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moved in upstairs, so from Day One she would’ve been able to hear, through her ceiling, the all-out, all-male goings-on in his bedroom. If she ever had any illusions about him, they couldn’t have been of more than a few days’ duration.
    That all seemed so long ago now, before his career in advertising took off, forcing him — or so he saw it — to abandon his risky love life for the liability it was. Yolanda had reproached for that once, upsetting him badly; she, too, apologized later. Ever since, as long as he forbore to deride her relationship, she forbore to scold him for his cowardice.
    Their moment of tenderness passed, and she started a new sweep with the flashlight. But half a minute later they heard the doorbell to her apartment buzz loudly. “Oh, Lionel,” she cried, “that will be Bob! Will you help me? Go and let him in, and tell him I will be there shortly!”
    Taking his cue from the urgency in her voice, he buzzed open the front door of the building, then dashed down to the landing outside her apartment and waited for Bob to make his light-footed way up to him.
    He appeared, all six-feet-three of him, in a daringly cut double-breasted wheat suit and burgundy calfskin slippers. His tie was a simple ribbon of royal purple with a jet-black outline around its edges. The moment he rounded the landing and saw Lionel, he untucked the tie from his suitcoat and flapped it at him, a look of rapturous anticipation on his face. In his other hand, he carried a bouquet of pristine white tulips.
    Lionel felt an explosion of hatred that nearly rattled his teeth from his gums.
    Never one to waste time on pleasantries, Bob hopped up the remaining steps and got right down to business. “Isn’t this tie the best?” he said. He extended his hand so that the item in question stretched to its full length for Lionel to admire. “Cost a pretty penny, but have you ever seen anything like it? Really makes a statement. I just had to have it, especially for this suit.” His voice, which sounded helium-drenched at the best of times, was now so shrill with excitement that it made the short hairs on Lionel’s nape stand at attention.
    I’m gay and he’s straight, thought Lionel in amazement and frustration, as he always did when face to face with Bob. In his most sarcastic voice he said, “I’m fine, Bob, thanks for asking. And you?”
    Bob looked up obliviously, his little black eyes revealing no depth of comprehension whatsoever. “Hmm?” he said brightly. Then, a glimmer of realization. “Hey, where’s Yolanda? Isn’t she ready yet?”
    Nice of him to finally think of his girlfriend, thought Lionel. “She’s up at my place. She was looking after my bird and she lost the back of one of her earrings on my floor. She’s trying to find it now.”
    “Not the Paloma Picassos!” cried Bob, aghast.
    He’s straight and I’m gay, thought Lionel. “I don’t know. Big, dangly things?”
    “Oh, no. I didn’t give her those.” He looked relieved, as if the earrings must then be of no consequence. He swept a silky blond forelocked from his face, weaving it with his fingers into the body of his rich, pampered head of hair.
    Lionel glared at this unlikely Romeo. He wondered if Bob had ever been beaten up on his fifth-grade playground, as he had. He wondered whether Bob had ever had the word QUEER spray-painted on his high-school locker, as he had. He wondered if Bob had ever been denied jobs he was qualified for because he wasn’t able to reel off football scores in casual post-interview conversation, as he had. He wondered if Bob ever suffered for his effeminacy, or whether he was absolved from such suffering by having demonstrated his manhood not only beyond question but beyond anyone’s capacity to ignore — by marrying a third cousin of the Duchess of York, bringing her and her King’s Road wardrobe to America, and siring two gorgeous children (names: Denzil and Felicity) through her before she left him for a