Roy sighed, and then said, “Rachel, I would love Friday, but I already promised a friend that we would spend the night together, and-- ”
“You can’t back out of that.”
“Yeah, thanks for understanding.”
“You shouldn’t want to back out of it,” Rachel said, displaying some DuFresne common sense. “Friends are hard to come by. I tell you what?”
“Hum?”
“This’ll sound stupid.”
“I’m up for stupid,” Roy said.
“What it... you were like my date to the funeral? And then we could go out, and do something.”
“Your--” Roy burst out laughing.
“Roy!”
Roy was still laughing.
“Is that a, ‘no’?”
“Actually,” Roy said, when he could finally say something, “that’s a huge, ‘Yes’. Sure. I guess I don’t have to bring flowers? Or, I could just grab some off the coffin!”
“Roy, don’t me mean!” Rachel reprimanded.
But when she hung up the phone, she was laughing too.

Ian heard his name being whispered. When he was awake he still heard it. In the dark-blue- grey light of morning he hoped it was still a dream. Mackenzie’s chest, rising and falling under his cheek, the blankets around them, was more real. The heat and smell of his living flesh, the arm holding him loosely was far more real.
“Ian.”
Ian turned around, and Cedric stood at the door way of the room. A million thoughts were going through Ian’s head, waking him at once.
“Come out,” Cedric whispered. “I need to talk to you.”
Ian felt himself nodding, and then Cedric left the room, closing the door behind him.
Careful not to wake Mackenzie, he reached into the covers and found his boxers, and pulled them on before climbing out of bed. The linoleum of the kitchen was cool on his feet, and Ian hugged himself in the darkness of the kitchen. Only the light over the stove was on.
“Cedric,” Ian said, sounding hoarse. “I know it’s your house and I should have asked about sleeping in the same room with Mackenzie, and everything, and if you don’t want me--”
Cedric put up a hand, and shook his head rapidly. This was not his concern. Cedric, Ian guessed, had expected to find the two of them together. Simon and Drew had slept in the same bed the night before.
“I didn’t wake you up at 5:00 for that,” Cedric said. “I woke you up to talk to you alone.”
Cedric handed Ian a bundle wrapped in what felt like a silk scarf. It was a woman’s. done in red and blue paisley’s, but it was heavy in his hands when Ian held it, and the feel and weight gave the gift’s identity away
“It’s a gun,” Ian said, removing the material, and looked up at the older man.
“The safety’s on it. It is loaded. I’ll teach you how to use it. We’ll take the safety off later. Now if you want me too.”
“Cedric what’s this for?”
“If you leave home, don’t do it without American Express. If you go home, don’t go home without this?”
“Wha?”
Cedric sighed, and moved around Ian. Everything felt as heavy and cold as this gun. Ian thought he was still sleeping. Cedric reached into one of the baskets on top of the refrigerator, and pulled out the article. He handed it to Ian.
Ian perused it, and looked up, wide eyed, very young and terrified.
“My father wouldn’t do that,” Ian said without any sign of being convinced of this. “I’m not going to get killed.”
“No, you’re not,” Cedric insisted. “Because you’re not going back. But if you do, you’re going back with this.”
“You’re scaring me,” Ian told Cedric.
Cedric sighed, and then said, “Well...” He shrugged. “Go back to bed. You’ve got a while before it’s time for school.”
Ian looked at Cedric, and then at the gun. He nodded, then turned around for the bedroom.

