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grand and terrifying, though Eliot hardly noticed it. Such efforts of affection were nothing for him; his life had been full of them, pats and caresses and casual kisses, whereas for Philip to touch a hand to a cheek was an action of such magnitude that it had to be treasured, preserved. It radiated power; it demanded bravery. Philip understood that there were people in the world like Eliot for whom love and sex came easy, without active solicitation, like a strong wind to which they had only to turn their laces and it would blow over them. He also understood that he was not one of those people. Instead, he seemed always to be eking out signals, interpreting glances, trying to extract some knowledge of another person's feelings from the most trivial conversations. Nothing came easy for him, and more often than not, nothing came of any of his efforts.
    Only three weeks before, at a dinner party at their friend Sally's, in a gesture of drunken self-confidence he still found hard to believe, he had slipped his foot out of his shoe and rubbed it: against Eliot's calf. And Eliot—without even looking at him, without even breaking the flow of his conversation with the woman next to him—grasped Philip's foot between his legs and held it there, trapping him for the rest of the dinner. That simply, his life changed.
    "Your face feels like Velcro," Philip said now, suddenly remembering a mouse he had stroked as a child—how oddly soft, almost synthetic, its fur had felt.
    Eliot laughed. "Yes," he said. "I'll shave when we get back to my house." He was eager to see if he'd gotten any mail, and to check in with his roommate, a lanky black woman named Jerene who made Philip shy. There was no talk of their spending the night apart, and Philip wondered if he seemed overeager.
    "Tell me the truth," he said now. "Do you want me to come down with you tonight? I mean, we could eat, and then I could go back uptown. It would be no problem."
    Eliot looked at him. "Philip," he said. "What are you talking about?"
    Philip was quiet for a moment. "I don't want you to get sick of me," he said at last.
    "If I'm sick of you, I'll tell you," Eliot said, taking his hand away, and turned to look out the window.
    Philip stared into the side of Eliot's face. He felt like one of those crazed vivisectors Eliot had spoken of, determined to know the exact boundaries of pain. How far can I go before I feel it? How long before something happens that hurts?
    The cab was passing through midtown now, past warehouses and towering garages, and the sidewalks were dotted with tired-looking prostitutes in hot pants, rubbing their stockinged legs in the cold. A garbage truck pulled up to the curb, and three or four of the women approached its enormous door. The wind blew, but their hair stayed perfectly in place.
    "I'd like to stay with you tonight," Philip said.
    "Yes," Eliot said. He stroked Philip's hand, looking at the prostitutes. "That's fine."
     

     
    P HILIP WAS TALL like his father, and gangly. More than anything else he resembled one of those awkward, loping dogs who seem always to be getting caught between people's legs. His face inspired trust in old women in elevators: even-keeled, the features all in proportion to one another and nothing too striking except the eyes, which were a brilliant blue. It was a face so well composed, so familiar-seeming, that people who had never met Philip before insisted that they had (although they could never remember where), then afterwards were unable to recall a single detail of his physiognomy. He had straight brown hair that turned wheaten in summer, a likable grin, a tendency to laugh
    too loudly at inappropriate moments. Something about his very ordinariness, the fact that nothing in his appearance betrayed his homosexuality, made him attractive to other young men; he was the childhood neighbor they'd dreamed of jacking off with in bunk beds, and usually that was all they wanted. Philip longed for passion and romantic