Devotion.

Levinson, David Samuel

On this hot August afternoon, Dale and Charlie float around the pool, the air a heated vapor of slow confessions and the occasional pang of remorse. Everything's melting--the ice in Dale's glass, his patience for Charlie's whining, even his own resolve to stay away from Angus. Dale's left Angus again, but this time it's different, he says. This time, I'm done.

"Sure you are," Charlie says, the alcohol lengthening and softening her words. She's a Texas girl, straight out of the Panhandle, Miss Teen Abilene, way back when. She's still a beauty, even with the extra twenty years and thirty pounds on her. Dale's not much different. Years of marriage have made him thick around the middle, but his face is just as handsome in that aging frat boy kind of way.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later," she says, as his cell phone buzzes and he lets the call go. "Reggie again? My God, he's persistent," she says, her lounger bumping against his. She pushes off, but not before tickling Dale's foot.

Jumping and spilling his drink, he says, "Next time, let's fill the whole pool with ice, sugar, vodka and lemonade. A sea of lemon drops. How about it?"

"A marvelous idea," she says, though he knows he might as well have said, "Let's castrate our spouses and move to Paris," and she would've said the same thing. She's adrift, wandering, it seems, through the house of her daydreams.

He wonders if they have to do with Eli, a former student who came back to find her, or with Wyatt, her husband, his return a few days ago from L.A.

"But how can Angus go from me to him?" Dale asks, pouring another lemon drop from the pitcher that sits on the lip of the pool. "A coffee jockey who's still living at home with his parents?" He pauses and waits for Charlie, who doesn't respond. "No need to jump right in and make me feel better," he says.

"You already know how I feel," she says, as a mosquito lands on the white of her throat. "Austin's full of attractive, successful men who don't come home with fish guts all over their hands and clothes."

Dale flinches at these words. She's right, of course. Funny how our friends always are, he thinks. When he introduced Charlie, his best friend, to Angus, his lover, she behaved with couth and grace, yet her couth and grace, Dale knew, belied what she really felt. "I won't say a thing," she said, "because what if you end up together? You'll just use what I say against me." She was right about this as well. He would've used any insult about Angus against her.

"These damn mosquitoes," he says, as he smashes one on his thigh, leaving a bloody smear. "Spray?"

"On the counter," she says and then he's up and out of the pool.

In the house, he finds the can of spray next to the phone. For a few days, Angus tried him on his cell and when Dale refused to answer, Angus called the house. Now, neither phone rings.

It's been two weeks and he wants to talk to Angus, to hear the surprise and regret in his voice. You blindsided me, Dale would've said, thinking of Angus's request. He picks up the receiver, then slams it down and heads outside, forgetting the spray entirely.

Dale finds Charlie at the fence draped in a towel, staring at the rotten planks and posts, which she's asked Wyatt to fix every day since he's been back.

"It's about to fall over," she says. "It's on our property, so it's our responsibility," and it seems she's crying, though when she turns, her face is dry. "How many times am I going to have to ask him?"

"He's preoccupied," Dale says, because he likes Wyatt, even though he doesn't approve of what Wyatt's done--quitting his job at the law firm. There's nothing wrong with switching careers, going from a steady life of law to an unsteady life of acting, but to Dale it just seems selfish and mean.

Suddenly, Al Green floats through the open windows and Dale knows that Wyatt's back, that he's picked up where he left off the previous night--reordering his movie collection. Wyatt arranges the dvds alphabetically, titles facing out. When he's done with this, he'll go from room to room, readjusting bathroom shelves, organizing the pantry, the kitchen spices. Things he does in lieu of real work.

The evenings for Dale are hardest and as twilight falls, his spirits fall as well. Watching his best friend and her husband together, Dale is reminded of Angus, the similarities and differences of shared, fulfilled lives. At least Dale thought they were shared and fulfilled, until Angus came home with the coffee jockey. "I've been thinking," he said, "about the future." The future, it seemed to Angus, had the face and body of a twenty-three-year-old.

In the house, Al Green fades into silence as Wyatt takes up where the crooner leaves off. His voice is good, Dale thinks, his singing deep and rich. "Who knew a man who graduated from Yale Law had it in him? I certainly didn't know," Charlie had said. "I didn't marry him for his voice, but because he was an ambitious corporate attorney."

Yes, whom we end up with speaks volumes, Dale thinks, pausing at the guest room, an office that houses a day bed, Wyatt's movie archive and Charlie's diplomas.

