"We've only been here two minutes," Quinn says, "but already I know what just about every man in here looks like." He leans against the bar, lights two cigarettes and puts one in my mouth. "Can you say the same?"

I can barely hear him over the sounds of frantic conversation, disco from the jukebox, the clack-and-rumble of a pool game in the rear, the tinny crunch of beer cans popping open. My eyes haven't adjusted to the dimness and smoke, can't sort through the crowd the way his do, like a machine sorting mail. See him craning his neck, lifting his body like a shadow from a larger shadow—black sneakers, black corduroys, black t-shirt. I've often wondered if his underwear is black.

"If you know what everybody in here looks like," I tell him, "it's because you've slept with most of them."

He flashes the scar that splits his left eyebrow. From there his face lines up tough and handsome, his nose slightly crooked like his laugh. "I don't deny it." He raps my shoulder. "Come on, look happy."

Looking happy is one style here; looking grim is another. As my vision clears—the beer we've drunk, the dope we've smoked don't help any—I see squared shoulders, stooped shoulders, rigid hips, swaying hips, knuckles white against beer cans, thumbs hooked in belt-loops, stern eyebrows, hopeful smiles. In the past I took my place among the hopeful, doing their best to look clever, sexy, persuasive. This is the one gay bar in town, the only place to meet Mr. Right, as the sign over the bar mirror has it:

"Gil," Quinn says, "check it out."

I follow his nod to a tall dark man leaning in a corner. He wears a t-shirt with a bull's head on its chest. His face has a nice symmetry, a widow's peak, a dimple in his chin.

"I've never seen him before," Quinn says. "He's interested."

I'm about to ask how he knows when the man sends us a smile—a quick, nervous one that vanishes without a trace, leaving his good-looking face looking sad.

"Interested in you or me?"

"In both of us, I hope." Before I can ask what that's supposed to mean he adds, "Stay cool. He's coming this way."

But only a few steps, toward a couple of guys sitting at a table just big enough for two beers. These guys are wearing cowboy boots and leather chaps, shirts with pearl buttons and lariats looping across their chests—a sight you don't see every day in a New England town. Our friend hikes his fanny up on the edge of the table and takes out a cigarette. One of the cowboys half-rises to light it for him.

Quinn looks grim.

The bartender shakes my empty beer can, asks if I want another. I shake my head, having drunk three beers before Quinn and I left the house we're sharing as of today. A sprawling old sea-captain's place, it sits high and dark in another part of town, waiting for us to come back. And I want us to come back, alone. "What are we doing here?" I ask him.

"We're cruising. What's the matter? Don't you want to become a pro?" He tilts his chin at one corner of the room, then another, suggesting, inviting, daring. When his eyes come round to me they say, Look, you could be me if you tried.

I see him dragging his suitcase up the stairs—a black suitcase, appropriately enough. "You can have this room," he said, "across the hall from mine." The room was a brassy, unnatural green. It had twin beds, like his. I wanted to discuss sleeping arrangements in more detail; maybe now is the time to do it, before anything happens here. But when I open my mouth he raps my shoulder again: "Check it out."

The man with the widow's peak is still talking to the cowboys, smiling, nodding, blowing smoke at the ceiling—all with a subtle movement to his look that says he hasn't forgotten us.

Quinn lights a cigarette, takes a drag and sighs.

I met Quinn a couple of months ago, on my first night out. I drove down here alone, guided only by old high-school rumors and messages on the wall of the bus terminal men's room. The place was hard to find, just a curtained window and a shiny black door pitted like a starry night. I half-expected the latch to turn into a padlock at my touch, the rest of the waterfront was locked up tight. But the door opened, not on a few sad characters eyeing each other as they slipped into drunkenness, but on a crowd so noisy it nearly sent me running. Instead I took a deep breath, eased through to the bar without touching anyone, raised a finger and whispered for a beer. My knees shook. Music and talk had a hundred rhythms. I don't know how long I stood staring at a puddle of water on the bar till a voice over my shoulder separated from the rest: "You're new." Then the voice was beside me—"You're new, aren't you?"—and I was looking at Quinn's tough face. He lit a cigarette and offered me one.

"I don't smoke."

"You do now." He smiled as I took a cigarette. We exchanged names. His eyes played with mine as he asked if it was my first time out. Before I could answer he said, "I've been out since I was thirteen. I had a cousin who liked to fuck."

I'd hardly touched my beer but suddenly I had to pee. Nerves. Stupid. I stubbed out my cigarette. "Can you tell me where the john is?"

"Past the pool table. I'll watch your beer." His eyebrow scar flickered as he winked.

But when I'd found the john and had halfway returned, stepping as if the floor was mined, there was a man in my place beside Quinn and they were kissing. I'd never seen two men kissing before. When I looked, really looked now, I saw men kissing all over the room, two of them at my elbow, their mustaches mingling like waves meeting over rocks. I stood with one hand on the bar, which kept me from shaking to pieces.

The bartender reached out to drum his fingers on my knuckles. "Can I get you something?"

His touch startled me. "No. I don't know. I don't think so."

"First time out, huh?"

He looked friendly enough, with a funny fringe of beard I was tempted to pull. But I shook my head.

"I get it." He raised his palms. "No pressure. Want a beer? On the house."

He brought me one before I could answer. "What's the catch?"

"Just trying to get you to relax. I saw you talking to Quinn."

I took a few swallows of beer. "Do you know him?"

He shrugged. "He's a regular. Looks tough and acts tough, but it's just an act as far as I can tell. His mother gives him plenty of money. He spends most of it on art books."

