“What? No, not a bit. Come on. We can get a hot dog at Hector’s and look over this crap for the essay.”

“Jesus, you sound just like a student. A regular, diligent Carolina gentleman.”

Spreading his hands, walking backward along the grass. “Hey, what can I say. I’m a fucking intellectual.”

NOVEMBER

He felt a fear at times, at night when he was trying to sleep, but at other times as well: when he was walking down the long balcony at the front of the suites and people were watching him; when Tate was making fun of him for being thin or smart or for helping Ben or even for helping Tate when he wrote a paper for him; in class sometimes, for no reason he could think of. Less rarely at the newspaper, where he had a function, but still it happened sometimes that he wondered what people thought of him, whether they had any idea how many secrets he kept. It was a fear old and new, familiar from the days after his father left home, when he was trying to understand what it meant that his mother called his father a queer; but it was new because at school, and especially in the presence of Ben, the fear took on so many other shapes. There was Ben himself, who was intimidating when he wanted to be, and turbulent whether he wanted to be or not—unless Ronny managed to relax him, which happened at times when they were talking, especially when they were alone. There were Ronny’s feelings for Ben, which had moved beyond friendship into something that felt at times quite sinister—for Ben would never return those feelings, would he? Friendship maybe. Ben had never had a friend quite like Ronny before, he had said so. Ben was not used to talking, enjoyed it when it happened, even told his mother about it, according to his own testimony. A simple thing like talking made him happy.

Things would be different if he knew what Ronny was really wanting. But he did know, didn’t he? At times when he was drinking he would lean close to Ronny, or throw an arm around him, or put a hand in his hair, teasing, deliberate. This was part of the wheel on which Ronny went round and round, the fact of himself and all that he concealed and the truth of the world in which he was, for the first time, becoming happy in spite of everything. It was a feeling you could lose so easily; once you understood it was there, very likely it was about to fade. His grandmother had told him to forget about happiness, there was nothing but misery in the world, from family, from husbands, from friends, even from grandchildren, she would say, and had shaken her finger at him. But then he would watch her while she picked her butter beans, watered her tomatoes, smelled her roses, trimmed her jasmine and trained it to grow along a trellis; at times like that there was not only happiness but joy in her expression. So she was lying to herself and to him. While her body told the truth with its radiance of bliss among the plants of the garden. The body was an entity that could not lie.