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to.”
    I give her that look, the one I use to remind her that she’s saying quiet things too loud.
    On the way over to Rene’s I stick my head into the free clinic. There’s a basket of condoms on the counter nine days out of ten, and you can take as many as you want for free. It’s there, so I duck in and grab a handful, six or seven, and stick them in the pocket of my duster.
    The woman at the counter has a modern hairstyle, about two inches long and all moussed back in waves. She smiles at me.
    In a kind of purposely singsongy voice, I say, “Thank you.”
    “S’what they’re there for,” she says, purposely imitating my song voice.
    I try to think of a way to get to Rene’s without going by the leather store. There are lots of ways, but they all have me walking a little farther. And that’s stupid, I decide. What am I, a little kid? I can stand to see something it hurts to want. I can see it and then just keep walking. It happens to lots of people every day. We all survive.
    But when I pass the store, I don’t just keep walking. It stops me dead, like seeing an old flame step out of a cab on a busy street. And once I’m stopped I stay stopped a minute, and I look at the duster coat. And I make the mistake of thinking about going to Rene’s wearing that coat. It would be so different. It would be better even than it is now. He would look at me and see things he never saw before. I would be just as big as Rene and have just as much power, and we would have to find new games to play, ones that reined in both of our powers so we didn’t both get burned to a crisp by all that self-satisfied cool.
    The guy in the store is not the same guy as yesterday. He’s a little older, maybe forty, with silvery hair and heavy black eyebrows.
    And a weird kind of male-pattern baldness that leaves one little hank of hair all alone by itself on his upper forehead, like an island. I’m so busy thinking about the duster coat and Rene and the new games that it takes me a minute to realize he’s checking me out. I look him in the eye and drink in all that raw approval. And I almost wish the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. I know in a flash that I probably—potentially—could get that coat. But I am not going to bend over for it. I refuse to bend over to get that coat because then every time I wear that coat, instead of feeling like the king, I’ll feel like a guy who bent over.
    Instead of men crossing the city to fall down at my feet, I’ll be picturing men crossing the city to tell me to bend over. I shake my head at him and walk on.
    Over my shoulder I hear his voice. He’s come out onto the street to call after me. “Hey, kid,” he says. “Where ya going, kid?”
    I’m going to Rene’s.
    “Jordan,” Rene says. “My man.”
    I am struck dumb, as always, by how gorgeous he is. He’s standing at the door in just a pair of jeans. He lifts weights, and his chest has great definition. And not one single hair. Not even around his nipples. He has a little skinny goatee, jet-black. He is Hawaiian and Nicaraguan, very dark and smoky and dangerous and gorgeous, and sometimes I just can’t believe my own luck.
    Actually, every time. I just can’t believe it.
    “Business or pleasure?” Rene asks, stepping back to let me in.
    “Maybe both,” I say. “Maybe a little of both.”
    Then I know again how bad I need that coat, because I feel how it would be to stand in his one-room studio with the collar up and the sleeves pushed up to my elbows, saying, Maybe a little of both. That’s the real me. I have to find a way to step up to what I know I could be.
    “Which comes first?” he says, but he’s already peeled my coat off onto the floor and he’s unbuttoning my shirt, and then I couldn’t talk if I wanted to. His arms are around my waist and he picks me up so my feet are an inch off the ground and he puts me down on his big bed.
    Rene doesn’t do this with just anybody. Lots of guys come by here to get work