Another guy had touched him, he'd said.

We were out in the middle of nowhere, alone, utterly alone. This was a first for us, since Devon.

I was standing on a bare stony spot, overlooking a forest in the distance; beyond that, way off, some coastal rocks and the sea. He was sitting, legs dangling off an unthreatening ledge, reading a map. He told me, that according to said map, that the rocks were called Otter Cliff.

We were on Mount Desert Island; I'd never been before; he'd insisted we come, alone.

I'd found out on arrival that the place's name was pronounced "dessert" more often than not.

"Who touched you?" Why had he said this? Why here? We'd been alone and suddenly it was as if we weren't.

His saying the unexpected out of the blue wasn't all that unfamiliar to me. Finny had a tendency to spring odd confessions at unlikely moments. Usually they were less disturbing, though.

"Some guy in a bar, right after my birthday. I was legal, you weren't around and I, well, I went exploring."

I'd been away with my family, at home. My mother had insisted. I would only turn 21 once, she'd said. It was a "dry" occasion; unlike the questionable places in which Finny might have found himself, no alcohol was ever served at home. There, the Volstead act remained in effect.

As his birthday was almost on top of mine, I'd missed his, arriving back in Boston a week too late. Of course the situation could have been avoided if he'd come south with me (as I was living in Boston); but he'd never seemed interested. And I had never encouraged him.

I really didn't want my folks to see him, or him them. Everyone at home knew me well enough already for my taste. I didn't want to offer a new view of me, certainly not as in me and Finny, not as in the us we'd somehow made of one another. Didn't much fancy Finny seeing me in the vaguely backwards, teetotal place I'd come from either, though that would have been much easier to bear.

So we'd missed each other's birthdays, there was nothing to make up for; he'd said as much, probably knowing I be thinking that way. I knew he'd gotten drunk that night, he'd told me already - but nothing more, until now. We were, neither of us, the purest of God's creatures. But, if we'd been together, nothing memorable would have happened - probably.

So while I had been far away, with my well starched parents, Phineas had been groped, gently, he said; by a sailor.

Well I never. Well actually I had.

Finny described him for me. Blond and red of face, tall. Once he was described, strangely we were alone again. The sailor may as well have been made of blond, reddish cardboard. We agreed on our truly being alone again, without actually saying anything. The wind, a surprisingly warm breeze for October had carried the sailor off somewhere way beyond Otter Cliff.

We'd come prepared, unlike that other time, to spend the night on the beach. There was no moon; we made a fire as there was driftwood everywhere. Alone I watched the flames' light on his face. "Which is what you are", I said aloud, surprising us both.

"Are what?.

"My best pal."

"Hell, I'm your only pal", he said, his hand suddenly across my bare ankle. I don't think he realized I'd echoed his words from that other beach night, where his unanswered words were burned into me - words I still heard in my dreams occasionally.