“Find streets paved with gold?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They didn’t find that but a lot of our families found a home. Hey, is that all you’re going to eat?”

“Are you trying to fatten me up for a reason?”

He grinned. He’d made it clear he thought I was too thin and often piled my plate with more food than I could possibly eat, then packaged the leftovers.

Larry had warned me not to get romantically involved my first year of recovery but I figured even he wouldn’t object to my discreet infatuation with this smiling straight boy. Because clearly, Adam was a straight guy, cluelessly friendly and open and at ease in his big body as only straight guys can be. A gay guy who looked like him would have carried himself with the slightest bit of theatricality to show off the gym-built muscles, and the eyes of gay men in the city at that moment were all touched with a drop of anxiety, like a tiny tear that never fell. Adam’s eyes were clear.

I felt Adam’s meaty fingers digging into my shoulders and briefly massaging me. “Hey, what you got there?”

The operations manual was open on the table before me. I explained to him what it was and the job I had taken on.

“I thought you did criminal law,” he said, positioning himself in front of me, order pad in hand.

“Business is slow and a man’s gotta eat,” I said.

He smiled. “Speaking of eating, what’ll you have today?”

“Surprise me?” I ventured.

“Tuna melt and tomato soup.”

“I have that most days. What’s the surprise?”

“Side of salmonella,” he said. “Kidding!”

He went off and I stared appreciatively at his broad back and big, tight glutes, and then, with a sigh, turned my attention to my work.

Compared to the opaque legal documents I was accustomed to, the operations manual was refreshingly to the point. Thus far I had learned that every life insurance policy contained a contestability clause that allowed the insurer to challenge the validity of the policy within two years of the death claim. Whether the company exercised that option depended on the results of a preliminary inquiry called a death confirmation investigation. This investigation centered on three areas: whether the insured’s information on the original application—name, age, gender, address—contained any material misstatements that would void the policy; confirmation of the insured’s identity to make sure the insured and decedent were the same person; and verification of cause of death. If those three things checked out, the claim was paid.