The dog padded with her to the front window. Beyond the huge oak tree in the front yard, there was a car at an odd angle, with its headlights aimed toward the house. A front and back wheel were up on the hill. Whoever was driving had missed the turn and skidded onto her property. There was a man bending over by the side of the car. Somebody else, in the driver"s seat, gunned the engine and wheels spun again. "Wait for me to move! Wait till I"m out of the way, for Christ"s sake," the man outside the car hollered. The wheels screamed again, drowning out the rest of what he said.

Charlotte got her coat from the hall closet and snapped on the outside light. She nudged the dog back inside, and went carefully down the front walkway. Snow seeped into one shoe.

"What"s going on?" she called, clasping her hands across her chest.

"Nothin", " the man said, as if all this were the most normal thing in the world. "I"m trying to give us something to roll back on, so"s we can get some traction."

She looked down and saw a large piece of flagstone from her wall jammed under one back wheel. Again the man raced the engine.

"He"s gonna get it," the man said.

"Do you want me to call a tow truck?" she said, shivering.

There were no lights in any nearby windows. She could not believe that she was alone in this, that half the neighborhood was not awake.

"We got it! We got it!" the man said, crouching as the driver raced the engine again. The tire screamed on the flagstone, but the car did not move. Suddenly she smelled something sweet-liquor on the man"s breath. The man sprang up and banged on the car window. "Ease up, ease up, G.o.d d.a.m.n it," he said. "Don"t you know how to drive?"

The driver rolled down the window and began to curse. The other man hit his hand on the roof of the car. Again, the driver ga.s.sed it and tires spun and screamed.

For the first time, she felt frightened. The man began to tug at the door on the driver"s side, and Charlotte turned away and walked quickly toward the house. This has got to stop, she thought. It has got to stop. It has got to stop. She opened the door. Horatio was looking at her. It was as though he had been waiting and now he simply wanted an answer. She opened the door. Horatio was looking at her. It was as though he had been waiting and now he simply wanted an answer.

Above the screeching of tires, she heard her voice, speaking into the telephone, giving the police the information and her address. Then she stepped farther back into the dark kitchen, over on the left side, where she could not be seen through the front windows or through the gla.s.s panels that stretched to each side of the front door. She could hear both men yelling. Where was Nicholas? How could he still be asleep? She hoped that the dog wouldn"t bark and wake him, now that he"d managed to sleep through so much. She took a gla.s.s out of the cabinet and started toward the shelf where she kept the bourbon, but then stopped, realizing that she might be seen. She pulled open the refrigerator door and found an opened bottle of wine. She pulled the cork out and filled the gla.s.s half full and took a long drink.

Someone knocked on the door. Could it be the police-so soon? How could they have come so quickly and silently? She wasn"t sure until, long after the knocking stopped, she peered down the hallway and saw, through the narrow rectangle of gla.s.s, a police car with its revolving red and blue lights.

At almost the same instant, she touched something on her lapel and looked down, surprised. It was Santa: a small pin, in the shape of Santa"s head, complete with a little red hat, pudgy cheeks, and a ripply white plastic beard. A tiny cord with a bell at the bottom dangled from it. Nicholas must have gone back to the store where they had seen it on his first day home. She had pointed it out on a tray of Christmas pins and ornaments. She told him she"d had the exact same pin-the Santa"s head, with a bell-back when she was a girl. He must have gone back to the store later to buy it.

She tiptoed upstairs in the dark, and the dog followed. Nicholas was snoring in his bedroom. She went down the hall to her room, at the front of the house, and, without turning on the light, sat on her bed to look out the nearest window at the scene below. The man she had spoken to was emptying his pockets onto the hood of the police car. She saw the beam of the policeman"s flashlight sweep up and down his body, watched while he unb.u.t.toned his coat and pulled it open wide in response to something the policeman said. The other man was being led to the police car. She could hear his words-"my car, it"s my car, I tell you it"s my car, I tell you"-but she couldn"t make out whole sentences, couldn"t figure out what the driver was objecting to so strongly. When both men were in the car, one of the policemen turned and began to walk toward the house. She got up quickly and went downstairs, one hand sliding along the slick banister; the dog came padding down behind her.

