Boo.

So, this chapter is 35,000 words.


The key to Kyle's flat was burning a hole in my pocket. Without him, my life was devoid of meaning. But he did not want to see me, or speak to me. A nervous wreck, I spent excess time sitting in pubs drinking whisky and wondering what I had done wrong. I couldn't think of anything, and yet it had to be something. I'd called Ike when he was ill — but if I hadn't done that, Kyle would probably have died. I rationalized that he couldn't possibly be angry at me for saving his life. I'd told Miss B, but I'd had to tell someone. Now Kyle's secretary would not put me through to him during the day. "He will call you right back," she droned, unamused.

Recently I'd learned that her name was Caroline, and so I very kindly said to her, "I really beseech you to put me through. Please, Caroline. I am distraught without him." I felt Kyle would not want me telling her that he was terminally ill, and it was better to let her think we were experiencing marital trouble — that is, if it even occurred to her that our problems were marital.

"Mr. Marsh," she replied one afternoon. "I can only give him so many messages before he snaps at me. He probably doesn't want to speak to you. I'm sorry."

"You don't understand," I wheedled.

"Not really, no," she admitted. "But it isn't my business."

So I spent the days without Kyle with Wendy and her daughter. We took Willa to Harvey Nichols, to tea at the Orangery, and to Sloane Square, which I found supremely ugly. But there were such fabulous cafes up and down the little streets and the area was flooded with young girls in flouncy skirts, so it felt charming to me, and I made do. The baby was duly impressed with none of this. Tea didn't amuse her, and certainly watching her mother try on blouses was equally disinteresting. Infants can be so difficult.

Wendy complained about her weight. "I need my figure back," she moaned, whilst modeling a Westwood. It was so self-satisfying and indulgent of her. She'd put on barely anything and most of it had come off with the baby.

"What I think we need is sandwiches," I suggested. "Nothing goes with a new dress like sandwiches."

"If I eat another sandwich I shall burst and if I burst I shall scream!" she exclaimed. This was the baby's cue to begin screaming. We then had to rush to a restroom, where Wendy changed her nappy.

"I'm getting a nanny," she announced afterward. "I'm too rich not to have one."

"Suit yourself," I said with a shrug. At no time did it occur to me that perhaps we were both too immature to be slumming around Knightsbridge with a three-month-old baby, even at age 40. (Or in Wendy's case, nearing.)

One afternoon over avocado and cress sandwiches in some café, sans baby, Wendy said to me, "You know, Clyde is really ill."

"Oh, that's awful," I said, bored, hardly listening. "Do you want another glass of Billecart?"

"Yes, that would be lovely," she agreed. "It's wonderful to be able to drink again."

So I ordered us refills. When the waiter had left, Wendy promptly repeatedly, "Stanley, Clyde is very sick. Token is distraught."

"Well, if he dies I'll send Token a condolence card."

"Stanley." Her tone was steely and focused. "Clyde is going to die, don't you understand? He's in hospital. I think he has … you know." She sighed. "Poor Clyde."

I dropped my forkful of vinegar-doused rocket and gaped at her. Finally, I understood. "You know meaning he has AIDS?"

"Shhhh!" She clasped a hand over my mouth, which was very rude. "Not so loud!"

I shoved her hand away. "Wendy, you cannot just say something like that in a public place and expect me to withhold my reaction!"

"What reaction? Why do you care?"

"If you don't know why I should care, why are you telling me?"

She blinked. "I don't know!"

We finished the meal in terse silence, Wendy every so often checking her watch or reapplying lipstick, just to have something to do. By the end of the second round of champagne and the last scraping of our forks against the china, she had put on such a lacquer of bubblegum grease that I was certain she'd eaten more of that than luncheon.

I paid for lunch, or rather Kyle paid for lunch, as I used his charge card and signed his name. No one ever asked me to produce identification when I did this.

XXX

Had it been only a week? I missed Kyle dreadfully. On Friday Butters rang to say, "Kyle says no drinks tomorrow. He sounds very glum but he asked me to phone Eric and make up an excuse. Well, I hate lying. Have you got an excuse?"

"You can tell him I am quarreling with Kyle," I suggested. "It's mostly true."

"Well, you have my sympathy if it's true, although I don't think it is true, is it? Because I don't think—"

"I don't know, Butters." This annoyed me. I was sitting on the couch in the dark using the princess phone, rolling and unrolling the cuffs of my trousers of lack of a better outlet. "He doesn't want to see me."

Butters laughed at this, an awkward little girlish laugh. "Oh, that's not what he wants at all, I'm sure."

"Well, how would you know?" I barked.

For a moment, there was silence. Then Butters replied, "You don't have to yell at me."

This was truly too much for me to handle. "He's really sick!"

Butters sighed. "I know."

"What if he never wants to see me again?"

"He'll get over it. Have you tried flowers?"

"I started with flowers," I said.

"Maybe he's not angry at you at all," Butters suggested. "Look, I don't know how your relationship functions. I'm not really a part of it — but if it were me, I'd much rather be with the man I loved than sulking by myself in a drafty flat. He'd probably like you to reach out to him."

There was a lot wrong with this sentiment. "Well, how do you know what he's like, or if he's anything like you?"

"I've known him about as long as you have," Butters reminded me.

"Look, I don't know what to tell Eric. Tell him Kyle's sick and doesn't want to have people over. You don't have to tell anyone he's sick with AIDS."

"Eric is distracted easily enough; I just hate to lie, is all. Stanley, are you lonely?"

I thought about this for a moment. I shouldn't be lonely. I'd been with Wendy almost every day. "I don't know if I'm lonely but I miss him," I admitted.

Butters was obviously rustling around his flat, and I hear the dog barking. "Well, my baby's sick too, actually, so I won't leave her here," his baby being the bulldog. "Why don't you come over and we can chat for a while? I've no reason to go into the shop today."

Not sure why I agreed to go there, but I did, getting on the Northern Line at Old Street and taking it down south to Borough, then taking a bus what seemed to be a long, long way. This was probably the least efficient way to do it, but I was in no rush to be in Butters' company. I hadn't been there for years, probably not since Bradley had died. Butters rarely complained about living seemingly so far from the rest of us. In truth, the neighborhood was not too bad at all — the people who lived here seemed to take pride in their homes, and although it was January, everything looked fresh and bright. It was a sunny day and the streets felt as though people really lived there. While I hesitated to think of Hoxton as a slum, the area still felt risky and industrial. This part of Southwark reflected Butters' general attitude — humble and unexciting, but vital and pleasant.

When I rang the bell, the dog began growling, and didn't stop even when Buters buzzed me in and I ran up two flight of stairs. Miss B had flung the door open, and was hunched over with her hand on the knob, and the other holding Desdemona back by the collar. "Oh, shush," she said, into the dog's ear. "It's just Stanley. You can pet her, if you like. She's irritable because she's under the weather."

"Could I?" I got down on the floor and rubbed the bulldog under her chin. "Don't be foul, doggie. I like you."

"She's just protective." Butters sighed, letting go of the dog and standing up to close the door.

Desdemona dropped to the ground and rolled over so I could rub her belly, which I did.

"Oh, she likes you." Butters double-latched the door, smiling. "You should hear when Douglas comes over. They're not friends, let's say."

"I'll be friends with any dog," I said.

"You could get a dog. Your flat's large enough."

"I had a dog once." I stood up, and the bulldog whined at me for abandoning her. "I don't feel the need for another one. Plus life — it's just gotten stupidly complicated. I can't take care of a dog, Butters. I can barely take care of myself."

"Well, you look fine to me. But then — it is difficult. I understand. Do you want a cup of tea?"

"A cup of whisky suits me better."

"It's half-one."

"Fine, then, thanks," I said. "Tea would be nice."

I followed him into the kitchen, sun just beginning to shine through the west-facing window, glaring off the yellow kitchen tiles of the floor and the back-splash beyond the stove. Butters had an old-fashioned flat, but not in the way Kyle's flat was old-fashioned, patrician and orderly; Butters' flat was narrow and claustrophobic, adorable and working-class. The stove pre-dated the Blitz. On the table sat a bouquet of acid-yellow gerberas.

"Miss B," I said. "Who gave you those flowers?"

"Who?" She was filling the kettle under the tap. "Oh, the flowers. Oh, Dougie, of course. Who else would it be?" The tap came off and the stove ignited. "Really, he shouldn't have bothered."

"Why, isn't it nice to be romanced?"

Butters sat down next to me at the table, waiting for the water to boil. "Oh, I like being romanced. The problem is that I don't like Dougie."

This was news to me. "I thought you were something of an item."

"No, hardly. I've gotten myself into such a mess, Stanley. You don't want to hear about it."

Now, generally he'd be correct; I wouldn't want to hear about it. But being that I was suffering the existential crisis of not knowing when my terminally ill lover would want to see me again, even a dumb story about Butters' love life was a welcome distraction. So I said, "Of course I want to hear about it."

"Oh." He settled back in his seat, arms crossed. "Well, if this story bores you at any time, don't hesitate to shut me up. Have you ever had a lover who liked you much more than you liked him?"

"No."

"I'm surprised. I always thought you were so successful with boys, you know."

I rolled my eyes. "Success is relative to what one is interested in."

"Well, I know, but — it's a careful situation. Because I do like him — Douglas. He is sweet and considerate and really romantic. He is intelligent, too — he's a mathematician and they're generally so dull, but he'll read anything I tell him to, and we talk about literature. The first thing we did was read The Hobbit, which he'd never heard of. Perhaps that was my first clue. We read passages aloud to each other — but his voice was so scratchy and dull. He didn't try to effect any accents, he just read—"

Butters was interrupted by the whining kettle.

"Oh, of course." He got up, pushed his chair in, and turned off the stove.

"I don't like Tolkien either, you'll recall," I said. Already this story was boring me, but I was at least now preoccupied by the dullness of Butters' love life, rather than how much I wished I were with Kyle.

He set a steaming mug of Typhoo in front of me. "Thanks."

"Of course." Butters added sugar and milk to his tea, stirring with a teaspoon. His mugs were all mismatched, which was not how I expected them to be — if one had asked me to theorize about Butters' china service, I would have predicted really fussy, chintzy teacups with pedestal feet and undulating saucers. Not tasteful, but byzantine. Instead, he was holding a mug that announced an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, 50 Great Victorian Statesmen. While he prepared his tea, I tried to count, but was stuck after Gladstone and Disraeli. As, I had to assume, were most people.

"The crux of the matter is that he sends me fancy gifts and tries to get me to marry him. Desdemona doesn't like him. I really don't mind a casual companion. He's fine, I like him fine. I should say at this point we're great friends. I do like him. I just don't want — he's not the one. I'm sorry, I must sound so spoilt complaining about this: 'Oh, a man likes me too much.' But I don't want to hurt his feelings! I care about him too deeply.

"The worst is that he often says, 'You'd like me more if you weren't still hung up on Bradley.' It makes me feel so awful."

"Well, that's a terrible thing to say," and it struck me as odd that anyone, let alone sincere, chipper Dougie, could be so callous.

"He doesn't mean it to be cruel," said Miss B. "He's very sensitive and insecure. He wouldn't say it if he didn't perceive it to be true. What makes me feel lousy is that it is true. Maybe I just don't want another marriage like that. Or — or why doesn't he understand I'm not right for him, we're not right for one another—"

"Haven't you told him this?"

"We have very long, very revealing conversations. Which is just another thing — Brad and I never had such conversations. From the very moment, the first meeting, we — well, we just knew. Nothing ever needed to be said between us."

I nodded, hands around my steaming mug of Typhoo, letting the ceramic warm my palms. This situation seemed delicate, so much inside Butters' head — and yet I was gripped by the sudden determination to solve his problem. "Have you been sleeping with him?"

"What?" Butters shook his head, shocked. "Ah, I don't know, not very often."

"How could you not know?"

He was blushing so hard his face was probably warmer than my cup of tea. "I don't know! How you sleep with someone, anyway? I'm not sure."

"You mean, how do I sleep with someone, or…"

"I mean, does it have to be intercourse? Or just — I don't know, little things, we do these little things, I don't know, I never talk about my personal life, Stanley, never. Most people assume it isn't true. Well, Eric assumes it isn't true, he tells me bloody everything, things I would give my life to never have heard in the first place, but I just don't like to share. Anyway. Douglas. I don't know what to do. What should I do?"

I realized he was expecting me to answer. "Oh," I said, trying to figure out if there was any way I could solve this scenario for him. "You know, many blokes like it if you're just direct with them. Maybe you should just tell him, and certainly stop having sex with him."

"But he likes having sex with me, and…" Butters blushed. "I like having sex."

"Well, you don't even have full-on sex with him, anyway, so why not just go to some park and do it the old-fashioned way?"

"What's the old-fashioned way?"

Did he really not know? I rolled my eyes. "Put your cock through a hole in some bathroom stall, and see what happens."

"What?" Butters was just so affronted by this, he dropped his tea spoon on the floor and the dog began howling from the living room. "Oh, gosh, that's not me at all." Like he expected me to know what he was, or something.

"Very well," I said. "Keep fucking Dougie. Just make sure you tell him every single time that you don't love him and this is all for your pleasure. You'll feel awful each time, but I suppose in the technical sense of things, you'll be readily absolved."

"No! That's ghastly! I love Douglas, I do. He's just not for me. No one's for me. If I can't be with Brad, I'd rather be alone."

"Well, you can't be with Bradley, Miss B! He's dead."

"I know."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Not fellate random men in park cottages," he said. "That'd be awful risky and stupid."

"Yes," I agreed, suddenly feeling rather guilty. "It would."

"I have half a mind to just—" In the middle of his sentence, the phone began to ring. He seemed startled, even as he bent over to pick up his spoon. "That's so odd. I rarely get phone calls during the day. Dougie's at work, you know, and Eric usually calls the store. Do you mind if I get this?"

Not only did I not mind, I didn't care. "Not at all. Go ahead."

"Thanks." When he answered the call, he said, "Hello?" and his entire demeanor changed. He looked as though he'd been smacked upside the head. "Oh, hello, hello," he repeated, mechanical. "Yes, too long."

It was a repetitive conversation lasting no more than three minutes, throughout which he wrapped the cord forever tighter around his fingers. The last thing he said was, "Yes, I'm sorry, too. I know. I miss you, too. I know." When Butters returned the phone to its receiver on the wall, he stumbled, wiping his eyes.

"Butters," I said. "Are you all right?"

"I — I don't honestly know. Do you know who that was?" He sniffed, falling back into his seat. "Of course you don't. Stanley, that was my mother."

"Oh," I said, never having met Butters' mother, not even at commencement many years ago. If I had, it'd slipped my mind since. "Is she well?"

"Well, I don't know, I — we haven't spoken in 20 years."

For some reason, this didn't shock me. "I'm so sorry."

"Oh, it's all right. I'm glad to hear from her, it's just, my father's dead." He heaved a sigh, and took a sip of cool tea.

It took me a moment to catch on to what he'd said. "Oh, my god, Miss B." My hand shot out to pat her arm. "I'm so sorry."

Butters put the mug down. "Thank you." He laughed, shaking his head, tearing up — but not crying. "He — he wouldn't let us speak. My mother and I, we haven't spoken in 20 years and he's dead. He's dead, so she called me."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry! I hope he's rotting in hell."

"Butters! That's so unlike you to say."

"Is it?" He shrugged. "Well, I do. I hated that man, despised him. And now he's dead! It's brilliant."

"Butters!"

He clapped his hands, bouncing in his seat. "This is great, you have no idea. That man, he — he kept me from speaking to my mother. They say everyone has some anger, deep down, and that most of us just repress it. I've never repressed it. I hate that man. Hated. He kept me apart from my mother for 20 years. I could only get him to pay for university by lying through my teeth every day, every conversation — telling him I was cured, I'd met girls, I was seeing girls at Oxford. I'd write him long letters about my girlfriends — oh, I'd write about their long blonde hair and their pink lips and beautiful voices. But I was just writing about me, about how I saw myself when I looked in the mirror."

I had never heard this before. I knew Butters' father had chased him off to some kind of program of ineffectual reforming treatments when he was in his early teen years, where he met Bradley — but having never had a serious conversation with him, in all the 20 years we'd known each other, he'd never expounded on his Oedipal complexes for me. (And it was only in my utter loneliness that I could convince myself to really care.)

"I'm so sorry, Butters. Is there anything I can do?"

"Not really," he said. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

The moment felt very surreal.

"Your father just died. I mean, seriously, Miss B, anything at all … ?"

"Don't let's dwell on it." He put his wrists against the body of his statesmen teacup, and frowned. "My tea's gone cold. How's yours?"

"It's empty."

"Well, I could make another pot." He put his thumbs between his fingers. Smashing his knuckles together, he said, "Or — or I have a chilly bottle of white wine. I know, it's afternoon, but I just feel so—"

"Let's drink it," I said quickly, not bothering to let him finish his thought.

When Butters returned to the table, he had a tall, green-glass bottle, a red ribbon tied around its neck with a desiccated cream-colored rose knotted up in the middle.

"That looks fancy," I noted.

"Oh, it's from Dougie." He shrugged.

"He's trying really hard."

"He'd better try harder, then." Butters managed to uncork the thing, and was pouring a generous glass; he wasn't looking at me while he spoke. "After what he did to my baby, I don't know if I can forgive him."

"Did what?"

"Didn't I mention?"

I shook my head.

Butters set the wine bottle down, handed me the glass, and began rubbing his temples. "He left some chocolate, a large box of champagne truffles, on the coffee table for me. I don't know why; I told him not to. Anyway, Desdemona got into it. She almost died, Stanley. They had to pump her out. My poor baby!"

"Indeed," I said, feeling genuinely bad. Thinking of animals in pain reminded me of my own dog. "I'm sorry, that's terrible."

"Well, he keeps trying to apologize. So, first he sent this wine. Then the flowers. Do you understand why I feel conflicted now? He does this sort of thing all the time, you know. Not — not to this severity. But, thoughtless things. Do you know?"

Not really.

"I don't know why I bother," he continued. "So, I spent all of earlier this week with Desdemona, making a big to-do out of the whole thing. Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, but Des, well — she's a big dog. So she got a little sick; I shouldn't be angry at Douglas for that. It's not his fault. I mean, it's his fault, obviously, but…" Butters rubbed his eyes again. "Well, well — look. She was a present. She was a present from Bradley for my 30th birthday. She was a present from Bradley and then, one day not long after…" Butters just trailed off, a grim look on his face. "I'm sorry for being dramatic," he muttered. "But what if she had died?"

"That would be awful. Butters, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry, I just — I just keep thinking. I'm so worried for you, Stanley, you don't have any idea."

"Why?" I asked. "Look, don't worry about me. I'll be fine." It did not even occur to me, even once, that I perhaps wouldn't be fine, so preoccupied was I with obsessing over two or three weeks of my life without Kyle.

"Well, I talk to Kyle on the phone," Butters said. I was vaguely aware of this, but I didn't really know what kind of things Miss B and Kyle had to discuss. Men or books or something — fantastic literature I didn't like, or gossiping about aristocracy I didn't care about. Something along those lines, I figured, now that I had to consider it.

He continued: "I know it's not my place, it's not my relationship. Lord knows, I have my own problems, my own stupid problems. But you — and Kyle, you both — I mean, good god, my father just died."

"I know, Miss B, and I'm dreadfully sorry. You have my condolences."

"I know," she said. "Thank you."

We sat there for a moment, Butters and I, in silence save for the heavy breathing of the bulldog in the other room. I sipped my wine tentatively, wondering why he hadn't poured himself a glass.

Finally, he said, "I should call my mother back. I — I should go up to Durham tonight."

"What's in Durham?" I asked.

"Well — well, I'm from Durham, didn't you know?"

"No."

"Ah." In that one brief syllable, an entire galaxy of things I didn't know about Leopold Stotch came to light.

XXX

The next time I heard from Wendy, she sounded truly grim: "Good morning, mon cher, although it's something of an awful morning. Because Clyde is dying, you know."

"I know, I know. You keep telling me," I reminded her, "but I'm still asleep." Actually, I was quite hungover, having drunk sherry by myself with the radio on until 3 in the morning. "I don't care about Clyde, Wendy. If you're so sad he's ill I'm very sorry, but you haven't ever had one nice thing to say about him! And if you liked him so much I think you should have dropped all the to-do about peerages and just married Clyde."

