Chapter One
First night—Wednesday
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you.
You must be he I was seeking.
—Walt Whitman
Dan drove down Victoria Terrace, scowling at the row of boring, ticky-tacky houses. How did the rest of that old song go? And they all looked just the same . But at least the houses in the lyrics were different colors—these were blank and beige. Their garages took up far too much of the facades for elegance, as if the designers had put more thought into sheltering automobiles than the humans who owned them. Dan had lived in this development for almost two months, and if he hadn’t rented a place on a corner lot, he would have had to check the house numbers to see which one was his.
He turned onto the ludicrously named Prince Albert Circle. That had to be a joke on the part of some developer or street planner. It was a circle, more or less, but there was nothing princely about the street or the seven identical buildings that huddled around its borders. It was very late in November. The sparse, scrawny trees were bare of leaves, and the grass had gone dormant. He’d come home early because it was the day before Thanksgiving, but the weak afternoon sun filtering through a few clouds did little to brighten the scene. The entire block was so colorless it could have been a sepia-toned photo.
Except for a second-floor window on the unit directly across from his. A rainbow flag hung there, its cheerful colors shouting a welcome reminder that the entire world was not beige and brown.
Another flash of color near the same building distracted Dan. It was the bright blue of a sweatshirt. Someone was standing on the porch. Dan slowed his car to a crawl. Maybe it wasn’t him . It could be the older man who lived next door. Condos 307A and 307B were attached, their front entrances side by side. They shared the small porch.
No, it was that guy. The tall one who had moved in last week. The one with the broad shoulders and the rainbow flag in his window. He was bending over to pick something up, and—whoa!—he would henceforth be labeled as the guy with the sweet ass, broad shoulders, and rainbow flag.
The triply attractive neighbor straightened, looked around, and stared straight into Dan’s eyes.
Well, maybe not straight into his eyes, because Dan was not getting a heterosexual vibe from the expression on that pleasant face. He realized he’d been caught staring, tapped the gas pedal, and turned in to the driveway of 301A.
He parked his car in the garage, but instead of using the door that led into the kitchen, he walked around the front of the building to check his mail. There was no package, and no note mixed in with the flyers and bills saying a parcel was being held for him at the post office. With a grunt of disappointment, he went inside, then tossed the mail on the kitchen counter.
Dan usually liked returning to his place after a busy workday, but tonight, all he saw was its deficiencies. He’d needed to find somewhere to live quickly when he’d been offered a job in this sterile area of a small Midwestern city. The condos were recent construction, but so poorly built that few people had been willing to buy them. The developers had been forced to turn the majority into rental units.
He noted the crack at the upper corner of the doorway between the kitchen and living room had widened and now nearly reached the ceiling. The landlord had assured him it was only a sign of the building settling, just as he promised the shuddering in the bathroom water pipes did not herald catastrophic flooding.
Dan doubted both, but the flaws bothered him mostly because they were reminders that he had no sense of belonging here. Like the building, he hadn’t finished settling in his new location. He hoped he’d eventually settle in more gracefully than the condo.
An off-key clang caught his attention. Even the doorbell didn’t work properly. He hurried to open the front door.
The
First night—Wednesday
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you.
You must be he I was seeking.
—Walt Whitman
Dan drove down Victoria Terrace, scowling at the row of boring, ticky-tacky houses. How did the rest of that old song go? And they all looked just the same . But at least the houses in the lyrics were different colors—these were blank and beige. Their garages took up far too much of the facades for elegance, as if the designers had put more thought into sheltering automobiles than the humans who owned them. Dan had lived in this development for almost two months, and if he hadn’t rented a place on a corner lot, he would have had to check the house numbers to see which one was his.
He turned onto the ludicrously named Prince Albert Circle. That had to be a joke on the part of some developer or street planner. It was a circle, more or less, but there was nothing princely about the street or the seven identical buildings that huddled around its borders. It was very late in November. The sparse, scrawny trees were bare of leaves, and the grass had gone dormant. He’d come home early because it was the day before Thanksgiving, but the weak afternoon sun filtering through a few clouds did little to brighten the scene. The entire block was so colorless it could have been a sepia-toned photo.
Except for a second-floor window on the unit directly across from his. A rainbow flag hung there, its cheerful colors shouting a welcome reminder that the entire world was not beige and brown.
Another flash of color near the same building distracted Dan. It was the bright blue of a sweatshirt. Someone was standing on the porch. Dan slowed his car to a crawl. Maybe it wasn’t him . It could be the older man who lived next door. Condos 307A and 307B were attached, their front entrances side by side. They shared the small porch.
No, it was that guy. The tall one who had moved in last week. The one with the broad shoulders and the rainbow flag in his window. He was bending over to pick something up, and—whoa!—he would henceforth be labeled as the guy with the sweet ass, broad shoulders, and rainbow flag.
The triply attractive neighbor straightened, looked around, and stared straight into Dan’s eyes.
Well, maybe not straight into his eyes, because Dan was not getting a heterosexual vibe from the expression on that pleasant face. He realized he’d been caught staring, tapped the gas pedal, and turned in to the driveway of 301A.
He parked his car in the garage, but instead of using the door that led into the kitchen, he walked around the front of the building to check his mail. There was no package, and no note mixed in with the flyers and bills saying a parcel was being held for him at the post office. With a grunt of disappointment, he went inside, then tossed the mail on the kitchen counter.
Dan usually liked returning to his place after a busy workday, but tonight, all he saw was its deficiencies. He’d needed to find somewhere to live quickly when he’d been offered a job in this sterile area of a small Midwestern city. The condos were recent construction, but so poorly built that few people had been willing to buy them. The developers had been forced to turn the majority into rental units.
He noted the crack at the upper corner of the doorway between the kitchen and living room had widened and now nearly reached the ceiling. The landlord had assured him it was only a sign of the building settling, just as he promised the shuddering in the bathroom water pipes did not herald catastrophic flooding.
Dan doubted both, but the flaws bothered him mostly because they were reminders that he had no sense of belonging here. Like the building, he hadn’t finished settling in his new location. He hoped he’d eventually settle in more gracefully than the condo.
An off-key clang caught his attention. Even the doorbell didn’t work properly. He hurried to open the front door.
The
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