Roman was adorable, and Yale figured him first of all for gay—why else the strangeness from Bill?—but also for the type who didn’t even know it yet himself. Yale might have wound up like that if he hadn’t, sophomore year at Michigan, gotten Mark Breen as his macroeconomics TA—older, beautiful, confident, persuasive. Five minutes in Mark’s apartment, and Yale couldn’t remember his own past or anything else he’d ever felt.
Dolly asked Roman if he’d gone home for Christmas.
“Yes, well, we—I’ve got six brothers and sisters. So we all converge on the house. Northern California.”
“Seven kids!” Esmé said.
The family, it turned out, was Mormon.
Yale could sense Charlie appraising Roman too. He wasn’t Charlie’s type, but Charlie did have a thing for glasses. Before he got so insecure, they used to play “Who Would You Screw?” at the beach or at the airport (one of them would identify three men, the other had to pick one hypothetical lay, and only one, and the other would guess which he’d chosen) and Charlie always went for men with glasses. Yale teased him about his Clark Kent fetish.
Charlie said, “So you’ll be working in the gallery?”
“Actually,” Bill said, “he’ll be working under Yale.”
Dolly invited them all to the table, and when Charlie went to wash his hands, Yale followed him around the corner and down the hall, touched his arm outside the bathroom. He whispered. “Bill just sprang that on me. The intern thing.”
Charlie smiled thinly.
“I wonder if Dolly made him switch,” Yale went on. Everyone was finding seats back in the dining room, exclaiming over the good smells. “Do you think? It was so sudden. It was weird.”
Charlie whispered too. “It’s okay. You expect me to freak out?”
Yes. He did.
“I’m not some monster, okay? I’m not going to flip my lid every time you come in contact with someone.”
“I know,” Yale said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
* * *
—
At the table, after the Sharps had both drunk a fair amount of wine, after they’d grilled Charlie about his newspaper and asked him for travel recommendations and raved over Dolly’s cooking, Yale looked for his moment. He turned the conversation back to the donation and the plans to visit Nora again (leaving out that they hadn’t been invited, leaving out the entire issue of Nora’s family and Chuck Donovan and the development office) and said, “I want to float something a little unorthodox.”
Esmé said, “I love unorthodox!”
“This donor has no assets beyond the collection. She can’t pay for authentication, and she can’t endow maintenance on the works. Sometimes there are grants for restoration, but not authentication. Because—”
Esmé nodded. “Because it’s a gamble.”
Allen rested his fork on his plate.
“Now, I have no idea if this would be acceptable to her,” Yale went on, “but she doesn’t seem to have an ego. I’m thinking if someone wanted to endow those things, we might put two names on the collection. Not a quid pro quo, but, you know, an in honor of your generosity deal.”
Bill said, “The Lerner-Sharp Collection, for instance.”
Esmé and Allen glanced at each other. “We’re intrigued,” Esmé said.
“This is putting the cart before the horse a bit,” Yale said.
Esmé raised her glass. “Well, here’s to the carts. May the horse catch up.”
* * *
—
On the way to the El, Charlie said, “If you have to have a hot intern, at least it’s a Mormon virgin.”
Yale laughed.
“No, wait,” Charlie said, “not a virgin. He has a girlfriend, a little blonde girlfriend who lives, conveniently, three hours away. Sweater sets and pearls. Sees her every other weekend.”
Yale said, “She can’t figure out why he won’t propose.”
“Republican. She is, at least. And her parents. He pretends to be. He doesn’t actually vote.”
“But his work is on Balthus!” Yale said. “Do you know who that is? All these naked young girls. Really controversial.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“You have one confused turnip on your hands.”
Yale, because the street was completely empty, swung Charlie around to kiss him.
* * *
—
Charlie had arranged to take the paper’s staff out for a year-end lunch the next day, before people headed to their various New Year’s Eve celebrations. Charlie and Yale were planning to visit Terrence at Masonic instead of partying. He’d called yesterday and said he was ready for visitors. Apparently they did a good job celebrating holidays on the new AIDS unit, but Terrence didn’t expect them to make a huge deal of ringing in a year few of them would see to the end. New Year’s was his