"Oh, Stanley. Your black little heart! I don't particularly care for Clyde — although I wouldn't wish this on him. He's — he really is dying, Stanley. Token's been by his bed for the past 18 hours. I think it's the end, I really do."

"Well, that is too bad." I felt a wave of nausea envelope me. "My condolences to Token. I'll call him when — when it's over, I guess."

"I think you should go to him."

"What?"

"Well, not you — Kyle, I mean. I think Clyde would very much like it if Kyle went to him. And, well, you're something of a set, so — I'm sorry, this is Token's bad idea."

Sitting up, I readjusted the receiver so I could speak more directly. "Wendy, Kyle won't talk to me. He's been ignoring me for two weeks."

"I know," she said, although she really didn't have any idea beyond the cursory explanation I had given her two weeks ago that Kyle was temperamental and we weren't getting along. It wasn't exactly untrue, although I wasn't so much angry at him as he was suffering an emotional disconnection. Kyle would fight with anyone about almost anything, though, so it really wasn't worth parsing for her. No one had any trouble believing the vaguest of explanations. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I'm so tired at all hours I forget other people have problems."

"It's all right. Look, Wends. Put Token on the phone and I'll talk it out with him."

"Can't do, dearest, sorry." She coughed into the phone. "If he weren't entrenched at Clyde's bedside I think he'd be at work right now."

"Right." It was easy to forget other people had lives when mine seemed rather empty. "How's the baby?"

"Beautiful." Her tone picked up. "I think we get along better with a third party, you know. It's just — I don't want to say I had no idea this would be exhausting, but I'm afraid the concept was rather academic. We're fine now, though — my mother's helping now. Token's parents are being rather a nuisance, implying I've done something awful, having this daughter. Those people waited 20 years for a grandchild. They can wait another two for an heir, I should think."

"Don't let anyone force you."

"You know me, Stanley. I don't let anyone force me."

"Quite right."

"But I should force you around more often. Go to Clyde, and take Kyle with you."

"But I don't know that Kyle will go anywhere with me right now," I said.

"Well, Stanley." She swallowed. "Have you asked?"

XXX

There comes a time when a man has to face his fears and confront a problem head-on. To this effect, when Kyle did not pick up the phone, I stood up, tied my shoes, and went immediately to Notting Hill Gate. He could try to ignore me, he could screen my calls — but I didn't think he would resist a direct appeal.

There was no answer at the buzzer, but when I got upstairs to the front door of his flat, I heard the muzzled sweep of a symphony behind the door. I knocked before using the key, and sure enough, the turntable had an LP spinning on it, going too fast for me to read the label — but it was unmistakable Gilbert and Sullivan. It took me a minute, but at the first lyrical chorus — with aspect stern and gloomy stride — I realized it was The Mikado. Appropriate enough, I thought, but then he called out, "Oh, don't just stand there," and I turned around only to realize he was lying on a couch in that kimono dressing gown. "Yes, I'm here," he said, sitting up.

"Kyle—"

"Shhh." He put his finger to his lips. "Wait for the act break."

Not knowing what else to do, I sat down on the couch opposite him. I hadn't even taken my coat off. For a few moments I was happy enough to listen to the operetta as it played out. It had been some time since I'd heard to the piece from start to end, and was enjoying the caustic jubilation of the whole thing. But then came the part in which the story devolved into, "But as you've got a month to live, long life to you," and so on. I rolled my eyes at the heavy-handedness of Kyle's choice in music.

He, on the other hand, was quite enjoying it, conducting a small orchestra for himself with his index fingers, eyes shut, humming along. He looked much better than when I'd left him last, having gotten what seemed to be a flattering haircut, and much of his color back. He didn't look ill at all, really, except that he was cloaked in the trappings of sickness, lazing around on his own like a recluse, feeling sorry for himself.

"There's lots of good fish in the sea, darling, really?"

"Stanley, shush."

As the needle skidded off the record on a crescendo, he straightened the tie on his robe and said, "Will you get that for me?"

So I got off the couch and pulled the needle from the LP, and threw my coat over a chair before I sat back down. "You're very immature," I said when I did, crossing my legs so as to appear more adult. "Running from me won't solve anything."

"I wasn't running," he said. "I wanted a bit of time to myself. I can't say I'm not a bit upset it took you this long to chase me."

"I'm not a dog, Kyle. I am not in the habit of hunting."

"Yes, well." He sniffed. "That's been established well by now. Of course. How stupid of me." He buried his face in his hands. "There were times, you know, when I sat at my desk for hours, just wondering if you'd decided to be done with me. I realize I'm — oh." He wiped at his eyes. "I've been vacillating between content resignation and grim desperation. I can't talk to anyone, except Miss B—"

"You could have called me," I said.

"I wanted you to call me."

"I called you about a hundred times. More, maybe."

"I wanted you to come for me," he said, voice cracking.

"Well. I'm here. Right?"

"Right." He extended his arms toward me.

Moving to the other sofa, he embraced me, rocking both of us back and forth. "I missed you so much," he whispered in my ear — not because it was a secret, but because with any more volume he would have crumbled into abject sobs.

"I know." I pulled away and cupped his chin. "You were all I could think about."

"What did you do without me?"

"Oh, wasted my days with Wendy and the baby. Went over to Butters'."

"He said as much. I'm surprised — you never go over there."

"I was desperate, darling. I don't know what to do with myself without you. I've meant every word, Kyle. I'll take care of you."

"You don't have to take care of me. I'm not dying … yet."

"But—" My hand flew to my mouth. "Oh, god, I didn't mean—"

"It's all right," he said, crawling away from my embrace, disconnecting. He rolled his eyes. "I've been thinking the same thing, obviously. Without end, for days and days. I've been reading, I've been working — but it's all I can do to pretend I'm looking at the monitor when, really, I'm thinking to myself, 'This is the end. I'm going to die, ugly and breathless and starving.' "

"You're not ugly."

"I will be."

"Kyle…"

"Stanley."

"Kyle. Two years—"

(As an aside: "Maybe less.")

"—is a long time. You don't know, no one can know, what sorts of medicines brilliant men can invent, what one can learn about the pathology of a virus—"

("Retrovirus.")

"—in that time. I'm not saying this to give you false hope. I'm saying it—"

Kyle's eyes shut. He breathed, "Because you believe it." And he opened them again, shaking his head.

"Kyle, I have—"

Recognition dawned on Kyle and he interrupted me. "You have AIDS? Oh god, I've infected you, I've—"

"Shhhhh, no." I grabbed his hands and held them in mine. "You didn't allow me to finish."

"Ike had told me you should be tested," he continued, disinterested in heeding me. "He recommends, as does any doctor I've consulted, that every man I've been with be tested. Or at least that I ring everyone since 1976. They don't know the incubation period but 10 years seems prudent. I felt so guilty, thinking like some — Christ, this phrase — like some whorish Typhoid Mary I've made half of the world sick. I tried to tell them I couldn't possibly know the whereabouts of many of these fellows, scores of people…"

"Scores of people?" I wished my reaction to this hadn't been jealousy, but the thought of other men fucking Kyle forced me to fight back possessiveness. Worse was the notion that some of these nameless men had held him, been tender with him — or that Kyle had wanted them to be, would have said endearing things and clung to them in bed the way he grasped me.

"Yes, I suppose. I don't know! Mostly flings, dates — at least I know most of their names. I know it doesn't stack up against your faceless thousands, but not all of us are you, Stanley. We should get you tested, though."

"It's pointless. If I'm infected I'll become ill, but currently I'm not ill, and in the meantime there's nothing they could do about it."

"I know." Kyle yanked his hands from mine and wrapped them around himself, sheltering his torso. "It is pointless. Today is the first day in quite some time I haven't come home from work and just sat on the sofa and cried and cried…"

"Well, today is a Saturday." He didn't smile. "If you were miserable, why didn't you call me?"

"I needed to think. I've been thinking, Stanley. About a lot of things."

"That sounds ominous."

Now he laughed, short and bitter. "Well, of course. I've had to find a lawyer who can do wills. It's very tricky. My father has always advised me, but I can't tell him this. We must ascertain your rights, we must be absolutely certain that everything is sound. I find that being methodical is helping me cope."

"I don't want a penny," I said. "Give it to Ike."

"There's no point — he'll get everything from my parents. Isn't that ironic? Like he always wanted. You don't really understand, dear. But I don't expect you to."

"Is it all right to kiss you?" I asked.

He blushed. "Stanley," he said, lowering his eyes. It was alluring and coquettish. "You never, ever need to ask that."

I grabbed his upper arms, the silk of the kimono eluding the creases of my fingers. I brought my lips against his, waiting for his mouth to open. When it didn't, I rammed my tongue through, feeling his moan around my lips and his body slack, his hands at my hips. His head fell back, arms linking. Our mouths stilled against each other, and I felt his trembling, so I drew back.

He rested his head on my shoulder, mouth and nose to my neck. I petted his hair, tucking waves of it behind his ear. "Darling," I whispered. "I have bad news."

"I want to stay like this forever," he replied, not really in any way an answer. "I don't want to die but if I have to, let me have this."

"Anything, Kyle. Anything."

We sat like that for some time, the sun setting lower and lower below the tree line of Hyde Park. The flat became dimmer and soon I could no longer see where Kyle began and I ended.

When it was too dark in fact to make out anything outside but the flashing lights of St. James, I said, "I need to tell you something. Bad news."

"It's been an awful week for news. You might as well. Will it crush me?"

"I should hope not, although I doubt you'll cheer. Old Clyde is dying. He's got AIDS and is dying."

"Oh." Kyle sat up and withdrew, wiping his wet eyes with the back of his wrist. "Yes, that makes sense. Poor old Clyde." He sighed, heaving his shoulders, shaking his head. "I made him sick, did I?"

"How do you know he didn't make you sick?"

"We made each other sick, I'm sure. There must be plenty of strains."

"Well, he is in hospital. On his deathbed, I'm told. By Wendy. Token thinks — well, it would be nice if we went to him. Or you, rather, but I — I'll go with you."

Kyle sighed, doubling over, rubbing his eyes. He sat back up, and said, "I'll go. Of course I'll go. But I don't know why anyone would want me there. Who's going to be there?"

As if this were a social gathering — but I understood what he meant, what he was intimidated by. "Well, apparently Token. I don't know about other people—"

"His parents?"

"Well, maybe. I can't imagine they wouldn't be. It's their only son."

"Then I have to get dressed." He stood up, stretching, reaching out for me. I took his hands. "I'll just be 20 minutes."

He took closer to an hour. But this was usual behavior for Kyle and I couldn't bring myself to mind it.

XXX

And so old Clyde Donovan died, surrounded by his weeping mother, his father, and a handful of resentful homosexuals he'd once studied with at Oxford, made love to, bored half to death. I don't know what his parents made of the fact that we held a vigil with them, that not a single female relationship could be represented in the group — Kyle and I; Token (shaken and distraught, like I'd never seen him); Craig, sans Tweek, which conveyed the weight of the situation. He glared at us when we came in, arms crossed, leaning against the window.

I hated the way no one explained to Mr. and Mrs. Donovan what we were doing there, but they were each so absorbed in committing every one of their son's final breaths to memory that it probably never occurred to them to ask.

At the end, when the even-paced chirping of monitors slowed to a flat, obnoxious cry, I took Kyle out of the room before anyone could speak to us. Perhaps this was rude, but again, I was doubtful that Clyde's parents would notice. To no great surprise, Wendy was sitting on a bench across from the room, baby in her arms, looking rather bored. It was jarring to see her here all the same.

"Token still in there?" she asked.

"Yeah," Kyle answered, in that same annoyed tone he took whenever Token was the subject of conversation.

"How is he?" Wendy asked. "Clyde, I mean."

"He's dead," I told her.

"Oh." She swallowed. "I'm so sorry to hear that."

Kyle snorted behind me, so sure that she was lying.

"Was it a hard death?" she asked.

"No clue," I answered. "He wasn't conscious."

"I'm sure it was just awful," Kyle remarked. This was the first time I had looked at him since leaving the dark of the hospital room, and I was thrown seeing that he was, actually, pale as a sheet. "He was covered in — in sores, I guess, or lesions, and just resembled nothing more than a victim of a concentration camp. He was a corpse, he was…" Kyle shut his eyes. "…so old."

"That's really a shame."

"It's depressing," I agreed.

"Terrifying." Kyle shook his head. "Absolutely terrifying." He let go of my hand, and began to walk away from us down the hall.

I looked at Wendy. "I never liked old Clyde," I reminded her.

"I recall."

"But I wouldn't wish this on him."

Willa gurgled, and Wendy offered the baby a finger to nurse, which she accepted, seeming content. "Kyle seems bothered by this." She looked back up at me. "I wonder why that is?"

How to carefully stage an answer so as not to give anything away? "Yes, well, he just watched someone die. I think the last time he saw a person expire, he was too young to understand it."

"Oh, but you've watched plenty of people die so you're well into it."

"I literally sat next to my grandfather and watched him die when I was a teenager."

"Ah, but did he look like a corpse?"

"Something like a corpse. He fought in the Somme."

"You don't think Kyle still has feelings for Clyde, does he, and that's why he's upset?"

"I'm sure it's struck him as very upsetting that someone he's had intimate relations with had passed away, yes." I turned to glance at him from down the hall, and spied him leaning against the wall, forehead pressed against a bulletin board, probably squishing his nose up against the cork but it was just too far away to tell. "Look, I'd better go follow him. He is bothered and I'm sure he needs me."

Wendy sighed. I wondered if her finger would wrinkle inside the baby's mouth. "Any idea when Token will be done?"

"Just go in there and ask him," I suggested. "Or better yet, what's keeping you here? You're not his nanny."

She didn't answer my question. "Clyde was never my friend, and I feel going in would be encroaching on a moment I don't belong in."

"Well, that's what I just did."

"No, you went with your husband because a dying man would have wanted him to be there."

"Does it matter? I'll speak to you tomorrow." I hunched down to kiss her cheek, and kissed the top of the baby's head, the dark hair feeling delicate under my lips.

"So long, mon cher." She waved. "Call me tomorrow." I knew I would.

At the end of the hall, Kyle was crying.

"Oh, don't cry," I said, reaching around his torso. He was still leaning on the wall. "It's only Clyde, don't cry."

"I'm not crying for him," he warbled. "Well, I am, and I am not. I'm crying for all of us, really. And I'm crying for me."

I tightened my hold on him, resting my head on his shoulder. "We're not going to let that happen to you," I said.

"What's wrong with you? It's not something you can stop, Stanley. It's not up to you."

"No one ever loved Clyde like I love you." I kissed his neck. "I promise, darling."

"Promise me what? Why are you doing this?" He slipped out of my arms, turned around, back against the wall, cheeks flush and snot on his upper lip. "Don't be foolish, Stanley. Just be glad there was no one except Wendy in this hospital corridor to see us embracing in public."

"Loads of people embrace in hospitals."

"I just don't want that to happen to me."

"Kyle," I said sternly, grabbing him by the wrists and pulling him off of the wall. "I am not going to let you die."

"Really?" he spat, eyes narrowing. "It's not up to you! Don't you understand? I am not a 5-year-old! And you are not God! There is little if anything you can do, goddamn you!" He stomped his foot and curled his hand into a fist. Then, he released it. "Oh, forget it!" He ran away from me sobbing, like a character in a Regency novella.

I followed him through corridors and around corners. He stopped and rang for a lift, arms crossed, tapping his foot against the linoleum. When it failed to arrive after a minute, he threw his hands up and said, "Of course the bloody lift doesn't come!" and kept going, finding a stairwell and heading down to the lobby. It was about 9, and Kyle stopped at reception. "Excuse me, excuse me," he repeated, slamming his hands into the desk. "Why isn't anyone listening to me?"

"Kyle," I grabbed his hands and tried to still them. "You're making a scene."

He turned around and laughed at me. "This is not a scene," he said. "If I wanted to make a scene you'd better believe I'd do it where I had a bigger audience."

"Regardless," I said. "Calm down."

"I am calm!" He had only stopped crying a few minutes before, and his eyes were still red and swollen. Now he bit his lip, obviously trying to stop himself from bursting into tears. "You don't understand," he said, leaning back against the reception desk, elbows supporting him as he leaned on the counter. "I thought I was doing so well."

I asked the receptionist to call us a minicab, which she did, eyes narrowed at us. On the ride back to my flat, we sat entwined against the window, the car trembling over the ragged asphalt of Theobald's Road.

"What's wrong with me?" he kept asking. "I mean honestly, I'm an adult. Why can't I process this like an adult?"

"How are you supposed to process it? Why does adulthood necessitate that you handle it any differently?"

"I should accept this, be stoic about it."

"That's idiocy."

Kyle mused aloud: "What would some proper British gentleman do, I wonder? What would, say, Craig do? What did Clyde do, do you think, Stanley, when he found out? Do you think he … do you think he broke down in hospital and in cars, or do you think he got up and said, 'Well, this is it, I can't beat this thing,' and put on his pants and went on with his day?"

"I don't know what he did," I gritted, "and I hardly think you should follow some delusional assumption about what Clyde would do anyway." I took his point, I really did, but this was Kyle, after all, and Kyle was not the sort of person who should bottle it up like that. It just wasn't him. But then I wondered, did this fundamentally alter who Kyle was, how he should act? The thought was unsettling and, for the first time even during this depressing and draining day, I felt significant unease.

"That may be true, that may be true." Kyle leaned into me, and I felt all of the tension in his body unwind as he rested against me, head dropping to my shoulder. There were sparse, washed-out streams of light along Clerkenwell Road, and where streetlamps shone on his face I could see he was tired, maybe physically but certainly emotionally. "I just want to go to sleep," he said, shutting his eyes. It reminded me of his illness weeks prior, how relieved I'd felt when he'd opened his eyes. I hated how significant every movement of his felt now. Perhaps as a 19-year-old I'd felt the same, as if Kyle were a fleeting moment of my life I should have drunk in as deeply as possible, as if each brief synapse were something worth committing to memory, as if the disparate collection of bodily functions voluntary and involuntary that comprised his existence should be dismantled and weighted individually.

We got to my flat and I paid the driver. Upstairs, Kyle undressed and so did I, glancing at each other, unsure of what was going to happen. Generally at this point in the evening, we had sex. As if by instinct, I developed an erection on sight of his bare thighs, slipping under the covers. He was looking at me expectantly, but I wasn't certain. Should I take off my pants, or find a pair of pajamas and slip them on, get into bed, and shut out the light?

"Well?" he asked.

"Well what?"

"Are you coming to bed?"

Without putting on any pajamas, I said, "Yes," and crawled into the sheets. I kissed him on the mouth, sighed deeply, and reached across his chest to turn off the beside lamp. Settling against a pile of wan pillows, I heard Kyle breathe, long and deep, as if he weren't thinking about it. He probably wasn't. The room (really it was a loft, part of a much larger room, but I felt it was my private little room anyhow) was dark, but it was never pitch-black, as big (but dirty) windows let in the lights of the East End, moonlight and a few street lamps and, seldom, illuminations from across the square I lived on.

I was flat on my back, staring at the ceiling with my eyes wide open, unable to conceive of sleep.

Before five minutes had passed, Kyle rolled onto his side, planting his lips on my neck and his hand on my cock.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Well, yes, but—"

He interrupted me. "What kind of man am I if I can't do this for you?"

"Oh god," I said, rolling over to face him. "It's too much to bear, darling, really."

There was a look of such hurt on his face, such sadness and betrayal. Could I even remember a time in my life when I did not see Kyle as a sexual phenomenon? The way he breathed was erotic to me; the way he smelled (a sweet-metallic smell I couldn't identify, that had lingered near his hairline and wrists as long as I'd known him) reminded me of ravaging afternoons in Notting Hill Gate, on the King's Road, in tiny rooms at Magdalen College, with my cheek pressed to his back as I fucked him, him coming in my grasp — and here I was, rejecting him. I couldn't believe I would decline, even with an erection at all, but I looked at the fright in Kyle's eyes, on his parted lips, and I just didn't know how I could allow him to do this.

So I petted his hair, sitting up, and cupped his chin. I hoped the swirl of emotions, the mess that was my own fear mingling with arousal and hesitation, was obvious to him. "Darling," I said, tucking strands of his hair behind his ear. "You're not—" I knew I didn't want to say that. "It's been such a long day, a long week. I'm tired, you're tired. You're not thinking straight, and your brother did say to abstain from sex. So we can't — I just don't know, I'm sorry, I don't know why but it hardly feels right."

