Her lips were in a frenetic shape. He thought she might close her mouth, but that took longer, though her eyes had a sleepy, sideways look, so almost, yes, a crazed look, fever for eyes. He looked around at the bower they were in and then back at her and then at his hands, as if they might hold the answer to this overheated abyss he now found himself in with, with her.

In the old days, Stanley would have wheeled in luggage. One of the obit writers would have asked, “Vacation?”

The Sissy report would have filled at least two suitcases. He would have gone to the closet lining the length of the Room’s interior wall, the one where he usually leaned his umbrella, the place he hung his winter coat these many years. He would have pushed the bags in there. All the hangers were empty in June, tangled in groups on the long pole. Still, he would have worried. Was it a safe enough hiding place?

Instead, he carried it in his man purse. All of the DVDs—fourteen, to be exact—fit nicely. He took the discs out and placed them beside his terminal. When he walked by his desk, his eye burned right to them. They glowed. Then he refocused, and they became an unobtrusive stack on his busy, messy desk.

We need to talk.

It was the first time he’d messaged Adam in months. Since Gordon Bray became managing editor, Adam and Stanley’s church meetings had been suspended. It had happened before, these kinds of moratoriums, but never for this long.

Four. The usual place.

If he were a teenager, he would have gulped. He’d hoped to wait only a full day for a reply. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t get one at all.

Sure.

His own cool, in that one word, thrilled him. “Sure,” he said to himself more than once over the course of the day. When he found himself saying it out loud, in response to any one of many questions put to him from this one and that one, he had to stop a wiseass grin.

Walking the short half-block to the church, he thought he might run into Adam. When he didn’t, he reminded himself to be reasonable. No doubt Adam would be late.

He pushed the heavy doors into the smell of Sunday flowers.

His eyes adjusted to the dim. He walked slowly toward the pews. He felt his way to a seat on the far right, their usual place.

It took a few minutes for him to realize Adam was there too. He was sitting at the front of the church, in a pew off the center nave, staring at the altar. The hot afternoon coming through stained glass didn’t quite reach him.

“Adam,” Stanley said.