“I haven’t been with you sense before all this mess,” Ian murmured into Mackenzie’s ear once the sun was coming up. He kissed the other boy’s ear and breathed into his blond hair. “I think if I had remembered what it was like to be with you... I would never even have honestly thought my father had a point.”
Ian’s arm was draped over Mackenzie, and Mackenzie just reached up and rubbed the arm, delighted by the little hairs that covered it. They had the same body. Their bodies were completely different.
Ian kissed him on the cheek, and sat up, reaching for his cigarettes. When Mackenzie turned around he saw the other boy, lithe and hirsute, nude as birth, was blowing out smoke.
“You need to shave,” Ian stated, taking another drag. “You’re scraggly.”
“You’re scraggly too,” Mackenzie told him.
“Yeah, but you’re too pretty to be looking scraggly. I’m not pretty.”
Mackenzie, walking his fingers up and down Ian’s foot, told him, “I think you’re very pretty.”
Ian gave Mackenzie a coy look, and blew smoke out of his nostrils, “You really do make me feel like a natural woman.”
“There is nothing natural... or womanly about you,” Mackenzie insisted, sitting up beside the other boy.
“I missed you,” Ian said suddenly. “I missed being with you, Kenzie. I don’t just mean having sex with you. Can you imagine? I almost forgot what it was like to have sex with you? But I remembered what it’s like after, just holding you to me when we’re so close it’s like we’re the same person. When there’s nothing between us. I missed waking up with you. I missed what your hair smells like...” Ian grinned and buried his nose in it. “And it doesn’t smell that good.” he told him, truthfully.
“Thanks.”
“It smells like a wet dog.”
“If you go on, I shall blush from embarrassment.”
Ian crushed out his cigarette, and kissed Mackenzie quickly. Mackenzie could taste the remnants of the cigarette. For a moment, he breathed out smoke too. They were kissing and then, very quickly, they were making love, and trying to keep quiet. Kenzie’s body and brain, his heart, were the same. The same things rushing through them. That they were safe and protected, that somehow they were still innocent, and this felt too good for words, and that it was utterly, totally, rough, and that there was nothing but love in it went through his head. The taste of Ian’s body, and the truth that Vaughan was right upstairs, Cedric down the hall. and Simon and Drew had done this very same thing the night before in this bed. He didn’t know who he was, he didn’t... He was on fire... He was shaking. He was erupting. He was hard. He was opening. He came. Ian moved quickly, and breathed quickly and then made a strangling noise. He reared up. His as was soft as velvet, solid as metal. Ian went rigid in his arms.
They held each other, not speaking.
Ian finally said, “Cedric gave me a gun, Kenzie. I’m scared as hell.”
Mackenzie didn’t say anything, and Ian added. “He wants me to take it whenever I go home. He showed me this article about this gay kid who got killed by his father. He thinks my dad’s nuts. He knows my dad pretty well. I don’t know what I’d ever do if my father came at me, and tried to kill me.”
Mackenzie, the queer one who was a sixteen year old altar boy, afraid of everything, wanting to do the right thing, who had just had sex with another man in the guest bedroom of his best friend’s house, said:
“I think you’d better kill him.”

i v

Cedric had taken care of a whole pot of coffee, and jotted a little note on the refrigerator before taking his bicycle down to the house on Windham Street where he would meet Ida and they would go up to the rectory for Ralph before winding their way to Holy Spirit Monastery. There they’d breakfast with Julian and Mario. He told the boys yogurt, milk and fruit were in the refrigerator. He’d bought new cereal. He didn’t remember what kind, but it wasn’t that cheap stuff, and it wouldn’t rot your teeth out. He said they should feel free to have whatever, that there were also muffins. Mackenzie’d better eat the bran ones because he was the only one who liked them. Don’t be late for school.
It was seven o’clock. In the early days of April, not long after Easter, there was still a chill in the air, and the grass was rimed with a little bit of frost. The sun was just making an appearance, and Cedric was riding into its direction, down the cracked path of Michael Street. Only a few cars passed up and down.
He was fifty-one, almost fifty two. He had managed to mess around and get a long running Broadway show. When it had left Broadway, it went around the world. It had legs they said. Whatever. It paid the bills. He had managed to publish three large volumes of poetry, and become playwright laureate of the state. This was nothing compared to the managing of two children. However, he had never managed to secure a driver’s license, or buy a car. Such were the ironies of life. So here he was, and here was the turn south onto Windham Street. And here he went.
Ian had probably told Mackenzie about the gun by now. They were probably telling Vaughan. Cedric had not intended for Ian to keep it a secret. He only wanted to talk to him in secret, not let everyone hear the words that were for him alone. He couldn’t know that the words Mackenzie had spoken to Ian about the gun were the same words that had been spoken to him well over thirty years ago, and that he himself had in turn spoken to another.
Cousin Flipsy, Evelyn’s not - husband, the youngest son of that enigmatic witch, Marie Madeleine, had called Cedric to him one day in 1968.
“I hear you going Down South.”
“Um hum.”
Flipsy sucked in his black cheeks, and rolled his tongue around in his mouth before presenting the gun to his younger cousin.
“You’d better take this,” Flipsy said at last.
“What is someone tries... to get me?” Cedric had asked.
Flipsy gave a cackle that turned into a hack after awhile, and then he said, thoughtfully:
“I think you’d better kill him.”

