"Let me look at you." Eli Rosenman finished hanging up his guest's heavy, wet overcoat and swiveled his stocky frame back into the front hall. He inspected the tall, smiling, younger man, now in stocking feet, his slush-covered overshoes set on a bath towel in the entryway. "Pat," the verdict was quick, "you look terrific. And it isn't just that pre-cancerous tan. You look like a new man. Are you a new man?"

"You should have been a cheerleader, professor." Patrick Handly stepped forward and gave his old friend a quick, firm hug. "I'm not new, but I am renovated, and I owe it all to you and Walter Raleigh. Thank God for Sir Walter Raleigh!"

"Let me guess. You found a cute queen waiting to cross

Duvall Street

, waved your cloak to stop traffic and made a night of it."

"That's myth and a bad pun, too. You should know better. You're the historian."

"Social historian. Myths are mother's milk to us."

Patrick chuckled. Eli took him by the elbow and steered him into the cozy living room and over to the bar table. "Bourbon? Rocks?" he asked.

"Yes, please. And a splash of water. For someone so light-minded, you pour with a heavy hand. My debt to Walter Raleigh is the Western world's debt. Tobacco, in a word. These days, smokers have to stick together. Let's just say, I did."

"Let's say that you're not going to get away with the abridged version." Eli handed his guest a short glass, nearly full of liquid the color of roasted chestnuts. "Pat, your slump is gone. You're eyes are bright. You even have a decent haircut. I haven't seen you like this since Spencer got sick. You're out of mourning at last."

"I'm still a widow, my friend. And I'll always be in mourning for Spence. You don't just file and forget 17 years." He sipped at his bourbon and sat down heavily on the sofa. "Glorious years, Eli." He stared into the cheerful fire. "I miss him every waking minute. Even my dreams are all about loss. Still. And it's been almost six months."

"But you're mending, boy-o. I can see it. And I'm really pleased that Key West helped." He dropped into his favorite spot, an Eames chair next to the sofa, lifted his slippered feet onto the footstool and raised his glass. "Here's to you, Pat, and whatever refreshed you. Or whoever. Spencer was a lucky man."

They drank in silence. "You did like my house?" It wasn't a question from Eli, more a new sluice gate of conversation being opened.

"Like? I loved it. Obviously, you haven't gotten my bread-and-butter letter or the announcement that you've been enrolled in the T-shirt of the Month Club. Life-size silk screens of 12 of Key West's studliest torsos with your name and phone number on the back of each shirt. From the Pecs 'n Sex boutique on Simonton."

"You didn't?"

"Nope." Pat grinned. "Almost, though. They were having a sale."

"All those rip-off joints are always having sales. Between the cruise ships and the tourist traps, they're turning the island into a theme park for bad taste. It used to be just casually seedy with redeeming intervals of elegance."

"Like your house, Eli. I knew your taste was impeccable, but the house is more than that. So beautiful and so comfortable at the same time. I don't know how I can ever repay you for letting me use it. I almost wish I'd taken my cameras so that I could show you what you let me see."

"You left the Leicas here? I thought you carried them everywhere. Your suit of armor. Didn't you feel naked without them?"

Pat's eyebrows rose. "What a strange idea. No, not naked, maybe a little handicapped now and then. That's all. I wanted a real vacation and I got one. After the second day, I even stopped thinking about shutter speeds and camera angles. I just admired the beauty indoors and out and blessed you for insisting that I go."

"It would have been a shame to let the place sit empty just because some paying tenants backed out. I kept their deposit after all, and I had the pleasure of putting you in my debt. Your side of the bargain…"

The doorbell interrupted. "Damn," Eli muttered. "Jehovah's Witnesses? Mormon missionaries? Not in a snowstorm. Girl Scouts?" The bell sounded again. Eli pushed himself up from his chair. "Sorry, Pat. I'll be right back. You're not expecting anyone are you? An angry wife?"

Pat smiled and shook his head as his host went out into the hall. He heard voices, but they were indistinct. He longed for a cigarette, but Eli, who tolerated many vices, forbad smoking in his house, his presence, even his personal space. Which stretched to enclose his many friends and sometimes, on the street, the odd teenager from whose astonished fingers the scholar, like a silent, stooping falcon, snatched cigarettes, lit and unlit.

Pat closed his eyes to summon up a vision of another young smoker, the stunning, nearly naked boy-man on the breezy beach in Key West, leaning down to ask for a light, holding an empty pack of matches in wordless, embarrassed explanation. That's how it had begun. The idyll. The resurrection. The story he would only tell Eli in "the abridged version."

"Of course, it's no trouble." Eli's voice came from the hallway. "There's plenty of food, and you'll never get a cab to come back out here in this storm. Besides, it's my mistake." The voice grew louder as a tall figure filled the doorway, obscuring Eli, who was apparently propelling his reluctant guest from behind. "I must be losing it. I expected you on the weekend."

