“I didn’t know you were still talking to him.”

“Honey, that is all the bygone days. I’m three husbands past him, now.”

She went back to descriptions of Las Vegas, the time of her life, and on and on. Wayne Newton could sing like anything, and the showgirls! She might be one herself if she could start all over again, that was the life, spangled half to death and kicking up your heels, twitching your butt around, serving cocktails and selling cigarettes. It might have sounded the same as always. But she had a quieter tone to her voice, and when she mentioned Rayford there was hardly a complaint. It was early, of course. Anything could happen. But Ronny could hear Rayford in the background, the low gruff sound of his voice. “Where did my buck knife get to, sweetheart, did you put it up somewhere?”

She said, “You dropped it in your boot, didn’t you? I saw you do it. He keeps his knife in his boot so he’ll know where it is,” she said into the phone. “And then he forgets it, or he sticks his hand in there and he can’t find it and he thinks I lost it in a drawer.” Her voice easy, a bit of laughter, another puff.

They had less strife when they spoke these days, maybe because of the distance, or maybe because Ronny understood better the whole craziness of that feeling—how it had drained out of him—after he left the bubble that had encased him with Ben, the ecstatic certainty of each other followed by nothing. Nor could he even feel any anger about it, because Mrs. Nickelsen had died, after all, and she didn’t deserve it, so who could blame Ben if he took himself out of sight, and who could blame him if he came back to play football, to throw himself into the game—who could blame him for anything, really? Mom had gone through that kind of thing with men, of course the same thing would happen to Ronny. So he listened more patiently.

He would remember it later: he hung up the phone on her and walked across the changing colors of the autumn campus, threading his way through buildings, crossing the gravel parking lot all the way to the student union, then upstairs to one of the narrow-windowed meeting rooms. A discussion was under way when he walked into it. Some of the other people seated in the chairs acknowledged him, a thickset girl with short, bleached hair; a pale boy with long, thin arms. She was wearing a button that said, “How dare you presume that I’m heterosexual!” He thought it was silly but it made him smile. This was his second time coming. He dreaded it. But he had to try, he couldn’t go on hiding, so he dragged himself to the meeting room, opened the door, slid into the seat. Anybody could have seen him. If they saw him they would know. The Carolina Gay Association. Attendance could only mean one thing.