In the front seat Ronny felt the density of Ben next to him, taking up width, relaxed and unself-conscious as he headed out of Chapel Hill through the traffic. He drove with one hand on the steering wheel, his thighs sprawled under it, his other arm at rest on the open window. The car stirred with the warm rush of air, rattling some scraps of paper on the seat and the floor until Ronny gathered them up and wadded them together, trash, to dispose of the next time the car stopped. Ben watched him and grinned. “You’re cleaning my car.”

“The sound is irritating.”

Ben shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’d have never thought you liked things tidy from the way you and your roommate keep your dorm room.”

“That’s all Kelly. I clean that room all the time but it doesn’t do a bit of good.”

“You complain to him?”

Ronny shrugged. “Why be a pain in the ass? It wouldn’t make any difference anyway.”

Quiet then, and Ronny asked about where they were headed. Ben’s hometown, Turtletrack, was a spot on the map, the back end of Virginia, he said. The Nickelsens had lived there the last ten years or so, when Ben’s dad got a job at a farm supply house. Ben turned into a star football player for the high school. His sister became a hippie and a feminist.

“What about your mom? Did she ever work?”

“She had a job at the post office till about a year ago. She took early retirement. My mom and dad had kids kind of late.”

“You close to your sister?”

“Kind of. She might come tomorrow or the next day. She’s out of classes, too. Or she may wait and come when I take you back. She hasn’t decided.”

That meant they had talked about Ronny’s visit. He had met Ben’s parents but not his sister. “She’s not uncomfortable with me being around your mom?”

“Why would she be?”

“People are funny sometimes. Especially when there’s sickness in the family.”

“Nina’s cool. She’s sharp but she’s kind of a space cadet. Half the time she might as well be an oyster. The other half she won’t shut up.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ll see what I mean. It’s nothing wrong, it’s just how she is. She’ll be fine with you.”

“Sure. She sounds kind of cool, actually.”

“She’ll probably have some pot. She usually does.”

“Nice, I guess.”

“You want to try it?”

Ronny shrugged. The thought made him uneasy. He had felt guilty about drinking the beer.

“You don’t have to worry about Nina, if that’s what you’re doing. It’s not like everybody can tell you’re queer just by looking at you.”

Something about the statement was not quite comfortable. There was more than one way to read it. What did queer look like anyway? Ben thought of hiding Ronny, of keeping him secret; but so did Ronny, didn’t he? “I was more worried about being a stranger in the house than that,” Ronny said.