“Nice, isn’t it?” Sandy asked. “I told Peter no clutter. I go through with a trash bag every time I come over. He’ll be out in a minute. Take a seat.” He tugged up the legs of his shorts, lowered himself onto the love seat opposite Desmond, and spread his arms out across the back. You’d have to say he was an attractive man, yet there was something corpselike about the antiseptic spotlessness of his skin; and the forced baritone of his voice and muscularity of his calves seemed to be obvious instances of protesting too much. “Peter tells me you’re up in Boston,” he said.

“I have a teaching position for one semester.” Desmond started to describe Deerforth College.

Sandy nodded in the eager, polite way of someone feigning interest, then took advantage of a pause and said, “I grew up outside Boston. A small New England town called Stoneham.” It would have sounded charming enough, if only Desmond hadn’t had the misfortune of once getting lost in the bland sprawl of this particular suburb. When Sandy asked him if he’d heard of it, Desmond felt the kind thing to do was say he hadn’t. “I’ll have to show you around some time,” Sandy said.

“That would be wonderful.”

“And your lover runs a secondhand shop. I think I might have been in there once,” he said, as if congratulations were therefore in order. “What do you think of Boston?”

“It’s growing on me.”

“It’s funny you should use those words.” Sandy leaned forward with genuine amazement, a smile lighting up his face. “Just this morning I was telling Peter I think I’ve out grown Boston.”

“Well—”

“And you’re working on a book of some kind?”

“Yes, I’m—”

“I love to read. A couple of us at Merrill Lynch formed a reading group. We get together once a month and discuss a book. Are you in a reading group?”

It didn’t matter how Desmond answered any of these questions, since it was obvious Sandy was asking them so he could toss in his own opinions. After offering an annotated list of the books his group had read over the past sixteen months, Sandy sprang up from the love seat and clapped his hands. “I’m being rude,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Oh, maybe a—”

“I’m going to have a Pepsi. But Peter probably has a bottle of wine hidden away somewhere if you like.”

“Soda would be fine.”

When Peter finally emerged from the bedroom, he dashed over to Desmond and embraced him tightly. He swept his hand around the room and then nodded toward the kitchen where Sandy was rattling ice. “Can you believe how far I’ve come since the last time we were together? Can you believe it? God, it’s good to see you.”