"Dinner tonight?" Wyatt asks, looking up from the assortment of dvds at his feet. "Indian? Chinese? Tex-Mex? You name it," he says, his curly blond hair longer and lighter than it was before he left for L.A.

Dale studies his collection--every Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, everything Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Otto Preminger ever made.

"You guys go. I don't have much of an appetite," he says, reaching out to correct one of Wyatt's mistakes, On the Waterfront, which he had put in upside down.

"We'll bring you back something," he says, but, like every other time they go out to dinner and bring back food, the container will sit in the fridge uneaten until Dale throws it away.

"Don't waste your money," he says.

"A man has to eat," Wyatt says.

Not this man, Dale thinks, slinking into the bathroom and away from Wyatt's good intentions.

While they are at dinner, Dale jogs down South Congress, the capitol's pink granite cupola lit up and glowing in the distance. Back at the house, he showers and then calls Reggie Devine at Little Gray Cells, the production company in L.A. that bought the rights to Dale's biography of King Henry the Eighth. "I see it as a miniseries," Reggie said, when they first spoke on the phone a few months earlier. "We're working in conjunction with the BBC. It ought to blow that crappy hbo show out of the pond!"

It's six o'clock in L.A. When Reggie says hello, Dale imagines a mild evening of cool desert breezes, the air dry and chilly. He hears what sounds like the roar of water in the background and pictures Reggie at the beach.

"No, no, I'm on the 'four or five hours'--the 405," he says, "so now's a perfect time to talk. I ought to be here for days," and laughs good-naturedly.

"You called. Is there a problem?"

"Right," Reggie says. "It's about the script," and puts him on hold to take another call. When he returns, he tells Dale about the scriptwriter, his nervous breakdown. "We were thinking you might want to try your hand at it. Adaptations are rough, but nothing like this traffic." He laughs again. "If you want, you can come out and stay at my place," he says. "Plenty of room. I know how you writers like your privacy."

Yes, Dale thinks. But these days he has far too much privacy. He misses Angus all of a sudden, the sound of the tv while he wrote, the intrusions and distractions that gave his life meaning. All that tension worked out on the page and in the bedroom. They rarely if ever fought because they knew what they were doing with each other.

"Let me think about it," Dale says and hangs up, just as the doorbell chimes.

His heart gunning, he thinks it must be Angus, who's relented and given up on Hank. But when Dale opens the door, it isn't Angus at all.

The young delivery man says, "Flowers for Dale," his voice slow and deep, pure country, entirely unlike Angus's nasally Midwestern drawl. He holds a bouquet of sweet-smelling hyacinths. Dale signs for the flowers and then tips Elijah, his name stenciled in red on his pocket. Then, alone with Angus's heartfelt attempt at reconciliation, Dale looks for a card to make sure, but there's no card.

He puts the flowers in water, the pull to hear Angus's voice overwhelming. He eyes the phone, picks it up, puts it down, and decides to call in the morning, before Angus leaves for work. He carries the flowers into the guest room, inhaling the scent and, he imagines, what will be a new future with a man he hasn't yet (or ever) stopped loving.

Early the next morning, Dale calls Angus, but the line just rings and he ends up leaving a message. "Thank you for the flowers," he says. "I love you."

Even as he hangs up, he regrets falling back into this pattern of forgiveness. Flowers are a cheap way out, he thinks as Charlie wanders into the kitchen without looking at him.

Her face drawn and the skin beneath her eyes puffy and wrinkled, it's clear to Dale she's been up most of the night. He wonders if her insomnia has to do with what she told him yesterday, about the affair she's been having with Eli.

"Reggie called us last night right in the middle of dinner," she says. "'It's not that you weren't terrific, but we gave the part to someone else.' Like this was any big surprise, but still you could've at least warned Wyatt." Before Wyatt left for L.A. to take an acting class from a famous retired actress, he cornered Dale and begged for an audition: the part of young Henry, the lead. "What kind of man gives up partner at the best law firm in Austin to chase some childhood dream? If he doesn't know who he is anymore then how am I supposed to know who I am?" Charlie asks.

At least your husband's midlife crisis makes some sense, Dale thinks, but he says, "You're Charlene Baxter, Miss Teen Abilene, and don't you ever forget it."

"Sometimes, for fun, I like to imagine where I'd be if my mother hadn't gotten sick and I hadn't had to pull out of Miss Teen World."

"And sometimes, for fun, you like to torture yourself," he says.