I wanted to ask more without knowing what. Then it was too late, someone called for a beer and he slipped away. I returned to find two empty stools where Quinn and I had sat. I looked through the crowd for him, not caring if I drew stares; I went back to the john and looked, not caring if I brushed up against people. But he had slipped away too, leaving only the beer he was watching for me. I didn't stay to drink it, or to finish the one the bartender had given me.

I came back the next night. Immediately Quinn had an arm around my shoulders: "Buy you a beer." I didn't know if I should ask what had happened the night before. I asked anyway. He flipped a hand at me. "Forget last night." Meaning, I hoped, that we could start again. And again he started telling me about his cousin. "He had a body like a sculpture"—his hands carved the air, two fingers popped up to make a ruler—"and a wong this long." He laughed his crooked laugh.

Soon a man a head taller than me appeared behind Quinn and put two hairy arms around him for a bear hug. "Buddy!" Quinn said as he struggled free, turned around and reached for a kiss. And soon Quinn was squeezing my arm goodbye as he squeezed Buddy's arm, following him to the door.

I stayed for another beer. And another. I remembered the light, warm feeling of Quinn's arm around my shoulders, and knew I'd be coming back here night after night to get at least that much from him.

Now he's saying, "Get ready," and I look to see the man with the widow's peak standing up. I'd almost forgotten him, would like to forget him now. "You mean," I ask Quinn, "you really want a threesome? That's why you brought us here tonight?"

"What's wrong with a threesome? He wants one. But the cowboys aren't playing along."

It's true that there's some fast talking going on at that table now, and one of the men keeps shaking his head, lifting a hand to wave an idea away. Finally the stranger raises a finger to his eyebrow, tips it toward his friends and moves closer, taking his time.

I turn toward the bar mirror—reflections of strangers are easier to look at than strangers themselves. This was how I managed to make eye contact on those few nights when I stayed long after Quinn had left, how I took my place among the hopeful and let strangers take me home. A couple of them are here tonight: the tall, bald one in the corner is Paul, the dentist; the short, hairy one shooting pool is Mark, the medical student. I even landed in the sack with Buddy, who turned out to be a stock-car driver. I wanted to ask him what Quinn was like as a lover, but I left him as I had left the others, silently, wondering if Quinn had spent the night with a stranger, wondering why that stranger wasn't me.

Then one night the subject of the house came up. "It belongs to a friend of my mother's," Quinn said, "who's going to Europe for the summer. We can move in next week."

"'We'?"

"You and me, kid. We've been living with our mothers too long."

Was he asking me to join him as a lover, or as his only friend? "I'd have to know more about it."

He raised his chin, stared down his nose at me. "Are you saying yes or no?"

"I just said I need to know more, that's all."

"You need to know," he said, "whether we're going to fuck. Right?"

It was an angry question but he looked sad, as if he'd been used by too many people. I didn't want to be one of those people; I didn't want to misrepresent myself either. "Right," I said, and regretted it, for he turned and left the bar without looking back.

He wasn't there the next night, or the night after that. But the next day he called me. It was a shock to hear his crisp voice over the telephone. "Nine Ellsworth Street, Saturday afternoon," he said, and hung up.

After two days of thinking, I decided to at least look at the house and ask him some questions. Then I found myself packing two large bags and saying goodbye to my mother as if I meant it. The next thing I knew I was in that brassy green room with the twin beds. One question—"Won't we be sleeping together?"—kept straying to the tip of my tongue, but before I could ask Quinn left the room, as if he'd read my mind and was angry again. In a minute he returned with two beers. "A toast to our house," he said, grinning, giving the lie to the toughness of his face: his teeth were too nice. I enjoyed seeing him on a human scale you don't find in a bar, within four walls that weren't painted black like his cruising outfit. "We'll go to the bar tonight," he said, and I smiled back and didn't complain.

When he raps my shoulder a third time I turn from the mirror. The stranger is closer by about five paces. He's older than we are, maybe thirty. He has the kind of handsomeness that runs in a family, the kind that doesn't photograph well. A few steps away now, he takes a breather against the bar, stretches to show his t-shirt fitting a tight stomach, his jeans riding a full basket. I don't care for his little advertisement, and hope it shows when he turns his head, fixes his eyes on mine for a second, turns away again.

"New to the bar," Quinn says, "but not to the game."

When I look again the game is almost over; the stranger is right next to me, ordering a beer. I look to Quinn to handle this but it's too late, the stranger's elbow nudges mine.

"Hi, what are you drinking?"

He has a radio voice, a weatherman's voice. Seventy degrees in the shade, I imagine him saying.

"Get him into bed with us," Quinn mutters.

The stranger opens his wallet. "If you'd like a beer, I'd be glad... "

I just stare at him. My knees start to shake. It makes me mad, he makes me mad, I wish he'd go away.

Quinn whispers in my ear: "Introduce me, quick."

It's a relief to step out from between them. Their eyes find each other's, drawing a line so thick you could hang clothes on it. "You're new in town, aren't you?" Quinn says.

"That's right." Without breaking eye contact he places his hands on Quinn's, runs them lightly up to his shoulders to grab hold and pull him close for a long, deep kiss. I catch a glimpse of us in the bar mirror, two men melting into each other while a third stands by, disapproving. The stranger releases Quinn, licks his lips and turns toward me. I want to say—what? That I should be the one kissing Quinn? The stranger takes my open mouth as an invitation. I don't return his kiss. He pulls away, looks embarrassed for a half-second, offers his hand and says, "Taurus."

The night presses down on the waterfront, keeping its brine close to the street. Quinn and I sit in his MG, idling at a stop sign as we wait for Taurus to catch up to us. "Why did we have to do it?" I ask. "Why pick up a stranger tonight?"

"What's so bad about strangers?"