She opened the door just before the policeman knocked. Cold flooded the hallway. She saw steam coming out of the car"s exhaust pipe. There was steam from her own breath, and the policeman"s.

"Could I come in, ma"am?" he asked, and she stood back and then shut the door behind him, closing out the cold. The dog was on the landing.

"He"s real good, or else he"s not a guard dog to begin with," the policeman said. His cheeks were red. He was younger than she had thought at first.

"They were going to keep that racket up all night," she said.

"You did the right thing," he said. His head bent, he began to fill out a form on his clipboard. "I put down about fifty dollars of damage to your wall," he said.

She said nothing.

"It didn"t do too much damage," the policeman said. "You can call in the morning and get a copy of this report if you need it."

"Thank you," she said.

He touched his cap. "Less fun than digging out Santa and his reindeer," he said, looking back at the car, tilted onto the lawn. "Have a good Christmas, ma"am," he said.

He turned and left, and she closed the door. With the click, she remembered everything. Earlier in the evening she had gone upstairs to tell Nicholas that she was sorry they had ended up in a quarrel on Christmas Eve. She had said she wanted him to come back downstairs. She had said it through the closed door, pleading with him, with her mouth close to the blank white panel of wood. When the door opened at last, and she saw Nicholas standing there in his pajamas, she had braced herself by touching her fingers to the door frame, shocked to realize that he was real, and that he was there. He was looking into her eyes-a person she had helped to create-and yet, when he wasn"t present, seeing him in her mind would have been as strange as visualizing a Christmas ornament out of season.

Nicholas"s hair was rumpled, and he looked at her with a tired, exasperated frown. "Charlotte," he said, "why didn"t you come up hours ago? I went down and let the dog in. You"ve been out like a light half the night. n.o.body"s supposed to say that you drink. n.o.body"s supposed to see you. If you don"t ask any questions, we"re supposed to stop noticing you. n.o.body"s supposed to put you on the spot, are they? You only talk to Father Curnan, and he prays for you."

Downstairs in the dark hallway now, she shuddered, remembering how she had felt when he said that. She had gone back downstairs and huddled in the chair-all right, she had had too much to drink-but it was she who had woken up and been alert to squealing tires and people screaming, and Nicholas who had slept. Also, she thought, relief suddenly sweeping through her, he couldn"t have been as angry as he seemed. He must have put the pin on her coat after the party-after their words in the car-or even when he had come downstairs to let Horatio in and had seen her asleep or pa.s.sed out in the chair. He must have pinned it onto her lapel when the coat still hung in the closet, so she would find it there the next day. She had found it early, inadvertently, when she went out to investigate the car and the noise.

She looked at the dog. He was watching her, as usual.

"Are you real good, or not a guard dog to begin with?" she whispered. Then she pulled the cord. Santa"s face lit up. She pulled the cord again, several times, smiling as the dog watched. Over her shoulder, she looked at the kitchen clock. It was three-fifty Christmas morning.

"Come on," she whispered, pulling the cord another time. "I"ve done my trick. Now you do yours."

Second Question

There we were, in the transfusion room at the end of the corridor at Bishopgate Hospital: Friday morning, the patients being dripped with blood or intravenous medicine so they could go home for the weekend. It was February, and the snow outside had turned the gritty gray of dirty plaster. Ned and I stood at the window, flanking a card table filled with desserts: doughnuts, cakes, pies, brownies, cookies. Some plastic forks and knives were piled in stacks, others dropped pick-up-sticks style between the paper plates. Ned surveyed the table and took a doughnut. In his chair, Richard was sleeping, chin dropped, breathing through his mouth. Half an hour into the transfusion, he always fell asleep. He was one of the few who did. A tall, redheaded man, probably in his mid-fifties, was hearing from a nurse about the hair loss he could expect. "Just remember, honey, Tina Turner wears a wig," she said.