He was looking up at me so hopefully until this moment, when he scowled. "So you're going to take this away from me, too? This too? I'll lose my life in two years, or less, and I can't have … I can't have…" He couldn't even say the words. "I don't care what Ike said, honestly. Stanley, I haven't…" He trailed off, finishing in a whisper: "I don't even know what words to use to describe why I wish you would let me."

"Well. It seems I haven't got the words to explain why I can't let you."

His eyes became wet, this much I could tell, but instead of crying, Kyle rolled over and went to sleep, or tried to sleep. I stayed awake for some time listening to his breathing, feeling it unsettle the mattress in a subtle rhythm. By the time I too fell asleep, my erection had subsided and the sun was soon to rise. Birds outside were squalling for the coming day, but I was too exhausted then to heed them.

Later, I was awoken by church bells. Kyle was gone, or rather, he was not in bed with me. For a moment, my heart jumped, worrying over where he'd gone off to; it was only the day before I'd gotten him back again, and I couldn't bear the agony of wondering why'd he left, why he wouldn't answer my phone calls. The bedding next to me was soaked, so I knew he couldn't have gone far; then I heard a kitchen cabinet slam, and I realized he was just downstairs.

He was in a rotten mood, though. "You've nothing to eat in the house!" he said, assaulting me before I was even fully awake. "I ask you, what kind of grown man has cupboards this bare?"

"Isn't there something in the refrigerator?"

"Yes, a moldy piece of red Leicester and some expired soured cream."

"I have soured cream?"

"Had, Stanley. I threw it away."

I was about to say to him, "You know, darling, not everything needs to be thrown away the day it expires," but he sat down to pout at the kitchen table, nursing a mug of tea.

"I'm famished," he moaned, curling his legs up under him on the chair. "I don't know why you took me back here last night. There's nothing to eat! And I'm starving!"

"I'm glad to see you're hungry," I said. "Let me throw on some trousers and we'll go out for brunch."

But when we got to the Duke of Buckingham, ordered fry-ups and found a seat, Kyle was no longer famished; he could barely eat anything. "I wish I could have a Yorkshire pudding," he complained, picking at the sautéed mushrooms on his plate. "I so badly wanted lunch foods, I think."

I had to swallow a mouthful of fried toast with beans. Then I said, "Well, they don't do roasts until half-one, I'm afraid."

"This whole meal is nauseating me."

I found this cause for concern. "Well, you have to eat something. What do you want, darling? A roast? I'm sure we can find one at another pub. Sandwich? Scones? Chocolate bar? Spag bol? I'm trying to help, Kyle, you have to eat. Do you want to go to Maison Bertaux and have a mille-feuille? Anything, darling, you have to eat." I couldn't shake visions of old Clyde, emaciated and exhausted; it seemed each time I conjured this he looked increasingly haggard. I wasn't going to let that happen to Kyle. Suddenly I was determined to force-feed him if I had to, spearing ragged cooked tomato and a hunk of Cumberland sausage on my fork. "Come on, have a bite."

"If I eat that, I'll vomit."

"Well, what are you in the mood for?"

"I said Yorkshire pudding," he repeated. "Maybe a plain bap or something. Something bready."

"That's hardly enough to get you through the day," I said. "Do you want some of my toast?"

He stuck his tongue out at the idea. "I've my own fried bread, thank you, to eat if I want it. I don't want it."

"Do you want to go to The Stockpot?"

"No, the idea of eating around a bunch of queens makes me queasy. I don't want to be spied on by drag queens while I eat."

"Then we went to the wrong place," I said, glancing around at the clientele.

"I can't help thinking that they all know." Kyle was twisting his paper napkin in his hands.

"Nobody knows, darling. No one's looking at you. You're just being nervous." I said this to assuage my own fears, but inside I was panicking, trying to figure out how I'd get him to eat. When I was sick as a child my mother would just force me to eat anything, cloudy soups and things from cans, tins of sardines and anything oily. "Are you in the mood for some sardines?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was speaking another language. "Sardines?" He gaped, eyes wide with disbelief. "Really?"

"On toast, maybe?" Now I no longer had an appetite for my meal. "Christ, Kyle, you have to eat something!"

"Why?"

"So you don't starve to death!"

"Oh." He cocked his head, narrowing his eyes to look at something; my back was to the bar and to the entrance, so I couldn't say what. "Never mind." He pushed his plate of food away. "It seems I've completely lost any appetite I did have."

Kyle had noticed Kenny, who was apparently also having a noontime pub brunch, as evidenced by his pint of soapy-smelling lager and big, stupid grin. Kenny came over to chat with us, and I had the deep, unsettled feeling that Eric would probably be with him, although he didn't say as much immediately.

"Weird that I spotted you," Kenny said, holding the pint in one hand, tapping his fingernails against it. He needed a haircut, but Eric had him in some hideous tight yellow polo shirt, very much the sort of thing Eric himself would wear. Maybe it was Eric's, from his rower days. That was the sort of thing he would do. The frayed old barely cornflower jeans, though, that was all Kenny. "Was everyone up late last night celebrating? Eric's in a revelatory mood."

Kyle was digging into me with a look, don't you dare mention a single thing about me or AIDS to that brat. (Clearly I wasn't going to.) "Yes, well." Kyle was trying his best to seem disinterested. "Life's so busy, sometimes you just, um…" He trailed off, shrugging. "Well, we were doing something last night, anyway."

"Oh, got it." Kenny winked at us.

Not wishing to contradict this assumption, I nodded. "Right. Yeah."

Then Eric found us. "Have you boys heard the news yet? It's a dark morning for someone, I'm sure." His glee was thinly cloaked. "Donovan is dead."

"Who, you mean the singer?" Kenny asked.

"No, Clyde Donovan," said Eric, shoving Kenny out of the way to make room for his bulk against our table.

"We know," Kyle muttered, looking away.

"Oh, yes." Kenny nodded. "Clyde. From Her Majesty's Home Office."

"Yes," I said. "Well, no longer. I suspect the funeral will be sometime this week, although Wendy should tell me exactly."

"Ah, of course." Kenny rolled his eyes. "The right-honorable the Viscountess Black."

"Yes," I repeated. "My friend, Wendy."

"We were with him last night," Kyle said, crushing his paper napkin into a ball in his hands. "When he died, you know, Eric. How'd you find out, anyway?"

"There is an obit," Eric replied. "In the Sunday Telegraph."

"Really!" Kenny whistled his appreciation, smirking. "Old Clyde Donovan of Her Majesty's Home Office? Who knew he was so popular? I mean, who goes around constantly thinking about the Home Office?"

"You'd do well to learn everything you can about the Home Office," Kyle said, kindly. "Assuming you'd regret being deported back to Ireland."

I wasn't interested in hearing a conversation between Kyle and Kenny about the Home Office, or the legality of Kenny's residency. So I asked, "What did the obituary say?"

"That he was a loyal servant," Eric reported. "English with Herbert Garrison at Oxford, close friend of His Grace, the Duke of Pederasty. Enjoyed racquetball and was a member of something — oh, White's. I've been thinking of joining, actually. Perhaps I'll submit an application, now that I know they're down a member—"

"Nobody wants a fucking Nazi immigrant in their precious hoity-toity Tory club," Kyle spat. "Good luck."

"No, but I'm sure they'd appreciate the wit and repartee of an educated Tory businessman such as myself," said Eric.

"An educated German Tory homosexual, you mean. Do you think you'll ask for an associate membership for your live-in lover, or will he have to make his own?"

"The last thing I'd like is to belong the some fucking club," said Kenny.

"Shut up, Kenny. Listen here, Jew. Jewess. You're an abominable drain on this society. One day I'll sit in the loo crying tears of joy as I read your obituary: Cunty fat-arse Liberal Jewess, died of an infection caused due to unusually high concentration of sand in his vagina—"

"Fuck you, Eric!"

"—son of inestimable American bitch MP, middling post at moderately successful advertising firm, never married. That was the last line of Clyde's obit, too, which you'll see if you pick it up. He never married. Nothing about fucking blokes, of course. Or Page Three girls, for that matter. That's all Clyde ever was, and that's all you'll ever be, Kyle. He never married."

"Get out of my sight!" Kyle yelled. This attracted the attention of some drinkers nearby, and a pair of blokes flirting over bloody marys at an adjacent booth.

"Don't think I shall," Eric said. "It's a free pub. A free house by definition. You can't make me."

Kenny rolled his eyes, tugging at Eric's sleeve. "Maybe we'd better clear out."

"I'm still drinking."

"There are other pubs," Kenny said.

"But this one comes with the advantage of spoiling Kyle's lunch," Eric replied. "Not that he seems to be eating it, being anorexic or whatever. Or are you just hungover? You have that sallow look about you, Kyle, as if you've been up half the night vomiting Stanley's semen by the bucketload. That's understandable, I couldn't digest it, either."

"Oh my god," I said, really exasperated. "Will you two please leave us alone?"

Eric's hand curled tighter around his pint. He bent over me, smirking, and said, "No."

"Then we're leaving." I stood, grabbing my coat, slipping it on and tying the buckle without buttoning the front closed.

Kyle just sat there, chin resting on his fist, eyes down on the floor.

"I think you should just run away from your problems," Eric said, grabbing at a piece of congealed fried bread on my plate. He was about to take a bite of it when I grabbed his wrist and yanked it from his mouth.

"Don't you dare fucking eat my food," I said, not that it mattered or that I was planning on finishing it.

Eric snapped his hand back, shocked, setting the pint of Guinness down on the table, where it sloshed over onto Kyle's plate. "You were done with it," he spat, "so what's it to you?"

"If you're going to eat another man's scraps, you should wait for him to leave the table."

Kenny stepped forward, putting a hand on Eric's shoulder. "Let it go," he said, meeting my gaze with a kind of mutual détente, like a plea. "It's not worth it. They're leaving."

"You've ruined my morning," Eric said, pushing me aside to take my seat at the table. "How's that, Jew?" He peered across at Kyle, trying to get his attention. "What, are you sad about Clyde? It's better now. He was miserable."

Slowly, Kyle raised his head. He blinked at Eric, scowling. Finally, he said, "I know he was miserable, Eric, I was there when he died." Kyle got up, pushing his plate of food into Eric's drink, fumbling for his coat hanging off a brass hook. When he was all buttoned up, he turned to Kenny and said, "It's all yours," gesturing at the seat he'd vacated.

I turned back to stare at Kenny, at the mess of his hair and the scowl on his face. "See you at the funeral," I said, trying to be polite, not knowing what else to say.

Eric called back, "I won't be caught dead there!"

We migrated to a coffee shop on Soho Square, where Kyle had a latte and a croissant. "It's not as good as the ones we got in Covent Garden," he said. "You know, that one time."

"Let's walk over there," I suggested, eyeing the dregs of my black coffee. "Pick something up."

"No, I don't think so." Kyle meant to put his head on my shoulder, but then he remembered himself, and leaned back in the booth. "It's quite far, isn't it? I prefer to sit here, stewing in my misery. I wish you'd never fucked that obese sociopath, Stanley. I wish you'd never fucked him and brought him into my life."

"He wasn't obese when I fucked him."

"He's not obese now, for that matter, but I just hate him so much! You've no idea."

I thought I had a pretty clear idea, but didn't say anything about it. "Covent Garden is just around the corner," I said. "Let's walk over for some croissants."

"No, I'm tired." He finished his coffee, and pushed the mug away. "Take me home, all right?"

Kyle would not abide by the Tube again, so we sat in the back of a black cab, caught in the gears of Oxford Circus, pedestrians darting between us and queues of double-deckers. "This is so aggravating," he moaned, impatient to glide past Marble Arch, down Bayswater Road, past the palace, up to his flat. "I cannot go anywhere without running into someone. Last week it was Craig, this week Eric."

"You ran into Craig last week?" I asked.

"Yes, at Fortnum and Mason. Buying shortbread. I mean, I was buying shortbread. He was having lunch. With his wife."

"What do you think they were discussing?" I asked, as if I cared what Craig talked about with his wife over lunch. "Reconciliation?"

Kyle snorted at that. "Please. Probably their children. I didn't stand there eavesdropping. He shot me a nasty look and I moved on. You know, for the largest city in the world, London is entirely too small."

"London is not the largest city in the world," I said. "Bombay should be larger. Or Delhi. Hong Kong. Something like that."

"Well, really, that's hardly my point. My point is that this city is enormous, and here I can't go anywhere without running into someone unpleasant. I should board myself up inside my bedroom, never leave. Except I'd have to go to work, and I'd run into people going to and fro, I'm sure."

"Maybe you don't have to go to work, though," I suggested. I was having a moment of grim clarity.

"That's ridiculous." Finally we'd made it to Marble Arch, and Kyle was too obstinate to notice. "I won't stop working, Stanley, that's simply absurd. As long as I can will my body to move, I'll work. It's just who I am, you know, it's just what I do."

"Fine," I said.

"Okay."

We sat in the back of this cab, staring at each other, tumbling over badly paved roads, past strollers waiting for their companions at the Queensway crossing. Tall buses sped by us. Kyle's hands were trembling on his thighs. The enormity of the situation was suffocating, so I opened the window.

"Close that," he said, inching to the side of the cab, as far from me as possible. "It's chilly out."

It was hardly chilly for January, but I supposed it was a bit damp. Even when I closed the window, Kyle kept trembling. So much we weren't really discussing. Then again, I was hardly eager.

XXX

Clyde's funeral was the next week, a Saturday afternoon. Kyle did not bother with a taxi, choosing instead to call a car that picked us up from his flat and drove us to Clerkenwell Green. This was gratuitous, totally absurd, and yet I did not argue. I could not decide if indulging all of Kyle's urges for creature comforts was going to be his undoing, or not. He should be happy, I felt, so satisfied that his life was something worth living. At the same time, though, I wondered if perhaps humanizing him — insisting we take the bus, treating him as if nothing extenuating was at play — would remind both of us that he was not actively dying. I was too weary to argue, which was the deciding factor.

The morning before, Kyle had called me from work and told me to wear the clothes he'd bought me a few weeks before, to go to dinner with Token and Wendy. Staring at myself dressed in his vanity mirror, I wanted to rip them off, light them on fire, throw them off the balcony. My entire life I had liked nice things if I could have them, and now these corduroy trousers just felt binding and scratchy to me.

The funeral was in a small Anglican church with a lush, decrepit yard, high iron fences and brick retaining walls on all sides. The steeple was the highest thing in the near vicinity, towering over the "green," a compact asphalt knot of streets lines with coffee shops and studios, a former radical hotbed. It felt both right and inappropriate for Clyde's funeral. Mr. and Mrs. Donovan had their son cremated, and his tainted ashes sat in an urn on the pulpit. The place was bloody packed. "Who the hell are most of these people?" I asked Kyle. We chose to sit in the back so he could rest his head on my shoulder while we chatted idly instead of paying attention.

"I don't know." Before the service began the room was just buzzing, Clyde's miserable parents receiving guests who patted them on their shoulders without a word of condolence. "From eavesdropping a bit I believe that lady over there" — Kyle used his shoulder to single out a weeping old maid with a streaky bun — "is his secretary. Well, was. You know." He sighed, and laid his head back against me. "Do you think Caroline would cry at my funeral?"

"What a silly thing to consider." In my mind, I was certain I'd be too wracked with sobs to take notice of who would even attend Kyle's funeral. It also occurred to me that I hadn't any concept of a Jewish funeral — did they cremate? Who delivered the eulogy? Would I be able to do it? Would I have to do it? I was about to ask him, and then Butters arrived.

"Oh, my gosh," he said. He was wearing an old black suit that was too small for him and he looked about ready to tear the whole thing off. "I was worried I'd be late."

"I wouldn't have worried," Kyle said. "If I were you, I wouldn't have come."

"Oh, but I never disliked Clyde." Butters took a seat next to us, forcing me to shove down the pew. "All those English tutorials, you know. I remember him struggling to come up with things to say. Do you remember that class on Georgics and pastorals? When Garrison asked Clyde to compare The Ecologues to Spencer? And he went off for about 20 minutes on The Faerie Queen and after he finished he stammered, 'Well, and that's The Faerie Queen,' — and I swear to god, Kyle, you turned to him and said, 'Yes, it certainly is' and the entire room erupted in laugher."

"No," I said.

"Yes," said Kyle, "but that's really more of a story about me than about Clyde, isn't it?"

"Oh." Butters blushed, working his thumbs together in a nervous way. "I suppose it is."

"Maybe you can tell it at my funeral."

"Oh, no. Kyle, I'm sorry, I completely forgot to say — you look excellent."

Kyle rolled his eyes. "You mean for one of the walking dead? Yes, well, rigor mortis hasn't settled in, I suppose — yet. It won't be pretty at the end, though, we were in the room with Clyde—"

"You mean, at his bedside?"

"Yes, in hospital, Stanley and I — apparently he wanted me there, although he wasn't conscious or anything, maybe it was meaningful. Perhaps that can be my last calling, bringing comfort to ex-lovers at death's door. That sounds like me, Stanley, doesn't it?"

The very conversation was driving me mad, alternating wills to stand up and march out, or just burst into tears. I hadn't cried at all — it wasn't in my nature to do so. But this church full of grieving old people was only causing me to dwell on Kyle, the way his skin felt clammy and his intravenous puncture wounds were scabbing over in the crooks of his arms. "Yes," I managed, hating myself for feeling anything near sadness at Old Clyde's damn funeral. "Exactly like you."

Token and Craig delivered eulogies — Craig's officious, Token's sentimental. Craig praised Clyde's service to the British Empire, the model civil servant, a good friend to have when one needed a visa for some hothouse African equatorial province in a pinch. Once they went on safari. I hadn't known that, but it made total sense. All of Craig's poor children and his long-suffering wife trapped in a jeep on some grassy tundra with Clyde Donovan — it must have been great fun to grow up in that household.

Token's eulogy, by contrast, was almost sweet. "The most caring, deeply loving man I've ever known," he said, speaking in generalities. It made me wonder if perhaps Token had never fallen for Craig because he was in love with Clyde. Then I wondered why I cared. Wendy was sitting in the front, beside her husband, and every time the organ broke into a hymn, she looked back at me to offer a wan smile.

After the service, there was a small reception in the yard behind the church. The girl Rebecca stood there crying, utterly alone. There was weak punch in plastic bowls, and Clyde's parents sat in folding chairs, his mother holding his ashes, shaking her head. "This seems wrong," I said to Kyle and Butters, looking around at the scene before me. "That girl is really distraught."

"She should be distraught," said Kyle. "She's a gold-digging whore and her closeted meal ticket's died from AIDS. That would ruin anyone's day."

"Oh, this is awful." Butters covered his ears with his hands. "That poor, poor girl."

"But do you think she even knew?" I asked. "Have some sympathy, Kyle."

"I'm hungry. Can we go, please?"

"Well, I don't mean to be rude, but it's been a long day," Butters said. "Perhaps some food is in order."

"There are palmiers," I said, and there were — on silver trays, next to the punch.

"I need real food. I'm not going to stand in a churchyard eating palmiers."

"Fine." I handed my plastic cup of punch to Kyle, and said, "We'll get something to eat, but first I need to say goodbye to Wendy."

She was standing under an oak tree, drinking punch and reading the memorial pamphlet. Clyde Donovan, it said on the front, with a big picture of Clyde at about age 30, smiling in a turtleneck sweater, 10 April 1946 – 27 January 1986. "What a nice service," she said as I came over. "Don't you think?"

"It was fine."

"I almost didn't come this morning. I didn't sleep at all last night. I thought getting full-time help would mean I slept more, but there's something about keeping a baby in the house that deters one from resting. Oh, and Token was up all night, writing his eulogy. He was so nervous, he read it to me six times over breakfast."

"I wish you'd told him to remove the part about Clyde being the most loving man in Britain."

"Why? That's how Token felt."

"Clyde was the most boring man in Britain — I mean, but everyone knows that already."

"Some people really liked him! Look, you cannot just — you can't just camp your way through this funeral. A man is dead, Stanley, you mustn't act so disaffected. What if it was someone you cared about?"

"Well, it wasn't," I snapped. "Listen, we're leaving. Give my love to the baby."

"And give mine to Kyle."

"Oh, you love him now?"

"No, but I'm afraid if I seem uncaring, his needy, existential angst will prevent you from having your way."

