“I know what you mean,” I said.

Back to the hallway. There were two more rooms: a spacious kitchen to our left, the living room to our right. Neil tiptoed into the kitchen; the cats scampered about his ankles, expecting dinner. But I began walking slowly into the main room, my skin gradually translating, deepening to the translucent blue with each step as I moved toward the picture window, into the glow of the outside porch light. The world’s silence swelled until I could hear my heartbeat. I stopped in the room’s center. Here I was, at last, in the room from my dreams.

Behind me, Neil opened and slammed the kitchen’s cupboard doors. “What’s up with these He used to keep these things stocked.” I turned to watch him prop a cookie jar between elbow and ribs like a football. He opened the lid, reached inside, and gobbled something I couldn’t see. “That’s better.”

He noticed me staring. Whatever face I was making, its horror or solemnity stopped Neil in his tracks. He moved toward me and posted his hand on my shoulder. “Yes,” he said. “This was the place, wasn’t it?”

I reached up, grabbed his hand, and led him to a couch. Purple lilacs filigreed its upholstery. I sat on one flower, and he took another. The silvery white cat wandered in, upturned her implacable face, and creaked at us.

“Why now?” Neil asked. “Why do you need this now? Why did you search me out?”

“I’m tired of it,” I said. “I want to dream about something else for a change.”

Neil leaned against the cushions. Blue outlined his cheeks and chin, sapphiring his pupils, lending the medicine stain an eerie fluorescence. I was still holding his hand. The numbness persisted, and I waited for it to melt, waited to feel something new. Neil watched the frozen world outside the room’s window for what seemed hours. Finally he turned his head to look at me.

“It’s time,” I said. “Speak.” The forbidden moment had come; Neil would have to tell his story. Before he even opened his wounded mouth I knew what he would say. I knew it as conclusively as I knew my family, my self, and as he spoke it seemed as though his story had already ended, I was already tucked away in some warm and secure place, I was already remembering his words.

“Look down from the sky…and stay by my cradle ’til morning is nigh.” Or so sang the carolers. By the sound of their voices, they huddled together only a few houses from Coach’s doorstep. I scanned the room, thoughts rocketing through my mind so quickly I couldn’t catalog them: there’s the spot where he kept his stack of video games… Right about there, he first took my picture…The same window where he’d drawn the blinds before he carried me to bed…

I knew I had to talk now. Brian waited, eyes blinking behind his glasses, resembling a kid inside his first chamber of horrors. Holding his hand seemed preposterous, so I let go. If we were stars in the latest Hollywood blockbuster, then I would have embraced him, my hands patting his shoulderblades, violins and cellos billowing on the soundtrack as tears streamed down our faces. But Hollywood would never make a movie about us.

“It took a while to remember you,” I told him. “Eric’s letter mentioned you, and something seemed familiar. But really. I’ve never seen a UFO, let alone stepped inside one. If a little green man had examined me, I doubt I’d forget it.” Brian smiled, his mouth an awkward arc. In the darkness he appeared almost handsome. “So I knew there was something more to your story. And then it hit me, who you were.”

Brian stuffed hands in pockets and unrolled a photograph. “Look at this.” Although the dark loosened its particulars, I could still make out the picture of the Panthers. “That one’s me,” Brian said, circling his face with his finger. His expression in the photo seemed lost, hopeless. “And that’s you.” I almost laughed at my pushed-forth chest, the black sunblock bisecting my face. Brian pointed to the figure next to me, but this time he didn’t say a word. It was Coach. Even in shadow, I could distinguish the baseball cap, the steady and rehearsed grin, the mustache.

“I feel like he’s watching us,” I said. “But as for where he is now, I haven’t the slightest. He coached some summers after the Panthers, but his teams were made up of older kids. I’ve always guessed someone complained, and the Little League people assigned him boys he couldn’t handle in the ways he wanted. So I think he moved after that. I really can’t say. For all I know, he could have suffered a stroke or a brain aneurysm, right here in this room. Maybe his ghost is watching us as we speak.”

Brian seemed to ponder that idea, his eyes examining the room’s china cabinet, its ottoman, stopping at its rocking chair. “He came back for me,” he said. “It was an accident. It was Halloween, and I think some of the older Little League boys were with him. He saw me, he knew it was me. He followed me into some dark trees. It’s the only time I’d seen him, and I haven’t seen him since.” Outside, a car slid past, headlights sneaking into the window to highlight Brian’s face. “Maybe I’ll never, ever remember the rest about that night. The reason is because I was alone with him. But the first time it happened was different. You were there. I’m relying on you now.”

The photograph dropped to the carpet and curled like a scroll. I considered the best way to begin. I felt stranded, as though delivering a speech to a stadium filled with listeners. “This is crazy, but inside here are things I’ve never told.” I traced an X across my heart with my fist. “Eric doesn’t know, Mom doesn’t know. I don’t think anyone can understand, really. And this will sound odd, but when it first started happening, the feeling I felt more than anything else was honored.” Brian looked at the floor, nodding. “He had chosen me, you know? Out of all the boys on the team, he’d picked me. Like I’d been blessed or something. He taught me things no other boy on the team or at school could know. I was his.”

The cats stretched out to lounge at our feet. I resumed my story, gradually leading to the point in the plot where Brian appeared. “I guess he suckered me in. He was there at the right time, Mom was with Alfred, I was learning things early.” Brian nodded still. “Are you following me?”

“Just go on. Don’t stop.”

“Coach took me to movies, told me I was his star player. He stuffed me full of candy and let me win a trillion video games. And then he was there, on top of me on the kitchen floor, rubbing his dick against my bare belly.” I could still feel the scratch of the coarse platinum hairs on Coach’s arms. I glanced to my left; to the kitchen’s features that hadn’t changed: the lemony color of the cabinets, paint spattered at the window’s corners, the chandelier’s green glass teardrops. I had watched those dangling above me, catching the light, on that summer afternoon, the floor beneath me carpeted with cereal. Here we go.

“After that, there was no turning back. From then on, I’d do anything he wanted. It lasted that whole summer. We were…in love.” Those words were no longer accurate. I tried to spit out a laugh when I said them, possibly because I’d never said them aloud, had only kept them silent, for years, inside my head. But my throat had no laughter left in it. “I guess I sound like I’m preaching, like there’s a moral here, that I should start bawling and scream ‘my childhood was taken from me.’ But I don’t believe that.”

There was so much more I could tell him, but everything seemed irrelevant. “We were in love,” I’d said, and I wanted to take that back, wanted Brian to speak. I placed my tongue against the inside of my cheek, tasting the steely bud of my wound, soothing the place where the shampoo bottle had smashed my face. I know you want it, the john had said. Had that only been last night? New York seemed lifetimes away.