I stayed longer than I wanted to. Frankie talked to me for a while, but he was a busy man. He hung on Chip for a while, and kissed him several times; then Brian showed up again and hung on Frankie; then Chip pulled Brian onto his narrow lap and made out with him, while Frankie occasionally glanced over and applauded. Three different people came up and whispered in Frankie’s ear. Each time, he glanced at Chip, dug something out of the pocket of his jeans, and palmed it over to them, like an uncle bestowing quarters. At one point, Big Frank sidled up to us and asked me to dance. Frankie burst out laughing.

“What?” Big Frank wanted to know. “Is that so funny?”

They both looked at me. I held up my hands and said, “Sorry. I don’t really dance.”

“He doesn’t dance,” Frankie confirmed. “Nothing to be done about that. It doesn’t mean you’re not pretty, though,” he called after Big Frank, who was already wandering off.

“I’m going,” I said.

“Don’t,” he said. And then, “All right. But I’ll call you this week. We’re going to see each other.”

“Good,” I said. And then I couldn’t help myself. I felt a wave of desire to be part of his troupe. I dredged a nickname from my memory, one my sister had used for both of us, indiscriminately, and I reached up and smashed my palm down onto his patch of blue hair. “Dingus.”

At the foot of the stairs, I met the host. He was short and thick-waisted, standing with one hand on the newel and the other pinching a cigarette; he couldn’t have been more than twenty, but he talked like a middle-aged mobster. “Thanks for coming, Little Frank’s brother,” he said, for that’s how I had introduced myself. “I, ah, wouldn’t go out there just yet, if I were you.” He was staring intently at the screen door that opened onto the front porch.

“Why?”

“Thugs,” he said. “Across the street, there, next to the cemetery. They’ve got nothing better to do; they’ve been hanging out, staring at the house, shouting the F word.”

“Fuck?”

He took his eyes off the screen door and blinked at me, as if I’d asked him what planet we were on.

It isn’t all scary.

I knew what my little brother was getting at. Not only had I never clarified which side of the fence I was on, sexually; I hadn’t indicated that I even knew where the fence was. An all-scary party would be one filled entirely with homosexuals.