another archway was the dining room, where an elaborate buffet had been laid out, and beyond that the bar, which had been set up in the kitchenâs breakfast nook.
Then again, he could be here and I wouldnât even know it. Harold always said I have this oblivious side....
The bartender was a tall, dark-haired young man in his mid-twenties, dressed in a black button-front shirt.
âHi, there,â said Peter.
âHey, what can I get for you?â
âA vodka would be terrific, pleaseâice, twist of lime. Actually, make it a double. I wonât have to bother you so soon.â
âNo bother.â
The bartender made the drink and handed it to Peter.
âBrilliant, thanks,â said Peter. It was the slight awkwardness Peter was feeling at the party that kept him from registering the warmth of the young manâs smile and the sparkle of his gray-blue eyes.
âEnjoy,â said the bartender.
Peter peered across the crowd.
âThe, uh, library?â he asked.
âJust on the other side of the living room,â said the bartender, pointing.
âAh, thanks,â said Peter, raising his glass in a little toast. âIâm on the tour. I know thereâs gonna be a quiz.â
That was a lame thing to say, thought Peter as he walked away. Why did I say that? It sounds so ungenerous toward Jonathanânot that the guy was really listening to me or would even take it seriously. Why the hell do I say these things?
Twenty-plus years after Harold, Peter still found socializing as clunky as he had before Harold, when he was a small-town teenager with scant social grace. Years of experience had done little to make him any smoother, he felt, especially in gay circles like this. And the gay men of his age who were single? In addition to incurious, most of them were wounded, exhausted, or bitter, settled into an imperturbable equilibrium of self-acquaintance that seemed to preclude the mad, transformative ardors and intoxicating, pop-music highs that he still craved. He remembered, too, the shock, one day before meeting Nick, of realizing he knew essentially nothing about menâcertainly not what everyone else seemed to know: that whether straight or gay they could be untrue. Before Harold, Peter had not dated at all, not even a high school sweetheart. He and Harold met in college, in the early â70s, just as both were coming out, and it was love at nearly first sightââa marriage made in heaven,â as his grandmother had always described her own long and storied marriage. And Peter and Haroldâs relationship did turn out to be a kind of heavenânot unbumpy, but elevated, resonant in a metaphysical way that made it feel, then and since, like myth. They framed pictures together, read Foucault together, attended protests together, boiled lobsters together, traveled to Machu Picchu together, blessed newborn nieces and nephews together. And still, in memory, Harold was the great love of Peterâs life, his seductively wicked smile caught in the halcyon glow of an undying late-spring afternoon in Venice, the saint and prince with whom no mortal, perhaps, could ever compete.
Certainly not Nick, who craved drugs more than love, and certainly not the boys whom Peter saw now. And about the future, who could say? Failing heavenâs help, Peter would gamely soldier on, trying to do what he imagined other people do: talk about yourself when asked, ask questions about the other person, find points of mutual interest, like Mike Nicholsâor rather, Julia Roberts.
More greetings, as Peter kept navigating, then he entered the library, a gentleman scholarâs retreat lined with custom-made bookcases holding artwork and objects, as well as books upon books. Displayed beneath two large windows on a bank of built-in cabinets, spot-lit from the soffit above, were some of Jonathanâs prize possessions: a commedia dellâarte mask, a miniature window from a