I declined to tell her that I hadn't gotten my way for several weeks, for reasons she couldn't begin to fathom. Not that it was really on my mind. Kyle and I hadn't discussed sex at all for a week. He had been sweating at night, soaking through pajamas and sheets and into the mattress. He didn't complain, just got up and washed his hair, then stroked it into complicity. His body seemed the same as it had always been — pale, well-tended, graceful and long. It was odd to think, suddenly in this churchyard, that his body might be changing. Already there were puncture wounds and bruises where he'd been jabbed in hospital.

"And you still owe me a dinner date!" she chided. "I want to have dinner at the club, Stanley, you and Kyle owe me an engagement—"

"Fine, Wendy, we will. Yes." I kissed Wendy goodbye on the cheek, and wished she'd forget about going to her club. I couldn't bear to put these fussy clothes on again and act as though everything was all right, that life was so manageable that I could stand to sit for two hours in someone's precious club.

I made one more stop before leaving. The girl Rebecca was distraught, and alone, so I made a point of going to her and offering my condolences. "You're so kind!" she wailed, falling into my arms. I held her, standing there, with Kyle glaring at me across the courtyard. I shrugged at him. What could I do? All of her weight was resting on me, her big fake breasts pressed to my front, while she sobbed, "I love him, I love him." Had he loved her? I couldn't imagine it. Maybe her love made him feel potent, important, normal. Maybe he loved her, and his premature death spared her all the anguish she'd have had later, when that love crumbled around them in middle age, like the brittle shell of a macaron. Maybe there were so many types of love, and Clyde was unable to reciprocate that which he won with his despicable personality. It didn't matter to me, and I began to wish she'd get off of me. When she finally did, she mumbled a brief, "Thank you," and slunk off, still crying. I pitied that girl, and hoped she'd live long enough to forget about Clyde.

XXX

Sitting down to lunch, I turned to Butters and said, "So, I see Eric found it too trying to make it to the funeral."

"Making good on what he said last week," Kyle remembered.

Butters looked up from his place setting and sighed. "I did ask him to come. He seems to feel Clyde wasn't worth his time. No one forces Eric Cartman to adhere to their own agenda." Poor Butters was looking haggard, and he yawned into his menu. "Excuse me. It's just been such an emotionally draining week."

Kyle was tapping his fingers against the white tablecloth, scanning the café for a waitress and a menu. "I didn't realize you were so fond of old Clyde, Miss B," he said, straining to get the attention of a server at the next table without seeming impatient.

"You know I wasn't." Butters had taken his suit jacket off and was rolling his blue checked sleeves up to his elbows, careful and precise. "Two funerals in a week, though, it's an awful lot of funerals."

"I'm so sorry, Butters." Kyle finally stopped looking for a server's attention and turned to stare across the table at Butters. He grabbed Butters' hand and clasped it. "I'm so sorry. Who died?"

"My father."

"Oh my god!" Kyle dropped Butters' hand now. "I had no idea!"

"Yes, he died." Butters rolled his eyes. "He died last week. Stanley was there when I learned. He—"

"You knew?" Kyle turned to me, eyebrows arching. "You knew her father died and you didn't tell me?"

"I'm sorry," I said, feeling the barest amount of regret. "I came to see you and then we went to hospital and Clyde, you know, it's just — I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Miss B. Are you quite all right?"

Butters was about to answer when our waiter came with menus. He shrugged and said, "Let's talk about it after ordering," paging through to the beverages, the liquor list. "I was going to have a coffee, but I think I'm in a more celebratory mood. Would it be disrespectful to Clyde to have a bottle of champagne? Would you boys share it with me?"

"What are we celebrating?" I asked.

"My father's timely death, of course," Butters said.

"Miss B!" Kyle gasped through a slight smile. "That's so rotten of you."

Butters' menu snapped shut. "Is it rotten? Gosh, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be horrible. I don't need to toast his death, but I am celebrating my reunion with my mother. Is that all right?"

I stared at Butters in confusion, trying to pick out the tone in his voice. "Miss B, are you being sarcastic?"

"What? No, of course not. Gosh, I'm sorry, I really am sorry. Am I ruining things? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I just don't—"

"Butters." Kyle grabbed one of Butters' wrists, and clasped his hand again. "It's quite all right."

"What's all right?"

"Whatever you're feeling," said Kyle. "It's perfectly good. Go on. Order champagne."

And so we did. Kyle had a plate of artichoke heart with clarified butter and a bowl of minestrone soup; Butters ordered linguine with clams, and I felt that was best suited to the dry, ripe champagne we were drinking. I had a bacon avocado sandwich served open-face, on very thick, toasted egg bread, drizzled in a syrupy balsamic; the toast itself was slathered in thick gobs of mayo and carpeted with rocket, a dismal mess of a sandwich. My hunger compelled me to eat, though. Palmiers hadn't been enough. Yet the champagne was bitter in my mouth, stinging as it went down. I decided I didn't care and had a second glass, and a third.

Twirling a clutch of linguine around his fork, Butters looked at the bottle and said, "I think we'd best have another."

"Yes," I said. "This one's on me."

"Yes," Kyle said. "For Clyde."

"For old Clyde," I agreed.

When the second bottle arrived, the waitress opened it and we clinked our glasses together. This was a cheaper bottle, cheaper and older, and I found it less effervescent. It went down easier.

"Shall we share fond memories of Clyde?" I was drunk, drunk enough to ask such an inane question.

"He once came to a show I was performing," said Butters. "With Token. I was touched by that, at the time. I felt it so significant, so gracious of him. Later I learned he wanted me, which I suppose is flattering in a different way, but less flattering all the same. I had no idea at the time, none at all, and I'm not sure where I heard it. Was it from Eric? One of you?"

"We might have told you, yes," Kyle confirmed, stirring and sniffing (but not quite finding it in himself to finish) his minestrone. "I think Token told us, he said something about you — my god, yes, it was last year, wasn't it, last year at Camp—"

"That was three years ago," I said. "Or two, I don't remember, I can't count."

"I don't remember much at all, I must have been—"

"You were inebriated, let's say, darling, and you burst it out in front of Dougie. I went home with you that night. August, 1982."

"How do you remember those things with such precision?" Butters asked.

"Yes," Kyle echoed. "How?"

Because it was right after Gary died, and I remembered all the things I felt for him so sharply, the unease of forgetting he'd existed, then forgetting that he'd died. Because Kyle took me to Islington to have dinner with his parents, and Ike was there. Because Ike was so infrequently there before he moved back to London, his disdain for me was crippling and that was the night he announced his engagement, to no one's great joy but Kyle's, not even his own. Because it was the night after Kyle coaxed a tense confession of love from me. Because we'd fucked that previous evening, and when I awoke in the morning with my heart in my throat he was just downstairs, cooking me breakfast. Why wouldn't I remember it?

"I've a good memory," I said. "I know these things."

Butters finished chewing his mouthful of linguine before saying, "Yes, well, I suppose that's my fondest memory of Clyde. That and Fairy Queen, but as you so rightly point out, Kyle, it's got little enough to do with him."

Kyle said, "Right."

"So what's your favorite memory of Clyde?" I asked.

"What?" Kyle flushed, his fingers tensing on his bread knife. "Oh, I have so many."

"But just pick one for us," I said.

"Yes, I'd like to hear." Butters sat up straighter, and leaned conspiratorially over the table. "You can cover Stanley's ears, if you like. I'm very interested."

"Oh, you know Clyde and I," Kyle said, trying to decide whether to put his butter knife down on his plate or to set it on the table. He kept moving it back and forth, nervous, unsure where to look or how to handle this question. "We have such an unusual history, I'm hardly mourning him, but I wouldn't wish — I can't conceive…" Of dying the same way, emaciated and confused, barely conscious, skin scabbing over with lesions. Kyle's voice began to tremble, and he began to shake: "He wasn't a bad fellow, obviously, he wasn't so bad to me. Clyde never hurt anyone. He didn't deserve to be broken like that."

"Darling," I said. "You needn't continue."

"But I want to." Kyle moved his butter knife to the edge of his artichoke plate. "My favorite memory of Clyde is this: There was a night once when I was feeling lonely; I think I'd been left. It was that, that Frenchman—"

"Christophe," Butters supplied.

"Yes, Miss B. Christophe, he left me. He stole my silver! Very upsetting. I went down to the pub to confront him and found him with another man. The nerve, do you know? I was — well, I was distraught. So I went home via Avondale Park. It's out of the way, of course, but I needed to think. I certainly wasn't cottaging there, and I wasn't in the mood for anything, either, but I just sort of … ran into him there. Clyde, I mean. He started asking me about whether I spent much time in Avondale Park, I said no, it was dark out, might he walk me home, and before we'd even left the park, he was sort of, sort of … touching my back. I remember thinking, is this some sort of signal? I never take chances like that, but I turned around and asked, 'Are you alone, Clyde?' In my huskiest voice, do you know?" Kyle lowered his voice, and said a very deep-throated, "Like this, do you know? Are you … .alone?" He cleared his throat before continuing: "And he sort of grabbed my hand and led me sort of behind some bushes, where he said, 'I want to show you something.' So I knelt down—"

"Kyle."

"—and, and sort of … felt out this massive thing. This massive, purple thing, it was glorious, I don't use the word glorious lightly, but to have seen this thing, Stanley. Miss B. It was … I just put it in my mouth right there."

"Kyle, please."

"Once he was hard, I didn't waste a moment. I just dropped down on all fours, and let him have me right in the bushes." Kyle put his elbows on the table, ears in his hands, shaking his head. "He was so bad at it, it was just pathetic. But I was in ecstasy, panting on my knees, thinking to myself, 'Broflovski, you imbecile, you'll never find a man like this again, he's a statistical impossibility. He'll ruin you, utterly ruin you, he'll stretch you out, no man could ever want you again after you've been with this horse, this utter beast.' My sleeves were rolled to my elbows and I felt my elbows pushing into the mud, it was so rainy that summer, and the grass streaking on my rolled-up sleeves and the waist of my trousers cutting into my thighs. He was big, so impossibly big. Before I knew what was happening I was just climaxing all over myself, face in the mud. I remember thinking that if he kept going I would come again, and again, and I didn't care how stretched out I got, so long as I kept coming like that. But before I could, it was over, he fell on top of me. He said, 'Cheers, that was brilliant.' I was sitting there in the mud, covered in come and mud, my thighs smeared with it, my cheeks covered in bits of grass. I said, 'Would you walk me home, Clyde?'

"And he looked down at me, and I saw his face sort of fall from this triumphant smirk of conquer into a crestfallen Oh, right, this thing is still lying in the mud in front of me. One of those bitter realizations, as if watching something die in front of your face, the shock and displeasure mingling. And he said to me, he said … he said, 'I have to go.' And he went, and I walked home myself, with mud on my trousers and my pants perfectly ruined. Took a shower, washed myself out, got in bed.

"For a time I was so disappointed. And then, for a time I felt perhaps if I just loved him, tried to show him another man could love him — but I learned very quickly that wasn't Clyde. Old Clyde … for a while I told myself I wasn't like him, that the pain I felt others did to me, but he caused his own anguish, he kept himself miserable. Then I saw him with that Page Three girl — do you recall, Stanley? … Stanley?"

I hadn't realized he was paying attention to me whilst he was speaking. "Yes," I said, "of course. That was … very distracting."

"Well, who does that?" Kyle shrugged. "More than we realize, I think."

"I thought we knew them all," Butters said. "I thought that was the point."

"Mmm, I don't know." Kyle's mood seemed to lift as he spoke, dipping his spoon back into his soup, stirring the bits of pasta and tomato around the congealing broth, creating a whorl at the center of the footed bowl. "I like to think I harbor a rather sensitive and accurate ability, and yet I'm not sure I would have known about old Clyde, you know, had I not known him in his youth, for years—"

"Crossed his path in Avondale Park," I interjected. Although I was not done with my sandwich, and had not eaten anything more all day than a palmier or two, I was quickly losing my appetite.

Butters shot me a sympathetic look.

Kyle wasn't looking at me, but eyeing his soup as if he were trying to will himself to eat some. Soups with pastas and beans and other starchy things becomes clumpy if left to sit, and I tried to tell myself that Kyle was debating his enthusiasm for consuming mush. But that was hypocritical; I no longer wanted to eat, either. Suddenly, I hated this meal, hated being here, hated Clyde, hated that he'd been so selfish as to die.

"Oh, this is exhausting," Kyle said. He rubbed his temples, and I wondered if he had a headache, or was similarly frustrated with the conversation. "I'm sorry, this is too much. Clyde's not worth this much angst. He never was. Miss B — tell me about your father."

Butters seemed surprised. "Why?" he asked. "What do you want to know?"

"I don't know," said Kyle. "You have my condolences, really. I wish I'd known; I would have tried to be there for you. Is there anything I can do?"

"What? Oh, no, gosh, no, I'm fine. Pleased, really. He was such an unpleasant person, and we never got along. Long before he suspected me of having 'inclinations' " — he made inverted commas with his fingers — "he was hard on me. I was made to do absurd things, rearranging the pantry items in compulsive order, digging holes and made to refill them. Maybe he suspected. Maybe he was trying to work it out of me. I don't know. He was in the war, you know, at Normandy. He had a very militaristic outlook. I was always disciplined, confined to my room." Butters sighed. "Well, he's dead now. We've never had a relationship to speak of. And I hadn't seen him since 1967, when I told him I was moving to London with Bradley. … That felt good, actually, perhaps that was the finest hour of my life. My great triumph."

"That's so horrible," Kyle said. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what I would have done if that had happened to me."

"It's all right," Butters replied. "I had the love of a good man. That was well enough for me."

"I'm very sorry, Butters," Kyle repeated. "Really, truly."

"There's really no need to be sorry. I'm glad he's dead. It's brought me back in touch with my mother, actually, which is enough for me. I was just in Durham for a bit and I … well, I sort of enjoyed it. I had a difficult time deciding between whether to spite the old bastard by bringing Dougie with, or just leaving him here. So, I left him here. It was nice to get a break from Douglas, and my mother and Desdemona got on famously. She'll come down here and visit me, I believe. It's not perfect, of course, but I think things are healing a bit."

"Aren't you sad at all?" I asked.

"No."

"Not even a little?" Kyle said.

"No, not even a little. The whole thing was wonderfully pleasant. Exhausting, grueling, but cathartic and good all the same. Don't you know what that's like?"

Thinking of my birthday, I nodded. "Yes, I do."

Kyle nudged my calf under the table with his wingtip. "You've been very quiet today, Stanley. Penny for your thoughts?"

"I should require at least two pennies," I said, not wanting to sit at the table for hours, gossiping idly, discussing funerals and their guests of honor.

Rolling his eyes, Kyle slouched down to reach into his pocket, laying on the table a two-pence piece. "Here."

I looked at it. "Thanks"

"Well?"

I rolled my eyes, and crossed my arms tighter, lower on my torso. "Everyone is somehow wounded. I've no love for Clyde, but why must we sit here discussing him? I've greater concerns."

"Ah, your great concerns," Kyle said in a tone of mocking. He pushed the coin toward me. "Go on, dear. Give me something to work with."

"I don't like being put on the spot. Get your two pence away from me. Clyde doesn't care if he had you. He's dead and I hate that we're talking about him."

"What about Miss B's father?" Kyle asked.

I stood up, tired of sitting after the hired cars and churches and late luncheons. "I'm truly, truly sorry," I said to Butters, not even sparing one glance toward Kyle. "Either that he's dead or that he's dead and he treated you so miserably that you seemingly feel nothing. Either, or both, I'm not sure. Also, that I never mentioned it to Kyle. I think you can understand that I'm reasonably distracted of late."

"Of course," said Butters.

Kyle said nothing.

"I'll settle the check."

"Oh, you don't have to," I heard Butters say as I sought out our server. I paid what we owed with a charge card, wondering what would happen to Clyde's money, if it would default into his parents' accounts, and what would happen to Kyle's money, what would happen to Kyle's flat. As I signed my name, it occurred to me that I was lucky to have my own place to live, and more certain that I should hold onto my home with a tight grip.

Much later that evening, we were curled together in bed, Kyle and I, listening to the radio and not doing much of anything. Inside it was balmy, the heater gurgling at full-blast, inefficient. Kyle was sweating in my arms, his skin sticky in my hands, but I didn't flinch or complain, just content to be with him. He said he was cold despite the warmth, the bedclothes, an old sweater over his kimono, and I was inclined to believe him. But he sat up, peeling off the damp sweater. It was navy cable-knit cotton, not at all his style. "This is Clyde's, you know," he said, leaning over to switch the radio off. "Does that bother you?"

It did, a bit. A lot, actually. "Not really," I said. "Why, are you wearing it for sentimental reasons?"

"No." He shrugged, slipping it over his head and down his lean arms. "It's a coincidence, actually. I never realized he left it here until I was looking for something recently that I wouldn't mind perspiring on." He huddled down beside me, yawning, his eyes heavy.

"Should I be worried about you?" I asked, as if I weren't already.

Quickly, he said, "No," and then he paused. "Well, yes, I mean, you should, probably," he corrected. "Generally, I mean. Not necessarily in this moment specifically. I'm not presently ill. I'll be all right. I think when I'm dying, we'll know."

The thought horrified me. "Well, how are we going to know that, darling?"

"If I'm distressed, I think I should inform you. Yes, if I'm in pain I'll be insufferable. All right?"

"Yes. Splendid."

"Would you be a dear and turn off the light?"

I reached over for the chain on Kyle's porcelain vase-pedestal lamp, pastoral scene of a suitor in powdered wig handing a flower to a girl in a cream-puff dress, obliging demurely. It was a kitschy sort of thing, and it went out with a bit of a pop. The room was dark now, Kyle's wet hair tucked under my chin, and all the traffic of Holland Park Road audible even in the distance. It was only 10 p.m., or maybe it was later. Kyle's electronic alarm clock was on his side of the bed. There was no way of knowing.

He murmured something against my chest.

I asked, "What's that?"

"I said, I'm sorry for all that … talk of Clyde earlier." The wet silk of the kimono bunched on my chest beneath his arms.

"It's all right, darling. It's nothing."

"So we're not mourning his loss, all right, I think we're both fine with that."

"I'm fine with it."

"But surely you must be angry, dear, I mean — I shouldn't bring up all these ex-lovers of mine. It's cruel to you."

"How is it cruel to me?" I asked.

"Doesn't it bother you at all," he pressed, his fingers boring deeper into my flesh, "that other men have had me? Just a bit?"

"Yes." I don't know why I was honest with him this time. Perhaps I was tired, too tired to unwind the difficult threads of his tangled heart. "All right, Kyle, yes, it bothers me, the thought of any other man having you bothers me. I didn't like to think of it then and I don't like to think of it now. But what would you have me do, seek them all out for vengeance? Sob about it? Console myself with the number of men I've been with?"

"No!"

I was surprised that his reaction was so sudden and emphatic. "That's just as well, then. I may have seen the insides of my share of toilets, but I can count the number of meaningful relationships I've had on half a hand. Is that better? To have fucked prodigiously, and loved seldom?"

"It's better to have had very satisfying sex," Kyle said.

This intrigued me. "Oh? And the sex you had with Clyde that evening, in Avondale Park, was that satisfying?"

Against my chest, Kyle shook his head. "No. Oh, Stanley, no. He had a big cock, but that was all. It didn't mean anything. It meant nothing. I wanted it to, of course, because I don't — I don't want to be that person, you know."

"What kind of person?"

"You know." Kyle's eyes shut, and not from tiredness; this much I could tell in the dark. "The kind of person who has very degrading, very unsatisfying sex, just trying to will it into something better. At school, they called me a, well … they called me many horrid things." He paused to sigh, and I felt his breath against my flesh. "They called me a whore, you know, at first I didn't know what it meant. I looked it up in the OED. And I felt they were right, at least in the abstract, because I knew it meant some kind of trade woman, the lowest thing you could be. And that was what I felt like. With Clyde, though — with Clyde, that was dispiritingly whorish. Because I was giving myself to him for a price, validation or whatever."

"But isn't that all sex ever is?" I asked.

"No, with you, sex is special, dear. Please believe me."

"Is it very satisfying?"

"Yes," he hissed. Now his eyes were shut tight, but his words sounded wet. "Emotionally and physically. When you fuck me it's divine, like sitting on a throne of glory."

"But you don't use the word 'glorious' easily," I replied.

"No," said Kyle. "I don't.

