Fifteen

Let it snow! My Muse seems to find me when I'm housebound.

Again, I'd love to hear from old fans and new readers alike. Without your response, I'd probably be sledding.

This installment is for Ian from Sydney. Among my correspondents, all of them discerning, he may be the wisest.

The usual disclaimers apply, sadly.

Fifteen( pijito52@aol.com

XXIV

I'm too tired to sleep. I can't stop replaying the last 24 hours. I'm fucking Billy as if it's my last minute on Earth, so lost in the prodigious instant, so determined to greet eternity I forget that someday soon a hundred lonely men in Indianapolis and Des Moines will be cumming all over our little apocalypse. Every time I close my eyes I'm besieged by neural storms, explosions of lightning and serotonin. In the distance I hear Kenny's incredulous whistle and those unforgettable words: "I've never seen anything like that in my life." And I imagine that somewhere out there in the fog and neon my mother is looking for me, her eyes hollow with regret, her mouth quivering, begging me to come home, her only child. I wonder if she'll still want to hold me when she realizes exactly where my desperate heart has taken me. "My son, the porn star!" It's really not that funny.

Billy's just fine, I should add. He fell asleep mid-sentence, not five minutes after we lay down and turned out the light. I'm spooning him, pressed up against his backside, absorbing the warmth from his summer-brown skin. Every now and then he'll fold in on himself and I'll just accommodate, follow his lead, pull myself tight to him, try to synchronize our breathing patterns. If he can sleep, then so can I, I tell myself. We are one body, one soul, I repeat, something I'd never say in the light of day.

Like most little kids, I was in thrall to some strange bedtime rituals. First, I'd arrange my plastic dinosaurs in chronological order on the bedside table, triceratops first, then these sharp-clawed pterodactyls, then Stanley, the stupid stegosaurus, then T-Rex and the raptors, then the saber-tooth (who wasn't a dinosaur), and finally the hairy Neanderthal that looked a little like Uncle Terrence after a fishing trip. Then I'd put on my jammie top, but not the bottoms, never the bottoms - a pervert in training, I guess. Then I'd read exactly one page of whatever book this second grader might be making his way through. These missions accomplished, I would turn off the light and begin my prayers, oddball utterances that had nothing at all to do with the Holy Spirit. I'd stare up through the fuzzy darkness at the ceiling and pronounce the great words I'd heard the day before: diesel, lilac, adagio, Cabernet, portfolio, foundling. Most of these were my mother's words, and as I invoked them behind closed doors, I'd close my eyes and invite her warm hand to sweep the hair off my forehead. That last word was my father's. I didn't like it so much, but it stuck with me, like certain ugly words: rebate and mortgage and facsimile. I imagined stumbling upon this creature in the forest, half puppy, half pony, a timid little herbivore afraid of everything - the foundling. Father didn't know I was listening (he should have realized from the start that I'm always listening): "Sometimes I swear the boy's a foundling," he said from behind the evening paper. "Shut up, Byron," my mother commanded, and I never heard it again. Maybe Father was on target I now know, lifelong devotee of the dictionary. Maybe I really was a foundling, delivered in swaddling to torment the childless suburban couple that took him in on faith alone. Maybe my real parents are still out there somewhere. Maybe they're wondering what became of the boy they left in The Glade.

Well, Byron, the little bastard's grown up. And he's left the way he came, a stranger even to himself. Feeling momentarily sorry for myself, I slide away from Billy and turn to face the wall. I don't want him to wake up and find me crying.

XXV

"Damn, Aidan, check out that horse!"

"Which one, you moron?" I ask, as ten thoroughbreds parade past us at the rail.

"The Six. Look. He reminds me of you!" Billy's grinning like he just hit the Power Ball.

The Six, Punkin Pie, has popped a boner you could see from Cincinnati. It sways between his fragile legs like a Gatling on a swivel. Two matrons in sundresses are also staring, high-fiving each other like cheerleaders. Punkin Pie doesn't seem to notice the attention he's drawing, which may be the most important difference between the species.

"Funny, Billy. Why not just tell the whole world?"

Then he whoops, at nobody in particular, "Aidan's bigger! Aidan's bigger! You got nuthin' Number Six! Nuthin'!" And he's flapping his arms and whooping, circling me, a beautiful blond savage in extremis.

