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said Tom, though he was grinning.
    Getting too close to Lloyd, Jake went on, “They call you ‘wife-stealer.’ Hear it? Since you’re the kind that… what ? I’m only—"
    “Don’t be getting in his face and scaring him up,” said Tom, who had grabbed Jake’s arm to pull him away. “He doesn’t know about your jokes.”
    “A date snatch if I ever seen one,” said Jake, never taking his eyes off Lloyd as he allowed Tom to drag him to the door.
    “No, he’s a classic fellow with a college style that’s way over your head. Now, you come on to the TV and get the beer drunk, so you can get all melancholy instead of fighting with every guy you see, in the good old Jake manner.”
    To Lloyd, as they departed, Tom added, “If I had a buck for every bar they threw this lug out of…Say, you want to watch the game with us, pal? There’s beer enough for a squad.”
    “I think I’ll get in a bike ride till Bizarro World is over,” said Lloyd.
    “I think I’ll put on a speckled vest and loafers and get in some cocksucking,” Jake snorted back. “Who’ll put a penny in my loafers?”
    “Come on, troublemaker,” said Tom as the two disappeared.
    Outside, in the breezy summer-fall heat, Lloyd made an afternoon of it. Between laps, he had a sandwich and chatted up members of a women’s cycling club lounging on a break in the city park running along Northside. When Lloyd got back, quite some time later, Tom was by himself at the kitchen table, reading the paper as he finished off a beer.
    “Here’s a nice column of yours,” Tom announced. He held the paper up to show Lloyd. “Makes me feel important to know a guy with his name so standout in the press. Reading all about the trendy new swimming strokes and bathing wear. That’ll be handy if the Titanic goes down again.”
    “Is Nosferatu gone?” asked Lloyd, parking his bike helmet on what Tom referred to as “the step thing”: an old high chair with a fold-in ladder attachment.
    “Old Jake likes you,” said Tom, with the look of a child getting into an inspired bit of mischief. “He plans to flirt and tease you fiercely, maybe corner you at a Christmas party when you’re in a Santa suit and take it off you piece by piece. Yeah, old Jake’s got ideas about you. And none of your faces, now, when I’m just telling what old Jake said.”
    Getting a water bottle out of the fridge, Lloyd said, “It’s not fair to joke at me so radically.”
    “Can’t help it if you’re his type, can I?”
    “His type of what?” Lloyd replied, sitting across from Tom and taking a swig of water.
    Shaking his head in mock-concern, Tom said, “Old Jake would know just what to do with a rebellious desperado like yourself, I can tell you that. He would whisper his schemes for you while tenderizing you all at once.”
    “Tom!” cried Lloyd, half-scandalized.
    Tom started to heft his mug for another swallow, decided against it, looked at Lloyd and slipped into that naughty-boy grin once more. “My old Jake? He would flirt and tease you for certain. Favorite trick’s where you’re on the phone to break a date with your chick, and while you’re talking Jake’s all over you, pulling off your clothes and smooching away all over the place. He’ll eat up your johnson, too. Does the chick catch on? If she does, you lose and Jake gets to score you big time.”
    No longer startled, Lloyd was playing it on the casual side. Finishing off his water as if Tom had been recounting a movie plot, Lloyd asked, “But what if I win?”
    “You get out in one piece.”
    Again, Tom grasped his mug as if to raise it but didn’t follow through.
    “Jake asked if he could have you for a night,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Don’t worry. If anyone gets to rough you over it’s me, when I punish you for your crimes.”
    In his suave mode, Lloyd carefully screwed the top back on the empty water bottle, set it on the table, leaned toward Tom, and said, “Okay if it comes to that, whatever