As soon as he walked into the apartment, he was overwhelmed by the reassuring exhaustion that always overtook him when he returned home from a long trip. The sounds of the New York traffic, so distinctly different in volume and tone from the traffic sounds in Boston; the dusty odor of the dirtier New York air; the familiar smells of carpets and houseplants and gas from the pilot light on the stove that always blew out on breezy afternoons. As he lowered his bag to the floor beside the red velvet sofa in the living room, he realized how cold and emotionally empty his life in Boston was, and, taking in all the clutter Russell had been collecting for five years, how colorless his life in this apartment had been before Russell had tricked Desmond into letting him move in here. What a fool he’d been for thinking he had to leave this behind, even temporarily, to get a hold on his life. This was his life. This was where he belonged, here in this apartment flooded with the burnished light of late afternoon, and the primitive portraits and embroidered pillows. He let his knapsack slide off his shoulders, and went to the kitchen to get something to eat.

He and Russell were erratic housekeepers. Once or twice a month they’d go on extravagant cleaning binges that could last for a couple of days. They’d spend hours doing laundry, and swinging around vacuum cleaners and harsh chemical sprays. Then, gradually, they’d slide back into genteel squalor. But there was nothing genteel about the squalid kitchen this afternoon. The sink was stacked high with dishes, the wastebasket was overflowing with trash, and the little table by the window was covered with junk mail and stacks of unread newspapers. Russell read history voraciously, but seemed to view current events as inconsequential. The tragedies and victories of the past at least had a beginning, a middle, and an end; until you could see the whole picture, he wasn’t interested. All the nondescript 1980s junk he sold at Morning in America suddenly took on a thin veneer of Cultural Significance when you factored in the Black Monday stock market crash, the ravages of AIDS, and the all-too-plausible announcement of Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Well, maybe this kitchen mess was a good sign, evidence that Russell needed Desmond around to hold his life together. The freezer was crammed with TV dinners, frost-covered loaves of bread, and boxes of mini-pizzas. What a poignant image this stockpile conjured up: Russell slumped over a plastic tray of pseudo-food. He might as well be eating protein pills. The bottom half of the fridge was virtually empty. Nothing to eat. So much for that idea.