His car appears around a corner, a white Volkswagen like the one my old high-school girlfriend used to drive. I lean my head back and watch Quinn's profile as the streetlights pass, see him constantly checking the rear-view mirror. "It goes way back," I tell him. "You know how it is, my mother drilled it into me—if a strange man offers you candy, walk away with your head down. If he opens his door for you, run. Don't hang out near the bus station, keep away from the woods after dark. There were strangers everywhere and they had nasty things on their minds."

He looks mildly amused. "But she didn't take her own advice, did she?"

I've been feeling sleepy but his question jolts me awake. It's a lucky guess on his part, he couldn't know about the men my mother kept company with over the years. Some stayed for a few days, some for a week. Some were no more than the closing of a door as I lay wondering what had happened in her room. She never talked about these visitors; when talking seemed inevitable she'd cry instead. One afternoon she cleaned out the bathroom cupboards and I found her weeping into an armful of shaving creams. "Oh, honey," she said, "what have I done?" Maybe I never knew what she'd done till this afternoon, when I said goodbye to her and saw in her face the accumulation of twenty years' bad luck with men.

"Anyway," Quinn says, "you learned what nasty things strangers have on their minds. You've gone out looking for them."

"Maybe. But I wasn't looking tonight, you were." I glance back at the Volkswagen, hatefully close. "Let's lose him."

"Don't be funny."

"I mean it. Cut a few corners. Run a red light. We don't need him."

"Relax," he says, barking the word. "Let me handle it."

I close my eyes, wishing I were somewhere else, wishing for sleep. Sleep comes, for a minute or two.

"Wake up, Gil," he says, gently now. "Strangers aren't always strangers. After a while they're friends." I wonder if he might be speaking of himself, if this might be his own plea for friendship. Then comes a bump, the car stops. "Come on."

When he helps me out I'm standing on grass, he's parked in the middle of the lawn. The house looms over us—the kind of house you'd expect to find near a beach, with its wraparound sunporch and fifty windows. A weathervane creaks in the breeze, a cloud comes between the moon and the black skeleton of the widow's walk. I feel less like a tenant than like a ghost who's come to haunt here.

"Give the me key," Quinn says.

"I don't have a key. You never gave me one."

"Well, I don't have it."

"Look again."

He turns out his pockets, comes up with cigarettes, change, car keys. The house looks doubly forbidding now but I can't help laughing. I'd seen the night as a strict succession of events, nothing unexpected.

"Come on, this is serious."

Yet he looks so comic, shaking himself down in the moonlight, that I'm not afraid to sound cocky. "Weren't you telling me to relax and let you handle it?"

"Fuck." He walks up to the front porch and tries the door. It won't budge.

"You guys could really tear up the lawn that way." It's Taurus, approaching from the driveway.

"We're locked out," I tell him, hoping he'll want to go home. He just stands with his hands in his pockets, looking from one of us to the other.

"The side door," Quinn says, and we follow him where the sidewalk barely reaches. He tugs at the knob, swears at it. "Now the back."

At the back of the house there's no light at all. I have to guess that Quinn is testing his weight on the bulkhead, reaching for a hallway window. "Give me a boost," he says.

"Wouldn't it be easier to break in from the porch?"

"The neighbors might see. They'd call the cops."

"Wait a minute," Taurus says. "You sure you want to do this?"

"And what do you want to do," Quinn says, "sleep on the lawn? Give me a boost, Gil."

I lock my hands under the sole of his sneaker. The window screen jangles to the grass, wood shoves against wood. He lifts himself with a grunt. Then comes a faint rumbling from the hallway. The light should come on, but it doesn't. I call up to the window, "Are you all right?" No answer. I look around—no Taurus, either.

When I circle the house I find him standing on the front stoop. His hunched silhouette doesn't remind me of the stranger who was so confident in the bar. His hand moves toward the doorbell, then returns to his pocket. When he sees me he says, "Hey, you guys really live here?"

I join him on the stoop and reach in front of him to ring the doorbell. "No. We're housebreakers. This is our target for tonight."

The stoop light comes on, restoring his face, the widow's peak, the dimple in his chin. He wears a blue windbreaker he didn't have in the bar. It matches his eyes. He smiles as if he's afraid of not smiling.

Quinn opens the door. "Stupid fucking table broke," he says, rubbing the back of his head. "Damn near cracked my skull."

Taurus asks Quinn, "You guys really live here?"

Quinn frowns. "Sure we do."

"All by yourselves?"

His frown deepens. "What's the problem?"

"The guy thinks we're housebreakers," I tell him. "I can't imagine where he got the idea."

Quinn sighs, rubs the back of his head, grabs the edge of the door and shakes it. "Get in here."

The porch is piled high with wicker lawn furniture, looking ghostly in this light. We pick our way through to the hallway, the stranger following Quinn, me in the rear. We pass rooms I faintly remember from my tour this afternoon, we pass the window and the mahogany table that's split in two. It held a pot of African violets that now lie among shards, their roots exposed. Poor Quinn. I feel like asking if he's all right, but he's in a sour mood, he'd probably bark. He kicks violently at the dirt as he swings up the stairs. The stranger steps in the dirt, wipes his sneaker carefully against the first step, takes a last look around before he ascends.

Instead of his room or mine Quinn takes us to the old lady's bedroom. It has a great white canopy bed with posts of braided ebony and, along each wall, glass cases filled with dolls—baby dolls, grown-up dolls, primitive dolls, every kind of doll. Some are four feet high, some as small as my thumb.

Our guest stops at the threshold, meeting a thousand different stares. Then he looks at Quinn. "You guys really live here?"

Quinn sits heavily on the bed. Its stiff counterpane rustles. "For Christ's sake—"

"I'm sorry—"

"—pisses me off."

Taurus steps in cautiously, reminding me of the tiny soldier doll with his bayonet raised.

"Get over here," Quinn says.