"Do not go gentle into that good night and all that," she says. "But, really, fuck Dylan Thomas and the horse he rode in on."

Wyatt appears in his slippers, his hair flattened to his head. In the light, Dale sees the fine lines around his eyes, the gut pushing at the buttons of his pajamas. He's not a bad looking man, but life as a lawyer has slowed him down, made him stooped and doughy.

Dale hopes for Charlie's sake that his interest in acting passes quickly and effortlessly, like a twenty-four-hour bug. Wyatt pours himself a cup of coffee, then goes to sit under the catalpa tree.

"And that, my friend, was my husband, Wyatt Baxter, who spent five thousand dollars on an acting class and another five thousand dollars on hotels and dinners and cars in L.A. I wonder--do you think he has any pride left? Shall we go interview him and find out?"

Dale doesn't like when Charlie talks like this, less when she turns her bitterness on Angus, which she does these days. He wants to tell her she needs to ride this out as she's ridden out everything else--living in Wyatt's tiny apartment in Far West, the nights and days and nights she never saw him that first year of marriage, all the debt he accumulated during and after Yale. He wants to tell her that if she loves him she'll let this lie still, that she won't allow the feelings she has at the moment erode the feelings she had then, when they were all younger and full of hope.

"Angus sent me flowers. I guess he wants a rapprochement."

"Did he say that, 'rapprochement'?" she asks.

"Charlie," he says. "Be nice."

"I will not be nice," she says, dumping out her coffee. "I will not. You're being treated badly, Dale." She washes the coffee down the drain, stacks the cup. "It's just hard for me to see you take as much as you do and deserve so much more and keep going back to Angus who deserves so much less."

"I could say the same for--"

"No, you can't," she says and walks to the fridge. Opening it, she says, "Now, do you want eggs and bacon before you and Wyatt go to Home Depot?"

"I'm fine," he says, eyeing her, wondering if, the moment they drive off, Eli will arrive. He doesn't like playing the accomplice, this role she's imposed on him, but even that doesn't come close to his true dislike of being forced out of the house with Wyatt.

As Charlie cracks the eggs and fries the bacon, Dale goes to talk to Wyatt, a wonderful distraction while he waits for Angus to call back.

In the truck, Dale says, "I'm sorry about the audition. There'll be others."

"No big deal," Wyatt says, but Dale knows it is. "I just have to work on my craft. Marlon Brando wasn't built in a day. Some people find their true passions later in life. I'm okay with this."

And to Dale he sounds okay with it, though this still doesn't explain how well he's taking the rejection. He thinks of Reggie, his invitation to stay with him, imagining what it might be like to leave Austin, and Angus, behind.

Whenever he gets off the phone with Reggie, Dale is infused with a startling lightness, a tingle that electrifies the whole of him. He likes how Reggie makes him feel, and wonders if the other man feels the same. On occasion, Dale finds himself flirting, wondering if the compliments Reggie gives him are more than that.

At Home Depot, less than ten minutes from Dale and Angus's house, they head to the back of the store. As Wyatt buys the lumber, Dale wanders through the store like a revenant, missing Angus more than ever. The fact that Angus hasn't called back worries and angers him. If he wants a rapprochement, he's certainly taking his own sweet time. But Angus, he knows, is nothing if not thoroughly pragmatic and won't call unless he's chosen his every word with care. Dale pictures him writing down his thoughts, struggling to get the sentiment just right. It's a pleasant image and one that Dale holds onto as he goes to find Wyatt, who's talking to a woman with a too-tan face, her cleavage equally tan and leathery. Dale remembers the woman--she lives behind Charlie and Wyatt--and the morning she and Charlie had words. Shouting, really, that woke Dale up from a deep sleep. Dale doesn't like her, because of the way she leans into Wyatt, exposing her cleavage, or the way she made Charlie cry. He idles at the edge until she walks away.

"We have a prowler," Wyatt says. "My neighbor just told me she's seen this kid sneaking through our backyard. Has Charlie mentioned it to you? She never said a thing on the phone. I would've come home sooner."

And he would've, Dale thinks. He would've gotten on the next plane and been back to make sure Charlie was safe, patrolling the yard and house. Dale bites his tongue against telling Wyatt there isn't any prowler. That since he's known Charlie--she and Dale met twenty years ago in an English class at UT--she's always had a little on the side. Dale thought at one time marrying Wyatt might slow her down, but it hasn't. Rather, it's only intensified her yearning. Where Dale's union with Angus helped solidify his molten core, Charlie's life with Wyatt has done the opposite. Even with the beautiful house, the new cars, the expensive vacations to Paris, even with a man as devoted to her as Wyatt, Charlie has not lost her restlessness or desire for more. But what more is there? Dale thinks. What more can Wyatt give her?

