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everyone’s business. It’s my new BBC series I’m pitching for their Tuesday nights: The Vicar with Vigor . He rides his red bike all over the village and he gives awful advice, turning lives upside down. Blurts out people’s secrets. But in the end, everyone ends up better off. Also, whenever he lectures young people about celibacy, they end up having sex almost right away.”
    Perry stares at my cheery delivery with alarm.
    “I invited you because you took the blame for the caterer’s fuck-up instantly, and I felt humbled to stand near a man so rich in compassion, so beautiful a person. That, and I think we’re going to have rock star sex all weekend.”
    “Vin—”
    “Having a single word trapped in your head is worse than having a song because you can only repeat the one word over and over. Vigor, vigor, vigor. If you emphasize the v-i , it’s like ocean waves. Vig-grr , vig-grr , vig-grr. ”
    The line presses forward around us, catching us up in the swell.
    I pull two tickets from my back pocket and hold them in front of him.
    Perry scowls.
    “I have a ground rule,” he says, “and your answer must be the single word yes with nothing else after it, or I leave right now. I will not discuss the topic of my father at all this weekend. You can’t bring it up. Not fucking once. Agreed?”
    “Yes.”
    Perry jerks a little. “Wait, seriously?”
    “Yes.” I pause to mirror the solemnity in his eyes. “I will not bring up the topic of your father. I promise.”
    If he considered ground rules, that means he showed up ready. Or at least having given it some thought. That’s good. Another tipping point in our favor.
    “However, Perry, if you invite me, I get to talk about him. I get to ask anything. But you have to open the door and verbally confirm I may.”
    “Agreed,” he says, still surprised. “But I won’t bring him up. You guessed pretty well at the art gallery about me playing the cello and him dying young but—”
    “I will not initiate a discussion about your father.”
    Perry frowns a little, another big argument cut short. I don’t think I gave him the answer he hoped for. “I’m serious. I did therapy, books on tape. Saw a psychic once.”
    With intentional firmness, I say, “We’re done with this point.”
    “Fine,” he says, watching the Alcatraz pilgrims tentatively shuffle the chain-link maze of walkways leading up to our ferry.
    I can’t resist needling him. “You saw a psychic?”
    “I was with friends and they dared me. But this counts as you bringing it up.”
    “Okay. We’re done talking about your dad. Unless, of course, you initiate the conversation.”
    We are quiet for a moment.
    “Which you can.”
    We advance a step or two.
    “Anytime. Like, whenever.”
    “I’m allergic to bees,” he says. “I have meds with me, but still, no tours of bee farms. And charming serial killers from the Midwest. I’m allergic to them too.”
    I like his tone. This is exactly the right growl I need from him right now.
    “Perry, if you add onion rings to your forbidden list, swear to God, I will rip up your ticket.”
    “Please don’t be a serial killer,” he says in a joking tone. “I showed several friends your note and described your appearance. My friend knows HTML. If I go missing, he could put up a website.”
    “That’s cool. By the way, we should trade e-mail addresses when this weekend is over. About a week ago, I installed a counter to track the number of hits to my AOL page. It’s pretty cool. Some AOL pages have, like, many, many hundred hits. My page already has 118 hits, which is crazy. I don’t even know 118 people.”
    Perry does not strike me as comforted.
    In a deadpan tone, he says, “You’re a World Wide Web fanatic.”
    “I do AOL and CompuServe, but I wouldn’t say fanatic. Less CompuServe these days.”
    He grunts. We shuffle forward.
    “Perry, if you don’t have an AOL account by next year, you’re going to be in the minority. If we’re