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

“I mean,” the other kid continued conversationally, “just now, I saw you, you hit accurately, the same place, four time in a row. It’s just too bad that it’s your thumb.”


Garner felt something in him lighten at this. It was a joke.


“I was also thinking, that you might have more success with the nail—” The kid paused for emphasis. “If you tried to hit your thumb instead.”


Garner’s reaction hovered between annoyance and amusement, but the kid’s face was so innocent that the latter won out. He started to laugh, and then they were both laughing.


That had been Garner’s first meeting with Peter, who lived on the farm beyond the wooded rear part of his aunt’s ten-acre property. Garner learned this when Peter led him through the wood, along a barely discernible path from the gazebo glade to a wood-and-wire fence, beyond which was a broad open field, and in the distance the various buildings of the farm itself.


Chapter 73