The sundress ladies turn around. A couple of dredlocked railbirds look up from their Racing Forms. I close my eyes tight, a little kid making himself invisible. I pray they can't see the blush of shame through the brilliant sunshine.

I want to throttle him. I want to rip his eyeballs out. But mostly I want to hold him close and kiss him in front of the whole world.

We're at Churchill Downs, of course, home of the Kentucky Derby. We know nothing about the sport, and we can't bet, but after yesterday, we need to be outside, to be kids for a while.

"I'm just playing, Aidan. Just having fun. They don't know anything."

"Whatever."

"Don't be mad. Be proud."

"Just shut up, okay. I'm hot. Let's get a snow cone."

"Sure, Aidan." He reaches over to put his arm around my shoulder, but I push him away. Then, he brushes his hand across my cheek, pausing for an instant to touch my lips, and says, in a whisper that echoes in my soul like the Hallelujah chorus: "I love you, asshole."

XXVI

Paranoia sets in on the bus ride back to the motel. Everybody's looking at us like we're escaped convicts or multiple amputees. An enormous black woman with a DKNY bag stares a hole in me, and when I smile to signal we're okay, really, just headed back from the track, she shakes her head as if to tell me: "I know what you up to, boy, and I don't like it one bit, no sir." A Latino man pulls his little girls closer to him. I wonder if I've stepped in dog shit or if a crusty booger's hanging from my nostril. Then I get it. Billy's dozing in the window seat, oblivious to the whole awkward scene, his left hand planted squarely on my crotch. I must be too exhausted to notice and too crazy to care.

Evening in a strange city doesn't hold many options for boys on the run. Back in the Glade, the cool kids would be tapping kegs by the pool. The nerds would be gathering in somebody's basement to play Halo. Cassandra Mitchell would be lying in wait until her mother passed out, ready to hop into some senior's Viper, her fake ID the ticket to a wonderland of clubs. Privilege has its luxuries, chief among them that nothing much ever goes wrong.

But ten o'clock in downtown Louisville is another story. The only action is in the shadows. Grotesque shapes peer out at us from the alleyways. The silence is punctuated by muffled laughter and bottles smashing into asphalt. I think about crossing through Memorial Park, but the little boy inside my head tells me there are monsters in the bushes.

"Let's go back," Billy says.

"Yeah. There's not much going on here."

Two blocks from the Shedrow, I hear footsteps keeping pace behind us. Then a voice.

"You shouldn't be out here, fellas. Bad hombres, homes. Everywhere." It's Mr. Ubiquitous, and I wonder how long he's been tailing us.

"I know, Kenny. We're headed back. No party here."

"Well, you're definitely wrong about that, my man. But the parties aren't for you. Nothing but trouble this way."

"Thanks for looking out for us, really. And thanks for the extra cash."

"You earned it. That was fucking unbelievable."

I don't know what to say to that, and Billy, I'm learning, withdraws like a sea turtle at the first sign of a shark, paralyzed and mute. Kenny's cool with it, though. He must be used to protracted silences. The glow from a nearby streetlamp etches canyons on his cowboy face.

"There's more if you want it, Anthony. Bobby, too. Y'all are naturals, true performers."

What good would it do to tell him it wasn't a performance? What the camera caught was real, mysterious, unique - love in flight. A blind man could have seen that. "Not really. Beginners luck."

"I'm not an idiot, Anthony - or whatever your name is. I know what I know, and what I know is boys fucking. I'm a goddamn PhD in that department." For the first time I hear something like menace in his smoky Kentucky drawl. "You guys love each other. You might as well be wearing a sign. We don't get a lot of that at the shop, trust me. It's okay, homes. It really is. Fuck, it's better than okay. It's bee-you-tee-ful."

"You don't know," I say. "You don't know."

"Whatever you say, kid. I make porn. You make love. I don't judge, except that y'all did what you did better than the pros. Vernon rushed the unedited clip to BeauTown. They were all over it, like they struck fuckin' oil in the parking lot. That's got to get you psyched."

Billy tugs at me. He's not going to make it much longer. "I don't think so, Kenny."

"One more shoot, that's all we're lookin' for. You tell us when. We'll make it right. I'm talking two grand - professional wages. We'll put together a little script, shoot outdoors, maybe. Hell, I know boys who'll work it out for fifty and a nickel bag."

"I'm really tired. Me and Bobby need to sleep."

"Sleep, then. I'm not stoppin' you. I'm the good guy, remember. Trust me."

