“No,” he said quickly, and shook his head.

“It’s okay, everybody does. I’m not self-conscious about it. Well, I am, but I don’t care. My mom says it looks like a hatchet.”

“I like it,” said Jamal, and kissed her nose along the bridge.

“I really wasn’t,” Ronny said. “I mean, I was looking at it before, and then I thought what nice eyes you have. And then I thought you were kind of nice, or something. I get feelings about people.”

“So do I.” She smiled and crossed her arms over her chest. She had a small upper body and big hips; she was wearing a loose blouse, jeans, and sandals; and her fingernails and toenails were painted with glitter. “So what do you think my nose looks like?”

“I think it looks fine,” he said, though he was tempted to tell her that he had compared her to a crow. While she was putting on a good show about it, anybody could see she was sensitive about her looks. Most people were.

They talked longer and agreed to go out to dinner together sometime over the summer. All of what they said was in the category of polite chatter, but there was something pleasant about it. He remembered Ben from last night—this morning, really—telling him not to say bullshit things. It was a nice idea for two people but tough in the everyday world. Anyway, politeness wasn’t really the same as bullshit, was it?

That Obscure Object

LATER HE READ THE NEWSPAPER AGAIN and looked at the want ads, in the late of the day with shadows longer on the lawn, the house still quiet, a bit of music hanging in the air from the fraternity next door. Somebody was playing a Springsteen album over and over again. The page of job ads made him feel hopeful enough that he felt free to spend a bit of money that evening. He went to the Buñuel movie with Lily. It made him feel grown-up, sitting in an art movie house with Lily wrapped in her elegant scarves of white and gray, she enraptured by the beauty of it, the obscure object of desire, the thought of the phrase. Eating salty popcorn and watching a French film.

Afterward, in the pools of light on Franklin Street, standing across from the Intimate Bookstore, she asked, “Are you really sure you’re gay? Don’t get upset.”

“You’re not starting this again, are you? I thought you were done being angry with me.”

“I am. I just wonder how you can be sure.” Lily was one of those people who were born to critique the world and everything in it, but there was something warm and careful about her at the same time. She was the first person he had told he was gay. She had brought it up at odd moments ever since. Maybe something in the movie had reminded her of the conversation? It made him smile to remember what he had been doing the night before, and he almost answered her question more fully. He wanted to talk about Ben to someone. But he wanted to keep it quiet at the same time, to hold it solitary inside himself, lest he should break the spell.