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

But all of this was beside the point! What mattered was that now he knew—or firmly believed, for everything fit—that he had not been abandoned by his parents, that he had not been hated by his uncle. That connection with his uncle—that had disturbed the man sufficiently that he had turned that evening and lost his balance.


Garner shook with joyful relief. He was notunlovable. He had been loved.


And, even more, he now had a realistic view of things, one that fitted the new and old facts reasonably, based on how he now understood the world to function—an understanding that was far more subtle and sensible than the emotional, simplistic solutions produced by the imagination of a traumatized and grieving child.


He repeated this phrase several times, and each time felt the warming effect of it.


Chapter 82