Peter’s current digs were in a new development near the West Side Highway. The building was a sleek glass column surrounded by other sleek glass columns in various stages of completion. The whole neighborhood seemed to have been invented in the past five years and had the feeling of an extraordinarily well-heeled frontier town. What a perfect place to start a new life, a faceless building at the edge of the known world with the grinding and crashing of construction playing in the background twenty-four hours a day. But the noise, along with the bright sunlight and the unseasonable heat and the dusty yellow air, seemed to disappear as soon as Desmond entered the building’s calm lobby. Here was the future, a carefully controlled environment that allowed you to see the outside world while shielding you from its every danger and inconvenience. Never mind about global deforestation and dwindling species of plants; there were trees here and exotic red flowers, the air smelled sweet and was filled with soft, seductive sounds that could have been music or bird calls. The cool, golden elevator lifted Desmond to the twenty-third floor with smooth efficiency, and he stepped off, pleasantly disoriented, as if he’d been transported to another world.

Sandy opened the door for him. He gripped his hand as if he were trying to crack a walnut. “It’s just great to finally meet you, Desmond,” he said, emphasizing his words with the overdone enthusiasm of someone trying to lure you into a pyramid sales scheme. “Not that I don’t feel as if we’re friends already.”

Desmond had been expecting youth and vitality, but Sandy couldn’t have been more than thirty. He had light hair cut in a geometric flattop and the solid body and perfect posture of a hefty dancer. Everything he was wearing—gray polo shirt, knee-length khaki shorts—appeared to have been ironed within the past hour, and his skin was so clean and glowing, it looked as if it had been polished with a rag. Good with children and dogs, Desmond thought, everyone’s favorite uncle, probably planning to impregnate a lesbian friend or adopt a baby. He led Desmond into the apartment, his shoulders thrown back with proprietary confidence, silently proclaiming that no matter how long Peter and Velan had been a couple and despite the fact that he Sandy didn’t live here, he Sandy was in control.

The clean, clear decor Peter had touted over the phone turned out to be a long living room with views of the Hudson furnished with two matching bone-colored love seats and a glass coffee table. There were a few framed travel posters leaning against the walls and a stack of books on the floor that looked as if they’d been placed there by an interior decorator. The sun was blazing right outside the window, but thanks to some technological miracle, the pane was cool to the touch.