“No, because you pay at the pickup window. I don’t take any money; I just have some stuff on me. Never that much. So neither one of us is bustable.”

“Bustable. Well, you know, I hate to sound like a sorehead, but you’re bustable if you have your pockets full of this crap. You really don’t see the danger in this, do you? You’re floating out there in Frankie-land, where everybody wants you and everything’s just … happy-go-lucky and perfect.”

“Wow,” he said in a voice suddenly juked with revelation. “You’re jealous.”

“That’s such a laugh. Jealous of what?”

“Me. There’s no reason to be, Joe. I know I have a lot of friends up here, but you could, too, if you’d just loosen up a little.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on. You just can’t take the leap, can you? You have no trouble showing up at all of these parties and staring holes through … certain people … but you never let on what’s really happening with you.”

“Well, if it’s that obvious, why should I?” I wasn’t sure if that helped his argument, or mine. In fact, I was losing track of mine fast.

“I could help you,” he said. “I know you don’t like to think that, but it’s true.”

“I’m not discussing this with you. This isn’t the conversation we’re having.”

“What isn’t the conversation? Can you even say it? It doesn’t have to be a big deal, Joe.”

“I’ll decide when … and if … there’s something to talk about.”

“If you don’t go bonkers first.”

“Let me tell you something. I don’t need a helping hand from a … from a drug dealer. You don’t have to come to my rescue, okay? I don’t have to be part of Frankie’s Fan Club. I’m the older one here.”

“What in the world does that have to do with it?”

Nothing, I thought. Everything. I said, “This is idiotic. Maybe we should just hang up.”

He did.

We didn’t speak after that for several weeks—a stretch of time that felt much longer, and that made me realize I missed him even more now than before I’d moved to Tallahassee. I felt as if I’d sworn off a particular food, only to find I’d been drawing some crucial nutrient from it.

I started noticing gay people almost everywhere I looked. They grouped together in the cafeteria. They hung out on the grass between the English and humanities buildings. I hovered near them. Of course, I had no more chance of being subsumed than a pilot fish has of being absorbed by the skin of a shark, but the fact that I was thinking about them seemed a step in the right direction.