He followed her around the side of the building where a peeling metal door held the faded silhouette of a beaver wearing a hair bow. The bathroom was a one-seater, not exactly clean, but marginally acceptable, with white, cinder block walls, and a fly-specked mirror bolted above the sink. As she looked around for a clean place to set her bundle of clothes, he lowered the toilet seat lid and—out of respect for his gay brethren—covered it with a couple of paper towels.

She put her clothes down and turned her back to him. “There’s a zipper.”

In unventilated quarters the beaver suit stank more than a gym locker, but as a veteran of more two-a-day practices than he could count, he’d smelled worse. A lot worse. Some of her damp, baby-fine dark hair had escaped from that sad excuse for a ponytail, and he pushed it away from the nape of her neck, which was milk white except for the faintest trace of a pale blue vein. He poked around in the mangy fur until he found the zipper. He was damn good at undressing women, but he’d barely lowered the tab an inch before it caught in the fur. He worked it free, but after another few inches, it caught again.

It went on that way, stop and start, the parting fur revealing an ever expanding wedge of milky skin, and the longer it took to unzip her, the less gay he felt. He tried to distract himself with conversation. “So what gave me away? How did you know I wasn’t straight?”

“Are you sure you won’t be offended?” she asked with phony solicitude.

“The truth shall set me free.”

“Well, you’re totally buff, but those are designer muscles. You didn’t get a chest like that roofing houses.”

“Lots of men go to the gym.” He resisted the urge to blow on her damp skin.

“Yes, but what straight guy doesn’t have a chin scar someplace, or a nose bump? Your profile is more chiseled than Mount Rushmore.”

It was true. Dean’s face had remained remarkably unscathed. His shoulder, however, was another story.

“Then there’s your hair. Thick, shiny, blond. How many products did you use on it this morning? Never mind. It’ll just make me feel inferior.”

The only thing he’d used on his hair that morning was shampoo. Good shampoo, it was true, but, still, shampoo. “It’s all in the cut,” he said, his cut having been administered by Oprah’s hairstylist.

“Those jeans didn’t come from the Gap.”

Correct.

“And you’re wearing gay boots.”

“These are not gay boots! I paid twelve hundred dollars for them.”

“Exactly,” she said triumphantly. “What straight man would pay twelve hundred dollars for boots?”