Outside, bigger snowflakes fell, like wadded-up tissues heading for the trash. Which was what I had turned away from when I went to the window: the sight of a nurse holding a tissue for a young woman to blow her nose into. The woman was vomiting, with her nose running at the same time, but she refused to relinquish the aluminum bowl clamped under her thumbs. "Into the tissue, honey," the nurse was still saying, not at all distracted by her posturing colleague"s excellent imitation of Tina Turner. I"d stopped listening, too, but I"d stuck on the phrase "Gonna break every rule."

Richard was dying of AIDS. Ned, his ex-lover and longtime business a.s.sociate, found that instead of reading scripts, typing letters, and making phone calls, his new job description was to place organically grown vegetables in yin/yang positions inside a special steamer, below which we boiled Poland Spring water. A few months earlier, in that period before Richard"s AZT had to be discontinued so that he could enter an experimental outpatient-treatment program at Bishopgate, Ned had always slept late. He couldn"t call the West Coast before two in the afternoon, anyway-or maybe an hour earlier, if he had the unlisted number of an actor or of a director"s car phone. All of the people Richard and Ned did business with worked longer hours than nine-to-fivers, and it was a standing joke among us that I was never busy-I had no real job, and when I did work I was paid much more than was reasonable. Ned joked with me a lot, an edge in his voice, because he was a little jealous of the sudden presence of a third person in Richard"s apartment. Richard and I had met in New York when we were seated in adjacent chairs at a cheapo haircutter"s on Eighth Avenue. He thought I was an actress in an Off Broadway play he"d seen the night before. I was not, but I"d seen the play. As we talked, we discovered that we often ate at the same restaurants in Chelsea. His face was familiar to me, as well. Then began years of our being neighbors-a concept more important to New Yorkers than to people living in a small town. The day we met, Richard took me home with him so I could shower.

That year, my landlord on West Twenty-seventh Street remained unconcerned that hot water rarely made it up to my top-floor apartment. After I met Richard it became a habit with me to put on my sweatsuit and jog to his apartment, three blocks east and one block over. Richard"s own landlord, who lived in the other second-floor apartment, could never do enough for him, because Richard had introduced him to some movie stars and invited him to so many screenings. He would sizzle with fury over the abuse I had to endure, working himself up to what Richard (who made cafe filtre cafe filtre for the three of us) swore was a caffeine-induced s.e.xual high, after which he"d race around doing building maintenance. Now, in the too-bright transfusion room, it was hard for me to believe that only a few months ago I"d been sitting in Richard"s dining alcove, with the cl.u.s.ter of phones that rested on top of for the three of us) swore was a caffeine-induced s.e.xual high, after which he"d race around doing building maintenance. Now, in the too-bright transfusion room, it was hard for me to believe that only a few months ago I"d been sitting in Richard"s dining alcove, with the cl.u.s.ter of phones that rested on top of Variety Variety landslides and formed the centerpiece of the long tavern table, sipping freshly ground Jamaica Blue Mountain as my white-gloved hands curved around the pleasant heat of a neon-colored coffee mug. The gloves allowed the lotion to sink in as long as possible. I make my living as a hand model. Every night, I rub on a mixture of Dal Raccolto olive oil with a dash of Kiehl"s moisturizer and the liquid from two vitamin E capsules. It was Richard who gave me the nickname "Rac," for "Racc.o.o.n." My white, pulled-on paws protect me from scratches, broken nails, chapped skin. Forget the M.B.A.: as everyone knows, real money is made in strange ways in New York. landslides and formed the centerpiece of the long tavern table, sipping freshly ground Jamaica Blue Mountain as my white-gloved hands curved around the pleasant heat of a neon-colored coffee mug. The gloves allowed the lotion to sink in as long as possible. I make my living as a hand model. Every night, I rub on a mixture of Dal Raccolto olive oil with a dash of Kiehl"s moisturizer and the liquid from two vitamin E capsules. It was Richard who gave me the nickname "Rac," for "Racc.o.o.n." My white, pulled-on paws protect me from scratches, broken nails, chapped skin. Forget the M.B.A.: as everyone knows, real money is made in strange ways in New York.

