It took me a few tries to get the hang of the printer, but then I did, and it was easy enough to do my tasks, and talk with Jonathan at the same time. He was from Wyoming, he said. Not the best place to be a gay boy. Had I heard of Matthew Shepard? I had. Well, he was from Wyoming, too. That was the kind of thing that happened there. If you stayed.

Doug and Ed had been, like, his fairy godfathers. Jonathan had a job waiting tables at a place in Noe Valley. He was trying to put a little money aside. He loved San Francisco. He loved Doug and Ed, they were angels who walked among us. He owed them everything. “I don’t want to get into the details, but seriously, they saved my pitiful, scabby little life.”

“They sound great,” I said. It made me a little uncomfortable, hearing him go on about Doug and Ed, singing their praises, which for all I knew they entirely deserved. It reminded me that even the most sincere admiration, the most devoted hero worship, can make you sound foolish.

Doug came back with our lunch, pizza slices and some fizzy fruit sodas. So far I had no complaints about the working conditions. We finished with the page printout and Jonathan said it was time for him to get ready for his waiter job. He waved as the elevator door closed on him.

“I should think about getting back, too,” I said. The afternoon rush hour started early, and I didn’t want to get slammed twice in one day.

“Absolutely,” Doug said. “First let me show you something.”

I followed him to an alcove under one of the diamond-shaped windows. An old-fashioned bookcase with glass doors was there, and Doug opened a door to show me a line of small bound journals. He drew one out. “Here. Compass Points, spring 1943.”

It didn’t look like much. Limp, a little grimy and worn, and with a plain cover of rough blue paper. “Yeah, it’s been around for a while,” Doug said. “Not continuously. There was a break in the sixties, and another one in the eighties. It kind of dragged along in the nineties, then went under again. I’ve had it for the last eight years.”

“So it’s not really the same magazine,” I said, then wished I hadn’t, since Doug gave me some side eye.

“It’s a heritage. A heritage of excellence. Compass Points published e.e. cummings. Pablo Neruda. Bertolt Brecht. Marianne Moore. I expect you may have heard of some of them.”