We make our move to the motel. Kenny keeps pace.

"I'm not queer, Anthony, whatever you think. Not that that matters. But I don't think there's a man on this planet wouldn't ditch his bitch to spend an hour with y'all. And the great thing is, you don't even know it. You don't have half a clue. That's fucking amazing. Later, homes."

Kenny disappears into the night. He'll be back, I tell myself, like a serpent to the garden.

XXVII

Billy's watching "Beaver" reruns on Nick at Nite. He hasn't said more than three words since we locked the door behind us. Mayfield's a fascinating place, I'm sure, but I suspect at the moment he's more drawn to the simple chiaroscuro of the screen, to a life without nuance and color.

I'm watching Billy watching Beaver, or more specifically, I'm staring at his beautiful backside, tracing and retracing the line of his spine, marveling at all the muscle contours, the traps, the delts, the glutes, understanding in a flash what Praxiteles was after when he shaped young Apollo, knowing what Michelangelo must have known when he finally chiseled the crack in David's ass.

"Miss Landers is pretty hot," I venture.

"She's pretty. Not hot. There's a difference, you know."

"Yeah, I suppose there is."

"That Art teacher at Whitman, Ms. Duchesne? She's pretty hot, right? But she's not pretty. You'd probably hook up with Ms. Duchesne, but you wouldn't marry her. You'd marry Miss Landers."

"Probably not, Billy. She's way too old for me."

"You know what I mean."

"What about Wally?"

"What about him?"

"Do you think he's hot?"

"What a stupid question, Aidan. He's just a dumb T.V. kid."

"I mean, if there really was a Wally, would he be your type?"

"Goddamn, Aidan. You're fucking up the show."

"Sorry. I'll shut up."

"Good idea. And for the record, I don't think about Wally that way. Or Zach on "Saved by the Bell." Or Malcolm, or Reese, or the little motherfucker with the pointy ears."

"Dewey."

"Dewey. Whatever. They're not hot. They're kids. You shouldn't think about them that way."

"We're kids."

"Oh, man. Why did you have to say that, Aidan? Why are you asking me all these ridiculous questions, anyway?"

"I'm sorry, Billy."

"Yeah, you're sorry."

He knows he's hurting me, but I guess I deserve it. I've brought him here, after all, to this promontory at childhood's end. He isn't quite ready yet, he's trying to tell me. He wants to spend an hour with little boys and pretty schoolteachers, and goddamn it, he doesn't want to fuck them for all the money in Texas.

When I get up to pee, the red digits of the alarm say 7:30. Billy's still out for the count, his deep, regular breathing accented by a comical fanfare of snorts and pops. Eight hours of sleep, and I feel much better, definitively alive and kicking. I brush my teeth and rinse the night out. I stare into the mirror and I recognize the face, the one, since Billy, I've grown to appreciate

I run a hot shower. I've never been a singer - modesty gets in the way - but under the pulsing spray, I find myself lip-synching to the Shins, the last CD I bought in my former life:

But I learned fast how to keep my head up 'cause I

Know there is this side of me that

Wants to grab the yoke from the pilot and just

Fly the whole mess into the sea.

That's it, I tell myself. It's not a death wish, exactly. It's not even tragic. I just want to live with my heart in my throat, with every possible synapse firing. The slackers and the anarchists, the mall kids and the Asian math geeks, they hate being alive. They find it all too boring. Me, I just want to make room for everything, for the fear and the glory and the caress, for the feast of sensation my imagination has prepared. I want to live like a car bomb on the highway. I want to explode.

I've talked myself hard. Nerves strain to pop through skin. I'm electricity in the flesh. The impulses arrive in waves. I could cum without touching, just close my eyes and lick my lips and picture Billy laughing underneath me. My dick is magnificent now, not a big and clumsy peasant. I'm beautiful, not a freak. I love the way the red dome has pushed its way through the collar of white skin. I love the bubble of pre-cum oozing from the slit. I dab at it with my index finger, and pull the sticky string towards my mouth. It tastes like okra dipped in chlorine - manna for the earthbound.

Shut up, Aidan. No más. I don't want to cheat on my boy, asleep in the other room. So I step out of the tub, dry off, smile at my reflection in the steamy mirror, and saunter out to rejoin my destiny.

"You smell good," he says, propped up on his elbow, his eyes drinking in the spectacle. I make a move to join him under the covers. "No, Aidan. Just stand there a sec." If I weren't already naked, I'd say he was undressing me with his morning eyes. "God, you're so fucking skinny."

