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still couldn’t understand. Surely, Mitchell could have helped more people if he’d stayed a lawyer, done work for the homeless, worked for Legal Aid.
    As Arthur heard the voice mail message play, he felt dizzy from all of the conflicting thoughts. Mitchell had tricked him, hidden his true identity from him. Or had he? He’d given Arthur his full name; perhaps it was Arthur’s own blindness, or blind lust, that had prevented him from making any meaningful connections.
    “I need a drink,”Arthur mumbled as he got out of his car and headed back into his house. How was he supposed to recognize someone who had changed so much? How was he to have known that Mitchell the salesperson had at one time been instrumental in getting Arthur out of losing his license, maybe even jail time?
    Was that why Mitchell had left the law firm? Had Mitchell seen too many, participated in too many scams that pushed the legal limits of right and wrong? And if so, what had Mitchell seen outside of the law firm to make him change so radically? Or had he changed radically? Was it possible that Mitchell had always had a kind and giving nature and had only tried to conform to what his parents and society expected of a child of privilege? Like Arthur had conformed? Like Arthur having felt himself worthy of a gift as extravagant as tickets that must have cost an eleven-year-old boy a small fortune? Like Arthur had done tonight, when he thought that Mitchell, a product of a poor or middle-class family, couldn’t possibly have known anything about someone as complex and sophisticated as Arthur? Complex and sophisticated. The voice in Arthur’s head was laughing at him now. You’re about as obvious and common as people get in this world.
    Arthur headed to bed, head aching and mind numb from trying to figure out if he’d been the victim in all of this. After all, Mitchell could have told the truth to Arthur right from the beginning. But what lies did he actually tell you? The voice in Arthur’s head was back. Mitchell told you everything, but you were too busy thinking about… what had he been thinking about, exactly?
    At first, Arthur was willing to admit, there had been the physical attraction. And what would you have thought if he’d told you he’d been the overweight, gawky pre-teen you can’t even remember him being? Would it have made any difference to the fact that you were just looking for a hookup?
     As he felt himself falling off to sleep some four or five hours after Mitchell had left, Arthur knew he would have to make this up to him. He didn’t know how, but he knew why. Somehow Mitchell’s opinion had come to mean a great deal to Arthur. Somehow, the thought of disappointing him, of letting him go through the rest of his life thinking that Arthur was somehow less than the eighteen-year-old boy Mitchell had known and fallen in love with, suddenly meant a great deal to Arthur.
     
    *  *  *
    Saturday, December 23
     
    Arthur stood on the sidewalk, thinking about what he normally would have been doing at this time of the year: the popular places he’d visit, the people he would have been with, and the copious amounts of alcohol and alcohol-fueled sex he would have had with countless strangers—all the while wondering why he had not met anyone to share his life.
    He laughed as he opened the familiar door, amused and relieved that he did not miss those places or those people even less. He did not want to be that person anymore. I’ve very sorry you don’t get it … you seem like the kind of man who did get it at one time, Mitchell had said to him in the coffee shop. Still feeling like the amnesiac in that Hollywood film, Arthur had started to remember a lot of other things too: happy vacations with his entire family, being excited to see his parents when he was back from school, helping his sisters with their homework, even hugging his mother for the football player cake.
    Arthur pulled open the door, steeling his nerves for a