Eighteen years later, with Marilyn dead, and two near infants at home, Cedric had taken the bus up to Crawford Street. Same street, different house. Letmee was every bit as black as his grandfather had been, and at the time nearly as old... or so it looked.
“But Ced, you might want this again,” Letmee said as his cousin handed him the gun.
“I don’t really want a gun in my house. If I need it, I’ll come back for it. Just don’t misplace it. ”
“Aw, Ced, I ain’t gon misplace no gun.”
“Marilyn doesn’t need it anymore,” Cedric said, “I’m not sure she needed it when I gave it to her.”

Saint Clare’s had been the college where he blossomed. Always there was Lake Erie, big and beautiful as the sea, grey like mother of pearl one day, blue like sapphires the next. It was there he’d started acting, and Marilyn had been with him in every play. It was there he joined the poet and writers circle and began contributing to the magazine.
In 1972 he was still only about to become a junior, the year or so of roving, the decision to go undeclared for so long had much to do with this. Marilyn was graduating. It was awful to think of being parted from her, and awful to think it was so awful. They got on well, true, but they were not really girlfriend and boyfriend. They didn’t even kiss.
To make matters worse, Ralph had come up to visit. In what he claimed to be common sense, he had waited his two years out at Notre Dame before transferring to Sainte Terre-- not Saint Clare’s, as if to rub in the fact that he didn’t want to attend school with Cedric. And now, about to graduate himself, Ralph had come to visit him.
“I’m going straight into seminary, “ Ralph told him.
“Are you already accepted?” Cedric tried to sound as interested as possible.
“Well...” said Ralph. “It’s not quite like that. It’s not like going to grad school or anything.”
“I bet it isn’t,” Cedric said baldly. “Most of the priest I’ve known couldn’t spell grad school let alone get into one.”
Cedric’s feelings for the priesthood in general, and this prospective seminarian in specific, were altogether dark. When Ralph parted from him, he was sure he had hurt his one time best friend, and a little surprised to realize he didn’t give a damn.
What did make Cedric give a damn was Marilyn’s announcement.
“I’m going to work the Chitterling Circuit!”
“I didn’t know they had a Chitterling Circuit anymore.”
“They don’t,” Marilyn explained. Not much of one. This is kind of like an... In Memory Of . Put on by a bunch of young Afro-American artist. We start this summer. So you could come on down. You’ve been South, Ced.”
He had already pissed off one friend, so he didn’t feel bad about pissing off another.
He told her straight out, “Hell no,” and added, “I think you’ve really lost your goddamned mind, and if I see you again in the land of the living, I’ll count us both very fortunate.”
But he had also given her the gun.
“Oh, Cedric,” she’d said, standing in his room. “What if somebody... tries something?”
“I think you’d better kill him.” he said, frankly.

Ashley Foster followed Mick Rafferty into the stockroom. He was bent over in his brown trousers, picking up stacks of Hammermill paper for the photocopier downstairs. She draped herself across him and his body stiffened.
“Hey, Ash. Don’t do that. Okay?”
“What’s wrong?” She was still clinging to him.
“Ashley,” he twisted out of her hold, and she moved from him, a little angry.
“Not here,” he said.
“You didn’t mind it in the English department last week.”
“And not so loud,” Mick turned around, and said, “Look, Ashley. Not at all.”
“What?” she sounded, and looked completely confused.
“I’m calling it off, Ash. It’s over.”
She looked at him incredulously, opening her mouth, then closing it. She felt the power of speech preparing to leave her.
“How?” She could barely hear herself as Mick picked up the stacks of paper, and walked swiftly past her, down the hall.
“How?” Her voice grew louder as she followed him.
“Don’t make a scene,” he hissed, and kept walking.
“What the hell kind of scene am I making?” her voice was louder as it echoed down the halls. “There’s no one out here. Class is supposed to be in session.”
Mick stopped at the door to the main office, and turned around.
“Ashley. It’s over.” he whispered. “We can talk about this later.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“Not now,” he pleaded.
“Yes, right now.”
In one swift gesture, she brought down her hand on the stacks of paper, and they fell to the ground. Mick moved to pick them up, but thought better of it.
“Right now,” Ashley said. “You don’t just decide to start something with me, and then break it off, you worthless dick, because Stearne-- that short son-of-a-bitch, found out about us. I ought to scream it from the top of the school. I ought to tell them all!”
She leaned in closer to Mick. There was a student coming down the hall. Mick’s heart was racing, sweat was pouring down his pits, and his face.
“I ought to scream, ‘Mick Rafferty’s been fucking me every night for two months now!‘ My father would love that one!”
“Ashley, don’t!” Then he said, “Ashley, think about it. What kind of future do we have?”
“None, thanks to fucking jealous George Stearne.”
“That’s really enough,” Mick said, suddenly turning into a school teacher again. He squatted to pick up the paper.
“He was looking out for both of us. Why would Mr. Stearne be jealous, huh?”
He looked up at her with that smug adult face, and Ashley smiled down like a bitch at him. Then said, triumphantly, “Why the hell to you think?”
And then, while Mick had time to think, she turned around, and walked away.

