“You’ve met someone, haven’t you?” Tracy says.

You flag down the barista.  “No. Well . . . yes, I have, but it’s not like that.”

Your friend leans in, her elbows on the table.  “Do tell.”

And so you do.

You got tired of feeling the weight of his attention on you every time you were in the café, which was a lot.  So one day, you looked up and caught him staring at you from behind his curtain of greasy fringe.  That was when you stood up, grabbed your coffee and your paperback book with the tattered pages and loose spine, and walked over to him.

He sat at a table in the far corner, away from the entrance—his table.  When he saw you, maneuvering through the sparse late-afternoon crowd of business suits, he jerked his head downward as if to hide.  But dark, dingy yellow lights did little to hide him from you; he stuck out like a tap dancer in a ballet recital.  His knees started to bounce frantically. 

He wasn’t cute, not in the traditional sense.  His ensemble was unfortunate; its motif, misguided.  And he used his hair to hide his face.  Even as you sat down at his table and leaned over it, you couldn’t make out the color of his eyes.  But you did take note when he closed his journal and covered it with folded hands, one on top of the other.

You gave him your name.  He mumbled his.  Seth, he said, and you immediately thought of snakes, and Egyptian gods, and that character in the story you want to write—the one about the Demon Childe who turned out to be not a demon child at all, really. You engaged in a futile attempt to strike up conversation, and he looked at you behind his fringe with a stare that reminded you of a dry-erase board, fresh out its packaging. 

And there you were without any markers.

The next time you went to the café, Seth wasn’t there, so you sat in the far corner, away from the entrance.  When he showed up, he made a beeline to his table without looking around.  Halfway there, he realized you were sitting in his chair.  You could tell it threw him off a bit, but he sat across from you without much fanfare, and he kept his journal on his lap.

I’m new, he told you.

And you knew he didn’t mean new to the city; rather, he was new to the Gay City, the Glitterati, as you liked to call it.  He still lived with his mother, worked at a job he hated, studied a degree program that held little interest at a university that he hated even more. He seemed defeated and miserable, but an open sort of miserable, like he was waiting—ready for something to happen to him, for someone to happen.

You decided then to be that someone.

When he complained about money and clothes, and how it cost too much to be a part of the Glitterati, you took him to the artsy part of town, to a quaint shop that sold vintage clothes. 

This is where tomorrow’s fashions get its inspiration, you told him. 

And to prove your point, you bought some shirts and pants and jackets and vests from the vintage store, then you took him uptown to the high-end stores and downtown to the boutiques, and you pulled shirts and pants and jackets and vests.  They weren’t exactly the same, but they were same enough so that Seth got your point. 

The next time you saw him, he was wearing one of the shirts you had bought for him.

Tracy interrupts you.  “What was that dog’s name?”

You feign ignorance. “Dog?”

“That mangy mutt you found last winter.”

“Anna Stasia was a pure Labrador retriever.  Hardly a mutt.”

“I remember how it shat all over the place—”

“—she was sick!”

“—and how you always kept it inside—”

“—she was sick!”

“—even when it clamored to go out.”

“Anna Stasia wasn’t made for the perils of Outside,” you remind her.

“I admit,” Tracy says, bringing a cigarette to her lips.  The barista coughs from behind the counter and shakes his head, pointing to the NO SMOKING sign by the door.  Tracy rolls her eyes but puts the cigarette pack in its pack.  “I admit,” she continues, “the dog was adorable.  But that dog was an outside dog.”

You sigh, remembering everything you did for that dog, only to have had it bolt out the door its first chance, never to return.  “I was a wreck for days.”

“For months,” Tracy corrects. 

“Can I continue my story, please?”

Tracy leans back in her chair.  “By all means, do.”

You invited Seth home one night, and though he stuttered his response, wide-eyed, he accepted the invitation. 

Not tonight, you said to him; Tomorrow.  I’ll make dinner. 

That affix settled his nerves a bit.

When he showed up to your apartment, on time you noted, he was nervous.  As expected.  When he sat on your couch, his knee bounced furiously.  The conversation turned to the two new Glitterati words du jour, heterosexism and heteronormativity, and you listened to him as he chastised straight men, called their masculinity ridiculous.  So you put on old kung-fu movies and watched them.  He remembered them growing up, and he relaxed.

You watched the one about the old teacher, once a fabled sensei but now a drunken outcast, who takes in one last pupil, whose family had been murdered by the court of a corrupt emperor. 

What are they doing, you asked him, about twenty minutes into the movie.

He looked at you, then back at the television.  Then back at you. 

They’re fighting, he said.

Look again, you said.

So he did.

They’re not fighting, you told him; It’s just made to look that way.  They’re trained dancers and acrobats, not fighters.  It’s all choreography.  