I turned away from the snowstorm. On a TV angled from a wall bracket above us, an orange-faced Phil Donahue glowed. He shifted from belligerence to incredulity as a man who repossessed cars explained his life philosophy. Hattie, the nicest nurse on the floor, stood beside me briefly, considering the array of pastry on our table as if it were a half-played chess game. Finally, she picked up one of the plastic knives, cut a brownie in half, and walked away without raising her eyes to look at the snow.

Taking the shuttle to Boston every weekend had finally convinced me that I was never going to develop any fondness for Beantown. To be fair about it, I didn"t have much chance to see Boston as a place where anyone might be happy. Ned and I walked the path between the apartment (rented by the month) and the hospital. Once or twice I took a cab to the natural-food store, and one night, as irresponsible as the babysitters of every mother"s nightmare, we had gone to a bar and then to the movies, while Richard slept a drug-induced sleep, with the starfish night-light Hattie had brought him from her honeymoon in Bermuda shining on the bedside table. In the bar, Ned had asked me what I"d do if time could stop: Richard wouldn"t get any better and he wouldn"t get any worse, and the days we"d gone through-with the crises, the circ.u.mlocutions, the gallows humor, the perplexity, the sudden, all-too-clear medical knowledge-would simply persist. Winter, also, would persist: intermittent snow, strong winds, the harsh late-afternoon sun we couldn"t stand without the filter of a curtain. I was never a speculative person, but Ned thrived on speculation. In fact, he had studied poetry at Stanford, years ago, where he had written a series of "What If" poems. Richard, visiting California, answering questions onstage after one of the movies he"d produced had been screened, had suddenly found himself challenged by a student whose questions were complex and rhetorical. In the following fifteen years, they had been lovers, enemies, and finally best friends, a.s.sociated in work. They had gone from Stanford to New York, New York to London, then from Hampstead Heath back to West Twenty-eighth Street, with side trips to gamble in Aruba and to ski in Aspen at Christmas.

"You"re breaking the rules," I said. "No what-ifs."

"What if we went outside and flowers were blooming, and there were a car-a convertible-and we drove to Plum Island," he went on. "Moon on the water. Big Dipper in the sky. Think about it. Visualize it and your negative energy will be replaced by helpful, healing energy."

"Is there such a place as Plum Island or did you make it up?"

"It"s famous. Banana Beach is there. Bands play at night in the Prune Pavilion."

"There is a Plum Island," the man next to me said. "It"s up by Newburyport. It"s full of poison ivy in the summer, so you"ve got to be careful. I once got poison ivy in my lungs from some a.s.shole who was burning the stuff with his leaves. Two weeks in the hospital, and me with a thousand-dollar deductible."

Ned and I looked at the man.

"Buy you a round," he said. "I just saved a bundle. The hotel I"m staying at gives you a rate equal to the temperature when you check in. It"s a come-on. I"ve got a queen-size bed, an honor bar, and one of those showers you can adjust so it feels like needles shooting into you, all for sixteen dollars. I could live there cheaper than heating my house."

"Where you from?" Ned asked.

"Hope Valley, Rhode Island," the man said, his arm shooting in front of me to shake Ned"s hand. "Harvey Milgrim," he said, nodding at my face. "Captain, United States Army Reserve."

"Harvey," Ned said, "I don"t think you have any use for guys like me. I"m h.o.m.os.e.xual."

