“Arturo.” Jeffrey shook his head from side to side. “Yes. And I love you. For the world, you came home when? Around nine, right? But between us…” He let it hang.

“The police think it was a suicide.”

“You called the police?”

“I just happened to notice it at the office this afternoon. The daily police reports for the paper, you know.”

“That’s why you went to the office.”

Cruz hated that bitchy, petulant tone. But then the real hurt showed. “You could have let me know,” Jeffrey said, reaching out and touching his face. “You don’t tell me enough. We are together,” he said, “we share.”

“We do share,” Cruz said. “I want to share.”

Jeffrey got up and walked naked over to the window. “And you want me to say we never met Ed here?”

“Probably no one will ask. I just want to make sure.”

Jeffrey turned back toward him. “1 think being honest is the best thing, Arturo. If you start telling lies, they tie you all up. You can even forget what the real truth is.”

“Jeffrey, I agree with you. I’m finding that out now. The only thing is, I already told the police I didn’t know Ed. If we just-on this one thing-agree, we won’t lie about anything else.”

Jeffrey sat again on the bed. “You promise?”

“Promise.”

How could he expect Jeffrey to understand? He sat on the brocaded couch downstairs, facing the fireplace. The vodka, which had once been iced, was nearly untouched and had now gone warm. Through the gossamer drapes, light from the street filtered into the living room, enough to make out the familiar outlines- the chandelier over the twelve-foot marble table, the twin sculpted marble pillars that bracketed the fireplace, the polar bear rug at his feet, the trio of original Gormans on the far wall bought long before his tiles had become available in every boutique in the West.

In the quiet house, Cruz took stock of what he’d acquired. It still felt like it was worth it. In fact, it wasn’t complete yet. The room was beginning to feel a little small, the house just slightly worn. He was ready to move up again.

Keep that in mind, he said. Comfort is stagnation. Keep wanting more, that was the key. Keep that sharp edge. If you weren’t expanding you would contract.

A car labored up the steep hill, and a minute later Cruz heard the soft plop as the Sunday paper hit his driveway. Morning already, the darkest hour before dawn, before the black began turning to gray.

No, it would be impossible for Jeffrey to understand. Jeffrey hadn’t come up the way he had. Cruz didn’t even have to try to remember: it was always with him. When he’d been Jeffrey’s age…

He was starting to think like an old man, sound like his father had sounded when he talked about the bracero life. “I used to be up by three, ’Turo, to work the fields before the sun got too hot.” Well, Cruz had done his own laboring, only in different fields.

No, Jeffrey could never understand what it was like to be Mexican, poor and gay. And Cruz was never going back to poor.

Even now, in San Francisco where the heteros joked about their minority status, in the Latino community to be gay was to be a leper. Macho still ruled-Cruz knew it would never change during his lifetime.

Every week or two he would come across a story about one of the Mission gangs or another beating, mutilating or killing some poor maricon. Long ago he had decided not to run those stories. People didn’t want to read them; they weren’t news-what happened to those pervertidos was not important, at least not among la gente, not among his advertisers and readers.

Cruz had learned well. No one could ever know about him. His parents had died never suspecting. At least his mother never stopped pushing girls at him, especially after La Hora had started to become successful.

So he’d simply done without sex, except for the vacations that had brought him back home disgusted with himself. He had done without-until he’d met Jeffrey.

And even with Jeffrey, even with love for him pumping so hard through his veins that he didn’t feel he could control himself, he had been cautious. First hiring him, getting to know him at the office-a joy just to watch him move. Then a late meeting or two, until the declaration.

And after that-bliss.

But still the need for secrecy, which Jeffrey didn’t really understand but respected. Gayness to Jeffrey had never had to be that big an issue; he was the type of boy who’d always known what he was and who was happiest in a relationship. They lived quietly, at home, a publisher and his employee, private lives discreetly handled.

The house creaked somewhere upstairs. Was he up? Cruz listened, but the place reverted to silence.

Even Ed Cochran’s visit-the most surprising thing that Cruz could remember in his business life-hadn’t started out badly. If both Jeffrey and Cochran hadn’t been so naïve, so idealistic, it might’ve been okay.

He slugged at the tepid vodka, his face contorting into a grimace, remembering that Thursday night. It hadn’t yet gotten dark. They were finishing an early dinner when the doorbell rang, and Jeffrey had jumped up to answer it. Seeing the nice-looking kid in a coat and tie, with a briefcase, Jeffrey had said, sure, they had a couple of minutes.

Cruz had wanted to scream, “No, Jeffrey, we don’t! Not here!” But Ed Cochran was already inside the house, shaking hands, and there was nothing to do but be polite and bluff it.

And they’d sat right here, in this room, as Cochran had explained that he hadn’t been sent by his boss or anything. He’d just done some figuring on his own and had devised a way to keep Army-Sam Polk’s company-in the distribution chain for another year, after which time they could be phased out and Cruz could have his in-house operation at no loss of profit.

See, he’d explained, it was more or less a loan situation that would enable Army to keep drawing income and stay in business while Polk set up some other networks to cover for the loss of La Hora. Cochran had had all the details right there on paper. He was sure that Cruz didn’t mean to wipe out all the families who worked at Army-especially when there was an alternative. And it was just a matter of a slight compromise on his part.

Cruz couldn’t believe it. Here was some dumb kid asking him to forgo his entire reorganization to accommodate some businessman who’d gotten caught in the squeeze.

“But it won’t have any negative effect on your business,” he’d said after Cruz had said no.

“It will affect cash flow for a year, minimum.”

Why had he even argued with him? It was strictly a business decision, having nothing to do with the personal fortunes of another company’s employees.

“But you could survive that, couldn’t you? Wouldn’t it be worth a little sacrifice for the grief you’d save other people?”

Was this kid for real? No one, not even Cruz, could predict what his business would need to survive. What might El Dia do if he gave them a hole to crawl through?

Cruz had been about to toss Ed, but then Jeffrey had butted in: “He might be right, Arturo. It could perhaps be done.”

“It can’t!” It had been an outburst-atypical behavior for him. Normally, it would have rolled off him. But, he recalled, he had felt Jeffrey might be coming on to Cochran.

Well, in any case, he should have kept his cool, not started bickering with Jeffrey-and in front of Cochran, where, if the boy wasn’t blind, he would see that they were arguing not like employer and employee, but like lovers.

Even if it could be done he wasn’t going to do it. He had no investment in Army Distributing or any of the others. What happened to them was their own problem, and if they hadn’t planned contingencies for the loss of La Horn ’s business, it just showed poor management and validated his decision to stop dealing with them in the first place.