After the lumber has been loaded into the truck and they're on their way, Wyatt asks Dale if he minds stopping at Kerbey Lane to pick up some lunch. Once there, he runs in and places the order. He seems despondent and sullen to Dale, who wonders if rejection has finally settled in. There might be other parts, but Dale's not unconvinced they won't be with some local theater troupe or in community theater.

At the truck, Dale says, "Maybe I can talk to the producer and get you some screen time. What do you say to that?"

Wyatt beams, his face brightening. "You'd do that for me?" he asks.

"If I had more cache, you would've already been rehearsing the part of Henry," Dale says.

At this, he pulls Dale close and hugs him, his smell in Dale's nose reminiscent of Angus's, the sour crush of deodorant, the sweat beneath. In that moment, with Wyatt's arms around him, Dale finally understands--Angus didn't send the flowers and he isn't calling back.

"Then who sent them?" Dale asks Charlie later, after he's helped Wyatt with the lumber.

As hot as yesterday, if not hotter, they're back in the pool, listing around. A gentle breeze blows him into Charlie, who says, "I don't know, but I for one am relieved it wasn't Angus. He needs to leave you alone and you need to sort out your feelings without any complications from him."

"Flowers aren't complicated," Dale says. "They're thoughtful."

"My point exactly," she says, pushing off.

"You can be such a cold-blooded reptile, sometimes," he says.

She laughs. "If I stay out here much longer, I'm not going to have any skin left to shed," she says, applying a fresh coat of suntan oil. In a few days, summer will shut down and school will be back in session. He knows she's looking forward to this, when she can leave Wyatt to his domestic idling and dreams of stardom.

The phone in the house rings and then Wyatt's on the patio, his hand over the receiver, saying, "Dale, it's for you."

Charlie drifts to the far corner of the pool, but Dale knows that behind her sunglasses she's watching him with disapproving eyes. Don't do it, her face says. Don't get caught up again. But Dale has never been able to refuse Angus. From the moment they met at Whole Foods over the fish, Dale's been smitten. It's as pleasant and satisfying a sensation he knows, this uxorious feeling, to know he belongs to someone.

Wyatt hands him the phone and mouths Good luck, then goes back into the house.

"Angus, thank you again for the--"

"Dale, it's Hank," Hank says, and Dale flinches. "Look, I know this is last minute, but we want to have you over for dinner. We're grilling some swordfish. It'll be fun."

We, Dale thinks. When did we happen? "Tonight, if you're around. Dale, are you there?"

Shocked and dismayed, Dale hangs up, and then lets go a terrific, involuntary laugh, his body shaking. There he is, a man of thirty-eight, having just gotten a call from his husband's lover inviting him over to dinner as if they were all the best of friends. Dale laughs and laughs, until tears stream down his face and Charlie is beside him, wrapping him in a towel and leading him out of the sun, saying nothing, saying it all with her silence.

The shock and dismay lingers, even after his second glass of wine, even after the three of them watch On The Waterfront, which Wyatt has seen a thousand times. He shouts out Brando's lines, to Dale's amusement and Charlie's seeming chagrin.

"Wyatt, enough," she says, but there's nothing harsh in her words. In fact, there's a new playfulness to them. Has she forgiven him? Dale wonders, thinking of Angus and Hank, the swordfish steaks from Whole Foods.

"I like the idea of being owned," he told Angus once, early on. And went on to say he wasn't into kink or anything like that, just plain, old-fashioned proprietorship. "It turns us on," he told Charlie later. "We understand each other."

As Wyatt and Charlie shut their eyes, Dale thinks, I want to understand you again, Angus. I want to understand why you're doing this. He leaves the sofa and the napping couple and goes to spiff up, wash his face and gel his hair. At the door, he glances back at Wyatt and Charlie stretched out on the sofa, curled up in each other.

He remembers last week when he found Charlie in the closet, running her hands up and down Wyatt's tailored suits and shirts. He never saw her so absorbed in her grief. He's not a bad man, Dale wanted to say. He's not going anywhere. But he didn't say anything. Instead, he crept out of the room. That same night, he heard the sound of a man's hushed moans, which were not Wyatt's. Though Dale never mentioned it, Charlie herself brought it up yesterday in the pool. It's been going on for months, she said.

