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, if he never found it, was he unhappy?”


“No. Not exactly. But he was too alive, I think, to be totally content. I was better at that. Partly because just being with him meant so much to me. I know what it did to him, but he had that other quality.” She shook her head. “I never knew what it was, really.”


That day was the most pleasurable of his visit. When he told his aunt that he wanted to get back to the city and would leave the following day, she smiled and told him that she had thought that might be the case.


Garner felt a twinge at this, but resolved he would Skype more with Aunt Jenny, and perhaps, one day, bring Alonzo to see her—if things worked out. He had made the decision. It was the best kind of decision-making, for it simply welled up from inside him, as a manifest truth.


Chapter 83