Bill, a young gay man living in California, returns to Boston in the summer of 1987 to visit his old college roommate and briefly lover, David. He, David, and their buddy Lou drive to Provincetown for a week's gay vacation, where the old ties of friendship among them deepen. But their good time is threatened by increasingly volatile personalities and a growin AIDS epidemic encircling them in an ever tighter grasp.<br><br>Their emotions explode one evening with the unexpected arrival of George, whose added presence brings to a head the simmering anxieties, fears, and resentments these friends have long harbored but have not openly shared. Will their friendships fall apart? Or will they discover a deeper love that binds them together?

Maid Service

There was little light left. On the shore, against the sea wall rocks where Bill had left David, he could make out a scene that looked like a painting by Goya: David, in the same reclining position, but now bookmarked by Lou and Bowen and Stephen lying on either side of him, the four laughing and enjoying a joke among themselves and whose punch line Bill would never get.


By ten the next morning, Bill, David, and Lou were out on the deck. Lou, wearing his Joan Crawford sunglasses, lay perpendicular to the sun, his skin polished with an even coat of Bain de Soleil. David, the palest of the three, was lying on his side facing away from Lou and reading the sports section of the New York Timesas he casually picked his nose.


“Gay bingo tonight,” Lou suddenly said.


“We’re not going,” David quickly retorted.


Chapter 15