At the door of the house, Dale knocks, expecting Angus, but Hank opens it and lets him in. "You came," he says, with jollity, his floppy black hair falling into his face. He's a good-looking boy, Dale decides again, looking over his lithe body and broad back. It's no wonder, he thinks, saying, "And Angus?"

"He's flipping the steaks," he says, offering Dale a drink. The paintings he and Angus collected over the years--during trips to Santa Fe, Rome, Mexico--are gone, replaced with black-and-white photos: barren landscapes, watery sunsets, icy mountain ranges. Ansel Adams derivatives, he thinks, as Hank returns with a glass of red wine and a Lone Star. "Angus said you like red wine," he says.

Dale smiles. "You took these photos," he says, sipping his wine.

"I'm getting my MFA in photography at U.T.," Hank says, just as Angus wanders in from outside.

The sight of him aches Dale to the bone and quickens his pulse.

"Angus," he says, but can't go on because, seeing him there, as Angus leans in to kiss Hank, Dale nearly loses his nerve and resolve. But I can do this, he thinks. I can do this.

"Dale," Angus says, leaning in to kiss him as well. "We made your favorite," yet all Dale can hear is what he's heard for the last two weeks, the replay of their last conversation, when Angus said, "I know in time you'll learn to like him. He's our future. Three is the magic number."

"Forget it. I'm not going to be part of a harem," Dale said.

Stunned as he was, it was the only thing he could say.

"Just think about it," he said. "He's a good kid. He likes doing chores. It'll free you up to write as much as you want. Hell, if this works out, we can even find you a writer of your own."

"This is not what we planned," Dale said, already heading for the door. "This is not how love is supposed to go." "Love?" Angus said. "What makes you think this is about love?"

Now, in the house in which he lived and struggled with Angus and grew from the boy he was into the man he became, who told stories of kings and queens, Dale says, "I'm moving to L.A." "No, you aren't," Angus says, his face more jowly than Dale remembers it, his body more burly. He's in a white t-shirt which shows off his round shoulders and hairy chest and it's all Dale can do not to run to him.

"You can't go," Hank says, taking a step toward Dale who shuts his eyes. "We're going to be a family," he says. "Angus, tell him. Tell him what you told me," and in that moment, as the words fly from Hank's fleshy, handsome lips, Dale balls his hand into a fist and strikes Hank in the face.

If there's blood or broken bones, Dale doesn't know, because he races out of the house, kneading his hand, which throbs. He's never hit another human being and the feelings that go through him are profound. My God, he thinks, sliding into the car, as Angus steps onto the porch.

"Dale," he hollers, but Dale is driving away. He takes one look back, like Lot's wife, but he is not frozen in time, a column of salt. Instead, the salt is warm and rushes from his eyes and nose into his mouth and he lets it run, wondering what comes next.

On his way to the house, Dale finds himself back at Kerbey Lane Cafe, where he and Charlie used to go as undergrads. Usually, they went there to study, to smoke and drink coffee and smoke some more. It was where Charlie taught him how to smoke, in fact. Eighteen at the time, Dale took his first drag, but didn't inhale. "No," she said. "It's not a pipe or cigar. You take the smoke into your lungs, but blow it out fast. Don't hold it in." He watched Charlie, the grace of her long fingers as they tapped the ash, the soft lips that closed around the filter and the line of smoke she let go of. She makes it look so easy, he thought. And she did, there in her vintage clothes that hugged her bones. Even then, a part of Dale wanted to be Charlie, who got away with everything because she was pretty and stately and had large breasts. A girl who liked only guys she could control.

As handsome as he was, Dale always ended up on the other side, the devoted wife, never the cheating husband. Over time, he grew used to the role and came to like it, the power and elegance in it. Love suited him.

Now, watching the couples come and go, Dale drives off. As he nears the house, he flexes his hand, staring at the cracked skin, the swollen knuckles. Around him, there's the lingering heat and engulfing silence of another twilight. Then, turning onto the street and parking, he sees something: a figure outside the bedroom window--a man, his large frame made all the larger in the falling shadows. When the man spots Dale, he rushes across the yard, but not before the front door opens and Wyatt steps into the yard.

Elijah, Dale thinks. Eli, he thinks, climbing out of the car. He moves toward Wyatt, even as Eli stops, confused about what to do, where to go. In his hands, he holds a bouquet of flowers, though in the dark Dale can't make out what kind.

