'What?'

'I wish my folks could see us like this right now. Hangin' out, talking, being us. Being happy.' He paused, looking at the floor. 'Are you happy?'

'Right now?'

'Yeah.'

'Sure.'

'Because I am. I'm about as happy as I think I've ever been. And I've got a long memory,' he laughed. 'I can remember seeing you for the very first time.'

'No, you can't.'

Drew looked up, his expression sweetly defiant. 'Oh yes I can,' he said. 'It was at Lewis's place. He had a brunch, and I came along with Timothy. You remember Timothy?'

'Vaguely.'

'He was a big of drag-queen, who'd taken me under his wing. He'd brought me along - little Drew Dunwoody from Buttfuck, Colorado - I

guess to show me off. And I was so damn nervous, 'cause there were all these circuit queens there who knew everybody-'

'Or said they knew everybody.'

'Right. They were dropping names so fast it was like a fucking hailstorm, and once in a while one of them would look at me and check me out like I was a piece of meat. You were late, I remember.'

'Oh,' said Will. 'So you get it from me.'

'I got everything from you. Everything I wanted. You lavished attention on me, as if nothing else mattered. Up till then, I wasn't sure I was going to stay. I was thinking: this isn't for me. I don't belong here with these people. I was plotting to get on the next plane home and propose to Melissa Mitchell, who would have married me in a heartbeat and let me do what the fuck I liked behind her back. That was my plan, if being here didn't work out. But you changed my mind.'

Gently, Will stroked Drew's face. 'No...' he said.

'Yes,' Drew replied. 'You might not remember it that way, but you weren't in my head. That's exactly what happened. We didn't even sleep together right away. Timothy got very sniffy and said you weren't good people.'

'Did he indeed?'

'He said, oh, I don't know, you were crazy, you were English, you were uptight, you were pretentious.'

'I was not uptight. The rest, probably.'

'Anyway, you didn't call me, and I was afraid to call you in case Timothy got mad. I was kinda dependent on him. He'd paid for me to fly out, I was living in his apartment. Then you did call.'

'And the rest's history.'

'Don't knock it. We had some fine times together.'

'Those I remember.'

'And of course by the time we broke up, there was no going back to Colorado for me. I was hooked.'

'What happened to Melissa?'

'Ha. You'll like this. She married this guy I used to jerk off with in high school.'

'So, she had a thing for fags,' Will said, moving behind Drew and letting him lean back against his body.

'I guess maybe she did. I still see her once in a while when I go home. Her kids go to the same school as my brother's kids, so I meet her when I go to pick them up. She still looks pretty good. So...' He leaned his head back and kissed Will's chin. 'That's the story of my life.'

Will hugged him close. 'What happened to Timothy?' Will said. 'We owe him.'

'Oh, he's been dead seven, maybe eight years. I guess his lover walked out on him when he got sick, and he pretty much died without anyone.

I heard about it just after Christmas and he'd died on Thanksgiving. He's buried in Monterey. I go down there once in a while. Put some flowers on the grave. Tell him I still think of him.'

'That's good. You're a good man, you know that?'

'Is that important?'

'Yeah. I'm beginning to think it is.'

They made love then. Not the hectic, no-holds barred mating of their first romance, eighteen years before, not the tentative, faintly fearful encounter of a few nights ago. This time they met not as conquests or tricks, but as lovers. They took their sensual time with their detections, passing kisses and touches back and forth with a lazy ease, but by degrees becoming more agitated, each in their way demanding, each in their way conceding. In waves then, they played, pressing steadily towards a destination they had debated and planned. Will had not fucked anyone in four years, and Drew, though he had been a glutton for it earlier in his life, had sworn off the act with so much risk attached. It had never been, even in simpler days, a natural act, despite tales of Mid-Western farmhands, spit and a little lust. It was a conscious act of desire, especially in the heart of the plague, when the condom and the lubricant had to be at hand, and there had to be, along with the erections, a gentle overcoming of anxiety. Tenderly then, in the nest of pillows, they coupled, to the pleasure of both of them.

When they finished, Drew went to shower. Mr Clean, Will called him. This wasn't a new preoccupation; he'd always needed to wash off the sex immediately after he'd come. It was the church boy in him, he explained, to which Will replied: 'You just had an Englishman in you. How many people have you got in there?'

Laughing, Drew went into the bathroom and closed the door. Will listened to the muted sound of the shower being turned on - the slap of the water on the tiles, then the change of timbre as the water broke against Drew's back and shoulders and butt. He shouted something, but Will didn't catch it. He stretched in the double luxury of fatigue and satiety, his consciousness drifting. I should shower too, he thought; I'm greasy and sweaty and rank. Drew won't crawl into bed beside me unless I wash. So he held onto consciousness, though it was hard work. Twice he fell into the shallows of sleep. Woke the first time with the shower now turned off, and Drew singing tunelessly as he towelled himself dry. Woke the second time to hear Drew thundering downstairs. 'I'm just getting some water,' he yelled. 'You want anything?'

Woozily, Will sat up. He yawned and gazed down at the felon between his legs. 'Busy night?' he said, flipping his cock back and forth. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed, knocking over one of the candles. 'Fuck,' he muttered, bending down to right it again, the smell of the extinguished wick sharp in his nostrils. As he stood up, the room pulsed. Thinking he'd risen too quickly, he closed his eyes. White patches throbbed behind his lids. He felt suddenly sick. He stood swaying at the end of the bed for a few moments, waiting for the feeling to pass, but instead it intensified, waves of nausea rising from his belly. He opened his eyes again, and started towards the hallway, determined not to end the evening puking in the very room where they'd made such fine love. He got no more than a yard from the bed; then the ache in his belly doubled him up. He dropped to his knees, surrounded by the leavings of their feast, his senses horribly sensitized. He could smell the spoiling of fruit that had been fresh three hours before, of cheese and cream that had been sweet and were now curdling, as though the heat of the room, of the deeds performed in the room, was hastening everything to rot. The stench of it was too much. He began to puke, his belly cramping, the white particles flaring in his head, washing out the room

And in the midst of the blaze, images from the adventures of the day: a sky, a wall, Bethlynn; Drew clothed, Drew naked; the cat, the flowers, the bridge, all unreeling like a fragment of film tossed into the fire in his head, the throbbing white fire that lay at the end of everything.

God help me, he tried to say, no longer afraid of being found in this state by Drew, only wanting him there to extinguish the blaze

He raised his head, and squinted through the light towards the door. There was no sign of Drew. He started to crawl towards the landing, knocking over two of the three remaining candles as he did so. The conflagration in his head continued unchecked, the memories still flickering in its midst before they were consumed, like moth's wings, fluttering and fluttering -the waters of the Bay, whipped by the wind; the flowers on Bethlynn Reichle's windowsill; Drew's face, sweating in ecstasy And then, suddenly, the blaze was gone, extinguished in a heartbeat. He was kneeling three or four yards from the door, the darkness grey, the light grey, the food in which he knelt drained of colour, his hands and legs and dick and belly all drained, all grey. It was strangely pleasurable after the assault and the sickness, to be thrown into this cool cell, detached from sensuality. His mind, he assumed, had simply decided enough was enough, and pulled the plug on all but the barest minimum of stimulation. He was no longer overpowered by the stench of rot and curdle; even the glutinous textures of the food around him had been tamed.