“I guess,” Desmond said. “Of course it could be wonderful, couldn’t it?” That was what made Velan so irresistible; even if you found him hard to take, you couldn’t help but want a little of his audacity for yourself.

“We may never know.” Kevin turned and gazed at Desmond with his big green eyes, threatening him with his empathy and his chiseled good looks. “How are you, Desmond?” He asked so pointedly, it was as if he’d asked several times already but hadn’t believed any of the other answers. He was wearing a dark suit and a very soft green tie, all nice, but so inappropriately formal, Desmond assumed he had someplace better to go following this gathering.

“I’m just fine.”

“You are? Really? Not worried about leaving town?”

“It’s only for a few months.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Kevin said, shaking his long, narrow head and jutting out his jaw in an exaggerated gesture of disapproval. The problem with being as handsome as Kevin was that he looked so good in every light and expression, he always appeared to be posing, even when he was completely sincere. “I couldn’t pack up and leave a lover for four months. I’m too much of a romantic.”

Desmond said nothing. It was hard to figure out why everyone assumed that a separation was a threat to a couple when the evidence clearly indicates that spending time together is what usually kills a relationship.

Kevin worked at Smith Barney sixty hours a week and spent much of his free time attending to his aging parents in White Plains. He frequently made pronouncements about how romantic he was but never referred specifically to any romantic attachments. Friends were always trying to fix him up on blind dates, but nothing ever worked out. Desmond suspected that he had a secret life tucked away somewhere, one that revolved around slings and leather masks, or possibly women with penises, but he wasn’t the type you could ask. He was studiously polite and evasive, which made him the perfect person to put beside a grinding bore at a dinner table. Desmond often felt reassured by his stoic diffidence; most of the time you knew more about a person than you cared to know, so Kevin was a refreshing change.

“I’ll invite Russell out to dinner when you’re gone,” Kevin said. “If that’s all right with you. Keep him out of trouble for you.”

“I’m sure he’d like that,” Desmond told him, comforted by the thought that Russell, who claimed to find Kevin “scary,” wouldn’t like it at all.

“Now I think I’m going to try to slip out of here. I have the feeling something’s about to hit the fan and I’d rather not get the suit dirty.”

“Another party?”