The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney

Seventeenth Street, an experimental production by a local playwright in which Kirby had played a mute turnpike tollbooth operator. I hadn't understood a word of it, and he was trying, with much diffidence and tact, to explain it to me. It had just begun to snow, the first fall of the season, and we'd stopped to watch the thick, wet flakes swirl in the halo of a streetlamp. We had never touched before, never so much as held hands. Still, it felt quite natural to turn my head and rest it, just lightly, on his shoulder and say, "Isn't it lovely?" We might have been actors in a movie- because he looked into my eyes and echoed, "Lovely." And he- touched my face with his gloved fingertips. - He kissed my cheek. All I could do was stare at him, nonpiussed and suddenly shy, fumbling in my mind for an explanation for this confusing turn of events. I thought, -But you're gay! And then he kissed my mouth, and I knew he wasn't. It was like discovering that someone you thought you knew has been in drag all along. Exactly like that-like finding out your woman friend is really a man.
He drew back to smile at me, but I couldn't smile back, couldn't even speak. I was utterly dumbfounded. Gradually my silence began to embarrass him. "I'm sorry," he said. "Isabel, I'm very sorry:' "It's all right," I said automatically. Meaninglessly. We- started to walk again. He went back to explaining the play, but of course now it was terribly awkward. And I couldn't do anything to smooth the situation over-I was too busy trying to rearrange everything I had ever thought about him. - We live in the same building, in the noisy heart of Adams-Morgan. His third-floor apartment is directly over mine. He's a quiet neighbor, and yet the walls and floors are so thin, I can still hear him with rather unsettling clarity; I can tell what room he's in, for example, and more often than not, what he's doing. I daresay he can hear me almost as well-the first time we spoke, he called on the telephone to ask if I would please turn my stereo up so that he could hear the "Appassionata" without straining. His deep, cultured voice intrigued me, even though I thought at first he was being sarcastic. Another false assumption.
When we met in person, his looks neither confirmed nor contradicted the mistaken impression which was to grow, slowly but surely, the longer I knew him, that he was a homosexual. He's tall, thin as a stalk, almost completely bald. His eyes would be piercing, because of the intense way he has of staring at people, if they weren't such a benign shade of soft brown. His nose is like a blade, sharp and pointed on the end, but his lips are soft. Surprisingly soft. As I have discovered. He looks malnourished, but he's really quite strong-I know this from all the furniture-moving and household repairs he's done for me over the course of our friendship. What drew us together, a passion for music, is still our strongest bond. We love to go to concerts together, and now we marvel that we never met before or at least noticed each other, for we invariably occupy the cheapest seats at the Kennedy Center, the DAR, the Lisner, the Baird Auditorium.
Last night, after our awkward walk home in the snow, Kirby came to my door, as he always does, to see me in and say good night. But of course it was different this time. - "Would you like to come in?" I asked.
"No, I'll go up. Thanks. It's late." I almost let him go, but then I couldn't. Something needed to be said. To pretend nothing had happened would be insulting to him, cowardly of me. On the other hand, what ill were making too much of it? What if his kiss had been an impulse, a gesture of friendship, no more? No, it was more than that for him, I was sure of it.
"My life - is changing, Kirby, I'm changing, so quickly these days, I can hardly keep up with myself. I'm completely self-absorbed just now. It's simply the wrong time for me to form a-a romantic attachment. I'm too selfish, too caught up in myself to do justice to