“It doesn’t matter,” Reynard says. “The marriage ceremony is never checked up on. Jump through hoops to get married, but nobody investigates if it’s true. It’s a scheme. It’s a scam.”

“And what’s yours?”

“To get you someplace comfortable for sex,” says Reynard in the dark. “You’re not afraid, are you?”

“Everybody’s afraid when they hear somebody say that,” Stanford says, but he isn’t.

“The coyote and the mountain climber,” Reynard says, “the barber and the peacock, wife, lover and dybbuk, all equally at home in the world.”

“OK, you’re high.”

“I learned that from the Jesuits.”

“Do Jesuits and vicars even intersect?”

“They used to keep immigrants here,” Reynard says, his hands swinging invisible around the meadow, “and one bride-to-be, bedecked for the occasion, demanded that a fox be roasted and served at the feast. The fox was mate to another fox—”

“That’s usually how it works.”

“—and the vengeful spirit of the wronged mate flew into the body of the bride and tricked her into hanging herself from a eucalyptus. And they say her spirit still lingers in the purgatory of this amphitheater, the story goes.”

They are at the amphitheater now, the darkness opening up like a galaxy around them. “No,” Stanford says.

“It’s a real story. You can look it up.”

“Nobody kept immigrants here. Angel Island, maybe. You are so full of shit. There’s no bride spooking around here.”

“So why do I tell you this?” Reynard asks, his voice, familiar from the ceremony, like he is reciting again. “Because you still listen, because in times like these to have you listen at all, it’s necessary to talk about trees.”

This is, it takes Stanford a second to place it, from a poem his last girlfriend, months before he came out, loved. This vicar plucked it from his brain, or maybe his heart. The title is “What Kind of Times Are These,” and Reynard drops the bottle and it’s gone. They hear it crack, a busy noise but one that sounds like trouble. They were several strides away, but now find and grasp and open their mouths to each other. Reynard reaches down and has Stanford unzipped before he knows it. The vicar’s hands are cold, but then warm around him as he thickens. Stanford is not much younger than this guy, probably. He wants to lean back against something but the only thing behind him is the vicar’s other hand and open space. In the dark around him, also, it feels like things are happening. “Good,” Reynard says, at his mouth.

“I think I heard someone say something,” Stanford says.

“That was me.”

“No, something else.”

“Stop listening. Feel this.”

“Fuck. That feels good. Why do you do this?”

“Because it feels good.”

“No, the vicar thing.”