Union Atlantic Page 0,82

kitchen watching him spread the files across the counter. He'd gone home first to shower and change but on the walk back he'd sweated through his T-shirt again.

"Does this mean she's going to lose?"

Doug fingered an envelope, glancing at the return address.

"She was always going to lose," he said. "It's just a question of when."

"She's not evil, you know."

"You feel bad, huh?"

"Wouldn't you?"

Doug flipped through another folder, ignoring Nate's question. "This is good," he said. "You've done well. There's beer in the fridge if you want it."

Taking one, Nate wandered down the hall, through the first empty room, and into the space where the TV stood in the corner. Here, binders and files now covered a large portion of the floor. Two laptops, their power cords running several yards to the wall sockets, were set up on the kitchen table, which had been brought in and placed beside the couch.

Doug followed him in and turned on the Sox-Yankees game.

"The fact is, she was obliged to give us copies of those papers weeks ago. That's the law. So you can relax. It's not on you."

They watched as the designated hitter, Ramirez, struck a ball deep into center field, driving home the runner at third and bringing the crowd at Fenway to its feet.

It wasn't too late to walk back into the kitchen, Nate thought, to gather those papers up and leave. "You were wrong about the baseball thing," he said. "I did watch it before I met you."

"You're a weirdo."

"Yeah. So are you."

"Why don't you go upstairs. Go ahead. Take your clothes off. I'll be up in a bit."

Nate's heart thudded against his chest. "What if I don't want to?"

"Suit yourself."

The bed hadn't been made. Nate pulled the sheets up and tucked them in, arranging the cotton blanket at the foot of the mattress and putting the pillows back in place. He wondered if he should keep the lamp on but decided not to, leaving only the light from the bathroom. He folded his trousers and put them with his shoes and belt on the floor in the corner. The nights he'd stayed over they had always been under the sheets together, Nate getting Doug off, never the other way around. He had never even been naked in front of him.

He waited there in his underwear, terrified at the thought of what kind of person he was for wanting this. He waited ten minutes and then another ten. He could hear the television still on downstairs, switched to a different station.

Eyes closed, trying to forget everything - his life and the world outside this house - he sensed that for all the highs he'd experienced while stoned in the back of Jason's car or tripping by the lake, for all the cares that such forcings of the brain had displaced, none would free him from himself as this might.

To be pressed down into the bed by Doug's full weight, the last remnant of the minding self rubbed into oblivion. To be taken over and used up and made to go away. A body as strong as Doug's could do that to you.

At last the sound of the TV ceased and a few moments later Doug came through the bedroom door. He walked to the window and leaned against the sill.

"You're not taking your shirt off?" he asked.

"I don't look like you. I'm not muscular."

"That's fine. You're more like a girl that way."

"Is that how you think of me?"

"I'm just saying, you're fine. Go on. Take your shirt off. And the boxers."

Nate pulled his T-shirt over his head and laid it on the bed beside him and then he slipped his shorts off, his throat tightening, just a thread of air reaching his lungs.

Pushing his shoes off and unbuttoning his shirt, Doug approached the bed.

"My God, you're young," he said, taking Nate's chin in his hand. "You really are."

Withdrawing from his touch, Nate lay back on the bed, covering himself with one hand.

"I've never done this," he whispered.

Making no reply, Doug picked Nate up by the rib cage and turned him over onto his stomach.

"Just close your eyes," he said, shifting onto the bed. And then Nate felt Doug's knees pressing against the inside of his own, spreading his legs apart. He'd been self-conscious about his body for so long, for so many years, and yet he'd still never known the sensation could be this intense, as if, perversely, by enacting the fantasy of self-forgetting the self only grew stronger and more