XXX

A couple of weeks later I was spending a Saturday night with Kyle. He made a heavy lasagna with a white wine-cream sauce, the layers of pasta hiding spinach and seafood, shreds of scallop, squid, clam, and late winter Scottish cold-water salmon. I'd never had such a dish before, and marveled at its richness. Kyle dismissed my compliments, though. "It's nothing," he said, sealing the leftovers in the casserole dish with cling wrap, presumably to finish later in the week. Maybe we'd eat it the next day for lunch. "My mother would kill me for making this. It's so Italian, do you know? The entire thing is so antithetical to Jewish food. Well, except that it's fattening. I mean, this entire thing would be outright forbidden. Can you imagine?"

I didn't much care if it was fattening or antithetical to Jewish food. I could very well imagine, yet I didn't care to. It had been a while since we'd seen Kyle's family, before the new year, even, and although I knew he was speaking on the phone with his mother on a regular basis, I was in no rush to lie to them about Kyle's illness to their faces. The lasagna was magnificent and I praised Kyle's cooking skills highly. He flushed with pleasure at my compliments and we got in bed early, just to lie together and talk.

"The last few days have been so excellent," he said, yawning into my shoulder as he held me from behind. "I'd enjoy a life of lazy Saturdays like this one."

"I wish you'd quit working, then." This was the most forward thing I'd said to him about his mortality in a week or two, and it was weak and indirect, my voice stinging with possessiveness. I didn't want to share him with anyone anymore, I'd decided. Why couldn't it be just the two of us forever? As soon as I said it I realized I'd get up in the morning and go home alone to my flat, to work for hours on end, typing up a review of the Barbican production of Le Liaisons Dangereuses. I'd taken Kyle when I'd gone to see it the night before, and I remembered my notes next to the typewriter, all the way back in Hoxton. Suddenly I felt lonely without them, so far from my work, but I took solace in his arms around me, the way I felt his chest expanding against my back. That's how we fell asleep.

At 7 the next morning I was awoken by the phone ringing in my ear, to a mouthful of Kyle's hair. The night before was so calm and pointless; Kyle had fallen asleep before I did. He was exhausted, poor Kyle. He rolled over, away from me and the sound of the ringing phone. Not wanting him to wake, I spit hair out of my mouth and answered with a groggy, "hello?"

It was Ike. "Is Kyle there?" he asked immediately.

"Well, good morning," I replied. "Yes, he's here; he's asleep." I was whispering.

"Well, okay." Ike paused for a moment, then commanded: "Wake him up."

"Um." I looked down at sleeping Kyle, his breathing rhythmic and his hair an absolute mess. "I don't know if I should."

"Oh, for the love of Christ! I've had a baby. Well, I haven't, but Flora has. I want to tell him he's an uncle. So wake him up and put him on the phone."

"Congratulations!"

"Godammit, Stanley, put Kyle on."

So I nudged Kyle until he rolled over, yawned, and looked up at me. "Oh," he said, glancing at the alarm clock. "But it's only 7."

"It's your brother," I informed him, handing over the receiver.

And just like that, a smile appeared on his face. Sitting up, he was beaming. "Oh, that's wonderful! What's the name?"

The conversation was short, and Kyle handed the phone back to me to replace on the nightstand. "I've a little nephew," he announced, lying back down next to me. "Winston, apparently. Winston Broflovski. They haven't decided on a middle name, if any. Silly name, don't you think? So very Ike-ish, to name it after Churchill. Predictable. Oh well."

"That's a miserable name," I agreed, settling in against him. The flat was cold but Kyle's body was so hot and sticky; he sweated buckets in his sleep, soaking the bedclothes and my pajamas.

He couldn't lie in bed for long, even tired and queasy; the news excited him to action and I lay in bed watching him dash around, showering and drying his hair; buttoning up a shirt, then a waistcoat.

"I haven't seen my mother in so long," he said. "I've got to seem passable. How do I look?"

"Excellent," I said, my face buried in a stack of pillows. "Beautiful."

"I'm hoping she won't be cross with me for being so scarce."

"Say you've been working," I suggested.

"It's not good enough!"

"Maybe she won't be there."

He sat down at the vanity, pulling on his argyle wool socks, sunny yellow and lavender with white details. Even with the ever-burgeoning popularity of pastels and floral prints, no respectable straight man would wear those socks in thick wool, in mid-winter. "Of course she'll be there. My parents are likely to have been there for hours already. It's their first grandchild." He paused to reach for a pair of light gray brogues, biting his lip. "I hope their joy distracts from my presence."

Only Kyle could make the birth of his brother's first child somehow all about himself. If Ike went on to have myriad children, perhaps he'd internalize the role he played in this: utterly nothing.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, right next to me, running his fingers through my messy hair, brushing it from my eyes. "You need a haircut," he said. "Do you want to come with me to see Evelyn? I really think—"

"No thank you."

"Well, all right." He stood back up, the mattress reverting to its pre-Kyle structure and firmness. "I don't know how long I'll be. Will you be here when I return?"

"I think that depends on when you return."

"I think I'll go home and write, then."

"I wish you wouldn't say that."

"Say what?" I asked.

"Well, I wish you wouldn't do that," he replied. "Can't you write here?"

"Well, no. You haven't got a typewriter."

"I've a word processor!" he insisted. "And I do so have a typewriter, an old Smith-Corona. It's portable, put away in a closet, I think—"

"Forget it," I said. "My notes are at home."

"You're impossible, Stanley!" He sat back down on the edge of the bed, his fingers back in my hair. "The bris will be eight days from now. I expect you'll be my plus-one."

"I don't know what that is, but of course I'll be your plus-one."

"As it should be. Sit up and give me a farewell kiss." He closed his eyes and pouted his lips at me.

I sat up and kissed him. "It's too early and I'm going back to bed." I lay back down, pulling the quilt back over my head.

"I'll ring you later, dear, with the full report." I didn't hear him go.

XXX

Not knowing what a bris was, I went along to one quite willingly. It was only in the taxi to Kyle's parents' the next weekend that I learned the ritual involved something more than symbolic gestures and prayer. I had been fiddling with my trainers, trying to double-knot the laces, while Kyle explained it to me. I all but pulled my shoe off and threw it at him.

"They're going to what?"

"Don't be shocked," he said, seeming more annoyed than anything. "I know you're familiar with circumcision."

"In theory!" I protested. "There is a marked difference between an encounter with a naked prick, already shorn, and forcing me to watch one be ripped off a baby!"

"Well, when do you think they should do it?" Kyle asked. "In Islam they do it at 13. Or, how would you like to have it done right now? Better to do it in early infancy when he can't feel it."

"Of course he'll feel it! Do you think babies don't have pain receptors?"

"They'll anaesthetize him—"

"Thank god."

"—with wine."

"What!" Now I really felt bad for poor Winston. I hadn't even met him yet; he was eight days old and I couldn't help wondering about his foreskinless future with these people. "That's not a devotional gesture, darling. It's cruel!"

"You only think it's cruel because you're imaging what it might be like to experience it yourself, with only a thimbleful of wine to distract you."

"I think it's cruel because I've spent enough time around howling infants to know that they are ill-prepared to handle pain."

"It'll be six minutes of his early life and then he'll be well past it, forever," Kyle said, waving his hands in front of him, as if to banish the thought of pain from our conversation. "I've had mine done for 30 years now and it doesn't bother me at all."

"It's been 40 years, you mean," I said, thinking of his birthday in late May.

"Yes, well." Kyle sniffed. "I'm used to rounding down. Seeing as I'll never have anything to round up to."

I refused to indulge his self-pity. "I am only saying that six minutes for you or I is fleeting, and six minutes for an eight-day-old infant is a significant amount of time."

"Don't say another thing to me until we get to my parents' house," he snapped. "I'm going to spend the rest of the ride concentrating on keeping my breakfast down." He managed that, at least.

I was used to the Broflovski house swarming with people; often I recognized none of them. They entertained prodigiously, both for political and spiritual circles. Today's gathering was a bit of a mix, but I spied Flora's family and would have followed Kyle to say hello to them, had I not been caught in his mother's web first.

She kissed me on both cheeks. "You look so well, Stan," she said, wiping lipstick smudges from my face with the ball of her hand. "How come I never see you anymore?"

"Oh," I said, "I don't really know. I suppose you'd have to ask Kyle."

"Kyle is so unforthcoming lately! Is something the matter with him? You know you can tell me."

I was dreading having to answer this. "He's all right," I said. "Just swamped with work, of course, utterly swamped. I can barely get his attention." I wondered if embellishing this weren't going too far.

"But surely he could make some time for his mother?"

"Oh, he can hardly make time for me," I replied, figuring this wasn't a lie at all.

She gave me a look that indicated I couldn't compare to her level and sort of import. "It's good of you to come today."

"I've only just learned what a bris is…"

She laughed, girlish and condescending. "Oh, they don't even feel it. I have pictures from Kyle's, of course. And Ike's. Ike was so much less of a thing, you know, the second child, and he was already circumcised, by the orphanage. So we made something up, you know, Mother" — her mother, I presumed — "didn't even want to fly over. But Kyle! Oh, he was so sweet, such a good boy even so young. He sucked on that towel, you know, so content with something in his mouth."

I chose not to remark on that.

"Anyway." She sighed. "Have you met Winston yet? You should go find him. He's got so much Ike in him. It's touching. I should go talk to the caterers, though, and say hello to—" whoever, and she walked away, mid-sentence, wig threatening to slide off of her head.

Mildly disturbed, I found Kyle conversing with Flora. "There you are!" He waved me over. "Flora, you remember Stanley—"

"Yes," she said, rolling her eyes, heavy and pointed. "I know him. I've known him three years."

This was a vivacious girl, beaten back into a shell of whatever she'd been before marrying Ike and moving to London. The first time she'd been here was the weekend before her wedding for a ritual early in the morning at the synagogue; she'd converted in Manchester, apparently, and the ceremony was at some lovely historic home in Wigan. The drama and pathos of the wedding had been draining for everyone involved; not being involved, I found the entire thing an entertaining farce.

Sheila Broflovski could not help wanting to seize control of things, but Flora's parents were losing their daughter to a new family, a new religion, a new big city far away that she knew nothing about. It had taken so much energy on their parts, especially Flora's, to have the wedding where she wanted and how she wanted; to keep so many Labour ministers out of her reception; to keep from alienating her parents, who had never known a single Jew until their daughter consented to marry one. It was mad, a mad nine-month circus of hurt feelings and subsumed identities. I sat on the sidelines reveling in this comedy of manners, reminding myself of Wendy's frequent rejoinder, you're so lucky you're gay. I still didn't think I was lucky, but in a better position to defend myself than Flora was. She certainly resented me.

And I was sure the last thing she wanted was to have her infant ripped from her arms by Kyle.

"Isn't he amazing?" Kyle held the squirming child in his arms, bouncing and shushing him at the same time, whilst Flora stood there looking cross. I imagine on the inside she was fuming. All the mothers I knew were fervently possessive.

"Yes, well," Flora muttered, wringing her hands.

Kyle seemed not to notice. "I do think he's a little bit of me, little Winnie—"

"Ike doesn't like you to call him that," Flora said.

"Oh, but he's precious. Stanley, have you ever seen a more beautiful child?"

I said, "No," mainly out of courtesy.

"He's Ike's little charcoal eyes, of course, and the same black hair—"

"I'd black hair as a baby, and now I'm rather fair," Flora said, tugging at her ponytail, blinking her big, empty green eyes. "I was hoping he'll grow up fair-haired."

"Flora, that's not how genetics works."

"It was just something I was hoping—" She was holding her hands out, reaching for the baby.

But Kyle wasn't ready to give him back. "Do you want to hold him?" he asked me.

I shot him a dubious look. "Oh, I'm horrid with babies," I said.

"But you've all those nieces and nephews," Kyle said, foisting Winston on me; I had no choice but to take hold of him, supporting his head in the crook of my arm.

"And Willa, of course," Kyle added, bracing my wrist. "There you are, Stanley. Be gentle." As if he'd ever held a baby before this one in his life.

"Who's Willa?" Flora asked.

"My goddaughter."

"Oh." She rolled her eyes. I could tell she wanted her son back. She didn't much regard me as anything other than a curiosity anyhow. I'd had enough awkward Friday night dinners at Kyle's parents' to know this, and it didn't bother me.

A crown was forming around us, well-wishers, people I didn't know at all. Winston was squirming, too tired to cry. Or perhaps he'd been subdued already — I didn't know all the specifics of the ceremony. "He's lovely," I said, handing him back to Flora. "You should be very proud."

Relief swept over her features. "Thank you," she said, but it sounded chilly. I wasn't sure whether to attribute this to her general wariness of me, or her maternal instincts.

Kyle shook his head, done with Flora and me for the moment. "I should speak with my mother," he said. "Or play emissary to her guests."

"Of course," I said. "Introduce yourself to as many MPs as possible."

"Let's make a game of it, shall we?"

I declined. "I think a drink is more the game for me," I said, pecking him on the cheek before I went off. Flora gave me an incredulous look, as if I'd caused some offense to her or, worse yet, Winston.

On the way to the open bar, I was caught by Kyle's cousin, also named Kyle. I'd met him before, at Ike's wedding, and elsewhere — but the details of these other encounters escaped me. He snagged me from behind, clamping a hand to my shoulder and saying, "Hello, Stan!" in the most grating, whiniest tone. I had no choice but to turn around and return the greeting. His wife was in tow; she was a mild woman with a rather bleached-looking mess of streaky hair hanging around her shoulders, and the least organic-looking breasts I'd ever seen. Around the dinner table Kyle's mother called her a shiksa, which he informed me was Yiddish, and not meant to be derisive. The way I'd heard this word pronounced led me to believe otherwise.

"Hello, long time no see," I said, trying to be warm, and probably failing. "I was just on the hunt for a drink."

"I'll join you," said cousin Kyle, touching his wife's shoulderpad. "Can I get you anything?"

"Oh, just tonic water," she said, revealing a very flat American accent — there was no vigor in her tone. "Or if they have it, a mimosa."

"All right, just a sec. So, I hear you're coming to stay with us?"

It took me a moment to discern where his comments to his wife ended, and his question to me began. "Oh, right, yes," I said. "Well, I don't suppose I knew where we were staying — a hotel might be more suitable—"

"Nonsense! We've got a place in the city. It's lovely. On Central Park West. At 81st. Right across from the museum. It's so easy. And by the subway, too, so you can just get everywhere. Of course, it's so crowded down there, I never take the subway, Janie and I drive in for the night if we're going to see something. Do you like theater?"

"I'm a theater critic, actually," I tried to say as we approached the bar, but he was going too quickly.

"Well, we just saw the most wonderful thing, Sunday in the Park with George, just the other night. It was brilliant. Well, the first act was brilliant. It's Sondheim, do you know him?"

It took me a moment to realize he was actually pausing to ask me a question. "Ah, well, yes—"

Too late. "What am I talking about? You're a homosexual. So Janie and I came in to see this, we didn't bring the kids. Oh, they would have hated it, it just goes on and on. I mean, the first half's pretty good, it's all about that painting, but in the second half, my got, what is he doing, it's some diatribe against modern art or something, and the painting is talking to the main character, who is actually George Seurat, but in 1985, he's a digital media artist or something — it's madness. We saw this thing last year you might like, though, it's La Cage and I didn't care for it. Too campy. But you're a homosexual, you might like it." He finally stopped to take a swill of his drink, a glass of cognac.

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks, right, yeah."

"This is so dry," he said, making a face as he pulled away from his drink. He held the glass under my nose. "Does this seem dry to you?"

I shrugged, reaching for an enticing vintage of whisky.

"Well, what can you do, you don't come to Auntie Sheila's for the open bar. So have you been to New York?"

"No, I—"

"Oh, you'll love it. I hate it sometimes, it's so aggravating. But there's no place like it on Earth. You might find it hard, though, your whole scene's gotten kinda ghastly—"

I raised my eyebrows, my lips on the rim of my drink.

"—all the homosexuals, I mean, it's like all downtown's a graveyard. I was wondering if it'd be like that there, actually. Is it like that here?"

It really took all of my will power not to spit my drink at him. He meant well, I had to tell myself, he meant well and he didn't know, he was just insensitive, he didn't know. He couldn't know. He didn't know. "A friend of ours passed away, actually," I said, staring into my glass as I swirled the whisky around. "Just recently. He was 40. Well, shy of 40, he'd have been 40 soon, I suppose."

"I'm sorry," said Kyle's cousin, also named Kyle. "How did he go?"

"You mean, what did he die from? I'm not entirely sure." I'd heard that Clyde had been ill with a kind of meningitis, but I could not be sure that this was what strictly killed him. Had any one thing been responsible for that? "Sometimes these things have a cumulative effect, you know."

"Well, that's a shame! I'm so sorry."

"He wasn't a good friend," I clarified.

"Oh, but that must be so awful. How was he? Was he sick for long?"

"I don't know." Thinking of Wendy's last dinner party, I said, "Well, maybe. I'm not sure. Sickness can be so ill-defined—"

"But you're well, of course."

"I'm fine."

"And Kyle—"

"He's fine. Just right." I hid my scowl of pain behind a drink of whisky.

"Well, that's a relief!" Kyle's cousin pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I guess you'd be all right, over here in England, but Janie and I, we were so worried about Kyle, coming to the city all the time, mingling with those boys."

"Er — pardon, but which boys?"

"Oh, out on Fire Island, they all used to congregate out there in the summer, I mean, you all used to. Although I guess you've never been there. Downtown, that scene. Hamptons for homos. Kyle's gone out there — but I suspect just to visit, I thought maybe he had friends."

Swallowing the rest of my drink, I said, "Well, yes, thanks for the concern — excuse me," and I pushed him aside.

I found Kyle standing in the parlor, holding a glass of what smelled like sweet brandy, waiting for the show the start, and I removed it from his hands. "Oh, did you want a glass?" he asked.

"Boys on Fire Island," I said, taking a sip. It was too floral on my tongue, and I shut my eyes as I swallowed. "I've just had the best conversation with your cousin."

"Oh, that's nothing," he said, taking his drink back, but I could see that he was pink and ashamed. "It's just a nice place to visit in the summer. We should go."

"Go where?" I asked. "Who's left? Darling, everyone's dead over there. Or dying, at the very least."

"Fine," he snapped, shoving me with his shoulder. "You know, you're making me feel lousy. Just — just don't talk to me until after the ceremony."

The ceremony turned out to be horrifying, Winston howling his tiny lungs out. Flora stood by the fireplace with her face in his hands, shaking her head at the scene. A fat old man in a prayer shawl and fraying hat did the carving, while Kyle's father held the shrieking infant. Flora's parents hid behind her, shaking their heads and steadying her by the shoulders. Ike stood with his arms crossed a step behind the ceremony, surveying the whole thing, passionless. When Winston was back in his mother's arms, the most demonstrably Jewish guests began singing and clapping their hands above their heads, and soon a three-piece band was playing in the corner while we helped ourselves to fruit-filled blintzes and slices of dense, dry sponge cake cooked without dairy.

I ate with Kyle at the dining room table, watching him chew very slowly. After eating one of the three blintzes he'd served himself, all stuffed with blueberry compote in thick maroon syrup, he pushed his plate away, grimacing.

"Darling," I said. "What's wrong?"

"Can't eat anymore."

Which I took as cause for alarm. "Are you all right?"

"I'm not — I'm fine, no — I'm going to be sick." Kyle got up from the table and fled before I could even blink. I was left staring at a plate of uneaten blintzes, a mug of pale tea, and a bit of salt beef.

Helping myself to the end of Kyle's salt beef, I got up from the table and stretched. I was doing a fine job of not panicking, which was my first impulse. Instead, I wandered a bit, pausing only to say hello to Kyle's father (who nodded at me, but nothing more), until I found the downstairs loo. It was empty. So I tried upstairs, and found Kyle in his bedroom, or rather, the bedroom he lived in until he left for university, and on occasional summers, but not recently. He was curled up around a pillow.

"Hello," I said, softly shutting the door behind me. "Are you all right?" I assumed he would say he was all right, regardless of whether he was.

Instead he said, "No, I've vomited."