He moves toward the bed.

"Closer."

When he's close enough Quinn reaches up to tug at his jeans. They fall to his ankles. There's surprise in his posture but he doesn't resist as Quinn pulls his briefs down too.

I wander over to look at dolls. Here's a strawberry-blonde baby doll dressed in lace fine as dust, an African doll of naked wood with a scream for a face, a sailor doll dancing a hornpipe next to a doll who might be a whore with her pursed red lips and one eye cocked for a wink. I picture what that eye will be seeing later, heaving bodies twisted in the counterpane. It won't be long now, I've heard the last of their clothes hitting the rug, now a sharp breath, now a moan.

But when I turn around they're standing face to face, arms at their sides. Quinn's body looks as I've pictured it on lonely nights when my imagination stripped him down. It has the look and logic of a well-tuned machine, overlaid with a fine mat of hair that curls and glistens in the light.

"I can't," Taurus is saying. "It's too weird. You guys. This place. These goddamned dolls."

Quinn sits on the bed again, pulls his cigarettes from his jeans and lights one as if he's trying hard not to lose his temper. His fingers crumple the empty pack, then straighten it out again. "Shit. Look at this."

I take the pack from him. The house key is stuck between the paper and cellophane.

"What is it?" Taurus asks.

Maybe it would be fine with me if he left, but there's something to be proven here. "I'll show you. Forget your clothes, just come downstairs with me a minute."

He follows me down, keeps his nakedness in shadow as I open the porch door and fit the key in the lock. "The key in the lock, get it? This is our key. Our place. We just moved in today."

He holds out his hand for the key, rubs it thoughtfully between his fingers. After a long moment he nods. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"I'll stay."

He was ready to leave, now I've got him to stay. How did things get so turned around?

"Just one thing," he says. "I need a drink. Of water."

I lead him through the hallway toward the kitchen. A couple of doors are ajar, revealing moonlight brushing against stained glass, beading up in the glass fringes of lampshades. A thump like a footstep comes from one of the rooms up ahead. "Wait a minute," I tell him.

The door I've chosen opens on the library. There's no overhead light switch but I'm within reach of a barrister lamp, which sheds enough light to read titles by. I looked at the books this afternoon—a collection of whims, best-sellers of fifty years ago.

"Wow. Look at this."

I thought I had left him in the hallway but he's right behind me, exclaiming over the centerpiece on the reading table, an enormous clipper ship in a bottle.

"And look at these chairs." He settles into one, an easy chair of oak and leather, and swings his bare legs up to rest on an ottoman. "Taureans are materialistic," he says. "Taurus says, 'I have.' And I'd love to have a room like this. Just books and light, and an Oriental rug or two—and these chairs. And that ship."

I may have found what I've been looking for, a heavy Bible concordance that's fallen from its niche. It wasn't any mouse that pushed it free. I've thought of ghosts since I first saw this place, and I think of them more seriously now.

"'I have,'" Taurus says. "Isn't that a nice sound?"

I look at him, reclining naked in this cozy room, and wonder what he does have. An efficiency apartment, maybe, where he sits in the one chair and sets his mind free to covet things. I put the book back on the shelf. "Come and get your drink of water."

"Can we look at some more rooms? Or just one more?" He smiles like a kid hoping for a favor.

I take him to the dining room. He stands before the doors of a hutch, letting his fingertips rest on the glass. There are two more hutches just like it; he stands before each of them. "I've never seen so much silver in my life." He eases open a drawer, gently unfolds a layer of felt. "And more silver." He looks at me with a new kind of respect. "If you guys were housebreakers, this would be the house to break into."

"Well, we're not. Let's go, you're beginning to bore me."

He opens a glass door to touch the round gleaming belly of a teapot. "I get the picture. You guys are just house-sitting for the summer, none of this is yours. I bet you'd like to have it, though. I bet you like having things as much as I do." He gives me a slightly wicked smile. "There's someone you'd like to have, I could see that."

"I said, let's go."

"But you don't have him, do you? I could see that too."

The sight of his pretty, hairless body is turning my stomach. I open the door wide. "Get out. Get your clothes and get out."

"Oh, no." He crosses his arms on his chest. "I think I'm staying. Quinn wants me to stay. You want what he wants, don't you?" He lets a hand fall to his prick, strokes it gently.

Another noise. I left the library door open and the light on, and from here I can see the book's fallen again. The back of my neck tingles. "You'd better get out of here. Now."

"What about my drink of water?"

I leave the room, muttering about his fucking drink of water. He follows me to the kitchen, a stark departure from the rest of the house: everything is new, in flat bright shades of yellow. It looks like a showroom, clean, disinfected, smelling of pine though there's none in sight. "Look for a glass in that cupboard."

He opens the door on a row of gleaming tumblers. They seem to stupefy him as the silver did. When his finger pokes among them one hops right off the shelf onto the floor. "Oops." He stares at the pieces of glass rocking, extends a toe to test a broken edge.

"Watch it."

He pulls his foot back quickly. A red line appears along the fleshiest part of his big toe, gathering a drop. The drop falls to a blue square of the blue-and-gray linoleum and turns purple. "Huh," he says, as if surprised that he can bleed.

"Stupid fucker, what did you do that for?" Without waiting for an answer I head for where I think the first floor bathroom is. The house plays tricks on me: doors open on a broom closet, a sitting room, a den where a TV sits playing silently. I turn it off and head for the second floor john, next to my room. It has a tub as wide as my outstretched arms and a wall that's all gold-flecked mirror. The medicine chest holds a lifetime of powders and glues and smells. I thought I saw Band-Aids when I peeked in here this afternoon. Where are they now? My fingers shake as I push aside boxes and bottles.

"What's taking so long?"