"Gee. Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Shut up and let me finish. You're so fucking skinny," and I swear he's starting to tear up, "and you're like the strongest guy I've ever known. It doesn't make sense, but I think you could carry me to California and drop me in the ocean."

"You want to go to California?"

"It's a metaphor, goddamn it. But if you'll carry me, I'll go wherever you take me."

"Look at me carefully, Billy. You could break me with a sigh. You could kill me just by turning away."

"No. You're wrong. It's the other way around. I'm nothing at all without your skinny ass. "

"I think you've just defined love, Billy."

"How 'bout that. I guess I have."

We just cuddle and kiss for the next hour, Catholic boys kicking it around outside the rectory, back in Mayfield for a visit. Billy tells me funny stories about his big brother, how he can't bench press without farting, how he wrote this paper for History class on "Manifest Density." He does these uncanny impersonations of Mr. Whitecross, the principal, a dead-ringer for Dick Cheney, and Ms. Benjamin, the failed poet who reeks of cigarettes and Shalimar. "The passive voice will destroy you, dahlinks! Excise those linking verbs." He tries to explain why Val Kilmer was the only good Batman, not Clooney or Michael Keaton. He takes me inside the Whitman locker room, a shrine as off-limits to my kind as the holy mosque in Mecca, tells me which guys really get some and which guys just talk big, which guys snap towels and which linger in the shower just a little longer than they should. He whispers - though nobody will ever know but me - that his Uncle Paul, the one who died when his plane crashed into the Pentagon, touched him while they shared a tent on a camping trip. "I liked it, I can't lie," he says. "I was eight, but I should have known something." And he admits, though I think I knew it all along, that he was a virgin until that night in the shelter. "Ashleigh Gaines jerked me off behind the pool-house at the Epstein's - but I came all over her hand in about 20 seconds. She was so grossed out. I don't think that counts."

I'm drinking it all in, dazzled by the arc of my friend's history. He's always lived on the surface of things, his joys and sorrows measured in snapshots and sound bites. Being with me is rubbing off, I think. He's learning that every sensation he once took for granted as something separate and discrete is in fact part of some larger conspiracy of memory, part of why we are who we are. And, if I had to guess, the boy he's discovered living at the bottom of his heart is not at all who he thought he was. He's much more beautiful in every way, and like me, this truth astonishes him.

"Let's go for it, Aidan," he whispers, nibbling at my earlobe.

"Okay, sounds good," I say, wrapping my leg over his thigh.

"Not that, stupid," he says, pushing me off.

"I thought the nibble thing was foreplay," I tell him. "Doh!"

"I want to go for it. Let's take up Kenny's offer. Let's make a movie they'll never forget."

"Billy, we already did that. And it didn't make you happy."

"I think it just took a while to sink in. What did Vernon say? 'Fuckin' amazing'?"

"And it was. But it's amazing when it's just you and me and a bed."

"I want it, Aidan."

"We're okay with cash, you know. We can go anywhere with what we've got."

"It's not the cash." He looks straight at me with big blue cherub eyes and a grin that would stop wars. "I have a theory."

It's not what I expected to hear, but Billy's full of surprises this morning. "What's your theory, sweet prince?"

"I don't know if there's a word for it. That's your department. Last night I was watching "Leave it to Beaver" and you pretty much fucked up my train of thought."

"I said I was sorry. And you agreed."

"I was being shitty, I know. I was just trying to think."

"Dangerous, Billy. Trust me."

He takes a deep breath. The theory's coming. I'm powerless to stop it. "I love Beaver Cleaver. Love him. Why? Because he's on T.V. every night, even though the world he lived in never existed, and even if it did, it died a long time ago. Whenever I want, I can find him. Eddie is always a jerk, and Ward is patient, and June bakes and smiles, and Miss Landers is always pretty. It's, like, permanent."

"Grecian Urn," I mumble,

"What?"

"Go ahead. I'm not going anywhere."

"Beaver's always 12. He's frozen forever in these little episodes. He's never in high school. He never gets laid. He never really loses. He never dies."

"Holden Caulfield," I whisper, but I know that for Billy, this is all new, a genuine epiphany.

"Yeah, that's right. You see, Aidan, we don't know where we're going. We don't know if two weeks from now we'll be in California or Chicago. Or dead." A cloud passes through the room, but it's gone as quickly as it came.

