The usual thought that came to me at bedtime returned: Why not suicide? Why had I waited on after Duane went? And tonight? Here I lay, not alone, for the first time in a year. Beside me slept a 'normal' person . someone who might be incensed if he knew, might bound up, nervously yanking on his things to go out to the highway and hitchhike quickly away. Nuts!

I got up quietly and went to sit by the window staring off toward dark hills and velvet-gray nightsky. Finally a modicum of calm returned and I slipped into bed again, lying on my back and breathing regularly. And then, Bill turned towards me, putting his head on my shoulder and laying a knee across my hips. The movement was so unexpected that my heart bounded, and I lay breathing rapidly. And yet . . . and yet . and yet . . . I suddenly found myself unable to shove him away. It may be too much beer, or it may be he's asleep, I thought. And then I had to know.

"Bill," I whispered, "Are you awake?"

Silence followed momentarily. Then, "Yes," he whispered back.

I lay puzzled, quiet. "If you say so, I'll go away," he said, "but we're both so lonely, and I've felt so near you tonight that I got the yen to go back to my old ways of falling asleep."

I said in brutal frankness, "You oughtn't to unless you're prepared to go all the way."

"All the way?" he asked, puzzled, "What's that?"

"Well you see," I said in a dead calm voice, "The mate I lived with for ten years and lost happened to be a man."

The following silence became so profound that a dull roar invaded my hearing. Slowly, Bill withdrew his leg and lifted his head from my shoulder, turning onto his back. "Oh," he said in a quiet, lost sort-of-voice.

I blocked out all thinking, and after what seemed an interminable time, I fell asleep. Later, I wakened into a tingling alertness. Bill had his head back on my shoulder and thigh across my waist. I knew he was asleep this time, for he nuzzled his face into my neck, mumbling unintelligibly in a somnolent voice. A sob welled up in me. I couldn't help myself. I clasped his sleeping form, half turning and drew him to me, kissing him on the lips. And he, still sleeping, kissed back. I never wanted to stop. I held his lips lightly to mine, unifying my breathing with his. A tremor seemed to go through him-a crossing the borderline from unconscious to consciousness. But I didn't care. I still held him to me where he remained passively. And at last, when I let him go gently, slowly, he asked, "What is all the way?"

In Tijuana, we went for breakfast to a little sidestreet restaurant named Fausto's and sat in leather-and-cane chairs at low leathertopped tables. A jukebox ground out sprightly canciones about lonesome lovers. All Bill's chatter of the night before seemed dried up. But he listened attentively if I spoke. And he kept anticipating my needs. Secretly I hoped he could be a fraction as content as I in finding him someone so loving, so kind, so sweet, after the nightmare of my past year.

No allusion was made to the night before on the journey home. Yet, Bill seemed relaxed, and nowhere could I detect any signs of hostility or perturbation. However, toward the journey's end, qualms hit me. After a year's celibacy, could I possibly stand this being just a pickup? In Santa Monica, I said, "Where to?"

"If you'll take me around for a clean shirt and things, we'd better make it your place," he said simply.