“Tina, you’re weird as hell, lately,” Luke told her on the smoker’s porch.
“I’m not weird,” Tina said, taking the burning butt of one cigarette, and lighting the next one with it. “I’m just... preoccupied. A lot is going on right now, and...”
“Do you plan to tell me any of it?”
“Not right now,” Tina said. “Not until every single detail is worked out. I gotta meet with Stearne tonight after play practice. So scratch anything we wanna do until about six-thirty.”
“You’re all about plots and plans recently,” Luke said.
“It’s our future,” she said.
“Our?”
“Yeah, jerk,” Tina said, looking up at him. “Don’t you remember? We’re all linked. The whole jati thing. Friends don’t walk alone.”
The glass doors opened, and suddenly Ashley, in tight jeans and pink top, came storming down the steps past them.
Luke took out another Lucky Strike, and told Tina: “She needs some friends.”


“I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU needed me to look over this,” Stearne said, sitting back in his seat in the booth, and passing the essay back to Tina.
“It’s good enough, you think?”
“It’s more than good, Tina,” Stearne said to her. “What do you plan to do with yourself. After Europe?”
Tina sighed, and pushed her black hair out of her face. “I suppose real college. Get a nice job. Marry, have some kids, and a dog. You know: the responsible thing.”
Stearne shook his head, and grinned at her.
“I don’t believe you,” he said. “I don’t believe you, Martina Foster, and I don’t believe you believe yourself.”
Tina raised an eyebrow.
“After a while you can tell,” Stearne said. “There’s a difference between people who say they want to do fabulous things, but are just settling for a normal life, and people who pretend that they’re going to settle for a normal life.”
“Aw, Mr. Stearne,” Tina teased, “you think I’ll do fabulous things?”
Stearne sat up, and ate the last fry from his place.
“Martina Foster, I know you will. You’re a great actress--”
“I’m alright.”
“You’re a great actress,” Stearne repeated. “And you’re a talented writer, and you have a wonderful heart, and personality. No one will keep you down. You do know that, don’t you?”
Tina was caught up short for a moment, and then she said, “Well... I guess I did. Sort of. Maybe I just needed someone to tell me.”
“Well,” Stearne said, looking a little embarrassed. “I just told you.”
For only a brief second, Tina thought about what it would be like to kiss Stearne, and then immediately pushed the idea out of her mind.
“And while we’re on the subject of things that you already knew, but might like to be told,” Stearne said, “When we do the play--”
“You want me to re-color my hair?”
“I would be so pleased if you did.” Stearne signaled for Race Cane, and said, “When it’s convenient, can we get a check?”


“Can I have the car?” Ashley asked Aileen who was rinsing the dishes before sticking them in the dishwasher.
“You asked Tina, right?”
“Mother!”
“Ash,” Aileen shut off the water, and opened the dishwasher. “It’s Tina’s car. In one dim point in history your sister-- who hates work-- actually worked a whole summer to buy it.”
Ashley let out a breath. Aileen said, “You can take your father’s if it’s that much trouble to ask. But I bet Tina wouldn’t mind. She’ll be working on that application all night.”
“What application.”
“For this thing in Europe.” Aileen was pouring detergent into the washer. “I’m sure she’ll get in. In fact she’s already in. She just has to send off everything.”
“This is all news to me,” said Ashley.
“It was all news to her. George Stearne’s taken quite a shine to her. He pulled a few strings and helped her out.”
“George Stearne?” Ashley said.
“I’m surprised to.” Aileen hit the buttons, the dishwasher roared to life. “He and Tina are becoming really good friends. That’s good,” Aileen went on not noting the hardening of her daughter’s face. “Every student should study under a good teacher at least once in her life.”



