head in Terry's lap. Terry shifted slightly to accomodate him, rubbing Jack's head soothingly with one sticky hand and feeding himself with the other.

"The trouble with you is, you get too worried over little things," Terry told him in a kind and casual voice.

"Little things!" Jack said in disbelief. "Little things like all the slobs you sleep with and all the money you spend and-" His head had come up and he gripped Terry's thighs in hard angry hands.

"Honey, we're still eating, for Christ's sake. We aren't starving to death. The rent's paid. I don't spend that much money.'

"The rent's paid because Laura lent me a hundred bucks! Which she can't afford!" Jack shouted at him.

Terry gazed down at him and smiled. "Poor Jack," he said. He bent down and kissed his forehead. "That was nice of Laura," he added. "She's a good kid. Why don't you two get married?"

Jack gaped at him. And at last he asked sourly, "Are you telling me to leave you?"

Terry shook his head with a laugh, and shoved Jack's glasses up his nose with his index finger. "You goofy owl," he said. "I don't want you to leave me. Who'd pay the grocery bills? Besides, I love you, Owl."

"Then why do you treat me like this?"

"I can't help it."

"You could help it," Jack said with such intensity that Terry stopped chewing for a moment. "You could come home once in a while."

"I'm home," Terry protested innocently.

"You could get a job and earn a little money, instead of spending all mine." "But I don't know how to do anything. Except make love," he grinned. He had a fine smile: charming and honest. The kind mothers love. It had fooled his own mother for twenty-one years.

"You could stay out of other people's beds," Jack said bitterly.

Terry wiggled in his hard grasp. "No, I couldn't," he said. "I need variety, Jack. Some people are just made that way, and I'm one of them."

"God damn you, you little twerp, if you love me why can't I be enough for you?" Jack's voice rose with his words, rough and tormented.

Terry looked him straight in the eye. "I don't know," he said. "I swear I don't. I wish you were enough. You think I like to hurt you, but I don't. It hurts me, too.'

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Jack gazed into his young face, clear-featured and fair, and he knew he was backed against a stone wall. His head went down again into Terry's lap and he wept while Terry finished his orange and comforted him.

It was hopeless. It was a little ridiculous in a pathetic sort of way. Terry loved men in the plural. He couldn't get enough. But he loved Jack Mannsingular-too. Jack was Terry's home base, his refuge and security. Jack was a friend; something very few of his other lovers had ever been.

Besides, Jack tickled him. It wasn't just his big-eyed bespectacled excesses of temper that looked so comical. It was his mind, his wit. It amused Terry as it did everybody else, and it pleased him to see an angry Jack trounce people with it, even hurt them. Hurting didn't scare Terry; it excited him.

In the back of his mind Terry realized vaguely that he was living a meaningless life. He spoke the truth when he said he didn't know how to do anything but make love. He had a persuasive charm that he could use when he thought

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