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for a living?”
    “He trains seeing-eye dogs.”
    That so startled us that even Cosgrove and Dennis Savage shared a wow! look. Fleabiscuit sought to celebrate the moment by opening Peter’s left shoelace.
    “You found some hero?” I said. “A good guy?”
    “Would I fall for a ribbon clerk?” Peter countered.
    “But what is his type?” Cosgrove insisted, holding up one of the Lars Erich photos.
    “His type is love,” said Peter, retying his shoelace.
    “You’ve hooked up with a man in a charity service industry,” said Dennis Savage, incredulously. “Why did I foresee a liaison with a soap-opera stud? A circus strongman?”
    “Because you think all gay men are materialists.”
    “No, just you.”
    “I want to come to Tower, too,” said Cosgrove. “This guy could model for a character in my series of porn stories. Only there is no desk for Cosgrove in this apartment. Some may ask, Does he have a theme? Yes. Yet there are those who will fear the dire mythology I unveil.”
    “I would need a decoder ring to even begin replying to all that,” said Peter. “Except this first time it really should be just Bud. The rest of us are so … unpredictable?”
    Followed then a bit of scurrying around. Dennis Savage went upstairs, Cosgrove set out on household errands, and Peter took a refill on coffee.
    “It’s okay about Tower, right?” Peter asked me, relaxing a little, as, I’ve noticed, he always does when a group boils down to a twosome. He doesn’t like having to Hold the Stage. “I can’t wait to see how you … But that’s gay life, isn’t it? Presenting your new boy friend, and your buddies hold this pep rally thing, and deep bonds are forged. Why do my shoelaces keep coming undone whenever I sit on this couch?”
    “Would you please finally take that ridiculous thing off your head?”
    He did, and that was even worse: he was bald.
    “Christ and Judas!” I said. “ What are you doing? ”
    “Well, it’s a look. The hair’ll grow back. Haven’t you ever wondered how you’d seem without … Some men find it attractive.”
    “I’ve never wondered how I’d seem being eaten by wolves. I’ve never wondered how I’d seem going down on the Andrea Doria. And I’ve never wondered how I’d seem bald.”
    “Lars Erich digs it.”
    The next few seconds hosted a gently rapturous moment, as Peter contemplated his great good fortune.
    “Just to … to talk to him,” Peter finally fluted out. “His smile as he dives into little German phrases. The fierce way he pushes me onto my back, his hair falling across his forehead and his mouth frowning like a little boy’s. Can I whisper to you?”
    Not waiting for a reply, he leaned over and quoted, in a synthetic German accent, “‘Now it is my Peter who is being fucked, you will see that!’”
    Retying my right shoelace, I set up the logistics for the Tower trip in a tone designed to conclude the visit, but Peter appeared to have one more thing on his mind.
    “Yes?” I said, stopped while working my way to the door.
    He rose; he didn’t follow. “I need to say this, but I’m afraid you’ll think I’m crazy.”
    “I already think you’re crazy.”
    “It’s a sort of … yes, a … a dream, you see, that I, you might say, entertain. You’ll find it strange. I don’t know where it came from, but it’s in me somehow. I can’t get away from it, shocking though that … But I have to tell you, or someone. It’s funny how concerned one can be about appearances, then … suddenly … you aren’t at all.”
    “Sure you are—you’ve just changed the appearances.”
    “It’s about a sacrifice ceremony. Drums and feathers in a sacred grove, the Maria Montez thing. And he’s the sacrifice, struggling in the grip of burly guards … or why use that silly vague straight term, ‘burly’? No, they’re lavish dynamite, as hungry to fuck him as to … You see how frontal it gets? As if a boy this beautiful cannot simply be loved.