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because she’s afraid of you.”
    “ Afraid of me?”
    “Yeah, as a matter of fact.” Thack took two Fiesta platters from the cupboard and set them on the counter. “You treat her like shit, Michael.”
    “ I treat her like shit? When have you ever heard me say anything that could…?”
    “It’s not what you say, it’s how. The color just drains out of your voice. I can always tell when she’s on the other end. You don’t talk that way to anybody else.”
    He wondered what had brought this on. “Have you been talking to her or something?”
    “No.” Thack sounded faintly defensive. “Not lately.”
    “You talked to her at work. You told me so.”
    “Last week,” Thack answered, searching in a drawer. “Are the napkins in the wash?”
    Michael thought for a moment. “Yeah.”
    His lover tore off two sections of paper towel and folded them lengthwise.
    “She never calls me at work,” said Michael.
    “Well, maybe she would, if you wouldn’t be so hard on the old gal. She’s trying her damnedest to hook up, Michael. She really is.”
    He didn’t want to discuss this. If the “old gal” had made overtures of reconciliation, they hadn’t come until last year, when his father had died suddenly of a heart attack. Like most country women in the South, she required a man’s guidance at any cost, even if that meant making up with her hell-bound gay son in California.
    “She misses you,” said Thack. “I can tell you that.”
    “Right. That’s why she calls you.”
    Thack dumped a handful of butter lettuce into the salad spinner. Slowly, maddeningly, a smile surfaced on his face. “Sounds to me like you’re jealous.”
    “Oh, please!”
    In point of fact, Thack and his mother had become cloyingly chummy in recent months, swapping homilies and weather reports like a pair of Baptist housewives in a sewing circle. This from the woman who had never spoken to his first lover—not even when she knew he was dying.
    It was her grief, after all, that had finally made the difference, her loss that had sent her to the telephone, desperate for company. If he was jealous, he was jealous for Jon, who had asked for her blessing and never received it. But how could he ever say that to Thack?
    “She’s against everything you stand for,” Michael said finally. “You have nothing in common at all.”
    Thack began to spin the lettuce. “Except you,” he said.
     
    At dinner they talked about Thack’s day. He’d worked at the Heritage Foundation for almost a year now, organizing tours of historic houses. Lately, more to his taste, he’d been testifying before the Board of Permit Appeals, pleading the case of endangered buildings.
    “They’re dragging their asses again. It really pisses me off.”
    “What is it this time?” Michael asked.
    “Oh…an Italianate villa off Clement. Fuck off, Harry. I’m not through.”
    The dog sat at Thack’s feet, head cocked for maximum effect, licking his little brown lips.
    “It’s the shrimp,” said Michael.
    “Well, he can wait.”
    Michael gave the dog a stern look. “You heard him, didn’t you?”
    Harry skulked off, but only as far as the doorway, where he waited stoically, rigid as a temple lion.
    “We’re gonna lose it,” said Thack. “I can tell already.”
    “Oh…the villa. That’s too bad.”
    “It’s near the nursery, you know. I stopped by around noon to see if you wanted to have lunch.”
    Michael nodded. “Brian told me. I was out delivering Mrs. Stonecypher’s bamboo.”
    “Delivering?” Thack frowned. “I thought you had employees for that.”
    “I do, but…she likes me and she spends a lot of money. I make an exception in her case.”
    “I see.” Thack nodded. “You were whoring.”
    Michael smiled at him. Rich people were beyond redemption in Thack’s view of the world—just another corrupt facet of the white, male, sexist, homophobic, corporate power structure. Even poor old Mrs. Stonecypher, with her bad hats and wobbly