Quinn's standing in the doorway. He must have fallen asleep for a minute, his eyes are red and blinking. He never looked more like a thug.

"Don't ever sneak up on me like that."

"Well, what's taking so goddamned long?"

"Had an accident." Here are the Band-Aids, stuck in a corner. "Be back in a minute." I brush past his nakedness.

Taurus still stands by the cupboard, one foot raised like a prancer's hoof. In this bright light he looks older, his hair thinner. He could be somebody's uncle, a high school teacher, even a cop—anything but a lover.

"Sit down over here and I'll put a bandage on that toe."

He hops across the floor, shedding a drop or two of blood, and sits sideways at the table. I kneel down, grab his ankle and pull the toe closer. It's shaped like a slightly crushed lemon, and separates easily from the other toes when I tug at it. I squeeze, and a drop of blood runs down my thumb. That feeling along the back of my neck again.

Suddenly his toe is in my mouth, the nail sharp against my palate. His leg goes stiff, he tries to curl the toe past my teeth and can't. My tongue pries at the cut. Though my eyes are closed I see us very well, me kneeling on this damp floor, him sitting bolt upright with one leg stretched out. When I had my wisdom teeth extracted I tasted blood for days, a dull, rusty, irritating taste. So why this impulse? And why isn't he saying anything? He takes sharp breaths only, one, two, three. His blood comes surprisingly cool, tasteless, not like my blood at all.

I open my eyes and see Quinn's shadow in the doorway. He must be piecing the scene together, the broken glass, the drops of blood. "What the hell?" he says softly.

Taurus takes another sharp breath that becomes a deep, shuddering sigh, locating him between pleasure and pain. I lift the toe so I can see his face but his head is tilted back, I see only the dimple in his chin. His blood grows warmer; so do I. At the tip of my tongue is a pulse, an extension of his heart beating just out of sync with mine.

Quinn is somewhere behind me. I picture his feet dancing around splinters of glass. "I don't know what the hell you're doing, Gil."

I keep sucking, squeezing blood free with my tongue. Taurus squirms. The chair squeaks. He sighs again.

"Gil... "

The blood goes straight to my head, not my stomach. It slides along my temples, pulses behind my eyes. Blood from the brain sparkles. Blood from the lungs intoxicates. I feel the faithful blood of the heart, the passionate blood that engorges the penis, that keeps the fingertips alive. Where there was no taste before there are now flavors too subtle for names. His pulse is a quarter-beat closer to mine. What happens when they match?

Quinn puts his hand on my shoulder. I shake it off.

"Oh," Taurus says. Then, "Oh? Oh?" His blood has found its home in my memory, and releases his own memories. When I close my eyes again I see them plowing toward me. I have feelings, feelings I had when I was a kid, longings I've forgotten. What was it I always wanted? What was it?

"Huh," he says, his body jolting. Our pulses lock. His toe changes as if it were putty, becoming long and thin like my own big toe. I open my eyes, needing to see his face. He lifts his head obligingly. Our eyes meet. His eyes are brown, like mine. And his hair is brown like mine. And he has a big straight nose like mine.

I set his foot down carefully, rock back on my heels and stand. "This man."

Quinn is beside me, looking at him.

"This man is my brother."

Quinn is frowning, thinking hard. His lips move silently. Finally he says, "So he looks like you. So I didn't notice that before. So what?"

"He's my brother, I tell you." My brother looks at me, no denial in his eye. I lean close to him. "Talk to me. Say something."

A smile begins at the center of his lips and spreads out till there are dimples in his cheeks and his big white teeth gleam. His lips pucker slightly to form a word. I lean closer, as if I might have to read as well as hear it.

"We won," he says. His smile grows brilliant again.

It echoes in me. Of course. We won. We won the race, the game, the pennant, two brothers undefeated on the fields where an only child once stumbled and fell. "We won," I repeat, matching his smile.

"Get him out of here," Quinn says.

My brother pays no attention to Quinn, but pays a different kind of attention to me now, his brows set sternly, the corners of his mouth turned down. He is an older brother, after all. What was I like as a younger one? Did I fail to understand him? Did I get in his way?

"I said, get him out of here."

It doesn't matter. His smile wants to grow again, and does. The look in his eye shifts slightly to say, I forgive.

"We don't need him."

I turn to face Quinn. He looks very small, very naked in this big yellow room. The glass is gone, he must have swept it up while I stood here—dreaming? No, not dreaming; he's seen it too. He's hugging his shoulders, his eyes search all over for comfort.

"You said it yourself," he says. "We don't need him."

"I've changed my mind."

"Damn it, it's my house too. If I say he goes, he goes."

"Let's leave it up to him." I turn toward my brother, who has a look of mischief in his eye. He lifts his foot up, offering his toe again. I kneel and take it in my mouth. My sucking becomes a moist, rattling sound as the blood thickens—blood from a different man, another man I never knew. If my brother's blood went to my head, this man's goes to my heart, coating it layer by layer. When I look up his hair is turning gray, some of it falling to his shoulders, drifting down his chest. Gently his face folds in on itself, creasing around the eyes, the mouth, weakening the chin. My heart fills my chest, crowding my breath.

"Gil," Quinn says, "don't you see what you're doing? You're turning this guy into things he's not. What good's going to come of it?"

I keep sucking. Three deep lines stitch up his forehead. His temples turn bluish, his nose reddish. His eyebrows bristle with gray hairs.

"Gil, I know what you'll be saying next. You'll be saying he's your father."

I stand up, my knees shaking from the wonder of it. "I don't need to say it, then."

"But you never had a father."

"Everybody's got a father."

"Yours died before you were born. Remember?"

I remember when I was old enough to learn that other kids had fathers and I didn't. I cried for days. I wouldn't let my mother touch me. I hated her for being alone.