“I like you, Rodder,” Cedric told the tall boy outright.
Rodder sort of blushed, which was surprising, and said, “Thank you, sir.”
What Cedric meant to say was, “I almost forgive you for taking my daughter’s virginity.” He’d like to say he totally forgave Rodder, and didn’t care. But he was sure that the day he said that he would find a trace of resentment and care laying around somewhere inside of him.
“So you go to University of Chicago this weekend?”
“But I’m not telling Madeleine, and please don’t you tell her either,” Rodder begged.
Cedric raised his hand as if to say, “You’ve got my word.”
Rodder was turning to leave Cedric’s living room when he said, “Sir, can I ask you a question? It’s gonna sound stupid?”
“It never stopped anyone else,” Cedric said.
“When I get to be... say, your age.... Do troubles stop?”
Cedric raised his eyebrow.
“Maybe you get used to them,” he said. “I think I know what you mean. When I was your age I would look at my aunts, and my grandmother and think they’d finally done it all. They were finally at peace. Nothing left. And when I look at you kids, when I’m being stupid and forgetting what childhood was like I think, how nice it would be to be a kid again, and not have any troubles. Am I right? Is that what old people say?”
“My parents say it to me,” Rodder said. “And maybe they’re right. But... I don’t know. I want things to get easier. I feel so stressed out a lot and you don’t. And neither does Tina’s grandmother, and I thought... maybe when I’m older I won’t be stressed.”
“If I knew when I was eighteen that I would be fifty-two with a dead wife, two unruly children... and just that for starters... if I had any idea,” Cedric confessed, “I would have swallowed a bottle of pills prom night.”
Rodder grinned, and then realized that Cedric was serious.
“Thank God,” Cedric said earnestly, “We don’t get a preview of what’s coming to us.”
There was a look on Rodder’s face that made Cedric say, “You’ve got another question.”
“Since you’re answering them.
“I guess I am.”
“Alright,” Rodder put his fingers together and tried to gather his words.
“I... I’m a good student. Real good. But.... I have never ever asked myself what I want. I know what my mom and dad want. I know what I should want, but I don’t know.... what Rodder wants. Nobody ever asked me. Cedric, no one. I mean, Madeleine did. When we went to Massachusetts she asked me... It was the first time anyone asked and now....” Rodder took a breath and looked at the ground. When he looked up, he said, “When did you know that you’d be a writer?”
“Not right away,” Cedric told him. “But... it was the thing that drove me... After awhile. It was a passion I guess. I take it for granted. But I knew what I should do because...I had to.” Cedric smiled. It all seemed such a surprise. Rodder looked sad.
“That’s just it. I’m afraid,” he told Cedric. “I’m afraid and I can’t tell anyone else that I’m afraid that.... I don’t have anything that drives me.”


“Yeah, so Rod is going some place with his Aunt Louisa this weekend,” Madeleine was telling Claudia. “But never fear. Father Brumbaugh’s funeral is on Saturday, so it’s not like I’ll have nothing to do.”
The cousins stopped talking when Ashley Foster stood before them. Eighth period had ended. It was Friday and time to go home. They did not feel like being bothered with Ashley today.
“Can I help you?” Claudia said in a voice that said, “Can I jack you in the face?”
“Where’s my sister?”
“The bitch, or Tina?”
“My twin.”
“Believe it or not,” Madeleine said, “I don’t find it my duty to keep tabs on Martina Foster at all times.”
“I think she’s in the auditorium,” Claudia said. “In third period she said she wanted to go talk to Stearne... If you can imagine that.”

