“I decided I wanted to live,” he replied firmly. “The plan was we would take sleeping pills and he would turn on the gas and we would die in our sleep. I didn’t swallow the pills he gave me and when he wasn’t looking, I spat them out. We got into bed and he held me tight. He told me how much he loved me, how happy he had been with me and that soon we would be happy together forever. He drifted off to sleep. By then, the apartment was filled with gas. I forced myself out of bed and called my brother, Sal. You know the rest.”

“Did you try to rouse him?”

He bit his lip and shook his head. “I went back to say goodbye.” He threw me an anguished look. “He wanted to die, Mr. Rios. Should I have tried to wake him up? Did I kill him?”

This, I understood, was the reason he had told me the story.

“No, Nick,” I said immediately, crisply. “You did not kill Bill Ryan. He killed himself. That’s not on you. You understand?”

His eyes glistened with tears. He murmured a relieved, “Thank you, Mr. Rios.”

“I mean it, Nick, it’s not on you. Not legally, not morally, not in any way.”

He nodded.

“You said you been thinking about what you want to do with your life,” I said after a moment. “What have you decided?”

He accepted the change of subject gratefully. “Finish up at school.”

“And then?”

Shyly, he said, “I’ve always dreamed of being a writer. Is that crazy?”

“I look forward to reading your first book.”

He got up, extended his hand. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Rios.”

I got up, came around my desk and pulled him into my arms. “Good luck, Nick.”

He whispered back, “You too, Henry.”

I never saw him again. Years later, I was walking around the National Mall in Washington where the AIDS Memorial Quilt had been unfurled, each panel bearing the name of someone who had died. I came across a sky-blue panel. Stitched across it in green lettering were the words Nick and beneath it Manito—little brother. I’ve often wondered if it was him.

I remember in law school having been exposed to gonorrhea and taking the train to San Francisco to get tested in one of the city’s free VD clinics. The clinic was located in a blocky building constructed of unpainted concrete bricks on a side street in the Castro. While its outward appearance was grim, the waiting room inside was filled with other gay men chatting and joking and cruising as if we were in a bar rather than a medical office.

“You again,” the male receptionist said to a handsome man checking in with him. “I’m beginning to think you get the clap to have a reason to come and see me.”