Garner working as a waiter at an upscale restaurant with a growing attraction to a man named Alonzo, who always asks to be put in his section for dinner. One night after work, the man is assaulted while trailing Garner. Garner goes to his aid, but is shot for his trouble.<br><br>Taking time off from work to recover, Garner is resting on a park bench when Alonzo suddenly appears at the other end of the bench. Garner never saw him approach. He asks why Alonzo is trailing him.<br><br>After some hesitation, Alonzo explains he wants to recruit Garner to help fight against others who systematically hunt people like himself. Garner isn’t inclined to get involved in anything dangerous, but he does finds Alonzo more and more attractive, so he agrees to consider the idea. As he learns more about Alonzo’s bizarre and dangerous subculture, what Garner really wants to know is whether Alonzo is romantically interested in him at all.

Call to Love

The mattress lay between a tarp-covered pile of boards and a low, shed-like structure. Beyond the foot of the mattress stretched the gravel-covered surface of a building’s flat rooftop, and maybe twenty feet away a cluster of pipes rose vertically from the gravel surface, each covered with a conical metal hat.


Details of his activities from the previous evening came slowly back to him, and he shook his head in wonder. It seemed incredible, but the memories were far too real, both in clarity and in detail, to have been a dream or hallucination. He looked at the sheets where he lay and ran his hand over the fabric. This had been where he had made exquisite love to Alonzo. At the memory, his heart pounded and his eyes filled with tears of tenderness.


Chapter 68