'I am?' said Will, looking around at a man maybe five years his junior, whose present hapless expression he vaguely knew. Narrowed brown eyes watched him under upturned brows, a smile, with dimples, waited in readiness for when Will said

'Drew?'

'Shit! I shoulda taken the bet. I was with this guy-' He glanced back down the bar at a husky fellow in a leather jacket; the guy waved, obviously chomping at the bit for an invitation to join them. Drew looked back at Will, 'He said you wouldn't recognize me after all this time. I said betcha. And you did.'

'It took a moment.'

'Yeah. Well ... the hairline's not what it used to be,' Drew said. A decade and a half before, when they'd had their fling, Drew had sported a curly clump of golden brown hair that hung over his forehead, its most ambitious curls tickling the bridge of his nose. Now it was gone. 'You don't mind?' he said. 'The tequila, I mean? I wasn't even sure it was you at first. I mean I heard ... well, you know what you hear. I don't know half the time what to believe and what not to believe.'

'You heard I was dead?'

'Yeah.'

'Well,' said Will, clinking his beer can against Drew's brimming glass of tequila. 'I'm not.'

'Good,' Drew said, clinking back. 'Are you still living in the city?'

'I just returned.'

'You bought a house on Sanchez, right?' Their affair had preceded the purchase, and upon its cooling they'd not remained friends. 'Still got it?'

'Still got it.'

'I dated somebody on Sanchez, and he pointed it out to me. "That's where the famous photographer lives".' Drew's eyes widened at the quoted description. 'Of course, I didn't know who. Then he told me and I said

-oh, him.'

'No, I was really proud,' Drew said, with sweet sincerity. 'T don't keep up with art stuff, you know, so I hadn't really put two and two together. I mean, I knew you took pictures, but I just remembered seals.'

Will roared with laughter. 'Christ, the seals!'

'You remember? We went to Pier 39 together? I thought we were going to get buzzed and watch the ocean, but you got obsessed with the seals. I was so pissed off.' He emptied half his tequila glass in one. 'Funny, the things that stick in your head.'

'Your buddy's waving at you, by the way,' Will said.

'Oh, Lord. It's a sad case. I had one date with him and now every time I come in here he's all over me.'

'Do you need to get back to him?'

'Absolutely not. Unless you want to be on your own? I mean, you've got the pick of the crowd here.'

'I wish.'

'You're still in great shape,' Drew said. 'I'm kinda running to seed here.' He looked down at a belly that was no longer the washboard it had been. 'It took me an hour to put these jeans on, and it'll take me twice as long to get 'em off.' He glanced up at Will. 'Without help, that is,' he said. He patted his stomach. 'You took some pictures of me, do you remember?'

Will remembered: a sticky afternoon of beef-cake and baby-oil. Drew had been quite the muscle-boy back then, competition standards, and proud of it. A little too proud perhaps. They'd broken up on Hallowe'en Night, when he'd found Drew stark naked and painted gold from headto foot, standing in the back yard of a house on Hancock like an ithyphallic idol surrounded by devotees.

'Have you still got those pictures?' Drew asked.

'Oh, I'm sure. Somewhere.'

'I'd love to see 'em ... sometime.' He shrugged, as though when was of no consequence, though both of them had known two minutes before, when he'd mentioned his jeans, that Will would be helping him out of them tonight.

As they made their way back to the house Will wondered if perhaps he'd made a mistake. Drew kept up a virtually unbroken monologue, none of it particularly enlightening, about his job selling advertising space at the Chronicle, about the unwanted attentions of Al, and the adventures of his ineptly neutered cat. A few yards from the door, however, he stopped in midflow and said: 'I'm running off at the mouth, aren't I? Sorry. I'm just nervous I guess.'

'If it's any comfort,' Will said, 'so am L'

'Really?' Drew sounded doubtful.

'I haven't had sex with anyone in eight or nine months.'

'Jeez,' Drew said, plainly relieved. 'Well we can just take it real slowly.'

They were at the front door. 'That's good,' Will said, letting them in, 'slowly's good.'

In the old days sex with Drew had been quite a show; a lot of posing and boasting and wrestling around. Tonight it was mellow. Nothing acrobatic; nothing risky. Little in fact, beyond the simple pleasure of lying naked together in Will's big bed with the pallid light from the street washing over their bodies, holding and being held. The greed for sensuality Will would once have felt in this situation, the need to exhaustively explore every sensation, seemed very remote. Yes, it was still there; another night, perhaps, another body - one he didn't remember in its finest hour - and perhaps he'd be just as possessed as he'd been in the past. But for tonight, gentle pleasures and modest satisfactions. There was just one moment, as they were undressing, and Drew first saw the scars on Will's body, when the liaison threatened to become something a little headier.

'Oh my, oh my,' Drew said, his voice breathy with admiration. 'Can I touch them?'

'If you really want to.'

Drew did so; not with his fingers but with his lips, tracing the shiny path the bear's claws had left on Will's chest and belly. He went down on his knees in the process, and pressing his face against Will's lower abdomen, said: 'I could stay down here all night.' He'd slipped his hands behind his back; plainly he was quite ready to have them tied there if it took Will's fancy. Will ran his fingers through the man's hair, halftempted to play the game. Bind him up; have him kissing scars and calling him sir. But he decided against it.

'Another night,' he said, and pulling Drew up and into his arms, escorted him to bed.

iii

He woke to the sound of rain, pattering on the skylight overhead. It was still dark. He glanced at his watch - it was four-fifteen - then over to Drew, who was lying on his back, snoring slightly. Will wasn't sure what had woken him, but now he was conscious he decided to get up and empty his bladder. But as he eased out of bed he caught, or thought he caught, a motion in the shadows across the room. He froze. Had somebody broken into the house? Was that what had woken him? He studied the darkness, looking and listening for further signs of an intruder; but now there was nothing. The shadows were empty. He looked back at his bedmate. Drew was wearing a tiny smile in his sleep, and was rubbing his bare belly gently, back and forth. Will watched him for a moment, curiously enraptured. Of all the unlikely people to have broken his sexual fast with, he thought; Drew the muscle-boy, softened by time.

The rain got suddenly heavier, beating a tattoo on the roof. It stirred him to get up and go to the bathroom, a route he could have covered in his sleep. Out through the bedroom door, then first left onto the cold tile; three paces forward, turn to the right and he could piss in certain knowledge his aim was true. He drained his bladder contentedly, then headed back to the bedroom, thinking as he went how good it would feel to slip his arms around Drew.

Then, two paces from the door, he again glimpsed a motion from the corner of his eye. This time he was quick enough to catch sight of the intruder's shadow, as the man made his escape down the stairs.

'Hey-' he said, and followed, thinking as he did so that there was something suspiciously playful about what was happening. For some reason he didn't feel in the least threatened by the presence of this trespasser; it was as though he knew already there was no harm here. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, and pursued the shadow back down the hallway towards the file-room he realized why: he was dreaming. And what more certain proof of that than the sight awaiting him when he entered the room? There, casually leaning on the windowsill twenty feet from him and silhouetted against the raining glass, was Lord Fox.