I sat next to him on the bed, and he shifted away to accommodate me. "Darling," I said, stroking his hair. "What are we going to do?" The whole thing was vaguely cinematic, with clean winter light falling in slits against an old writing desk through the shades on the windows. Kyle's mother had not done much with this room after Kyle had gutted it to move to Chelsea with me. The walls were originally a deep purple, but they'd faded a bit over the years and now looked tired or washed-out. There was a fraying antique Oriental that covered the expanse of cold hardwood floors. The room had a very English dimension to it, with low ceilings over the bed (Kyle had always slept it a bed twice as wide as he needed) and a narrow closet, missing a door. The desk, the dressers, the bookshelves — everything had a youthful, stunted proportion to it. Sheila had apparently changed the linens, as I remembered them being flowery and ruffled, and these new ones were just powdery green. They matched Kyle's hair while he lay there, but not his personality. There were scant photos of Kyle and his family, and he'd taken most of his books with him to Chelsea. The ones that remained were innocuous, a Greek dictionary here or a children's novel there, stacked haphazardly. The carpet bore the telltale lines of vacuuming, but I couldn't fathom that anyone used this room. It seemed unfair to me that parents should put effort into creating homes for their children, who would only abandon these efforts in the end. Still, I fondly recalled the afternoons I spent with Kyle in this room reveling in lazy sex, passing back and forth tight-rolled joints, and sharing bottles of inexpensive sherry. We also read aloud passages of Wilde, effecting silly voices and pretending our investment in subtext wasn't ludicrous. If Kyle vomited during that long-past summer, it was from over-indulgence.

Now we sat there, or I sat there and Kyle lay sighing, and the din of the party — heels on wooden floors and a trio plucking at strings, china clinking and an infant wailing — went on below us.

"Stanley," Kyle said, sitting up. "I feel a bit better, but — could you do me a favor and go find my brother?"

I said yes, of course I would, and I kissed him on the lips before going.

"Oh, I must taste terrible," he said, pushing me away as our mouths came apart.

"It doesn't matter," I said, leaving to find Ike. I found him, obviously unhappy to leave his guests, drinking a can of beer and rolling his eyes at my appearance.

"You might recall Stanley Marsh," he said, tilting his Tetley's toward me, "Kyle's lover."

"Mazel tov," a middle-aged man said to me.

"Oh, you don't have to congratulate him, he's not done anything," said Ike.

"Yes, well—" I was trying, and failing, to play things off as if everything was amusing and stupid. "Ike, I'm so sorry. Might we speak for a moment?"

"All right, I guess — Christ." He walked off with his beer, pursing his lips. "This is my party, you know. What is it? Is it — where's Kyle?"

"Upstairs."

"You imbeciles can't manage to keep yourselves in check for three hours, can you?" he said as we climbed up the stairs.

"That's not fair!" I said. "Kyle's not an imbecile, this isn't about behavior, it's as if you're implying that our very presence in your life is annoying—"

At the door, he whipped around and gaped at me. "How did you get into Oxford, again? Never mind, I don't care." He went into the room.

"My father worked there," I said to no one, following him in.

Ike had sat down on the bed, and Kyle had sat up, Ike's hands around his throat. For a moment I felt territorial and wanted to leap at them, but I soon realized that Ike was feeling for something. "Yes, they're nice and swollen," he said, dropping his hands. "Just a bit."

"What is?" I asked.

"His lymph nodes," Ike said. "Kyle, open your mouth."

"I didn't ask for a full exam—"

"I'm not giving you one, shhh, just comply. All right, there." Ike peered from a distance. "Well, the light's not the best, but I don't think you have oral candidiasis."

"What are you doing?" I asked.

Ike ignored me. "And no lesions, you say?"

"No, nothing bruisey like that," Kyle said. "Are we done?"

"Christ, no, you're so skinny. And hot. Have you been sweating a lot? Or just now that you're here?" Kyle sort of nodded, looking glum. "Ah, that's a shame. You need to put some weight back on. What've you been eating?"

"He hasn't been that hungry," I said.

"What did you eat today?"

"Ah, um, a blintz, but I lost it."

"You need to eat more, Kyle. You need to stuff yourself."

"Oh, I'll just make myself fat, will I?"

"No, you'll be staving off death while you waste away, all right? You have to keep your weight up. Stanley should make you."

"I can't make him do anything he doesn't want to do."

"No, you have to feed him!" Ike said. "Force-feed him if you have to! My lord, wasting will kill him before the lesions. Don't you know anything?"

I shook my head. "I'm not a doctor," I said defiantly.

"Christ, I know." Ike sighed. "Unfortunately for all of us, I'm not sure how much medical training would help you in this instance. We don't know that much."

"This is why I don't really want a doctor at all," said Kyle.

"Well, that's not an option either. We still know more than the both of you. It almost makes me wish I'd gone into viral pathology, you know, rather than becoming a private clinician. Except I'd hate to work for the NHS. This way I make loads of money. It's really fascinating, though, Kyle. I'm torn between worrying for you, and, well, finding out what happens."

"What happens!" Kyle put his hands over his eyes. "To hell with you! I'm not a science experiment."

"Unfortunately, you are. There are relatively few cases in the U.K. And no one knows much about it anyway! Where'd it come from? We've no clue. How to stall it? We're not sure. There are clinical trials, though, the pharmaceuticals companies will be having a field day. We should get you into one, Kyle. … Yes, I only wish I'd done immunology. It's exciting, you know. And if I went to work in America, or maybe France, I might make a lot."

"Why is it always about money for you?" I asked.

"Because I have a family now," Ike replied, although I suspected he'd have answered the same before he had a family. "Stanley, let's talk across the hall so Kyle can rest."

I looked to Kyle, to see if this was all right. He waved me away. "I'll be fine," he muttered, settling down. "You go talk."

I didn't want to leave him, but Ike dragged me into his old bedroom. The walls were hung with football posters, mostly. Ike seemed to be a fan of Arsenal. I'd had no idea.

"Are you a football fan?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "Those are from before I left."

"For uni?"

"You might say that. For a kind of education, anyway."

I understood.

"Listen," Ike said. "Much as it pains me to say this, I think between the two of you, you're the rational one."

"Oh, am I?" I rolled my eyes. "How good of you to care."

"Don't be sarcastic. This is serious. He needs a doctor."

"He doesn't seem ill enough for that yet."

"What do you mean 'yet'? Why are you so stupid? God, it's so frustrating, this is what we have to work with. Do you understand how this disease works? It takes a person apart, little by little. So he'll fall ill, you'll worry — and he'll get better. And it will happen again. And again. Until he's barely recovering at all. You cannot stop this — but you can try to delay the inevitable. Have you made plans? Have you been tested?"

"What, me? No, I'm fine."

"Unlikely."

"Unless you can explain to me the benefits of testing, I think I'll pass."

"Peace of mind, I should think. And there are drugs you can take, preventatively. Kyle should be on acyclovir, I think. You might want to get on it as well. It's for herpes—"

I just found that offensive. "We don't have herpes!"

"Well, it's a useful antiviral, maybe it would prove beneficial. I'm just guessing. But feel free to make rash medical decisions based on stigmas, of course, that's usually helpful. Let's see. …. Oh. Ribavarin, you could try that. And possibly get him on an anti-anxiety, maybe Xanax, or antidepressants—"

"God, he's not depressed!" I said. None of these drug names really meant anything to me, but this bedroom prescription was frightening and bothersome. "What's that going to do for him?"

"You don't think a man recently diagnosed with a relatively unknown, incredibly stigmatized disease who doesn't want anyone to know might benefit from anti-anxiety drugs?"

"I think he needs you to be compassionate!"

"Yes, I should be compassionate," Ike said, "because he fell into this mess by being irresponsible—"

"How could anyone be responsible about a disease he's unaware of?"

"—and I tried to tell you! I tried to tell both of you and neither of you listened! And you are asking me to lie to my parents for who knows how long, ad infinitum, about that fact that my older brother, their only biological child, is terminally ill?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Oh." Ike snorted. "Just checking."

"Look," I said, pinching my nose and furrowing my eyebrows. "I agree with you. I think you are essentially correct — lying about this, concealing it, is only going to cause Kyle more trouble. It will probably mean more trouble for all of us, eventually. But what else can I do? He doesn't want them to know, you know, he — he is afraid of something."

"I'm sure he is afraid of them finding out he is an irresponsible, promiscuous queer who authored his own demise by being stupid," Ike replied. "But they will find that out eventually, and they may blame you or they may blame him, but I think the only thing worse than losing your first-born child has got be the knowledge that you are being lied to, consciously and determinedly, by everyone who matters to you."

"I think he just wants to avoid hurting them," I argued.

"Tell Kyle I'll help him however I can. After all, I am a doctor. But I think he is being, once again, a stupid, spoiled cow. And you are doing neither him nor yourself any favors by indulging him. Understood?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good. Well, you can rest easy. He's not going to die today." Ike turned and exited the room, probably to go back downstairs. With him gone, I crept back across the hall, trying to ignore the commotion of the fete downstairs. I heard the baby squealing, its cries penetrating my consciousness. Poor Winnie — to have been conceived in such fraught circumstances, into a family of dramatics-addicts.

XXX

A few weeks after Winston's circumcision, Kyle was called upon to babysit. Having never seen Kyle so much as handle an infant previous to his recent role in genital mutilation, I was shocked to hear the request come loud and clear through the answering machine: "I need a babysitter," Ike implored, the sound of his wailing son providing background instrumentation. "Just overnight, really, while we attend a friend's dinner party. I think hiring some teenager would be my first choice, but Flora insists it's better for an infant to be left with family. Although I don't know why she thinks she would know. I asked Mom first but she has the inevitable services Saturday night, followed by a constituent function, or — I don't know.

"Do this for me and I'll … actually, I think you should simply out of your instinct for self-preservation, which I assume you can interpret accurately without further detail. I apologize, this is an absurdly long recording. The child needs a bottle or something, I don't know. It's been a very long week. Goodbye. Oh, thank you in advance. And goodbye."

"Well, all right," Kyle said to me after deleting the message. "I think I should do that."

"Oh, darling, no," I replied. "Infants are messy and noisy. Didn't you hear it crying in that recording?" I rued the day Kyle decided to purchase an answering machine. It made his life, and mine by extension, ever more complex and irritating. There was no chance of ever being left alone again, and for a moment I mourned silence.

"Oh, but how much trouble could a little baby be in the hands of two capable men?" he asked.

"Oh, Kyle." I sighed. "Oh, no."

"Well, how difficult could it be?"

"Have you ever changed a nappy?"

Kyle shook his head.

"Warmed milk? Woken at dawn to the sound of something howling?"

"Yes, once, on holiday in the Hebrides—"

"This is a mistake," I warned. "Leaving either of us, or both of us together, in the care of an infant is a recipe for discord."

"But he's my nephew!" Kyle protested. "An innocent little thing! Besides, I do like to pretend, you know."

"Pretend what?"

He became very quiet, diverting his gaze from mine. "Oh, that — that it could be normal, I suppose. That I could have something to do with a child, or we could, or—" He laughed to himself, shaking his head. "Well, that's just stupid, of course. My brother needs a favor, and he's strongly implying that I had better help him under threat of noncompliance with my wishes. So really, what's the worst thing that could happen?"

"I don't know," I said. "But I hesitate to guess, given that fate has had a way of defying even my capacity to imagine the very worst things recently."

"That's probably for the best," Kyle agreed. "I'll give Ike a ring."

In this case, Kyle proved correct about the relative simplicity of caring for an infant. Which was not to say that it was easy work, or that we slept a full night. Winston did doze for about five hours, which Wendy later told me was quite good for a baby — but then, he woke demanding to be held and coddled, changed and fed. Winston was soft and docile, not at all like Willa had been a few months previous, all screeching and howling, if Wendy's reports were to be believed. When Kyle rocked him and cooed, "Winnie, oh Winnie," it made my heart skip a beat.

Kyle gave the baby his fingers to suck on. It was erotic in the most uncomfortable way. Winston was hungry and gulped milk past my presumptions of an infant's capacity. I'd seen my sister suckle her children, especially the oldest, when I was a teenager; Ike's son drank primarily from bottles, enthusiastic and yielding, smiling up at Kyle, who smiled back down, radiant. Winston nursed at Kyle's fingers, first one and then two, and Kyle's contentment moved me, threatened to break my heart. "He shares my deportment," Kyle said of Winston, whose gurgling was robust and jovial at all times. "I know we're not blood-related, but he's got something of me in him. Wouldn't you agree?"

Kyle's hands, so unsteady in mine in those days, cradled the baby with such confidence and ease. "You'll never know me, Winnie," he said, rocking Winston on the balcony overlooking Hyde Park at twilight, "but maybe someone, your daddy or your bubby, will tell you about me, that I held you in my arms and rocked you at sunset." I stood half inside the flat, half out, leaning against the doorframe as I listened to Kyle soothe his nephew. It made sense to me now, why he wanted to babysit. For a moment, Kyle looked back to me, catching my eyes, smiling, proud of himself and of the baby, for quieting, and probably of me for being there. Then he shrugged with a chill, and moved by me as he stepped back inside. It was still very much winter, after all, and I worried about their little bodies, both Kyle's and Winston's.

XXX

Kyle and I had both been witness to the deaths of elderly relatives. Mine was my paternal grandfather, who had died when he was quite old and I was too young to fully appreciate that he had formerly been a man not unlike that which I was becoming. Which is to say he had once been vital and potent, not that I would live to father sons with two women, or any women at all. I was 14 when he died, old enough to know that I was not exactly normal and yet still just young enough to feel there may be a chance for me to turn out that way. I was literally in the room when he passed, although by then he had been immobile and senile for so long that it hardly felt notable.

On the other hand, Kyle had been with his maternal grandmother when she expired. He was 8 at the time and she, in his retelling, was unaccountably ancient. "But I loved that woman," he once told me, "and though I did not know it at the time, with her died the idea that I could have been something other than what I would become — that somehow there may have been a straight, American Kyle Broflovski, who graduated from a state university only to be sent off to Vietnam. Who had a girlfriend and later a wife and children. My mother was literally living the American dream — until she abandoned it and went back to Old Europe. So yes, I think many things have died inside of me, the heir to some unfulfilled promise. Ah, well." He had told me this in the mid-1970s, when Britain if not the entire world seemed on the brink of collapse.

Well, now the idea that Kyle might die — correction, would die — was rather distinct. Some nights he sat in my lap and cried, and I held him, delighted with his body, its fleshiness and the abstract hardness of muscle and bone in his joints, his elbows, the powerful tendons in his legs and gaps between his fingers butting up against cartilage. Suddenly it was 1967 again, and we sat in my bedsit at Magdalen, his tears mingling with snot and blood in the aftermath of his shattered nose, begging me through his fear and pain to please, please help him, couldn't I mend him, please don't take him to a doctor.

It was 20 years later, and Kyle still feared, hated doctors. Aside from his own brother, he regarded them with suspicion. They looked not at the superficiality of your person, but at your very viscera. In his youth Kyle had come to fear, and rightly so, being pried open by surgeons, by boarding school nurses, by almost anyone professing to help whilst asking him to yield. I understood completely, but my own physician was a gay dilettante from the NHS; I saw him once a year and he tried to talk to me about literature, a conversation which never went very far as he knew very little, but he thought he knew more than I did. I think having a gay doctor made my life extraordinarily easy, as he never questioned it when I had appeared at the clinic in the past with, say, a case of syphilis. In any case, Kyle had no such doctor, and was now being traded back and forth by a team of private clinicians Ike had recommended. Very little could be done for AIDS patients. There was no great medicine to speak of; the best advice anyone could give Kyle was to avoid getting sick. They did give him ribavarin, and so far, he had managed not to fall ill. No one really knew what to do with him. The ribavarin quickly make him anemic and somehow even less hungry, but he persisted.

These were uncertain weeks for us. Slowly, life returned to its circadian rhythm. We woke together, and Kyle left for work. Sometimes I'd ask him not to go, and all he'd be able to say was, "But this is my job, dear," before going anyhow. My job was to wake up hours later, and type until my fingers callused. Sometimes I met Kyle at his office and we went to get a sandwich, but Kyle ate very little now, despite my best encouragements.

Other days I'd meet Wendy, and we'd talk. She was so tired all the time, caring for the baby, that even a team of nursemaids didn't seem to relieve her. I wanted to tell her so badly; I felt as though I were lying by not telling her. She complained about Token. "He's dropped the baby thing altogether," she said. "Now he is fixated on Clyde. He's almost manic about it. I sympathize, honestly! But I wish he'd relax."

"Wendy," I'd said, "he's never lost anyone before. He's not sure how to handle it."

"He can barely speak to me, barely speak to Willa…"

"She's a baby. She won't notice."

"That's a bad attitude! He's her father! And this isn't his first death. You remember James—"

"Right," I said, feeling silly that I'd forgotten. "Right, right."

"I just wish there were something I could do for him, but he's acting so distant!"

"Well, he'll calm down." I was too drained, thinking of Kyle, to be supportive in any more active way. "If I lost my best mate, I'd—" I didn't know what I'd do. It bit away at me as we sat on the sofa, some Catholic urge in me to confess, confess, confess, dying to tell her, just struggling so hard internally with myself. Kyle didn't want that, didn't want anyone to know. I was going out of my mind, especially at this very moment. Willa was on the rug on her back, batting at some arched baby toy that make noises when she hit it, gaudy shapes hanging from its form, secured there by felt or something soft. She laughed at each jingling noise.

"I hope you're right." Wendy slipped down off the couch, careful not to crease her skirt, and she crawled over to the baby. "Is this fun?" she asked, lifting her voice an octave. "Do you like it, Wills?"

Willa answered by laughing, and waggling back and forth. It was the most purely joyful thing I'd seen in some time. Watching her for a moment, I was overcome with the distinct feeling that, no matter how dark and uncertain life was becoming, eventually it would be normal again. Then I looked down at the plate of sandwiches left on the table, and thought of how I'd eaten most of them, and Wendy'd had only one or two. They were such small sandwiches, too, and I reached for my forgotten cup of tea. It remind me of Kyle, of his appetite and how it vanished one day, of how I was supposed to be feeding him. He was impossible in that regard and I didn't have any ideas. Then I heard the baby laugh again, and Wendy was laughing with her, and I looked at them, smiling, and I felt how genuine it was, how glad I was to be here in this moment. It felt so normal, and yet what was normal was changing by the week, and I didn't know if, come next week, I would be able to have these moments. But I scolded myself internally for being overdramatic, got on the floor myself, and tried to laugh with them for a while.

XXX

My mother rang, which was rather unexpected. Of course she had a genuine affection for me, being my mother and all — or, perhaps more significant, being the mother of two children in the post-war mothering years, when her identity couldn't have been fashioned from anything more interesting than being my mother. Despite this, I always thought my father had some kind of sway over her that might prevent us from speaking, were he and I ever to be at odds, which of course we now were.

Unfortunately, her call was anything but good news.

"It's your uncle," she said, voice hollow and far wearier than I remembered it being. "He's, well — he's passed, Stanley. I'm so sorry."

I knew which uncle she was talking about — I had only one. I hadn't spoken to my uncle James in decades, not since he'd shot my dog. I'd heard whisperings of him over the years — information translated down to me through my parents like ancient wisdom off of cuneiform tablets. Presumably, this was the last I was ever to hear, and it made me both sad, and curious — how had he died? Why had he died? Where was my father in all of this, the brother who survived him? I had no idea how old he was exactly, my uncle. Older than my father, of course, but it was the way of the Marsh family to somehow forget how to count when we were dealing with older persons. His birthday was irrelevant. I would always be the baby, the one that was younger than they all were, even at age 40; my uncle was older than I was, so it mattered little how high that number actually went.

It was mid-morning, and although my mother sounded off somehow, there was no sense of immediacy. It was chilly and dry in my flat; Kyle lay next to me, the shuddering breaths of his sleeping form reassuring and consistent. At first I wanted to shake him, but then I felt pity and let him snore.

"Is there to be a funeral, a wake?" I asked, unsure of how we'd handle this.

"Not really, no," my mother assured me. "He's Anglican, and lapsed anyhow, Stanley, no Last Rites or anything. What would the point be?"

"Well, what are you going to do? Wrap him up and throw him in a hole?"

"He's been cremated, if you must know."

"What about Dad?" I asked.

"Well, what about him?"

"Doesn't he care?"

My mother sighed. "Daddy feels there's no point in being sentimental." I wondered if my father would feel the same way when it came time for his last of kin to bury him. "I told him to call you, just so you know, but he just didn't want to do it. He's very busy, your father, graduating students who are finishing their theses. He's taken on two more this year, but he swears it's the final batch. Of course, he always says that. I wish he'd quit though, you know. Your father is just so industrious."

Or clinging to the only thing he could rely on to make him feel important. That, or industrious.

"Well, I don't — what do you want me to do?"

