in London to attend a brunch the next morning in honor of his grandparents' sixty-fifth wedding anniversary, and Wendy was complaining of the unending translation project she was struggling to complete. ("I've got the translation bit done, but the whole thing reads so untrue to the original. It's not fair to Zola, really," she'd admitted recently.) So they found themselves at a table in the back, everyone bundled in wool jumpers and extra pairs of socks. Wendy kept shivering, and Token offered her his coat.

"How kind!" she said, beaming. She wrapped herself up like a girl pretending to drape her mother's stole across her shoulders, regally and with confidence.

"Anything for a lady," Token had said.

"Anything, really?" Wendy batted her eyelashes.

"Almost anything. I try to have standards."

Stanley beamed at them. Here he had been expecting this conversation to go dreadfully, and already they were laughing like fraternal twins who'd shared every joke since infancy. He only wished Kyle, the missing third of his emotional well-being, could be there. "Are you sure you don't want to come with?" Stanley had asked six times at breakfast. "Wendy finds you so amusing."

"I have better things to do," Kyle had snapped; those better things were either revisions to his Blake reading list, or clinging to Eric's shoulders while Kyle's arse was repeatedly pounded, sweat dripping into his face. It made Stanley sick, thinking about this, but he couldn't get the idea out of his mind — until meeting up at the pub, where the conversation was going so well and so rapidly that Stanley was able to miss Kyle only in brief, painful snatches.

"Oh, are you from Hungerford?" Wendy was asking Token.

"Well, the estate is outside Hungerford," he was replying. "But we spend so much time in London. Black House is so stately. You must visit some day."

"I couldn't impose," she demurred.

"Oh, Wendy." Token sighed, rubbing her shoulder, sipping his drink. "You'd look so at home there."

"If I didn't know any better, Lord Black, I'd think you were trying to seduce me, to lure me back to your castle and lock me up."

Token laughed. "You're a clever girl," he said.

Wendy laughed. "That is how I get top marks in my French course!"

Stanley laughed with them. They got along. They got along! It felt so relieving.

"What's your telephone number?" Wendy asked. "Stanley, have you got a pen? I need to take down Token's number."

"Oh." From the pocket of his overcoat, Stanley produced a biro. He always had one. "Yes, of course. Here." Uncapping it, he scribbled Token's phone number on the back of her hand.

"You know it by memory?" Token asked him.

Stanley hesitated to admit that he had practiced dialing this number late at night, just so he'd have it inscribed on his heart forever. "Of course," Stanley answered. "It's just convenient."

"We do speak a lot," Token figured. "You'll call me, though, Wendy, won't you?"

She nodded. "Of course!"

"That's a good girl." Token finished his pint and flashed her a smile. He flashed one at Stanley.

Stanley had never felt so important as when he brought together two dear friends. Shame Kyle couldn't have been there.

---

Before the term sped to a close Stanley found himself waiting outside of Garrison's office, fiddling with his latest draft. It comprised 20 evenly typed pages, each one grayed at certain edges from Stanley's nervous rereading. He was certain it was free of typographical errors, and though it was not a final draft per se he felt that, at long last, he had reached a sort of solace in terms of what he wanted to say: Sebastian was unobtainable because he was so flawed; Julia unobtainable because she was flawless. Stanley could see it clearly, the distinction between the two choices, each above Charles' station. Charles never pursued Sebastian, not really; even that fateful trip to Morocco was less a gesture of love than of pity, and Stanley was not certain that Waugh had fully intended their affair to be sexual, or their love erotic. It was Julia whose love was valid, and Julia who rejected Charles. To be turned away at the precipice of validity! The very notion stung. Here Stanley checked his watch and saw that Garrison was not running behind; Stanley himself was early. After this, at 4, Stanley would meet Token for tea and they would discuss how it had gone. And then, the term would be over, and he would slink back to his bedroom and sleep.

A shivering first-year shambled out of the office, Garrison peering out. "Marsh," he said, crooking his finger at Stanley. "Come inside."

Stanley fell into a hard chair in front of Garrison's desk; he shook as he handed over the worn manuscript. It was still cold, a drizzle misting the thick windows. Wet buds stuck in gross clusters to the creases between the woodwork and the glass. "This isn't final," Stanley said, crossing his legs and sitting up straighter. "But I believe I have reached a point of cohesion. I am happy with it."

Garrison scowled at the draft, and then he pushed it to the side. "I don't know what business a journalist has trying to write literature," he said. "There's a matter-of-factness to journalism that always ruins the mood. Fiction, real fiction, tells truth devoid of facts. Do you know what I mean?"

"I understand what you mean," said Stanley, "but I don't know that I agree."