The man looked at me. I was surprised, too; it wasn"t like Ned to talk about this with strangers. Circ.u.mstance had thrown me together with Ned; fate precipitated our unlikely bonding. Neither of us could think of life without Richard. Richard opened up to very few people, but when he did he made it a point to be indispensable.

"He"s kidding," I said. It seemed the easiest thing to say.

"Dangerous joke," Harvey Milgrim said.

"He"s depressed because I"m leaving him," I said.

"Well, now, I wouldn"t rush into a thing like that," Harvey said. "I"m Bud on draft. What are you two?"

The bartender walked over the minute the conversation shifted to alcohol.

"Stoli straight up," Ned said.

"Vodka tonic," I said.

"Switch me to Jim Beam," Harvey said. He rolled his hand with the quick motion of someone shaking dice. "Couple of rocks on the side."

"Harvey," Ned said, "my world"s coming apart. My ex-lover is also my boss, and his white-blood-cell count is sinking too low for him to stay alive. The program he"s in at Bishopgate is his last chance. He"s a Friday-afternoon vampire. They pump blood into him so he has enough energy to take part in an experimental study and keep his outpatient status, but do you know how helpful that is? Imagine he"s driving the Indy. He"s in the lead. He screeches in for gas, and what does the pit crew do but blow him a kiss? The other cars are still out there, whipping past. He starts to yell, because they"re supposed to fill the car with gas, but the guys are nuts or something. They just blow air kisses."

Harvey looked at Ned"s hand, the fingers fanned open, deep Vs of s.p.a.ce between them. Then Ned slowly curled them in, kissing his fingernails as they came to rest on his bottom lip.

The bartender put the drinks down, one-two-three. He scooped a few ice cubes into a gla.s.s and put the gla.s.s beside Harvey"s shot gla.s.s of bourbon. Harvey frowned, looking from gla.s.s to gla.s.s without saying anything. Then he threw down the shot of bourbon and picked up the other gla.s.s, lifted one ice cube out, and slowly sucked it. He did not look at us or speak to us again.

The night after Ned and I snuck off to the bar, Richard started to hyperventilate. In a minute his pajamas were soaked, his teeth chattering. It was morning, 4 a.m. He was holding on to the door frame, his feet in close, his body curved away, like someone windsurfing. Ned woke up groggily from his sleeping bag on the floor at the foot of Richard"s bed. I was on the foldout sofa in the living room, again awakened by the slightest sound. Before I"d fallen asleep, I"d gone into the kitchen to get a drink of water, and a mouse had run under the refrigerator. It startled me, but then tears sprang to my eyes because if Richard knew there were mice-mice polluting the environment he was trying to purify with air ionizers, and humidifiers that misted the room with mineral water-he"d make us move. The idea of gathering up the piles of holistic-health books, the pamphlets on meditation, the countless jars of vitamins and chelated minerals and organically grown grains, the eye of G.o.d that hung over the stove, the pa.s.sages he"d made Ned transcribe from Bernie Siegel and tape to the refrigerator-we"d already moved twice, neither time for any good reason. Something couldn"t just scurry in and make us pack it all up again, could it? And where was there left to go anymore? He was too sick to be in a hotel, and I knew there was no other apartment anywhere near the hospital. We would have to persuade him that the mouse existed only in his head. We"d tell him he was hallucinating; we"d talk him out of it, in the same way we patiently tried to soothe him by explaining that the terror he was experiencing was only a nightmare. He was not in a plane that had crashed in the jungle; he was tangled in sheets, not weighed down with concrete.

When I got to the bedroom, Ned was trying to pry Richard"s fingers off the door frame. He was having no luck, and looked at me with an expression that had become familiar: fear, with an undercurrent of intense fatigue.

Richard"s robe dangled from his bony shoulders. He was so wet that I thought at first he might have blundered into the shower. He looked in my direction but didn"t register my presence. Then he sagged against Ned, who began to walk him slowly in the direction of the bed.

