he now turned away from Art's hands and finished unbuttoning the shirt himself. Glumly he dropped it to the floor and began on the slacks.

"That's a good boy." Relieved, satisfied, Art crossed the room to the window. Beyond it, October rain soaked the dead leaves fallen from

the sycamores on to the dark slope of lawn. Art drew the curtains, then came back to switch on the floodlamps. They made brilliant the corner of the room where Robie had sat-the striped mauve and orange cushions of the Danish chair, the brightly jacketed books on on white shelves to the ceiling, the big Paul Cadmus oil of a circus acrobat. Art turned to the naked boy.

"Now, in the chair, first, Robie. Pick up the magazine. No, just sit the way you were before, relaxed." He peered into the viewfinder of the camera. "My God," he breathed, "but you are lovely." He stepped into the dazzlement of light and bent over Robie, hand caressing the neat, hard Robie, very much. I'll thank you for curves of his chest. "Thank you, this evening the rest of my life." He kissed Robie's mouth, tongue moving deep inside. His hand slid downward across the smooth belly and provoked boyishly quick reaction. He lifted his mouth from Robie's. "There, now. That's the way I want you in these pictures. Sexual, not clinical." He was in the dark again, the lights glaring at Robie, blinding him. "Just touch yourself there, Robie. That's right. Now-"

Art took twenty pictures. Robie sat for them, stood for them, lay on the white carpet for them, and on the sleek couch. He smoked, he read magazines, he sat at the white baby grand, pretended to speak into the white phone, always sexually aroused. sexually provocative, sometimes grave but mostly smiling. Art wanted it. asked it, so he did it. He even tried

10

to relax and enjoy it. Didn't he love his own body, wouldn't he too want the pictures to pore over? But he couldn't dissolve the uneasiness, the distaste. He went to the kitchen for drinks while Art changed the film. When the doorbell rang and he heard the front door burst open, he nearly dropped the glasses.

"Hey! Anybody home?"

He froze where he was, naked, in the act of pushing the swing door with his foot.

"Wait a second," Art shouted. "Hold it right there.”

Robie heard him moving quickly in the living room, the muffled thud of his feet on the thick carpet, his breathing. The swing door opened. Art's hand flung his clothes through. The door flapped shut. Hurriedly Robie dressed, while beyond the door Art managed to sound jovial, welcoming the intruder. As Robie thrust his feet into his loafers, Art's voice sang

out:

"Bring a drink for Harry, will you, Robie?"

With a whistling sigh, Robie moved to the refrigerator. That had been close. Art ought to have remembered to lock the front door. Not that you'd expect anybody on a night like this. The rain roared quietly on the shake roof overhead. And Art's brother rarely came. Still, when he did, he invariably walked right in. Two minutes sooner he would have caught Robie and Art in a position no amount of explaining would have helped. And Harry would have been shocked.

Occupant of a pretentious house mortgaged twice over, driver of expensive new automobiles whose payments he could never quite meet, victimized by a wife to whom clothes and country club meant life, sending a daughter to a private college when in reality he couldn't afford the modest expenses even of a state uni-