"He died in a car crash, that's what you told me."

Once I saw two cars crash head-on. They crumpled in a split-second, then burst apart from each other. The man whose head had gone through the windshield sat in shock, wiping his bloody face with a handkerchief. And that became part of the story of my father, I saw him wiping his face as he died. It was the face in a photograph I had till I was sixteen, when I junked him just as I'd junked other myths, God among them. It was the face of the man in this chair, though he's older now, as if he had lived.

Quinn puts a hand on my shoulder. "Some people think gay men are always looking for their fathers. Do you think that's true?"

His question means to distract me, to keep me sane. But I can't think of an answer, can only look at my father's eyes, a watery brown. They move, not to the right or left, but inward, outward, gathering me in.

"Snap out of it. Let's get him his clothes, tell him to leave."

"No. Not till he says something." I lean in close and whisper: "Father? Will you say something?"

The corners of his mouth twitch, his fingers work on the arms of his chair.

"Father? What are you thinking?" I take a deep breath. "Are you thinking of me?"

His eyes have stopped searching. He shows tobacco-stained teeth. His voice comes like a muffled explosion, deep and raw: "What's there to think? What's there to think about a son who's queer?"

"All right," Quinn says, "I don't care who he is, he doesn't belong in this house. Tell him that."

But I can't. Not without crying.

"Are you going to let him make you feel bad? If he created you, you created him. I saw you do it."

It's true, but where's the gratitude? "I've never hurt anyone," I tell him.

"You've hurt me." He lifts a finger to poke himself in the chest. "Me."

With that finger he also poked my own chest, a full heart that suddenly emptied.

"Don't cry over him," Quinn says. "It's not worth it."

He's right. One tear has rolled down my cheek, but that's all.

"And it's long past time for him to get the hell out of here."

"Not yet." I kneel and take the toe in my mouth one more time. Taurus begins to struggle as he hasn't struggled before, twisting his ankle, jerking his leg, but he's old and getting older as I suck at his thin bitter blood. It curdles and burns in my stomach as his hair turns white and falls, his scalp wrinkles. He leans to the side, opens his mouth. His teeth scatter, bouncing off the floor like hailstones. His skin is shrinking, but not enough to fit his old thin bones; it lies in loose folds along his sides, his legs, in his lap. His toe twists feebly as he gathers himself for one last fight, but all that comes of it is a long, whistling sigh.

Quinn puts his hands on either side of my head to pull me gently away. I can't look at the old man's face, so I look at his hands instead. The nails are yellow, striated, the knuckles knobby, the shiny, bluish skin spotted brown and purple. I stand and turn away toward the sink, swallowing again a bitter mouthful that doesn't want to stay down. My hand shakes as I spread cool water on my forehead.

Quinn puts a hand on my shoulder. "Are you afraid?"

It didn't surface till he said it, but yes, I am afraid. No wonder I can't look at the old man's face—just picturing the accusation there makes me shiver.

"If it happened, it happened," Quinn says. "Maybe it was meant to happen."

He's right. I must need a tougher code of living: things happen because they're meant to, so why worry? I turn and look at the old man's face. His eyes are a yellowish blue, tiny and weak in their nests of wrinkles. I can barely read any life in them, let alone accusation.

"You think this is someone to be afraid of?" Quinn says. He looks delighted by the way things have turned out, smiling down on the old man as if he were an ugly, harmless pet. "Look at him. Wrinkled old bald head. Yellow eyes. Toothless mouth. Spots all over. You can't even see his prick for all the loose skin sagging around it. I bet he's light as air." He takes the old man by the shoulders and lifts him straight up. The old man looks from one of us to the other, his lips stretched in a thin, foolish smile. By comparison Quinn looks godlike in this bright light.

"I'll go get his clothes," he says.

When he's gone I wish I'd gone instead, I don't want to be left alone with the old man. I turn out the light; darkness presses against my eyes, and for a moment I can believe I'm by myself. But soon the darkness begins to move. Stick-like arms twine around my neck. The old man breathes up at me. "We could start over," he says, his voice hoarse, hushed.

I try to speak calmly through the terror of having him pressed up against me. "Please take your arms away."

His arms fall. Sour breath propels him back, leaving words in its place: "Young Taurus says, 'I have.' You know what old Taurus says?"

I hear footsteps. "Get ready," Quinn says, "I'm turning on the light."

The light hurts. The old man winces. "Old Taurus says, 'I had.'"

"You talk pretty well for a toothless man," Quinn says. "Here." He kneels to sweep the teeth into his palm. "Put these under your pillow tonight."

The old man stares at the teeth as Quinn pours them into his hand. "I had." He lifts his feet one at a time as we slip the briefs over them. Quinn's as efficient as a nurse, tucking the old man's genitals into their pouch. But the briefs are too big and the jeans are worse, they fit nowhere. "I had." Quinn produces a belt—one of his own, with an enormous silver buckle—and wraps it almost twice around the old man, forcing a new hole in the leather to fasten it. As we pull the t-shirt over his head he speaks through it, his voice, raised to its limit, crackling like fire: "I had."

We tie the sleeves of his windbreaker round his neck. He sits down under its weight. I haven't forgotten the cut but it's dried out now, lost in the wrinkles of his toe. I put a bandage on it anyway and slip the sneakers over his poor thin feet, tying the laces round his ankles.

"Time to go," Quinn says. He presses the old man's keys into his hand. "Do you remember how to drive?"