"It"s cold," Richard said. "Why isn"t there any heat?"

"We keep the thermostat at eighty," Ned said wearily. "You just need to get under the covers."

"Is that Hattie over there?"

"It"s me," I said. "Ned is trying to get you into the bed."

"Rac," Richard said vaguely. He said to Ned, "Is that my bed?"

"That"s your bed," Ned said. "You"ll be warm if you get into bed, Richard."

I came up beside Richard and patted his back, and walked around and sat on the edge of the bed, trying to coax him forward. Ned was right: it was dizzyingly hot in the apartment. I got up and turned back the covers, smoothing the contour sheet. Ned kept Richard"s hand, but turned to face him as he took one step backward, closer to the bed. The two of us pantomimed our pleasure at the bed"s desirability. Richard began to walk toward it, licking his lips.

"I"ll get you some water," I said.

"Water," Richard said. "I thought we were on a ship. I thought the bathroom was an inside cabin with no window. I can"t be where there"s no way to see the sky."

Ned was punching depth back into Richard"s pillows. Then he made a fist and punched the center of the bed. "All aboard the S.S. f.u.c.king A f.u.c.king A," he said.

It got a fake laugh out of me as I turned into the kitchen, but Richard only began to whisper urgently about the claustrophobia he"d experienced in the bathroom. Finally he did get back in his bed and immediately fell asleep. Half an hour later, still well before dawn, Ned repeated Richard"s whisperings to me as if they were his own. Though Ned and I were very different people, our ability to imagine Richard"s suffering united us. We were sitting in wooden chairs we"d pulled away from the dining-room table to put by the window so Ned could smoke. His cigarette smoke curled out the window.

"Ever been to Mardi Gras?" he said.

"New Orleans," I said, "but never Mardi Gras."

"They use strings of beads for barter," he said. "People stand up on the balconies in the French Quarter-women as well as men, sometimes-and they holler down for people in the crowd to flash "em: you give them a thrill, they toss down their beads. The more you show, the more you win. Then you can walk around with all your necklaces and everybody will know you"re real foxy. Real Real cool. You do a b.u.mp-and-grind, you can get the good ole boys-the men, that is-and the transvest.i.tes all whistling together and throwing down the long necklaces. The real long ones are the ones everybody wants. They"re like having a five-carat-diamond ring." He opened the window another few inches so he could stub out his cigarette. One-fingered, he flicked it to the ground. Then he lowered the window, not quite pushing it shut. This wasn"t one of Ned"s wild stories; I was sure what he"d just told me was true. Sometimes I thought Ned told me certain stories to t.i.tillate me, or perhaps to put me down in some way: to remind me that I was straight and he was gay. cool. You do a b.u.mp-and-grind, you can get the good ole boys-the men, that is-and the transvest.i.tes all whistling together and throwing down the long necklaces. The real long ones are the ones everybody wants. They"re like having a five-carat-diamond ring." He opened the window another few inches so he could stub out his cigarette. One-fingered, he flicked it to the ground. Then he lowered the window, not quite pushing it shut. This wasn"t one of Ned"s wild stories; I was sure what he"d just told me was true. Sometimes I thought Ned told me certain stories to t.i.tillate me, or perhaps to put me down in some way: to remind me that I was straight and he was gay.

"You know what I did one time?" I said suddenly, deciding to see if I could shock him for once. "When I was having that affair with Harry? One night we were in his apartment-his wife was off in Israel-and he was cooking dinner, and I was going through her jewelry box. There was a pearl necklace in there. I couldn"t figure out how to open the clasp, but finally I realized I could just drop it over my head carefully. When Harry hollered for me, I had all my clothes off and was lying on the rug, in the dark, with my arms at my side. Finally he came after me. He put on the light and saw me, and then he started laughing and sort of dove onto me, and the pearl necklace broke. He raised up and said, "What have I done?" and I said, "Harry, it"s your wife"s necklace." He didn"t even know she had it. She must not have worn it. So he started cursing, crawling around to pick up the pearls, and I thought, No, if he has it restrung at least I"m going to make sure it won"t be the same length."