"I know it's just a porn. I know it's cheap and exploiting, or whatever the fuck the word is. I know some nasty old dudes will be jacking off to us. And believe, me, I know better than you where Kenny's coming from in all this."

"So why, Billy? Why? Why sell what we've got?"

"So forty years from now when we're all wrinkly and gross we can watch ourselves when it was absolutely perfect. And only we can ever know how perfect it really was. Like Beaver knows."

I don't know what to say. Billy's theory negates all logic, but suddenly, logic doesn't mean all that much.

"Of course, we never do it again. That would ruin things. We'd just be sluts, boy ho's. I want it like we're this monster rock band that plays only one concert, then retires forever. Only ten thousand people in the world can say they ever saw them live. So we do it, and we put our love forever in a microchip."

I'm still speechless, still wondering where all this came from.

"So? What do you think?"

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"Let's go for it."

"I knew you'd get it, Aidan."

"Sure. I always get it eventually."

He pulls me close for a second, embraces me chastely, then hops out of bed and into the bathroom, my foster child of silence and slow time.

XXVIII

Vernon greets us at the door of the studio, slaps us on the back like old Army buddies. He leads us through a maze of offices and storage areas to a large sunken room in the back. There, he introduces us to Marco and C.J., BeauTown technicians. Handshakes all around. We're given Cokes and told to make ourselves at home. It's hard to imagine any place on earth less like home. Billy picks up a bag of weed, all bud, from the coffee table. He puts it back down, and goes instead for the Peanut M & M's. I pick up a catalogue of BT products, then think better of it when I see what the jarhead on the cover has in his hands.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, watching Marco and C.J. fiddle with equipment. One camera's on a dolly. Another three-headed hydra hangs precariously from a swag hook in the ceiling. This is clearly Action Central. The room is immaculate and well appointed, but it hums with sex, the air-conditioning and Ozium not quite masking the scent of those who came before. If these walls could talk, I say to myself, then realize with all the hardware installed, they probably can.

A man who looks distressingly like my Dad takes a seat across from Billy and me. He mutters an unintelligible greeting, riffles through a bunch of official-looking papers, and says, monosyllabically, "Waivers. Disclaimers. Proof of age. Medical consent. Sign at the bottom. Initials everywhere else." The man obviously hates verbs. "Procedure. Standard. No fine print."

Billy looks over at me and shrugs. He grabs the papers and starts signing, then passes them on to me. Theodore Cleaver, he's written. I sign John Keats. When the man checks the signatures, he actually laughs. Maybe he's a fan of the English Romantics.

We're left alone again for a few minutes. It's a lot like going to the dentist, so far, without the menacing drills buzzing in the back room. That Billy's working on his game face doesn't make it any more pleasant.

Finally, a tall, angular man with a gray handlebar mustache comes in. He's got a clipboard like a basketball coach, and he's got presence. If I didn't know better, I'd say he's someone famous. His smile is as wide as the Ohio River. His handshake is firm and dry.

"Manley Pointer," he says. "And that's not a stage name. Which one of you is the Beaver?"

Billy says sheepishly, "That would be I."

"So you must be Mr. Keats," he says to me. "Love what you wrote about Beauty and Truth. There's a screenplay in that. So, fellas, I understand from Kenny you'll be working for us. Welcome to BeauTown."

"Thank you, Mr. Pointer," says Billy.

"Manley works fine."

"Are you the director?" I ask.

"Well, since you ask: Yes. I'm the director. And the writer. And when Vernon visits his grandkids, I'm the cameraman. And once or twice in another lifetime, I did what you fellas are about to do. I did straight stuff, mostly - "Crack of Dawn" was the best - but I had much more fun with the boys." He chuckles at the memory. "Just so you're at ease, I'm resigned to being an old faggot. My stud-pony days are over."

He puts his hand on my bare knee and lets it linger there for a few awkward seconds. I like him, just the same.

Billy must be feeling more comfortable, too, because he asks with startling candor, "What are me and Aidan going to be doing?"

"Well, I've, uh, seen your talents. I'm going to try to, uh, build a story around 'em."

"What kind of story, Manley?"

"Just a frame, my boy. We'll improvise around it. No lines to learn, if that's what's troubling you."

"No. I'm just kinda curious. Me and Aidan are new at this."

"That's fantastic, Theodore - "

"Billy."