"It's a curious thing," my mother said, sounding as if she were suddenly engaged in a different conversation. "None of us knew he was dying."

"Perhaps he wasn't dying. Perhaps he just died." I wondered if my voice sounded to my mother how it sounded to me — brittle, tiny, terrified.

"Oh, sweetheart." She sighed. "People don't just die. There are vaccines now, you know, jabs and things—"

I was getting the distinct impression we'd had this conversation before. "Not everything can be cured with a jab. I need to know, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to come to Oxford?"

"Well, the reason I am calling — Stanley, he's left you his house."

"Excuse me?"

"His house, Stanley, in Nuneaton. He's left it to you."

"All right." I suddenly felt the burgeoning of an enormous headache. "What should I — what am I to do?"

Somehow, Kyle convinced me to drive to Oxford, where my mother would give me the keys to the flat, and then continue onto Nuneaton. The house was not in the city proper, but a bit out of the way. "We'll need a car anyway," Kyle advised, looking at a map the night before we left, a Thursday evening at home, rain battering the windows of my flat, rattling the Victorian glass panes. "It's the country, dear, we can't walk to a market, let alone town."

"He has a truck," I said, absent and unwilling. "I've also inherited the truck."

"I won't drive some country-bound mud-splattered truck around Warwickshire."

"Oh, suddenly you're too good for Warwickshire."

"Stanley, I've always been too good for Warwickshire."

XXX

"I'd like to teach you how to drive," Kyle said somewhere around Banbury. He'd never owned a car in his own right, and this one we'd borrowed from his parents, a 1983 Jaguar Sovereign. It gleamed up the M40 fluidly, although Kyle was rusty on the driving; the last time I'd seen him behind the wheel was 20 years ago in London. "But it's not the most important thing," he added, flicking wipers against the Midland mist. "But I'd like to teach you to do it. You should get a license. You can chauffer me around."

"I live in London. That's ridiculous." In the passenger seat, my legs butted up against the dashboard, I sat with my arms crossed, unhappy. I had lost my uncle, had been forced to subject myself and Kyle to my family's disapproval again in order to get the keys to my late uncle's house, I was hungry, and I was tired, and rather than grieve for this man who represented the best hours of my childhood, I was trapped with the knowledge of how much was going wrong. I sighed against the window, grateful it wasn't Kyle, but torturing myself with the notion: What if it had been Kyle? What if I wasn't with him when he died, what if someone kept us apart, what if I was with him and it didn't bring him comfort, what if they wouldn't let us be together, whoever they were, the amorphous idea that like my mother, everyone in England had disapproving looks for us? I knew that was ridiculous, that Kyle's parents and brother respected my longstanding place at his side, even if they didn't specifically like me.

The English greenery we traversed to get to Nuneaton was boring me, and I started hallucinating about driving. How was Kyle doing it, both talking to me and controlling a whole machine? I asked him.

Of course, he just laughed at me. "Oh, when you know how, it's not something you forget," he said. "It's very silly to be like this, it comes like second-nature. I'll teach you, dear, you'll pick it up quickly."

I wasn't sure I wanted to know how to drive, but I figured it was best to nod and say, "Of course, darling," and keep my thoughts to myself for the rest of the ride. It wasn't a long drive, not that I had been on many long drives. I couldn't remember any lasting more than three hours. I said this to Kyle and he laughed at me again.

"Oh, that's ridiculous," he said. "My family drove all over this island when I was young. It's six or seven hours to St. Ives."

"I've never been to Cornwall."

"Forget Cornwall, then, it's conceivable to drive for days on end in America."

"Oh, America."

"Yes. My family would rent a car in New York and drive all the way down to Miami Beach to see my grandmother. Oh, god, it took days and days and we stopped so often. I was very young, you know, she died when I was 8, but I remember being pent up in that little car, it smelled like leather, and we just rolled along while my parents argued and argued. My father had to act put-off by Florida, or something, but I think he actually liked it. And beaches—"

"I've been to beaches," I said.

"But not like English seaside beaches, dear, I mean these long, sparkling stretches of smooth sand, and the waves are so tall they'll knock you over, although of course I was very small so if I went back I might find they weren't that big—"

"Isn't that always how big things seem," I remarked.

"Is that a jab about Clyde?" he asked.

"Not really. I don't know." We were silent for a moment, only the sound of the wipers on glass and the beginning of late-winter rain to distract us. Then I said, "Why don't you go live in America? If you like it there so much?"

"Why would I?" Kyle's eyes turned from the road very briefly to shoot me a confused look. "I'm British."

"Well, but not entirely, or—"

"No, entirely. It's like a novelty, Stanley, I don't want to live there. I wouldn't have anyone, I wouldn't have a job or — I couldn't take you with me."

"Couldn't you? Not that I would want to go — I mean, I would go anywhere with you, darling, but I've never been there—"

"You couldn't follow me there, no, not if I were to move there permanently, because you would need some reason to be there, like a job or a spouse, and, well. You know. I'm afraid I wouldn't count, you'd have to find a nice lady." He shook his head and refocused on his driving, fixing his eyes to the open lane stretching ahead of us. "Keep your eyes on the map, dear, all right? I don't want to miss the turn-off."

"Oh, certainly." I picked up the map from the floor where it had been lying abandoned since we'd left Oxford and merged onto the M40. I ran my fingers up the trace of road Kyle had lined in acid-yellow highlighter. "Ah, there's a traffic circle we'll be coming upon, near Coventry."

"Thank you." Kyle nodded, and I crushed the map in my sweaty hands. He was running the heaters at their highest settings.

XXX

I didn't know what I'd expected to find in Nuneaton, but it was basically how I remembered it from my youth. The town center was mostly empty in the rain, and Kyle decided it was too wet to go scouting for George Eliot sights. I made him go to a small sandwich shop with me and then stop at an Iceland supermarket for provisions of some apples, loaves of bread, milk and two boxes of Wheetabix (which Kyle assured me he would eat), a package of generic-looking deli meat which was supposedly rosemary ham, cans of tuna, a jar of mayo, potted prawns, three rolls of plain digestives and one roll of chocolate, pressed apple juice, packages of cheese-and-onion crisps, a vacuum-sealed package of four tomatoes, a stalk of celery, a long and fat cucumber, and finally, he ran back while we were in the checkout lane to grab a huge brick of a Dairy Milk bar.

"This food seems very random," I said, throwing the crisps in one of our bags on top of the digestives. "Are you really going to eat all this?"

"You're very stingy with food, do you know," was all he said in response.

"I mean, you're supposed to be eating, so why don't we go get something more fattening?"

After this he ran back to the dairy aisle and grabbed a tub of really thick yogurt and a big block of mild cheddar. Then he said, "Wait, hold on," and disappeared into the aisles again, returning with a package of Cumberland sausages and two cans of Branston-brand beans. "Is this all right with you?" he asked, flinging a fiver at the clerk.

"Yeah, that's great," I said, tossing the cheese in on top of the crisps. "Whatever you want, honey."

The clerk immediately shot me a baffled look. She was a middle-aged woman in a red button-down shirt and red waistcoat that didn't really fit her, with ear-length choppy hair. Her confusion melted into an open-mouthed gape as I stared at her. Then I shook my head and smiled.

"Thanks so much," I said, seizing our three little bags in one hand. Kyle hurried out ahead of me, not bothering with the umbrella tucked under his arm, holding his mackintosh shut with a hand. It was unusual to see him in something so shapeless. Anyway, I didn't feel any of his panic, perhaps because I felt we were on my turf now or something. Not that I had been there in ages, because I hadn't, but I was preternaturally calm anyhow, tossing the bags into the boot and climbing into the passenger seat. My trench was open as well, belted behind me, and I was a bit wet when I sat down, finally glad that Kyle was blasting the heat, as I dried off before we'd even left the car park.

We got to my uncle's house at about 6, the sky dark and the key difficult to wrangle. We both tried twice before I managed to get the door open. I braced myself for something to come at us, some animal or ghost or crudely installed medieval security deterrent. Obviously nothing did, and I flipped on the lights to see that not much had changed in 25 years, except there were more rifles hung on the walls, and the place was in a general condition of mess. My uncle James and Ned had never been exactly interested in home décor, and Kyle absolutely recoiled at everything.

"All of these guns!" he said, shrinking from one hung up next to the door. "What the bloody hell! I thought people were supposed to lock these up! Someone could — I don't even want to think about it!"

"Well, no one ever did," I said, going to the refrigerator to put away our cheese and sausages. I realized we hadn't gotten anything to drink, but there was a bar in the corner, and knowing my uncle I assumed it would be well-stocked. He also had an army of bottles of different brown ales, mostly Newcastle.

"Do you think they're loaded?"

"Yes, probably." I slammed the refrigerator door. "I don't want them, you know, I'll sell them or something.

"Jesus Christ," Kyle muttered, stumbling toward the couch. "I think I have to sit down. How did your uncle live here? And how did he die here, do you think it was one of these guns?"

"No, no." I came toward the couch with a bag of crisps and a roll of digestives, ready to investigate the bar situation. I handed Kyle the food and sat down. "He wasn't the type to have a rifle accident. Those things were like children to him, you know, hunting was his religion or something."

"What a depressing religion." Kyle ripped open the crisps and sort of nibbled at the edge of one. "It never occurred to me until just now that some people consider killing to be a fun pastime. Isn't that odd?"

"I'm sure some hunters in one of the big houses up the road have sat around wondering how some people consider buggery to be a fun pastime, you know, it's not as if there's only one way to enjoy life."

Kyle buried his head in his hands, crossing his legs atop one another. "This is just a lot, Stanley. I need a moment."

"All right." I kissed him on the top of his hair and decided to let him sit there having his moment and eating crisps while I snuck around a bit. The sofa faced a giant mantle, over which hung a pair of majestic antlers that belonged to an elk my uncle had shot and eaten long before I was born. It did seem someone had been through the house, and parts of it bore the telltale signs of my mother's particular cleaning methods, streaks on all the mirrors and murky blue water in all the toilets, seats down. She hadn't mentioned anything about cleaning, but why would she? It was like them, my parents, to burn up and bury my uncle without telling me, rush up here and empty his house of anything I might like or take an interest in. Before we'd left London, I'd wondered if Kyle and I might find anything incriminating, love notes or gay pornography or anything of sentimental value. It was clear now that we weren't going to, either because it never existed, or by design. We'd never know which.

The second bedroom, where my sister and I (mostly me) had slept as children, was no more, full of boxes of ammunition, old financial records and newspapers, and fitness equipment. Nothing interested me as I picked through it. Although they were only half-brothers, this hoarding reminded me very much of my father's inclinations, and a bit of my own that I'd resisted by generally being acetic with personal belongings other than photos and novels and papers of mine. Maybe it was a shared Marsh family trait. My sister seemed to enjoy hoarding children. I didn't care about any of this, though.

Later I found a bottle of sherry and cracked it open. It had to have been a recent purchase, as it wasn't dusty like some of the older bottles of vermouth and bitters. I made myself a drink in one of the old tin tumblers from the cabinet over the bar and started a fire with logs from a pile by the hearth as Kyle complained about how cold he was, pacing by the windows. Then I went to sit down, bringing my drink and some tumblers and the sherry.

"Well, darling," I said, kicking my legs onto the trunk that served as a cocktail table. "What are we going to do with this place?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, refusing to sit. "Oh, it's 'we' now, is it."

"Yes. Hasn't it always been?"

This placated him, and he sauntered to the sofa, sitting beside me. "You might like to keep it, I suppose," he said, reaching for the sherry. "As a token of remembrance for your beloved uncle."

"Oh, darling, would you like that? A holiday home in Nuneaton?"

He was pouring himself sherry in a tumbler, making a face of utter disdain. "I'd rather repair somewhere tropical, or at least warm and lovely," he said. "Three years of uni was enough Midlands for me."

"Then I'll sell it."

"You can keep it, you know, it's all right by me." He handed me my tumbler of sherry, swirling it gently into my hand. "Rent it, maybe, make a profit."

"I've no use for profit. And things are anathema to me."

"Yes, so I'm aware. Except for princess phones." He paused to drink. Then, wiping his mouth, he said, "This sherry tastes metallic."

"Well," I said, dwelling, "everyone needs a telephone."

"I don't like it here, in this cabin. I like my flat. If you don't want to keep it, I think we'd best pack things up and meet with an estate agent. Do you think it'll take long? Two days? Three?"

"I think if we bag things and toss out them like rubbish, we'll make it work. I'll get rid of the guns first, first thing in the morning — maybe there's a shop in town. I mean, there must be. … Are you sure you don't want to hang onto it?"

"No! I'm done with Warwickshire, do you understand? I don't want to go anywhere." His voice became very tight. "I just want to go to work in the morning and sit in my flat at night and try to make the precious time I have left mean something, do you know?"

"Darling."

"Stanley." He finished his sherry, and reached for the bottle.

"Should you be drinking that?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Well, no, but—"

I took it from his hands. "I won't let this thing destroy you."

"You don't have that ability! I know you're a writer, but you can't just invent some fiction that everything is all right. It's not, it's not all right. I want to spend my life enjoying it."

"Maybe you should quit working, then."

"But that's what I enjoy doing!"

I really didn't want to have a fight about this, alone in the dank cabin my uncle had left me. "Stop being such a fatalist, Kyle."

"Stop making everything feel so fucking normal! Gah, I'm bloody freezing!"

On a rocker by the corner there was a pile of quilts, and I got up and brought one back to Kyle, draping it across his shoulders. "Here's what I'll do," I said, wiping some of the sweat from his brow. "I'm going to heat up some bangers and beans, all right, and make some cheese toasties too, if that's okay by you. Then we'll eat some supper, and you can drink as much sherry as you want, but there's also a tea kettle and I'll make you as many cups as you can drink, and we'll do a little clearing and sorting and get into bed. I suppose in the morning we can go into town or maybe to Birmingham for some boxes—"

"I'm too tired to go all the way to Birmingham—"

"Shhh, all right, we'll just go to town and get some boxes and on Monday we'll meet with an agent and get rid of the house. We'll box things up and put them in the road and I'll get rid of the guns first, I'll take them to Oxfam or something, whatever's nearby. We'll tell the agent we just want rid of it, okay, we don't care how much it costs, and I'll say we as many times as I have to, I want everyone in Nuneaton to know you're here with me, okay? And we'll drive back to London—"

"I want to teach you how to drive—"

"—we'll drive back to London, darling, and we won't drop in at Oxford, okay, to hell with my parents, I don't care if I never see them again."

"How can you not care if you never see them again?" Kyle sniffed, pulling the quilt tight around his trembling chest, which looked awkward with the tumbler in his hand, but he didn't want to put it down, his grip very tight. I pried it from his grasp and put it on the trunk. "They're your parents, Stanley, that's your family—"

"I'm done," I said. "I hate them. It's over. I'm done."

"I don't understand—"

"They couldn't even give me this house without scrubbing away anything worth having," I said. "They wouldn't let me see my uncle, or even know he'd died. They've done everything they can my whole life to curb my interest in any single thing I might love. I'm done, it's over."

"But your mother—"

"Kyle, I love you." I put my hands on his cheeks, kissing him very still on his mouth. He responded, dryly, dropping the quilt to grasp my hands. "We'll be okay," I said against his lips. "I don't want anything in my life that distracts me from you. We can hold on a little, okay, you—" I licked at the tears in the corner of his eye, which in another setting might have felt sexual, but it didn't to me, not then — I just didn't want him crying, and it was the quickest thing I could do to stop it. "You're my family," I said, finally, dropping my hands to grab his waist.

"Not even this house, your uncle…"

"He shot my dog when I was 15, all right, and I didn't hear from him until he died and left me his fucking house? What the bloody — what am I going to do with a house?"

"You said you'd sell it," Kyle said.

"Well, these people!" I let go of him, and I got up. "I'm going to make those sandwiches, all right, and the beans and Cumberlands. Is there anything else you need?"

"I'll just nap a bit," he said, reaching for the sherry as I walked away.

We had a brief, tipsy dinner, and although Kyle didn't eat as much as I wanted him to, he did finish an entire sausage, and most of the beans. "I can't," he said, poking at the cheese toasts I'd put on his plate, and the stiff slices of winter hothouse tomato. "I really can't, I'll lose it, it's just too much — it's like digestion exhausts me."

"Can't you try—"

"Maybe a less tiring night." He sighed, pushing his plate away. "I know it's early, but let's do something about bed." Something was changing the sheets. ("I don't want to sleep in these if he died in them," which I wouldn't have minded, but I couldn't refute it, because we simply didn't know.) There was that moment, the same moment we always had before bed then, when we paused to reach for each other, mimicking the way it was before, when we didn't know there was something treacherous in our union. I was aroused when he kissed me goodnight, behind the ear, his hands against my shoulders. Then he rolled over and snapped off the lamp by his bed, muttering "I love you" and burying his face in a fresh pillowcase.

It was not that late and I was emotionally drained, maybe, but more numb than sad, and not very tired. I stayed up in bed for a while reading Fleming by lamplight, amused that my uncle should have loved such delightfully post-war posturing. I could tell he'd read the whole collection often and thoroughly by the fraying pages and the loose bindings, the creases bisecting pages where he'd taken pauses at each chapter break. I finished Live and Let Die that night; it didn't dispel my erection at all, and I fell asleep with it poking into Kyle's thigh, against his sweaty pants, barely interested in doing anything about it. I dreamed about it, though, and woke up around 4 a.m. with a start before I came. By then I was awfully tired, though, and I tucked my head back in the crook of Kyle's neck and put it off for the morning.

We spent the rest of the weekend cleaning, and Kyle was an immense help. He was not exactly an immaculate person, but he had an ordered sort of approach to housekeeping that came in rather handy. He took on the role of matron-director with ease, and I performed the physical labor of hauling boxes (purchased from an in-town shop in bulk) and shifting furniture, rolling rugs and securing stacks of yellowing paper with twine. It struck me only once or twice during the afternoon that we were dismantling an entire life, and when I was tired in the evening from exerting myself, I began to wonder if my uncle had left me this house at all, or if this wasn't my father being vindictive by shuffling the work off to me.

"Your mother wouldn't have had that legal paperwork for us if that were the case," Kyle pointed out. He'd given up on the sherry and had made it his mission to finish all the Madeira, and when he'd accomplished that task he'd begun on the Shiraz. I worried for him, wondering if he might not be better served just stabbing himself in the liver and seeing what happened, but he was in good spirits and we were eating crisps and laughing about all the odd old things in the house, and I was having some whisky I'd found in crates in the storage room. "Let's take that with us," he said, inspecting a dusty bottle. "The rest of the crate, I mean. You like that well enough. And you've got plenty of places to store it, so long as you never move in with me."

"It's nothing personal, you know," I said.

"Ah, ignore me, I'm cautionless and inebriated." When Kyle was uncautioned and drunk he liked to dance, and he got up to put on a record, some kind of old jazz, and we spun around the sofa, his arms up on my shoulders, but he kept trying to lead. When that ended up in a tangle we just spun around for a bit until we were both laughing at ourselves and each other, spilling back onto the couch, Kyle reaching for his wine in a tin tumbler. "How drunk are you?" he asked me, pushing my disarrayed hair back into place with two fingers.

"Me? I'm not drunk."

"But you never dance."

"I danced with you at your brother's wedding," I said. "I've danced with you before."

"Well, not nearly enough."

"You only dance when you're on coke, mostly."

He rolled his eyes, his teeth and the corners of his mouth purple like he'd been chewing on a pen cartridge. "There's something I'm sure I shouldn't ever do again," he said, and there was some weight in his voice, like he was sad about it. "But, yeah, usually I need to be wired. But now, I don't know, I'm unusually happy. This is fun; I'm glad I came."

"Were you thinking of not coming?"

"Can't say I was dying to, but Stanley, you're my — my whatever we are. I'll always go — the rest of my life, however long, a couple of years—"

"I'm glad you came, then." To get him to stop, to stop him from putting finite language to it, I kissed him, and he slipped his arms around me again and kicked his legs around my waist and sat in my lap and ground our erections together until I pried away and said, "Stop, stop, darling—"

"I don't care if I come in my pants," he said, swallowing most of my protests, which was good, because he did, and so did I. Later I felt guilty as I showered that night, but at the time it felt like being home again after years at war, or a long trip abroad in a land where I didn't speak the language, or like the conclusion of a novel, the perfect last words that sealed off the narrative. When I was finished, heart beating, breathing deeply, I realized Kyle was crying on me, against my chest. When he gazed down at me I saw that he was just overwhelmed, drunk and sated but scared, too. We kissed again, and again, and didn't stop until Kyle said, "All right, my lips are chafing," and he pushed off of me and stumbled to the bedroom to change.

