I looked outside. I looked and looked. I looked and I kept looking. And mayyybe I could see the thing he wanted me to see. Yes, among the cruisy boys were lots of kinds of people, people I didn’t see when I let my eyes unfocus until I saw a few of them to the exclusion of all else. But this wasn’t the only point, that I had looked at them because I knew I could learn from them, or because they were a bit like Dan, internet and sex people who’d upgraded into friends. It was that I hadn’t seen even these people, not completely. It was Speedos all the way down, the whole world, the whole thing.

I had a sudden and unshakeable faith in this idea, always a sign that things are going well and you should be cleared for take-off.

‘Right,’ I said uneasily. Was this what Dan meant? Maybe I could go out there. Something was holding me back.

It was Dan’s hand, and it had cupped my shoulder. ‘Please come outside,’ he said.

I looked at him softly.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m just not risking it.’

‘You have to do something,’ he said. ‘Go to the steam room.’

I said, ‘Really?’ I looked up at the sun. ‘Even in summer?’

‘You’ll like it.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It’ll be empty.’

And it was steamy, and empty, a lovely salty place – a world within a universe, its superheated middle. I breathed in through my nostrils and out through my mouth and watched the droplets form in gluey grids along the ceiling. It was thirty-six degrees outside and objectively unpleasant, but Dan was right. That really was the part I liked the best.

I breathed in steam and breathed steam out, a steamy wet environment. You couldn’t live in a steam room, but you could always visit.

In the weeks between my leaving Richmond and Dan leaving for good, the main thing I did was walk around endlessly, avoiding the various boxes Dan had left un-taped, half-packed.

I walked Nicholson Street, Johnston Street, Smith Street, random others. I could have gone to West Brunswick, or south into the city, but instead I walked all the boring streets I knew already, hoping that the man in the shawl, the news that walked like a man, would walk like news or person into a run-in with me.

In other words, I was stalking Chris L. But not, like, stalking-stalking. A few times I’d deliberately passed Dan and Lachlan’s warehouse apartment building when I knew neither of them were in and was tempted to press the buzzer so I could say my piece. But I knew I wouldn’t personally like being surprised like this, and if I was halfway right in my Chris L theory-of-mind – that we were both private people who expressed it differently – I knew that this could only wreck things further.