He looks confused. We help him up, lead him shuffling down the hallway past the broken table and the plant with its roots in the air, past the rooms he admired so much, through the porch with its stacks of wicker. Quinn opens the door. The neighboring houses are dark, no one to witness what happened here tonight. The old man, clumsy in his big sneakers, steps onto the stoop and makes it down to the lawn all by himself. "Good for you," Quinn says. When he's halfway down the lawn, past the MG parked at a crazy tilt, he flings his arm, scattering the handful of teeth. They pick up moonlight, glowing in the grass.

"He'll be okay," Quinn says as the old man gets in his Volkswagen and starts up the engine. From there the car takes over, swinging smoothly out of the driveway, carrying him off.

Fog has come in from the harbor tonight. It stands thick on the streets, shrinking headlights to pinpoints, reducing distances. It shrouded the black pitted door of the bar, and as I pushed it open I felt I brought the fog in with me. It was fog, not cigarette smoke, that hung in the air; it was fog that kept conversations low and made secret the glances passed from man to man like words in a parlor game.

Roger, the bartender with the funny beard, has brought me a beer—he doesn't ask about Quinn anymore—and I begin to pick out familiar faces in the crowd, men I may speak to later. I recall saying to Quinn once, "If you know what everybody in here looks like, it's because you've slept with most of them." Now I can say the same of myself. Maybe there must come a saturation point, when everyone has finally slept with everyone else. Yet a new face does appear now and then—an occasional tourist, or a young man coming out for the first time, stumbling through the crowd on shaky legs as I have done.

There's a new face here tonight, I saw him as soon as I came in. He has blond hair and a dark mustache, I like that combination. I'm watching him now in the mirror, and I think he's watching me—his eyes are so narrow it's hard to tell. He may be looking at the clock, which reads almost twelve, the hour when desperation starts to set in for those who haven't met their mates for the night. Yes, he's looking at the clock, comparing it to his watch. Looking around the room, comparing men. Now and then his attention is snagged by a return glance; I'm not the only one interested in a new face. Finally he turns back my way, and I nod to him in the mirror. He lifts a hand to his head, smoothes back his hair, flicks the ends of his mustache and allows himself a brief smile. New to the bar, Quinn would say, but not to the game.

The door opens. It never makes a sound, but catches the attention of those standing near. Their heads turn, then more heads, and soon even the guys playing pool at the rear are craning their necks to see who's coming in. I want to keep track of the blond but my head turns too, part of the mass reflex.

And there, easing his way toward the bar, is Taurus. He looks the same as when I saw him first—widow's peak, blue eyes, dimple in his chin. His down jacket matches his eyes, and when he unzips it the t-shirt with the bull's head shows through. Standing at the bar, he orders a beer and lets his eyes roam over the crowd. I stare at him, willing him to look my way.

"Hi, there." It's the blond, standing at my left elbow, shyly stroking the ends of his mustache. "Buy you a beer?"

He has eyebrows like streaks of autumn color, eyes that may be green, full soft lips—too pretty to let go. But I can't let Taurus go either, not till we've spoken. "Please. I'd like that. But will you wait here just one second?" Taurus is moving away from the bar; without waiting for the blond's answer I take off after him.

I like to stay on the fringes of a crowd, I'm not used to pushing my way through. And here the rule is to never let anyone pass too freely, not without pressing your body against his. I get felt up by a dozen people before I'm halfway across the floor, where Paul, the dentist I once slept with months ago, blocks me off.

"Gil! I haven't talked to you in a long time."

His eyes are searching mine; desperation has set in. I smile and squeeze his shoulder and say I'm on my way back to the john. Taurus has passed the long row of tables, now he's watching the pool game. I'm nearly there when a man at a table sticks out his leg, nearly tripping me. It's David, whom I slept with—when? I can't put all my sexual memories in order anymore.

"Gil," he says, "when do I get to see you again?"

I ruffle his hair and tell him I'm on my way back to the john. But now a group of men has moved in between me and the pool table: Harry, Skip, Walter, Tom, all old tricks. Harry sees me first, clamps a hand on my shoulder and rubs it hard. "Gil!" Walter, whom I thought I loved once, leans past him to give me a kiss. Skip and Tom look like a couple tonight, but I can tell they want to talk to me too. Now all of them are speaking at once, and I can't hear what they're saying except for my name, Gil, Gil, Gil. . . . Finally I excuse myself again, and reach the pool table just in time to see Taurus on the other side, disappearing through the men's room door.

"Hi, there. Again." It's the blond, handing me a beer. "Thought I'd never find you."

"I'm sorry." We step into a corner, out of reach of the pool cues, and set our beers on a waist-high ledge.

"What's your name?" he asks. I tell him. "I'm Hal. Do you come here a lot?"

"Where else is there to go?"

"You tell me. I'm new in town."

"Well, there is no place else."

"Except your place or mine."

"That's a line if I ever heard one."

"I bet you've heard them, too." He strokes my chin, the beard I'm trying to grow. His fingers are cold. "You're cute."

I should be trading him line for line, but I keep thinking of Taurus. On the night I saw him last I couldn't sleep: visions of his shrinking body made me too aware of my own, elbows poking the mattress, toes straining against the sheet. I lay wondering what kind of life he was returning to, whether the morning would find him young again. I couldn't believe he had aged for good, any more than I could believe he really had been my brother or my father. Yet I wanted to believe in something. I sat up, my sweaty palms sticking to the sheet, and listened to the house settling, creaking. It was so dark I couldn't be sure of the dimensions of my body; I might have been filling the room, I might have been a speck on the ceiling—it would take no more than that to hold what was left of me, a tiny voice crying, I want to believe.

Finally I got up and stepped into Quinn's room, so dark I couldn't tell which bed he was sleeping in. I could sense he was awake, though, and stood waiting for him to speak. At last he said, "So?"

"I want to sleep with you," I said.

He rolled over. He was in the bed closest to me, I could have touched him. "No."

"Why not?"

"It's too late."

