“Can’t argue with that.” Chuck set the butter knife, with its half-used pat still clinging, onto the tablecloth.

“Place the butter knife on the bread plate, where it belongs, young man.”

“Good point,” Chuck observed. He set the breadstick on the bread plate as well, wiped his hands on the heavy linen napkin on his lap, and then took another sip of the Saint-Estèphe. “That’s really good. How did you get to know so much about wine?”

Working as a waiter in Las Vegas, trying to make it through my shift so I could go lose even more money I didn’t have, get into it even deeper with a bodybuilding, shirtless Greek loan shark would not have suited as an answer, so B.B. offered a knowing shrug, hoping it would impress.

He had selected boys before, boys from his charity, the Young Men’s Foundation. These were special boys he thought would be able to dine with him, spend a few hours alone in his company, and mature from the experience. He looked for calm and steadiness in the boys, but he also looked for the ability to keep a secret. These dinners were special, and because they were special, they weren’t any of the world’s business. The dinners were only for those very exceptional boys worthy of extra mentoring, but in the three years he had been taking boys out to eat, a thought had always nagged at him- that he selected his dining companions for their ability to keep a secret rather than for their readiness to be mentored.

Now, here was Chuck- quiet, slightly introverted if not antisocial, trashy-novel-reading, journal-writing, obliviously-badly-haircutted Chuck- who knew how to keep a secret but had a sense of humor, had an intuitive appreciation for complex wines, obedient and pliable, but with an impish resistance. B.B. felt an excited tingle shoot out from the center of his body like a miniature supernova. Here, he dared to speculate, might well be the boy he’d been looking for, the special mentee, the reason he had wanted to help boys in the first place.

What if Chuck was everything he appeared? Smart, interested, full of soft-clay potential? Could B.B. arrange to spend more time with him? What would the boy’s worthless mother say? What would Desiree say? Nothing could work without Desiree, and he knew, without quite admitting it to himself, that Desiree would not be happy.

Chuck now turned his attention to the breadstick. He picked it up and was readying himself to take a bite when B.B. reached out with one hand and gently encircled Chuck’s wrist. Normally he didn’t like to touch the boys. He didn’t want them or anyone else to think that there was something not right about his mentoring. Nevertheless, sometimes when two people were together there was going to be a certain amount of touching. Life worked that way. They might accidentally brush up against each other. B.B. might put an affectionate hand on a boy’s shoulder or tousle his hair, press a hand to his back, give him a pat on the butt to hurry him along. Or it might be something like this.

Chuck had been an instant away from putting the breadstick in his mouth when B.B. saw the fingernails. Black dirt, packed into discrete geologic chunks, hibernating under the shelter of nails weeks overdue for trimming. Some things you could dismiss, put in the boys-will-be-boys category, look the other way. Some things, however, you could not. Some things were too much to ignore. If B.B. was a mentor, then he had to mentor.

He kept his grip gentle but the hand motionless. “I want you to put the breadstick down,” B.B. said, “and go wash your hands before you eat. Scrub those fingernails good. I don’t want to see any dirt under them when you get back.”

Chuck looked at his nails and then at B.B. He had no father, an impatient gnome of a mother, an older brother in a wheelchair as the result of a car accident- the impatient gnome of a mother had slammed her Chevy Nova into a sable palm a few years back, and B.B. suspected to the point of deep certainty that there’d been heavy drinking involved. Chuck slept on a tattered foldout couch with springs, he felt sure, as pliant and welcoming as upturned dinner forks. He did miserably in school because he tuned out his teachers and read whatever he felt like during class. He wasn’t the weakest kid around, but he got his share of ass kicking, and he gave his share, too.

Chuck had plenty of pride, and it was the frail and bitter pride of a desperate boy. B.B. had seen it often enough- these powerless boys growing red in the face, flashing their teeth like cornered lemurs, lashing out at their mentor because their pride demanded they lash out at someone, even if it was the only person in the world who truly wanted to help. B.B. understood it, anticipated it, knew how to defuse it.

This time, however, he did not get it.

Chuck studied his fingernails and then turned to B.B. with another of those self-deprecating smiles that made B.B. feel as though something in his body had just melted.

“They are pretty dirty,” he agreed. “I’ll go wash up.”

B.B. let go of the wrist. “You’re a fine young man,” he said. And then he watched Chuck walk away. The kid looked good, there was no denying that. He’d made an effort to clean his best clothes- a pair of green chinos and a button-down white shirt. He wore a cloth belt, his socks matched his brown shoes, and his brown shoes had been polished. It all meant one thing: The boy was letting himself be mentored.

He was back in under two minutes. He’d just scrubbed and returned. Hadn’t even taken the time to piss. Now he sat, took another drink of the wine, and nodded at B.B. as though they’d just entered into a contract. “Thanks for taking me out like this, Mr. Gunn. I really appreciate it.”

“It’s my pleasure, Chuck. You are an exceptional young man, and I’m happy to help you in any way I can.”

“That’s really nice of you.” Chuck held B.B.’s gaze with mature confidence.

The astronomical tingling was back, turning into B.B.’s own private cosmic event. It was almost as though Chuck were trying to tell him something, trying to let B.B. know that he was comfortable with the friendship between a young man and his mentor. B.B. looked at the boy with his thin frame, his face a little too round for his body, his tousled brown hair and strangely brilliant brown eyes. The boy was trying to tell him something, that he was ready for mentoring, whatever mentoring B.B. might wish to pursue, and the air at the table was electric.

Chuck finished his glass of wine, and B.B. poured him another. Then the boy bit into the breadstick with a ferocious clamp of his jaws. Crumbs sprayed out across the table, and the sound of it echoed halfway across the restaurant. Chuck looked up at his mentor, alarm preparing to settle on his face, but he saw B.B.’s amused smile, and he let out a little laugh. They both laughed. Several of the retirement zombies looked over with disapproving scowls. B.B. made eye contact with all of them, dared them to say anything.

When the black man approached their table, at first B.B. thought it might be the manager there to complain. Maybe one of the retirees had convinced them to initiate an effective-immediately no children policy. But the black man didn’t work for the restaurant. It was the darkness that kept B.B. from recognizing him right away. Otto Rose.

He wore a blue suit, and even in the dark B.B. could tell it was just a nudge short of electric blue, but the rest of the outfit was conservative and businesslike: richly polished oxfords, a white shirt, a rep tie crafted into a massive and artful four-in-hand. Otto hovered over the table with that imperial grace he loved to exude. He looked something like a cross between an actor and a third world dictator. Though barely thirty, which was irritating enough, he appeared hardly more than twenty, even with his head shaved. B.B. had been watching his hair thin with each year, maybe even each month, but Otto shaved his head and looked good doing it. The slick of his skin glowed from the candles of the surrounding tables.