I follow him to his room, a world away from the rest of the apartment.

Tapestries from India line the walls.

A stack of Playbills threatens to topple over on his tiny desk.

A Styrofoam head wears a pair of shutter shades.

His cologne, spicy and intoxicating, fills the room.

James lights two oil lamps that hang from the wall as I settle in on the beanbag at the side of his twin bed.

Every time I move, it sounds like one of those rain sticks they sell in the Village. Like James’s laugh while we were riding the fridge door.

We talk about music, whether film can ever be considered as much of an art form as live theater, and the rumor about a new Bowie album, until we’re hoarse and James is tired enough to allow the British accent he inherited from his mother to bleed through.

I’ve been hired to collaborate on a new performance piece, he says.

Then James tells me he wants me to contribute sound to it. Not, he explains, music, but noises. Guitar strings breaking. A percussive effect. A chord out of tune.

Out of tune? I ask. I spend all my time getting in tune.

But aren’t all things more interesting if they’re ever-so-slightly wrong? James asks.

I shrug. If that were true, I’d be the most interesting guy in the world.

I wake to a clatter of dishes. James is obsessed with breakfast. Somewhere in his past, he had a German nanny, and on weekends he likes to recreate her puffed apple pancakes, piles of bacon strips, fresh squeezed juice.

I make my way to the kitchen, passing Rob who gives me a seductive, sleepy smile that makes me wish I were attracted to guys in their midtwenties with facial hair.

James is quiet as he cooks, measuring flour and who knows what into a large bowl. Duran Duran meets Julia Child, Becky likes to say about him.

It’s funny, though. I have a hard time seeing James as Simon Le Bon. Sure, he’s got those delicate features and his hair is cut in kind of the same way, but James always makes me feel like he’s going to morph into something else. Something dark and slightly dangerous. I told him that once, curious to hear his response. He just smiled.

As if she’s been summoned by my thinking about her, Becky calls.

James holds out the phone to me.

Becky says, Your mom told me you were at Connor’s, so I figured you were at James’s. Meet me at the cathedral?

Becky is pretty much Jewish. Technically, half. Or maybe a quarter. Her family is as much a melting pot as the city, and people are always looking at her permanently tanned skin and her dark straight hair that she’s constantly teasing, and her dark blue eyes, and asking her where she’s from as if “here” isn’t an option.

Anyhow, her dad was the only one who practiced. Now he’s gone, and her mom doesn’t care about religion. Though she still goes to a synagogue on the big holidays, standing in the back because she doesn’t have a ticket, somewhere along the line Becky has become fascinated with Catholic churches: the incense, the music, the candles, the stained glass. She doesn’t go to mass; it isn’t about worship, she tells me. She only likes to pop in at odd times, when she has St. Patrick’s mostly to herself. She says she likes to hear her steps echo through the high arches.