"Billy. Ou sont les neiges d'antan?"

"What?"

"Nothing. Just an expression. I knew a Billy once. Not nearly as pretty."

"Where are the snows of yesteryear? Francois Villon." I interject, regretting it almost immediately. "Sorry. I'm always playing Jeopardy."

"Not at all. Let's just say, my actors aren't usually so widely read. But what they lack in depth, they make up in length." He's laughing broadly again, and I can't help it, I really like him, this man who's in charge of my immortality.

Billy's getting restless, drumming Chopsticks on the coffee table. I'm sensing all these allusions are kind of dampening his enthusiasm for the project.

"Manley, we're really new to this. It's not easy."

"It's never easy, laddie. Even for the ambitious airheads in the company stable. Hell, most of them aren't even gay. They're just broke and willing. We did a shoot the other day with this African-American gentleman, goes by Booker Ten, and it took the fluffer 20 minutes to prepare him for the first scene. I was more embarrassed than he was. The story in his eyes had nothing to do with fucking."

"What's a fluffer, Manley?" Billy wants to know.

"Guy gets you going, boy. Jacks you or sucks you 'til you're hard. Paid by the hour. Not too sexy, huh?"

"Oh," is all my boy can think to say.

"We don't need fluffers. I promise." I sound braver than I feel.

"Of course not. Of course not." And again he withdraws for a second, trying to remember a time before fluffers. "Look, I really don't want to sabotage my business. But you guys aren't what I expected."

"Mr. Pointer, we're good. Really. You saw how we did it. Kenny told us." Billy's mind is made up that we're going through with this. Theory into practice.

"Oh no, Billy. You've misunderstood. I'm just trying to give you the chance to back out. No hard feelings from the boss - and no more visits from Kenny."

"No. We're here. We want it."

Manley looks at me for confirmation. "Aidan?"

"Yes. Let's do it. Let's give 'em something to talk about." I can't believe how stupid I must sound.

"Okay. Okay. But it's not going to be a blaze of glory. There's, uh, stages in the process. But I think you can count on one thing. I'm going to do everything I can to make it good for you. Shit, you've got me sounding like a schoolteacher. We can't have that."

I thought the "stages" were over when we signed the papers. Not quite. Manley ushers us into a waiting room, complete with vending machine and TV monitor, then disappears with his clipboard into one of the offices. Billy's watching trailers for BeauTown productions. He's checking out the competition. I'm trying not to watch - and failing miserably. They're showing scenes from "Blasts from the Past: American Dude Ranch" - not one of Mr. Pointer's, unless he's uncredited. The guys are all buff. They wear tight '80's-style Levi's when they're standing by the corral, and Speedos when they're by the pool. Apparently, if I understand the plot, a wealthy gay rancher has employed all these cowboys to tame the wild mustangs he's brought in from the surrounding hills. The mustangs look like the lead ponies Billy and I saw at Churchill, and the cowboys all have perfect teeth and talk like Management students at U.K.

When the mustangs are asleep the place really comes alive. The cowboys, fresh from the sauna (this is one of those gay ranches with all the accoutrements), turn into wild horses - an irony even Billy can appreciate. Before you can say "howdy pardner," these untamed desperadoes start going at it in a big way. Images of the mustangs bucking against the sun are spliced into multi-angled shots of the men going wild. The actors are all hard as rocks. The screen swirls with deadly close-ups of dicks being engulfed and buttholes being domesticated and sperm flying into the firelight (it's summer, but there's definitely a fire).

"Oh shit, Aidan," Billy says. "Mr. Pointer was right. We're not what they expected."

"That's not us, true dat. So, we outta here, mon?"

"No. Mr. Pointer won't do that to us."

"I hope not. Did you see that guy with the tattoo on his dick?"

"Yeah. What's with that?"

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Billy."

"We're in Kentucky, stupid."

"Yeah. I get them confused." And then I'm thinking about April in the Glade, about a time in my life when I cried every afternoon and the big freestanding mirror in my bedroom recorded a tragedy in the making. And I'm thinking back to that night in the shelter, when, with nothing at all in my heart except a need to be held, Billy rescued me. And I tell myself, watching the dudes of the Eight-the-Hard-Way Ranch decorate each other with bodily fluids, that I still want nothing more than to be held by someone who loves me. Jesus turned water into wine. Pretty good, but just a special effect. Loving Billy, loving me - now that's a miracle.