Ned and I turned our heads to see Richard, his robe neatly knotted in front, kneesocks pulled on, his hair slicked back.

"What are you two talking about?" he said.

"Hey, Richard," Ned said, not managing to disguise his surprise.

"I don"t smell cigarette smoke, do I?" Richard said.

"It"s coming from below," I said, closing the window.

"We weren"t talking about you," Ned said. His voice was both kind and wary.

"I didn"t say you were," Richard said. He looked at me. "May I be included?"

"I was telling him about Harry," I said. "The story about the pearls." More and more, it seemed, we were relying on stories.

"I never liked him," Richard said. He waved a hand toward Ned. "Open that a crack, will you? It"s too hot in here."

"You already know the story," I said to Richard, anxious to include him. "You tell Ned the punch line."

Richard looked at Ned. "She ate them," he said. "When he wasn"t looking she ate as many as she could."

"I didn"t want them to fit anymore if she tried to put them over her head," I said. "I wanted her to know something had happened."

Richard shook his head, but fondly: a little gesture he gave to indicate that I was interchangeable with some gifted, troublesome child he never had.

"One time, when I was on vacation with Sander, I picked up a trick in Puerto Rico," Ned said. "We were going at it at this big estate where the guy"s employer lived, and suddenly the guy, the employer, hears something and starts up the stairs. So I ran into the closet-"

"He played football in college," Richard said.

I smiled, but I had already heard this story. Ned had told it at a party one night long ago, when he was drunk. It was one of the stories he liked best, because he appeared a little wild in it and a little cagey, and because somebody got his comeuppance. His stories were not all that different from those stories boys had often confided in me back in my college days-stories about dates and s.e.xual conquests, told with ellipses to spare my delicate feelings.

"So I grabbed whatever was hanging behind me-just grabbed down a wad of clothes-and as the guy comes into the room, I throw open the door and spring," Ned was saying. "Buck naked, I start out running, and here"s my bad luck: I slam right into him and knock him out. Like it"s a cartoon or something. I know he"s out cold, but I"m too terrified to think straight, so I keep on running. Turns out what I"ve grabbed is a white pleated shirt and a thing like a-what do you call those jackets the j.a.panese wear? Comes halfway down my thighs, thank G.o.d."

"These are the things he thanks G.o.d for," Richard said to me.

Ned got up, growing more animated. "It"s all all like a cartoon. There"s a dog in the yard that sets out after me, but the thing is on a like a cartoon. There"s a dog in the yard that sets out after me, but the thing is on a chain chain. He reaches the end of the chain and just rises up in the air, baring his teeth, but he can"t go anywhere. So I stand right there, inches in front of the dog, and put on the shirt and tie the jacket around me, and then I stroll over to the gate and slip the latch, and about a quarter of a mile later I"m outside some hotel. I go in and go to the men"s room to clean up, and that"s the first time I realize I"ve got a broken nose."

Although I had heard the story before, this was the first mention of Ned"s broken nose. For a few seconds he seemed to lose steam, as if he himself were tired of the story, but then he started up again, revitalized.

"And here"s the rest of my good luck: I come out and the guy on the desk is a f.a.g. I tell him I"ve run into a problem and will he please call my boyfriend at the hotel where we"re staying, because I don"t even have a coin to use the pay phone. So he looks up the number of the hotel, and he dials it and hands me the phone. They connect me with Sander, who is sound asleep, but he snaps to right away, screaming, "Another night on the town with a prettyboy? Suddenly the bars close and Ned realizes his wallet"s back at the hotel? And do you think I"m going to come get you, just because you and some pickup don"t have money to pay the bill"?"