Ángel imagined asking Oberon if he’d been brought here for sex, and quailed. Instead he ventured, “Are you angry with me?”

“No. Did you think I was?”

“Yes.” Ángel could no longer look at him; he focused on his own knees. “Because I destroyed the cameras in my room.”

“Where I am from . . . we live, many, in one home. And we all sense one another all the time. There is no privacy, because we can feel one another, from anywhere in the house. For us, that is . . . comfortable, to know our friends can tell how we feel, or if anything is wrong. It’s a feeling of safety, of home, to know that the people I live with can feel me, and I can feel them.” He paused. “I often cannot feel you, and when I do I cannot understand. So I use the cameras, so I can see you. It is comfort. Or it was.”

“It comforted you to watch me on the cameras when I slept?”

“Yes. Does it comfort you, to watch me?”

“On the cameras? No. I would never.”

“Even if I said I didn’t mind?”

Ángel shook his head.

“I thought I was offering you contentment.” Oberon’s voice was soft, and his scent had taken on a wintery note, like snow. “Easing your loneliness. But I think I only made it worse. Are you angry with me?”

Ángel bit his lip. “Sort of. Sometimes. But I agreed to come. And I know you’re doing what feels normal to you. It’s not your fault that it isn’t normal to me. I’m trying my best.”

“I will try harder. I should have listened to you, when you said you hated the cameras. Thank you for not lying to me, Ángel.”

“You’re welcome, I guess.”

“I have another question.”

“Okay.”

“Do you really like this house?”

Ángel laughed. “Oberon,” he said, “this is the ugliest house I have ever seen.”

Chapter 12

Days passed, and Ángel and Oberon eased into a sort of careful friendship. They had lunch together. Oberon ate, and Ángel was pleased that his color returned to what seemed to be its normal golden cream. They talked about music. The jazz influences and unreliable narrators of Steely Dan; the function of the movie score, and if it could stand alone without its movie; whether punk music had any aesthetic value or redeeming social importance at all. (Oberon was not a fan of punk.) Sometimes Oberon would consult Ángel about a song’s cultural significance, or meanings of lyrics. More often he would share his greater technical knowledge with Ángel. One afternoon, they had a discussion of harmony and counterpoint that so vastly expanded Ángel’s largely instinctive understanding of the topic it made his head spin. Ángel ruefully thought that his four years in Oberon’s company could easily be the equivalent of a graduate degree in music theory, if he paid attention.