“They’re lovely, of course,” Nicholas said, “but I don’t find them all that tasty. They’re too dapper, too aesthetic, they’re too effete for words. Actually, I find them epicene.”

The men dancing in the mirrors were somewhat on the dapper side, and it could be said that they were more beautiful than handsome, but they could not accurately be called epicene. I realized, though, why my brother had. It was not only true that they were not looking at each other; it was also the truth that, when they danced by themselves in mirrors the most beautiful men in Rome were not looking at Nicholas.

It was a night that he was looking his best and he knew it. He was sitting between two older, good-enough-looking men at a front table, in several hundred dollars’ worth of clothes, and the most beautiful men in Rome were not looking at his drop-dead bone structure, and it was not going over.

It was not going over, and it did not go over when the man from San Francisco got up to dance, to join the most beautiful men in Rome.

Nicholas watched the man claim a mirrored column.

It did not go over.

Nicholas watched the man from San Francisco dance by himself.

“Screw him,” I said to my brother. “He probably lives in the Mission.”

“The Avenues,” Nicholas said.

“Richmond,” Nicholas said.

“Dance with me,” my brother said.

He pulled me from my chair with a strength that I gave in to. He pulled me to the dance floor, to the center of it. He put my hands on his waist. He put his arms around my neck, blew soft, liquored air on my face, and began to take small steps, moving in place, to no music that was being played in that room.

“Dance with me,” he said.

He wrapped his hair around my neck and pulled me to him with it. He moved his hands down my back, pressed me closer to him, and he pressed hard to me.

Our clothes touched everywhere.

“Why don’t you dance with me!”

I clasped my hands around his waist, practically encircling it. I let my hands become the accessory he wanted.

He made his eyes look as if they were looking into mine.

“Dance with me,” he said.

I danced with him.

We left the man from San Francisco with the most beautiful men in Rome. We walked back to the hotel and said very little for most of the walk.

“Just one thing,” I finally said. “The Empress of China wasn’t there when you were twelve.”

“Actually, it wasn’t the Empress of China,” my brother said. “It was the place that was there before it was the Empress of China.”

“Chinese?”

“Of course Chinese. We had cashew chicken.”

“What was a Japanese man doing there?”

“It is a little odd, isn’t it?”

“A Jap in a Chink joint?” I asked.