"What's going on out here?" Wyatt asks. "Who is that?"

Dale wants to say, This is the boy with whom Charlie has been sleeping, the same boy to whom she once taught The Great Gatsby, Daisy Miller, Macbeth. Great works that should've taught her a lesson--that love makes fools out of us all.

Instead, Dale says, "He's just one of my students," but Wyatt seems to know better.

Eli looks down, away, then back up at Dale. His average face is smooth and his squared-off chin full of peach fuzz. His black hair looks shiny and clean and Dale imagines it smells of Charlie's shampoo, his skin of her soap. Eli drops the flowers and walks off as Dale looks for the white delivery van, but it's nowhere. He wonders then what Charlie must've said to him, if she told him what she told all the others: that she'd run away with him, that she loved him. He wonders if she also told him this might end badly, with her husband in the yard, growing more and more suspicious and disturbed. Dale looks at Wyatt, then at Eli, who's moving away, anger and disappointment in his face.

"That's the kid my neighbor told me about. The prowler," Wyatt says as the porch light flashes on and Charlie appears behind him. When she sees Eli, her face blanches and she takes a step forward, then one step back. Even then, Dale can feel her devotion; it heats up the already hot evening. She wants Eli, as she wanted Eric and Harvey and Robin and David and Brad before him, as she wanted and finally settled on Wyatt, who turns to Dale now and says, accusatorily, "I have to ask you this: Are you sneaking around with him? I mean, it's none of my business, but I like to know what's going on in my own house." He turns to Charlie. "Did you know about this?"

"You're right," Dale says, staring at Charlie. "It's none of your business," and he wanders to his car and climbs in.

But Wyatt the lawyer isn't quite done with him. "All this time," he says, "I thought you were different. I thought we understood each other. But you're just like every other depraved fag, aren't you? Taking advantage of a kid like that--well, it's morally repugnant." He pauses. "I think I speak for both of us when I say we'd like you to leave."

Dale expects Charlie to say something, anything, to tell Wyatt he's wrong, that if there's anyone who believes in the sanctity of marriage it's him. But she says nothing, lost again, it seems, to her daydreams.

Before Dale pulls away, he looks at Charlie one last time, Charlie, his best friend, who will come back out later to find Eli's flowers, which were never meant for Dale at all. Flowers for Charlie, he thinks, from her former student and seventeen-yearold lover. As he drives off, Charlie takes Wyatt's hand and leads him into the house. Later, in a day, a week, when Dale comes to get his things, she will tell him she's learning to be with Wyatt again, that Eli was just a stupid whim. She will gaze at the backyard and say, "Wyatt fixes things. He's always been good with his hands."

Up in the distance, Dale spots Eli sitting on a curb under a streetlight, curling and uncurling his fingers.

"Where's your van? Do you need a ride?" Dale asks.

Eli lifts his head, his brown eyes glassy slits, which makes Dale wonder if he's high. He should be high, he thinks. He should be young and punch-drunk in love. And from the look on Eli's face he is both of these things. He climbs into the car without a word and sits there, drumming his fingers in his lap.

Dale wants to tell him about a different night long ago when he visited Charlie in her dorm room. After he'd finally come out to her, she hugged him and said, "Everyone goes through phases. It might just be that. Like I went through last month when I thought I was a lesbian. I think we should sleep together so you can know for sure."

When she started to unbutton her blouse, he stopped her, thanked her and left. He thought that offering herself up to him like that was the kindest thing anyone had ever done. Now, he knows that, in typical Charlie fashion, she managed to make the most important discovery of his life all about her and her seduction.

As he drives and Eli sits there in silence, Dale thinks of Angus and Hank, this new configuration. He sees that Angus was right, that it has nothing at all to do with love. In a week or a year, Angus will tire of Hank and turn him into what he has always been. He will call Dale in L. A. and say, "He says things I don't get. He mentions the Golden Oldies, but he's talking about the 80s. He texts me messages and it takes me hours to figure them out. Have I gotten that old or is he just that young?"

Sometimes, Charlie will call and he'll listen to her go on and on, as he listened to Angus, and then he will say he has to go, that it was nice hearing from her. As always, Dale will think, and hang up. Then, the man he is seeing, perhaps Reggie, perhaps someone else entirely, will come into the bedroom and ask him who it was. And Dale, with all of the honesty he can muster and with all of his heart, will tell him, "No one. Just someone I used to know."