new world. Then he walked up to Cody—three steps—and put a kiss on Cody's lips. Neither of them spoke, Billy turned to leave. He felt a drop of moisture on his lower lip, Cody's saliva or his own cum. He could hear his boots clopping on the floorboards. He closed the door behind him, strode down the bare hallway, took the stairs two at a time. He crossed the malignant little lobby, with its varnished yellow wood and its rows of smudged chrome mailboxes, opened the glass door and walked out into the altered Cambridge night. It was April, the air had a living smell, though there would still be fitful little furies of snow in the weeks to come. Will took a breath, and another. He was out of the room but he wasn't out of it. He carried it. He had kissed another man, and he knew, abruptly, who he would be. As he turned onto Brattle he touched his own lips, curiously. A wild roil of happiness and terror caught up with him and took him so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that he stopped and stood, just stood, before his reflection in the window of a bookstore. He was exultant and full of dread. He had kissed another man. He let himself be inhabited by this new thing, this possibility. A leaf of newspaper scraped across his feet and in the electric lights of Cambridge he said his new name, quietly, to himself, in a tone of tenderness and surprise, as if he were speaking to a strange brother who'd been away for years and had suddenly returned, unannounced, to stand before him radiant and fierce and crazy as an angel, full of an angel's wised-up, immaculate sorrow.
1971/ It refused to happen. Susan thought it should have by now but nothing took hold. No tiny hooks caught on other hooks and began the long process of tangling themselves into hands, feet, the first stirrings of a silent red slumber. She charted her days carefully; she always knew. There were times when she thought, That's it. That was the little puncture. Now it's going to start. But nothing started. She was alone inside herself.
She didn't want to wait much longer. She wanted a family of her own. When she and Todd had a child they would be separate, complete; they would be respected. They would no longer visit their families on holidays.
Aside from the baby—a temporary problem—her life was good. Good enough. She didn't mind her job, typing and filing in the admissions office. She didn't mind Yale, though it did not open to her. Privately, she called it the fortress. She and Todd and everyone they knew lived within the fieldstone and lawns of the campus itself. Next to the campus a cluster of stores and inexpensive restaurants had grown up around a green and an ancient church. That was what offered itself; that was where you could go. Beyond the stores and cafes it was broken glass, black men and women, the dim dirty glow of the Greyhound terminal. Susan kept her circles small. She never complained. She made friends with the other girls in her department, young Yale wives like herself. She loved her boss, Mr. Morst, a reedy jovial man who smelled somehow like an overheated vacuum cleaner and had no aspect of sexuality, none. Mr. Morst made only modest demands. Please refile these folders, please type up these forms. He knew Susan and the other girls wouldn't be around for long, just as he knew that if this job began to displease them they could get other, equally meaningless jobs tomorrow. After the riot of confused, contradictory desires Susan had known in school this island life, this life of simple undemanding tasks, felt sometimes like a guilty pleasure. She did exactly what was needed, neither more nor less. The hours passed like boxcars, steadily, with a mechanical rhythm and order that possessed something of a cross-country train's measured, stately grandeur. Todd worked hard at his classes, and did as well as he'd expected to. There were no surprises. Law school became an increasing certainty, either at Yale or at Harvard. The days kept arriving. But nothing grew inside Susan, and she wanted it to. Until that happened, until the baby began to manifest itself, her days would be made of waiting. She typed student records onto forms, and always typed exactly on the line. She shopped, and cooked, and cleaned the apartment, and drank