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somewhere else. More than that, Grandma Lincoln’s was the first black household in the city into which he’d been invited. She made them coffee, like they were grownups, and served them cake that she’d baked from scratch. Grandma Lincoln called her freezer “the icebox” and still had a black-and-white television in her living room, with aluminum foil wrapped around the V-shaped antenna. After cake and coffee, she put on the TV, let a soap opera run in the background, and kept up an intermittent conversation with the boys. When the image got staticky, she’d say, “Adjust the rabbit ears for me, George-honey.” When it was time to go, she told Robin, “You’re a good-looking boy, but too skinny. Come back here and I’ll feed you a proper meal, with or without Little Georgie.”
    Robin started calling George by these sweetheart nicknames: George-honey, Little Georgie. George claimed to hate this, but Robin couldn’t resist.
    During another of George’s visits, Robin decided to test him. As they walked through Central Park, George in a wool coat and canvas sneakers, Robin in the belted trench coat, silk scarf, and pointy-toed boots he’d taken to wearing after reading Oscar Wilde and deciding he wanted to be a dandy, Robin said, “I have a crush on someone,” and then revealed that someone was Alton Humphrey, a boy in his new high school. He hoped this wouldn’t end his friendship with George, but thought that it might; he figured it was a risk worth taking, if they were going to stay friends.
    George nodded as he listened and then said it was probably a phase that Robin would outgrow. He said what he’d heard Dr. Ruth Westheimer say on her sex-advice radio show; in puberty, boys had “experimental” ideas, but they usually outgrew this “phase” as their hormones came into balance. Homosexual tendencies were nothing to worry about. Nothing permanent. He told Robin that his “androgynous wardrobe” was part of that, too, as if Robin himself hadn’t put it all together.
    Robin didn’t tell George about the sexual experiences he’d already had, orgasms shared with boys from Greenlawn (the names would have shocked George: Scott Schatz, the quiet burnout who cut school all the time; Todd Spicer, the beautiful stoner who drove Robin to school in the morning) and, more recently, now and then, with a man he met in New York. This man, a piano teacher his mother had hired but could not afford to pay after a few lessons, invited Robin to his apartment on Lexington Avenue, where Robin would drink wine, disrobe, and then masturbate onto him. On the way out he’d slip a few bucks into Robin’s pocket. Giving George the full picture would have been pushing things too far, too fast. So Robin simply shrugged his shoulders, saying that the concept of a phase was “interesting,” and thus he let George talk his way into maintaining their friendship, which for some reason he seemed to want to do, despite Robin’s deviant confession.
    Then there was the night when George came into the city to meet Robin, who had gotten the dates mixed up and was out at the theater with Dorothy. Ruby was out, too, so no one answered the buzzer at their apartment, and George wound up stranded at the diner on West End Avenue, killing time and contemplating whether or not he’d have to head up to his grandmother’s to sleep, probably waking her up because it was so late. After that, Dorothy decided George should have a key, so that he could come and go as he pleased, so that he wouldn’t have to take a late-night subway ride to Harlem if Robin messed up their plans. Robin remembers George taking the key and trying it in the lock, remembers the feeling that George was now part of their family. Robin was sixteen, George a half year older.
    Another weekend, not long after that: George came into the city with a plan to stay overnight. “Let’s shoot for who sleeps on the floor,” George said. Scissors, paper, rock: Robin lost two out