Then you watched the World Wrestling Federation—soap operas and soft-core porn for men, you called it—and Ultimate Fighting—bareback, condom-free gay porn for straight guys. 

Seth laughed at that.  But when the two Ultimate fighters embraced, bloodied and battered and bruised and somehow freer, you knew he understood. 

Mom usually does all the cooking, he said during dinner, and you learned that his mother was late in life when she had him.  Now, she was past retirement age. 

I’m all she’s got really, he told you.

And you understood him to mean that she was all he had, too.  That was when you noticed the color of his eyes: roasted chestnut brown.

“How sad,” Tracy says.

The barista sets down a glass of water and a demitasse of Turkish espresso—sans pistachio grains—in front of Tracy. 

“It’s not sad,” you say, nodding at the barista for more coffee.

“Why doesn’t he just get his own place?” she asks and brings her cup to her lips so to blow across the coffee’s surface. 

Her question makes you think, but not about Seth—about her.  You wonder if she could ever understand a life such as Seth’s.  She had a litter full of brothers and sisters and, because of it, a freedom that Seth couldn’t fathom.  He’s stuck, living in some half-state with a woman: not her lover but not quite her son anymore, either.  No, she couldn’t understand, but rather than make her understand, you try to lighten the mood: “Get his own place?  Are you mad?  His taste in clothes was questionable at best. Could you imagine the furniture he’d pick out?”      

One night, you and Seth stole up to the roof of the café.  Lying side by side, you both listened to the cicadas sing in the distance as you stared up to the night sky.  He asked if you knew any of the constellations; you pointed out the obvious ones, the ones everyone knows—Leo, Orion, the Big Dipper.  He asked if you thought there was life somewhere up there.  You answered, Yes.

Me, too, he said. His knee brushed against yours.

But they are so far away, you reminded him, and light can only travel so fast; chances are, they’re already dead.

He pulled back.

You vowed never to talk about death around him again.

You came home one evening to the message light on your answering machine blinking a steady cadence of threes.  1: Your benefactors; they wanted to talk.  Deleted.  2: A company you had sent your résumé to; they wanted an interview with you tomorrow afternoon.  Saved.  3: Seth. He wanted to skive off work tomorrow; wanted to stargaze again, this time in an open field; wanted to go look at foliage change and drink wine.  You can be Charles, he said; I’ll be Sebastian.

So you drove him southward to the vineyards for wine tasting, and photographed trees and sunsets and read to him Jean de La Fontaine’s fable La Cigale et la Fourmi—‘The Cicada and the Ant.’

You were gone for three days.

“Wait,” Tracy says.  She fires off a cross look.  “What about your interview?”

You wave away the implication, a bothersome gnat.  “They’re more important things than jobs.”

“The world won’t wait forever for you.”

But you don't quite believe that.

You didn’t scoff at his choice in books; instead, you recommended some classics—You’ll want to read other things, you explained.  Much like when someone sprinkles fleur de sel on your food and you find out there’s more to seasoning than salt, pepper, and ketchup.

You didn’t scoff at his choice in music; instead, you talked about Mozart, mentioned Bach, and waxed poetic about Stravinsky—His ‘Rite of Spring’ was so powerful, you told him, so daring, that it caused a riot at its Paris premiere!

You didn’t scoff when he told you that he spoke two foreign languages, Gaelic and Welsh; instead, when one of your friends, Paul, bewailed about needing someone who spoke a Celtic language for his dissertation (so he could prove that English owes a good portion of its grammar to the Celts), you smiled—How about Gaeilge? you asked.  Will that do?

A week later, you introduced him to Seth.

Tracy nearly chokes on her swallow of coffee.  “You introduced him to Paul?”

“Yes, of course.  Why?”

She answers by bringing the coffee cup up to her lips.

You and Seth only argued once: when his reverse elitism had reared its head, like a rattlesnake on the prairie when a child comes too close, and he had leered at a group of ‘Nellie queens’ (his words) and branded them an embarrassment to the Queer Movement.

How dare you? you scolded. 

Then you told him about Stonewall and Harry Hay and Harvey Milk and the San Fran riots. 

You would do well, you warned, to show some respect while riding comfortably on the backs of their sacrifice.

You might have been a bit too harsh, and it killed the conversation for the rest of the night.  He never spoke ill of queens again, but you didn’t see him for several days after that, and you worried that you had gone too far. 

For the next few days, you noticed Seth’s absence more and more.  When he finally showed up to the café, he did two things differently than before. First, he handed you his journal and let you read some of his poems—they weren’t bad; they weren’t all that good, either. But they were honest and growing more honest with every turned page. Second, he asked you about you, your life, your job.