“No, I’m serious!” Tina said. “It can be like that one night in the bar. Me and Luke and Madeleine. You could bring Mr. Rafferty!”
“Tina!’ George Stearne said.
“You can’t even give me that student teacher stuff. You’re not that much older. This is completely innocent, and I’m eighteen. I would say it’ll be legal, but we’re using fakes.”
“Aw, Tina, I don’t know.”
“Plus, Luke will want to thank you personally... I think... when he finds out he’s going with me. This’ll be great.”
Stearne rolled his eyes, and then said, “Alright, what’s the harm? Are you guys gonna be at the same restaurant?”
“You mean bar?” said Tina. “Yeah. Around nine o’clock.”
George shrugged and said, “Fine, I’ll go. But for right now I’ve gotta clean up backstage.”
Tina looked around the stage and said, “I’ll get this mess up if you want me too.”
“I would appreciate that a great deal, Ms.--” Stearne smiled ruefully, “Tina.”
George Stearne lifted a box, and then went backstage with it, and Tina didn’t feel completely bad for thinking that he really was a cute little man. She went to get the push broom, and when she came back with it Ashley Foster, of all people, was coming up the aisle.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Tina demanded.
Ashley didn’t answer. She just quickened her steps, and came up to the stage where she said, “I don’t have to ask what you’re doing here, do I?”
“No, you don’t. I’m sweeping the stage floor as you can see.”
“You think you’re so smart, Tina!”
“Ashley, what’s up?”
“What’s up is you’re just the new flavor, sweetheart.”
“Excuse me?”
“Exceuse me,” Ashley mimicked, badly. “Excuse me while I sweep up the stage floor for George Stearne. Excuse me while I giggle at everything he says. Excuse me while I flirt back and forth with my teacher. Excuse me while I play the oldest game in the book.”
“You’re flipped.”
Ashley went on.
“Excuse me while I suck your dick, Mr. Stearne. Excuse me while I think I’m such The Bad Ass for getting a piece of my drama teacher--”
“You’re a lunatic, you know that--”
“Well, excuse me, baby,” Ashley said to her twin. “But I had him first.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Anything you did with Stearne I did first, alright? That cute little desk back there, Tina? Every time you picture it picture me on it with one leg in the east, the other in the west and Stearne all up in my Mississippi.”
“You’re a lying cunt!”
“No,” Ashley declared, triumphantly, “I’m not. And I got to him two years sooner. That’s right! I fucked him a long time before you were ever in the picture.”
Just then Tina heard a door slam.
She ignored her sister and went backstage. There was no Stearne. Only the door that led out to the parking lot. Opening it made a scar of light in the backstage area, and Tina saw Stearne’s car driving away. She blew out her breath, and came back around where Ashley was standing.
“Ashley,” Tina declared, “you are such a fat, miserable bitch.”

George Stearne knew he shouldn’t have been too surprised when he opened the door to his apartment and saw Tina standing there.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” he told here.
“I look up where you live, and drive all the way down Willow Parkway just so you can suggest I leave? Oh, I don’t think so.”
Tina shook her head, and walked into the apartment. “Nice place. Bit of a lake view too. Bet you pay far too much for it.”
“Martina...” Stearne started.
“Thank God you didn’t pull that Ms. Foster bullshit with me,” Tina said. “Now, you walked out on me, sir,” she told him.
“You know everything now,” Stearne said.
Tina sighed and said, “I know a few things. I know about you and Ashley because she told me, because she thinks there’s a me and you. And you never stepped out to say anything. You just left.”
“I was embarrassed,” Stearne said, and now she could tell he really was. He was standing taller, and more rigid than usual. What he had said made sense now. How he tried to distance himself from students. He’d given her hints all along, really. She knew now why This explained why he was so wary of her. He’d gotten to friendly before... and look what had happened?
“The thing is,” Tina went on, “Ashley understands what I don’t think you do.”
When she didn’t continue, Stearne raised his eyes to look at her.
“She knows that there is an us,” Tina told him. “A you and me.
“You see, I guess you know Ash doesn’t have any friends. She doesn’t get it. She goes from bed to bed, and she’s jealous of friends cause... she doesn’t know how to be one, or how to have one... Which, I think might be about the same thing. And she sees us, and she thinks it’s sex. But she doesn’t get that it’s friendship.”
“Tina-- ”
“I wonder,” Tina continued, “how many different ways you can say my name.
You’re my friend, Mr. Stearne. You hooked me up with Europe, and then helped Luke get a free trip too. You’ve supported my acting, and lifted me up when I felt ... down to tell you the truth. And you reprimanded me when I needed it and sir, that’s what a friend does. And a friend stands by another friend when... when that friend might be a little embarrassed. So, I’m your friend, alright, Mr. Stearne?”
Stearne stuffed his hands in his pocket, and stood in the middle of his apartment looking at the carpet.
“I don’t know what to say, Tina.” he told her at last.
“Say, ‘yes,’ or nod your head.” Tina told him.
Stearne nodded.
“We still on for tonight?”
Stearne smiled and nodded again.