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 coming together of grandmother and grandchild is bumpy. When Olivia whispers, “Your namesake is here,” Mom’s eyelids pop open, and she rasps, “My name isn’t Je-nine-ugh.”


Nina crouches. “Hi, ‘eenie.” That’s what she always called Mom. She’d intuited early that Mom might leave her in a dingo’s care if she called her Grandma, but she had trouble with J’s, so it was ‘eenie. It stuck. Nina squeezes her eyes shut. “‘eenie, I’m visualizing your cancer exiting your body.”


We all do our best to visualize, but it’s hard to ignore the claustrophobic stink, the metal, the cleansers, the disinfecting detergent embedded in the sheets. Those are the things no bedside vigil in a movie can impart. When my cell phone rings in my workout bag, I leave them.


Chapter 99