Two women are standing off to the side, passing a bottle back and forth. One walks over to me. She’s wearing…not much, and not, I don’t think, because of the heat.

Hey, she calls, You know who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?

Yeah, I answer. No one.

When Connor was little, this was his favorite joke because the answer seems obvious, but the remains of Grant and his wife, Julie, are actually in an aboveground building next to the tomb.

Smart boy, she says and moves closer. I like smart boys.

I wonder if I should feel something. Anything.

In books, sixteen-year-old boys are turned on by everything.

Maybe this is a test. Maybe I can avoid the secrets and the dark corners, the fear and the lies. Maybe this is the way to keep my skin unmarked.

But I feel nothing. Nothing at all, except for the weight of the four days and three hours until I have a chance of seeing Gabriel again.

And so I walk away.

I give up on getting a real summer job. Connor’s boss pays me to help clean out their storeroom. James asks me to help hang some lights in the theater and even gets approval to pay me for the music I did for the show.

The days move too slowly.

James and Becky and I take turns in front of the oscillating fan in my room, trying to combat the heat.

All art is surrender, James says, as if he’s relaying the Yankees score.

Surrender to what? Becky asks.

James pulls on his damp bangs and holds them while he thinks and then answers, Words. Notes. Brush strokes. Anything, really. You have to give up yourself to embrace whatever you’re creating, he says, Otherwise, it’s just you trying to be artsy.

I like the city best like this, James says. Empty.

I don’t understand where everyone goes, Becky replies.

It’s easy to see why they leave, though. Summer temperatures and steam-filled subways that, on a good day, make everything smell like wet dog.

They go to Europe, James explains. Or the Hamptons. Or Fire Island.

His fingers flutter in front of him. My mother is home and doesn’t allow smoking in the house, and he doesn’t know what to do with his empty hands. When it gets bad enough, Becky dips into her bag and pulls out a pack of sweet, red-tipped, candy cigarettes. He smirks, but takes them nonetheless, rolling one between his fingers until the paper comes off.

You realize that not everyone can afford to pick up and leave, right? I ask.

James gives me a cocky smile. Of course. Isn’t that why we’re still here?

August 1983

Klaus Nomi is dead.

James is sprawled on my floor in the semidarkness.

I never got to meet him, he says. I heard he was playing the Mudd Club last year and waited outside, but the info must have been wrong. Lucy from the theater knew a friend of his and kept saying she was going to try to get him to come to rehearsals, but it never happened.