"Too late for now, or too late forever?"

"We'll see what happens."

So I had hope. But what happened was that Quinn and I had threesomes only; we never made love without a body between us, a buffer to keep me from knowing him as I wanted to. When I refused to play anymore he would go to the bar by himself, choosing men from the wildest crowd; and when he'd exhausted the bar he began picking up men from the bus station and the park, the rest area out on the highway. The house became a nightmare of drunken cursing, stoned laughter. Spilled drinks stained the Oriental rugs, cigarettes and joints burned the upholstery. Food was bought, went uneaten and spoiled. Ants and roaches appeared in the kitchen. Windows got broken, lamps were smashed. One trick stole some silver, another took two heavy bronze ashtrays. Another stole Quinn's wallet, and he was so mad he put his foot through one of the glass cases filled with dolls. The dolls stayed where they fell, collecting dust along with everything else.

Then came a night when I went to bed early, hoping to get to sleep before the noise started. But noises woke me, sharp ones coming from the master bedroom. I crossed the hall quietly and opened the door. Quinn was standing over the bed with a leather belt, bringing it down over and over. From that angle I couldn't see the man he was beating, but I could hear him yelping like a dog when the belt came down. Quinn saw me and came over to press the belt against my chest. "Try it," he said. Pleading came from the bed, please please please. I shut the door in his face and told myself I was moving out of that madhouse.

But Quinn left before I did, a few days later. "Bill's the most erotic guy I've ever met," he said, crumpling up shirts and stuffing them in his suitcase. "I think I'm in love with him."

I felt he was crumpling me up too. "So you've finally found someone who lets you be as cruel as you want."

"It's never cruel to give somebody pleasure." He snapped the suitcase shut. "You've got a lot to learn about men. I hope you learn it soon."

He picked up the suitcase. He didn't throw it. Yet suddenly it was out of his hand and banging against the wall ten feet away, sliding slowly to the floor.

"Jesus," Quinn said. He approached the suitcase, hefted it, inspected it. He carried it toward the door, which slammed shut before he could touch it. And it wouldn't open when he tugged at the knob, even when he put his suitcase down and used two hands. He kicked the door, kicked the suitcase.

"Here." I had a feeling the door would open easily if I tried it, and it did. He left, and I followed him down the hall, down the stairs. When he reached the porch door it wouldn't open for him.

"Stop it," he said.

"I'm not doing anything." Yet it must have seemed as if I was, for when I turned the knob the door opened easily. He walked to his car without looking back. And that was the last I saw of him.

Now I look at the clock: twenty after twelve. Men are starting to file out, some in pairs, some alone, shuffling through the door with their hands in their pockets. I look at Hal, whose smile has disappeared.

"What's the matter?" he says. "You look lost."

"Sorry. I was thinking." I've lost part of his attention, his hand plays with mine on the ledge but his eyes are wandering. I follow them as they wander to the men's room door and stay there; Taurus is just coming out. Hal gives a soft moan of appreciation.

Taurus looks at the clock, looks around the room, makes his decision. He walks straight up to us, leans against the ledge on the other side of Hal. "Hi," he says to Hal, and "Hi," to me, no recognition in his eyes.

"Hi, there," Hal says. He runs his finger up Taurus's chest. "What's the bull for?"

"Taurus."

"And what's your name?"

"Taurus."

Hal giggles. "I'm Hal. And this is Gil."

Of all he things Taurus could say he says nothing, looking at me as if I were a stranger. Looking at Hal, eating him up with his eyes. And I realize it's Taurus I've been searching for these past few months, Taurus and no one else. It's been like waiting for a dream to return, knowing you can't depend on it, knowing that dreams don't explain themselves. Now this dream skips back to the beginning: Taurus begins his approach with Hal as he did with Quinn, starting with his hands on Hal's hands, working them up to the forearms, the shoulders, pulling Hal close for a kiss, sucking at him. When he straightens up Hal melts, his head against Taurus's chest, his fingers gripping the down jacket, his body swaying. Taurus gives me a hungry look. If Hal weren't clinging to him he'd grab me too. Instead he asks, "What would you guys say to a threesome?"

Hal giggles. He twists his head to look my way. "Fine with me."

Taurus looks at me, his eyes narrowed, his tongue in his cheek. Any second now he'll recognize me. Yet the seconds become a minute and he doesn't say anything. Finally I see it's my turn to speak. "Why don't you guys go on without me."

He takes the rejection with a slow nod. "Okay for now," he says. "But sooner or later... "

My face is burning. "What?"

"I'm going to have you."

"You had me once. In a very strange way."

"What's past is past."

"Does that mean you don't remember?" I lean close, sharing our secret over Hal's head: "We won."

"What?" He looks ugly, impatient.

"I said, we won."

"If it's a joke, I don't get it." He lifts Hal's face by the chin to kiss him again. Hal digs his hands under Taurus's t-shirt, stands on his toes so they can rub baskets. Taurus laughs. "Let's go, kid."

And they're off, each with an arm around the other, nearly tripping each other up as they move through the remaining crowd. It is one thing to have a dream return, another to see it move away slowly, belonging to someone else. I follow them at a distance, prepared to let Taurus go forever when they reach the door. Bodies and voices come at me, Gil, Gil. "Gil," Paul says, stepping in front of me, "don't go home alone tonight."

"Maybe nobody's going anywhere," someone says. "Those guys can't get the door open."

I step around Paul to see Taurus tugging at the door, then Hal. Roger comes out from behind the bar to help, but it won't open for him either. Again I remember the last night I saw Taurus, when I lay awake craving something to believe in. Now I believe that there are doors which will not open unless I open them. I step up between Hal and Taurus and turn the knob. "It looks," I tell them, "as if I'll be joining you after all."

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