“Much to my surprise, it was a pleasure. Of course, it’s always a pleasure to read about the torment of someone’s hidden sex life. You feel as if you’ve caught them red-handed.”

2.

Miraculously, Loretta and Henry, installed in their recliners, merely nodded when Desmond and Brian climbed the staircase. (“A potential fall hazard,” Brian said, hand shaking the banister, “but at least they haven’t destroyed the place with a shoddy renovation.”) In Desmond’s room, Brian went to the round window and stared out at the windswept river, evidently contemplating something, possibly the sight of Cambridge just across the water. Desmond wondered if he was suddenly plagued by guilt, although that seemed doubtful. Surely you had to acknowledge the existence of other people in order to experience guilt, and a man who referred to his honeymoon as “my trip to Italy” wasn’t a likely candidate for that.

When he finally turned from the window, he glanced around the room slowly, taking in every detail with a blank expression that did little to hide his disapproval. He looked down at himself and then met Desmond’s gaze; it was the first time he’d looked at him directly since they’d been together, and his pale eyes were softer than he expected. Desmond was shocked to realize that he’d missed an essential fact about Brian: he was shy. “What do you think Rosemary meant,” he asked, “when she talked about . . . catching someone red-handed?”

There was a rueful tone in his voice that Desmond found almost touching. It didn’t make sense to try to demonize Brian. A lot of gay men he knew complained about the scruples of married men they’d had affairs with, as if cheating with someone of the same gender as your spouse put you in a morally superior position.

“Rosemary was talking about the subject of a biography I wrote. He had a private life that was very different from his public persona.”

Brian sat on the edge of the bed and unbuttoned his jacket. “How so?”

“Most strikingly, he had a reputation as a compulsive womanizer, but in his journals, he wrote almost exclusively about ‘playing gin,’ code, I discovered, for picking up young men on the street. There were at least two gin games recounted every week for the last couple decades of his life: ‘Disappointing game,’ ‘Big win,’ ‘Dealt a marvelous hand this afternoon,’ and so on. I asked one of his ex-wives about his card playing and she scoffed at the idea, said he hated to play and usually cheated when he did. These secret pickups were the center of his life.”

“Maybe his marriages were the center of his life and these were simply outlets.”

“That’s what he tried to tell himself, but looking at it objectively, you wouldn’t draw that conclusion.”

Brian crossed his legs. “It sounds as if he was confused.”