The mid-40s are that time in a gay man's life when his major paradigm shifts from sexy to Sansabelts. But when Barry Grooms's partner of twenty years is killed on Barry's forty-fifth birthday, his world doesn't so much evolve as it does explode.<br><br>After navigating through the surreal conveyor belt of friends and family, he can't eat another casserole or swallow much more advice on what constitutes grief. Still numb, he leaves his homestore and design business in the care of others as he escapes to Key West, then New York. There he gets a thankless new job working for a crazy lady in a poncho, then has too many drinks with a narcissistic Broadway actor. Next it's a nude exercise class that redefines flop sweat, and from there he's on to a relationship with a man twenty years his junior.<br><br>Yet no matter how great the retreat from the man he used to be, life's gravity spins Barry back to the small town where he grew up for one more ironic twist that teaches him how to say goodbye with grace.

The Cool Part of His Pillow

Another unidentified voice, that of a woman, an eyewitness, joins the reportage. “From the corner of my eye, I saw something yellow begin to fall. I started running.”


A blurting police car intercedes in my race.


EXIT signs jump by. I’m afraid I’ll miss the one I was told to take but I don’t slow for the pursuing pandemonium red, not when I hear “…another witness, a store owner in the vicinity, told me emergency equipment was brought in to rescue one victim from a parked luxury car as workers removed debris by hand.”


That’s not Andy. Please, God, have it not be Andy.


St. Vitus Community Hospital directional sign looms. I still don’t defer to the police car, now parallel to the Jeep.


As preposterous as it seems, I think about the risk of disfigurement. Scarring is tricky. Dee could help on this. A competent plastic surgeon should be standing by ready to reset Andy’s aquiline nose, to ensure his crooked mouth remains perfectly crooked.


Chapter 9