The Death of Friends by Michael Nava

was a rape in the stairwell not six months ago.” He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a stick of gum. “Nicotine gum,” he said. “I’ve been trying to quit. You look great, Henry, but what happened to your hair? It’s all gray.”
    “The same as happened to yours,” I said. “Time.”
    He touched the receding line of his hair. “Yeah, well I’d rather have your problem than mine.”
    His face was heavier and more set than when I’d last seen him, and he was bulkier. A man’s face, a man’s body.
    “It suits you,” I said.
    “I was really surprised to get your announcement. I figured you’d never leave the Bay Area.”
    “I figured the same thing,” I replied, “until I fell in love with someone who lives down here.”
    “Ah, that’s great. Another lawyer?”
    “No. Josh is a student at UCLA.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “A student?”
    “He’s twenty-three, Chris, well past the age of consent.”
    “Of course it’s none of my business,” he said.
    “Of course,” I agreed.
    “The last time I heard anything about you on the Stanford grapevine it didn’t sound like you were doing too well.”
    “I wasn’t,” I said. “I was a drunk. I’ve been sober two years now.”
    “Congratulations,” he replied, meaning it. “Bay’s sober, too, you know, or probably you don’t know. It’s been four years now. I don’t think our marriage really began until she stopped drinking.”
    “Good for her,” I said. “I remember we both hit the bottle pretty hard when we were at school.”
    “I know she’d love to hear from you,” he said.
    I nodded. “Maybe I’ll give her a call.”
    “Maybe?” he said, chewing his gum. “Why wouldn’t you?”
    “I don’t want to lie to her,” I said.
    “Lie to her?”
    “I assume you never told her about Buena Vista Park,” I said. “She never mentioned it in any of her Christmas cards.”
    “God, this stuff is vile,” Chris said, spitting the gum into a wastebasket. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray. He lit a cigarette and inhaled. His face relaxed. “It’s humiliating, isn’t it? Being hooked on anything?”
    “When you asked me to drop by,” I said, “you specified your court. Why not invite me home to dinner, Chris? Were you afraid I’d say something?”
    He dragged on his cigarette. “Let me ask you something, Henry,” he said. “If someone’s an alcoholic but he manages to stay off the bottle for a couple of years, don’t you say that he’s a recovering alcoholic?”
    “Yeah, so?”
    He put his cigarette out and slipped the pack and the ashtray into his desk. “Well,” he said, “you might say I’m a recovering homosexual. I haven’t cheated on Bay since that weekend. I’ve been a good father and a good husband, better than I was before. So you see, there’s nothing to tell her.”
    “Because you’re cured.”
    His mouth tightened, then he asked, “This guy you’re with, Josh? How long have you been together?”
    “Over a year.”
    “Do his parents know?”
    “What is this, a deposition? Of course his parents know. Everyone knows. We’re not hiding anything here. That’s never been my style.”
    “I remember. Back at school you were always expounding on the virtues of being out of the closet, and I’d say, let’s talk in twenty years. Well, here we are, coming on twenty years and you’re a recovering alcoholic with a kid for a boyfriend. I can see what you mean about being out. It’s so much better.”
    My face burned. “If that’s what you have to think about me to make yourself feel better about deceiving everyone in your life, you’re even more pathetic than I thought you were.”
    We glared at each other, and then Chris looked down and shuffled some papers.
    “I see you’re on the nine-eighty-seven panel,” he said, referring to the criminal defense lawyers the county hired to defend indigent defendants. “I’ll make sure you start getting