I’m between endeavors, you answered. 

He asked if you were looking for a job—Nope—and about your schooling.

On that you obliged him: I started with computer science, but got bored with it.  Then I went to music.  Love theory; can’t really play very well, tho’.  So then I moved to photography.  But I’m color blind.  One day, the school dean called me to his office and said, ‘You have credits enough for a degree in Leisure Studies; kindly get out of my university.’ So I did.

He pressed on: But . . . then how do you pay for your apartment?

My parents are rich.

Oh. When do I get to meet them?

You don’t.

Why not?

I’m a charity, you told him; that’s all. You may be willing to send thirty-five cents a day to some starving child in Africa, but you don’t really want him showing up at your door.

He didn’t laugh and he never asked about your parents again.  A small part of you wished he would. 

“Wow,” Tracy says, her eyes wide. “He brings up the Topic-Not-to-be-Broached, and you’re still speaking to him?” 

“What are you implying?”

A smile flits across her lips.  “Nothing.”

One night, you showed up late at the café, and Seth was holding court with a small group of your friends.  You noticed his new outfit, which he must have picked out himself.  More astonishing was that he wore it well.  Layers, a vest that didn’t quite match the shirt, slender slacks that revealed a dancer’s leg, socks that matched his shoes.  Ascot.  Colored handkerchief.  A place for everything; everything in its place.  He called it ‘New Pratt Dandyism’, which you thought cute, and he topped it off with hair no longer weighed down by grease or oil or the gravity of misery.  A proud sight, but you had to queue up, practically, to speak with him. 

I thought you were going to call, you said.

I’m sorry.

I waited for your call.

I just . . . thought I’d meet you here.  And here you are.

He wasn’t Seth the lonely kid in the corner anymore.  He was someone else and you couldn’t help but feel a loss. 

I should do something, you thought; mock funeral service, write a eulogy. 

Then you remembered that you were not twelve years old anymore and that he was not, was never, a goldfish you could flush down the toilet or bury out in the backyard.

Later, Seth pulled you aside and you stole up to the rooftop. You stargazed for a bit, then he took your hands in his.  He smiled, capturing his bottom lip between his teeth.  You glanced asquint as though you had just caught him cheating in poker. That was when he held up two tickets. 

The symphony’s playing ‘Rite of Spring’, he said, so I got seats for two.

You started to say something but couldn’t finish; he mistook your hesitation for something else. 

I’ll understand if you want to take someone else, he said; if you’d rather go with someone else.

But there was no one else you’d rather go with.

“Can I hire you,” Tracy says, as you conclude your story.

“For your husband?” you say with mock panic.  “Oh, but there’s little hope for that.”

“You can’t blame a girl for trying.” She stands and takes a final sip of her coffee, peering at you over the rim of the cup as she does.  “Probably for the best: I doubt I could handle dating a You, anyway. Seth sounds like a great guy.”

“He is.”

“And not at all like those other . . . unfortunates that you’ve—”  

“He isn’t.”

“I mean, you do have such bad taste in men.”

“Which is especially confusing, considering my impeccable taste in, well . . . everything else.”

She glares crossly at you, and you pretend to be properly reprimanded. After tossing her scarf around her neck and slipping on her coat and gloves, she kisses you on the cheek and makes for the exit.  To her back, you promise that you’ll introduce her to Seth soon enough, though you doubt you ever will.  Tracy reaches for the door and stumbles into Seth.  There’s an embarrassed exchange, and Seth, ever the gentleman, steps back and holds the door open for her.  Tracy thanks him, turns to you and waves, and walks out of your panorama. 

Seth’s smile is radiant, illuminated, and it burns even as he brings in with him from outside the winter cold, which trails behind him, an echo that soon surrounds you.  He sits and takes your hands in his.  They’re cold, but you don’t mind; you’ve warmth enough for the both of you.  He lifts your fingers to his mouth and kisses them.  The kiss is more of a press, really, but he leaves it there, mashed against his lips, for a long time. You can feel the smile in the kiss. 

“I want to thank you,” he says.  The words are muffled against your hand. 

“For what?”

He pulls back and takes you in, all of you.  His eyes travel along your face, from your nose to your mouth to the length of the neck, as though he’s trying to memorize you.  You swallow hard, and his gaze locks in on the skip of your Adam’s apple.  “For everything.”

It’s hard to catch a breath, and you find the room is suddenly too small and there are too many people, all of them inconsequential.  Their conversations surround you.  The timbals of cicadas.  La Cigale et la Fourmi.  Your knee starts to bounce frantically. 

Seth says, “If it weren’t for you,” but then pauses, licks his lips.  His brilliant smile becomes a supernova, consuming everything in its path. 

“I’ve met someone.”