45

Affenlight parked the Audi on a side street a few blocks from campus. Owen reached past the gearshift and tugged at the corner of Affenlight’s pocket with his thumb; they couldn’t kiss in front of the Westishers out weeding and mowing their lawns. “I’ve got to go,” Owen said. “I’m late.”

“I’ll be at the game,” Affenlight said, eager to cement some tiny portion of their future.

Owen smiled. “Me too.” He shut the passenger door softly and strolled off toward the north edge of campus, where the athletic fields lay. As he turned onto Groome Street, just before passing from view, he took a few steps in a sashaying, rolling-hipped way—a caricature of a gay man’s walk. Affenlight glanced around, nervous that someone else might have noticed, but even if anyone had noticed they couldn’t possibly have cared. The hip roll was a joke meant for him alone—Owen knew he’d be watching. It wasn’t quite a joke for his amusement, and it wasn’t quite a joke at his expense. More like a joke Owen wanted him to live up to. Don’t take this too seriously, Guert. Don’t be dour about it. Straight gay black white young old—it’s not going to kill you or let you live.

The silence that filled the Audi seemed profound. Affenlight rolled down the windows so he could hear the roar of lawn mowers and patted down his jacket in search of a smoke.

They’d driven far out into the country, headed nowhere except somewhere where nobody knew them, and wound up at a fish fry in a greenly lit basement with no nonsmoking section. The place served pale beer in small glasses, nine or ten ounces each, and every time Affenlight looked down his glass was empty, and every time he looked up the coughing blue-haired waitress had filled it again. They ordered two fish fries—So as to seem polite, Affenlight said, and Owen raised his eyebrows and said, You mean not gay, and Affenlight glared at him reprovingly, flicking his eyes toward the nearby tables, and Owen said, Down, tiger. Owen ate both their salads of iceberg lettuce, pale pink tomato wedges, and sliced cucumbers. Affenlight ate his beer-battered cod and Owen’s beer-battered cod, so as to seem polite and not gay, and then the waitress brought more because it was all-you-can-eat, and Affenlight ate that too, cholesterol be damned. By the time he’d remembered that he was supposed to be at dinner with Pella and David he was already half-drunk. God, what a terrible father. She’d sounded surprisingly un-angry on the phone. Affenlight believed her at the time, but he needed to believe her; he was forty minutes away, a cigarette lit, several lagers in his bloodstream, his shoe tips pressed against Owen’s beneath the table. He should have hustled back for dessert no matter what she said. The motel he and Owen found, forty miles west of Westish, was called Troupe’s Inn.

Now he decided to leave the Audi where it was and take his stroll along the lake, which he’d missed this morning. The pressure in his temples was that of a genuine hangover. How many beers had he drunk? How nervous had he been to spend the night with Owen, share a bed, make love? Pretty nervous, apparently. It had been forty-two years since he’d lost his virginity. He’d never thought then that he would lose it again. He felt a touch of sadness now that it had happened, now that he knew what it was like. Not because it wasn’t enjoyable, or wouldn’t be repeated, but because one more of life’s mysteries had been revealed.