Pat stood up as the two men came all the way in to the room. The new arrival - mid-twenties? younger? older? Pat couldn't tell -- was broad-shouldered in a tweed jacket, white button-down shirt, lively patterned tie - Hermes? Ferragamo? -- and jeans. He wore his dark red hair pulled back tight in a pony-tail and had astonishingly dark blue eyes that darted around the room in self-conscious confusion. "Pat," Eli announced, "this is my new research assistant, Kerry. I invited him to come for supper when he got here from New York, and I forgot it was today. Kerry, this is Pat, my youngest old friend."

"Terry, sir, not Kerry," just a trace of upset in his voice as he put his hand out. "Terence Martenson. It's nice to meet you, but I'm sorry to intrude. I should have telephoned."

"You're not intruding, son," Eli pushed him toward the couch as Pat sat back down. "We're almost family, and now so are you. What do you drink?" He waved an expansive hand at the bar.

"Do you have rum, professor? A rum and coke would be great. Otherwise, just a beer."

"One Cuba libre, coming up. The Cokes are in the kitchen. I'll be right back." He bustled out.

"I can't believe Eli is getting to be the absent-minded professor type," Pat smiled at Terry. "If he is, you'll really have your work cut out for you. What is it, anyway, the next project, I mean?"

"The weekend." Eli bustled back in with an open Coke can. "The leisure class at its leisure. Country weekends. Sneaky weekends. It's my publisher's idea, so, of course, it has to be a great one. Guaranteed Oprah. Maybe you could do some of the illustrations, Pat."

"Somehow, I don't think fox hunts would be my thing. Crowds at the beach, maybe. Are you going to give the toiling masses equal time?"

"That's the whole point of the book," Eli crowed. He handed Terry his drink. "How the privilege of the few has become the nightmare of the many, the jammed freeways, the family outings, the frenetic shopping, the do-it-yourself home repair. I know it sounds like pop history, but it should be fairly serious sociology. And Oprah will love it."

"Eli," Pat raised his drink, "to the weekend. I know you'll make it a fascinating book. But," he paused, "what happened to the divine Diana? Your predecessor," he explained to Terry."

"Didn't I tell you last month? As good research assistants go," Eli pouted, "she went. Princess Di kissed a frog, and they're planning to live happily ever after in some squalid suburb of Paris. You don't kiss frogs, do you, Kerry?"

"Terry, sir. No. Never had the pleasure."

"I'm sorry," Eli seemed genuinely remorseful. "Terry, of course. I won't do that again unless you call me sir again. There was a Kerry in the first class I ever taught. Good-looking kid like you." The young man blushed, fidgeted. Eli went on. "He didn't come back from Vietnam, and I guess he's on my conscience. I flunked him. He lost his deferment. Then his life. He was adorable. Not that I ever made a pass at a student."

"Never?" Pat tried to make his tone light.

"Not until after graduation." Eli bounced back. "Then all bets are off. But I am not in confessional mode tonight. What I want is to hear about the Key West life and loves of Mr. Handly. I have reached the age when I have to do most of my living vicariously. I have also reached the time when I turn into your serving person for the evening. Amuse each other while I put the food on the table."

"Can't we help?" Pat asked Eli's retreating back.

"Only by staying out of my way. But don't say anything interesting while I'm gone."

Pat turned to face Terry who was staring at him intently, hopefully. "Are you really Patrick Handly, the photographer?" The look of self-conscious confusion was stronger than before. "I… I thought you'd be a lot older."

"I am older. Every minute. Someday you'll find out that thirty-seven is old. But not for a while, I guess. How long have you got?"

Terry blushed again. "A little over twelve years to go. Sir, Mr., I mean, Pat, I think your work is great. The show you had in New York two years ago. Well, I went five times. I guess I thought you were old because you'd done so much in the nursing home. And you made those old people so… so alive. It was like a miracle.

"I'm sorry. I'm babbling, but I've just never met someone famous that I admired before."

"I'm not famous, but thank you for pretending. I'm not modest either, but I know that most of the people who like what I do are other photographers. Are you?"

"Oh, no. I mean, I wish. I've studied, but I wouldn't dare call myself a photographer. And pictures of people, I don't know why, but mine don't work. I sort of stick to landscapes and still lifes. There I feel I'm more in control."

Pat listened sympathetically. Starting out, he, too, had been afraid of the human face, of emotion, of seeming to pry. "You'll get over that," he assured Terry. "It's mostly a matter of how you feel about yourself. I'd really be interested in seeing what you've done. Have you brought anything with you?"

"Here? Tonight?" Terry was instantly, pathetically eager. Then, assuming that Pat was just being polite, he reversed field. "No, nothing. I'm being stupid. I've really only come out now to hunt for a place to live. All my stuff is still in New York. I'm sorry, I wouldn't dare impose on you like that anyway."

What this kid needs is some confidence, Pat thought. Just like me when I met Spence. Scared of my shadow. He put a hand lightly on Terry's forearm. "Terry, if you're sharp enough to go for the kind of stuff I do, I bet you're good enough to be doing work I'd enjoy seeing. Have you been working with anyone? A teacher?"

"No. Just books. I couldn't afford classes in New York. Not on an internship at a small publisher."

