He finished the bottle. He was so lonely. He could go the baths and look for distraction but when that was over, he would feel even lonelier. He could drink himself to sleep but he would wake with a hangover and loneliness. He would do neither. He would go to bed now and maybe tomorrow Nick would return home. Despite everything, Nick was all he had.

“Pete’s got it,” Waldo confided as he broke off a chunk of apple fritter. In the six months since Eddie’s death, Waldo, who had always been stick thin, had gained at least fifty pounds. His belly sagged over his belt, his face was rounded and jowly, and soft man breasts pressed against his shirt. It was as if he had cushioned himself against a coming blow. When Bill asked him about it, he’d shrugged and said, “If Miss Elizabeth Taylor can be fat and still beautiful, so can I.”

An autumn shower flicked itself against the windows of the doughnut shop in the Tenderloin. At a corner table a young, bearded man dropped his head to his chest and then jerked it up repeatedly.

“He’s just on the nod,” Waldo said dismissively when Bill suggested he might be ill. “All the junkies come here for their sugar high after they shoot up.”

“Pete has what?” Bill asked. He took a sip of the bitter, dregs-of-the-coffee-pot brew cooling in his Styrofoam cup.

“The gay cancer. The KS. He’s at General right now looking like a Dalmatian with all those purple spots.”

Bill hadn’t seen Pete in a couple of years and as far as he knew Pete was still working as a bouncer in The Hide ’n’ Seek and seducing whatever fresh meat wandered into the place.

“He always was a big whore,” Waldo continued, “and crazy for poppers. That’s what they say causes it, poppers. Thank God, I always hated them. Smell like dirty socks and give me a headache. Anyway, I’m going to visit him tomorrow and I want you to come with me.”

“I don’t know. I’m pretty busy.”

Waldo broke off another piece of fritter and said, “I don’t want to go either but he’s our friend.” He plopped the pastry into his mouth. “Plus, I’m so over the gay cancer hysteria. All these queens dragging themselves around the Castro like they’re Camille. It’s a plot, you know.”

“A plot?”

Waldo nodded. “A new way for straight people to shame us for fucking each other. Gay cancer my ass.” He sipped his coffee. “Meet me in the lobby at General tomorrow at seven.”

“Should I bring anything?” Bill asked. “Flowers?”

“A blond eighteen-year-old with a bubble butt,” Waldo said. “But no flowers.”