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then something about pussies. Now he’s asking Philip what pussy smells like. Again. Philip hears himself saying, “Like cod,” which is funny, he thinks. He smiles to himself. He has always been told that he’s funny. He understands the mechanics of humor. Ithas to be quick and effortless, a shift snuck into an unsuspecting conversation, not a barrage of dirty words thrown until one sticks. Josh is saying
clit
, over and over. Other words, too, but he’s saying
clit
the loudest, with real glee. Philip wants to get close to the tape recorder and say with slow, unmistakable enunciation,
Josh, it doesn’t get funnier the more you do it
.
    The last time Philip came over, he brought his girlfriend. Josh said the same words to her. He talked about fingering pussies and laughed as he mimed the gesture. She gripped the handle of her coffee mug tight, and Philip had to watch little veins pulse on her hands.
    “I think we’ve got somewhere to be,” she said. “Philip, don’t we?”
    “Where you going?” Josh said. “Where you going, guys? Where you going?”
    Philip leaned in close and hissed, “Stop it, Josh. Come on, man, stop it.”
    “You going home to finger her pussy?” Josh said.
    Even when they made it to the elevator, Josh was still audible. He was leaning out the door into the hallway—“Phil, hey Phil, where you going?”
    When the elevator door closed, Philip hugged his girlfriend and she exhaled.
    “He’s just too old to be that way,” she said. “It’s not right.”
    Phil, Phil, Phil, okay, hey Phil
.
    Josh is still going in the present. His giggle has become a shriek. He stamps his feet on the tile floor in a happy way. On the wall behind him, thin-stemmed wineglasses shake with the force of his stamping, make little plinking noises. His body is powerful. He has begun to pack his broad frame with new, adult muscle. Pectorals push against his T-shirt. He’s no longer a chubby boy. If Philip had just met him today for the first time,there maybe would have been that stab of jealousy that occurs whenever a man in his thirties passes a sculpted teen on the street, the knowledge that he could never return to that ideal now even if he tried. But this is Josh. Philip knows Josh. He imagines leaning across the table, putting his fingers on Josh’s biceps, and finding it to be slick, inflated plastic like a pool toy. He imagines pricking the biceps with his fingernail and watching the body deflate.
    Phil, are you listening? Phil, Phil, Phil
.
    His patience is gone.
    Phil, when was the last time you rubbed clit?
    Philip hears his own voice cut in despite himself, chiding,
When was the last time
you
did?
    At first it feels good to point out that Josh has never rubbed a clit in his life, to give him pause, if only for a second, but then it feels sad.
    Philip stands. He hears his own voice again, and it sounds like an older man’s.
    “We’re done here,” he says. “Turn the thing off.”
    He’s out of energy. He leaves fast. Josh watches him from the doorway, smiling, certain that he will see him soon.
    Josh never tracks him into the hall, never rides the elevator down with him. Never wants to hang out at Philip’s apartment. Never wants to be taken out for dinner, or to a ball game, even just for a walk along the river. He’s supposed to be a musician, but he never goes to a club to see a show. There’s a whole city around you, Philip told him once. All these lives, all these fucking interesting people with things to tell you. Josh shrugged, said fuck all those people, grinned a stupid grin. Philip grins in the elevator, thinking of Josh as some iron-pumping, emotionally unstable Rapunzel, waiting helpless, high above any intrigue or danger, for a visitor who is willing to climb.
    Philip will climb again, he knows that. He will be asked and he will oblige. And it will be the same, static and tense. Minutes will pass slowly, and Josh will be what he always was. Because the thing about living is that