You could afford expensive neckties, Pat nearly said, but Terry saw the photographer's appraising look and corrected the unspoken thought. "This was a Christmas present from a roommate. I thought it might help me make a good first impression on Professor Rosenman. Actually," he confided, "I don't usually wear a necktie."

"Well, that one looks great on you. But I don't understand. You and Eli hadn't met before?"

"Just on the telephone. My roommate works for his publisher and suggested me. And the professor said he was desperate."

"Don't believe anything he says. He probably checked you all the way back to kindergarten before he called you, and he's probably not paying you enough and he'll work your backside off. Abandon hope, all ye …"

"Patrick, if you're trying to scare Terry away, I'll pour the soup in your lap." Eli had returned. "And the soup is hot and on. Come and get it."

The meal was the kind Eli was famous for producing. Not cooking. He didn't cook, but he allowed caterers on both banks of the Ohio to think that if they measured up to his exacting standards, he would drop their names in well-placed ears. Sometimes, he did. The dinner he provided for Pat and Terry - a hot-and-sour soup, grilled shrimp on saffron rice, leeks suffused with garlic, lichee over mango and peach sherbet - was not your ordinary Chinese take-out. It had actually materialized from the newest Asian eclectic restaurant in Cincinnati, Eli admitted as he poured a remarkable white Burgundy into their glasses, "and the manager's daughter is a student," he chortled. "She thinks she'll get a good grade on her paper, and she will. It's an excellent paper."

Most of the dinner-table conversation was about the food, Eli's devious conduct in getting it, other memorable meals he'd conjured up, Terry's apartment-hunting prospects, his need for a car and his timetable for entering Eli's service. Only when the plates had been cleared, and the three had taken their coffee back into the living room did Eli resume his inquisition. "All right, Pat," he said, "it's supper-singing time. You left here two weeks ago looking like a professional pallbearer, and now you're back with a spring in your step and a sparkle in your eye. You got laid. That's obvious. What I'm entitled to know as the man who sent you to Key West is how you did it and with whom. Surely not with my friend, Kurt. He's not your type."

"Not with Kurt," Pat agreed, admitting in effect that he'd been with someone else. He wanted to give Eli the present of his story - part of it, at least -- but Terry was not only a stranger but quite possibly straight. "Peut-etre pas devant les enfants," he pleaded with Eli. (Not in front of the children.)

"Il y a un enfant ici?" Quizzically Terry shaded his eyes and pretended to scan the room. His French sounded Parisian. It was certainly assured. "I don't see any kids. Pat, I'm not a babe in arms. I won't be offended, and I will keep my mouth shut. Besides, I've never been to Florida. I'd love to hear about it."

"But you've obviously been to France."

"For most of high school. My mother married a Frenchman after my father…" Died? Ran away? Went mad? Whatever had happened, it still hurt Terry to remember.

"Small world," Pat said. "I grew up in Paris, at least till I was twelve. Then my family moved back to the States. Do you go back often?"

"No. The last time was my mother's funeral, and that was nearly two years ago. My life is here now."

"You sound very well-adjusted," Pat smiled. "I went through hell to become an American. Sometimes, I still dream in French."

"Me, too," Terry shook his head. "Sex dreams, specially." He blushed yet again. Pat found the shyness more and more endearing. The small hole in the toe of the young man's left sock stirred him as well. "I'd love to know more about his sex dreams," he thought.

"All in good time," Eli was a mind-reader. "But some other time, Terry. It's Pat's turn tonight, and I'm an impatient man. What happened down there? When? With whom? Are you in love?"

"You're impossible, Eli," Pat protested, "but all right, I guess you're entitled. I kissed two frogs. That's what happened. Actually they kissed me first. And I'm not in love, no, although … I don't know how to put this … but, well, I think I could be in love again. When Spence died," Pat's voice choked, "I thought I had lost the only person I could or would love. Now, thanks to you and my frogs, I see … I see, let's call them possibilities I hadn't imagined."

"Terry," Pat turned to his neighbor on the sofa. "I should explain. For almost 17 years I lived with one, wonderful, amazing man, Spencer Kendall. He was a lawyer here, and we met when I was a witness for a friend of mine who'd gotten into trouble. Spencer defended him, and we fell in love and then last year he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and in three months he was dead. He was only fifty-two. I went to pieces, and Eli slowly put me back together. He sent me off to stay in his house in Key West to complete the cure, and I guess it worked. I owe him a lot."

"Including an explanation of your misbehavior with the local amphibians. I don't remember seeing any around my house," Eli pressed on. "Just those little lizards."

"Gekkos," Pat said. "My frogs were of the human type, Eli, like Diana's. They were French boys, lovers, and really they were more like adorable puppies than frogs. I met them on the beach, the nice one with the pine trees, the state park. I was the only smoker there, and they had run out of matches." He closed his eyes, and again the picture of the tall, lithe youngster in the almost indecent thong bikini swam into his vision. The long, supple legs, the wavy dark hair coming almost to his shoulders, the outline of his trapped cock against the thin fabric and the ravishing, embarrassed smile miming his request for a light.