On the other hand, it is unlikely that I would discard a crushed nitrite ampoule so neatly in an ashtray. This is another thing that I am wondering tonight: how it could be that a man who would burn cigarette holes in a cashmere blanket and leave water marks on antique lacquer would, presumably in a state of some abandon, reach across a bed, perhaps across a body, to deposit crushed, sniffed nitrites in a bedside ashtray. In a state of abandon, I might have dropped them on the sheet or stuffed them for the time being into a pillowcase.

Of course, this is hard to say for sure; I have not used the things for years.

And of course, it might not have been Nicholas who put them in the ashtray.

It might have been the other man, being fastidious.

I try the window, to open it, but I breathe through the glass instead, because there is nothing to breathe outside but night. Down below, a late-fifties convertible with tail fins has stopped for a red light. When the light does not change, the car races off, and when it is gone, I can still hear this year’s music coming out of it. Years ago, in parking lots, on highways, Nicholas used to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac.” He used to say that cars with fins made him believe it could be possible to get far enough away.

Across the street, storefront windows all along the block display men’s clothes for the fall. In a few months it will be time for the scarves tucked into overcoats. Now it is time to look. It is always time to look.

Of course Nicholas would live across the street from a showcase of adornment, from male mannequins posed in artificial light. Leather jackets are slung over shoulders or ballooned around perfections of torso; trousers are belted tight around improbable frugalities of waist. From his bed, Nicholas could look down upon an avenue of waxy cheekbones, a prohibition of repose.

As a little boy, Nicholas called men’s clothes frocks. He must have seen the word somewhere, perhaps in one of our mother’s magazines, or he might have heard the word from her, though it was not a word she used, or from a movie, from one of the thirties comedies that thrilled him. He might have heard the word from an actress with a cigarette holder.

When he first said it, it is possible that he did not know what he was saying.

Years later, when he did know what he was saying, Nicholas said that he had learned about life from Rosalind Russell.

The first time I heard him use the word, I tried to tell him it was not a word to use. I meant, of course, that it was inappropriate, but what I said, the way I put it, was that boys did not wear frocks.