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

“The county coroner. They weren’t done.”


Something glacial settles over the bedroom as the implication of “they weren’t done” sinks in.


Morgues, large drawers, dissection. TV is cluttered enough with fictional procedurals that I don’t want my own factual one. I refuse to see the pathology report. I have no need to know what Andy’s spleen weighed. I do not want to know if Andy suffered massive head trauma, internal injuries, suffocated beneath the collapse, or hemorrhaged slowly. I asked that his death certificate, multiples of which I’ll require to sate the death industry, be sealed in envelopes so I don’t have to even touch one.


In the guise of helpfulness, hospital administrators suggested I meet with those who first responded to ColonyScape and extracted Andy. To offer a thanks or a gratuity?


I declined. I already know that everything I could count on drew its last breath when Andy did.


“Had you guys ever made arrangements?” Faith asks.


Chapter 11