"And what do you understand me to mean?" Garrison pressed.

Stanley took a deep breath. He uncrossed his legs and sat up taller, straighter. "I believe you mean that a fiction writer must invent information, that this invention is the nature of detail. That the truth of fiction is in the pattern the writer weaves, which details he invents and how. I just don't agree with this. I think human perception is the detail, and it's how the writer employs that perception, which is to say, the facts of his own life, that determines whether a composition is fiction or memoir." Stanley cleared his throat and sat up. "Sir."

Garrison tented his fingers. "Go on, Mr. Marsh."

"Oh, well. That's it, really. … Only that, I suppose, it's the application of a narrative to one's personal facts that makes the text a fiction. Because it's a fiction to expect a narrative trajectory on one's own life."

"So it's narrative convention that makes fiction?"

"Well, yes."

"And this is what Waugh does with the details of his own experience?"

"That's what I think, sir, yes."

"And do you also think that at 21 you are old enough and in possession of experiences enough to make a determination on the facts of your own life?"

"If I am not well disposed to do so, who is?" Stanley asked.

"The older version of yourself with the ability to turn around and examine his life with a better-informed perspective."

"And what if I grow old and lose the ability to look back with adequate perspective? What if I do not grow old and I lose the opportunity to commit my experiences to prose because I did not do so when I was young?"

"Well, life is a bit of a gamble," said Garrison. "Just a bit. I thought I would write once, but I ended up teaching at Oxford instead. Not bad, that. But I'm afraid there's no easy answer for what a man should do with his life."

"I want to write," said Stanley, without hesitation.

"Yes, go on."

"Go on? That is it, that is what I should like to do. I want to write."

"Well, certainly," said Garrison, "but what are you going to write?"

Stanley slumped, feeling defeated. "My father asks me the same question."

"And don't you have an answer for him?"

"I've spent so many years specializing in the analysis of literature that I assumed I would simply apply those critiques to my own experience."

"Yes? So you wish to write a memoir?"

"No, sir," said Stanley. "Fiction."

"And you wish to follow Waugh's example, surely?"

"I don't wish to follow any one man's example, sir. But I disagree with you about experience. I've got the experience. I wish to make good on it." He crossed his arms. "That's all."

Garrison regarded him for a moment with an expression of delight. "Tell me, Stanley. Is this a conversation you'd like to continue having?"

"I'd like to have any conversation with anyone, sir. Provided they didn't tell me to my face I was incorrect. I wouldn't mind if they thought it, of course. But I'd like for my feelings to be treated with merit." Stanley cleared his throat. "I'm sorry if I've become overly emotional."

"My dear boy, don't apologize. You are well within propriety."

"Literally no one's ever said that to me."

"I suspect they may have and you simply cannot remember it."

"Nobody has," Stanley said. "No one. Please excuse me, sir, but I must ask — is it just going to be like this?"

Garrison leaned forward. "How do you mean?"

"I mean, the trajectory of my life. Am I going to feel forever as if I'm all wrong, as if I'm — just nothing?"

"Well, I don't know. I suppose it's something all men fear. The shared anxiety of mankind."

"I mean me," said Stanley. "Please, sir, surely you understand."

Perhaps Garrison was feeling charitable, or perhaps he liked Stanley more than the boy had suspected. He stood up, placing his hand on the back of his desk chair. "Academia has always suited my purposes in that regard. This institution can bolster a person so that he never feels as though he is nothing, merely part of something else, something bigger than he is, ancient and dominating. There's a sort of comfort, to me, in this world." He cleared his throat. "But more specifically than that and I'm afraid I'm unsure what you mean."

"I mean—" Stanley was about to say something, to let it all come tumbling out of him, unguarded. Then he caught a look that was crystal clear, unmistakable to Stanley's skills of perception: do not continue. The man had been Stanley's don for going on three years now, and in that moment Stanley was certain there would never be a fourth. The thought filled him with dread, and he began to wonder how he would remain in touch with Kyle — he would move back in with his parents; they would make weekly dates at the pub; perhaps one day they would share a flat—

"If you've another two years to spare," Garrison said, "I invite you to read for a master's."

"Really?" Stanley asked.

"Yes," he said. "How does that sound?"

"What should I say?"

"I don't know," said Garrison, "it doesn't matter to me. What do you want to do?"

"What is Kyle doing?"

"Well, what does that matter? Forget about him — what do you want to do?"

"I'd be delighted to take it!"

"Then I shall see you next year."

Stanley stood, grabbing the desk to brace himself. "Well, that's all right then!"

"Yes, very well," said Garrison. "Now get out of my office."