Page 21 of The Immortalists

6.

What’ll it be?” asks Simon.

He rummages around in the tiny pantry, which is really a closet on whose jutting beams they keep an assortment of nonperishables: boxed cereal, cans of soup, alcohol. “I can do a vodka tonic, Jack and Coke . . .”

October: brisk silver-gray days, pumpkins on Academy’s front steps. Someone put a men’s dance belt on a fake skeleton and propped it up in the reception area. Simon and Robert have hooked up at Academy—kissing in the men’s bathroom or the empty dressing room before class—but this is the first time Robert has come to Simon’s apartment.

Robert leans back in the turquoise armchair. “I don’t drink.”

“No?” Simon pokes his head out of the closet and grins, one hand on the door. “I know I’ve got some dope around here, if that’s your trip.”

“Don’t smoke, either. Not that stuff.”

“No vices?”

“No vices.”

“Except men,” Simon says.

A tree branch waves in front of the living room window, blocking the sun, and Robert’s face goes out like a lamp. “That’s not a vice.”

He gets up and brushes past Simon to the sink, where he pours himself a glass of water from the tap.

“Hey, man,” says Simon. “You’re the one who likes to keep this shit quiet.”

In class, Robert still warms up alone. Once, Beau saw Robert and Simon leaving the bathroom and whistled with both pinkies in his mouth, but when he asked Simon about it, Simon feigned innocence. He senses that Robert would disapprove of any disclosure, and his moments with Robert—Robert’s low, murmured laughter, his palms on Simon’s face—are too good to give up.

Now Robert leans against the sink. “Just because I don’t talk about it doesn’t mean I keep it quiet.”

“What’s the difference?” Simon puts his index fingers through Robert’s belt loops. He never dreamed he’d have the confidence to do such a thing, but San Francisco is a drug. Though he’s only been here five months, it feels like he’s aged by a decade.

“When I’m at the studio,” says Robert, “I’m at work. I stay quiet out of respect—for the workplace, and for you.”

Simon pulls him close, until their hips are pressed together. He puts his mouth to Robert’s ear. “Disrespect me.”

Robert laughs. “You don’t want that.”

“I do.” Simon unfastens Robert’s jeans and shoves his hand inside. He grabs Robert’s cock and pumps. They still haven’t had sex.

Robert steps back. “Come on, man. Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Cheap.”

“Fun,” Simon says, correcting him. “You’re hard.”

“So?”

“So?” repeats Simon. So everything, he wants to say. So please. But what comes out is different. “So fuck me like an animal.”

It’s something the Chronicle reporter once said to Simon. Robert looks as though he might laugh again, but then his mouth twists.

“What we’re doing here, you and me?” he says. “Ain’t nothing wrong with it. Nothing.”

Simon’s neck grows hot. “Yeah, I know that.”

Robert grabs his jacket from the back of the turquoise chair and slips it on. “Do you? Sometimes I really don’t know.”