XXX

Time drags on and on when you are living daily with a sword dangling over you, but soon it was March somehow and I was pocketing the funds from the quick sale of my uncle's house, and the lorry as well. It was the first good money I'd made in a while, and I took Kyle out to Le Caprice. I'd heard the food was nothing to brag about, but I didn't care if it was; it was sort of a place to gawk and be gawked at, and it had taken a lot of badgering poor Wendy to get the table, at 9 on a Tuesday. "I've work the next day," Kyle moaned at me, but in the end he just went along happily, picking at his main, a giant pile of salmon cakes and rocket in a thick, mustardy sauce. He was beginning to look fairly pale, and getting him to eat was becoming a chore. He has such bizarre notions about food; maybe he was correct and I was stingy, but my tendency had always been to eat what I was hungry for when I wanted it without second-guessing myself, and without overcomplicating things.

Kyle now fretted about the other pouty queers and starlets and young peers sitting around us, an MP or two he recognized ("That one's a drunk, according to my mother," he said, nodding at an old man with a young brunette next to him) and he then worried about my fretting, which was kind of him but further nerve-racking. But we had fun and giggled at the silliness of the whole thing. Kyle was trying not to take it too seriously, but he was clearly enjoying it. He finished a whole lavender crème brulee for dessert, which was something. Then we tried to have a serious conversation over our coffees:

"I'm going to leave you everything, you know," which caught me well off-guard.

I shifted in my seat and said, "All right."

"I'm naming you my executor, of course. I'm provisioning for Winston, I've set up a small trust for him for something nice, university or, more likely, a small flat or something. So after that, it's all yours." He put down his coffee spoon, sighing. "I didn't really want to have this talk."

"Well, we don't have to do it now," I said, suddenly feeling very lonely, despite the fact that his foot was nudging against my calf this whole time.

"I thought you wanted to," he said, frowning. "I mean, I thought that was the point of, you know." He picked up the spoon again and gestured around the room.

"Well, no, I mean — I just thought you'd like it."

"Oh. Well, I did."

"It's all right, you know, I don't think—"

He smiled at me, genuinely, although his face had thinned enough that he actually looked least well when he smiled, his cheeks and the wells beneath his eyes looking sort of hollow. I wondered if he'd eat another dessert if I ordered it on his behalf. Then I pushed my plate of lemon cake with Chantilly cream at him, but he waved it away before I could encourage him to have some.

"Are you as tired as I am of all of our conversations taking on this macabre subtext?"

The question caught me off guard. "Well, I am, yeah, of course. But everything feels so foreboding lately."

"Maybe that can't be helped."

It had been a few weeks at least since Kyle fell apart entirely, but when we went back to my flat and got into bed, he let me hold him while he cried, not for anything in particular, just clutching at the lapels of my pajamas: "I'm scared and I don't know what to do, you're too good for me."

"What? That's insane, I'm not good enough for anyone," I said.

"That's not true, that's not true," he sobbed. "I never dreamed I'd have a man want to take me out to dinner, but you have and I don't know, I don't know why I couldn't have you when I was younger but I feel so stupid, so stupid, that was such a mistake."

"But you could have had me any time, darling, I loved you, I always did."

"I'm not worth all this fuss, I don't know, I was doing so well and I can't, I can't justah, I can't pull myself together, Stanley, I'm sorry," and he wailed out "sorry" like an obstacle, choking on it. We got to sleep fairly late, and Kyle rang his office around breakfast and took the morning off.

The next exciting thing that happened was when Miss B called and said, "Eric won't shut up about having a party. You know, a boys' night."

"We don't do that anymore," I said. "We're done." I felt like I was done with an awful lot lately. The only things I wanted to make time for were Wendy, Kyle, and possibly working, although 'working' for me consisted of seeing a play or an opera and writing 800 words about its general relevance. Maybe my nascent memoir counted as working, but I didn't think so. I managed at this point to type up about a page or two each week, pending my general occupation with those other things.

"You don't have friends anymore?" Butters asked. "I know it's hard lately, Stanley, I sympathize. But that's just really stupid."

Butters was never that disparaging about anything, so I said, "Well, wait," and stammered until I could gather my thoughts into, "You know, you're right about that, generally, it's good to have friends, and maybe you should come over this week. But Eric's not my friend, and he's not Kyle's friend, and, well, the last time we saw him was a bit of a jam."

"When was that?"

"Oh, god." I tried to think back to the weekend of Clyde's death. "Easily two months ago. And you know what, we haven't missed him. Or I haven't, anyway."

"Well, since Kyle seems to be, what do you call it, masking his calls—"

"Screening them—"

"—so as to avoid Eric entirely, well, I'm inviting you fellows to a birthday party."

"Eric's birthday is in July."

"Yeah, it is," said Butters, "but Kenny's is next week."

So then we found ourselves at Eric's, where I suddenly felt miserably guilty for not having spoken to Kenny at all over the past couple of months. He was beaming in a new button-down and tight jeans; Eric seemingly just loved dressing him up, like a droll little doll.

"Thanks for coming," he said, handing me a flute of champagne. Something in his eyes seemed sad, and for a moment when we looked at each other, there was the kind of shared pain that I'd only ever felt between Kyle and I. Then he looked away from me, and turned back smirking. "There's a great heaping pile of charlie in the dining room," he said. "Maybe you'd join me?"

"Er, no, thanks," I said. "Very kind of you."

"It's on the house," he insisted. "In honor of my birthday. You used to care about my birthday, remember?"

I remembered, and it felt like a very long time ago. "Well, happy birthday," I said. "I hope you've a lot of them."

"We'll see," he said, rolling his eyes. "Perhaps longevity is overrated."

Kyle was in the kitchen talking to Miss B and Dougie. He was seemingly just drinking water, which relieved me, and I came over to stand with them.

"Oh," Kyle said, dragging me over by the arm. "Stanley's here."

"Yes, I am," I said. They were huddled together in front of a bay of wide windows that looked out onto the Thames, just a corner of St. Paul's sliced off to the left. It was sunset and everything was sliding into darkness on the east side of Southwark, although the lights on that side of the river made a pretty outline for the old Bankside power station, now dormant. Eric had some of the most intriguing views I had ever been privy to, but the City was so dead at night that I was not sure it was even legal to leave his flat when the street lamps went on. "I've been talking to Kenny. What's going on?"

Kyle glanced around the kitchen, which, in keeping with the windows, was fairly open, but no one was around and Kyle was quiet when he said, "I've told Douglas about my, ah, condition."

"I thought we weren't letting people in on that," I said.

"Well, we've been tested," Butters announced, eyeing Dougie. "The results have come just today, actually." His tone was much stiffer than it usually came out.

I steadied myself, ready to offer my support, a feeling slamming me in the chest that seemed like it could reach all the way through me and stop my heart from beating.

"It's negative," Dougie announced.

I felt some kind of relief from a crisis I hadn't been fully aware I'd been having over the past five seconds.

"Thank god," Kyle said, echoing my own thoughts. "Miss B, I don't know what I would have done, you've been so wonderful to me!"

"Of course," Butters said, putting a hand on Kyle's shoulder. "We have to be resilient now, all right?"

"What about you?" Dougie asked.

"Hmm?"

"What's your status?" he repeated.

"Well, I don't know," I said, "I've not been tested."

"You should be tested!" Butters said with a gasp.

"He's stubborn like that," Kyle said.

"Don't you want to know?" Douglas asked me.

"Why would I?"

"Why don't you?"

"Because what are they going to know if I do know, all right? Not much more than we know now, except I'll have to tell everyone and upset them. I'm healthy, all right, look at me—"

"They say it can incubate for 10 years!" Dougie squeaked.

"What if you're negative, don't you want to know?" Butters pressed me.

"I prefer not to think about it!"

Dougie and Butters stood there staring at me, and Kyle took my arm.

"That'll do," he said, patting my hand. "Stanley's been good to me, he's been so good to me." He sounded like he was trying to be upbeat, but the words just made me anxious. I was about to answer him, to say "Of course" or something cursory, and then—

"I'm positive."

In shock, I turned, and Kyle's hand dropped from mine.

"You were eavesdropping on us!" Kyle said to Kenny, not with anger but in shock. Then his eyes narrowed and he said, "Did Eric send you to do this? How did he know what we were talking about this?"

"Eric?" Kenny rolled his eyes. "Oh, no, he's hogging all the coke in the dining room, so I slipped out. And I heard you, and I didn't want to interrupt you, so—"

Butters beckoned him over, and in a very low voice he said, "Kenneth, did you say—?"

"Yeah, I said." He left his champagne flute on the counter and walked toward us.

There was a moment of tenseness when none of us said anything, and all that could be heard was Eric's awful music blasting from the living room, some girlish pop that whined and whined and made the moment twist into something surreal. Then Kyle said, "Does Eric know?"

Kenny took a step back, and laughed sarcastically. "Ha, no," he said. "I'm not stupid enough to tell him."

"Well, you should tell him!" Butters suggested. "He needs to know, you know, it's probably sexually transmitted, so—"

"You might have killed him," Kyle said.

"Just a sec," said Kenny, taking another slight step back. "How do you know he didn't kill me?"

"You're a whore, or did you forget?"

"Oh, fuck, I forgot, thanks for reminding me."

"It's not a joke!" Kyle snapped. "It can make you very sick!"

"Of course it's not a joke! Are you — sorry, I know you think I'm an idiot or something, but I'm not. I went to a free clinic in Hackney, you know, these things exist, and I found out. I'm pre- or whatever, okay, but I'm sure since you're in the same boat you understand."

"Well, I hope you won't tell Eric," Kyle said. I could hear in his voice how much he honestly feared this.

"Christ, of course I won't tell him. You know, I've never done anything to you."

"Kenny, it's all right," I said, but he didn't care, he just stormed off. Needless to say, this put a serious damper on the rest of the party, until he returned an hour later, wiping at his nose. Eric swung him around until midnight, when I put my arm around Kyle and we left.

XXX

Token came to see me at my flat. He rang at 9:30 in the morning, quite business-like and soft-spoken. "May I pop by on my lunch break?" he asked. This was a ruse, or part of an elaborate façade in imitation of the working-class gent who truly has got a lunch break. Token was self-employed, and only because he so desired the normalcy that comes with handing out a business rather than a calling card. He had no set hours, and only imposed them on himself in a mimicry of people like Kyle and even Eric, who toiled perhaps above some people, but still under the supervision of others.

"Of course you may," I answered Token. "What time will that be? I only ask because I'm not yet out of bed." For effect, I yawned into the phone.

"No longer an early riser, I see."

"I was never an early riser, my lord. It just so happens that back when you saw me in the mornings, I often had classes. I should warn you, if you're only coming by for a fuck, that won't be entirely possible, as I'm still being dreadfully steadfast with Kyle."

"Doesn't Kyle wake up and go to work?" He sounded half reproachful, and half curious.

"Well, yeah, of course," I said. "But there's no one stopping me from going back to sleep. For that matter, he doesn't live here." Finally figuring I would never get back to sleep, I sat up in bed.

"Do you know, Wendy's tried to work out for me the details of your relationship, and I find it hard to understand why you haven't moved in together."

"What good would that do?" I asked. "We're two men, not spinsters. I'm not about to propose to him or anything. I think that would make him rather sad."

"Oh." Token coughed into the phone. "Well," he said, stretching out in an awkward way that suggested he was not sure what to make of what I'd told him. "I usually take lunch at 12:25. If I take a taxi I can be over no later than 1. Does that give you enough time?"

"I'll see you at 1," I said conclusively. I hung up the phone and spent the next hour staring at the ceiling.

XXX

In fact, Token had only been by my flat once before: On a crisp March Sunday at dawn he had trailed me back home from a nightclub, and we had fucked rather quickly and deeply before falling asleep with the lights on and the windows open. This had been, oh, probably 10 years previous, during the heady days of sexual enjoyment known as the 1970s. It was not Camp we had been to, as that venue was not yet conceived, but an establishment known as The Girder, in the back of which there were iron girders running along the walls with steel shackles chained on either side, so you might strap your partner in. Being refined men, Token and I turned our noses up at this idea, delightful as the possibility sounded when the club first opened. Incidentally, the only time I returned to The Girder was shortly after I began living with Gary, who was delighted by these new, foreign, tantalizing ideas about the liberty we now had to shackle ourselves to something.

Being that it was mostly foreign to him, when Token came inside he took a look around and said, "Oh, you've redecorated," which was really a nice way to say that I had accumulated some furniture, as the last time he'd been over I'd been on the possession of my kitchen table, a handful of chairs, and the bed upstairs. (It was Gary who helped make my flat into less of a place to park my body during sex and respite. He was nesting for us, building a home, and Token's comment reminded me of this fact briefly, and I sniffled some disappointment that he would never bear witness to similar comments.)

"Well, it has been some time," I said. "Drink, my lord? I have whisky, but then I always have whisky. I could make you something, I don't know, a cup of tea."

"No, thank you." He took a seat at my kitchen table, but not before shedding his coat. "I will be quite fine. Thank you, Stanley."

I took his coat and expected him to sit down, but when I returned he was still standing near the door, arms behind his back, looking, frankly, a bit scared. "Well, I'm having a whisky," I said, to break the ice.

"It's 1 p.m.!" he cried. "Who drinks this early?"

I shrugged. "I think your wife does."

"Oh."

I sat down at the kitchen table with my drink; Token followed suit.

"Listen," he said. The words were coming to him gradually. "I must tell you something, Stanley. Two things, although one of them I'd like to tell you twice. And I'll layer them."

I raised my eyebrows; the whisky tasted unusually bitter to me.

"I've always loved you."

I spit a mouthful whisky onto the table. "Jesus! Don't say things like that!"

"Why not?" he asked, eyeing the fresh mess on the table. "It's true."

"Because a man who's in love with me wouldn't have told me he wanted to get married!"

"I had no choice." He was calm, speaking rationally, telling me with patience a story I'd relived a thousand times. "You know I had responsibilities. I had to make choices. I made bad ones, but at least I made them. I want you to know that I love you, Stanley. I always have. Being with you was the only time in my life I ever felt really happy about things, you know. You gave that to me and I love you for it."

"But you left me," I reminded him.

"Well, no. It was you who left me."

"Yeah, because you told me you wanted to get married to a girl!"

"Which didn't necessitate the end of our relationship."

"Well, Christ, my lord, what was I going to do, be a piece of ass on the side for a married viscount?"

"But I never gave you a difficult time for not wanting that to be your life, did I?" He sighed, shoulders slumped, and he looked, for a moment, very old. "Perhaps I should have taken you up on that whisky," he said, glancing at the mess on the table. "This is indeed a difficult conversation."

"Why?" I asked. "Are you dying?"

He looked right at me, eyes locking with mine. He didn't even need to say it.

Something inside me felt like it had broken — not in sadness, but in shock. I put a hand to my chest, and nodded at him, muttering, "I see."

"Well, that's what I wanted to tell you." He was very calm, but his eyes betrayed his words and even his demeanor. Men like Token were bred to keep themselves reigned in, to guard their feelings from both society and themselves. "It's AIDS, of course. Or HIV, rather, as I've tested positive. I probably don't need to tell you; after Clyde passed away, I'm sure we all realized it was something that could happen to any of us." He paused. "Or all of us."

Suddenly, confessions came pouring out of me. "Gary died of AIDS," I announced. "Very early on. Three years ago."

"I didn't know you'd kept in touch with him."

"I hadn't. His mother called me. But forget Gary. I, er—" Now it was my turn to sigh. "Kyle has it."

Token's eyes widened. "Kyle does?"

"Yeah."

"Is he—"

"He's all right," I assured Token. "Not that I presume you care, but right before Clyde passed, actually — he became very ill with an infection, and we found out he had it. He's okay—" I was trying to reassure myself more than Token "—I want to emphasize that he is fine, for the time being; he can go to work and proceed normally, except for the horrid side effects from the virus itself, which rear their heads from time to inopportune time. But, really, he's not at death's door, at the moment, and I am very grateful." I punctuated this pronouncement by finishing the whisky I had left in my glass. "How are you?"

"Better than that," he said. "Well, no, not at all, I mean, I feel just dreadful, you know, for — for bringing this on my family. Wendy doesn't know. She may have it — I'm sure she does have it. But it's something she needs to hear from me, do you understand? Please don't tell her."

How could I refuse him? "Of course."

"Do you know, this whole time, I've only been trying to do what's right? And I love my daughter, Stanley — but of course, you know that." (I didn't, but I declined to respond.) "And I love my wife. That is the bottom layer of this confession, that I love the woman I have been married to for nearly two decades. I love her more than my parents love one another, which is remarkable, or perhaps not in this social climate, but I wanted to make sure you knew that you did a wonderful thing, finding her for me. If it hadn't been Wendy, it might not have been anyone."

"But that's just idiotic!" I snapped. I'd been silently stewing, and perhaps I was a bit jealous that what had begun as a confession of love to me had become, after a morbid pause, a confession of love for his wife, of all people. "If it hadn't been Wendy it would have been me, and we could have had our own faithful little marriage, and then there'd be no dying. But you had to go off and do the right thing. Surprise, Viscount, there is no right thing. All scenarios end in pain."

"We shall see whom, if anyone, is pained by my intended ending," he said stonily. Then he recovered: "Let me tell you something. While we were together, furtively but happily, I waited for signs that you might stop fixating on Kyle Broflovski and fall in love with me."

"I loved you," I replied.

"Yes, loved, past tense, but our relationship was not your great romance; it was something for you to enjoy while you were waiting for Kyle to confess to you. I could have thrown away my chance to have a family, take my station in society, and please my parents, but that would have meant doing it with a boy who would have thrown me away in a heartbeat, given that I was only second-best. So I freed you. If you had ever given me a sign that you wanted to be with me, perhaps I'd have wanted to be with you. I love you, and it hurt me. I still love you. I can't help but look on you and see the boy I wanted so badly to return my feelings. But you didn't, and I have more self-respect than that."

"Oh, like I'd call marrying a woman and sleeping with blokes on the side self-respectful!"

"Wendy understands me," he replied. He was still quite calm, breathing evenly, voice scarcely raised. "I understand her. The only component of our marriage that has not been entirely consistent all these years is physical intimacy, and I dare say by the time most couples are in their 40s and have a child they have moved past that anyhow. My father's engaged in infidelities. I trust that hers has."

"Kyle and I are faithful," I offered, attempting to make a counterpoint, although I had no idea what I was arguing against, if not the idea that Token was just incorrect on all points he thought he'd gotten right this time. "And we've slept together quite regularly, albeit his … health, I suppose … has caused us to somewhat alter our behavior."

"Ah." Token smiled. "But you are newlyweds. When Wendy and I were freshly married we made love as if the world were ending and intercourse were the only stopper."

"How lyrical."

"Yes, well, I've an English degree, after all. And I know how much you love him. I don't know nearly as much about him, but I do know he's a tenacious little thing. If you and Kyle had a normal narrative of heterosexuality ahead of you, I think you'd find him, no matter how affectionate you felt toward him, hard-up for a new ideal. As it stands, you may never reach that point." He lowered his voice: "I'm so sorry, Stanley." He stood.

"Going so soon?"

"My only regret is that I wish to have been able to settle with you. In my set, true normalcy is extraordinary, and I wish I could have shared in that more fully."

I gaped at him while he retrieved his jacket. I could not believe so much about the scene that had just played out in my flat.

"Good day, Stanley. Please give my regards to your … partner?"

I shook my head.

"Boyfriend?"

"Sorry." I wasn't sure exactly what to say, how I was feeling — not well, of course, but the full impact of these disclosures has left me reeling, clutching the table for dear life. "We're whatever, you know."

"Well," said Token, "whatever, then."

"Yes. He's my whatever."

"I hope you and your whatever are going to be all right," he said. "I love you, Stanley, all right? I'm so happy to have known you."

"My whatever and I are going to be okay," I said, not bothering to get up and open the door for him.

"Yes, I'm sure you will." He paused in the doorway for a moment, looking at me. He was smiling. "Goodbye, now." Then he left.

That was the last time I ever saw Token.


So if you read all 35,000 of my words, you're awesome. I hope you enjoyed. Happy Halloween!